This week after taking about a month’s break we are going to start looking at the book of Colossians. The thing is before we start to dig into the book we should do a little bit of background on the book. This way as we start to look at what Paul has written we can understand why Paul says what he did which in turn helps us apply the truths to our lives today. The letter to the Colossians starts out like this, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, and Timothy our brother: To the saints in Christ at Colossae, who are faithful brothers. Grace to you and peace from God our Father (Colossians 1:1-2).” So in setting up the background we see two clear things, the author and the audience.
The Author
The first thing to notice is that it is Paul who wrote the letter. This is considered to be one of his prison letters, and was more than likely written while he was a prisoner in Rome. This letter along with the ones to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon were written among the same time frame, with the letters to the Colossians and Philemon mentioning many of the same people and carried by the same messenger. This letter is unique in that it is one of the few letters Paul wrote to a church he had not started or even visited, but he still felt the need to write them to encourage them as well as to correct false teachings.
The Audience
We also see that this letter was written to the church in Colossae, which we will look at the church closer next time; but it does help to understand some about the city as it will help us to understand both the church and Paul’s reason for writing to them. The city of Colossae was one of three cities located in what was considered Asia Minor in the Lycus River Valley. While it was a prominent city when the Greeks ruled the area, by Paul’s time it became more of a small town, with a main road between Ephesus and the east running through the area. This probably helped lead to the diversity that would have been seen in both the city and the church. This also meant that it was a prime area for all kinds of philosophies and religions to mingle and essentially breed to form new sets of beliefs.
Does this landscape sound familiar? At least to me it sounds much like the religious landscape of many post-Christian nations, America included. There are those that look at the different philosophies and religions and take those teachings and practices that they find enjoyable and apply them to their life. They create their own hybrid religion that is appealing to them and may outwardly sound good; but in reality it is nothing but empty promises that lead people away from Christ. So now that we have seen what the city of Colossae looks like next time we will look deeper at the church that was located there.