Day 349 (Colossians 1-4, Philemon 1) - Year 6
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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. If you're doing our New Testament plan, today we finished our 13th and 14th books. And if you're doing the whole Bible, we finished books 52 and 53.

Paul wrote today's two letters while in prison, though we're not sure which prison. Maybe Rome. The first letter is to a church at Colossae, in modern Turkey. He didn't plant this church and he hadn't met them, but he's friends with one of their church leaders who filled him in on some problems they're having.

He starts out by thanking God for their faith and hope and love and asks God to grow their knowledge and wisdom. He wants them to know and love God with their minds, and he wants to see it bearing fruit in the way they live their lives. And he says they have what they need to do that because God is the one who empowers them. Then he goes on to remind them exactly who Jesus is.

Colossians 1, 15-20 is one of the most succinct, beautiful descriptions of who Jesus is in all of Scripture. If you've been wanting to memorize Scripture but aren't sure where to start, this is a great spot. More on this in a minute. He says Jesus has reconciled us to the Father and presents us holy and blameless to Him, provided there really has been a heart change. Perseverance will be the evidence of a new heart.

Verse 24 is a challenging verse to understand, but given what Paul and Scripture say about Jesus' suffering elsewhere, we know he can't be saying there's something lacking in what Jesus did on the cross. After all, Jesus said, Most scholars think verse 24 is saying something like this. Paul rejoices in his sufferings because he knows they're a necessary part of fulfilling his role in spreading the gospel of Christ.

This is part of his assignment from God and God's assignment for the church at large, and God's power is at work in him to fulfill it.

In 2.2, Paul says something that should be an encouragement to us. He says he wants them to reach full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. In other words, he wants them to know that they know that they know Christ. He goes on to say that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. Wow! The more they dig in to know Christ, the less they'll be led astray by deception.

There are two primary ways they're prone to deception. One is by the local philosophies and idol worship, and the other is by the Jewish laws and traditions, which don't apply to them as Gentiles. They're having the same problem with this that we've seen in other churches. They're contending with the lie that they have to convert to Judaism before they can convert to Christianity.

Paul says, look, you don't need to be circumcised. Your hearts were circumcised in Christ. You were dead and God came to you and made you alive and forgave your sins. That's all the evidence you need.

He warns them against participating in spiritual and religious practices that aren't connected to Jesus. There's a lot of language in this section where Paul seems to indicate a demonic connection. Like when he says Jesus disarmed the rulers and authorities, it's possible he's talking about in the spiritual realm. And when he talks about the elemental spirits of the world, that's likely a reference to the demonic realm.

He says they've died to all of that, so they should separate from it entirely. Not only are those things evil, but they have no power to help them anyway.

When they died to those things, they were raised to a new life in Christ. And in fact, their lives are hidden with Christ in God. We are hidden in Him, not attached to Him. He's not adjacent to our lives. He's the source and keeper of our lives. And as a result, everything in our lives should be filtered through His life.

We should evaluate things to see if they increase our affections for him and connect us to him, or if they distract us and prompt us to engage with the flesh instead. He tells them to disconnect from those earthly things—sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, idolatry, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lies. And instead, he reminds them that they are God's kids, and he calls them to engage with the things of God.

Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, love, peace, thankfulness, and the words of Christ. And this won't just impact the way they live in the world, it will impact the way they live in their homes. In this culture, the man is the king of his domain and everyone else is treated as less than. But Paul tells the husbands to be loving and gentle, to take care not to be discouraging to their children.

This would have been revolutionary in a day when children and women were often treated as property. He tells the bondservants to act with honor, and he tells their masters to treat them with honor. Often, being a bondservant was a mutually beneficial arrangement where someone could pay off debt and have their needs met, but there were obviously scenarios where the master abused his position. Paul wants to make sure that those who are followers of Christ treat everyone with dignity and honor regardless of their position.

Paul sends this letter to the Colossians via two men named Tychicus and Onesimus. We read about Onesimus in Paul's letter to Philemon. In this book, Paul starts out by thanking God for Philemon's love and faith. Paul's humility is so evident in this letter. He doesn't use his position to issue a command, but to make a request. He shows that he's practicing what he preaches by treating everyone as equal.

He says he's writing on behalf of Onesimus, who is like a son to him. At some point since Paul has been in prison, he met Onesimus, who was a former bondservant or slave to Philemon, but he stole from Philemon and escaped. Since then, he converted to Christianity and became one of Paul's assistants. Paul says he'd love to keep Onesimus around because he's such a huge help to him, but he knows the better thing to do is to send him back and aim for restoration between the two of them.

By the way, Paul sends this letter to Philemon via Onesimus. Yikes. I bet Onesimus was shaking in his sandals on the way there. I imagine him standing there as Philemon reads the letter, waiting to see if there's a change in his face when he gets to the part where Paul begs him to welcome Onesimus back, not as a slave, but as a brother in Christ, as an equal. And Paul offers to pay any remaining debt Onesimus has with Philemon, just like Christ did with our debts. Wow.

He tells Philemon to prepare a guest room for him because he's hopeful he'll get out of prison someday and can come for a visit. Paul is old now, but he's keeping his passport up to date just in case.

My God shot was in Colossians 1, 15 through 20, the beautiful description of Christ. I want to walk through it verse by verse. Verse 15 says, He is the image of the invisible God. If we want to see what the Father is like, if we want to see what the Spirit is like, we look to Christ. He reveals them. It goes on to say, He is the firstborn of all creation. This doesn't mean He was created. He wasn't created.

He wasn't. He has always existed. The word firstborn here is a declaration of his authority over all creation. And verse 16 tells us why. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. He made everything and everything serves his purposes.

Verse 17 says, "And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Not only did he make everything, but he sustains it all. Verse 18 says, "He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent." Jesus rules over everything. He started everything. He has authority even over death. There isn't an Adam in all of creation over which he doesn't reign.

Verse 19 says, Verse 20 says,

Jesus brings the fullness of his deity to the cross, and its impact echoes through all of his creation, bringing restoration to all things he made, not just things on earth, but things in heaven too. And for all those reasons and more, I say with certainty, he's where the joy is. Tomorrow, we'll be reading Paul's letter to the Ephesians. We'll link to a short video overview in the show notes to help set you up for success. So check that out if you've got eight minutes to spare.

Lots of you want to be able to gift a Recaptain membership to someone you know and love. And guess what? We can do that now. I'm so excited about it. So if you want to find out how to give a Recaptains membership to someone you love, go to the Recaptains link at thebiblerecap.com or click the link in the show notes.