Today’s Passage: An Overview of the Whole Book
You are about to walk through a short letter written from a prison cell to a church its writer had never once seen with his own eyes. Paul is in chains, most likely at Rome, and word has reached him of a little congregation in a valley town he has never visited, a church troubled by teachers who want to add something to Jesus. Some press a stricter law, some a stricter diet, some a ladder of secret knowledge, some the worship of angels, and all of them together whisper the same thing to a young church: Christ is good, but Christ is not enough. Against every one of those voices Paul lifts his pen and lifts their eyes, and for four brief chapters he holds up the all-surpassing greatness and the all-sufficiency of the Son of God, the one in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. There is nothing to add to Him, because in Him you already have everything.
As you read, hold this: In Christ all the fullness of God dwells, and in Him you are complete, needing nothing added.
The letter is addressed to the Κολοσσαεῖς (Kolossaeis), pronounced ko-lo-SAI-ays, the Colossians, the believers in Colossae, a small and fading town in the Lycus Valley of the Roman province of Asia, in what is now western Turkey. Paul did not plant this church. A man named Epaphras carried the gospel there, and Paul names him with warmth as the one from whom they first learned it.
"You learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf," Colossians 1:7 (BSB)
Paul writes from prison, around A.D. 60 to 62, and sends the letter by the hand of Tychicus at the same time he sends the letter to Ephesus, the two of them travelling the same road to neighboring churches. Everything he wants to say is gathered up into one towering picture of who the Son is.
"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." Colossians 1:15 (BSB)
"For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." Colossians 1:16–17 (BSB)
The world of the book
Something was pressing in on this young church, and scholars have long called it the Colossian heresy. It was not one clean idea but a mixture, a stew of borrowed pieces, and every piece added a rung to a ladder the believers were told to climb. From the side of the old law came a demand for Jewish ritual, for circumcision and food rules and the keeping of festivals and new moons and Sabbaths. From the side of a harsh spirituality came the call to punish the body, a list of rules that ran “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch.” From the side of a darker mysticism came the worship of angels and a hunger for visions, and behind it all a promise of a hidden “fullness,” a higher and secret knowledge reserved for the few who would reach far enough for it. The message underneath every branch of it was the same, that Jesus was a fine beginning but only a beginning, and that real maturity lay somewhere beyond Him.
Paul answers with a single towering truth, and he does not so much argue the errors down as flood them out with the greatness of Christ. In Christ, he says, all the fullness of God dwells bodily, so there is no fullness to be chased anywhere else. And the believer is already complete in Him, joined to the head over every power that these teachers so feared, so there is nothing left to add. The treasures of wisdom they were promised in secret are hidden in Christ and offered in the open. Whatever the false teachers held out as the next thing beyond Jesus, Paul shows to be already yours, in full, the moment you are His.
The map
- Colossians 1. Who Christ is. He is the image of the invisible God and the firstborn over all creation, the one in whom and through whom and for whom all things were made, the head of the church, the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and the one by whose blood, shed on the cross, all things are reconciled to God.
- Colossians 2. Complete in Christ. Here come the warnings, against hollow philosophy, against the legalism of the old rules, against the harsh self-denial that only looks like wisdom, for in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the record of debt that stood against us was nailed to His cross, and the shadow has given way at last to the substance, which is Christ Himself.
- Colossians 3. The life raised with Christ. Since you have been raised with Him, you seek the things above, you put off the old self like a worn-out garment and put on the new, and above everything else you put on love, the bond that holds all the rest together, with plain instruction for husbands and wives, children and parents, and the ordinary work of the household.
- Colossians 4. The life of prayer and grace. Devote yourselves to prayer, let your speech be gracious and seasoned with salt, and take your place in the warm fellowship of the gospel workers whose names close the letter.
This walk covers all four chapters of the letter, from the heights of who Christ is to the doorstep of the Christian home. Read them in their order, and let the greatness of the first chapters carry you into the daily life of the last.
The verses the book stands on
The whole letter leans on one astonishing sentence, that the fullness of God is not scattered across many mediators and secrets but gathered up bodily in one person, and that in Him you lack nothing.
"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form. And you have been made complete in Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority." Colossians 2:9–10 (BSB)
The Greek word standing under that promise of “fullness” is πλήρωμα (plērōma), pronounced PLAY-roh-mah. Strong’s G4138. It means fullness, completeness, the whole of a thing with nothing missing. The false teachers dangled plērōma in front of the church as a prize to be earned by ritual and vision and secret knowledge. Paul takes the very word and sets it where it belongs, in Christ, and then he does the unthinkable and hands it to ordinary believers as a gift already received. The fullness they told you to climb toward has come down and dwells in the Son, and you are filled full in Him.
And because that is true, the letter turns from who Christ is to how His people live, from the fullness above to the feet on the ground.
"Therefore, since you have been raised with Christ, strive for the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God." Colossians 3:1 (BSB)
That is the shape of the book. Christ is supreme over all things and sufficient for all things, and the ones who belong to Him, complete in Him already, now set their hearts on the place where He is. We start here because there is no higher place to start than the greatness of the Son.