《The Biblical Illustrator – Colossians (Ch.2~3)》(A Compilation)
02 Chapter 2
Verses 1-3
Verses 1-4
Colossians 2:1-4
For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you.
Ministerial anxiety
This anxiety was occasioned by the subtle errors prevalent in Colossae. Error cannot come into collision with truth without creating confusion of ideas, mental distraction, and moral restlessness. This anxiety was--
I. Intense. The thought of the preceding verse is here expanded. The conflict refers not so much to outward trial, etc., as to his fervent and importunate wrestling with God. The error must have been serious to occasion this struggle; great souls are not affected with trifles. People little know what their pastors pass through. A knowledge of this anxiety, however, is often necessary to create a responsive sympathy, and to teach the people the care they should have for their own salvation.
II. Disinterested. “As many as have not seen my face”--not only Colossians and Laodiceans.
III. Had reference to the highest spiritual attainments of believers. Paul was solicitous--
1. For the confirmation of their faith, “comforted,” i.e., encouraged, confirmed. He knew how error disintegrated the heart’s confidence and produced trouble, doubt, perplexity.
2. For their union in love. Without this no solid comfort. Error snaps the bond of love and splits the Church into parties.
3. For their enrichment with the unspeakable wealth of the Divine mystery.
IV. Prompted the apostle to faithfully warn the Church. Error is seductive. It is needful to keep a vigilant outlook in regard to its enticing words. The most effectual antidote to any heresy is the simple proclamation of the doctrine of Christ. Lessons--
1. The true minister is anxious to promote the highest good of the people.
2. All truth finds its explanation and error its refutation in Christ, the source of eternal wisdom.
3. False doctrine should be fearlessly and faithfully exposed. (G. Barlow.)
Paul’s striving for the Colossians
The strain of the apostle’s agony for the Colossian Church is here continued. Note the consummate art with which he prepares the way for his warnings.
I. The conflict itself was that of the arena, and “great.”
1. No external conflict can be meant, for he could strike no blows for them; but he could send them ammunition, and this Epistle has been a magazine and arsenal ever since. But the real struggle was in his own heart. In that lonely prison cell, and with burdens enough of his own, like some soldier left behind to guard the base, his thoughts were in the field.
2. For all Christians, sympathy in the battle of God, which is being waged all over the world, is a plain duty. Wheresoever our prison may be, we are bound to take an eager share in the conflict by interest, such help as we can render, and that intercession which may sway the fortunes of the field though the uplifted hands grasp no weapons. The men who bear the brunt of the battle are not the only combatants. In many a quiet home where wives and mothers sit there is an agony as intense as in the battle. It was a law in Israel, “As his part is,” dec. (1Samuel 30:24). So all Christians who in heart and sympathy have taken part shall be counted as combatants and crowned as victors.
II. Those for whom the conflict was endured. “As many as have not seen,” etc. The Colossians might think that he cared less for them than for those communities he had planted or watered. They had never felt the magnetism of his personal presence, and were at a disadvantage from not having had the inspiration and direction of his personal teaching. But Paul shows them that from this very fact they had a warmer place in his heart. He was not so enslaved by sense that his love could not travel beyond the limits of his eyesight.
III. The object in view.
1. That their hearts might be comforted.
2. The way to secure this is union in love.
3. This compaction in love will lead to a wealth of certitude in the possession of the truth. It tends to “all riches of the full assurance,” etc.
4. This unity of love will lead to full knowledge of the mystery of God.
(a) All wisdom and knowledge are in Christ. He is the Light of men, and all thought and truth of every sort came from Him who is the Eternal Word. All other media of revelation have but uttered broken syllables. Christ still pursues this work.
(b) In Christ, as in a great storehouse, lie all the riches of spiritual wisdom, the massive ingots of solid gold, which when coined into creeds and doctrines are the wealth of the Church.
(c) In Christ these treasures are hidden, but not as the heretic’s mysteries from the vulgar crowd, but only from eyes that will not see them; hidden that seeking souls may have the pleasure of seeking, and the rest of finding; hidden as men store provisions in the Arctic regions, in order that the bears may not find them, and shipwrecked sailors may. Conclusion: Such thoughts have a special message for times of agitation. We are surrounded by eager voices proclaiming profounder truths and wisdom than the gospel gives us. In joyful antagonism Christian men have to hold fast by the confidence that all Divine wisdom is laid up in Christ. The new problems of each generation will find their answers in Him. We need not cast aside the truth learned at our mothers’ knees; but if we keep true to Christ and strive to widen our minds to the breadth of that great message, it will grow as we gaze, even as the nightly heavens expand to the eye which steadfastly looks into them and reveal violet abysses, sown with sparkling points, each of which is a sun. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Three wonderful things
I. A noble anxiety. Paul pictures here his eagerness as that of the racer and wrestler. So far there is nothing very rare, for the spectacle of anxious men struggling with keenest eagerness to gain some purpose of their own is common. But the elements of nobleness here discovered in Paul are--
1. His anxiety for others. He says to the men of Colossae, “My conflict is for you.” It is no self-centred life that Paul lives when he spends himself lavishly for these early churches.
2. His anxiety for the absent. There is a counterfeit coin in current speech, “Out of sight, out of mind.” It is a proverb coined in the mint of a very shallow and selfish life. Such a spirit
Whilst real care for the absent--
3. His anxiety for those with whom he had no direct connection. He is caring for a group of churches on the Lycus that he had not even visited. It was pure, disinterested love. Wherein does the modern gospel of altruism excel this gospel Paul believed and practised? and where has altruism the motives with which Christianity pulsates, or the examples that Christianity can cite?
II. A blessed experience. Analyzing these verses we find signs--
1. Of personal comfort. The word “comfort” here, as in the word “Comforter,” points to more than solace, it tells of encouragement and strengthening. What better experience could he desire for the members of this young Church than that their hearts should be comforted? But to that is added the blessing of social security. Few expressions can describe a completer unity than this “knit together.” It means an interweaving of sympathies, an interlinking of destinies; and this is obtained by the highest and surest method “in love.”
3. Of firm conviction, “and all assurance.” There is much more than opinion, there is conviction; and conviction of man’s noblest faculty, the understanding, which is more than the reason alone. And this supreme conviction is, as to the truth, of the supremest importance, viz., the acknowledgment of the open secret about God.
III. An open secret. Paul did not mean by mystery an unknowable, mystical something; but rather a truth once hidden but no longer concealed; a truth fully, freely revealed. The self-revelation of Christ is the revelation of man, of duty, of God, of heaven. In Him were stored away all the riches of truth and love for which men cried. He is the exhaustless storehouse of God’s supplies for man’s higher nature. He is the vast mine of thought, of sympathy, of grace; and only the industrious who sink the shaft of inquiry, fellowship, faith, will know what the mine contains. (U. R. Thomas.)
The full assurance of knowledge
The second Colossian prayer is the sequel of the first (Colossians 1:9-14), inasmuch as it shows at once the end of all practical obedience and the ground of all practical knowledge. The words that introduce it show it to be a supplement, and also that the apostle’s request now deepens into a “great agony” which is akin to our Lord’s. The matter of his supplication is expressed in the form of the end which its answer would obtain, the full assurance of their understanding of Christ, the mystery of God.
I. How this is to be obtained.
1. It is hardly possible to separate the “full assurance” from the process by which it is reached. It is a branch, together with the “knitting together in love” of the one common trunk, “the comfort of the heart.” This last root principle of all religious establishment is the full work of the Paraclete, and the “heart” is the inner man in which the Spirit carries on His renewing work. Hence from this common principle spring two developments--one of charity, the other of knowledge--and these are united. The love of God strong in the heart of each, the bond of perfectness, is as “brotherly love,” the bond of union in which all are edified. Thus while carnal knowledge “puffeth up,” and makes a hollow fellowship, love “buildeth up” both the individual and the community. They have the riches of the knowledge of God imparted to them in the radiations of Divine light through the Word, by the Spirit. These riches are the common heritage of the sacred Treasury; but every one’s individual knowledge is His own.
2. This “full assurance” is the clear, deep, unclouded confidence in the reality of the objects of knowledge which the understanding grasps, excluding hesitation and fortifying against error. This grace comes from the “comfort” of the Spirit, through the diligent study of the mystery hid in Christ. St. Paul speaks of three kinds of assurance.
II. What it is is itself. The mystery of God which is Christ. This being the precise sentence which St. Paul wrote, we are taught by him that the Person of Christ, God-man, is the central and all-comprehending mystery.
1. The secret as it has been expounded in the previous chapter is impenetrable to human intellect. It is the mystery of God, and He alone can understand it.
2. But it is shown forth in such a manner that we may have a full and distinct knowledge, for this is the word, not acknowledgment. There is a difference between penetrating a mystery and beholding and knowing it. In the richness of its full assurance the understanding collects all the elements that go to the conception of the Divine-human Person, and unites them in one supreme object of knowledge, certitude, assurance.
3. Yet this object contains all other objects. In this are hid “all the treasures,” etc. To the riches of full assurance correspond the riches of the truths of which it is assured. All other intellectual treasures are of phenomena and time, and must pass away. If the vast fabric of things be destroyed or reconstructed, all extant physical science becomes obsolete. Bus the knowledge of Christ is always becoming richer. As the individual grows daily in it, so also does the Church behold more and more the development of “the manifold wisdom of God” in Christ.
III. What it effects. The apostle’s reason for the prayer was his deep desire to defend the Colossians against “oppositions of science,” etc. The full assurance of understanding in the mystery of Christ would be their effectual safeguard. The mind once raised to this region of cloudless certitude would not easily be seduced to descend into the region of scepticism, where doubt chases doubt in never-ceasing restlessness of caprice. Gnosticism under other names is still darkening the counsel of the hypostatic union. Hence the necessity of this prayer to-day. (W. B. Pope, D. D.)
St. Paul’s conflict
As gardeners are not satisfied with sowing good seed, but also take care to eradicate weeds, so in spiritual husbandry it is not enough to cast the Word into souls; the soil must be cleansed of the pernicious weeds of error sown privily by an enemy’s hand, or the Divine tillage will be marred. Hence St. Paul in chap. 1, having established the truth, now defends it against heresy, and these verses are the entrance to the controversy.
I. The conflict. What the apostle affirmed at the close of chap. 1. he here particularizes. He means--
1. The solicitude which the consideration of the Churches drew upon him. For though their faith and constancy afforded him satisfaction, the temptations around them and their human weakness led to the apprehension that they might be drawn from piety. Love is never without this, but the apostle’s was so great that he felt as though he had suffered their afflictions himself (2Corinthians 11:29, cf. also verse 3).
2. But more, he comprises here all that he did to avert the danger.
3. Admire the zeal and love of this holy man. He stood, as we may say, on the scaffold, yet their danger troubled him more than his own, and neither prison nor death was able to diminish his affection, or make him lay aside the least of his cares.
4. Observe his prudence To dispose their hearts and gain authority for his remonstrances, he sets before them his solicitudes for their salvation.
5. The apostle’s conflict is exemplary. Let ministers learn what they owe to their flocks. Without this strife we cannot avoid the censure of the Supreme Pastor.