THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS

THIS Epistle to the Colossians was written probably to the smallest of the churches which Paul addressed. Colosse was not a great city, compared with Corinth or Rome or Ephesus; and yet, from this small city, there went out influences that were very important for the kingdom of God.

History relates that Antiochus the Great, that tyrant and oppressor of the Jews, brought two thousand Jewish families from Mesopotamia and Babylon and settled them in Phrygia, the southwestern part of Asia Minor. This Jewish influence was, therefore, mixed with an Oriental influence; and the strange combination which we find in the Colossian church of formalism and Oriental theosophy was perhaps determined by the fact that Judaism in this portion of the world had a historical connection with the East.

In Phrygia there were three cities of some importance. Both Laodicea and Hierapolis were apparently of more importance than Colosse. It was to Laodicea that John wrote one of his seven Epistles to the churches in Asia, which you find in the book of Revelation.

Little Colosse was situated on the banks of the river Lycus, and in the midst of magnificent mountain scenery, so that its situation seems to have prompted a loftiness of thought.

It does not appear that Paul ever made to Colosse

a personal visit. During his stay in Ephesus, at the time when he had the most wonderful success in all his apostolic ministry, we read that the word of God went out into the regions of Asia. Although he did not himself visit Colosse, it would almost seem that some residents of Colosse visited Paul; and during those two years when he was teaching in the school of Tyrannus, in Ephesus, day by day, it is not at all improbable that some of the visitors from Colosse heard Paul, became his converts, and took back the gospel to the region from which they came.

What we know of the formation of the church is exceedingly little; but there are indications that Epaphras (not, by the way, Epaphroditus, who was a member of the church of Philippi, but an entirely different person), a Colossian, had received the gospel and had become the evangelist of Colosse. This Epaphras, when Paul became a prisoner at Rome, made Paul a visit in his imprisonment and devoted himself to the apostle's care with such assiduity that he shared the apostle's sufferings and dangers. It would almost seem that he had involved himself in the apostle's imprisonment, so that the apostle calls him a "fellow prisoner." Whether he had become amenable to the law, we do not know, but the epithet Paul bestowed. upon him is a peculiar one, his "fellow prisoner in Christ."

When Epaphras made his visit to Paul it is evident that he related to Paul the circumstances of the Colossian church; told him of the new teaching that had become current among them; told him of Jewish teachers who combined with their Jewish tendencies some

Oriental notions of a newer and larger wisdom than was provided for in the gospel itself, something of the nature of philosophy, something that was hidden from the mass of men, and was the possession only of the few. By ascetic practices, and by fastings and observances of an outward sort, this wisdom might be obtained. Paul, as a result of these representations on the part of Epaphras, writes this letter to the Colossian church.

We read in the Epistle to Philemon that, just about this same time, Paul had been the means of converting to Christ a runaway slave by the name of Onesimus, who had escaped from his master Philemon and had made his way to the city of Rome, where he thought perhaps there was the best chance of his being hid. After Paul had converted him to Jesus Christ, Onesimus was anxious to return to his master and make reparation for the wrong he had done him. Paul sends him back, and with him he sends that beautiful Epistle to Philemon, in which he commends Onesimus to his Christian forgiveness. Onesimus and Tychicus were the messengers who took this letter to the Colossians as well, and with this apparently the letter to the Ephesians, which is alluded to in the latter part of this letter to the Colossians, where the apostle speaks of another letter which the Colossians were to possess themselves of, while, at the same time, they were to give to the Laodiceans the letter which they themselves had received. So we may conclude that this letter to the Colossians was written either at the close of the year 62, or at the beginning of the year 63, four or five years after the Colossian church had been founded.

It is necessary, in order to understand the apostle, to get some more full idea of the errors that had begun to be prevalent in this Colossian church. They were very peculiar. They were such as we do not find alluded to in the previous letters of Paul. We do find some allusions to them in the pastoral Epistles to Timothy and Titus. The great danger of the Colossian church was the danger of lukewarmness. That is the specific fault which John rebukes in the neighboring church of Laodicea. Though Laodicea was not a great city, it was wealthy. An earthquake took place, and Tacitus, the historian, tells us that Laodicea was able to rebuild itself with its own resources, without calling in the aid of Rome; and this seems to be mentioned as proof that it was a place of considerable importance.

In the writings of John to Laodicea, he speaks of the church as fancying that it was rich and increasing in goods and had need of nothing. This apparently was also the case with the church in Colosse. Riches had corrupted the Christian heart; the deceitfulness of wealth had led to selfishness and lukewarmness in their Christian faith; and with this influence of worldly goods there was intellectual pride and selfsatisfied reliance upon what mere human reason and speculation could do. There grew up a species of wisdom which was not the wisdom of Christ, not "the wisdom among those that are perfect," which the apostle speaks of in his letter to the Corinthians, but a wisdom of this world. That wisdom was exclusive; it prided itself upon being the possession of the few; it was an esoteric doctrine held by those who fancied that they had greater intellectual powers than the

majority of the Christian church. Here was the first great danger of the Colossian church; namely, intellectual pride and dependence upon human speculation, rather than upon Christ or his gospel. This tendency to intellectual speculation ran in a peculiar course, and that course seems to have been determined for it by the Oriental influence to which the Jews in that neighborhood had become subjected.

In order to explain what the doctrine was which the Colossians held, or to which they tended, I shall have to remind you of the fact that, in the East, there were large numbers of persons who thought it was absolutely necessary to separate God from the world in order to explain the existence of evil. They thought it could not be that God had himself created the world, because they saw so much in the world that was wrong. They fancied that the existence of evil was an incident of matter. Man was a sinner because he had a physical system. This was a strange perversion of the truth; it ignored the fact that the soul masters the body, and that the body is only the servant of the soul. There can be no sin properly in the body itself, for all sin has its source in the spirit. We cannot explain moral evil by attributing it simply to the body, or to matter, or to the physical world. The only possible explanation of moral wrong is in the free decision of the moral creature against God; in other words, in the spirit and not in the body.

But this strange sect of thinkers fancied that they could explain evil by calling it a mere incident of the physical system, something which had its origin in our connection with matter. So they thought to remove