Colossians 2:1-5 — Hidden Treasure

LINDA: Here's the thing I actually want to ask before Frank explains a single word of this. Why would a man in a prison cell wear himself out praying for people he has never laid eyes on? Not his church. Not his friends. Strangers. And he tells them, straight out, I want you to know how hard I'm struggling for you. Who does that?

FRANK: [warmly] A man in chains, agonizing on his knees for faces he has never seen—that's the mystery Paul plants right at the start of this letter. Welcome in, everybody, this is Dig Deeper, and today we are sitting in Colossians chapter two, verses one through five.

LINDA: Struggling for strangers. Okay. I need to hear it before I can wrestle with it.

FRANK: Let me read it for us, then, and we'll take it apart from there. Colossians two, verse one.

FRANK: "For I desire to have you know how greatly I struggle for you and for those at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and gaining all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. Now this I say that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, rejoicing and seeing your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ."

LINDA: "Struggle." He picks that word on purpose?

FRANK: He picks it on purpose. The Greek behind it is an athletic word, the kind you'd use for a wrestler in the arena or a runner spending everything in the last stretch. It's the root we get "agonize" from. So this is not Paul feeling warm thoughts about a distant church. This is sweat. This is labor. And here's what I want you to catch about who he's laboring for, because there's a geography lesson hiding in verse one that most people read right past. He names Laodicea. And Laodicea sat only about ten miles down the Lycus River from Colossae, the bypassed little town we talked about back on day one. And a short way beyond Laodicea was a third city, Hierapolis. Three cities, clustered tight in one river valley, close enough that a letter carried to one would be read in all three. Paul says as much later in the letter, pass this on to Laodicea, and read theirs when it comes. What does that geography tell you?

LINDA: Three cities, clustered tight in one river valley, near enough to walk between them. Sister cities, basically. Same water running through all three.

FRANK: Sister cities is exactly right. And that matters more than it sounds, because it tells you the threat wasn't a local Colossian quirk. Whatever smooth teaching was creeping in, it was a current running through the whole valley. Laodicea especially, a wealthy banking town, a textile town, prosperous and pleased with itself, the kind of place where a clever new idea always finds a ready audience. Paul isn't worried about one congregation. He's worried about a region. And he's worried about it from a cell, for people, most of whom he has never met. Why would a man spend himself like that?

LINDA: A whole valley of strangers. He's straining like a wrestler for people he can't picture, and he's doing it from a prison cell. What could possibly drive that?

FRANK: What he wants for them, verse two. That their hearts may be comforted, knit together in love, and gaining, and this is the phrase, all riches of the full assurance of understanding. He wants them rich. Not in Laodicean gold. Rich in assurance. Confident, settled, unshakeable in what they believe. That's the prize he's sweating for.

LINDA: Assurance. But that's the one that's slippery for me. Because most days assurance feels like a mood. Some mornings I wake up and God feels close and I'd tell you I'm rock solid, and some mornings I wake up and I feel nothing and it all feels thin. If that's what he's praying I'd get, doesn't it just come and go on its own?

FRANK: Paul is quietly correcting that very assumption. Read the phrase again slowly. The full assurance of understanding. He chains assurance to understanding. He doesn't chain it to feeling. He's saying the settled confidence he wants for you grows out of something you come to know, not out of a temperature you're taking on your own heart. What does he mean by that?

LINDA: The confidence isn't the weather. It's fastened to something I actually understand.

FRANK: It's fastened to truth. To grasping who Christ actually is. The fuller your understanding, the fuller your assurance. And this is old, hard-won Christian wisdom. The church has long taught that much of what shakes a believer is not really a failure of feeling at all. It's a failure of thinking. A failure to take hold of what is actually true and reason from it. So Paul's answer to a shaky soul is never "feel more." It's "understand more, and let the confidence follow." How is that different from what you've been hearing?

LINDA: Almost backwards, actually. I've been told to work myself up into feeling more sure.

FRANK: He won't let you manufacture that. Look at the order in verse two, because the sequence is the sermon. Hearts comforted. Knit together in love. Then the riches of full assurance. Then knowing the mystery of God. Comfort and confidence aren't the starting line you squeeze out by gritting your teeth. They're the fruit. They come off the tree of knowing Christ more deeply. You don't squeeze harder for a feeling you can't produce. You look again at who he is, and you let knowing him do the steadying.

LINDA: Here is where it turns for me, though, because he says the thing to know is the mystery of God. And mystery, to my ear, means the part I'm never going to figure out. How is that supposed to steady anybody?

FRANK: The word is mystērion, and it's a beautiful misread—the one everybody makes, and clearing it up opens the whole passage. It does not mean a puzzle you're too dim to solve. It's not a locked box. It points to something God kept concealed for long ages, and has now flung wide open. What the prophets strained to see, what was veiled since Eden, has now stepped into the light with a name and a face. The mystery isn't the thing you can't know. It's the thing that was hidden and is now told.

LINDA: The mystery is that it's not a mystery anymore.

FRANK: [laughs] The paradox—exactly. And watch where Paul lodges it. The mystery of God, of the Father and of Christ, in whom, verse three, are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. Every treasure. Every vault of understanding, stored up in one place, and that place is not a philosophy, not an ancient secret you buy from a smooth teacher. It's a person. Christ. To have him is to have access to all of it.

LINDA: Say more about "hidden," though, because that word's doing something. If it's all been flung open, why call the treasures hidden?

FRANK: Because that's how God has always worked, and this reaches way back before Colossae. Think of Proverbs. Seek wisdom as silver, search for her as for hidden treasure, and then you will find the knowledge of God. Wisdom pictured as treasure buried in the ground, given only to the heart that digs. And Isaiah, God tells Cyrus, I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places, and here's why, that you may know that it is I, Yahweh. God buries his best gifts, not to keep them from you, but so you'll seek them. And Colossians tells you where the digging finally ends. Not in a principle. In Christ himself. That's the treasure. And the shovel stops there. What does that mean for someone actually listening?

LINDA: All through the Bible God's hiding treasure so people will look for it. And then Paul says, the search is over, it was him the whole time.

FRANK: It was him the whole time. The wisdom that framed the world was never floating free in the air. It was always heading somewhere. Toward Bethlehem. Toward a cross. Toward an empty tomb. And here's the part that matters for the person listening who doesn't think of themselves as clever. You do not have to be brilliant to be rich in him. You just have to belong to him. Now watch what he does with that in verse four.

LINDA: He goes straight into the warning, doesn't he. I'm telling you this so no one deludes you with persuasiveness of speech.

FRANK: Straight into it. And the word he uses there is worth a minute, because it's sharp. Pithanologia. It means the art of the winning argument. Speech crafted so smoothly, so reasonably, that the argument seems to close before you can even object. And you have to picture the world he's writing into. In those cities, a man who could speak well was a man with power. Traveling orators drew crowds like musicians. People didn't just listen to what was said, they savored how it was said, the polished cadence, the clever turn. So the false teachers in that valley were not crude. They came dressed in the eloquence the whole culture worshipped.

LINDA: So Paul isn't warning them off ugly, obvious lies.

FRANK: He's warning them off attractive ones. That's the core danger. A beautifully made argument disarms your guard before your mind ever engages. Paul sets the treasures of Christ over against the treasures of clever speech and says, prize the substance, not the sound.

LINDA: I have somewhere in mind for this already. I open my phone and there's a confident post, or a slick spiritual podcast, someone bold and polished making a big claim, and the polish itself makes me nod along. Because if it sounds that put-together, it must be right.

FRANK: And Paul hands you the one question to hold it up against. Not "is this clever," not "does this sound reasonable." Ask it: does this point me to Christ himself, or somewhere else? A slick argument is not the same as a true one. And Calvin, writing on this very letter, put his finger on why we're so easily embarrassed by the plain gospel. He said, "For the preaching of the cross is always foolishness to the world, as we found stated in Corinthians." The unadorned truth will never win the eloquence contest. It was never meant to. God set it down in a world drunk on fine speech and just let it stand.

LINDA: Test what you take in. I like that. But I want to come back to where we started, because there's a cost buried in this passage I don't think we've named yet. Paul says, I want you to know how greatly I struggle for you. He wants them to know they're being carried.

FRANK: And that's the harder cost, isn't it. Not the cost of struggling for someone else. The cost of letting someone struggle for you. To receive that is to admit you're not self-sufficient, that your faith is being held up by hands that aren't your own. And pride hates that. We would all rather be the strong one who prays than the weak one prayed over.

LINDA: That's me exactly. Someone at church asks how I'm really doing, and there's a true answer sitting right under the "I'm fine," and I reach for "fine" every time. Or if I do admit something, I fix it instantly, well, but let me pray for you, so I never actually have to just, receive it.

FRANK: And the whole thrust of this passage is that Christians are knit together in love, verse two, that word means woven, laced tight, and you cannot be woven to people while holding them all at arm's length. Someone far off, right now, may be carrying you in prayer without your knowing it. That's the picture. And behind all of them stands the Christ who carried you first, who, Scripture says, ever lives to intercede for you. You are already being struggled for.

LINDA: So the move isn't just to go pray for a stranger. It's also to let someone in close enough to pray for me.

FRANK: Both. And I'd give the person listening the second one as the harder assignment, honestly. Sometime this week, when someone asks how you really are, say the true thing. "I'm struggling with this, and I'd value you praying for me." And then don't deflect it, don't fire back an offer to pray for them, just let them labor for you. Receive it. That's not weakness. That's exactly what being knit together feels like from the inside.

LINDA: And the other direction, pick one believer you rarely cross paths with. The friend from an old church, the relative who moved. Before today's over, tell them you remembered them and you're praying, and then actually do it, right after you hit send.

FRANK: Love with legs. That's what Paul's whole prison prayer is. So take that into today, both ways. Be carried, and carry someone. And when your own assurance feels thin, don't reach for a feeling. He does not change on your cold days. Look again at who he is, and let knowing him steady you.

LINDA: Let that be the thing you keep. Every treasure worth having is already in him, and you don't have to be brilliant to be rich. You just have to belong to him.

FRANK: Amen. Go dig where the treasure actually is.

LINDA: This one's part of the Dig Deeper app, so if you haven't got it yet, look for Dig Deeper in your app store.