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 Christian Ministry In Its Theme, Methods And Aim._
There must be not only toil, but conflict. He labours, "_striving_"--that is to say, contending--with hindrances, both without and within, which sought to mar his work. There is the struggle with one's self, with the temptations to do high work from low motives, or to neglect it, and to substitute routine for inspirati…
686 wordsSECTION 62_Paul'S Striving For The Colossians._
"For I would have you know how greatly I strive for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Chri…
814 wordsSECTION 63_Paul'S Striving For The Colossians._
Let us learn the lesson, that, for all Christian people, sympathy in the battle for God, which is being waged all over the world, is plain duty. For all Christian teachers of every sort, an eager sympathy in the difficulties and struggles of those whom they would try to teach is indispensable. We can never deal wisely …
675 wordsSECTION 64_Paul'S Striving For The Colossians._
It is beautiful to see how, here, Paul lays hold of that very fact which seemed to put some film of separation between them, in order to make it the foundation of his especial keenness of interest in them. Precisely because he had never looked them in the eyes, they had a warmer place in his heart, and his solicitude f…
661 wordsSECTION 65_Paul'S Striving For The Colossians._
(2) The way to secure such joyous confidence and strength is taught us here, for we have next, _Union in love_, as part of the means for obtaining it--"They being knit together in love." The persons, not the hearts, are to be thus united. Love is the true bond which unites men--the bond of perfectness, as it is elsewhe…
820 wordsSECTION 66_Paul'S Striving For The Colossians._
This wealth of conviction is attained by living in the love of God. Of course, there is an intellectual discipline which is also needed. But no intellectual process will lead to an assured grasp of spiritual truth, unless it be accompanied by love. As soon may we lay hold of truth with our hands, as of God in Christ wi…
936 wordsSECTION 67_Paul'S Striving For The Colossians._
These stages are infinite, because in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. These four words, _treasures_, _wisdom_, _knowledge_, _hidden_, are all familiar on the lips of the latter Gnostics, and were so, no doubt, in the mouths of the false teachers at Colossae. The Apostle would assert for his gospel al…
735 wordsSECTION 68_Paul'S Striving For The Colossians._
The ordinary type of Christian life is contented with a superficial acquaintance with Christ. Many understand no more of Him and of His gospel than they did when first they learned to love Him. So completely has the very idea of a progressive knowledge of Jesus Christ faded from the horizon of the average Christian tha…
260 wordsSECTION 69_Conciliatory And Hortatory Transition To Polemics._
[2] Bishop Lightfoot, _in loc._ "This I say, that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. "As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him…
843 wordsSECTION 70_Conciliatory And Hortatory Transition To Polemics._
We may learn here, too, the true safeguard against specious errors. Paul thinks that he can best fortify these simple-minded disciples against all harmful teaching by exalting his Master and urging the inexhaustible significance of His person and message. To learn the full meaning and preciousness of Christ is to be ar…
733 wordsSECTION 71_Conciliatory And Hortatory Transition To Polemics._
Further, he beholds "the stedfastness of your faith in Christ." This may be a continuation of the military metaphor, and may mean "the solid front, the close phalanx" which your faith presents. But whether we suppose the figure to be carried on or dropped, we must, I think, recognise that this second point refers rathe…
694 wordsSECTION 72_Conciliatory And Hortatory Transition To Polemics._
If the rendering "stedfastness" be adopted as in the Rev. Ver., the phrase will be equivalent to the "firmness which characterizes or belongs to your faith." But some of the best commentators deny that this meaning of the word is ever found, and propose "foundation" (that which is made stedfast). The meaning then will …
1,038 wordsSECTION 73_Conciliatory And Hortatory Transition To Polemics._
To that gospel, to that Lord, the walk, the active life, is to be conformed, and the manner thereof is more fully explained in the following clauses. "Rooted and built up in Him." Here again we have the profound "in Him," which appears so frequently in this and in the companion Epistle to the Ephesians, and which must…
655 wordsSECTION 74_Conciliatory And Hortatory Transition To Polemics._
"Stablished in your faith, even as ye were taught." This is apparently simply a more definite way of putting substantially the same thoughts as in the former clauses. Possibly the meaning is "stablished by faith," the Colossians' faith being the instrument of their establishment. But the Revised Version is probably rig…
743 wordsSECTION 75_The Bane And The Antidote._
"Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ: for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full, Who is the head of all principality and …
656 wordsSECTION 76_The Bane And The Antidote._
The form of the expression in the original shows clearly that "vain deceit," or more literally "empty deceit," describes the "philosophy" which Paul is bidding them beware of. They are not two things, but one. It is like a blown bladder, full of wind, and nothing else. In its lofty pretensions, and if we take its own a…
867 wordsSECTION 77_The Bane And The Antidote._
Another mark of this empty pretence of wisdom which threatens to captivate the Colossians is, that it is "after the rudiments of the world." The word rendered "rudiments" means the letters of the alphabet, and hence comes naturally to acquire the meaning of "elements," or "first principles," just as we speak of the A B…
971 wordsSECTION 78_The Bane And The Antidote._
Paul sums up his indictment in one damning clause, the result of the two preceding. If the heresy have no higher source than men's traditions, and no more solid contents than ceremonial observances, it cannot be "after Christ." He is neither its origin, nor its substance, nor its rule and standard. There is a fundament…
1,002 wordsSECTION 79_The Bane And The Antidote._
This process of receiving of all the Divine fulness is a continuous one. We can but be approximating to the possession of the infinite treasure which is ours in Christ; and since the treasure is infinite, and we can indefinitely grow in capacity of receiving God, there must be an eternal continuance of the filling and …
673 wordsSECTION 80_The True Circumcision._
"In whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead t…
851 wordsSECTION 81_The True Circumcision._
Finally, this circumcision is described as "of Christ," by which is not meant that He submitted to it, but that He instituted it. Such being the force of this statement, what is its bearing on the Apostle's purpose? He desires to destroy the teaching that the rite of circumcision was binding on the Christian converts,…
1,037 wordsSECTION 82_The True Circumcision._
II. The Apostle meets the false teaching of the need for circumcision, by a second consideration; namely, a reference to Christian Baptism, as being the Christian sign of that inward change. Ye were circumcised, says he--being buried with Him in baptism. The form of expression in the Greek implies that the two things …
659 wordsSECTION 83_The True Circumcision._
We observe the solemnity and the thoroughness of the change thus symbolised. It is more than a circumcision. It is burial and a resurrection, an entire dying of the old self by union with Christ, a real and present rising again by participation in His risen life. This and nothing less makes a Christian. We partake of H…
795 wordsSECTION 84_The True Circumcision._
So men may live in the body, and toil and think and feel, and be dead. The world is full of "sheeted dead," that "squeak and gibber" in "our streets," for every soul that lives to self and has rent itself away from God, so far as a creature can, is "dead while he liveth." The other death, of which the previous verse sp…
735 wordsSECTION 85_The Cross The Death Of Law And The Triumph Over Evil Powers._
We need the profound truth which lies in the threefold form which Paul gives to one of his great watchwords: "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God." And how, says my despairing conscience, shall I keep the commandments? The answer lies in the second form of …
757 wordsSECTION 86_The Cross The Death Of Law And The Triumph Over Evil Powers._
Further, we must give a still wider extension to the thought. The principles laid down are true not only in regard to "_the_ law," but about all law, whether it be written on the tables of stone, or on "the fleshy tables of the heart" or conscience, or in the systems of ethics, or in the customs of society. Law, as suc…
737 wordsSECTION 87_The Cross The Death Of Law And The Triumph Over Evil Powers._
To philosophise on that teaching of Scripture is not my business here. It is my business to assert it. We can never penetrate to a full understanding of the rationale of Christ's bearing the world's sins, but that has nothing to do with the earnestness of our belief in the fact. Enough for us that in His person He will…
713 wordsSECTION 88_The Cross The Death Of Law And The Triumph Over Evil Powers._
The weakness of all law is that it merely commands, but has no power to get its commandments obeyed. Like a discrowned king, it posts its proclamations, but has no army at its back to execute them. But Christ puts His own power within us, and His love in our hearts; and so we pass from under the dominion of an external…
713 wordsSECTION 89_The Cross The Death Of Law And The Triumph Over Evil Powers._
The words point us into dim regions of which we know nothing more than Scripture tells us. These dreamers at Colossae had much to say about a crowd of beings, bad and good, which linked men and matter with spirit and God. We have heard already the emphasis with which Paul has claimed for his Master the sovereign author…
711 wordsSECTION 90_The Cross The Death Of Law And The Triumph Over Evil Powers._
"Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail," his death will come sooner or later. The regenerating power is lodged in the heart of humanity, and the centre from which it flows is the cross. The history of the world thenceforward is but the history of its more or less rapid assimilation of that power, and of its cons…
273 wordsSECTION 91Xv.
_WARNINGS AGAINST TWIN CHIEF ERRORS, BASED UPON PREVIOUS POSITIVE TEACHING._ "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is Christ's. Let no man rob you of your prize by a voluntary humility and…
869 wordsSECTION 92Xv.
Sacrifice, altar, priest, temple spake of Him. The distinctions of meats were meant, among other purposes, to familiarize men with the conceptions of purity and impurity, and so, by stimulating conscience, to wake the sense of need of a Purifier. The yearly feasts set forth various aspects of the great work of Christ, …
697 wordsSECTION 93Xv.
A few words may be said here on the bearing of the principles laid down in these verses on the religious observance of Sunday. The obligation of the Jewish sabbath has passed away as much as sacrifices and circumcision. That seems unmistakably the teaching here. But the institution of a weekly day of rest is distinctly…
668 wordsSECTION 94Xv.
II. The Apostle passes on to his second peal of warning,--that against the teaching about angel mediators, which would rob the Colossian Christians of their prize,--and draws a rapid portrait of the teachers of whom they are to beware. "Let no man rob you of your prize." The metaphor is the familiar one of the race or…
819 wordsSECTION 95Xv.
We do not see visions and dream dreams any more, except here and there some one led astray by a so-called "spiritualism," but plenty of us attach more importance to our own subjective fancies or speculations about the obscurer parts of Christianity than to the clear revelation of God in Christ. The "unseen world" has f…
701 wordsSECTION 96Xv.
III. The source and manner of all true growth is next set forth, in order to enforce the warning, and to emphasize the need of holding the Head. Christ is not merely represented supreme and sovereign, when He is called "the head." The metaphor goes much deeper, and points to Him as the source of a real spiritual life,…
783 wordsSECTION 97_Two Final Tests Of The False Teaching._
"If ye died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do ye subject yourselves to ordinances. Handle not, nor taste, nor touch (all which things are to perish with the using), after the precepts and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, a…
895 wordsSECTION 98_Two Final Tests Of The False Teaching._
Such detachment from externals and separation from a former self is not unknown in ordinary life. Strong emotion of any kind makes us insensible to things around, and even to physical pain. Many a man with the excitement of the battle-field boiling in his brain, "receives but recks not of a wound." Absorption of though…
1,266 wordsSECTION 99_Two Final Tests Of The False Teaching._
The parenthesis which follows in the text, "all which things are to perish with the using," contains an incidental remark intended to show the mistake of attaching such importance to regulations about diet and the like, from the consideration of the perishableness of these meats and drinks about which so much was said …
707 wordsSECTION 100_Two Final Tests Of The False Teaching._
II. We have to consider one great purpose of all teaching and external worship, by its power in attaining which any system is to be tried. "Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body, _but are_ not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh." Here is the con…
714 wordsSECTION 101_Two Final Tests Of The False Teaching._
Further, this system has a show of wisdom in "severity to the body." Any asceticism is a great deal more to men's taste than abandoning self. They will rather stick hooks in their backs and do the "swinging poojah," than give up their sins or yield up their wills. It is easier to travel the whole distance from Cape Com…
641 wordsSECTION 102_The Present Christian Life, A Risen Life._
"If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, _Who is_ our life, shall be manife…
670 wordsSECTION 103_The Present Christian Life, A Risen Life._
Union with Christ by faith is the condition of a real communication of life. "In Him was life," says John's Gospel, meaning thereby to assert, in the language of our Epistle, that "in Him were all things created, and in Him all things consist." Life in all its forms is dependent on union in varying manner with the Divi…
992 wordsSECTION 104_The Present Christian Life, A Risen Life._
But the believing soul is risen with Christ also, inasmuch as our union with Him makes us partakers of His resurrection as our victory over death. The water in the reservoir and in the fountain is the same; the sunbeam in the chamber and in the sky are one. The life which flows into our spirits from Christ is a life th…
832 wordsSECTION 105_The Present Christian Life, A Risen Life._
II. We have the future consummate flower of the Christian life in union with the manifested, glorious Christ. The future personal manifestation of Jesus Christ in visible glory is, in the teaching of all the New Testament writers, the last stage in the series of His Divine human conditions. As surely as the Incarnatio…
702 wordsSECTION 106_The Present Christian Life, A Risen Life._
Then shall the life which here was but in bud, often unkindly nipt and struggling, burst into the consummate beauty of the perfect flower "which fadeth not away." III. We have the practical aim and direction which alone is consistent with either stage of the Christian life. Two injunctions are based upon these consid…
651 wordsSECTION 107_The Present Christian Life, A Risen Life._
"Where Christ is." Yes, that is the only thought which gives definiteness and solidity to that else vague and nebulous unseen universe; the only thought which draws our affections thither. Without Him, there is no footing for us there. Rolling mists of doubt and dim hopes warring with fears, strangeness and terrors wra…
289 wordsSECTION 108_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, the which is idolatry; for which things' sake cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience; in the which ye also walked aforetime, when ye lived in these things. But now put ye also a…
652 wordsSECTION 109_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
Before dealing with that list, two points of some importance may be observed. The first is that the practical exhortations of this letter begin with this command to put off certain characteristics which are assumed to belong to the Colossian Christians in their natural state, and that only afterwards comes the precept …
715 wordsSECTION 110_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
"Slay your members which are upon the earth" means tears and blood and more than blood. It is easier far to cut off the hand, which after all is not me, than to sacrifice passions and desires which, though they be my worst self, are myself. It is useless to blink the fact that the only road to holiness is through self-…
782 wordsSECTION 111_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
A reason for this warning against covetousness is appended, "inasmuch as (for such is the force of the word rendered 'the which') it is idolatry." If we say of anything, no matter what, "If I have only enough of this, I shall be satisfied; it is my real aim, my sufficient good," that thing is a god to me, and my real w…
719 wordsSECTION 112_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
The wrath "_cometh_." That majestic present tense may express either the continuous present incidence of the wrath as exemplified in the moral government of the world, in which, notwithstanding anomalies, such sins as have been enumerated drag after themselves their own punishment and are "avenged in kind," or it may b…
721 wordsSECTION 113_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
This retrospect enforces the main exhortation. It is meant to awaken penitence, and the thought that time enough has been wasted and incense enough offered on these foul altars. It is also meant to kindle thankfulness for the strong, loving hand which has drawn them from that pit of filth, and by both emotions to stimu…
702 wordsSECTION 114_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
This second list goes in the opposite direction to the former. That began with actions and went up the stream to desire; this begins with the sources, which are emotions, and comes down stream to their manifestations in action. First we have anger. There is a just and righteous anger, which is part of the new man, and…
697 wordsSECTION 115_Slaying Self The Foundation Precept Of Practical Christianity._
On the whole, this catalogue brings out the importance to be attached to sins of speech, which are ranked here as in parallel lines with the grossest forms of animal passion. Men's words ought to be fountains of consolation and sources of illumination, encouragement, revelations of love and pity. And what are they? Wha…
489 wordsSECTION 116_The New Nature Wrought Out In New Life._
"Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him: where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all."--COL. iii…
760 wordsSECTION 117_The New Nature Wrought Out In New Life._
This entire change is taken for granted by Paul as having been realised in every Christian. It is here treated as having taken place at a certain point of time, namely when these Colossians began to put their trust in Jesus Christ, and in profession of that trust, and as a symbol of that change, were baptized. Of cour…
748 wordsSECTION 118_The New Nature Wrought Out In New Life._
But there is a practical conclusion drawn from this taken-for-granted change. Our text is introduced by "seeing that;" and though some doubts may be raised as to that translation and the logical connection of the paragraph, it appears on the whole most congruous with both the preceding and the following context, to ret…
742 wordsSECTION 119_The New Nature Wrought Out In New Life._
The new man is being renewed "_unto_ knowledge." An advanced knowledge of God and Divine realities is the result of the progressive renewal. Possibly there may be a passing reference to the pretensions of the false teachers, who had so much to say about a higher wisdom open to the initiated, and to be won by ceremonial…
825 wordsSECTION 120_The New Nature Wrought Out In New Life._
III. We have here finally the grand unity of this new creation. We may reverse the order of the words as they stand here, and consider the last clause first, inasmuch as it is the reason for the doing away of all distinctions of race, or ceremony, or culture, or social condition. "Christ is all." Wherever that new na…
753 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.