The supremacy of Christ: Paul to the Colossians

Colossae was a small city in the Lycus valley in the Roman province of Asia (modern western Turkey), near Laodicea and Hierapolis. It had once been prosperous from the wool trade but was by Paul's day overshadowed by its neighbours. Paul had not founded the church and had not met its members (1:4; 2:1). The gospel came through Epaphras, a Colossian, who is called a faithful minister of Christ and who prayed hard for the churches of the valley (1:7; 4:12-13). Roman writers report an earthquake that damaged Laodicea around AD 60, and some scholars think Colossae suffered as well, though the evidence is thin.

Paul writes as a prisoner (4:3, 10, 18) with Timothy named in the greeting. He writes because Epaphras has reported on the church. The report is good (1:3-8) but includes a danger: a 'philosophy' (2:8) that threatened to draw believers away from Christ's sufficiency. The letter is carried by Tychicus and Onesimus (4:7-9), the same Onesimus for whom Paul pleads in Philemon, and several people greet both churches (Aristarchus, Mark, Luke, Demas, Epaphras). If Paul wrote from Rome, the date is about AD 60-62; Ephesus and Caesarea have been proposed.

Authorship is disputed. The church held from early times that Paul wrote it. Many modern scholars accept this, noting the personal greetings, the link with Philemon and a consistent Pauline theology. Others see a follower of Paul writing after his death, citing the style (long sentences, unusual vocabulary), the developed picture of Christ and the church as his body, and the close overlap with Ephesians. Defenders answer that a different subject, a secretary and a new opponent explain these differences. The class reads the letter as Pauline and notes that its teaching is the same if the other view is held.

Colossians is a letter with a clear two-part shape: teaching about Christ and the church (chapters 1-2), then the life that follows (chapters 3-4). Chapters 1-2 are not abstract. The hymn and the argument of chapter 2 are meant to settle a practical danger. A first rule is therefore to read the claims about Christ as answers to what the Colossians were being offered.

What that was is debated, because Paul describes it only in passing. He speaks of a philosophy and empty deceit resting on human tradition and the elemental spirits of the world (2:8), rules about food, drink, festivals, new moons and sabbaths (2:16), worship of angels and visions (2:18), and severe treatment of the body (2:23). Scholars propose a Jewish mystical group, a blend of Judaism and local religion, or a form of Greek philosophy; there is no agreed name. The class works only from what Paul says: the teaching offered other mediators and other rules in addition to Christ.

The second rule is about the hymn in 1:15-20. It is poetic in structure, with two parallel stanzas, one about creation (verses 15-17) and one about new creation (verses 18-20), joined by the repeated 'firstborn'. Poetic language uses titles drawn from the Old Testament, and we should read them there before reading later controversies back into them.

1:1-14. Paul gives thanks for their faith in Christ and love for all the saints, the hope laid up for them in heaven, and the gospel bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, as it did among them when they heard it from Epaphras. The prayer asks that they be filled with knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily, bearing fruit and strengthened with power. Paul gives thanks to the Father who has qualified them to share in the inheritance of the saints in light, delivered them from the domain of darkness and transferred them to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom they have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The language of exodus is clear: rescued, transferred, given an inheritance.

1:15-20. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 'Image' (eikon) means the visible representation that makes God known. 'Firstborn' (prototokos) means the one with the rank and right of the eldest son, not the first to be created; Psalm 89:27 uses it for the Davidic king, who is highest of the kings of the earth. The reason given is that in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers or authorities: all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. The stanza then turns: he is the head of the body, the church, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything he might be first. In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God reconciled all things to himself, making peace by the blood of his cross.

1:21-23. The Colossians were once alienated and hostile in mind. Now they are reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, to be presented holy, blameless and above reproach, if they continue in the faith, stable and not shifting from the hope of the gospel. The 'if' does not make salvation uncertain; it speaks of the way a real faith continues. This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and Paul became its servant.

1:24-2:5. Paul rejoices in his sufferings for them and says he is filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body. The meaning is debated (see below). He has been made a minister to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and now revealed to God's people, which is Christ among them, the hope of glory. He labours and struggles for the churches in the valley, including Laodicea and those who have not seen him face to face, that they may have full assurance in understanding, in the knowledge of God's mystery, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

2:6-15. As they received Christ Jesus the Lord, so they are to walk in him, rooted, built up, established in faith. They must beware of being taken captive by philosophy. In Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells in bodily form (2:9), and they have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him they were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, buried with him in baptism and raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God. God made them alive together with him, forgave their trespasses, cancelled the record of debt that stood against them, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in him.

2:16-23. Therefore no one should judge them about food, drink, festivals, new moon or sabbaths, a shadow of things to come, while the reality belongs to Christ (2:17). No one should disqualify them by insisting on self-abasement and the worship of angels. Having died with Christ to the elemental spirits, they should not submit to rules such as the prohibitions against handling, tasting and touching, which have an appearance of wisdom but no value against fleshly indulgence.

The first doctrine is the identity of Christ. The Son is the image of God, the agent and goal of creation and the one in whom the fullness of God dwells. Claims like this were used in fourth-century debates. Arius appealed to 'firstborn of all creation' to argue that the Son was a creature. The Council of Nicaea in 325 and the fathers who followed read the verse in the light of the rest of the hymn: he is before all things and all things were made in him, so he cannot be one of the things made. This reading is shared by Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and most other Christians.

The second doctrine is the scope of redemption. The hymn says that through the cross God reconciled 'all things'. Christians read this differently. Some hold that it speaks of the renewal of the whole creation (Romans 8:19-21); others of the pacification of the powers as well as the reconciling of people; a few have taken it as universal salvation. The context in 1:21-23, where reconciliation is by faith and continuance, argues against the last reading, and the class follows that.

• The third is the church as Christ's body, the sphere of new creation.
• The fourth is baptism and union: the Colossians have died and risen with Christ. The cross is also the place of victory over the powers, a theme in the work of Christ that later writers called the Christus Victor view of the atonement.

The whole passage is Christological. The hymn applies to Jesus the titles and activities Israel's Scriptures gave to God, to Wisdom and to the king. Wisdom was the agent of creation in Proverbs 8:22-31. In Genesis, humanity is made in the image of God; here the Son is the true image. The firstborn language comes from Psalm 89:27, the Davidic king, and from Israel as God's firstborn son (Exodus 4:22). The Son is the one in whom those expectations are met and exceeded: he is the king and the agent of creation, and the first to rise from the dead (compare 1 Corinthians 15:20).

The exodus pattern in 1:12-14 (rescue from darkness, transfer to a kingdom, inheritance) is fulfilled in him. In 2:11-15 the Old Testament signs of circumcision, shadow and festival are fulfilled: circumcision by the cutting off of the body of flesh in Christ's death, the festivals as shadow whose substance is Christ. The cross is the means of forgiveness, the cancelling of a debt, and the victory over powers. John's Gospel says that the Word was with God and was God, and that all things came to be through him (John 1:1-3); Hebrews 1:2-3 says the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature. Colossians 1:15-20 belongs with them.