Colossians Study Outline

Remember in the account in the book of Acts where an Ephesian silversmiths were losing so much business in making images of their idols and these new found believers were throwing them away and were no longer buying them. Listen, you know what that tells us? He made such an impact in the city of Ephesus that it affected the business people who were selling idols and so forth. Can you imagine what that must have been like? In the magnitude of this idolatrous business which by the way has been passed on down through the ages, beginning back before the flood. And now these men are without any support. This is the same way with Colossi. Colossi was just a little city just a few miles inland from Ephesus and it was evidently a congregation that had been begun by one of Paul’s converts at Ephesus, Epaphras. And then from this one individual a little congregation began, being made up of mostly pagan people and it included a few of Judaism, who have become believers.

So as Paul writes this letter, remember he’s never met these people. This is one group he writes to where he didn’t know one of them, but by faith. It was still the result of his and Epaphras’ ministry, Paul's being based in Ephesus, a few miles away. So remember that whenever Paul writes to these believers, they had just recently come out of abject paganism, idolatry, which was not limited to the worship of the gods and goddesses only but included Judaism as well. Then to be able to bring them to the place where they would separate from all that and then endure the persecution that was brought on them. We can imagine what they went through as we receive reports of such brutalization still in our own day. This brutalization is earthy and comes up from the pit where Satan is being held and is demonic. Because the natural nature of all fallen mankind is as Jesus Himself told the Priest's, was their very own nature, this is seen in Romans 8:7-8, Ephesians 2:1-3 and then Jesus' own words in Matthew 15:1-20 and Mark 7:1-23 and then what Paul says in Romans 3:10-19, Galatians 5:19-21, to which Paul then addresses as our new nature in Titus 3:2-6.

Because here we are, in our enlightened America, and with all of our Constitutional rights and we can’t get people interested. Isn’t it amazing? For this is the every work of the familiar spirit known as religion (of Isaiah 19 and 29 and in Revelation is addressed as being the mystery of Babylon) which has such a grip on this country and all the others of the world. And yet, Paul and his own disciples went into those pagan cities, steeped in their idolatry, and did nothing but proclaim this Gospel of the kingdom of heaven and of our returning to God and they came out by the scores. Well, that’s the background of this little letter to Colossi. Inland from Ephesus which is on the western end of present day Turkey and a congregation, as we said, who he had never met personally, but he had heard of them through Epaphras and consequently he writes this Epistle. This mystery Babylon many claim to be the Roman Catholic church not realizing that all of mans many religious forms spring up from the very same ground that Israel's own religion turned inwardly to.

Colossians 1:1a

"Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,…"

A lot of people, have gotten the idea that Paul was some kind of an egotist. That he just sort of went out on his own. When in fact, the Corinthian church kind of accused him of that. That he’d just sort of gotten this idea that he could start something on his own and he was making inroads into Judaism and all that. No, here he makes it so plain that his apostleship was by the Will of God. And of course, Timothy is with him. And remember he is writing from prison in Rome.

Colossians 1:1b

"…and Timotheus our brother."

Here we are emphasizing to whom is he writing? To the saints, believers or the receivers of the ontological essence of Christ's own Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. One of the seven Spirits of God as seen in Revelation. Paul always writes to the believer, the Christ-like ones, who were dubbed Christians. Never to the lost world. He is writing to the believers and the few on the edge that are what maybe rightly called an unbeliever or backslider. And so these are Gentiles with a few Hebrews among them, who are like us and so this is why we can read the books of Colossians, Ephesians, and so forth. And know this that the setting could just as well have been said to the believers in the United States of America in 1676 or 2012 or whatever year we happen to be in. It could have just as well been so.