This Christian community in the province of Asia had come into existence during that period of prodigious missionary and evangelistic activity associated with the apostle's Ephesian ministry (c. AD 52 to 55). So effective were the daily evangelistic 'dialogues' held in the hall of Tyrannus, where Paul's bold speaking compelled men's attention during the long siesta period (Ac 19:8-10). Converts were trained and equipped to be his associates, among them possibly a man named Epaphras, who had come from Colossae in the Lycus valley. He was an evangelist to his own people and planted churches in Laodicea and Hierapolis as well as Colossae. The place name itself means 'great' or 'large'. Colossae was a confluence for traffic from east and west and was an important city in the Roman Empire. From the inscriptions found on ancient coins in it is evident that the gods of Coloassae were Isis, Serapis, Herios, Artemis, Demeter and Men.

As a concept 'fullness' played a large part in second-century Gnosticism, and even at this early stage was becoming a major theme of the visiting teachers. It can mean a 'supplement', something added to supply a deficiency, or it can mean a 'complement', that is the full number that makes up a whole, for example a ship's company. The distinction between the two meanings may help clarify the difference between the apostolic teaching and the new teaching. For Paul there was nothing whatever of the Godhead that was not in Christ; the full complement of divine attributes is to be found in him. But for the new teachers, union with Christ did not of itself bring anyone into such fullness of divine life; there was still room (and need) for a supplementary work of God. This could be thought of by saying that God had still more of himself to give than Christ, or that Christ was not received in all his fullness at conversion. However this was thought of, for Paul it represented a serious misunderstanding.

Used in legal language, meaning to bring someone before the court.

A unique NT word meaning that they are not to be dissuaded.

The 'mystery' religions at Colossae all offered in their different ways rites of initiation that would bring seekers into the privileged circle of those few who had found the 'secret' of life and existence. Paul's word 'mystery' comes from the same root as the verb 'to initiate', and stands for the whole complex of initiation, cult, and secret doctrine on which the numerous private religious brotherhoods of the time were based.

In the Hellenistic world 'perfection' referred to those who were filled with experiences of power and wisdom.

A particularly strong word, also used by Paul to describe his back-breaking manual work, tentmaking, cf. 1 Thes 2:9; 1 Cor 4:12.

Lit. 'how great conflict I have for you'.

Occurs in one other place in the NT, Ja 1:22, where it is used to refer to our capacity to deceive ourselves.

This word and taxin are imagery of an army describing the Christians standing firm with unbroken ranks especially as their faith comes under fire.

'Having been rooted'. Used for sinking the foundations of buildings.

'Being built up'.

This unusual word speaks of the slave-raider carrying off his victim, body and soul.

'Elements', meaning the letters of the alphabet written in order.

'Blotted out'. This might have been a reference to a wax surface on many ancient bonds.

'Handwriting in the decrees', a 'bond' or 'certificate of indebtedness' is to be understood as a promissory note, perhaps shown in the sense of obligation through the many fresh resolutions, vows and promises made, if only to oneself, to satisfy the conscience.

Cf. Roman titulus such as Pilate wrote (Jn 19:19-22). To place a written accusation above a condemned criminal meant that a man's crimes, placarded for everyone to see and read, might serve as a justification for his punishment and a deterrent to others.

Either evil spirit powers are stripped of their weapons or, more literally, 'He stripped himself of ..' as a person strips his clothes from himself, cf. 3:9.

The picture is of a Roman triumphal procession, vividly demonstrating to the people that their returning generals had been winning genuine victories. No-one could be ignorant of what had happened as hundreds of weary prisoners of war were paraded, straggling behind the conquering army. Shamed, and exposed to public gaze, everyone can see that there is nothing to fear from these once proud soldiers.

These sacred seasons were reminiscent of OT language, cf. 1 Ch 23:31 and designate calendar feasts marked out as annual, monthly and weekly celebrations. Paul's opponents might have infused these events with pagan content having stretched traditional and scriptural terms.

This word has a nuance of mortification and self-denial and could possibly mean 'fasting'. It may be that such exercises as fasting prepared the 'false prophet' for the unusual experience of worship that he treasured.

Angel worship was anathema to Judaism. It is not until the fourth century that the Council of Laodicea forbade such prayer. Earlier, at the end of the second century, Ireneaus in Against Heresies testified that the church performed nothing 'by means of angelic invocations, or by incantations, or by any other wicked curious art'. The phrase could be understood therefore in the sense of 'worship offered by angels', so that the insistence would have been on 'angel-like' worship. There might have been an enthusiasm for the way in which angels conduct their heavenly worship, and the claim might have been that it was wonderfully possible to be caught up in these glorious songs through sharing the language of the angels, cf. 3:16. Whether the Colossians were being urged to venerate angels or to follow their example in the language or conduct of worship, Paul is clearly warning against the influence of those who had infiltrated their ranks.

Satisfaction or 'satiation', in keeping with stress on fullness.

Paul is well aware of the unbridgeable gulfs in his world between slave and master, uncouth Scythian from northern Greece and sophisticated freeman of Athens.

Lit. 'bowels of compassions'.

Lit. 'And to all these (add) love'.

Contemporary Hellenistic culture already offered fixed forms of ethical instruction. The neighbours of a Christian couple might well have had their own firm ideas as to what was fitting. Apostolic teaching may not have rejected these but Christianized them.

Lit. 'embittered'.

Slaves

Even the poorest citizen might own a slave. With the expansion of the empire, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, had been uprooted from their homelands and brought to the centre of the empire. A citizen proudly boasted of the values that distinguished them from slaves - free speech, private property, rights before the law. In fact the Romans viewed the entire course of their history as an evolution away from slavery, towards a freedom based on the dynamics of perpetual competition. The Romans knew that had they remained the slaves of a monarch, or a clique of aristocrats, they would never have succeeded in conquering the world.

At the great free port of Delos it was said that up to ten thousand slaves might be exchanged in a single day. The proceeds of this staggering volume of trade fatted pirate caption and Roman plutocrat alike. Shipping from all over the Mediterranean arrived loaded with grain to feed Rome's monstrous appetite and slaves to fuel her enterprises, but also rarities garnered from her far-off domains: sculptures and spices, paintings and strange plants. So human beings were not the least significant portion of the wealth to have been plundered by the Republic during its wars of conquest. But the single market established by Roman supremacy had enabled captives to be moved around the Mediterranean as easily as any other form of merchandise, and the result had been a vast boom in the slave trade, a transplanting of populations without precedent in history. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, had been uprooted from their homelands and brought to the centre of the empire, there to toil for their new masters. Even the poorest citizen might own a slave. In rich households the labour glut obliged slave-owners to think up ever more exotic jobs for their purchases to specialise in, whether dusting portrait busts, writing invitations or attending to purple clothes. But the work of most slaves was infinitely more crushing. This was particularly the case in the countryside, where conditions were at their worst. Gangs were bought wholesale, branded and shackled, then set to labour from dawn until dusk. At night they would be locked up in huge, crowded barracks. Not a shred of privacy or dignity was permitted them. They were fed the barest minimum required to keep them alive. Exhaustion was remedied by the whip, while insubordination would be handled by private contractors who specialised in the torture - and sometimes execution - of uppity slaves. The crippled or prematurely aged could expect to be cast aside, like diseased cattle or shattered wine jars. It hardly mattered to their masters whether they survived or starved. After all, as Roman agriculturalists liked to remind their readers, there was no point in wasting money on useless tools.

This exploitation was what underpinned everything that was noblest about the Republic - its culture of citizenship, its passion for freedom, its dread of disgrace and shame. It was not merely that the leisure which enabled a citizen to devote himself to the Republic was dependent upon the forced labour of others. Slaves also satisfied a subtler, more baneful need. 'Gain cannot be made without loss to someone else' (Publilius Syrus, 337): so every Roman took for granted. All status was relative. What value would freedom have in a world where everyone was free? Even the poorest citizen could know himself to be immeasurably the superior of even the best-treated slave. Death was preferable to a life without liberty: so the entire history of the Republic had gloriously served to prove. If a man permitted himself to be enslaved, then he thoroughly deserved his fate. Such was the harsh logic that prevented anyone from even questioning the cruelties the slaves suffered, let alone the legitimacy of slavery itself.

The most far-sighted critic of the Republic's hunger for human livestock was not a Roman but a Greek - the philosopher Posidonius. He had witnessed Syrians toiling in Spanish mines, and Gauls in chain-gangs on Sicilian estates. In the East great cities were ransacked for treasure - but in the West it was the earth. The result was mining on a scale not to be witnessed again until the Industrial Revolution. Nowhere was the devastation more spectacular than in Spain, particularly in central and south-western Spain. The ore being smelted was silver: it has been estimated that for every ton of silver extracted over ten thousand tons of rock had to be quarried. It has also been estimated that by the early first century BC, the Roman mint was using fifty tones of silver each year. News of this reached the other extreme of the Empire, in Judaea (cf. 1 Maccabees, 8.3.). And the mines that Rome had annexed from Carthage had been exploited with gusto. A single network of tunnels might spread for more than a hundred square miles, and provide upwards of forty thousand slaves with a living death. Over the pockmarked landscape there would invariably hang a pall of smog, belched out from the smelting furnaces through giant chimneys, and so heavy with chemicals that it burned the naked skin and turned it white. Birds would die if they flew through the fumes.

To be a citizen was to know that one was free - such certainty suffused every citizen's sense of himself. Better to die than live a slave: this was the lesson that a Roman drew in with his breath. A Roman would submit to an Emperor, be grateful to him, even admire him - but one could never repress the resulting sense of shame.

Lit. 'with eye-services'.

'As men-pleasers'.

Lit. 'there is no respect of persons'.