Colossians 3

Colossians 3 is the chapter where the cosmic Christology of chapter 1 and the polemic against the philosophy of chapter 2 become lived. The hinge is the chapter’s opening verse: “if then you were raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God” (verse 1). The conditional if is rhetorical, not skeptical; the raising has happened (chapter 2’s baptismal participation has named it), and the imperative seek follows directly from the indicative. Where the philosophy of chapter 2 had been promising additional access through asceticism, calendar observance, and angelic mediation, chapter 3 says the believer is already with Christ at God’s right hand and already hidden with him in God; the spiritual life is the walking out of that location, not the climbing toward it.

The chapter has three movements. The first (verses 1 to 11) is the indicative-then-imperative put off / put on logic, climaxing in one of the New Testament’s clearest statements of the new humanity formed in Christ: there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, or free person; but Christ is all, and in all (verse 11). The second (verses 12 to 17) is the chapter’s positive ethical instruction: the texture of life inside the new humanity, organized around peace, the word of Christ dwelling richly, and gratitude in everything done in his name. The third (verses 18 to 4:1, spilling into the next chapter) is the Colossian household codes in compact form, paralleling but condensing the longer treatment of Ephesians 5:21-6:9, with the slavery codes especially extended (3:22-4:1) and concluding with the same cruciform grammar: you have a Master in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.

Underneath everything is the chapter’s identity-grounded ethics. The Colossian believer does what the chapter prescribes because she has been raised with Christ, because her life is hidden with him in God, because Christ is her life, because she has put off the old anthropos and put on the new. The imperatives flow from the indicatives. The walk Colossians 3 is forming is not effort-based moralism; it is the wearing out of an identity that is already true in him.

A · Colossians 3:1-11 · Raised with Christ: put off the old, put on the new

¹ If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. ² Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. ³ For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory. ⁵ Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶ For these things’ sake the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. ⁷ You also once walked in those, when you lived in them, ⁸ but now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth. ⁹ Don’t lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings, ¹⁰ and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator, ¹¹ where there can’t be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, or free person; but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:1-11, World English Bible)

1. If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God (verse 1). The chapter’s structural hinge. The Greek conditional ei oun (“if then”) is rhetorical; the raising is the given (the Greek aorist passive synēgerthēte, “you were raised together with,” echoes 2:12). The imperative that follows, seek the things that are above (ta anō zēteite), names the directional orientation of the raised life. Where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God, the Psalm 110:1 enthronement language that runs through New Testament Christology, naming Christ’s cosmic position. The believer’s seeking is therefore not a quest toward a Christ at a distance; it is the orientation of attention of a believer already located with him in the enthronement.
2. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (verses 2-3). The chapter’s deepest interior claim. The Greek phroneite (“set your mind”) names not just thinking about but being oriented by the things above. The grammar is decisive: you died (apethanete, aorist; the believer’s death with Christ in baptism, 2:12) and your life is hidden (kekryptai, perfect; an act in the past with continuing effect) with Christ in God. The believer’s true location is currently hidden: the world does not see it, the Colossian philosophy does not chart it, even the believer often does not feel it. But it is real, and it is with Christ in God. The verb kryptō (“to hide”) in the Pauline corpus often names that which is currently concealed but will be revealed. Verse 4 will make this explicit.

Where this lands: hidden with Christ in God

Colossians 3:3 is one of the chapter’s most pastorally weighted verses, and one of the most easily missed. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Three nested locations. Your life is with Christ; Christ is in God; therefore your life is in God, through Christ, hidden. The pastoral consequence is that the believer’s real spiritual reality is currently not visible, not to the world’s evaluation, not to the philosophy’s measurement, often not even to the believer’s own emotional experience. The Christian whose spiritual life feels small, ordinary, unspectacular, or fragile, is reading the wrong instrument. The actual measure of her spiritual life is not her interior weather but her location, and her location is hidden with Christ in God. The Colossian philosophy was promising visible spiritual depth through visible ascetic practices and visible visionary experiences; Paul’s word here is that the deepest spiritual reality is currently invisible, secured in him, awaiting the revealing of verse 4. The believer is not asked to feel this verse; she is asked to know it. The interior weather will fluctuate; the location does not. Hidden with Christ in God is, on the lane’s reading, one of the most quietly steadying sentences in the New Testament. It is permission to stop measuring yourself by the visible.

1. When Christ, our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory (verse 4). The eschatological completion. The Greek hotan ho Christos phanerōthē (“when Christ is revealed”) names the parousia, Christ’s coming appearance, the moment at which what is currently hidden becomes visible. The phrase Christ, our life (ho Christos hē zōē hēmōn) is one of the most concentrated Pauline identity statements in the canon: Christ is not just Lord, not just Savior, not just Brother, but life itself, the believer’s actual ongoing existence. And the promise: then you will also be revealed with him in glory (tote kai hymeis syn autō phanerōthēsesthe en doxē). The participatory grammar runs through. As Christ is currently hidden in God, so the believer is currently hidden with him; as Christ will be revealed, so the believer will be revealed with him; as Christ will be revealed in glory, so the believer will be revealed with him in glory. The eschatological completion is the unveiling of an identity that is already true.
2. Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry (verse 5). The chapter’s first imperative-list. The verb nekrōsate (“put to death”) is sharper than the related kill of Romans 8:13; it is the cognate of nekros (“a corpse”). The members on the earth (the Greek melē epi tēs gēs) are the residual practices of the old anthropos, named in a five-item vice list: porneia (sexual immorality, the broad term for unsanctioned sexual conduct), akatharsia (uncleanness), pathos (depraved passion), epithymia kakē (evil desire), and pleonexia (covetousness, grasping greed, which is idolatry). The parallel to Ephesians 5:3-5 is close. The closing identification of covetousness with idolatry is structurally significant: greed is named not as a moral failing but as a worship, a transfer of devotion from God to the thing grasped after. The parallel with Eph 5:5 makes this Paul’s settled judgment. The vice-list of verse 5 names the grasping postures of the old age; verse 8 will name the violent postures.
3. For these things’ sake the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. You also once walked in those, when you lived in them, but now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth. Don’t lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator (verses 6-10). The chapter’s second vice-list (the verbal-violence vices: anger, wrath, malice, slander, shameful speech) is followed by the chapter’s central participatory ethic. The Greek apekdysamenoi ton palaion anthrōpon (having put off the old anthropos) and endysamenoi ton neon (having put on the new) are aorist middle participles, naming the put-off-and-put-on as already accomplished. The clothing metaphor is precise: the believer has already taken off the old anthropos and already put on the new; the ethical practice is the walking out of that already-true wardrobe.

Word study: anthrōpos in Colossians 3:9-11 (the new humanity refigured)

The Greek noun anthrōpos (“human, person”) in Colossians 3 carries the same Adamic theology that runs through Ephesians (2:15, the new anthropos; 4:13, the mature anthropos; 4:22-24, the old and new anthropos). The chapter’s progression is exact. The old anthropos (palaios anthrōpos, verse 9) is the pre-incorporation human under the old age; the new anthropos (neos anthrōpos, verse 10) is the renewed identity in Christ. The phrase after the image of his Creator (kat’ eikona tou ktisantos auton, verse 10) draws Genesis 1:26-27 directly into the chapter: the new humanity is the image of God restored, refigured around the risen Christ who is himself the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15). The Adam-Christology of Colossians 1:15-20 (Christ as the image) and 3:10 (the believer renewed after the image of the Creator) form a single coherent doctrine: Christ is the image; the believer is in him, being renewed after the image. And verse 11 then completes the move: there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, or free person; but Christ is all, and in all. The categories the old anthropos was organized by (ethnic, religious-ritual, cultural-civilizational, legal-social) are abolished as salvific markers in the new humanity. Christ is the new ground of identity; the old markers have lost their power to divide. See the vocabulary of humanity and the image of God.

1. where there can’t be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, or free person; but Christ is all, and in all (verse 11). One of the New Testament’s clearest statements of the new humanity. The list is more expansive than Galatians 3:28’s three-pair structure (Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female): Colossians adds circumcision/uncircumcision (the religious-ritual divide), barbarian/Scythian (the cultural-civilizational divide; barbarians were any non-Greek-speakers, and Scythians were stereotyped in the Greco-Roman imagination as the most savage of the barbarian peoples, the verse names them specifically as also incorporated). The verse’s climactic clause, Christ is all, and in all (panta kai en pasin Christos), is grammatically striking: it is not just “Christ is everything in everyone“; it is “Christ is all and is in all.” The cosmic Christology of chapter 1 is now applied to the new humanity: he is all things, and he is in all the members of the body. See one new humanity.

B · Colossians 3:12-17 · The texture of the new humanity

¹² Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance; ¹³ bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do. ¹⁴ Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. ¹⁵ And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful. ¹⁶ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. ¹⁷ Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:12-17, World English Bible)

1. Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance (verse 12). The five virtues to be put on (the cognate of verse 10’s put on the new; the wearing of the new humanity is named in specifics). Splanchna oiktirmou (“heart of compassion”) is literally “innards of mercy”, the Greek thought of the bowels as the seat of deep compassion (cf. Phil 1:8, “the bowels of Christ”). The chosen-people language (eklektoi tou theou, hagioi kai ēgapēmenoi, “chosen ones of God, holy and beloved”) echoes the Hebrew Bible’s covenantal vocabulary (Deut 7:6-8; Isa 41:8-9) and applies it directly to the Colossian gentile believers: they are the chosen, holy, and beloved people now.
2. bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do (verse 13). The chapter’s most concentrated Christ-grounded ethic. Bearing with (anechomenoi) and forgiving (charizomenoi, from the cognate of charis, grace; “grace-ing each other”) are the daily relational practices of life together. The grounding clause is decisive: as Christ forgave you, so you also do. The Pauline cruciform pattern (the believer enacts what she has received) appears here with full force. The Christian’s forgiveness is not a moral muscle exerted but a re-enactment of the forgiveness already received. See the cruciform hermeneutic.
3. Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful (verses 14-15). The chapter’s two climactic relational virtues, love and peace. Love is the bond of perfection (syndesmos tēs teleiotētos, the ligament that holds the mature body together, the architectural-anatomical image returns from 2:19); without love, the body cannot hold. Peace is the chapter’s pastoral umpire: the Greek brabeuetō (“let it rule”) is the verb for an athletic referee’s decisive call. When relational friction arises in the body, the peace of Christ is the umpire whose call settles the question. The phrase called in one body echoes the one new humanity of verse 11. The closing imperative is be thankful, the Pauline disposition that organizes daily life.
4. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (verses 16-17). The chapter’s word and worship close. The word of Christ (ho logos tou Christou) is the apostolic teaching about and from Christ, the same teaching the Colossians had received (2:6). It is to dwell in you richly (plousiōs, “abundantly”). The teaching-and-admonishing happens to one another, these are not exclusively pastoral practices but body-wide practices, the same pattern Ephesians 5:18-21 names. The three musical categories (psalms, hymns, spiritual songs; same triad as Eph 5:19) name the early church’s actual worship repertoire. And the chapter’s climactic imperative: whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. The Colossian believer’s whole life, word and deed, is to be lived in the name of the cosmic Christ of chapter 1. Every act has a referent; every word has a sponsor; everything is in him.

C · Colossians 3:18-25 · The household codes

¹⁸ Wives, be in subjection to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. ¹⁹ Husbands, love your wives, and don’t be bitter against them. ²⁰ Children, obey your parents in all things, for this pleases the Lord. ²¹ Fathers, don’t provoke your children, so that they won’t be discouraged. ²² Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. ²³ And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, ²⁴ knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ. ²⁵ But he who does wrong will receive again for the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality. (Colossians 3:18-25, World English Bible. The masters’ counter-command follows immediately in 4:1.)

1. Wives, be in subjection to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and don’t be bitter against them (verses 18-19). The Colossian household codes open with the marriage pair, the same opening as Ephesians 5:22-33 but in radically compressed form. Where Ephesians takes twelve verses, Colossians takes two. The wife’s instruction be in subjection (hypotassesthe, the same verb as Eph 5:22) is qualified by as is fitting in the Lord (hōs anēken en kyriō), the phrase in the Lord names the frame inside which submission operates and limits it. The husband’s instruction love your wives (agapate, cruciform self-giving) is followed by the negative counter-command don’t be bitter against them (mē pikrainesthe pros autas, “do not be sharp/bitter toward them”). The Greek pikrainō names a resentful, harsh, embittered posture; the husband is forbidden it. For the full theological framework on the household codes’ structural inversion of Greco-Roman household conventions, see the household codes and the Ephesians 5 commentary.
2. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, don’t provoke your children, so that they won’t be discouraged (verses 20-21). The parent-child pair. Children obey in all things (qualified, like the wife’s submission, by being in the Lord: 3:20’s “pleases the Lord” is the limiting clause). The fathers’ counter-command parallels Eph 6:4 (do not provoke your children to wrath) with one important emotional addition: Colossians names the resulting harm as discouragement (athymeō, “to lose heart”). The father whose pattern of authority discourages his children is exercising authority against the chapter’s grammar. The Christianity Colossians 3 is forming protects children’s spirits from parental erosion. The parallel to Eph 6:1-4 carries over into Colossians without significant variation.

Influence callout: Esau McCaulley on the slavery codes (3:22-25, 4:1) and the Black church’s reading

Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black (IVP, 2020) is the lane’s anchor for reading Colossians 3:22-25 alongside Ephesians 6:5-9 and 1 Peter 2:18-25 as the New Testament’s slave-codes corpus. McCaulley’s argument: the slaves who heard 3:22 (servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh) heard in the same letter 4:1 (masters, give to your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven) and 3:11 (there cannot be… bondservant, or free person; but Christ is all, and in all) and 3:25 (he who does wrong will receive again for the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality). The Black church tradition’s reading of these chapters held the entire passage together, refusing the antebellum white Southern truncation that quoted only 3:22 and ignored the rest. The chapter’s grammar refuses such truncation. The Greek kata sarka in 3:22 (“according to the flesh”) is the chapter’s quiet qualifier: the master’s authority is real but limited, exercised “according to the flesh,” at a different ontological level than the lordship of the Lord Christ (kyriō Christō, verse 24) whom the slave actually serves. The 1st-century slave who heard this passage understood the verse’s relational logic perfectly: she had a flesh-master, real and dangerous; she also had a Master in heaven, more real and decisively final; and the latter relativized the former. The Black church tradition’s preaching of this passage during the antebellum period and beyond has consistently named the verse’s consoling dimension (the slave’s labor is not unwitnessed by her true Master) and the verse’s political dimension (the master has a Master too, and the partiality the master practices is not the partiality of the heavenly Master). The complete reading is the McCaulley reading. The truncated reading that turned 3:22 into a slaveholding warrant was the historical betrayal. See slavery and the trajectory.

1. Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ. But he who does wrong will receive again for the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality (verses 22-25). The chapter’s longest section of the household codes is the slavery passage, longer than the marriage and parent-child sections combined. Three structural notes. First, the slave’s labor is reframed Christologically: she works as for the Lord and not for men (verse 23). The Lord here is the cosmic Christ of chapter 1; the slave’s actual employer is the One who created and holds together all things. Second, the reward of the inheritance is named (verse 24): the slave who labored faithfully receives an inheritance, and in the 1st-century Roman world, inheritance (klēronomia) was unavailable to slaves, who as res (things) had no legal property rights and could not inherit. Paul’s word you serve the Lord Christ (verse 24, the only New Testament occurrence of the verbal phrase douleuete tō kyriō Christō) reframes the slave’s entire life: her labor is service to the Lord, and her reward is an inheritance that her social status could never grant. Third, the closing verse (25) names the limit on injustice: he who does wrong will receive again for the wrong that he has done, and there is no partiality (ouk estin prosōpolēmpsia). The grammatical antecedent is debated (is verse 25 addressed to slaves who do wrong, or to masters who do wrong? The Greek ho gar adikōn, “for the one doing injustice,” is ambiguous). The lane reads it as principally addressing the masters who have been quietly listening to the slave-instruction: their injustice will be repaid, and the partiality (the face-receiving by which they judge their slaves with less weight than themselves) is not practiced by the heavenly Master. The verse is the same theological move as Eph 6:9 (“there is no partiality with him”). The masters’ counter-command in 4:1 follows directly.

Reflection prompts

1. Your life is hidden with Christ in God (verse 3). The believer’s deepest spiritual reality is currently invisible, not measured by interior weather or external evaluation. Where in your life have you been measuring your spiritual condition by visible markers (feelings, achievements, others’ judgment) when the chapter says the actual measure is hidden with Christ in God? What changes if you stop trying to see the hidden life and start trusting its location?
2. The chapter’s put off / put on is in the aorist tense (verse 9): the believer has already put off the old anthropos and already put on the new. The ethical instructions of verses 5, 8, and 12 are about walking out of that already-true wardrobe, not acquiring a new one. Where in your spiritual life have you been treating the new identity as something to be earned through ethical effort, when the chapter says it is already worn? What does it look like to walk in what you already are?
3. Verse 11 abolishes Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, bondservant and free as salvific markers in the new humanity. The categories remain real socially, but they have lost their power to divide in Christ. Where in your church, your friendships, your neighborhood are these dividing lines still functioning as real distinctions of belonging? What would it look like for Christ is all and in all (verse 11) to actually shape who sits at your table?

Frameworks at play in this chapter: in Christ: participation and union, one new humanity, the vocabulary of humanity, the image of God, the cruciform hermeneutic, the household codes, slavery and the trajectory, two ways.