As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.One of my favorite sections of any magazine is the Letters to the Editor section. Reading other readers' reactions to magazine articles often gives me insights that I might not have gotten otherwise. Readers often say that they enjoyed an article, but want to point out the omission of something they felt was important; other readers point out faulty research; all too often, there are readers who claim the article shouldn't have been written at all; occasionally readers actually write a letter to the editor just to to say, “Good job!” In just about every letter, the writer starts out with a positive statement, such as, “Thank you for including John Q. Public's article on contemporary Mongolian cabinetry in the last edition of Cabinetry Today,” or “I enjoyed reading Mary Doe's thoughts on the yellow pages in the September 1 edition of The Phone Book Journal.” But writers of these letters always have a point to make that isn't reflected in these opening compliments, so there's just about always a transition... and the transition is usually pretty obvious. You know you've hit it when you reach certain key words, such as However, or Nevertheless, or Be that as it may. Occasionally, the transition is more positive, and is indicated by a phrase such as, For this reason.
—Col. 2:6-7
It's this last kind of transition that the Apostle Paul makes in his letter to the Colossians. He's spent the opening with his usual greetings, and he goes on to tell them how hard he's working on their behalf, and that he's with them in spirit, even though he's physically absent. In the final part of his opening words, he tells them how happy to see how firm their faith is. Then he gets to the meat of his message by using a transition word. It's not negative, like a But or a However, but one of those positive, supportive transition words—Therefore: “Therefore, just as you've received Jesus as your Lord, keep living your lives with that in mind.”
The Colossians Are in Danger of Being Led Astray
These are not empty words. Paul has gotten wind that things in Colossae aren't all peaches and cream. The simple message of the Gospel is having to compete in that church with a very different message. Because the letter as we've received it is written to real people in a specific place and time, there's a lot left out. Paul didn't write this letter so that others in later centuries and in unheard-of countries could understand it. He wrote it so that the Colossians could understand it. And the Colossians were fully aware of their own state of affairs and had no need to slog through a complete summary of all they already knew.
Picture it this way. What would it be like if there were no junk mail, and no bills, and no e-mail, but every piece of mail was a treasured letter from someone we knew and loved and had been waiting to hear from? It's a happy coïncidence today that Cherie's our lay reader, because she's also the church secretary. But imagine if at every worship service, the church secretary opened the mail in our presence and announced to us all who it was from, and then paused to let us all murmur our oohs and aahs as we quietly rejoiced to hear from a far-away brother or sister. And after we'd gotten that out of our system, then read it to us from start to finish, while we listened as intently as we possibly could.
Remember, there were no copiers, mimeograph machines, or even printing presses back then. Every document had to be carefully handwritten. So the only copy of the letter in the church would be the copy being read to us aloud. There would be no need to make us sit through a recitation of all that we already knew. And that's why Paul doesn't tell the Colossians everything that's happening in their church—they already knew it. If we don't, then it's just something that's to remain a mystery to us.
But what we can glean from Paul's letter to the Church at Colossae is that there's some sort of a religious or philosophical system being mixed with Colossian Christianity that tells people Christ is not enough, that they need to ask for the mediation of angels, too. The philosophy also seems to say that God isn't sovereign, but that people are also at the mercy of the stars and the planets, and need to live their lives with a view to other heavenly bodies.
We, Too, Are Easily Led Astray
I'm not sure what kind of letter Paul might write to us. But I am sure that he'd start off by being positive. In addition to a greeting, I suspect he'd also give a summary of the Good News that we've received in Jesus Christ. And unless things were really, really bad here (and I don't think they are), I suspect that he'd keep things positive—even if he had some gentle criticism to share with us. As the 19th-century Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher put it, “You can gain [people] easily if you get round their prejudices and put truth in their minds. But never if you attack prejudice” itself.[1] In other words, the best way to address somebody's errors is to reïnforce all the stuff they do right, in hopes that they'll concentrate on those things more and more, until the wrong withers on the vine for lack of attention.
And let's face it. There is error in this place and at this time. And, just as in Paul's day, the error often has to do with our willingness to pay attention to competing messages. We believe in God, and yet we're eager to place our future in the hands of other human beings. We attend a church that repeats over and over again the message that God loves us for who we are, and yet we are all to willing to allow ourselves to be divided according to language, or nationality, or political beliefs, or ethnic background, or sexual orientation, or educational background, or the amount of money we make. We may not think of these as theological questions. But if we allow them to take precedence over the Good News that we've received and on which we should take our stand, then that's precisely what we've made them into. Our god becomes something other than the God who made us and loves us, and our Savior something other than Jesus Christ who's united us and shown us what love is.
The Colossians Already Have What It Takes
Paul has confidence that, no matter how difficult things may seem to be, the Colossians know who their God is and have indeed taken their stand with Jesus Christ. And so he begins addressing their problems with a positive Therefore, and then proceeds for the bulk of the rest of the letter to make a whole series of statements about who they are as followers of Christ, interspersed with imperatives: Live! and, See to it! and, Do not let! In this way, he reminds them of who they are, all the while telling them to live that reality. In other words, he tells them, “Become who you are!”[2]
The Good News that Paul shares with them is that, in Christ, we are a new creation—the old ways no longer control us (see 2 Cor. 5:17). Paul tells the Colossians not to listen to voices that reminded them of all their past mistakes—the person who did those things isn't the person listening to this letter! And he told them not to obey people who teach them that the only way to earn God's love is through self-punishment and humiliation—Christ took on that punishment and that humiliation, and now we are free to love and to grow.
Paul's message wasn't just a personal one for each individual Colossian, but was even more importantly a message to all Colossians together. Though each person was a member of the church, it was all of them jointly who were the body of Christ—and it's the whole body that Christ strengthens and nourishes. The church's future, Paul reminded them, was already a reality in the eyes of God, because God can have nothing but love for the body of Christ.
In God's Eyes, We Have Integrity
And that's definitely a message we need to hear as well. Let me paraphrase a few sentences from this morning's lesson:
Don't listen to anybody who puts you down over things that don't matter, such as diet and church music and worship schedule. Those things are just a shadow cast by the body of Christ. Don't let anybody else run your life, insisting that you share their vision and their interpretation of the Gospel. We're all members of the same body, and together we're all nourished by the same Lord.Christ has taken away our shame and made us a part of his royal family. Though none of us is perfect, together we complete one another's shortcomings. This leaves us free to hear one another out, assuming the best of each other. As long as we're in this world, we'll probably be surrounded by voices that point out our differences. But let's remember: Those are the shadow. The body of Christ of which we are a part is what's important. Though the shadow it casts may seem to shift and may even grow indistinct, God looks on the body casting the shadow, and that body is solid and strong.
And just as we ourselves are free of shame, it’s even more important that we remain free from giving it. When we speak and listen, knowing that no shame can be transferred and that no obligation can be laid on us by another, then we know we haven’t given in to the shadows, but are standing strong in Christ.
So let’s become who we already are in God’s eyes. In Christ we have a reminder of precisely who that is: New men and women, people of integrity, generosity, and honesty. God has already transformed us. May the words that we speak to one another be shared in love. And may the way we receive one another’s words also be in love, knowing that a brother or sister in Christ can only strengthen us and can only nourish us, as long as we look for our common life to Jesus Christ, the head of the body. Amen.
—©2010 Sam L. Greening, Jr.
- Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America (New York: Three Leaves, 2007), p. 150.
- Andrew Lincoln, The Letter to the Colossians, The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. XI (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000) p. 620.







