Colossians-Understanding Your New Life

Colossians-Combating Heresy(NLT)

Colossians was written around 61 A.D. During Pauls imprisonment in Rome. It is therefore one of his “Prison Epistles”. “Who is Jesus”? From the earliest days of Christianity, there has never been a shortage of alternatives and theries regarding this question. Pauls letter to the Colossians addresed this question as well as combating pagan ideas that were creeping into the Church and its teachings. The Colossian church included Greeks, Jews, and native Phrygians. They all wanted too cling to their own ideas and wanted to incorporate them into their new faith. False teachers had taken ideas from Astrology, magic, paganism, and Judaism to produce and incorrect doctrine that presented Jesus as some “angelic being”. Paul knew that this stuck at the very heart of the message of the Gospel. By trying to retain circumcision, food laws, etc.. the whole basis of Christian living was being changed which depended on Christ alone just as it begins with him. Paul includes several titles for Jesus in this letter to counter that idea and teaching.

The first thing that Paul teaches us in Colossians is how to pray for other Christians. It is easy to pray for a non-Christian because you know what to pray for, “For them to know and accept Christ”. How do you pray for a Christian?

Paul gave guidelines on how to pray for other Christians

1 Be thankful for their faith and changed lives (1:3)

3 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

2 Ask god to help them know his will (1:9)

3 Ask God to give them spiritual wisdom and understanding (1:9)

9 So we have continued praying for you ever since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you a complete understanding of what he wants to do in your lives, and we ask him to make you wise with spiritual wisdom.

4 Ask God to help them live to honor and please him (1:10)

5 Ask God to give them more knowledge of himself (1:10)

10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and you will continually do good, kind things for others. All the while, you will learn to know God better and better.

4 Major Themes of Colossians

1 Christ is God

Colossians 1:15-17

15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation. 16 Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—kings, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities. Everything has been created through him and for him. 17 He existed before everything else began, and he holds all creation together.

Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, Lord of all creation, and Lord of the new creation He is the visible image of the invisible God. He is eternal, preexsistent, omnipotent, equal with the Father. He is supreme and complete

2 Christ is Head of The Church

Colossians 1:18

18 Christ is the head of the church, which is his body. He is the first of all who will rise from the dead, so he is first in everything.

Because Christ is God, he is the head of the church, his true believers. Christ is the founder, the leader, and the authority on earth. He requires first place in all our thoughts and activities.

3 Union with Christ

Colossians 1:19-22

19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, 20 and by him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of his blood on the cross. 21 This includes you who were once so far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions, 22 yet now he has brought you back as his friends. He has done this through his death on the cross in his own human body. As a result, he has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Because our sin has been forgiven and we have been reconciled to God, we have a union with Christ that can never be broken. In our faith connection with him, we identify with his death, burial, and resurrection.

4 Heresy

Colossians 1:23

23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand in it firmly. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed by God to proclaim it.