Introduction to Colossians: Authorship, Date, Audience - Crain Home

Interpretation 3
submissiveness: relationships are built and grounded in Christian love.
Recall the mystery of verses three and four:
Col 3:3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
God.
Col 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall
ye also appear with him in glory.
The normal distinctions are erased and replaced by an equalitarian
sociology where individuals are valued as equals. The reader should note,
too, that Paul addresses husbands, telling them to love their wives; children,
the resulting creation of the husband-wife relationship, telling them to obey
their parents (mother and father); Paul then addresses relationships in which
typically one individual is perceived as stronger than the other, an outcome
that Paul sees as a matter of flesh and not spirit: fathers are not to provoke
their children, and servants are to obey masters according to the flesh. All,
however, is to be done with singleness of heart and heartily as to the Lord
(23). Once again, the Intervarsity Press Commentary renders the morality
exactly:
http://crain.english.mwsc.edu/colossians/interpretation_3.htm (8 of 13)6/17/2003 8:18:08 AM
Paul's general concern stems from the deeper logic of his
gospel, introduced in the opening thanksgiving: ideas about
God are embodied in action toward others, and only the truth
about God's grace can produce holiness and peace in human
lives. In this light, Paul has made three critical points in his
description of the Christian life.
First, Christian morality is properly motivated by mindfulness
of the "things above," where the enthroned Christ is found
(3:1-4). When people confess Christ's lordship over all
creation (1:15-20), they will resist the separation of morality
into compartments, one spiritual and the other material. The
values of God and the norms of God's reign, which Jesus
incarnated during his messianic mission, inform all spheres of
the church's conduct. In this sense, the believer's public
conduct, whether in word or deed, will be at odds with the
values of the secular order, whether at work or at home.
Second, Christian morality is set within the new creation (3:9-
10), an egalitarian community (3:11), which has "put to
death" by God's grace all vices that result in death rather than
life and therefore undermine God's purposes for creation.