Colossians 1:1-8 — Grace & Peace

FRANK: There's a word buried in the very last line of today's passage, and almost every English Bible walks right past it. Paul calls a man named Epaphras his "fellow servant." But the Greek word underneath is one Paul reserves for something specific, and once you see it, the whole opening changes shape.

LINDA: A fellow servant. That sounds like Paul's just being generous, giving a coworker a pat on the back. What am I missing in it?

FRANK: What you're missing is where this letter is going and who it's addressed to. Welcome to Dig Deeper, everybody. We're in Colossians chapter one, verses one through eight this morning, the opening lines of a letter Paul wrote to a church he had never once visited.

LINDA: Never visited. Wait, he's writing this whole thing, the greeting, the thanksgiving, the prayers, to people he's never actually laid eyes on?

FRANK: Not one of them. And that fact is going to sit under everything we say today. But let's get the words in front of us first. Linda, would you read it for us?

LINDA: Happily. "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have toward all the saints, because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the Good News which has come to you, even as it is in all the world and is bearing fruit and growing, as it does in you also since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth, even as you learned of Epaphras our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf." Now, where was Paul sending this?

FRANK: Colossae was a little town in the Lycus Valley, in what's now western Turkey, sitting on the great road that ran from the coast into the interior. Centuries earlier the historian Herodotus called it a great city. By Paul's day, that description was a joke. The road had shifted. Its two neighbors, Laodicea and Hierapolis, had boomed, one into a banking center so rich it later turned down Roman disaster relief, the other into a resort town famous for its hot springs. And Colossae just... shrank. It became the least important of the three. A fading wool town on a bypassed road. The kind of place history forgets.

LINDA: A nowhere town—not Rome, not Corinth, not some strategic prize.

FRANK: It's a nowhere town. And Paul, who's writing from a prison cell somewhere around the year 60 to 62, sends this obscure, shrinking little church a full letter of eternal truth. Read the greeting again knowing that, and the word "grace" starts to feel almost scandalous. God addressed this to a nobody-town on a dead-end road. And we still speak his name two thousand years later. But here's what I want to know.

LINDA: If Paul never went there, how does he know anything about them? How does he know their faith, their love? He's writing like he's watched them grow up. Where's that coming from?

FRANK: Epaphras—he's the chain. Look at verse seven. "Even as you learned of Epaphras." Epaphras was a native of that valley. He heard the gospel from Paul's circle over in Ephesus, carried it home, and preached it in his own town. He planted this church. Paul didn't. There's a chain you can trace. Paul heard the gospel from the risen Christ. Epaphras heard it from Paul's people. The Colossians heard it from Epaphras. Faith handed down, one servant to the next.

LINDA: The church Paul's proud of, he didn't start it, and everything he knows about it is basically a report someone brought him. Secondhand. He's thanking God for people he only knows by testimony.

FRANK: Secondhand testimony, and he embraces it completely as his own concern. Now, that word. "Fellow servant." In Greek it's syndoulos. Doulos is a slave, a bondservant. And Paul does not throw that title around. He calls Epaphras a fellow slave of Christ, someone standing in the exact same position of total belonging to the same Master. It's not a pat on the back for a nice coworker. It's Paul saying, this man and I are owned by the same Lord, doing the same work, and the little church he planted in a forgotten town is part of the very same harvest I'm giving my life to. What does that make Epaphras?

LINDA: Not a footnote—the whole reason the gospel got there, and Paul's putting him on level ground with himself.

FRANK: Level ground. And that's the point where the passage stops being ancient history and reaches out and grabs you. Because you are somewhere on that same chain. Someone faithful handed you what they'd received.

LINDA: I can name mine. There's a woman who taught my Sunday school when I was nine and I have not thought about her in years.

FRANK: Hold onto her name. We'll come back to it. Because I want to sit with the three words Paul actually thanks God for, since they're the foundation of everything. Faith. Love. Hope. And watch the order, because it's doing real work. "Your faith in Christ Jesus, and the love which you have toward all the saints, because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens." Faith rests in Christ. Love flows out toward people. And underneath both of them, holding them up, is hope. Does that order make sense to you?

LINDA: Hope's the weak one to me, I'd say. Faith and love feel solid. Hope feels like a mood. Like, I hope it doesn't rain. Why would Paul put the flimsiest one at the bottom holding up the other two?

FRANK: Because his hope isn't your "I hope it doesn't rain." Look at the phrase, "the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens." That verb, "laid up," renders a Greek word, apokeimai. It's used for something set aside and kept in reserve. Money wrapped in a cloth and put in a safe place. Paul reaches for the very same word writing to Timothy from a death cell, "the crown of righteousness is laid up for me." It's not a feeling. It's a deposit. It's an inheritance already made, already yours, sitting in a vault you cannot reach and cannot lose.

LINDA: The hope isn't the feeling I work up on a good morning. It's a thing already sitting in the account, whether I feel it or not.

FRANK: Already in the account. And here's why the order matters so much. If your love for a difficult person, and your faith in a Christ you've never seen, had to be fueled by what you can see and feel today, they'd both collapse by dinnertime. Some days you don't feel any of it. Paul says they don't have to run on your reserves. The reservoir isn't in you. It's stored up above, and it's stored there by Christ, who went ahead of you. Christ didn't just promise you a future. He walked into the heavens and is holding it in his own hands. What's kept for you can't be spent or stolen, because the One keeping it can't be lost.

LINDA: The hope doesn't depend on the strength of my grip today.

FRANK: It doesn't depend on your grip at all. And here's the part I need you to catch, because it reaches back further than most people ever read. That phrase in verse six, the gospel "bearing fruit and growing, as it does in all the world." That word pairing, fruitful and increasing, filling the earth. Those are the words God spoke over Adam and Eve at creation. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. The job Adam was given and lost, the gospel is now quietly doing. And then God swore to Abraham, "in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." Paul looks at this Gentile church in a shrinking town Abraham never heard of and says, there it is. The families of the earth. The blessing sworn two thousand years earlier is bearing fruit right here in Colossae.

LINDA: This little nowhere church is what the whole Old Testament was straining toward all that time.

FRANK: The oldest purpose of God, resuming its march. Not a fresh idea. The fruitfulness of Eden and the promise to Abraham reaching one obscure city, and then the next one, and then the world. Calvin, writing on this passage, lingers on one little phrase, verse six, "since the day ye heard it, and knew the grace." That's the moment it took root in them. A specific day. Grace heard and known.

LINDA: I keep coming back to something in verse three, though, and it costs me a little to say it out loud. "Praying always for you." Paul's constantly praying, by name, for people he's never even met. And there's someone in my head right now that I actively do not want to pray for.

FRANK: We all have that name. And this passage puts its finger right on it. Because prayer for people costs time, and it costs you most when it's the person you'd rather not think about. You know the moment. Their name surfaces, the coworker who took the credit, the family member whose call you let ring out, and your reflex is to push the thought away and grab your phone. That reflex, that flinch, is the exact moment Paul is talking about. What's your instinct in that moment?

LINDA: I'm supposed to override that on my own willpower? Because I don't have it.

FRANK: You don't summon it from your own reserves. That's the comfort at the center of this. The same Spirit who was praying through Paul lives in you and prays through you still. Christ himself prayed for the men driving nails into his hands, and he's alive right now interceding for you. So it's small and specific. Next time that name surfaces this week, don't push it away. Stop, and pray for that person by name. Not "God help me deal with them." Ask God to actually bless them. Thirty seconds. Every time they come up.

LINDA: Thirty seconds. That I might be able to do. Not because I feel generous. Because it's short enough that I can't talk myself out of it.

FRANK: Carry it with you today. Two names. Your Epaphras, the person who took root in you, send them a message before tonight and tell them their words are still bearing fruit. And the name you'd rather avoid, the one you flinch from, pray a blessing over them by name.

LINDA: One name gets a thank-you. One name gets a blessing. And honestly the second one is the harder gift.

FRANK: Both of them are grace moving down the chain. Someone told you the truth once, and it changed everything. Now the truth's not yours to hoard.

LINDA: So here's your charge, then, straight from me. Before you sleep tonight, send the thank-you, and pray the blessing. Don't file it under "someday." Today.

FRANK: This episode is part of the Dig Deeper app. If you don't have it yet, look for Dig Deeper in your app store.