What Is the Book of Colossians About? A Letter to a Church He Never Visited

Colossians has an unusual feature: Paul had never been to Colossae. The church was planted by Epaphras (1:7), Paul was writing from prison, and he was handling the problem on the basis of someone else's report.

What he was facing

The Colossian problem was not anyone openly saying Jesus is insufficient. It was people adding things alongside him: circumcision (2:11), rules about food and festivals (2:16), the worship of angels (2:18), harsh treatment of the body (2:23).

This is a mixture — and a mixture is harder to confront than a denial, because it never denies Christ. It simply makes him the first item on a list.

How Paul answers

He does not go through the errors one by one. He makes Christ so large that the list stops meaning anything.

1:15-20 is the core of the letter, a dense declaration: he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature; by him were all things created, and for him; he is before all things, and by him all things consist; he is the head of the body, the church.

"All things" occurs five times in those verses. The conclusion lands in 2:9-10: "for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him."

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.Colossians 2:6 (KJV)

The verse that governs the letter

2:6 is the hinge: "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him."

Continue the way you began. It was not by rule-keeping at the start, and it should not switch to rule-keeping later.

Where the practical half begins

Chapter 3 does not open with a list of behaviours. It opens with a direction: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above… Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth" (3:1-2).

Only then come the specifics: put off the old man, put on the new, household relationships, work (3:23 — "whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord" — sits here).

The order is change of gaze first, change of behaviour second. Which matches the argument of chapter 2: the problem was never that people were not doing enough.

How it relates to Ephesians

The two overlap heavily and were probably written around the same time. Roughly: Ephesians is about the church, Colossians is about Christ. Reading them side by side repays the effort.

How to read it

Four chapters, about twenty minutes. Read 1:15-20 and 2:6-10 first, then start again from the beginning — take hold of the frame and the rest follows easily.

Read Colossians in the BiblePro app, and use compare mode to set it beside Ephesians. And do look for a local church to read alongside others.