Introduction
Towards the year 62, Paul, a prisoner in Rome, writes to the Christians of
Colossae, who, without being aware of it, belittle Christ. They do not feel
assured with only faith in Christ and they want to add some practices from
the Old Testament. Or they try to include Christ in a board of celestial
persons, or ¡°angels¡± who are supposed to have the key to our destiny in
hand.
Something was lacking in them and in the majority of their contemporaries.
They were caught in the Roman Empire which had imposed its peace on the
known world at that time, but also prevented them from living a life of
their own. They fell back on the ¡°spiritual.¡± Secret doctrines offered to
lead their ¡°perfect ones¡± to a higher state and theories called ¡°gnosis¡±
(that is, knowledge) were drawn up on the origin of the human and the world.
According to them, all comes from a cosmic soup that had been boiling for
ages, with impressive celestial families of angels or ¡°eons¡±, male and
female, who devour each other, couple and finally imprison sparks of spirit
in material bodies. So people are manufactured who, after ¡°putting on¡± a
series of successive existences, may return to the kingdom of light.
Caught in the wind of these fine discourses, the Colossians went the way of
certain Christians today who trust in their devotion to souls or who allow
their life to be led by spiritualism, astrology and horoscopes. They no
longer consider Christ as the only savior since they give the priority to
others or to practices that are not of the Church.
This crisis in the Church of the first century gave us this letter of Paul
where he establishes the absolute supremacy of Christ. As in other letters
of Paul, the letter to the Colossians mentions that Timothy is with him
(1:1). Paul chose him as assistant and looked on him as ¡°his true Son in
Christ.¡± Perhaps it was Timothy who wrote a fair part of this letter; it
would explain the difference in style from the more authentic of Paul¡¯s
letters while its content ¨C exceptionally rich ¨C is constantly faithful to
the inspiration of the apostle. On this subject see the Letter to the
Ephesians which has the same themes as the one to the Colossians, but in a
more developed way. In several passages of Colossians, relevant commentaries
in Ephesians will be indicated.