Collossians: The Morality Of The Book Of Colossians

Colossians may be one of Paul’s shorter letters, but that does not mean that it does it is lacking in validity to every Christians life. Colossians is a book that tackles how to deal with false teachings, heresy, and the supremacy of Christ, among other things. The troubled Colossians needed the prophetic word of Paul to help them fully understand Christ, God’s will, and how to discern that. The author of Colossians was the apostle Paul. This is one of the many letters that Paul wrote while his was imprisoned in Rome. Scholars believe that Colossians was written around approximately 61 A.D. The church that Colossians was in the Phrygian city of Colossae. The country Phrygia was located in Asia Minor and was one of the places Paul visited …show more content…
The Colossians were facing “a relapse into pagan ways of thinking and acting and acceptance of unorthodox teaching” (Harris 5) Paul’s purpose was to set the Colossians back onto the path of God. He wanted to show them the proper ways of Christ and the proper doctrines to follow. Because of the many trade routes going throughout the area of these three cities, many different philosophies, cultures, and religions came through the area. Many different people came to the Colossians, who were relatively new Christians, with new a different ideas on how to live their lives and conduct themselves. “Various hypotheses about this teaching identify its adherents as syncretists who incorporate elements of mystery cults, Gnostics, Jews who claim superiority over the church, and non-Christian cynics” (Sumney 10) One of the biggest threats that the church in Colossae faced is believed to be that of the Gnostics. The mystical cult believed in salvation through asceticism, which is not how salvation is found in Christian faith. There was a large amount of different views floating around the people of Colossae and many of the new Christians began to adopt these different ideas and then live out the different ways. This made it extremely difficult for the Christians in Colossae and the surrounding area to figure out the difference between right and wrong in their …show more content…
Soteriology is the study religious doctrines of salvation. The whole book of Colossians emphasizes this in different spots because of the need for the Colossians to properly understand how they go about the way of gaining their salvation. One of the first places this is show in Colossians is in chapter 1 verses 12 through 14. Here Paul talks specifically about how we got our salvation through Jesus Christ. The next place this is shown is in 2:14-15. Paul states in this specifically who Christ went about getting our salvation and how Christ disarmed all of the spiritual authorities on earth by overcoming death. It is last talked about in 2:20, where then Paul says that we have died with Christ and explains what happens to us when we find