For Teaching

Colossians 1: What the Passage Says

95 claims across 29 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Colossians 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul and Timothy write to the Christians in Colossae, thanking God for their faith and love and praying that they will know God's will, live well, and endure with joy. Paul then describes the Son: the image of the invisible God, the one through whom all things were created, the head of the church, and the one through whom God reconciles all things by the blood of his cross. He tells the readers that they, once hostile to God, have now been reconciled so as to be presented holy before him, if they stay grounded in the faith. He closes by describing his own work as a servant of the gospel, announcing the message once hidden and now revealed: Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Claim by Claim

1:1
- Paul is an apostle of Christ Jesus.
- Paul is an apostle by the will of God.
- Timothy is with Paul in sending this letter.
- Timothy is called our brother.
1:2
- The letter is addressed to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ who are at Colossae.
- Paul wishes grace to the recipients.
- Paul wishes peace to the recipients.
- The grace and peace come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1:3
- We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
- We always pray for you.
1:4
- We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus.
- We heard of the love you have toward all the saints.
1:5
- The faith and love come because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
- You heard of this hope beforehand in the word of the truth of the gospel.
1:6
- The gospel has come to you.
- The gospel is present in all the world.
- The gospel bears fruit in all the world.
- The gospel bears fruit among you as well.
- The gospel has been at work among you since the day you heard it.
- On that day you knew the grace of God in truth.
1:7
- You learned the gospel from Epaphras.
- Epaphras is our beloved fellow servant.
- Epaphras is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf.
1:8
- Epaphras declared your love to us.
- Your love is in the Spirit.
1:9
- Because of this, since the day we heard, we do not cease praying for you.
- We ask that you be filled with the knowledge of God's will.
- The filling is to be in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
1:10
- The purpose is that you walk worthy of the Lord.
- The purpose is that you please him in every way.
- The purpose is that you bear fruit in every good work.
- The purpose is that you increase in the knowledge of God.
1:11
- The purpose is that you be strengthened with all power.
- The strengthening is according to the might of his glory.
- The strengthening is unto all endurance and longsuffering.
- This is to be accompanied by joy.
1:12
- You are to give thanks to the Father.
- The Father has made us fit for a share in the inheritance of the saints.
- That inheritance is in the light.
1:13
- He delivered us from the authority of darkness.
- He transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.
1:14
- In the Son we have redemption.
- The redemption is through his blood.
- The redemption is the forgiveness of sins.
1:15
- The Son is the image of the invisible God.
- God is invisible.
- The Son is the firstborn of all creation.
1:16
- All things were created in him.
- The things created include things in the heavens and things on the earth.
- The things created include things visible and things invisible.
- The things created include thrones, dominions, principalities, and authorities.
- All things were created through him.
- All things were created for him.
1:17
- He is before all things.
- In him all things hold together.
1:18
- He is the head of the body.
- The body is the church.
- He is the beginning.
- He is the firstborn from the dead.
- The purpose is that he might be preeminent in all things.
1:19
- It pleased the Father that all the fullness should dwell in him.
1:20
- Through him God reconciles all things to himself.
- He made peace through the blood of his cross.
- The reconciled things include things on the earth and things in the heavens.
1:21
- You were formerly alienated.
- You were enemies in your mind.
- Your alienation and enmity were shown in wicked works.
1:22
- Now he has reconciled you.
- The reconciliation was accomplished in the body of his flesh through death.
- The purpose is to present you holy, unblameable, and unreproveable before him.
1:23
- This holds if you continue in the faith.
- You are to be grounded and settled.
- You are not to be moved away from the hope of the gospel.
- You have heard that gospel.
- That gospel was preached to every creature under heaven.
- Paul was made a minister of that gospel.
1:24
- Paul now rejoices in his sufferings for the Colossians.
- Paul fills up in his flesh what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ.
- Paul does this for the sake of Christ's body.
- Christ's body is the church.
1:25
- Paul was made a minister of the church.
- Paul's ministry is according to the stewardship of God given to him for the Colossians.
- The purpose of the stewardship is to fulfill the word of God.
1:26
- The word of God is the mystery hidden from ages and from generations.
- The mystery is now made manifest to his saints.
1:27
- God willed to make known to the saints the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles.
- The mystery is Christ in you.
- Christ in you is the hope of glory.
1:28
- We preach Christ.
- We warn every man.
- We teach every man in all wisdom.
- The purpose is that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
1:29
- Paul labors for this end.
- Paul strives according to Christ's working.
- That working operates in Paul with power.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1: "Apostle" translates a Greek word meaning one who is sent, an authorized representative who carries the sender's commission and speaks with the sender's backing. "Timotheus" is the King James spelling of the Greek form of the name Timothy, a younger coworker who traveled with Paul.
1:2: "Saints" translates a word meaning set apart or holy, and in Paul's letters it covers every member of the congregation, not a select few. "Brethren" is the ordinary term for fellow members of the group and includes women. Colossae was a declining town in the Lycus valley in what is now western Turkey, near the larger cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis. Ordinary Greek letters opened with a one word "greetings"; "Grace be unto you, and peace" fuses a variation on that with the standard Jewish greeting of peace, shalom. Many of the earliest Greek copies end the verse at "from God our Father," without the words that follow.
1:5: "Laid up" means stored away and kept in reserve, the way valuables are put in safekeeping. "Gospel" translates a word meaning good news: in ordinary use, the public announcement of an event such as a victory or the birth of an heir.
1:6: "The grace of God" is God's generous goodwill given freely rather than earned or owed.
1:7: "Fellowservant" renders a compound built on the word for slave, so Paul is placing Epaphras on exactly the same footing as himself. Epaphras came from Colossae and appears to be the man who first brought the message there; Paul himself had never visited the town.
1:8: The Spirit means God's Spirit, also called the Holy Spirit.
1:10: "Walk" is a standing idiom of the Bible for the whole conduct of a life, the way a person habitually behaves, not physical walking.
1:11: "Longsuffering" is a King James word for patience under provocation, holding back anger toward people; it does not mean suffering for a long time.
1:12: "Meet" here is the old adjective meaning fit, suitable or qualified, unrelated to the verb to meet. "Inheritance" carries the sense of an allotted share, the word used for the portions of land assigned to the tribes of Israel.
1:13: "Translated" in 1611 English means transferred or carried across from one place to another. Ancient empires did this to whole populations, moving conquered peoples from their own territory into another kingdom.
1:14: "Redemption" was the everyday word for buying a person out of slavery or out of captivity by paying a price for their release.
1:15: "Firstborn" in this world indicated rank and legal right as much as order of birth: the eldest son held first place in the family and the largest share of the estate, and the term could be applied to a king as the one holding highest status. The Greek phrase can be read either as firstborn belonging to creation or as firstborn ranking over all creation, and the wording itself does not settle which.
1:16: "Thrones," "dominions," "principalities" and "powers" are terms for ranks of governing authority. Readers of the time heard them as names for levels in an ordered hierarchy of powers, both the spiritual beings thought to stand behind the world's structures and the human rulers who exercise them. "Principalities" means rulerships or offices of rule, not small countries.
1:17: "Consist" is used in its older sense of holding together or staying coherent, not the modern "consist of."
1:18: "The church" translates ekklesia, the ordinary Greek word for an assembly of citizens summoned to meet. It refers to the gathered people themselves and never to a building. "Preeminence" means first place, holding rank ahead of everything else.
1:19: "Fulness" translates pleroma, the entire sum of what something contains, its complete content with nothing held back. The Greek leaves the subject of "it pleased" unstated, so the sentence can be read either as God being pleased to have his fullness dwell in him, or as all the fullness itself being pleased to dwell in him.
1:20: "Reconcile" was used of ending hostilities and restoring a friendly relationship between parties who had become enemies. "The blood of his cross" refers to death by crucifixion, the public Roman execution reserved for slaves, rebels and non citizens.
1:21: "Sometime" is old English for at one time or formerly. It does not mean occasionally.
1:22: "Unblameable and unreproveable" draw on two settings: the inspection of a sacrificial animal for blemishes, and a court, where no charge can be brought against the accused. "Present" suggests bringing someone formally before a ruler or judge.
1:23: "Minister" translates diakonos, a servant or attendant who carries out the orders of another. Here it describes a role, not an ordained office.
1:24: "That which is behind" is King James English for what is still lacking or left outstanding. What Paul means by a lack in Christ's afflictions has been argued over since the earliest readers; the Greek says only that he fills up in his own flesh what is lacking of those afflictions, and does not explain further.
1:25: "Dispensation" translates oikonomia, the management of a household entrusted to a steward, and so an assignment or commission given by an owner. "To fulfil the word of God" means to deliver the message in full, carrying it out completely rather than partly.
1:26: "Mystery" here does not mean a puzzle to be worked out. It translates a word for a secret that was deliberately kept hidden and has now been disclosed by the one who kept it.
1:27: "Gentiles" is the standard term for all the nations other than the Jews, that is, everyone outside Israel. The "you" in "Christ in you" is plural, so it can mean within each person or among the group as a whole.
1:28: "Perfect" translates teleios, meaning complete, fully grown, having reached the end it was aimed at. It does not mean faultless.
1:29: "Labour" is the word for exhausting physical toil, and "striving" comes from the language of athletic contests, wrestling or running with everything a competitor has. The Greek noun behind it is the source of the English word agony.

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