22.  EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS.  Colosse was a city lying in the southwestern part of Phrygia, in Asia Minor, in the neighborhood of Laodicea and Hierapolis.  Chap. 4:13, 16.  Respecting the founding of the church there we have no information.  According to the most natural interpretation of chap. 2:1, Paul had not visited Colosse in person when he wrote the present epistle.  The occasion of his writing seems to have been information received by him that false teachers were troubling the Colossian church.  That these men were Jews is plain from chap. 2:16, 20, 21; where the reference is to Jewish ordinances.  But their doctrine was not simple Phariseeism, like that of the false teachers among the Galatians.  They did not seek directly to substitute circumcision and the Mosaic law for faith in Christ, as the ground of justification.  They seem rather to have been Christian Jews of an ascetic turn of mind, and imbued with the semi-oriental philosophy of that day, which contained in itself the seeds of the later Gnostic systems.  Having no clear apprehension of the glory of Christ’s person and the fulness of the salvation which his gospel offers to men, they sought to supplement the Christian system by their ascetic practices and their speculations concerning the orders of angels, whom they seem to have regarded as mediators between God and men.  To all this human philosophy the apostle opposes directly the divine dignity and glory of Christ’s person, and the completeness of the redemption which he has provided for men.

The Jewish character of these false teachers appears in their insisting on meats and drinks, holy-days, new moons, and Sabbaths (chap. 2:16, 20, 21); their ascetic character, in their doctrine concerning the mortification of the body (chap. 2:23); their speculations concerning angels, in the fact that they are described as “delighting in humility and the worship of angels” (chap. 2:18, 23).  The apostle apparently refers to a false humility which, under the pretence that God is too great to be approached except through the mediation of angels, made them instead of Christ the way of access to him, thus disparaging the Redeemer’s person and office.

23.  In respect to plan, the epistle naturally falls into two parts of about equal length.  The first is argumentative.  Chaps. 1, 2.  After an introduction, in which the apostle thanks God that the Colossians have been made partakers of the gospel, commends them for the fruitfulness of their faith, and assures them of his incessant prayers in their behalf (chap. 1:1-12), and passes to his great theme, which is to set forth the divine dignity and glory of Christ’s person.  He is the image of the invisible God, existing before all things, and the creator and upholder of all things, those angelic orders included whom the false teachers regarded as objects of worship (verses 15-17).  He is also the head of the church, and as such unites under himself