Colossians 2:1-5
Struggling for People He Has Never Met
1For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me face to face,
2that they may be encouraged in heart, knit together in love, and filled with the full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ,
3in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
4I say this so that no one will deceive you by smooth rhetoric.
5For although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I delight to see your orderly condition and firm faith in Christ.
Berean Standard Bible
What the first chapter only hinted at, he now says plainly.
For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me face to face
He has never been there. Not to Colossae and not to Laodicea either, and the struggling he mentions is happening from prison on behalf of people whose faces he would not recognize in the street. Whatever we picture when we imagine somebody praying for us, this is a harder version of it.
Then he says what he is struggling for, and it is not what a worried leader usually asks.
that they may be encouraged in heart, knit together in love, and filled with the full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Encouraged, knit together, filled, knowing. None of those are things the Colossians could arrange between themselves by trying harder, and the sentence they belong to arrives somewhere particular. Everything Paul wants for them terminates in a person. The mystery of God, namely Christ.
Knit together is an image he comes back to at the end of this chapter. In Colossians 2:19 the church is a body held at its joints and ligaments, growing because it is still attached to the head, and the danger he names there is losing that connection. He is asking now for the thing he will warn them about losing.
That last phrase is doing something specific in a letter to this church. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him, which means they are not hidden anywhere else, and somebody in Colossae seems to have been offering to show them where else.
I say this so that no one will deceive you by smooth rhetoric.
Smooth rhetoric is an argument that sounds right, delivered well, by somebody plausible. He does not say the people troubling this church are stupid or obviously wrong. He says they are persuasive, which is the whole problem, and the defense he offers is not a counter-argument. It is knowing Christ well enough that an addition sounds like what it is.
He finishes the paragraph warmly, and the warmth is not a softener laid down before bad news. He is absent in body and present in spirit, and he says he is glad to see their orderly condition and their firm faith. This church is not falling apart. Paul is writing to people whose faith he calls firm, and he writes the warning anyway, which is a better time than after.
How We Know
Two details here are more than a general circular would have carried.
Verse 1 sets Laodicea beside the people Paul is writing to. Colossians 4:13 puts Epaphras working for both, plus Hierapolis.
Verse 1 also says Paul had not met them face to face. Colossians 4:16 asks that this letter be read at Laodicea and that the Colossians read the letter coming the other way, which is what you arrange when you cannot visit either church yourself.
So the man struggling for strangers in chapter 2 is, in chapter 4, organizing their reading around his absence. The letter knows its own situation.
Questions
1 Paul is praying hard for people he has never met. Who prays for us that we have never thanked?
AnswerThere are usually more than we think, and Paul says he is struggling at it rather than mentioning us in passing. He is doing this from prison for people whose faces he would not know.
2 What does Paul actually ask for them?
AnswerThat they be encouraged, knit together in love, and filled with understanding, so that they know Christ. Every one of those arrives at a person rather than at a result they could produce by trying.
3 Where does Paul say the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are?
AnswerHidden in Christ. All of them, which is a way of saying they are not hidden anywhere else. Somebody in Colossae seems to have been offering another address, and Paul is closing it off.
4 Paul warns about smooth rhetoric. Why is that harder to spot than a plain lie?
AnswerBecause it sounds right. He does not say the teaching troubling them is obviously stupid. He says it is persuasive, and the protection he offers is knowing Christ rather than winning the argument.
What This Means for Us
Paul writes this to a church that is doing fine. Their condition is orderly and their faith is firm, and he says so. The warning arrives while the church is still standing, which is the opposite of how most of us handle anything.
There is also a quiet answer here to the question of how you protect people you love from something persuasive. Paul does not give them a list of teachers to avoid or arguments to memorize. He prays that they would know Christ so well that the treasures on offer elsewhere look thin, and then he tells them he is doing it.
So tell somebody in this house tonight that you pray for them, and say what for. Not the exam or the appointment. Something closer to what Paul asks: that they would be encouraged, held together with the rest of us, and know Jesus better than they did last year.
Prayer
Father, thank you for people who have prayed for us out of sight, some of whom we will never meet. Do for this family what Paul asked for that one. Encourage us, knit us together, and let us know Christ well enough that we are not talked out of him by somebody who sounds convincing. Amen.