1 Paul, apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy our brother,
2 to the saints in Colossae, our faith ful brothers and sisters in Christ:
Receive grace and peace from God our Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord.
3 Thanks be to God, the Father of Christ Jesus, our Lord!
We constantly pray for you,
4 for we have known of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints. Indeed you await in hope the inheritance reserved for you in heaven,
5 of which you have heard through the word of truth. This Gos pel,
6 already present among you, is bearing fruit and growing through out the world, as it did among you from the day you ac cepted it and understood the gift of God in all its truth.
7 He who taught you, Epa phras, our dear com panion in the service of Christ, faithful minister of Christ on our behalf,
8 has reminded me of the love you have for me in the spirit.
9 Because of this, from the day we received news of you, we have not ceased praying to God for you, that you may attain the full knowledge of his will through all the gifts of wisdom and spiritual understanding.
10 May your lifestyle be worthy of the Lord and completely pleasing to him. May you bear fruit in every good work and grow in the knowledge of God.
11 May you become strong in everything by a sharing of the Glory of God, so that you may have great endurance and persevere in joy.
12 Constantly give thanks to the Father who has empowered us to receive our share in the in heritance of the saints in his kingdom of light.
13 He rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.
14 In him we are redeemed and forgiven.
Christ is the beginning of everything
15 He is the image of the unseen God,
and for all creation he is the firstborn,
16 for in him all things were cre ated,
in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible:
thrones, rulers, authorities, powers…
All was made through him and for him.
17 He is before all
and all things hold together in him.
18 And he is the head of the body, that is the Church,
for he is the first, the first rais ed from the dead
that he may be the first in everything,
19 for God was pleased to let fullness dwell in him.
20 Through him God willed to reconcile all things to himself,
and through him, through his blood shed on the cross,
God establishes peace,
on earth as in heaven.
21 You yourselves were once estranged and opposed to God be cause of your evil deeds,
22 but now God has reconciled you in the hu man body of his Son through his death, so that you may be without fault, holy and blameless before him.
23 Only stand firm, upon the foundation of your faith, and be steadfast in hope. Keep in mind the Gos pel you have heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, be came a minister.
24 At present I rejoice when I suffer for you; I complete in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the Church.
25 For I am serving the Church since God entrusted to me the ministry to make the word of God fully known.
26 I mean that mysterious plan that for centuries and generations remained secret, and which God has now revealed to his holy ones.
27 God willed to make known to them the riches and even the Glory that his mysterious plan reserved for the pagan nations: Christ is in you and you may hope God’s Glory.
28 This Christ we preach. We warn and teach everyone true wisdom, aiming to make everyone perfect in Christ.
29 For this cause I labor and struggle with the energy of Christ working powerfully in me.
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Comments Letter to the Colossians, Chapter 1
• 1.1 Paul, as usual, praises his readers. Actually, he is writing because of the information Epaphras gave him about the Colossians’ concerns.
Epaphras, about whom Paul speaks (1:7), is a man from Colossae. When Paul was organizing the evange li zation of the province of Ephesus (see Acts 19:26 and 20:4), he did not go to every city, but would send his assistants. Epaphras of Colossae announced the Good News and had started to form communities in Colossae and then in the neighboring cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis (see Col 4:13). He was the man who came to Rome to inform Paul of the difficulties.
Your faith… your love… in hope… (vv. 4-5). Paul constantly re groups these three Christian powers: believe, love and hope. In the Christian world, they are called theo logical virtues (i.e., powers that go straight to God). The three go together, otherwise they do not exist. In a sense hope is the first: if it is no longer alive, faith and love remain powerless.
Straight away, Paul presents faith as being matchless: the Gospel has already been preached and believed throughout the world (v. 6) (which is rather too quickly said); faith opens for us the way to true knowledge: pre cisely what the Colossians are look ing for (see Introduction); through this faith God has already placed us in the kingdom of Light (v. 12).
He has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. While the Colossians are interested in an invisible world of supernatural forces, where luminous powers battle with those of darkness (see the Intro duction, and also Eph 1:21), Paul immediately clarified the situation: there is nothing other than the power of Darkness and the kingdom of the Son.
• 15. Paul shows that the angels or invisible powers (v. 16) whether from the Bible or the story tellers of “gnosis” with their Thrones, Authorities, Principles… are nothing compared with Christ. He is neither agent nor intermediary of a creative adventure without a true creator. He is not one of the saviors of a history rather impersonal: there is only God-Creator and in him is Christ. See the same idea in Hebrews 1.
In Galatians 4:1-5 Paul recognizes that the history of humanity has been deeply marked by natural and social forces that he does not name. He also affirms that since the resurrection of Jesus, it is he who has in hand all the movement of history (Rev 5:3-5). Something that may astonish those among us who think all history is the responsibility of humankind. In one sense, they are right but on condition that they do not forget the Firstborn, the one who has already come to the end of history and of whom we say he is Lord (Phil 2:11) of history.
He is the image of the unseen God. We should not imagine that God has a human form beyond the clouds, and that Jesus is his image; human creature is the image of God, but God is not in the image of human creature.
In all that he is and in all that he does, Christ among us is the perfect image of the Father and of his mercy: his actions reveal God’s way of thinking and acting. Already before he became man, the Son of God existed in God, as the eternal and invisible image of God eternal and invisible, the radiance of the glory of the Father (Heb 1:3), the Expression or Word of God (Jn 1:1).
For all creation, he is the firstborn. We take this word in its biblical sense. He is not the first of many creatures, but the one who has a place apart. In his human nature, Christ is a Galilean Jew, a descendant of David. His person, however, is rooted in God and is presented to us as the model and the firstborn not of people but of all creation.
God was pleased to let fullness dwell in him who is the only bridge between God and the universe. The fullness of God is in him to be communicated to the universe, and the fullness of the universe will be found in him when all human beings are reconciled and reunited in him.
All was made through him: Jn 1:1 and Heb 1:2.
And was the first raised… Paul says more precisely “and as the first fruits offered to God, was raised” (as in 1 Cor 15:23). He has not come only for the forgiveness of sins, but for a “passover,” a passage from death to life, and his resurrection after his total abandonment to his Father was a first necessary step so that we too would have a resurrection.
God willed to reconcile. Once again the work of Christ is presented as reconciliation: reconciliation between people (2 Cor 5:17-21) and reconciliation of the whole of creation.
• 21. Paul now requires the Colos sians to keep their feet on the ground. Do not waste your time imagining strug gles between celestial beings and evil ones. The struggle is here below and costs blood and life. This is why Paul reminds his readers what he himself is suffering because of the Gospel.
The body of Christ is the place where the peace of all humanity with God, and peace between individuals and nations can be achieved (Eph 2:11).
That you may be, without fault, holy and blameless before him (v. 22): see commentary on Eph 5:26.
I complete in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. After Christ’s death something would be lacking in the salvation of the world, if Jesus’ followers and apostles did not, in their turn, meet with trials and sufferings. Working for the Church means suffering for the Church; to work for the rule of jus tice is to suffer for the sake of justice.
His mysterious plan: see Eph 3:5. We must not forget that in those days, no one even thought of the common destiny of humanity: they did not even speak of humanity. Moreover, neither the Greeks nor the Romans looked beyond their actual existence. Paul is amazed by the generosity of God whose promises are for all people, without distinction (v. 27). We, too, are offered nothing less than a share in the Glory of God, that is to say, all the riches found in him.