Overview - Why Colossians Matters: Historical Context & Faith | Bible Study (Session 1)

Ready to embark on a thrilling journey through the New Testament? Today, we crack open the book of Colossians - a treasure trove of rich theology, penned by the Apostle Paul from prison around 60-62 AD. Buckle up for a captivating discussion as we delve into the heart of the book’s objective - to prevent the church at Colossae from falling prey to false teachings.

Are you yearning to mature in your Christian faith? Colossians beckons! We take a deep dive into the balance between gospel and discipleship. While the gospel is the cornerstone of salvation, growth in Christ necessitates stepping beyond and engaging with deeper Biblical studies.  Join us on this enlightening journey through Colossians, kicking off from chapter one, verse one in our next episode.

Promo announcing next study is Book of Joel

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:49

Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible.

Speaker 2 0:51

My name is Glenn and I'm here with Steve, and today we get the privilege of starting a new book, the book of Colossians, and it should be a very rewarding book For those of you that are new to our program. One of the things we do is we go through verse by verse through these books and as we go we try to answer a few questions and deal with a little bit of theology, but most of what we do is talking about what it says in the text and just trying to explain it, to reveal the Word of God. For those of you that might want to go a little deeper, if you go to our website, reasoningthroughthebiblecom, you'll find that we have lesson plans that go along with all of our books. You can use them for small group Bible studies or maybe your church class and your ability. If you have somebody that's in need of teaching materials, we provide that free of charge. So, steve, with that we can jump into an introduction today to the book of Colossians. What can we say about Colossians?

Speaker 1 1:50

It's good to be in a New Testament book and looking forward to going through this and seeing how the Old Testament helps to give some clarity to this New Testament book, because I think there are some things that are in here that kind of make some references back to the Old Testament. That will be something that will be good to have. Colossae was in the Leica Valley. It was about 120 miles from Ephesus. It was also a place that Paul hadn't visited, but he has these questions that come, or at least hears about this new Christian community there in Colossae. He goes and he sends this letter to them and it's quite an encouragement and has a lot of deep theology in it.

Speaker 2 2:29

There's a lot of deep theology in this book. So what we want to do today is just give a bit of an overview and then hopefully next time we'll be able to dive into chapter one, verse one. But there's some context here that I think will help before we just get into exegeting the text. First of all, there's a series of about four of the New Testament letters epistles. The word epistle just means letter, and they were all written from prison. We can look at the clues inside the books and know that Paul wrote them from prison. The teachers are lumped them together and call these the prison epistles, the prison epistles and those being Philippians, colossians, philemon and Ephesians, those four are typically known as the prison epistles. And if we think of those four Philippians, ephesians, colossians and Philemon think of all of the wonderful teachings that are in those four books about the church and about God and about the person of Jesus Christ. They were all written while Paul was in prison.

Speaker 2 3:35

If we look at Colossians 4, 3, and 4, 18, paul says I am in chains, don't forget my chains. So he was in a prison, in chains, writing these letters to these churches, and I always think, steve, how Paul was such a goer and doer. He was always so busy, he was always so active. He was just tremendously active and I think God said OK, I want you to sit down and write something, and in order to do that, he had to be sitting. Paul wouldn't have done it on his own, he was just too driven. Ok, I'll make sure you're safe. He was in a Roman prison and if you were with us when we went through Acts, he was there in a Roman prison in the capital of the empire, under royal guard, and with that, he's able to witness to the people that you wouldn't normally be able to witness to, which is the palace guard and people in and around the emperor. From that, not only was he able to witness to senior people in the empire, but he's also able to write these wonderful, wonderful epistles.

Speaker 1 4:48

And the general consensus that this was written around 60 to 62 AD. To put it in perspective of where it was in Paul's missionary journeys he's already made all three of his missionary journeys and his third missionary journey was around 54 to 56 AD and the church at Colossae comes into being around 54 or 56. So it's during that time of Paul's third missionary journey is when the church comes about. But the epistle itself is general consensus is it's written around 60, 62 AD.

Speaker 2 5:23

There's enough clues in the New Testament where we can be fairly solid about that date. If we again, if, if you were with us when we went through Acts, we mentioned the dates. There's some landmarks inside the book of Acts that the king date things very specifically. We feel really good about this date of 61 to 63 in the sense that, especially like at the end of the book of Acts, it specifically says Paul was in prison in Rome for two years and the book just ends there. So with that we know he's in chains. He was in prison in Rome, which is probably where it was written from.

Speaker 2 6:01

The chapter 1, verse 1 says it's from Paul with Timothy. All of that lines up very well with what we know from Acts and the other epistles. Then Colossians chapter 4, verses 7 through 9 mention these two men, ticacus and Onesimus, and those names were mentioned again in parts of the New Testament. Specifically Onesimus is mentioned in Philemon. So it would seem that Paul wrote Ephesians and Colossians and Philemon approximately the same time. Some of the Bible scholars go as far as to say these three books were written at the exact same time and traveled with those two men at the exact same time. That's possible, although we wouldn't get too dogmatic about it. But we know that the places they were writing to were similar. The places he's writing from is similar and the men Onesimus is mentioned in two of the books, so that would lead us to believe that these were written about the same time.

Speaker 1 7:03

Can we also just call out that this is about 30 years after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. So this is really, and Paul was a contemporary of Jesus. This is not hundreds of years later. This is right in the timeframe of where the activity of Jesus' resurrection is relatively soon. After that you have Paul's missionary journeys. These aren't things that are happening hundreds or years later. They're very close to the actual event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 7:37

And it's also the case that again, if you just read the New Testament, the events of Jesus didn't happen in a corner. This wasn't some backwater town where nobody knew. No, all the activities that lined up the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was spread in a very short amount of time through all the known world. Some of it was in the days because all the Jewish people were in Jerusalem for those two events and they scattered immediately and told about it all through Jerusalem and Judea and Israel. And then, with the Roman roads and people like Paul traveling around, within two years the known world knew about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Plus, again, with all of the eyewitnesses then it's really hard for it to be started as a rumor in some remote part of the world.

Speaker 1 8:35

And there's two different groups of people that are here in this church. There are some Jewish believers that have now believed that Jesus is the Messiah, and so they become Christians. And then we have the Gentiles, the Greeks, and so Whenever we see in other parts of Scripture and other epistles, sometimes you'll see the term used of the Hellenistic Jews. That's these type of Jews. These are the Jews that live out in Asia Minor. That's the province that was known that Roman had named this. It's in modern day Turkey. Those were the Jews that lived out in this area. They had the Greek culture, they were among the Greek culture, they were known as Hellenistic Jews, but they're out in this area, and then we have combined with that the actual Greek Gentile people that have come in and they're forming this new Christian church.

Speaker 2 9:27

Yes, and I always find it fascinating about the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of these people often get reflected in the letters. Additional points here that I think are really interesting. Paul did not start the church at Colossi. Chapter 1, verse 7 says that this church was started by a man named Apaphros. And then in chapter 2, verse 1, paul tells them you have not seen my face. So Paul had not been to Colossae by the time he writes this book. Question then arises why would he write the letter? Well, he's writing the letter, it becomes very clear because there had been some false teaching that had arisen in that church.

Speaker 2 10:10

One of the things I always get a smile out of Steve is occasionally in modern days you'll hear people say oh, we want to get back to the way the first century church was, we want to get rid of all these modern influences and we want our church to get back to what was in the original church in the first century. Well, guess what? The original churches had false teachers, they had problems, they had factions. I mean, just read the New Testament. Half of the book of 1 Corinthians was dealing with all this long string of problems they had. Several of the books of the New Testament were specifically written because there were already false teachers that had crept in before the apostles died, and this was one of them. Timothy mentions false teachers. Titus mentions false teachers. First John mentions false teachers. There's a series of false teachers that had already arisen. What we really need to do is not worry so much about let's get back to the first century, but get back to what the apostles wrote down.

Speaker 1 11:10

And the great thing about that, there were false teachers. If you could say having false teachers is a great thing, is that because of these false teachings we have these letters that have been written, which depict and go through very clear doctrinal, theological matters that we know. From all of these epistles we know what the belief of Paul was, we know what Paul taught. So from that aspect of it, having these false teachers and false doctors going through has created this body of work that is very emphatic as far as what the true belief and true things that Paul taught were.

Speaker 2 11:54

Now, one of the things I find, steve, is that, again, paul didn't start this church, but nevertheless he is writing to them because he cares about them. He cares about this church. That he didn't found it, but it was a group of believers and he was concerned about them. I think that's a lesson for us today, don't you think, in the sense that today we're caught up in all the denominationalism and I have my church and somebody else has theirs, and who might worry about what they teach? Well, paul cared about other churches and other towns, even if it wasn't one he was a part of. He was writing because he cared about them, and I find that to be just a very good lesson for us.

Speaker 1 12:39

The opposite side of that is that we have a Paphras who started the church. We don't see him being jealous because Paul is writing about this to correct some of the doctrine. We see an agreement between all of these different people that are starting churches, that are going and spreading the gospel through this region and, with Paul for sure, is being looked upon as being the leader. He calls himself the apostle. Here he's referred to as an apostle. It's very clear that he is looked at as being a leader among these Gentile churches that are there, even the ones that he didn't actually found himself.

Challenges to Pauline Authorship of Colossians

Speaker 2 13:19

So let's talk about the writer. Chapter one, verse one, says Paul wrote it along with Timothy. That's what the text says and of course, liberal scholars being liberal, they want to challenge such things and in my research I only found three even partially credible challenges to Paul being the author. Let's talk about those, because it does come up at times. How do we know it was really Paul that wrote this? Well, one of the challenges says that there's words in Colossians that aren't found in some of the other writings of Paul.

Speaker 2 13:55

The accusation here is that if Paul were writing it, all the language and vocabulary would be similar throughout these various writings that he did, and there's somewhere around three dozen terms, words and Colossians that aren't found in some of the other epistles. Well, that really doesn't hold much water, doesn't prove anything, simply because the subject matter is different here than it is in the other epistles, and if you're writing about a different subject matter you're going to use different words. That really doesn't prove anything. Again, take Philemon, for example. Philemon was a letter to a friend and he's appealing on an emotional level to a friend.

Speaker 2 14:37

Ephesians is largely about the church and he gives doctrines about the church, and in Colossians it's largely about the person of Jesus Christ. He has a lot of things about the person of Jesus Christ, and when the subject matters different, you're going to have a different amount of words and terms. Then another second possible argument or challenge to Paul, as an author says that the doctrine in Colossians is very similar to the doctrine found in John's writings, and I just kind of a smile at this because, yes, because they're both apostles of Jesus Christ. In Galatians, that says they got together two different times and made sure their doctrine agreed with each other before they went out and taught things. I just people really fish in for when they come up with challenges like that one.

Speaker 1 15:34

Well, we're both kind of chuckling at this, because if the doctrines were different, then the critics would say oh yeah, so this couldn't have been written by Paul, or the doctrines are different, or there would have been a different criticism. But that's just silly. Of course the doctrines are going to be the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ that he died, buried and resurrected and ascended to heaven. That's the good news, that's the gospel. Why wouldn't it match up with what John's gospel was Right?

Speaker 2 16:04

And the third possible challenge to Paul as an author was that the heresy that's dealt with in Colossians was really a second century heresy, more so than a first century heresy, and that's a little bit weak simply because the heresy isn't specifically named. We can come to some conclusions by looking at his answers on what the heresy was or the false teaching, but in Colossians Paul doesn't major on exactly what the false teaching was. He majors on the answer, which is who is Jesus Christ. So he alludes to some of the challenges and the false teaching, but he's really giving all the truthful answers to it.

Speaker 2 16:47

One. I don't think we could be too terribly dogmatic about the exact type of heresy. You and I, steve, we've got some theories. But secondly, as we just said, there were false teachers in many of the books and some of these things were indeed already there in John, in Colossians, in Titus, in Timothy all these things are already had. False teachers crept in. They're mentioned everywhere and all of them are the first century. So it's just unreasonable to say that there's anything other than Paul who claimed to be the author. The greetings are the same, the salutations are the same, the doctrines the same, so it's unreasonable to say that anyone except the Apostle Paul wrote this.

Speaker 1 17:35

Probably the last thing to mention, since we're on this subject, would be that the Greek style at the time was for people to dictate to secretaries and that the secretaries would then actually pen the letters that the person that was dictating to them. And there were two different types of ways that these secretaries would operate. One was that they would take the blocks of text or blocks of thoughts that the person dictating was giving them and they would write it down that way. The other way is that they would write it down syllable by syllable, in other words, word by word. So some of it depended upon who the particular secretary was, and that's why sometimes you'll also see, even in this letter here, at the very end, paul mentions I'm writing this part myself.

Speaker 1 18:26

It makes sense that this letter that this secretary was writing through dictation from Paul, it would be read back to him. Paul wouldn't just say, okay, go ahead and send it when you're through with it. No, the letter would be read back, or Paul would read it himself and he would sign off on it, meaning that he would approve of it. If there was some sort of something that wrong, that the secretary got wrong that was writing this down, paul would have had it corrected before the letter actually went out. All of these different areas that you mentioned, as far as Paul, they all just fall apart.

Speaker 2 19:03

If you want to see an example in the New Testament of the oral dictation and ascribe writing it down, we use the term secretary. The technical word is an eminuensis. It's really as we just said somebody is speaking orally and somebody else writing it down. In Peter it gives their name. I forget if it's first or second Peter, but in Peter the scribe mentions his name as being the one who wrote it. That's one of the reasons why there's a distinction in the style of the grammar between first Peter and second Peter is they had a different eminuensis, a different secretary. That's exactly what happens with many of these books. So let's go to the purpose of the book. Why was the book of Colossians written? Chapter 2, verse 4, quote I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. So one of the reasons he was writing was so that the church at Colossae would not be deceived by people that had persuasive arguments about false doctrine. And then Colossians 2.8 says, quote see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception.

Speaker 2 20:18

Paul was writing this to the church at Colossae because he had heard from a Paphorus that there had been some false teachings going in there. Paul was concerned about that. Look at again the purpose. What is he writing? What are the main points here?

Speaker 2 20:33

One of the main points that Paul is trying to get across in Colossians to fight these false teachings, is that the Christian is sufficient in his position in Christ. The Christian is sufficient when he is in Christ. Being in Christ makes a Christian sufficient in all things. That's one of the goals. Being our position in Christ gives us the stability in our lives and in our worship. So that was one of his goals. Another one is to stabilize the doctrine of the church at Colossae. Paul spends a good part of this book talking about doctrine, specifically around the person of Jesus Christ. He holds it in Colossians. He holds that Christ is God Almighty. He holds that Christ is the Creator. He says Christ is the sustainer, the redeemer. He talks about the Christians' union with Christ. He talks about Christ circumcising the heart of the Christian. So there's all these things in here about the person of Jesus Christ, who he is, and because of that we are sufficient, because he is sufficient.

Speaker 1 21:47

I want to also bring out and we'll talk about this more when we actually get into the text. But you have these two groups, as mentioned before. You have Jewish people going by the law. They have now changed their mind, they've repented, changed their mind, belief in Jesus Christ. That's a big deal.

Speaker 1 22:08

And you have the outside influences that are trying to drag them back in to what they believed before, what their oral traditions were before, and they were walking away from the law. And on the opposite side you had the Gentiles that had all of their pagan worship and you had the same thing there you had people and family members that were trying to drag them back out of what their belief was. So that has been the case throughout all of history on people when they believe on Jesus Christ, especially if they're coming from another type of religion or outside influences, that you have this tug of trying to pull them back, and one of the ways that it's done is by coming in with these made up doctrines or made up teachings. Sometimes they're false teachings, not just from false doctrinal teachings, but also false things of what Paul was teaching. Now, paul doesn't address it here, but it's just an example that there's always this tug to pull people back out of their faith and their belief in Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 23:15

And the reason why we can know that what you just said, steve, is correct is because there's several clues in the text of the book. Chapter two, verse eight beware of philosophy and empty deception. So there have been these Greeks that had come in with platonic, platonic, just means from Plato, platonic doctrines about philosophy and things that just weren't compatible with Christianity. Chapter two, verse 16, beware of legalistic rules about food and drink and Sabbath days and festivals. Well, that tells us that there were some Judaizers there that were trying to get people to be Sabbath keepers or keep the dietary laws that came out of Judaism. It's two, 18, and again in verse 21,. False rules about holiness. He mentions that there there's what I would call extreme self denial as a work for righteousness. He talks about that. So you could call it a Cedic legalism, which is really a way of saying, oh, if I deny myself and increasingly increase the amount of things that I don't do, then I can live this very austere lifestyle and that's more holy. And Paul's fighting against that. He's saying that's not where our holiness comes from.

Speaker 2 24:35

Chapter 2, verse 18, false worship of angels. So that probably has a Gnostic influence. The Gnostics at least some parts of Gnosticism was a belief where there was these levels of beings, kind of demigods, that there was an almighty God but then he created a lesser God that had a lesser and lesser and there's this hierarchy of gods that go from more powerful down to less powerful. That's these worship of angels. Paul's message fights against all that stuff and he says Christ is the preeminent one, christ is the creator, Christ is the redeemer, christ is the one that we need to focus on, and I just find it to be very, very profound in this book.

Speaker 1 25:18

And if we look at both, we mentioned before that the difference between the Ephesians, the Epistle and the Colossians. The Epistle can I just name a few of them that are there Ephesians points to Christian unity that's found in Christ, whereas Colossians stresses the completeness of the believer in Christ, with what you mentioned before and that the mystery that Colossians is that in Christ is in believers, while the mystery and Ephesians is the unity of the Jew and the Gentile in Christ. And then in Colossians it speaks as Jesus has lord over all creation, while Ephesians concerns itself with Christian authority over the church. And then the final thing is is that Colossians has a hard tone or a stronger tone because it confronts specific false teachings in Colossae, while Ephesians is a softer tone because it does not address a specific heresy? So these are the differences between the two and again I'm thankful that they're that way because it enlightens different areas that we need to know as Christians.

Go Deeper in Christian Faith

Speaker 2 26:23

There's some concepts in here, Steve, that I want to make sure we point out. One of them is and I think it speaks to some of our churches today, in the sense that you and I, Steve, we've been in churches that preach the gospel every single Sunday, and I guess that's better than never preaching it, and you're never going to hear me say minimize the gospel. But what I will say is that the gospel is sufficient for salvation, but it's not sufficient for Christian growth as a believer throughout your life. And the reason I can say that is because that's what Paul's doing here, and he makes a major point. This whole book is that, for example, in Colossians 1, 5 and 6, he mentions that he was confident that the Colossians had the gospel and were in Christ and he was praising God for that. So he was confident that this man of Paphros had brought the gospel to them and that they were saved, and he's thanking God for that. However, he follows not long right behind that, saying that he had a quote, great struggle or great conflict within himself because of he was worried that their doctrine and their teaching was wrong. So even Paul says that this concern about these false teachings was really troubling him and he wanted to make absolutely sure that these people had the correct doctrine.

Speaker 2 27:55

I think we can take a lesson from this. We must ensure that Christians grow in the deep things of Jesus Christ. The gospel is great and the gospel is not complicated. It's simple. The simplest person can understand the gospel. But we don't need to stay there. We need to go on to deeper things, and that's what he's doing here. The gospel is sufficient for salvation, but it's not sufficient for growing somebody to be maturing in Christ, Because again at the beginning of Colossians he gets that out of the way.

Speaker 2 28:31

Oh, I know, you're in Christ, you had the right gospel. Now let me go correct your doctrine here. And he spends the last half of the first chapter and parts of the second chapter are some of the densest, most profound, most complex writings in the entire Bible. I mean word for word. There's things here denser than Romans, and that's saying something, because Romans is a pretty weighty book. There's concepts in here that are really, really profound and really heavy and really dense, and I approach this in all honesty with fear and trepidation because there's just some teaching in here that are just really dense. What Paul is saying is that you guys had the gospel. You're saved, but don't stay there. Here's some heavy theology to go on with it and you need this. That's what I see here, Steve. Any comments on that?

Speaker 1 29:30

Well, going deeper is the way that you make disciples, and that's part of the Great Commission is to go and tell what to make disciples.

Speaker 1 29:39

Through that going deeper, you understand more about Jesus Christ, who he is, about the Godhead, about the Trinity, about all of these different doctrinal and theological matters. By going deeper and through that, you get a deeper relationship and a more firmer relationship, which gives you a more firmer faith. By making disciples, it becomes to a part where there's just a better relationship. I agree the gospel certainly is great and we need to preach it from our pulpits, but we also need to have some of this discipleship that's going on, and I think sometimes the church is saying, well, we're going to preach the gospel from the pulpit and then we're going to disciple in the small groups, and I think that's a good strategy. The only issue with that is you have a great many people that don't go to small groups. I think you have to have, or should have, a good balance from the pulpit of both gospel and discipleship and going into these more meteor, theological, doctrinal things.

Speaker 2 30:46

One point about the style of the book of Colossians compared to, say, philemon and Galatians. If you read Galatians, just read it and the anger of Paul comes dripping out of the page. If you read Galatians you can tell this man is very emotional. You can almost feel his finger poking in the chest of the church at Galatia saying how did you get so far away so soon? And throughout the book he just keeps poking at him and you can feel his anger throughout the book of Galatians because they had compromised the gospel. His anger was high. Contrast that with Philemon, it's a friendly. He's writing to a friend. It's a personal letter. It's not to a church, it's he's appealing emotionally to his friend. It's a lot softer tone and Colossians takes a still different tone. Here you have these very profound doctrines. Paul takes a more scholarly tone. He takes a more pastoral tone. He takes a very scholarly sort of tone. That's very dense. And before we get out of here I want to just show people just how complex this can get, just to give you a taste of the book of Colossians and how profound this can get.

Speaker 2 32:17

I want to read a verse to you here. This is Colossians, chapter one, verse 12. He's just in the middle of a sentence, and Colossians 112 says this giving thanks to the father. He's thanking the father for the Galatian people. Giving thanks to the father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Okay, simple sense, right. Thanks to the father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Now, don't just skip over this. Give you a taste, at just a taste, of how much is packed into even that little sentence. He says who has qualified us? Okay, qualified in what way? This implies that people were unqualified and now they've become qualified. So how does that process work? In what way does he qualify us, and qualify us for what exactly, and how qualified are we? Are we fully qualified for all things or are we qualified for certain specific things? Are we qualified to do something or are we qualified to be something? Is this a visible physical qualification or a spiritual qualification? Is this a qualification that we can turn into shoe leather right now, or is this a someday qualified for something that we'll see later in heaven? Are we supposed to do something or act a certain way because of this qualification? That's the first phrase.

Speaker 2 33:57

Then he says to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints. So what does it mean to partake of the inheritance? In this sense? What is this inheritance of the saints? Is this something we have now, or is this an inheritance that we're going to get later? Once we inherited, what are we going to do with it? Is this the same as the heavenly rewards or that's mentioned in Revelation right, it mentions heavenly rewards or is this something else? Do we get the inheritance as an individual or is this a corporate thing that the church gets as an inheritance?

Excitement for Delving Into Colossians

Speaker 2 34:36

Then the next phrase the inheritance of the saints in light, or some of the translations say kingdom of light. So in what sense are we in light? Is this current or future? Does this allude to salvation, or is it allude to the ability to understand or proclaim truth to the world, or something else? Are the saints in the light or is it the inheritance that's in the light, or is it both? Is the light the same as the light of Jesus when he says I am the light of the world and you're the light of the world, or is the light the same as in John 12, 36 that it says we might be children of light? Are we supposed to do something with this idea of being in the light.

Speaker 2 35:22

So that's one phrase, one set of questions. That's just around giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. As long as you just skip over it and don't think about it, you don't have to worry about any of these things. But if you really start to think, you say wait a minute, there's a lot here. This is a very dense book and, steve, I am again. I approach this with fear and trepidation.

Speaker 1 35:50

Yeah, I am looking forward to going through this. You've already wet my appetite to dig into it because I like, I like this, I like digging into the word and discovering more meanings and deeper meanings. I'm ready to go.

Speaker 2 36:05

So am I. This is the introduction. We will be reasoning through the book of Colossians, starting at chapter one, verse one, next time, and we trust that you'll be here to do so with us as well.

Speaker 1 36:17

Thank you for watching and listening and may God bless you.