Colossians3chapter 3

Colossians 3:1-2

If ye then be risen with Christ takes the burial and rising of 2:12 as already accomplished fact and builds the whole chapter's ethic on it, not a command to become something but an instruction to live as what has already happened. Seek and set your affection both name a settled direction of the mind rather than a single act, aimed at where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God, the place of highest honor and rule. Things above and things on the earth are not matter against spirit but the risen life's true center against every rival center the old life offered.

Colossians 3:3-4

Ye are dead states what 2:20 already argued, and your life is hid with Christ in God pictures a treasure placed beyond a thief's reach, safe precisely because it is no longer visible or in the believer's own keeping. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear names him the believer's very life, not merely its source, and the hidden life is promised a public unveiling, then shall ye also appear with him in glory, the same hope named at 1:27, Christ in you, the hope of glory, come to its full flowering. The hiding is temporary; the appearing is certain.

Colossians 3:5-6

Mortify is put to death, a decisive act rather than a gradual fading, aimed at members which are upon the earth, the old life's practices treated as if they belonged to a body already dead in verse 3. The list runs from act to root, fornication and uncleanness naming the deed, covetousness naming the idolatry underneath it, an appetite that makes a god of what it wants. For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh states the judgment these practices earn without softening, the ground the mercy of chapter 1 answers rather than excuses.

Colossians 3:7-8

In the which ye also walked some time locates the list of verse 5 in the readers' own past, not a hypothetical danger but a life they actually lived before Christ. But now ye also put off all these turns from bodily sins to the sins of the tongue and temper, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, a second list as serious as the first though less often named so. Put off is the same garment language the chapter will use for putting on the new man, sin pictured as clothing stripped away rather than a nature merely restrained.

Colossians 3:9-10

Lie not one to another names the specific sin the surrounding list has been building toward, and the reason given reaches back to something already done, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, a completed exchange rather than an ongoing struggle to achieve. The new man is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him, echoing Genesis 1:26 and answering the false teachers' counterfeit knowledge with the true renewal that restores the image lost at the fall. Knowledge here is not information gathered but a man being remade to see and know truly, the same epignosis prayed for at 1:9.

Colossians 3:11

The pairs named cover every division the ancient world drew hardest, Greek and Jew by religion, circumcision and uncircumcision by covenant sign, Barbarian and Scythian by culture and civility, bond and free by law, and the verse levels them all in Christ exactly as Galatians 3:28 and Ephesians 2:14-15 do, not by erasing the categories in the world but by making none of them the ground of standing before God. Scythian named the ancient world's byword for the uncivilized, so its presence beside Barbarian pushes the leveling to the furthest edge the readers could imagine. Christ is all, and in all closes the list by naming the one reality that actually replaces every old division, not a blank sameness but a single new center.

Colossians 3:12-13

Put on therefore answers put off from verse 9 with the same clothing picture reversed, and the list moves from the inward disposition, bowels of mercies, to its outward practice, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, each virtue built to bear with people who are hard to bear. Forbearing and forgiving name what those virtues do in practice, a quarrel assumed as likely rather than hypothetical, and the standard set is exact, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, no lower measure permitted. As the elect of God, holy and beloved grounds the whole command in identity already given, not a status still to be earned by achieving it.

Colossians 3:14-15

Above all these things put on charity names love the crowning garment over every other virtue, the bond of perfectness, the single tie that holds the whole list together as one completed whole rather than a loose collection of separate qualities. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts uses an umpire's word, brabeuo, the peace called on to settle every dispute the way a judge settles a contest, to which also ye are called in one body naming the church itself as the arena that peace was meant to govern. Be ye thankful closes the sentence as it began the chapter's earlier turns, gratitude the recurring posture of the risen life.

Colossians 3:16-17

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly asks for more than occasional visits, a permanent and generous indwelling that then overflows into teaching and admonishing one another; the same Spirit-filled activity Ephesians 5:19 describes appears here without naming the Spirit directly, since the chapter has grounded everything in Christ rather than repeating Ephesians' phrasing. Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs names the church's worship in three overlapping terms rather than three rival categories, and singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord keeps the outward song tied to an inward reality; a note that carries only partisan argument about musical style misses what the verse is actually commanding. Whatsoever ye do in word or deed widens the command from song to the whole of life, every act offered in the name of the Lord Jesus with thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:18-19

The household code opens with wives and husbands as it does at Ephesians 5:22-25, submit yourselves given as fit in the Lord, a qualification that places the instruction inside Christ's own rule rather than granting a husband unlimited authority. Husbands love your wives answers the greater weight of the paired command with its own demand, and be not bitter against them names the specific failure a husband is warned against, a harshness that turns headship into harm. The text is taught as it stands, without a house verdict added to it and without any word placed in the founder's own name beyond what the text itself says.

Colossians 3:20-21

Children obey your parents in all things is grounded the same way as the wives' instruction, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord, obedience read as an act of worship rather than mere household order. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger balances the command at once, naming a real danger in the exercise of parental authority, lest they be discouraged, a Greek word for losing heart entirely rather than simple frustration. The pairing keeps either side of the relationship from becoming an excuse for the other's failure.

Colossians 3:22-25

Servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh addresses an institution the text regulates rather than abolishes outright, the same address Ephesians 6:5-8 gives and the same case Paul takes up by name in the letter carried alongside this one, Philemon, where Onesimus returns not as property but as a beloved brother. Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers but in singleness of heart, fearing God turns the lowest labor into an act done as to the Lord, and knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance promises a servant what Roman law could never grant him, an inheritance alongside free men. There is no respect of persons closes the section with the same leveling truth as verse 11, applied now to a master's own accountability for wrong done, for the coming chapter's just and equal at 4:1 is already implied here.