Hidden with Christ: the new self, the household and Paul's co-workers

Colossians 3-4 is the second half of Paul's letter to a church he had not founded, in the Lycus valley of the Roman province of Asia. Epaphras, a Colossian, had brought the gospel and had now visited Paul in prison and reported on the church (1:7-8; 4:12). Paul is a prisoner (4:3, 18), most likely in Rome around AD 60-62, though Ephesus and Caesarea have been proposed. Authorship is debated: the church held that Paul wrote it, many scholars agree, and some think a close follower wrote it after his death. The personal notes of chapter 4 are among the strongest arguments for the Pauline view, since they match the names in Philemon.

The first half of the letter (chapters 1-2) answered a 'philosophy' that offered other powers and rules alongside Christ. Chapters 3-4 draw out how a community that has died and been raised with Christ should live. The Roman world in which they lived was organised around the household: the head of the house ruled over wife, children, slaves and sometimes extended family. Slavery was common in Roman cities, and slaves were part of many households. Writers from Aristotle on had set out duties within the household, and Paul's short instructions use a familiar form, adapted.

The chapter ends with greetings carried by Tychicus and Onesimus (4:7-9). Onesimus is 'one of you', a Colossian, and is the slave for whom Paul pleads in the short letter to Philemon. Several of those who greet the church (Aristarchus, Mark, Epaphras, Luke, Demas) also appear in Philemon 23-24.

Colossians 3-4 is the practical half of an epistle. Its commands are not free-standing rules but conclusions: the first word of chapter 3 is 'Therefore, since you have been raised with Christ'. The pattern throughout Paul's letters is that the indicative (what God has done) comes before the imperative (what believers are to do). A first rule is to ask what each command rests on.

The passage uses three kinds of material.

• The first is the language of clothing, putting off and putting on (3:8-14), a picture drawn from baptism and common in early Christian teaching.
• The second is the household instruction (3:18-4:1), a short form often called a 'household code' (Haustafel), paralleled in Ephesians 5:22-6:9 and 1 Peter 2:18-3:7. Its form is borrowed from the surrounding culture, but there are differences: each party in the household receives a command, the wives and slaves who in Roman law were addressed as subjects are addressed as moral agents before the Lord, and the head of household is told he has a Master in heaven (4:1). Scholars disagree about whether the code mainly reinforces existing structures, softens them, or quietly undermines them.
• The third material is the closing list of names, which is real history and should be read as such.

The interpretive rule for the household code is to read it in its setting first, asking what the instruction meant to the first hearers, then in the whole Bible, where Scripture speaks of marriage, work and slavery elsewhere. Paul's instruction to slaves is not a defence of slavery as an institution, and his letter to Philemon (the next class) shows how he treated a particular case.

3:1-4. 'Therefore, since you have been raised with Christ, strive for the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.' The raising is a past event that Paul has just linked to baptism (2:12). The language of Christ at God's right hand comes from Psalm 110:1. 'Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things,' he says, which does not mean disregard for the world but a governing orientation. The reason is: 'you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.' The life of believers is secure but not yet visible. When Christ, 'who is your life', appears, they will appear with him in glory.

3:5-11. 'Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature.' The list is of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, 'which is idolatry'. A second list covers anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language, and then the command not to lie to one another. These sins are 'because of' which the wrath of God is coming (3:6), and the Colossians once walked in them. The grounds for the break are that they have taken off the old self with its practices and put on the new self, 'which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator' (3:10). The language recalls Genesis 1:26-27: the new humanity is restored to the purpose for which humans were made. Then comes the statement that in this new humanity there is 'no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all and is in all'. The list pairs ethnic, religious, cultural and social divisions. Barbarians were non-Greek speakers, and Scythians, from the far north, were proverbially considered the most savage of them.

3:12-17. In place of the old clothing believers are to wear compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. They are 'the elect of God, holy and beloved', language used in the Old Testament for Israel and here applied to a church of Gentiles and Jews. They are to bear with each other and forgive as the Lord forgave. Over all these goes love, 'the bond of perfect unity'. The peace of Christ is to rule, like an umpire, in their hearts, since they were called into one body. The word of Christ is to dwell richly among them in teaching, admonition and the singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Everything they do, in word or deed, is to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Thanksgiving is repeated three times in these verses (3:15, 16, 17).

3:18-4:1. Wives are told to submit to their husbands 'as is fitting in the Lord', and husbands to love their wives and not be harsh. Children are to obey parents, and fathers are not to provoke their children, 'so they will not become discouraged'. Slaves are told to obey their earthly masters in everything, with sincerity of heart and fear of the Lord, working at it 'with your whole being, for the Lord and not for men', knowing that they will receive an inheritance from the Lord. The word 'inheritance' is striking, since an inheritance was what a free son received. 'It is the Lord Christ you are serving.' Whoever does wrong will be repaid, and there is no favouritism. Masters are told to supply their slaves with what is right and fair, since they too have a Master in heaven (4:1). The text speaks of obligations on the master that Roman law did not impose.

4:2-6. Paul asks for prayer that God will open a door for the word, so that he may proclaim the mystery of Christ, 'for which I am in chains', and declare it clearly. The church is to act wisely toward outsiders, redeeming the time, with speech always gracious and 'seasoned with salt'.

4:7-18. Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister, will bring the news, and Onesimus with him. Aristarchus is called a fellow prisoner. Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, is to be welcomed if he comes, which recalls the quarrel over Mark in Acts 15:37-39 and shows a restored relationship. Jesus called Justus is named with them. 'These are the only Jews among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God', which Paul says have been a comfort. Epaphras 'is always wrestling in prayer' for them and for Laodicea and Hierapolis. Luke is 'the beloved physician', and Demas is named without comment, though 2 Timothy 4:10 later records his desertion. Nympha and the church that meets at her house in Laodicea are greeted. The letter is to be read in the church of the Laodiceans, and they are to read the letter 'from Laodicea'. That letter is not known to survive; some have suggested Ephesians, others Philemon, and others a lost writing. Archippus is told to complete the ministry he received. Paul signs in his own hand: 'Remember my chains. Grace be with you.'

The passage connects three doctrines that Christians have kept together.

• The first is union with Christ in his death, resurrection and ascension: the believers have died and been raised, and their life is hidden in him.
• The second is sanctification as renewal in the image of God. The commands are to put off and to put on, and the new self is already given, yet 'is being renewed'.
• The third is the unity of the church. The abolition of the division of Greek and Jew, slave and free, is not a political programme but a description of the community in which such divisions no longer decide a person's standing before God (compare Galatians 3:28). Christ is described as 'all and in all'.

On the household code, the Bible as a whole teaches that wives and husbands, parents and children, and masters and slaves stand equally under God. Paul does not tell his readers to abolish slavery in this letter, and the church later read Scripture in different ways on the matter. In the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa condemned the ownership of human beings as contrary to the image of God, and later Christians, including those who led the movements to end the slave trade, appealed to the creation of all in the image of God and to Philemon. Others in earlier centuries used Colossians 3:22 to defend slavery. The text itself speaks to the way slaves and masters are to treat each other before Christ.

Chapter 3 places Christ at the centre of the Christian life in three ways. He is the ascended Lord, seated at God's right hand, as Psalm 110:1 foretold and the New Testament repeatedly claims (Acts 2:34-36; Hebrews 1:3). He is the believers' life, so that their future is bound to his appearing. And he is the Master of every relationship: the Colossian slave serves the Lord Christ, and the Colossian master has a Master in heaven.

The image of God in 3:10 points back to 1:15, where Christ is the image of the invisible God. The new self is being restored to the image in which humans were first made, and that image is seen perfectly in the Son. This is fulfilment of the creation account: what Adam was meant to be, Christ is, and he makes the church what it was meant to be (compare Romans 8:29). The statement that 'Christ is all and is in all' (3:11) gathers up the Old Testament hope that the nations would be joined to God's people (Isaiah 49:6), now realised in a body that is made of Jews and Gentiles in him. The word of Christ that dwells in the church is the message about him, which Paul describes as the apostolic gospel.