성경 주석서

The Epistle to the Colossians

For Colossae, see on Colossians 1:2.

The Gospel was first preached in the cities of the Lycus by Epaphras (Colossians 1:7; Colossians 4:12; Plm 1:23), who may also have founded the churches there. The theory that the church at Colossae was founded by Paul has no sufficient foundation. The church had never been personally visited by Paul. Though his missionary journeys had carried him into the Galatian and Phrygian country (Acts 16:6), the indefinite usage of these terms, the absence of all hints of a visit in the epistle itself, and the notices of his route in the Acts, go to show that his path did not lie through the valley of the Lycus. Colossians 2:1, appears to indicate that the Colossians were personally unknown to him.

The occasion of the letter was the visit of Epaphras to the apostle in prison, and Paul's communication with Colossae in the matter of the restoration of Onesimus. Whether Epaphras shared his captivity or not (see on Plm 1:23), he did not return to Colossae with this letter, but remained in Paul's company (Colossians 4:12); and his stay in Rome was long enough to put the apostle fully in possession of the dangers which menaced the Colossian church. Paul took the opportunity of Tychicus' journey to Colossae with Onesimus, to send this letter.

Phrygia was a favorable soil for the development of error. "Cosmological speculation, mystic theosophy, religious fanaticism, all had their home there." The leading worship was that of Cybele, the great Mother of the Gods, which was spread over Asia Minor generally, and especially prevailed in Mysia and Galatia. It was orgiastic, accompanied with frenzied dances, howlings, and self-mutilations. Phrygia was also the home of Ophitism, or serpent-worship. Montanism, with its ecstasy and trance, its faith-cures, its gloomy asceticism, its passion for martyrdom, and its savage intolerance, owed to Phrygia its leader; and the earlier name of the sect was "the Sect of the Phrygians."

Under Antiochus the Great, two thousand Jewish families had been transplanted into Phrygia and Lydia; and while the staple of the church was Gentile, the epistle distinctly recognizes the presence and operation of Jewish influences (Colossians 2:16-21).

The form of error which prevailed at Colossae included three elements: Jewish formalism; speculative mysticism, representing the germs of what afterward developed as Gnosticism; and Essenism, the medium through which the Jewish and Gnostic elements came into combination.

Though Gnosticism, as such, had not developed itself at this time, a knowledge of its principal features is necessary to an intelligent reading of this epistle.

It took its name from gnosis knowledge, since it claimed for a select few the possession of a superior acquaintance with truth. Its tendencies were thus exclusive and aristocratic. The Gnostics denied the direct creation of the world by God, because God would thus be shown to be the creator of evil. God's creative energy was thwarted by the world of matter, which is essentially evil, in eternal antagonism to God, and with which God could not come into direct contact without tainting His nature. Hence creation became possible only through a series of emanations from God, each successive emanation being less divine, until the point was reached where contact with matter became possible. These emanations were called aeons, spirits, or angels; and to these worship was rendered with an affectation of humility in approaching the lower grades of divinity, instead of venturing into the immediate presence of the Supreme. The evil of matter was to be escaped either by rigid abstinence from the world of sense, or by independence of it. The system therefore tended to the opposite extremes of asceticism and licentiousness.

Essenism, in the apostolic age, had established itself in Asia Minor. The Essenes combined the ritualism of the Jew with the asceticism and mysticism of the Gnostic. They rigorously observed the Mosaic ritual, except in the matter of slain sacrifices, which they refused to offer, regarding their ordinary meals as sacrificial rites. They discountenanced marriage, and foreswore oil, wine, and animal food. Their theology revealed traces of sun-worship. Holding the immortality of the souls they denied the resurrection of the body. Their also held some mystical doctrine of emanations, as agents in creation, akin to that of the Gnostic aeons. Like the Gnostics, they maintained the evil of matter.

In this epistle Paul strikes at the intellectual exclusiveness of the Colossian heretics with the doctrine of the universality of the Gospel (Colossians 1:6, Colossians 1:23, Colossians 1:28; Colossians 3:11). Their gnosis - the pretended higher, esoteric wisdom - is met with the assertion of the Gospel as the true wisdom, the common property of all believers. The words wisdom, knowledge, full knowledge, intelligence, occur frequently in the epistle. Γνῶσις knowledge is used but once, while ἐπίγνωσις full knowledge, occurs four times, emphasizing the knowledge of God and of Christ as the perfection of knowledge. Divine wisdom is offered and prayed for as the privilege of Christians (Colossians 1:9, Colossians 1:27, Colossians 1:28; Colossians 3:10, Colossians 3:16). The pretended wisdom is denounced as deceitful philosophy, founded in tradition, and both its Gentile and its Jewish phases are characterized as mere elements or rudiments, unworthy of men in Christ (Colossians 2:8, Colossians 2:20). It is presumptuous and arrogant; a mere show of wisdom (Colossians 2:18, Colossians 2:23).

The doctrine of angelic mediators in the creation and government of the world is offset by the truth of the Eternal Son, begotten before the creation, by whom all things were created and are maintained, and who is also the only and absolute head of the Church (Colossians 1:15-18). For a succession of angelic emanations, each less divine than its predecessor, is substituted the Son of God, in whom dwells the sum-total of the divine powers and attributes (Colossians 1:19; Colossians 2:9). An angel or spirit, who is neither God nor man, cannot reconcile God and man. For the haziness which invests the personality and character of these intermediaries, we have the sharply defined personality of Christ, the Word made flesh, uniting in Himself the human and the divine, human even unto death, divine unto the eternal life and power of the Godhead, and thus reconciling and bringing into perfect unity all things in Himself (Colossians 1:19, Colossians 1:22; Colossians 2:9, Colossians 2:10).

The person of Christ is thus exhibited in two aspects, the cosmical and the theological, in its relations to the universe and to the Church. On the one hand, Christ is supreme in the creation and administration of the world (Colossians 1:15-17). "He is the beginning, middle, and end of creation." On the other hand, Christ is supreme in the spiritual economy. "If the function of Christ is unique in the universe, so is it also in the Church." In Him alone man is reconciled and united to God. In Him alone the individual children of God are compacted into one body, propelled and guided in their several activities, and each placed and held in due relation to the whole (Colossians 1:18, Colossians 1:22; Colossians 2:10-15, Colossians 2:19).

In this rigorous insistence upon the person of Christ as alone solving the problem of God's relation to the world, Paul strikes not only at the Colossian error, but also at the later error of Arius, whose Christ is of a different essence from God, His participation in the divine attributes partial, and His revelation therefore limited and imperfect. Arianism furnishes a principle of conduct, but not a basis of communion between the divine and the human. "The supernatural being whom Arius sets forth as a mediator between God and man, does not unite, but separates them, for He serves to reveal the infinite, impassable gulf that lies between them."

Bishop Lightfoot most truthfully remarks: "Christ's mediatorial function in the Church is represented as flowing from His mediatorial function in the world. With ourselves this idea has retired very much into the background. Though in the creed common to all the churches we profess our belief in Him as the Being through whom all things were created, yet in reality this confession seems to exercise very little influence on our thoughts. And the loss is serious. How much our theological conceptions suffer in breadth and fullness by the neglect, a moment's reflection will show. How much more hearty would be the sympathy of theologians with the revelations of science and the developments of history, if they habitually connected them with the operation of the same Divine Word, who is the center of all their religious aspirations, it is needless to say."

The doctrine of Christ as the true and only medium of union between God and man is fatal to the voluntary humility which substitutes the worship of angels for that of Christ. Christ is presented as the legitimate object of adoration, the refusal of which is a rupture of the connection between the members of the body and their Head (Colossians 2:18, Colossians 2:19). All things must be done in His name. The intercourse of the Church, the relations of the household, are to take their impulse and character directly from the indwelling word of Christ (Colossians 3:16-25). The Essene view of marriage is thus assailed (Colossians 3:18, Colossians 3:19). Asceticism, legalism, ritualism are condemned as fixing the mind upon mere external things. Their precepts are the merest rudiments of an earthly and sensual economy - "shadows of things to come." The imposition of these precepts is a moral tyranny: "mere legal obligations are a part of a dead compact, a torn and canceled bond, which is now nailed to Christ's cross." They do not lift the life into the higher moral and spiritual plane; they do not protect it against the temptations of the flesh; they furnish no efficient remedy for sin (Colossians 2:8, Colossians 2:16, Colossians 2:20, Colossians 2:23). Reconciliation with God through the blood of the cross will set the thoughts on heavenly things, will strangle unholy passions and indulgences, and will create a new man in the image of Christ (Colossians 1:20; Colossians 2:11, Colossians 2:14; Colossians 3:1-10). By this; asceticism and licentiousness are alike branded (Colossians 3:5).

The genuineness and authenticity of the epistle were universally acknowledged by the early Church, and not seriously questioned until the attack of Mayerhoff in 1838, followed by Baur and Schwegler. Holtzmann (1872) held that it was partly spurious, though containing a genuine epistle, which he fancied that he could extract. Dr. Davidson denies the Pauline authorship, and thinks it was written about 120 a.d. The assaults are, in part, on the same grounds as those against Ephesians - textual and grammatical departures from Paul's style, unique forms of expression, and differences of idea. Against Colossians in particular it is urged that the errors it attacks are later than Paul's date.

The Pauline authorship cannot be overthrown by any of these considerations. As to the errors treated in the epistle, it has already been shown that they contained the germs of later Gnosticism. The variations in style are no greater than those which appear in different writings by the same author. They are easily explained by difference of subject, and by the mental changes in the writer himself. Many of the unique words are echoes of the vocabulary of the heretical teachers (see especially in ch. 2. and notes), and every epistle of Paul contains numerous words which are found nowhere else. Not counting those which occur in the Septuagint, there are over a hundred in both Romans and First Corinthians; over ninety in Second Corinthians; thirty-three or four in Galatians; forty-one in Philippians; over thirty in the two Thessalonian letters, and above one hundred and fifty in the three Pastorals. The absence of peculiarly Pauline words and phrases it is only necessary flatly to deny. Any Greek student may satisfy himself on that point by means of a Concordance.

The Christology of the epistle is that of the earlier epistles, only more fully developed. Notably the preexistence of Christ is emphasized. The doctrine of Christ's person is more fully and precisely stated than in any other of Paul's letters.

The style lacks the richness and rhythmical sonorousness of Ephesians. This arises in part from its more controversial character, which betrays itself in Paul's style, here as elsewhere, by his employment of unusual words and long compounds. The earlier chapters especially are marked by a certain stiffness which is imparted by the rarity of the ordinary connecting particles, and the connection of the sentences by participial constructions and relative pronouns, or by "causal and inferential conjunctions" (see ch. 1). Bishop Lightfoot observes that "the absence of all personal connection with the Colossian church will partially, if not wholly, explain the diminished fluency of this letter. At the same time no epistle of Paul is more vigorous in conception or more instinct with meaning. It is the very compression of the thoughts which creates the difficulty. If there is a want of fluency, there is no want of force.

Colossae

The form of the name appears to have been both Kolossai and Kolassai, the former being probably the earlier.

The city was in Phrygia, in the valley of the Lycus, about ten or twelve miles beyond Laodicaea and Hierapolis. The region is volcanic, and the earthquakes common to large portions of Asia Minor are here peculiarly severe. The tributaries of the Lycus carried calcareous matter which formed everywhere deposits of travertine, said to be among the most remarkable formations of this character in the world. "Ancient monuments are buried, fertile lands overlaid, river-beds choked up, and streams diverted, fantastic grottos and cascades and arches of stone formed by this strange, capricious power, at once destructive and creative, working silently and relentlessly through long ages. Fatal to vegetation, these incrustations spread like a stony shroud over the ground. Gleaming like glaciers on the hillside, they attract the eye of the traveler at a distance of twenty miles, and form a singularly striking feature in scenery of more than common beauty and impressiveness" (Lightfoot).

The fertility of the region was nevertheless great. The fine sheep, and the chemical qualities of the streams which made the waters valuable for dyeing purposes, fostered a lively trade in dyed woolen goods. All the three cities were renowned for the brilliancy of their dyes.

Colossae stood at the junction of the Lycus with two other streams, on a highway between eastern and western Asia, and commanding the approaches to a pass in the Cadmus mountains. Both Herodotus and Xenophon speak of it as a prosperous and great city; but in Paul's time its glory had waned. Its site was at last completely lost, and was not identified until the present century. Its ruins are insignificant. Paul never visited either of the three cities. The church at Colossae was the least important of any to which Paul's epistles were addressed.

To the saints

A mode of address which characterizes Paul's later epistles. The word is to be taken as a noun, and not construed as an adjective with faithful brethren: to the holy and faithful brethren.

And faithful brethren in Christ

Or believing brethren. Compare Ephesians 1:1. There is no singling out of the faithful brethren from among others who are less faithful.

Our Father

The only instance in which the name of the Father stands in the opening benediction of an epistle without the addition and Jesus Christ.

And the Father

Some of the best texts omit and. So Rev. The form with and is the more common. Compare Colossians 3:17.

Praying always for you

Rather connect always with we give thanks, and render we give thanks for you always, praying, or in our prayers. According to the Greek order, praying for you (as Rev. and A.V.), would make for you unduly emphatic.

For the hope (διὰ τὴν ἐλπίδα)

The A.V. connects with we give thanks (Colossians 1:3). But the two are too far apart, and Paul's introductory thanksgiving is habitually grounded on the spiritual condition of his readers, not on something objective. See Romans 1:8; 1 Corinthians 1:4; Ephesians 1:15. Better connect with what immediately precedes, love which ye have, and render as Rev., because of the hope, etc. Faith works by love, and the ground of their love is found in the hope set before them. Compare Romans 8:24. The motive is subordinate, but legitimate. "The hope laid up in heaven is not the deepest reason or motive for faith and love, but both are made more vivid when it is strong. It is not the light at which their lamps are lit, but it is the odorous oil which feeds their flame" (Maclaren). Hope. See on 1 Peter 1:3. In the New Testament the word signifies both the sentiment of hope and the thing hoped for. Here the latter. Compare Titus 2:13; Galatians 5:5; Hebrews 6:18; also Romans 8:24, where both meanings appear. Lightfoot observes that the sense oscillates between the subjective feeling and the objective realization. The combination of faith, hope, and love is a favorite one with Paul. See 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 1 Corinthians 13:13; Romans 5:1-5; Romans 12:6-12.

Laid up (ἀποκειμένην)

Lit., laid away, as the pound in the napkin, Luke 19:20. With the derivative sense of reserved or awaiting, as the crown, 2 Timothy 4:8. In Hebrews 9:27, it is rendered appointed (unto men to die), where, however, the sense is the same: death awaits men as something laid up. Rev., in margin, laid up for. Compare treasure in heaven, Matthew 6:20; Matthew 19:21; Luke 12:34. "Deposited, reserved, put by in store out of the reach of all enemies and sorrows" (Bishop Wilson).

Ye heard before (προηκούσατε)

Only here in the New Testament, not in Septuagint, and not frequent in classical Greek. It is variously explained as denoting either an undefined period in the past, or as contrasting the earlier Christian teaching with the later heresies, or as related to Paul's letter (before I wrote), or as related to the fulfillment of the hope (ye have had the hope pre-announced). It occurs several times in Herodotus in this last sense, as ii. 5, of one who has heard of Egypt without seeing it: v., 86, of the Aeginetans who had learned beforehand what the Athenians intended. Compare viii. 79; vi. 16. Xenophon uses it of a horse, which signifies by pricking up its ears what it hears beforehand. In the sense of mere priority of time without the idea of anticipation, Plato: "Hear me once more, though you have heard me say the same before" ("Laws," vii., 797). I incline to the more general reference, ye heard in the past. The sense of hearing before the fulfillment of the hope would seem rather to require the perfect tense, since the hope still remained unfulfilled.

The word of the truth of the Gospel

The truth is the contents of the word, and the Gospel defines the character of the truth.

Which is come unto you (τοῦ παρόντος εἰς ὑμᾶς)

Lit., which is present unto you. Has come and is present. Compare Luke 11:7, "are with me into bed."

In all the world

Hyperbolical. Compare Romans 1:8; 1 Thessalonians 1:8; Acts 17:6. Possibly with a suggestion of the universal character of the Gospel as contrasted with the local and special character of false Gospels. Compare Colossians 1:23.

And bringeth forth fruit (καὶ ἔστι καρποφορούμενον)

Lit., and is bearing fruit. The text varies. The best texts omit and. Some join ἔστι is with the previous clause, as it is in all the world, and take bearing fruit as a parallel participle. So Rev. Others, better, join is with the participle, "even as it is bearing fruit." This would emphasize the continuous fruitfulness of the Gospel. The middle voice of the verb, of which this is the sole instance, marks the fruitfulness of the Gospel by its own inherent power. Compare the active voice in Colossians 1:10, and see Mark 4:28, "the earth bringeth forth fruit αὐτομάτη of herself, self-acting. For a similar use of the middle, see show, Ephesians 2:7; worketh, Galatians 5:6.

Increasing (αὐξανόμενην)

Not found in Tex. Rec., nor in A.V., but added in later and better texts, and in Rev. "Not like those plants which exhaust themselves in bearing fruit. The external growth keeps pace with the reproductive energy" (Lightfoot). "It makes wood as well" (Maclaren).

Fellow-servant

Used by Paul only here and Colossians 4:7.

Minister (διάκονος)

See on Matthew 20:26; see on Mark 9:35.

For you (ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν)

Read ἡμῶν, us as Rev., on our behalf: as Paul's representative.

Declared (δηλώσας)

Or made manifest. See on 1 Corinthians 1:11.

In the Spirit

Connect with your love. Compare Galatians 5:22.

We also

Marking the reciprocal feeling of Paul and Timothy with that of the Colossians.

Pray - desire (προσευχόμενοι - αἰτούμενοι)

The words occur together in Mark 11:24. The former is general, the latter special. Rev. make request is better than desire. The A.V. renders indiscriminately ask and desire. Rev. alters desire to ask. Desire in the sense of ask occurs in Shakespeare and Spenser.

Knowledge (ἐπίγνωσιν)

See on Romans 3:20; see on Plm 1:6. Full knowledge. See Romans 1:21, Romans 1:28; 1 Corinthians 13:12, where Paul contrasts γινώσκειν to know γνῶσις knowledge, with ἐπιγινώσκειν to know fully, ἐπίγνωσις full knowledge. Here appropriate to the knowledge of God in Christ as the perfection of knowledge.

Wisdom and spiritual understanding (σοφίᾳ καὶ συνέσει πνευματικῇ)

Rev., better, applies spiritual to both - spiritual wisdom and understanding. The kindred adjectives σοφός wise and συνετός prudent, occur together, Matthew 11:25; Luke 10:21. For σοφία wisdom, see on Romans 11:33, and on wise, James 3:13. For σύνεσις understanding, see on Mark 12:33, and see on prudent, Matthew 11:25. The distinction is between general and special. Understanding is the critical apprehension of particulars growing out of wisdom, which apprehension is practically applied by φρόνησις prudence, see on Luke 1:17; see on Ephesians 1:8. Spiritual is emphatic, as contrasted with the vain philosophy of false teachers.