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.