Colossians3chapter 3

Against a teaching built on rules about handling and tasting, Paul's ethical section is built on identity: you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. What follows is put off and put on — the language of taking off a garment and putting on another, familiar from baptismal practice and from ordinary dressing.

The list of divisions abolished in the new self is worth reading slowly: Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free. "Barbarian" meant anyone whose speech sounded like babble, and Scythians were the byword for the most savage people known — the far northern nomads that Greek writers used as the limit case of uncivilized humanity. Naming them means the boundary has no outer edge.

The household code that follows is shorter than the one in Ephesians but has the same striking features: wives, children, and slaves addressed as moral agents in their own right, and the person with power told what he owes. Fathers are warned not to provoke their children lest they become discouraged; masters are told to give their slaves what is just and fair.

The section to slaves is the longest, which fits — this letter travels alongside a note about a runaway slave named Onesimus going home to his owner.