Colossians 1:1-2 - Intro to the book

Peace is everywhere on merch, in slogans, and in our wish list for life, but Paul starts somewhere else. We open Colossians with just two verses and find a surprisingly complete roadmap: grace first, then peace. That order isn’t a religious detail. It’s a claim about how lasting peace with God and peace in our hearts actually happens, rooted in what Jesus has done rather than what we can manage on our own.

We also zoom out to why Paul writes Colossians at all. The big theme is “life in Christ,” and Paul uses an image you can’t unsee: the church is a body and Jesus is the Head. You can’t keep the body alive while swapping out the Head, which is why Paul pushes for the preeminence of Christ, Jesus in first place. From there we talk about the kinds of false teaching that creep in, including the lure of secret knowledge (early Gnosticism) and the pressure of legalism that turns faith into a checklist.

Then we slow down again and look at the people in the greeting: Paul, Timothy, the believers in Colossae, and the stunning word Paul uses for ordinary Christians, “saints.” We connect it to the cross and to Galatians 2:20, where faith means being united with Christ in His death and resurrection. If you’ve ever felt tempted to “upgrade” Jesus with something extra, this is your reminder to hold on to the only source of real life. Subscribe for the rest of our Colossians study, share this with a friend, and leave a review. What helps you keep Jesus in first place?

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Transcript

Starting Colossians With A Microscope

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All right. Well, the book of Colossians, you'll notice, is is pretty short. It's about four chapters. And it could take us a year, who knows how long, because going from the life of David, we take our binoculars, and we put them down, and we take up the microscope, and we look at one of Paul's letters in the book of Colossians. It's a different dynamic, smaller chunks, greater detail. And we will start simple here. Colossians chapter one, verse one. Two verses today. How about that? Introduction. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of

The Letter’s To And From

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God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossians. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So we notice right off here the to and from. That works a little more like an email than you know, writing a letter on paper. We see who it's to, but we see who it's from first. It lets you know if you want to keep reading the letter, right? So Paul here, the first word is Paul. This letter is written by Paul and Timothy. Notice Paul, uh, such a nice guy, includes Timothy in the the from here. Uh, although I'd say it's probably safe to say we're we're looking at the words of Paul here. Um uh notice who it's to: the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossi. Now, of course, the the title there, the epistle or letter of Paul, the apostle to the Colossians was not in the original document. You just had to read and find out. It was going to Colossae, so we call it Colossians. Um, now it's followed by the greeting Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and peace. And in case I don't get a chance to come back to it, uh, grace was the way you said hello if you were living in Greek culture. You would walk

Grace Before Peace

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down the street and you'd see somebody new and say, Grace, right? Uh and and it just meant all God's goodness, all goodness of life on you. Grace, it's a gift, is what that word means. The word peace in the Hebrew would be shalom. We still today there in Israel. That's how they say hello and goodbye, is shalom, which means peace. So here Paul is covering all the bases in the early church, right? The Gentiles, grace, the Jews, shalom, right? Um, peace. And and and that's the greeting there. Now we understand something from this greeting in case, again, I don't get a chance to come back to it. You can't have the peace of God, the order is important. You can't have the peace of God until you know the grace of God. Um, that's important because we're always looking for peace in life. Everybody's looking for peace. The hippies were peace, man, looking for peace, you know. But but you can't have real peace until you first experience God's gift of what Jesus has done on the cross

Life In Christ As The Theme

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for us. So all of this is thrown into two little verses. Now, the thing we want to understand today, because it's an introduction, is why does Paul writing this letter? It's a letter, and Paul's writing it. Why? Well, it's about life in Christ. If you look through this book, 19 times, one way or another, you'll find a phrase like in Christ, or in him, or in whom, right? And so Paul is writing to his friends, which he had never met, apparently, according to the chapter four. He had never seen him face to face, but he looked at him and he said, I want you to know what life is like in Christ, what it means to be a Christian. It's a picture of a body, Paul gives us here. Look at verse 18. We're not really covering it today, but it's there. And he, that's Jesus, is the head of the body, the church. So Jesus is the head of the body, but the church is like a body. That's a great illustration, isn't it? Because y'all got one, right? Everybody's got a body, right? And we understand what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a believer. You come into the body of Christ, and we're all different in Corinthians, 1 Corinthians. Paul lets us know we're all different. We have different callings and giftings, and yet we're all part of this body, and that's what life is like in Christ. Well, it's also a good picture because you start to realize in this body that you can live without certain members of your body. Some have lost fingers, some have lost uh arms, legs, um appendix, whatever. Uh, you can lose a lot of different body parts, but the one body part you cannot

Jesus As Head Of The Body

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live without is a head, right? That's why the guillotine is such an effective thing, right? Because you cannot live without a head. And so, in this picture of the body, what it means to be in Christ, certain members of your body.

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Some have lost fingers, some have lost uh arms, legs, um appendix, whatever, uh, you can lose a lot of different body parts, but the one body part you cannot live without is a head, right? That's why the guillotine is such an effective thing, right? Because you cannot live without a head. And so, in this picture of the body, what it means to be in Christ, he comes right out and says it to his friends in Colossian verse 18 don't lose your head, right? You cannot live. There is no life in this body of Christ without the head, without Jesus. So that is really the theme of this book is how important Jesus is. He'll use a word pre-eminence there. Um, having that Jesus should have preeminence, first place, superiority in our life. Um now, the reason why this is so important, it's always good for us, but the reason why it's so important is because Paul had heard that false teachings were coming into the church.

Why False Teaching Matters

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False teachings are always coming into the church, they have always been coming into the church, and it's a strong possibility that the reason why Paul is writing this letter is because a guy we meet later in chapter four, Epaphras, came from Colossae with this message. Paul, I'm concerned. There's false teaching coming into the church, and so Paul tells him look, you cannot give up Jesus. Jesus has to be everything, he's the head. If these false teachings replace Jesus in your life, you have no life. And so that's the big concern that Paul has. Jesus is everything. Now, you look at this book and it's four chapters. Uh, the first two chapters, we could say are doctrine. This happens a lot in Paul's letters. You get used to this. They're doctrine, they're teaching. Paul spends two chapters teaching us about how Jesus is like the head, what we have in Christ. Two chapters, one and two, explain Jesus. Three and four, we could say, are devotion, right? It's what you do with that information. And there's words like therefore and sense, how what you know affects your life. And that's an important thing because if we don't apply God's word to our life, it's not worth much. So chapters three and four uh will deal with things like the family. How does the Christian family work and look? How is holiness a part of our life and and our actions and all these things? So this is kind of the general setup why Paul is writing this letter. And and and you see his concern, right? You're gonna see his concern that they don't give up Jesus because other things were coming in. Things like Gnosticism, right? What? Gnosticism comes from the idea of knowing, right? The Greek word gnosko is to know. And so this teaching would later come into the church that would say we have some deeper knowledge about Jesus, about life. We have some secret knowledge. And aren't we just drawn into things like that? We love it. I mean, that's why conspiracy theories are so grand to us, because I know something nobody else knows. I have information that nobody else knows. That's why secret handshakes and secret societies are like, ooh, I want to be part of that, right? And people were coming into the church and saying, it's nice that you're a Christian, but if you really knew the deeper things, then you would be so much more. And there's a danger. Uh, there were also, we find uh Jewish legalism was coming in, and this happens a lot in the New Testament. Books like Galatians, Paul gets extreme with with this idea that some were also coming into the church and saying, You Gentiles, it's great that you found the Messiah, the Mashiach. You found the Messiah, but you need to get back into the law, you need to get into the rituals and the kosher diet and the Sabbath worship. Because if you really did these things, then you would be experiencing deeper life, and we love it in these cases. We love it to have something that nobody else has, and it's tempting and it draws people away. But Paul here says look, if you give up Jesus, you've lost everything. There is no life without Jesus. So that's gonna be what we're gonna look at for the next

Saul To Paul And True Apostles

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who knows how long. Um, and we'll take everything we can from it because it's so applicable today. Now let's just look at verses one and two uh for the rest of our time. And we see Paul. We know Paul, the guy wrote most of the New Testament, right? But you'll remember before he was Paul, he was Saul. And we find him there in the book of Acts, and they lay down their garments, their coats at the feet of a man named Saul when Stephen is being martyred, and Saul is there giving his approval to the whole thing. Well, Saul goes on to persecute the early church, and he's breathing threats everywhere he goes. And you know the story, he has papers, he's ready to go to Damascus and lock Christians up and cart them away and take them to the religious leaders in Jerusalem. And Jesus meets him in Acts chapter 9, knocks him to the ground, blinds him for a few days, and says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It's hard to kick against the goads, right? And and Saul meets Jesus. He says, Who are you, Lord? And I'm Jesus, who you're persecuting. And and there, Saul's life is changed. We find in chapter 13 of the book of Acts that his name is changed. We don't know why, but Saul means desired one. You remember in the life of David, Saul, handsome, good looking. He was the king everybody wanted. That's Saul's name. Desired one. Feels pretty good. Time goes on, and he gets to see who he is and who God is, and whether he changed it or his friends changed it. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he was just a little guy. They changed his name to Paul, which means little, right? Little guy, you know, and and that's where we meet him here. He's happy to say it, I'm Paul, I'm the little guy, right? I'm nothing. And and he writes to the people of Colossae. He says, I'm Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Uh, apostle, that's a Bible word right there, but it means sent one. You can understand that. It's sent one, it could be ambassador, is probably a better word that we look at for that word apostle. And in some ways, we're all called to be an apostle, a sent one, an ambassador of Jesus. But Paul is something a little different. The word apostle also refers to those few that were with Jesus while he taught, the 12 disciples, or apostles we call them, minus Judas, because he's not there. Um, and and and they got this time with Jesus. They heard Jesus teach, they watched him work, they asked him questions. And God uses their lives, simple guys. He God uses their lives in a special way to found the early church. Paul would say in the book of Ephesians that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles of prophets. That's Ephesians 2.20. Church is like a building, and it's built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. The apostles, people like Peter and John, and here Paul later, um, wrote documents we consider the New Testament. And God spoke through them to give the church an understanding of what the church needed to be like. Apostles, they're foundational. Now, just a little side note. Some today like to use the term apostle on their business cards. Some say, you know, apostle. Look, there it is. If somebody comes calling themselves an apostle, I think more than likely what it means is that they want to say, don't question me. My word is as good as God's word. Um, my advice to you if anyone ever comes to you and says, Hey, I'm an apostle, run. Just run, don't look back, run. Paul was an apostle, but he did call himself that. Um, that's what God wanted him to be. And he says, Here, I am an apostle. In Galatians, he says, I'm called by God to be an apostle. All right. Um, and and it was important. And he looks out for people as an apostle. So, Paul, there, we we met him for sure, to the

Saints In Christ And The Cross

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saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossae. So here we see where these people are from. They're from a place called Colossae. And I thought this was interesting. In recent times, they've actually pinpointed the city of Colossae. Um, kind of funny, it was a pretty big city in Paul's time, but around the year 1000 AD, just stopped. People stopped living there for some reason. It wasn't popular anymore. And currently, it takes up about 25 acres on someone's farm there in Turkey. Um, it's a mound, and you dig and you find all sorts of stuff there, but it's the city of Colossae. It's interesting because they're currently uh doing research there and archaeology there. So as we go through the book of Colossians, we may find out some interesting facts about this place that actually existed. Um, but where there are, the city of Colossae in modern Turkey is less important than who they were. Notice verse 2. Paul calls them saints and faithful brethren. Let's start with the faithful brethren part. Brethren, right? It's not a word we use very often, brothers, sisters, family, right? Is what Paul is getting at here. And in Christ, we find out we are part of one family, which is amazing to experience, right? Because I've been to England and Scotland. I've been to Costa Rica, a few places, and there I found people that were in the church. And in Scotland and Costa Rica, I couldn't understand much of what they said. Um, England was a little better, but Scotland and Costa Rica, it's a different language, and um and and I didn't always understand the culture or what they were saying, but man, I could give them a hug just like they give you guys a hug. I go, You're family. I love this. We have so much in common, even though I don't even know who you are. Family in Christ, it's a beautiful thing. It's why we're more than just friends here. We really do care about each other. Um, and that we get Paul here says, You're faithful brethren. But notice the first one, they're saints. That's a little bit harder to picture. Because when I say saint, you might think of the icons, right? Those pictures of the saints, right? You know, they have their head tilted a certain way and they're looking up to the sky, waiting for God to speak. They have a little halo, that's what that you know, golden stuff is around their head. And you get this idea though, I'm not one of those. God spoke special to the saints, did miracles through the saints in in the Catholic Church. Even now, you pray to the saints, and and you know, there's this understanding that they have this special connection with God. And yet, Paul looks at the people in Philosophy and says, You guys are saints, all of you, all y'all are saints, and the word means holy ones or set apart. It means that they're set apart from sin and death, they're set apart from this world. We don't fit here perfectly. We're set apart, we're holy. And Paul looks at every single one of them and says, You guys, you're my brothers, you're my sisters, you're saints. Now, how do you become a saint? Doing great things? Dying a martyr's death, not according to this. Notice verse two. The saints and faithful brethren in Christ. And that's kind of the theme of the book. In Christ. It's what we are in Christ. Um, it's that idea of being born again. That's how you get into Christ is you're born again, like Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John chapter 3, right? Unless a man is born again, he can't inherit the kingdom of heaven. You got to be born spiritually. But probably even clearer is what Paul says in Galatians chapter 2, verse 20. So just a few pages over. Galatians 2, verse 20. A classic passage that you no doubt know, but it says it all about how you become in Christ. Galatians 2, 20. And there's no other way to be in Christ. Paul says this: I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So Paul goes to the cross in his heart and in his mind, and he says, I've been crucified with Christ. Now, Paul wasn't there that we know of when Jesus was crucified, but spiritually, Paul looks at Jesus on the cross and he says, I was there in Christ. In Christ. Jesus died for my sins, and I was there in Christ. My sins are taken because of what Jesus did. Jesus rose from the dead. In Christ, I rose to a new life. And Paul would say, I was right there with him. So at the cross is the only way we get to be in Christ. And yet it happens as he says here by faith. I don't get it. I don't understand it, but we understand he died for our sins. He took our place. He rose to give us new life in Christ. There's so much more. Read the book of Ephesians, even more. Paul talks about all the blessings that we have in Christ. But he wants us to know, and he wants his friends in Colossae to know: you are saints. You're faithful brethren. You're faithful in Christ. You're there. Stay there. Stay in Christ. Don't go anywhere else. Don't accept any other, you know, thing or philosophy or idea. Stay in Christ. Because you're holy and you're set apart from death and sin. You've been given hope and peace and life and all these things in Christ. Why would you want to leave? And we haven't even gotten into the book. And Paul is already secretly here kind of pleading with them. Don't give up what you got. Don't lose your head. Hold on to Jesus. It's the only place you're going to find life. So, God, um, powerful stuff in your word that we can take to heart because in ourselves.