March through Colossians - the home stretch

(having trouble with the editing, sorry this appears as one long, daunting paragraph!) How should we think about these greetings that we find at the end of Colossians? I mean, it’s one thing to try to understand and apply Colossians 1:13: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” It is quite another to try to understand and apply Colossians 4:7a: “Tychicus will tell you all about my activities.” Here are a few thoughts to guide your reading of this last section of Colossians over the last few days of our march. -These greetings, no less than the parts of the letter that are more doctrinal, are the very words of God. Paul wrote them (or, perhaps dictated them to a scribe), but he did so as he was “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21), so that these words have their ultimate origin in God. So even if their value or their applicability is not immediately obvious to us, we have to start here. They are the words of God, for His church. -These greetings remind us of the realness of the Bible. God chose to give us His self-revelation through the agency of a real person. His words did not just drop out of the sky and get collected together like a bunch of fortune cookie messages. Paul, a real person, wrote an ordinary letter (qualify “ordinary” with what I said above) to a real congregation in the city of Colossae. They would have known who Tychicus was, and Onesimus, and Aristarchus, etc. So when you read these personal greetings, think for a bit about the fact that God’s Word addresses real people in real situations with His powerful grace. -Try to picture yourself as a member of this church in Colossae hearing this letter read for the first time. That might help you read these greetings with a little more attention. -We have a kids’ CD we’ve been listening to recently that has a line in it that says, “Your Word’s got nuggets of gold.” That’s true for all the parts of God’s Word, but we should carry that perspective into the way we read these greetings. So dig for gold! Think about what these verses say about the importance of real, personal relationships in the body of Christ. Notice how Paul describes his fellow workers. Meditate on phrases like “encourage your hearts,” “they have been a comfort to me,” and “the beloved physician” (do you love your physician? :) ). Be challenged and stirred up by the example of Epaphras who was “always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.” Continue with 4:12-13 tomorrow, then 4:14-18 Wednesday, and then one final reading of the whole book on Thursday. I’ll wrap up our march with a final post on Thursday.