Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Colossians 2:1-4 | Date: October 4, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Father, we’re grateful to have your word. We’re grateful for the ability to meet together again at our regular schedule. We pray that this study in Colossians will be aided by your spirit to teach us your word, give us a greater understanding of it, and by it, shape us to your glory, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Start with Colossians 2, verses 1 to 4. This is just an introduction to Colossians, but I want to start here. “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.”

I’ll start with some observations just about this passage that I think will bring us into an understanding of Colossians. First of all, notice in verse one, these people have not seen his face. So Paul has never been there. This is a church that he’s writing to that he did not start himself. His concern in writing is to strengthen them in gospel understanding. He says that in some rich ways here that we’ll get to when we get to chapter two. But the bottom line is he wants to strengthen them in their understanding of the gospel, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

So his theme, he tells us, is the all-sufficiency of Christ. That in a nutshell is what Paul is writing for. And he wants to say all of that because there’s some false teaching that may be creeping into the Church of Colossae. “I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.” So something’s going on in the Church at Colossae that Paul is having to address. And to address it, he wants to strengthen them in the gospel, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So that in a nutshell is why Paul is writing this letter.

Historical Setting

Now let’s get some historical setting. I won’t take a long time here, but the book of Acts in its larger context—remember now the gospel has been anticipated all through the Old Testament centuries—finally has arrived in Christ and the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John make the great announcement: he’s here. In the Book of Acts, the word goes out to the world. And the Apostle Paul has the primary role in that in the Book of Acts in taking the gospel to the Gentiles. And so we have Paul’s missionary journeys.

Let me give you just a brief glimpse of that with several maps to put it in perspective here. Okay, you can’t see my cursor. Right in here, Turkey, is where we’re talking about, is where he’s going with Colossae. I’ll show you some more with a zoom in. You’ll see where Cyprus is there. The bottom of the Y, that’s pretty much where Colossae is. We’ll see some more in a second. By the way, we call it Turkey. In the New Testament, you’ll read of Asia. That’s the Roman province of Asia, which is in what we now call Turkey, or Asia Minor. Ancient historical studies called it Anatolia. It’s that whole extension of the continent there that we call Turkey. And at the west end of it is the province of Asia.

There’s a bigger picture. Notice we have Jerusalem down at the east, southeast, and Egypt down at the south. You’ve got the Mediterranean Sea, then you have Turkey or Asia Minor above it. And then off to the northwest, you have Greece and then Europe. Another glimpse of that, if you like. For those of you coming to the Wednesday night study, notice, by the way, in the middle of Asia Minor there is Galatia. We’ll be reading through the book of Galatians. That’s the Roman province of Galatia there through the center. Another picture of that.

We have Paul’s first missionary journey. Again, we won’t take time to trace that through. His second missionary journey, third journey as well. And you can see all over the place where he goes. It’s pretty impressive to see how much territory was covered on foot in those days before traveling by air. Pretty impressive.

Okay, zooming in a little closer on our area, notice Colossae there. And notice just to the west and north, you have Laodicea. And then north and west, you have Hierapolis. Way over to the west, you see Ephesus. We’ll be talking about some of that in a little bit. But get a picture here of where these cities are.

Paul’s mission strategy, as I said, was to go first of all to the Gentiles. Evidently, he and James had an agreement strategically in this regard, that James would go to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles. And his strategy in it was not just to the Gentiles, but to hit the metropolitan areas first, so that from there, the gospel would go out to the various regions. Seems to be Paul’s decided strategy. And I’ll take for an example of that Acts chapter 19. Because we’ve started late, I won’t take time to read it, but we have his ministry there in Ephesus. This is on his third journey. And it says in verses nine and 10 that he rented the lecture hall of Tyrannus and he lectured there daily. And it says in verse 10, all the residents of Asia heard him.

Okay, Paul in Ephesus—it’s a major metropolitan area, commercial area. He rents a lecture hall and somehow they’re getting people to come in. And all the residents of Asia—this is the province of Asia—heard him. I’m sure he doesn’t mean that in absolute terms. I’m sure there were people who didn’t hear him. But people from all over is the idea, heard Paul giving the gospel as he did every day in the lecture hall at Ephesus.

And then so he goes into a place, he’ll give the gospel, eventually establish a church, and then once the church is established, he’ll move on to another place. Sometimes he’s there at some considerable length, like at Ephesus; he’s there two to three years. He was a couple of years at Corinth as well. Places like Thessalonica, he was there only a matter of a few weeks. But he would go there, establish a gospel witness, and move on. In metropolitan areas like this, the idea is for the gospel to go out from there.

And then Paul would write letters back to those churches to help them. And I call them here both pastoral and occasional. Pastoral letters in the sense that they are designed to give them instruction both in doctrine and in practice. What does a Christian believe? How is it a Christian therefore ought to behave? And that’s, in essence, the content of Paul’s letters. Now they’re called occasional, by the way, not because he writes them occasionally, but there was something that occasioned the letters that he writes. Most famously, his letter to the Corinthians, our First Corinthians. Paul is very explicit about it there: “Now I write to you about this, and now concerning that, and now concerning this, and now concerning…” He’s responding to some issues there. And it’s the same with Colossians. And as we’ve seen, he’s writing to address this false teaching in the church.

So the historical setting in brief: The gospel is making its way to the world. The Apostle Paul has the major role in taking the gospel to the Gentiles. He targets the metropolitan areas and establishes churches with an aim for the gospel to move out from there to the surrounding regions. And he then writes letters to the churches as a continuation of his ministry.

As a timeline here, we have the crucifixion of Jesus, I believe 33 AD. Conversion of Paul, 35. We have his missionary travels for 13 or 14 years here in the 40s up through the 60s. The famous council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 is probably 50 or 51. Paul’s third missionary travel—well, I don’t have time for that. In AD 60 to 62, we have his first Roman imprisonment, and that is when he writes these prison epistles. Anybody know what the prison epistles are? Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. So Colossians is one of the prison epistles. Paul wrote them from, I think, the Roman prison. Some have argued for Caesarean imprisonment, but I think the Roman imprisonment is what it was.

Colossae

All right, let’s talk about Colossae. Notice again where it is. This is in the western part of Asia Minor, sort of to the south. Notice it’s about, I think, 100, 120 miles to the east and a little bit south of Ephesus. And then you have these three cities together: Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis. Someone take your Bible and read for us Colossians chapter 4, verses 13 to 16. When you have it, just go ahead and start reading.

“I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis. Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.”

Okay, notice Paul mentions all three cities. There are churches in all three of these cities. He’s writing to Colossae. Paul has a sense—well, he has an understanding of his unique role as an apostle. So he expects his letters to be read not only at the church to whom it is addressed, but to others as well, ultimately to us. But notice he also mentions in verse 16, the letter to Laodicea. So make sure they read your letter. Make sure you read the letter I sent to them. So there’s a lost letter of Paul’s. There are others that we find hints like that in the New Testament. But notice then we have this gospel area. We have churches in Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis. And Paul is writing to Colossae and he mentions them all. There’s another picture of it for you on the map.

Now, as we’ve said, Paul was never in Colossae. So the question arises, how did the church get there? And we have the answer given in Colossians chapter 1 and verse 7, where he says, “You learned it,” that is, you learned the gospel, “from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf.” So Epaphras was the one who founded the church in Colossae. Well, that raises another question. Who is Epaphras? In chapter 4 verses 12 and 13, Paul says, “Epaphras is one of you,” which probably means that he’s from Colossae. Not just that he’s there now as pastor of the church, but he’s from there. He’s one of you.

So then, how did Epaphras come to know the gospel? And first answer is, nobody knows. Second answer is, there’s a guess. And that is, maybe he was converted under Paul’s ministry in Ephesus, where all of Asia heard him. That’s the easiest guess. There could have been something else. That’s the easiest guess. And most New Testament scholars go with that because there’s just not a better guess to go with.

So he was from Colossae. He was in Ephesus, ran into Paul, heard him preach, became a follower of Christ himself. So then, was he then Paul’s official delegate to Colossae? And again, Colossians 1:7: “You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on our/your behalf.” And the reason I say that, our/your, is because if you have one version of the English Bible, you’ll read “our behalf.” If you have another, it’ll say “on your behalf.” And that’s because there’s a variation in the Greek manuscripts. Some of them read “on your behalf.” Some of them read “on our behalf.” The difference in the Greek is just like in English, it’s just one letter, hemon or humon. And so, bottom line is not a great difference, but if it says “on our behalf,” he’s a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf—that would emphasize more that he’s an official delegate of the Apostle Paul. It’s probably the case anyway; that seems to emphasize that.

And now, Epaphras is back to Paul. While Paul is in prison, Epaphras has come to visit him. And he says, “who also told us of your love in the spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we’ve not stopped praying for you.” So he’s back with Paul in Rome, reporting to Paul about the problems, the theological issues going on at Colossae. And Paul now is writing, in keeping with Epaphras’ remarks, back to the church to help solve those issues. Chapter 4 and verse 12, Paul says, “Greetings from Epaphras.” So Epaphras is there with him. And now he’s with Paul.

Now the question arises at this point, in what capacity is Epaphras with Paul? Is he just visiting? Or Philemon verse 23, Paul calls Epaphras “my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus sends you greetings.” Does that just mean because he’s there with Paul in prison or because he’s in prison there with Paul? Can’t be sure either way. Somehow he’s with Paul in his Roman—by this time in Paul’s Roman imprisonment, he’s at a hired house. He’s—don’t picture a dungeon at this point—but he’s chained to his guard when he’s in a hired house.

So verses 12 and 13 of chapter 4: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand mature and faithfully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and Hierapolis.” I’ve already pointed that out. There’s the map again. So we have now a picture of Epaphras who is busy not only in the Church of Colossae, but also in the Church of Laodicea and up in Hierapolis as well. And then again, what I mentioned about the letter being written, Paul has written to the Laodiceans, he’s also written to Colossae; make sure you exchange letters.

All right, some of the people of the Colossian church. We already know about Epaphras, who is one of them. Another one, Onesimus, “who is one of you.” Chapter four, verses seven to nine. Where else do you hear of Onesimus? Philemon—yeah, remember he is evidently a former slave belonging to Philemon and has left and probably run away. Now he’s with Paul in prison as well. And just a heads up, next Sunday, I thought just to compliment the studies on Colossians that we’re doing in Sunday school, next Sunday morning, I’m going to preach through Paul’s letter to Philemon. So we have Epaphras, we have Onesimus, therefore Philemon also. Because if Onesimus is one of them from Colossae, now Philemon is also. And in fact, Philemon verses one and two says the church is meeting in Philemon’s house. So Philemon is some wealthier guy in the church who has a house big enough for everyone to come and meet him.

All right, who wrote the letter, when and from where? Just quickly on this, Paul, of course, is the author. He’s identified three times in the book that way—identifies himself, signs off at the end. “I write this with my own hand. This is Paul.” He’s in Rome, in prison. He mentions that three times in the letter itself. The date then is probably around 61. 60 to 62 are the dates that are given. Around this time, there is a major earthquake in Colossae that devastated the city. Paul doesn’t mention that. And so most think that this must have been written before that time. So 61 is the guess.

And notice they have some mail carriers, Tychicus and Onesimus. Chapter 4, verses 7 to 9, where he says, “Tychicus will tell you everything that’s going on here.” It’d be interesting to know those details. It’s one of those little statements that opens up something that we can’t really see. Does that mean Paul will explain how Epaphras ended up here in prison with me? Or does it just mean that Epaphras will explain my condition here and how things are going? Or how the gospel has gone out still while I’m here in prison? Maybe all of the above.

But Tychicus will explain all that’s going on when he sees you, so he’s delivering the letter. Mail delivery in those days, keep in mind, was not like today with all the trouble we’re having with the mail service and the ballots and everything. This might not be the best illustration at this time, but we have a relatively reliable mail system. Put it in the box, and it ends up where you want it to go. They didn’t have a centralized mail delivery system in those days. And if you wanted to send a letter to someone in another city 100 miles away or 1,000 miles away, you find someone going there. Hopefully, a friend that you can trust. If not, just a friend. If not a friend, somebody. And hopefully, it’ll get there. That’s how the mail system worked in those days.

Well, Paul has Tychicus personally deliver it. I’ve often tried to imagine this. You give it to a mail carrier, your friend, or somebody you’ve met, and say, “take this to the church at Colossae.” Okay, where’s that? Okay, well, when you get to Colossae, go to the center of the city where the Agora is, the marketplace, and you’ll see a street, and on the side there’s a corner… well, turn left there. And down the road somewhere you’ll see, and on the right, and you’ve got to give… and you can imagine the mail carrier getting there and asking, “where’s so and so?” Hopefully it gets there. Well, this did, and it made it.

Now, it’s also an interesting observation that Tychicus is bringing the letter with Onesimus. So Onesimus—this is a heads up for next week in Philemon—is being sent back to Philemon, carrying the letters. Can you just imagine Onesimus with Tychicus, I’m sure, knocking on Philemon’s door? Philemon opens the door and there’s Onesimus, who has run away. And Onesimus probably says something like, “before you say anything, please read this letter.”

Well, we have Paul’s prison epistles at Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. I wanted to mention some remarks about Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, just those three, because they have some commonalities and some connections between them. Tychicus carried Paul’s letters both to Ephesus and to Colossae. “Tychicus will tell you everything.” Paul makes that remark both in Ephesians and Colossians. And there are extensive similarities between some of the books, Colossians and Ephesians. If you just do a quick read through Ephesians and then Colossians, you’ll see notable similarities in terms of the content, like the house table, children and parents, servants, so on. Extensive similarities between Colossians and Ephesians. And then, of course, extensive similarities between Colossians and Philemon, both in content—the exhortation regarding slaves—and with some of the people, historically. And then, of course, the Onesimus/Philemon thing that has to be dealt with in a separate letter to Philemon, although there are hints of that in Colossians as well. So, Tychicus, with Onesimus, is probably carrying all three letters—Ephesus, Colossians, and Philemon—all at the same time, and delivering them in this trip. I think that’s just an interesting background peek into what’s going on.

The False Teaching At Colossae

All right, now the question of the false teaching at Colossae. Whole books have been written on this. What is the false teaching at Colossae? And Paul talks about it. That’s the occasion of Paul’s writing. Verse 4 of chapter 2, verse 8, 18—he mentions some details about it. And he calls it philosophy, empty deceit, human tradition. He refers to elemental spirits, asceticism, worship of angels, and visions.

Okay, so what’s this Colossian heresy all about? Take them one by one quickly. Philosophy—that term probably reflects some kind of Greek influence in the religious thinking at Colossae. Empty deceit—that really doesn’t tell us anything by way of specific content. I’ll mention this in a minute, but New Testament scholars in particular like to refer to what is called mirror reading. That is, Paul is writing to address a specific situation here in Colossae. And so he can address it assuming a mutual understanding of what’s going on. They read his remarks; they know exactly what he’s referring to. We are not they, and so we’re just seeing Paul’s end of the conversation, and so we have to kind of mirror read. Okay, what does that refer to? What is it he’s talking about at that point? The empty deceit here, they probably would have understood what that was. To us, that doesn’t give us a lot, except to say that the teaching that they have been dabbling in evidently is worthless.

Human tradition—the word tradition is a technical term, actually, that both Jews and Greeks would have used talking about the body of teaching that’s been passed down to them. We don’t know exactly the content of it, but it is at least something extra that has been added to the Christian faith. Christian faith is grounded in—this is its fundamental claim—our faith is grounded in divine revelation. God has spoken; he has spoken supremely in Christ and we have that revelation now that has been given us. Anything else is something extra, something unneeded, and that’s what he calls here human tradition.

Elemental spirits—that has some specific pagan associations to it. The spirits that were supposedly associated with the planets and supposedly controlling life and circumstances—in pure paganism, they had to be appeased and you’d pray to them and things like that. Something of that has crept into Colossae. We don’t know how extensively. Asceticism—some kind of self-denial, imposed regulations, restrictions, maybe afflictions of some kind. Paul characterizes it in brief, seems rather pejoratively in chapter two: “touch not, taste not, handle not.” That’s going to solve it. That’s what you need. That’s the recipe for holiness. Something of that is going on as well.

Worship of angels—that’s probably a Jewish reference of some kind. The Jews did not worship angels as such, but they had extensive speculations about the angels. Perhaps they prayed to the angels for guidance, something about the worship of angels, visions, extra revelations, searching for special guidance of some kind. And then there were some specific Jewish issues: circumcision, Sabbath, holy days, food restrictions. So evidently part of this so-called Colossian heresy was some Jewish influence that did not adequately appreciate the implications of Christ and the new covenant and the massive shift that comes with the advent of Christ.

All right, so we have these. But again, the problem of mirror reading: So what is the heresy? The Colossian heresy. And again, books have been written on this. How can we identify from this exactly what was that false teaching? Can we identify it specifically? About 40 different suggestions have been made. “This is the Colossian heresy.” And if there are that many suggestions that have been made, you can tell that we have a hard time dealing with it. Some have suggested it was Gnosticism, often because of the hints of syncretistic religion, blending of religions, but that’s common with all of the religions of that day and that era. More than that, Gnosticism, we know now, was not full-blown until later, the second century.

So the question is, what accounts for all of these strands of bad ideas that have crept into Colossae? And historians work to identify that. Mysticism of some kind—that’s the interest in angels, Paul’s key words like wisdom and knowledge, getting special wisdom and insight through revelations perhaps. Maybe it was some syncretistic elements creeping in, both Jewish and pagan.

I’ll give you my guess. So let’s make this 41. It was just a confused theological mess. I really tend to think this. Now, Paul says in chapter 2 and verse 4, “lest no one delude you,” that might refer to false teachers who have come in. But I rather think that the Colossian heresy, as it is called, is not a particular body of teaching so much as it is bad ideas from various strands that have come into the church and been sort of mingled in with their faith in Christ. Wrongly, but mingled in with it.

And I think we have to appreciate that in this era, remember there’s been what I’ve called before—you’ve heard me call it—a revelation dump. Jesus came, he taught the apostles, he sent his spirit and taught them all things. And these people don’t have a full Bible to read. It’s still being written. The apostles are having to work that out for them. And so they get the gospel in a period of weeks or a period of a couple years, maybe, whatever. They’ve learned the faith. They’re following Christ. But they don’t have the fullness of revelation that we have. And inevitably, other ideas are going to creep in and affect the purity of their faith. And I think that’s probably what’s going on here in Colossae.

It’s important to note Paul’s overall satisfaction with the church at Colossae. Paul’s remarks to the Colossian believers—your stability in the faith, your faithfulness, your love—he’s happy with them. There are some issues that he’s got to address and correct, but he’s happy with these people. This is not at all the tone that Paul has when he writes to Galatia. He’s upset with them, but now he’s writing to Colossae, and he’s overall happy with them. So I don’t think it’s a heresy as such that it’s been embraced by the church collectively, but some false teaching has come in.

The bottom line is it affects the supremacy and the sufficiency of Christ. We know that because that’s Paul’s whole emphasis in his letter to Colossae. He’ll make remarks like, “that teaching is not according to Christ.” And he’ll have whole sections of what we call high Christology. We’ll see this in chapter 1 and in chapter 2 where Paul has these marvelous statements of the lordship of Christ. He’s Lord over creation. He’s Lord over the church. This is the burden of Paul’s teaching in chapter two. Christ is all-sufficient. You don’t need these extra things. What we have in Christ—having died and being raised with him—we don’t need other things. So that’s Paul’s emphasis. Somehow all of this was impinging on the supremacy and the sufficiency of Christ, and Paul has to deal with that.

Survey The Letter

All right, survey this. To survey the letter—and I’m running out of time. I thought I’d give you a quick glimpse first of all at ancient Greek letters, epistles. We do have a number of them from the Greco-Roman world to compare to what we have from the apostles and their epistles. And it seems that they have fallen generally right in line with the custom of the day in writing letters. That shouldn’t surprise anybody, where you have a greeting, the body of the letter, and the closing.

But in the New Testament epistles, there’s a distinctive Christian twist that is given to the epistles. Some of the distinctive Christian twists given to the letters are, number one—you’ll like this—they’re usually much longer. Number two, charis instead of chyrene. You don’t have to know Greek, but I put it there so you can see that there’s probably an intended pun. Chairein, “greetings.” But when the apostles write, it’s “grace to you.” Now they still speak of greetings, and with Paul, Colossians is at the end of the book. But it seems that they’ve taken over this, but they’ve made it an intentional change: “grace to you and peace,” a Christian twist. And then also a doxology included usually in the opening greetings. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” or something like that.

But the usual format of the letters in that day, and particularly with the apostles, is there’s the name, the greeting, the thanksgiving. Then you have the body of the letter, which is both doctrine and exhortation. And then you have the personal greetings and benediction at the end. And that’s what we have generally in Colossians.

A broad overview: We have the introduction in chapter 1, verses 1 to 14. You’ve got a salutation, greeting, thanksgiving, and then a prayer for the Colossians. Chapter 1, verse 15, all the way through chapter 2, we have what I’ll call instructions. This is distinctly theological in nature. Paul expounds the glories of Christ, the lordship of Christ, the implications of his saving work, and so on. And then chapter three, all the way to chapter four in verse one, we have the theology applied, exhortation. In these sections, it’s these—both the instruction and the exhortation—that make the Christian epistles so much longer than other epistles in those days. But here Paul will expound on the implications of the theology that he’s taught in chapters one and two. And we’ll work our way through that. And then the rest of chapter four is his closing remarks, commendations, greetings, personal references, and so on.

I was going to take time for a more in-depth survey. But we’ve run out of time. Let’s just go here. Colossians in sum: You have Jesus. You cannot possibly need anything more. I think that is the bottom line of Colossians. I hope you’ll see that as we work our way through it in the coming weeks. Very quickly, any questions, comments, smart remarks? All right. Pastor Boyd, would you dismiss in prayer, please? th th Final.