Colossians 1:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Colossians 1:2

Comments

How are they to be described? As ‘saints and faithful brethren’. Saints – those who are especially set aside for God, taken out of the world, distinctive, separated from the world, and made holy, as it were, dedicated, consecrated to God. I write to you believers at Colossae, says Paul. You are saints, you have been taken out of your community, you don’t think and act like your community, you don’t believe things that they believe. You have been altogether changed and set aside.Not only ‘saints’ but ‘faithful brethren’. Now that term translated ‘faithful’ tends to mean to us – and it is a shame in a way – simply, ‘loyal’: ‘loyal brethren’. But actually, what is meant here is believing brethren; the two terms go together. Saints, separated ones and believing ones. The great term in the New Testament for Christians – ‘believers’. They believed in Christ, turned from their belief in this world, to belief in Christ and in his work and in his person. They have repudiated their former opinions and beliefs in this world. The two great characteristics: saints and believing brethren, in Christ, attached to him, in communion with him, ‘which are at Colossae: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ Grace is undeserved favour. You have experienced undeserved favour if you have been saved, but your whole life is an experience of wonderful blessedness, the undeserved gifts of God. That is what Paul means here. This is a distinctive New Testament greeting: ‘grace be unto you’ – the undeserved favour of God. ‘And peace’ which means the friendship and the communion of God. The war is over, we are now at peace with God in fellowship, in communion and that includes provisions from God and safety spiritually. It is a tremendous desire in the heart of the apostle for people in little Colossae, a downtrodden town. Where is this peace coming from? It is coming from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. How tremendous that we can be in poverty, we can have great shortages of things, but we have got grace and peace from no less a being than the mighty God, the Creator of all things. How can we feel sorry for ourselves?And then, the great title that the apostle loves to use: the Lord Jesus Christ. He sprinkles the title Lord Jesus Christ and that is what we need to do. He is our Lord, our King, our Ruler. He is Jesus, yes, his personal name because he came for us and took upon himself human flesh and suffered and died for us. And he is Christ the Messiah, the anointed One, appointed to do just that and we recognise every aspect of his title.

Application

‘To the saints’. We have to note this because we are living in extraordinary days when there are people who say – and they may be in some way – that they are Christians: they believe in the shed blood of Christ, they believe in conversion, they have come and repented, but they don’t come out of the world. They seem to work hard to be as similar to worldly people as possible: the same pleasures, the same ideas, the same way of behaving in every sense. But what is this? When the apostle writes to the church at Colossae, he calls them ‘saints’ – dedicated, distinctive, separated from anything in the world. That is the work of God, to take people out of that environment. Of course, we must do our jobs in the world, we must live in the world as witnesses but we are unmistakably different.

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Colossians 1:2 Commentary and Bible Study