Letters from Paul

A taste of the study room coming with Paul — pull open whatever you'd like to sit with.

The reading — Colossians 2:6-15

⁶As therefore you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, walk in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, even as you were taught, abounding in it in thanksgiving. ⁸Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ. ⁹For in him all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰and in him you are made full, who is the head of all principality and power; ¹¹in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; ¹²having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; ¹⁵having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

World English Bible

The words behind the words

When I wrote "rooted and built up in him" (Colossians 2:7), I set two pictures side by side on purpose. "Rooted" is a tree already sunk deep — the tense is finished, done, a thing accomplished in you when you came to Christ. "Built up" is a house still rising, course upon course, day by day. So you are wholly planted and yet not yet finished. And "the fullness of the deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9) — that word "fullness" means the whole of it, nothing held back, no scrap of God left over somewhere else to go looking for. It is all in Christ, and in a body.

Where else you say this

I have carried this thread through other letters. That God's fullness should dwell in Christ and reconcile all things — I said it plainly a chapter before (Colossians 1:19-20). That the record of debt against us is cancelled at the cross — I preach the same nailing-down when I write that Christ was made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). And being buried and raised with him in baptism, dead to sin and alive to God — I reasoned it out at length to the Romans (Romans 6:3-4).

The situation

The believers at Colossae were young in the faith and being circled by teachers with an impressive-sounding message — talk of angels, of visions, of festivals and food laws, of a hidden wisdom you could only reach by their rules and their rigor. It looked like more; it was less. It would have moved them off Christ and onto human tradition and the elemental things of the world (Colossians 2:8). I had not seen their faces (Colossians 2:1), and I wrote as I write now — from chains — to hold them fast to the One in whom they already had everything.

The hard question

You may ask: if I am already complete in him (Colossians 2:10), why do I still struggle, still fail, still feel so unfinished? Here is the honest answer, and I will not soften it. The passage itself holds both — you are rooted, and you are being built up. The debt is cancelled once, at the cross, and never reopened; your standing is finished. But your walking is not. So do not read your daily struggle as evidence that you lack Christ. Read the text: "as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him" (Colossians 2:6). You walk from fullness, not toward it.

This is a small window into what a study room with Paul will hold — word by word, letter by letter, and the maps and journeys behind them. Get notified when it opens →

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