Colossians is a letter and we should read it as a letter. When you receive a letter you don’t read a paragraph or two and then put it away for a week before reading a little more. You read it from beginning to end.
Likewise the Colossians, when they received this letter from Paul, would not have read only a little portion each week. They would have eagerly listened to the whole letter.
When we deal with it in sections, we possibly don’t get a feel for what the whole letter was about. What was Paul saying? What was the thrust of the letter? It is good to look at the detail but it is also good – maybe even more important – to get the overview.
I have tried to show the whole letter in a semi-graphical way. I would like to read the whole letter. You judge whether I have got it right or not.
READ Colossians
What was the letter about? My feeling is that the key word is the “or” between the Christ-centred life and the Christ-less life. Which way will the Colossians go? Paul’s main thrust is: you have been wonderfully reconciled and transformed by Christ. Now, live a Christ-centred life; not the Christ-less life. He is writing to people who have become Christians but it is now a question of how they will live.
The piece about the Christ-less life is under the heading of the Kingdom of Jesus. How can that be? Isn’t there a conflict there? Can you be in the Kingdom of Jesus but not live under the kingship of Jesus? Can you be in the Kingdom of Jesus and still be destined for God’s wrath?
That section is in the wrong place, isn’t it? Really, if we live a Christ-less life, then really we are back on the left hand side, alienated from God, aren’t we?
That is why, in 1:21-23, Paul says, “You were alienated from God... but now He has reconciled you... to present you holy in His sight – if you continue in your faith, established and firm and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. In other words, we are reconciled to God if, having been saved by Jesus, we continue to live by faith – to live the Christ-centred life.
Where are you on that piece of paper?
I’d like to read the book again. Can I ask that you put those pieces of paper away and just listen.
READ Colossians
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