Restores My Soul

Historical Context

Paul wrote this letter to the church at Colossae, a town in Phrygia on the road east from Ephesus toward the Euphrates valley. He had probably never visited the town. He knew the church through Epaphras, a Colossian who had carried the gospel there and later reported back to him. The congregation also included Philemon, a man from the same town.

Colossae had once been a significant town. By the time of this letter, it had fallen behind its two neighboring towns, Laodicea about ten miles away and Hierapolis about thirteen miles away. Both were gaining importance while Colossae was losing it.

The larger issue was what the church was being taught. In that region, people believed that spiritual powers, including angels, stood between ordinary people and God. To reach God, you appealed to those powers along the way. The church at Colossae was being pressured to add that thinking to its faith in Christ, as though he alone left a gap. That is the pressure Paul wrote against: a church being told it needed more than Christ to reach God.

Reflection

Paul’s point is plain: Christ is not one step among many on the way to God. Every power a person might rank above themselves was made by him. None of it existed before he did. He also holds the whole thing together, so none of it runs apart from him.

That leaves nothing to add. Maybe you treat some religious performance as required before you can approach God, or wait for someone else’s approval, or assume that one more rule will finally get you there. If that is true, none of it was ever necessary: whatever you have set above yourself was made through Christ and answers to him. There is no rung above him left to climb, and no one else is needed to get you there.