PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 143,068 words · 197 reading sections
_The Epistle To The Colossians._
</pre> Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) [Transcriber's Note: A few minor typographical errors and inconsistencies have been…
392 wordsSECTION 2_The Writer And The Readers._
Chap. I. v. 1-3 417 v. 4-7 432 v. 8-11 447 v. 12-14 459 v. 15-19 470 v. 20-25 483 "Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father."--COL. i, 1, 2 (Rev. Ver.). We …
800 wordsSECTION 3_The Writer And The Readers._
Paul does not seem to have been the founder of these Churches, or ever to have visited them at the date of this letter. That opinion is based on several of its characteristics, such, for instance, as the absence of any of those kindly greetings to individuals which in the Apostle's other letters are so abundant, and re…
753 wordsSECTION 4_The Writer And The Readers._
Such notions, fantastic and remote from daily life as they look, really led by a very short cut to making wild work with the plainest moral teachings both of the natural conscience and of Christianity. For if matter be the source of all evil, then the fountain of each man's sin is to be found, not in his own perverted …
787 wordsSECTION 5_The Writer And The Readers._
Here he puts forth his claim to the apostolate, in the highest sense of the word. He asserts his equality with the original Apostles, the chosen witnesses for the reality of Christ's resurrection. He, too, had seen the risen Lord, and heard the words of His mouth. He shared with them the prerogative of certifying from …
675 wordsSECTION 6_The Writer And The Readers._
Be that as it may, the lessons to be drawn from the names here given to the members of the Church are the more important matter for us. It would be interesting and profitable to examine the meaning of all the New Testament names for believers, and to learn the lessons which they teach; but we must for the present confi…
801 wordsSECTION 7_The Writer And The Readers._
But these Colossian Christians are "faithful" as well as saints. That may either mean _trustworthy_ and _true_ to their stewardship, or _trusting_. In the parallel verses in the Epistle to the Ephesians (which presents so many resemblances to this epistle) the latter meaning seems to be required, and here it is certain…
773 wordsSECTION 8_The Writer And The Readers._
This is the deepest mystery of the Christian life. To be "in Him" is to be complete. "In Him" we are "blessed with all spiritual blessings." "In Him", we are "chosen," "In Him," God "freely bestows His grace upon us." "In Him" we "have redemption through His blood." "In Him" "all things in heaven and earth are gathered…
666 wordsSECTION 9_The Writer And The Readers._
"Peace be unto you." That old greeting, the witness of a state of society when every stranger seen across the desert was probably an enemy, is also a witness to the deep unrest of the heart. It is well to learn the lesson that peace comes after grace, that for tranquillity of soul we must go to God, and that He gives i…
483 wordsSECTION 10_The Prelude._
"We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have toward all the saints, because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which is c…
759 wordsSECTION 11_The Prelude._
Faith is sometimes spoken of in the New Testament as "_towards_ Christ Jesus," which describes that great act of the soul by its direction, as if it were a going out or flight of the man's nature to the true goal of all active being. It is sometimes spoken of as "_on_ Christ Jesus," which describes it as reposing on Hi…
714 wordsSECTION 12_The Prelude._
So we have here two members of the familiar triad, Faith and Love, and their sister Hope is not far off. We read in the next clause, "because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens." The connection is not altogether plain. Is the hope the reason for the Apostle's thanksgiving, or the reason in some sense o…
718 wordsSECTION 13_The Prelude._
He begins by reminding them that to that gospel they owed all _their knowledge and hope of heaven_--the hope "whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel." That great word alone gives light on the darkness. The sole certainty of a life beyond the grave is built on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, an…
996 wordsSECTION 14_The Prelude._
That spiritual discipline is no less needful than is intellectual, in facing the conflicts of this day. Again, this gospel was filling the world: "it is in all the world bearing fruit, and increasing." There are two marks of life--it is fruitful and it spreads. Of course such words are not to be construed as if they o…
801 wordsSECTION 15_The Prelude._
This tree not only fruits, but grows. It is not exhausted by fruit-bearing, but it makes wood as well. It is "increasing" as well as "bearing fruit," and that growth in the circuit of its branches that spread through the world, is another of its claims on the faithful adhesion of the Colossians. Again, they have heard…
739 wordsSECTION 16_The Prelude._
The further testimony which Paul bears to him is so emphatic and pointed as to suggest that it was meant to uphold an authority that had been attacked, and to eulogize a character that had been maligned. "He is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf." In these words the Apostle endorses his teaching, as a true rep…
430 wordsSECTION 17_The Prayer._
"For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray and to make request for you, that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of …
788 wordsSECTION 18_The Prayer._
Passing by many thoughts suggested by the words, we may touch one or two large principles which they involve. The first is, that the foundation of all Christian character and conduct is laid in the knowledge of the will of God. Every revelation of God is a law. What it concerns us to know is not abstract truth, or a re…
725 wordsSECTION 19_The Prayer._
II. Consider the River or Stem of Christian conduct. The purpose and outcome of this full knowledge of the will of God in Christ is to "walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing." By "walk" is of course meant the whole active life; so that the principle is brought out here very distinctly, that the last result of kn…
752 wordsSECTION 20_The Prayer._
Another thought as to the nature of the life in which the knowledge of the Divine will should issue, is expressed in the other clause--"unto all pleasing," which sets forth the great aim as being to please Christ in everything. That is a strange purpose to propose to men, as the supreme end to be ever kept in view, to …
706 wordsSECTION 21_The Prayer._
One plain principle implied here is that the only true fruit is goodness. We may be busy, as many a man in our great commercial cities is busy, from Monday morning till Saturday night for a long lifetime, and may have had to build bigger barns for our "fruits and our goods," and yet, in the high and solemn meaning of t…
738 wordsSECTION 22_The Prayer._
Then comes the third element in this resolution of the Christian character into its component parts--"strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness." Knowing and doing are not the whole of life: there are sorrow and suffering too. Here again we ha…
848 wordsSECTION 23_The Father'S Gifts Through The Son._
"The Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love; in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins."--COL. i. 12-14 (Rev. Ver.). We have advanced thus far in t…
1,014 wordsSECTION 24_The Father'S Gifts Through The Son._
We notice again--where the inheritance is situated--"in the light." There are several possible ways of connecting that clause with the preceding. But without discussing these, it may be enough to point out that the most satisfactory seems to be to regard it as specifying the region in which the inheritance lies. It lie…
790 wordsSECTION 25_The Father'S Gifts Through The Son._
So whoever turns to the love of God in Christ, and yields in the inmost part of his being to the power of His grace, is already "light in the Lord." The true home and affinities of his real self are in the kingdom of the light, and he is ready for his part in the inheritance, either here or yonder. There is no breach o…
714 wordsSECTION 26_The Father'S Gifts Through The Son._
What a wonderful contrast the other kingdom and its King present! "The kingdom of"--not "the light," as we are prepared to hear, in order to complete the antithesis, but--"the Son of His love," who is the light. The Son who is the object of His love, on whom it all and ever rests, as on none besides. He has a kingdom i…
720 wordsSECTION 27_The Father'S Gifts Through The Son._
"Redemption," in its simplest meaning, is the act of delivering a slave from captivity by the payment of ransom. So that it contains in its application to the effect of Christ's death, substantially the same figure as in the previous clause which spoke of a deliverance from a tyrant, only that what was there represente…
685 wordsSECTION 28_The Father'S Gifts Through The Son._
But we must not overlook the significant words in which the condition of possessing this redemption is stated: "in Whom." There must be a real living union with Christ, by which we are truly "in Him" in order to our possession of redemption. "Redemption through His blood" is not the whole message of the Gospel; it has …
669 wordsSECTION 29V.
_THE GLORY OF THE SON IN HIS RELATION TO THE FATHER, THE UNIVERSE AND THE CHURCH._ "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powe…
720 wordsSECTION 30V.
The first thought involved in this statement is, that the Divine Being in Himself is inconceivable and unapproachable. "No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him." Not only is He beyond the reach of sense, but above the apprehension of the understanding. Direct and immediate knowledge of Him is impossible. Ther…
736 wordsSECTION 31V.
In these brief words on so mighty a matter, I must run the risk of appearing to deal in unsupported statements. My business is not so much to try to prove Paul's words as to explain them, and then to press them home. Therefore I would urge that thought, that we depend on Christ for all true knowledge of God. Guesses ar…
654 wordsSECTION 32V.
where "of" distinctly means "in comparison with," and not "belonging to." The title implies priority in existence, and supremacy. It substantially means the same thing as the other title of "the only begotten Son," only that the latter brings into prominence the relation of the Son to the Father, while the former lays…
669 wordsSECTION 33V.
The possible dangers of that profound truth, which has always been more in harmony with Eastern than with Western modes of thought, are averted by the next preposition used, "all things have been created _through_ Him." That presupposes the full, clear demarcation between creature and creator, and so on the one hand ex…
705 wordsSECTION 34V.
III. The last of the relations set forth in this great section is that between Christ and His Church. "He is the head of the body, the Church; who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead." A parallel is plainly intended to be drawn between Christ's relation to the material creation and to the Church, the spiritu…
760 wordsSECTION 35V.
So the Apostle concludes that in all things He is first--and all things are, that He _may_ be first. Whether in nature or in grace, that pre-eminence is absolute and supreme. The end of all the majesty of creation and of all the wonders of grace is that His solitary figure may stand clearly out as centre and lord of th…
256 wordsSECTION 36_The Reconciling Son._
"For it was the good pleasure _of the Father_ that in Him should all the fulness dwell; and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, _I say_, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens. And you, being in time past alienated and ene…
771 wordsSECTION 37_The Reconciling Son._
And this indwelling is the result of the Father's good pleasure. Adopting the supplement in the Authorized and Revised Versions, we might read "the Father pleased"--but without making that change, the force of the words remains the same. The Incarnation and whole work of Christ are referred to their deepest ground in t…
825 wordsSECTION 38_The Reconciling Son._
If this be so, then these words refer mainly to the restitution of the material universe to its primal obedience, and represent Christ the Creator removing by His cross the shadow which has passed over nature by reason of sin. It has been well said, "How far this restoration of universal nature may be subjective, as in…
721 wordsSECTION 39_The Reconciling Son._
On no subject is it more necessary to remember the limitations of our knowledge than on this great theme. On none is confident assertion more out of place. The general truth taught is clear, but the specific applications of it to the various regions of the universe is very doubtful. We have no source of knowledge on th…
735 wordsSECTION 40_The Reconciling Son._
That is a severe indictment, a plain, rough, and as it is thought now-a-days, a far too harsh description of human nature. Our forefathers no doubt were tempted to paint the "depravity of human nature" in very black colours--but I am very sure that we are tempted just in the opposite direction. It sounds too harsh and …
939 wordsSECTION 41_The Reconciling Son._
For us, that wondrous love--mightier than death, and not to be quenched by many waters--is the one power that can change our alienation to glad friendship, and melt the frost and hard-ribbed ice of indifference and dread into love. That, and that alone, is the solvent for stubborn wills, the magnet for distant hearts. …
356 wordsSECTION 42_The Ultimate Purpose Of Reconciliation And Its Human Conditions._
[1] Bp. Lightfoot, _On Coloss._, p. 226. "To present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before Him: if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and stedfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard, which was preached in all creation under heaven; whereof I Paul was made a mi…
767 wordsSECTION 43_The Ultimate Purpose Of Reconciliation And Its Human Conditions._
Such, then, is the grand conception of the ultimate purpose and issue of Christ's reconciling work. All the lines of thought in the preceding section lead up to and converge in this peak. The meaning of God in creation and redemption cannot be fully fathomed without taking into view the future perfecting of men. This C…
746 wordsSECTION 44_The Ultimate Purpose Of Reconciliation And Its Human Conditions._
Nothing less than our absolute purity will satisfy God about us. Nothing less should satisfy ourselves. The only worthy end of Christ's work for us is to present us holy, in complete consecration, and without blemish, in perfect homogeneousness and uniformity of white purity and unreproveable in manifest innocence in H…
707 wordsSECTION 45_The Ultimate Purpose Of Reconciliation And Its Human Conditions._
And it must be present faith which leads to present results. We cannot make an arrangement by which we exercise faith wholesale once for all, and secure a delivery of its blessings in small quantities for a while after, as a buyer may do with goods. The moment's act of faith will bring the moment's blessings; but to-mo…
770 wordsSECTION 46_The Ultimate Purpose Of Reconciliation And Its Human Conditions._
And, says Paul, that Christ-derived stedfastness will make us able to resist influences that would move us away from the hope of the Gospel. That process which their stedfastness would enable the Colossians successfully to resist, is described by the language of the Apostle as continuous, and as one which acted on them…
672 wordsSECTION 47_The Ultimate Purpose Of Reconciliation And Its Human Conditions._
To us the same appeal comes. This word has been sounding in our ears ever since childhood. It has done everything for some of us, something for all of us. Its truths have sometimes shone out for us like suns, in the dark, and brought us strength when nothing else could sustain us. If they are not truths, of course they…
699 wordsSECTION 48_The Ultimate Purpose Of Reconciliation And Its Human Conditions._
But there is more than that in the Apostle's mind. He was accustomed to quote the fact that he, the persecutor, had been made the messenger of Christ, as a living proof of the infinite mercy and power of that ascended Lord, whom his eyes saw on the road to Damascus. So here, he puts stress on the fact that he _became_ …
334 wordsSECTION 49_Joy In Suffering, And Triumph In The Manifested Mystery._
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the Church; whereof I was made a minister according to the dispensation of God which was given me to you-ward to fulfil the word of God, even the mystery…
719 wordsSECTION 50_Joy In Suffering, And Triumph In The Manifested Mystery._
Then at once the questions start up, Does Paul mean to say that in any sense whatever the sufferings which Christ endured have anything "lacking" in them? or does he mean to say that a Christian man's sufferings, however they may benefit the Church, can be put alongside of the Lord's, and taken to eke out the incomplet…
771 wordsSECTION 51_Joy In Suffering, And Triumph In The Manifested Mystery._
But the same thing is true about us all, though it may be in a narrower sphere. No man gets good for himself alone out of his sorrows. Whatever purifies and makes gentler and more Christlike, whatever teaches or builds up--and sorrows rightly borne do all these--is for the common good. Be our trials great or small, be …
663 wordsSECTION 52_Joy In Suffering, And Triumph In The Manifested Mystery._
II. These thoughts naturally lead on to the statement of the Apostle's lowly and yet lofty conception of his office--"whereof (that is, of which _Church_) I was made a minister, according to the dispensation of God, which was given me to you-ward, to fulfil the word of God." The first words of this clause are used at …
885 wordsSECTION 53_Joy In Suffering, And Triumph In The Manifested Mystery._
III. So we come to the last thought here, which is of the grand Mystery of which Paul is the Apostle and Servant. Paul always catches fire when he comes to think of the universal destination of the gospel, and of the honour put upon him as the man to whom the task was entrusted of transforming the Church from a Jewish …
676 wordsSECTION 54_Joy In Suffering, And Triumph In The Manifested Mystery._
He thinks of these once heathens and now Christians at Colossae, far away in their lonely valley, and of many another little community--in Judaea, Asia, Greece, and Italy; and as he thinks of how a real solid bond of brotherhood bound them together in spite of their differences of race and culture, the vision of the on…
770 wordsSECTION 55_The Christian Ministry In Its Theme, Methods And Aim._
But if we will take Him for our Saviour by simple trust, He will give us His own presence in our hearts, and infuse there a hope full of immortality. If we live in close communion with Him, we shall need no other assurance of an eternal life beyond than that deep, calm blessedness springing from the imperfect fellowshi…
916 wordsSECTION 56_The Christian Ministry In Its Theme, Methods And Aim._
To preach Christ is to set forth the person, the facts of His life and death, and to accompany these with that explanation which turns them from being merely a biography into a gospel. So much of "theory" must go with the "facts," or they will be no more a gospel than the story of another life would be. The Apostle's o…
703 wordsSECTION 57_The Christian Ministry In Its Theme, Methods And Aim._
This connection of the Christian minister's office contrasts on the one hand with the priestly theory. Paul had known in Judaism a religion of which the altar was the centre, and the official function of the "minister" was to sacrifice. But now he has come to see that "the one sacrifice for sins for ever" leaves no roo…
670 wordsSECTION 58_The Christian Ministry In Its Theme, Methods And Aim._
The preaching of Christ then is to be unfolded into all "warning," or admonishing. The teaching of morality and the admonishing of the evil and the end of sin are essential parts of preaching Christ. We claim for the pulpit the right and the duty of applying the principles and pattern of Christ's life to all human cond…
769 wordsSECTION 59_The Christian Ministry In Its Theme, Methods And Aim._
The Christian ministry, then, in the Apostle's view, is distinctly educational in its design. Preachers and hearers equally need to be reminded of this. We preachers are poor scholars ourselves, and in our work are tempted, like other people, to do most frequently what we can do with least trouble. Besides which, we ma…
923 wordsSECTION 60_The Christian Ministry In Its Theme, Methods And Aim._
And the purpose which the true minister of Christ has in view is to "present every man _perfect in Christ Jesus_." "Perfect" may be used here with the technical signification of "initiated," but it means absolute moral completeness. Negatively, it implies the entire removal of all defects; positively, the complete poss…
837 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.