SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/8/2016 11:39 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 Intro to Colossians
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians 1:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”
We begin to look more at the introduction to the book of Colossians, and as I mentioned in our last SD this is going to take some time to accomplish what I have to say about the introduction to this book.
I mentioned that our first round of introductions to this book we will use the help from Dr. Warren Wiersbe, but will not follow the outline in his commentary as we will be following John MacArthur’s commentary outline, but because I appreciate Dr. Wiersbe so much I wanted to look to see what he had to say in his introduction.
Today we will look at the sub-title “The Crisis” found in Dr. Wiersbe’s introduction, and as we think about the different letters that come after the book of Acts with the exception of the book of Revelation we see that they all deal with certain problems that the different churches of people are dealing with, and so it is true in the book of Colossians, as even though Paul had never visited this church it had started under his watch as we mentioned in our last SD. Paul was in prison as we also mentioned, but he had gotten word from a visitor who belonged to this church of the problems that they were going through.
The crisis is the reason that Paul writes this letter. Dr. Wiersbe gives the following about the timeline of Paul’s letter to the Colossians: “Paul was at that time a prisoner in Rome (Acts 21:17-28:31). He met a runaway slave named Onesimus who belonged to Philemon, one of the leaders of the church in Colossae. Paul led Onesimus to Christ. He then wrote his letter to Philemon, asking his friend to forgive Onesimus and receive him back as a brother in Christ.
“About the same time, Epaphras showed up in Rome because he needed Paul’s help. Some new doctrines were being taught in Colossae and were invading the church and creating problems. So Paul wrote this letter to the Colossians in order to refute these heretical teachings and establish the truth of the Gospel.
Epaphras remained with Paul in Rome (Col. 4:12-13). Onesimus and Tychicus carried Paul’s epistles to their destinations: Ephesians 6:21; Colossians 4:7-9; and Philemon. Epaphras was called Paul’s ‘fellow-prisoner,’ a title also given to Aristarchus (Col. 4:10; Phile. 23). This suggests that Epaphras willingly remained with Paul to assist him. Neither Aristarchus nor Epaphras were prisoners because they broke the law and were arrested. They were Paul’s willing companions, sacrificing their own comfort to help him.”
Now that we got the history of how this letter was written in our next SD we will begin to look at the crisis, the reason that Paul wrote this letter.
12/8/2016 11:59 PM
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