What is the history and significance of the church at Colossae?

Colosse was not a very large town in Phrygia, a region in the south of Asia Minor (i.e., today's Turkey) close to the two cities mentioned in this epistle, Hierapolis, and Laodicea. We do not know when and how the first Christians started meeting there as an assembly. The apostle Paul did not go there on his missionary journeys (Col 1:4; 2:1). During his three-year stay in Ephesus, many people from the wider area, perhaps also from Colosse, had heard the gospel (Acts 19:10). From Colossians 1:7, however, it seems that a Christian by the name of Epaphras, who himself originated from Colosse, was God's instrument for the conversion of the Colossians (cf. Col 4:12.13). Like almost everywhere else in the early days of the church, the assembly in Colosse consisted of converted Jews and Gentiles (cf. Col 1:27; 2:13.16.17; 3:11).

City on the river Lycus in Phrygia of Asia Minor. Col. 1:2. It appears as though Paul had not visited the city when he wrote the epistle to the church there, cf. Col. 1:7; Col. 2:1; but he may have done so in his journeys or have gone thither from Ephesus. He hoped to visit them soon, Philemon 22, for to this place Philemon and Onesimus belonged. Col. 4:9. Colosse had been a place of importance, but declined on the rise of Hierapolis and Laodicea. The modern village Khonas is about three miles distant from the ancient ruins.

It seems also clear that the church in Colossae came into existence after Paul had passed through that region the second time as stated in Acts 18:23, for if a church had existed then in that city, he would probably have visited Colossae. If we turn to the nineteenth chapter of the book of Acts, which records the long sojourn of the Apostle Paul in Ephesus, we have a hint on how the gospel was made known to the Colossians. First we read that Paul continued for two years, "so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks" (Acts 19:10). And then Demetrius the silversmith witnessed to the extension of the work of Paul while being in Ephesus. "Moreover ye see and hear, that not only in Ephesus, but almost throughout Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people..." (Acts 19:26).

Asia does not mean the continent, but a province of Asia Minor, of which Phrygia was a part. The whole region heard the gospel during his stay in the prominent city of Ephesus ; among the visitors who listened to the messages of Paul were people from Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis. These carried the gospel back to their homes and thus churches were formed. Philemon and Epaphras of Colossae must in this way have heard the gospel from the apostle and became the instruments through whom the church in their home-city was founded.

The gospel of the grace of God had reached the Colossians through Epaphras, the beloved fellow-bondman of Paul and Timothy, and "a faithful minister of Christ" to the Colossian saints. He had brought to the Apostle the tidings of the genuine work of God that had been wrought in their midst as manifested by their "love in the Spirit".

It would appear from verse 7 that Epaphras had been the servant of Christ who brought the light to them. They had learned the Glad Tidings of the grace of God and of the hope of glory from his lips. Then verse 8 indicates that he had travelled to Rome and made known to Paul what God had wrought among the Colossians, and the depth and sincerity of their Christian love. We can see how highly Paul esteemed him. He speaks of him as a faithful servant of Christ, and at the end of the epistle we learn how truly devoted he was to the spiritual welfare of the Colossians.

Epaphras had very likely heard the gospel from Paul during Paul's long stay at Ephesus, for Colosse was not far from there; and Epaphras in turn had brought it to Colosse, his own home (ch.4:12). Paul delighted in this news from his "dear fellow servant," whom he commends as a faithful minister of Christ. It was their love in the Spirit that Epaphras declared to Paul and Timothy because Paul had not seen their faces in the flesh (ch.2:1). This the only mention of the Holy Spirit in Colossians, which gives no doctrine concerning Him at all, in contrast to Romans, Galatians and Ephesians. Here rather the Holy Spirit is drawing attention to the Person of Christ as sufficient food for the wilderness and therefore says nothing of Himself. "Love in the Spirit" then is love of another although having no direct personal contact "in the flesh."

Although the Apostle Paul was the minister of the Gospel for the Gentiles, he was not the instrument used of God for the blessing of the saints at Colosse (Col. 2:1). The truth of the Gospel had come to them, and the assembly had been formed, and Epaphras had evidently been one of, if not the, chief instruments used of the Lord for their blessing (Col. 1:4–7). Paul had heard of their “faith in Christ Jesus,” and of their love for all the saints, and this for the hope laid up for them in heaven. These three great features, faith, hope and love, that mark the true Christian instructed in the truth of God, were in evidence in this assembly because of the gospel that had secured them for the Lord Jesus.

In common with that to the Romans, this letter was addressed to saints in a place in which Paul had not worked. (2:1.) The Church at Colosse - or Colasse, as some MSS. exhibit the name - was not founded by the apostle, but the instrument, it would seem, chosen of God to evangelize them was Epaphras, one of them, a servant of Christ (4:12), Paul's beloved fellow-servant, and their* faithful minister of Christ. (1:7.) To us this is not only interesting, but especially instructive; for these saints, as Paul writes of them, are illustrations of the results that were to follow from the apostle's ministry, as detailed to him by the Lord Jesus Christ on the day of his conversion. Paul was to open eyes to turn people from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that such might receive forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in Christ. (Acts 26:18.) The condition in which he would find God's elect, and especially those of them among the Gentiles, with the blessings in which they were to share; viz., forgiveness of sins and the inheritance, this is the order of thought in which his ministry in the gospel is sketched out for him.

In reading the Epistle to the Colossians we cannot fail to observe the striking parallelism between the conditions obtaining in the first century and those existing in the twentieth century. There is nothing essentially new under the sun, history is constantly repeating itself. Before considering the main features of the epistle it may be well to review the conditions which called for its being written. The circumstances which prompted the apostle to pen the Epistle to the Colossians were briefly as follows:—Epaphras, a Colossian who had been the agent in founding the Church at Colosse, had brought news of a heresy which was mainly philosophic. His zeal for the apostle led him to become his fellow-prisoner. The Colossian heresy circled round a subtle error, Gnosticism, a false mysticism, to which only the privileged few could be initiated. It accounted for evil and creation. God is good, matter is evil, God and the universe must then be connected by a descending series of angelic orders (principalities and powers), and the consequent dethronement of the Son of God, with the accompanying worship of angels. (Col. 2:18).

The believers at Colosse were not babes in Christ like those at Thessalonica, nor were they in a carnal state like the Corinthians. On the contrary, the Apostle Paul could address them as "saints and faithful brethren in Christ," for "the word of the truth of the gospel" had come to them and brought forth fruit in them. They were marked by "faith in Christ Jesus" and "love … to all the saints." All this the apostle acknowledges in his opening words, and in Colossians 2 he supplements it by crediting them with "stedfastness" as to their faith in Christ and also with "order."