Colossians 1:5

This thanksgiving follows straight on from the greeting of Colossians 1:1–2, where Paul and Timothy address “the saints and faithful brethren in Christ” at Colossae. The “we” who give thanks are those two men. Letters among the Greeks and Romans commonly opened with a word of thanks, and Paul keeps the custom and fills it with the gospel. He opens the same way when he writes to Philippi (Philippians 1:3–4), to Ephesus (Ephesians 1:15–16) and to Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 1:2–3).

The verb for giving thanks, eucharistéō, means to be grateful and to express that gratitude, and it is the root of the English word “Eucharist”. Paul’s thanks go to God, because the faith and love he is about to praise are God’s work in these people. Beginning here also sets a warm tone between writer and readers, and it lays down what they hold in common before Paul turns to instruction and correction. He teaches the same order elsewhere, telling believers to bring their requests to God with thanksgiving (Philippians 4:6).

The setting makes the warmth more striking. Paul most likely wrote from prison in Rome, around A.D. 60–62, to a church he had heard about from Epaphras and had neither founded nor visited. Colossae was a small town in Phrygia, in the Lycus Valley of what is now Turkey, overshadowed by its neighbours Laodicea and Hierapolis. A teaching was taking hold there that mixed Jewish legalism, harsh treatment of the body, the worship of angels and a search for secret knowledge, and all of it made Christ smaller. The letter answers by setting out the supremacy of Christ (Colossians 1:15–20). Before any of that, Paul thanks God for what is sound in this church, and the faith, love and hope he names are the very things that will hold them steady.

Paul’s thanks began when news reached him, most likely through Epaphras, and the news was of two things. The first was faith. The word pístis means persuasion, credence and conviction, and it covers both the act of believing and the truth that is believed. “In Christ Jesus” tells us where this faith rests. Christ is its object and its foundation, so that the Colossians rely on him for salvation and are loyal to him as Lord (Romans 10:9). Such faith is itself his gift, for Jesus is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

The second was love. The word agápē, from the verb agapáō, means affection and benevolence, a love that seeks the good of the other person even at a cost to oneself. The Colossians had this love “to all the saints”, which means to every fellow believer, with none passed over. Jesus gave his disciples this command and said that everyone would know them by it (John 13:34–35). Love of this kind comes from God, who is love (1 John 4:7–8). It reflects the love of Christ, who laid down his life for his friends (John 15:13), and it is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). The faith and love of the Colossians were therefore signs of Christ living in them (Galatians 2:20).

Paul sets the two side by side because they belong together. Faith looks up to Christ and love reaches out to his people, in the pattern of the two great commandments to love God and to love our neighbour (Matthew 22:37–39). Faith is the root and love is the fruit, and what counts in Christ is faith working by love (Galatians 5:6). The fact that Paul “heard” of both shows that the life of this small church could be seen and was spoken of well beyond its own town.

Verse 5 begins with “For”, and that small word gives the reason for the faith and love of verse 4. The Colossians trust Christ and love his people because of a hope. The word elpís means hope or expectation, a looking forward with confidence, and it can also name the thing hoped for. That is its sense here, since this hope is something “laid up” in a place.

“Laid up” translates apókeimai, to be reserved or to await, the word for something stored away and kept safe for a particular person. The verb is passive, which tells us that God is the one who keeps it. It is kept “in heaven”, out of reach of loss and decay. Peter speaks of the same thing, a living hope and an incorruptible inheritance reserved in heaven for those whom God’s power keeps (1 Peter 1:3–5), and Hebrews tells believers who had lost their goods that they have a better and lasting possession in heaven (Hebrews 10:34). At Colossae this had a sharp point. Teachers there were offering security through rituals, rules about food and mystical experiences, and Paul begins with a hope that God himself holds for his people.

This hope is bound up with Christ himself. Paul calls his appearing “that blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). Christ rose as the firstfruits of those who sleep, so that in him all shall be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:20–22). He has gone to prepare a place for his own and will come again to receive them (John 14:2–3), and when he comes from heaven he will change our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:20–21). All the promises of God are yes and amen in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Faith, hope and love stand together here as they do at the end of Paul’s chapter on love (1 Corinthians 13:13). In this passage hope is the one that feeds the other two, because people who are sure of what God is keeping for them are free to trust him now and to spend themselves on others.

The “which” that opens verse 6 is the gospel. It “is come unto you, as it is in all the world”, so the message that reached one small town in Phrygia was the same message then spreading across the known world of Paul’s day. This is what the risen Christ sent his disciples to do when he told them to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19–20). The gospel belongs to every people and place, and the Colossians were part of something far larger than their own congregation.

Paul speaks of the gospel as a living thing that arrives and grows. The verb karpophoréō means to be fertile or to bear fruit, and it is in the present tense, so the bearing goes on. The fruit is of several kinds. There is changed character, the love, joy and peace that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). There are good works that flow from a changed heart. And there is the growth of the church itself as more people believe. Jesus pictured this in the seed that falls on good ground and yields thirty, sixty and a hundredfold (Mark 4:20), and he is the true vine from whom all such fruit comes to the branches that abide in him (John 15:1–5).

Having spoken of the gospel across the world, Paul names the one man through whom it came to Colossae. The Colossians “learned” it from Epaphras. His name, Epaphrâs, is a shortened form of Epaphroditus. He was a Colossian himself, “one of you” (Colossians 4:12), and he very probably founded the church in his home town. Paul’s long ministry at Ephesus had spread the word through the whole province of Asia (Acts 19:10), and the gospel often travelled as people who had believed in a large city carried it home. Epaphras later made the long journey to Paul, bringing both the good report and his concern about the new teaching, and Paul elsewhere calls him his fellow prisoner (Philemon 1:23).

Paul gives him three descriptions. He is “our dear fellowservant”, and the word sýndoulos joins syn, together with, to doulos, a slave or servant. The apostle and the local preacher are slaves of the same Master, and Paul speaks of him with affection as an equal in the work. He is “faithful”, pistós, which here means trustworthy and reliable. And he is a “minister of Christ”, diákonos, a servant or attendant, the word from which we get “deacon”. He serves Christ by serving the Colossians.

This commendation mattered to its first readers. With other teachers now at work among them, Paul assures the Colossians that the message they received from Epaphras was the true one and that his care for them is real. Faithfulness is the quality Scripture asks of everyone entrusted with the gospel: “Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). Paul later tells Timothy, “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). Epaphras is that kind of man, and his faithfulness shows in his prayers as well as his preaching: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.”

The word “learned” also tells us that the Colossians were taught. Their conversion was followed by instruction, and what they learned was Christ, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Colossians 2:3) and through whom God reconciles all things to himself (Colossians 1:20). Epaphras’s service follows the pattern of his Master, who took on himself the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7).

The passage closes with what Epaphras told Paul. The verb dēlóō means to make plain by words, so his report was clear and full. What he made plain was the Colossians’ love, agápē again, the love for all the saints that verse 4 has already named.

Paul adds that it is love “in the Spirit”. The word pneûma means breath or wind, and by extension a spirit, whether human or divine. Here it is the Holy Spirit. Their love is his work in them, the first fruit of the Spirit in Paul’s list, and it has the qualities Paul describes when he says that love is patient and kind (1 Corinthians 13:4–7). Later in this letter he tells the Colossians to put on love above everything else, as the bond that holds the rest together (Colossians 3:12–14).

The report meant a great deal to Paul. It was evidence that the gospel had truly taken root in Colossae. It was a joy to a man in prison to hear of love flourishing in a church far away. And it gave him ground to build on, since a church with this love could receive the deeper teaching and the warnings to come. He moves straight from it into his prayer for their growth (Colossians 1:9–14).

These verses show God at work in an ordinary church in a small town. The Father keeps a hope in heaven for his people, the Son is the one they trust, and the Spirit produces their love. Paul thanks God for all of it, because all of it came from God.

They also show how the gospel travels. One faithful man carried home what he had heard, taught it, and kept praying for those who believed. Most of us came to Christ through someone like Epaphras, and the same gospel is still bearing fruit across the world in the same way.

And they give us Paul’s own habit of prayer, which begins with thanks and holds other believers before God by name. A hope that God himself is keeping can steady us when faith and love feel weak, since it rests in his hands and was promised in a word that is true.