The Call to Deeper Maturity
As I’ve got older and (slightly) more experienced, I’ve realized that good parenting is all about helping our kids become mature. At the start, we have to parent by saying ‘no’ and by putting things out of reach, by explaining everything in detail and by winning lots of little battles. Ultimately though, we all want our children to grow up equipped, able to discern what is right and good, and able to decide for themselves between right and wrong - learning how to navigate away from the rubbish. Paul is adopting this strategy here with the church in Colossae. He is a father training young believers how to become mature.
It’s inspiring to read any of Paul’s New Testament letters, but this one is particularly exciting. Paul, in prison either in Rome or Ephesus (the history books are unclear), is writing here to a church he had not started, or ministered to, or even visited!
Epaphras is the guy credited with starting this church and he has joined Paul in prison, sharing with him the encouragements and challenges with the local church in Colossae. As we read the pages of Paul’s letters we are left with a clear picture of a man limited so often by the confinements of geography, house arrest, illness or time availability – yet never limited, it seems, in prayer! Paul’s apostolic ministry is built upon his deep commitment to prayer. For Paul, prayer is nothing less, or more, than a necessary pragmatic joy. Without prayer his ministry slams quickly into very obvious limitations.
Much debate has been had over the years concerning the primary motivation for Paul in writing this letter. Clearly something significant stirred him to write to a group he had never met. Many commentators believe there was a ‘Colossian heresy’ which Paul sought to confront and evict. And many believe this false teaching was a hybrid of good-old-fashioned
Judaism mixed with gnostic (we might say ‘New Age’) teaching. There are many variations on this suggestion but the common opinion is that false teaching was rife and doing much harm. Paul’s motive therefore, they say, was to rebut this teaching and correct it with the authentic gospel.
Into this discussion comes the refreshing and straightforward commentary written by N T Wright (Tyndale NT Commentaries 1986). Here, from the very first pages, he argues for a simpler and more obvious set of reasons for Paul to write. The issue, he suggests, is less about Paul confronting immature false teaching, but rather about rather Paul encouraging immature believers. For N T Wright the issue is far more about equipping the church to recognize and withstand all errors rather than pushing back against one error in detail.
Wright argues the risk of error here to be nothing more complicated than old Jewish practices being added to the simple gospel – he suggests that none of the errors mentioned obliquely by Paul need fall outside of the teaching or customs of conventional Judaism. He builds further with his suggestion that the error in play is not even attempting to draw people to new teachings but rather to an old lifestyle.
‘My hypothesis, then, is that all the elements of Paul’s polemic in Colossians make sense as warning against Judaism. The way to maturity for the people of God does not lie in their becoming Jews, but rather in their drawing out, and applying to personal and communal life, the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ N T Wright pg. 29 As we read through the letter we see a recurring theme. Paul’s clear goal is to raise the need for ‘wisdom and understanding’ leading to Christian maturity. (1:9, 1:28, 2:2, 2:23 false wisdom), 3:16, 4:5, 4:12).
Stepping back for a moment, we see Paul’s tactics in this letter to be universally applicable to every local church in every generation.
How mature are we?
Is Emmanuel equipped to see and decline errors when they appear?
Are we fully free from the draw of our old lifestyles – or do we attempt to mix the two,
making a horrible hybrid of gospel + secularism?
Are we able to receive input from others to help us grow and become mature?
Can we cultivate the same energy and dependence on prayer?
Our study in this letter will offer many opportunities for reflection, confession and growth.