The Bible continually flags prayer as important and powerful and central to our relationship with God, yet it’s something that’s easy to overlook. We can be great organisers of activities, distributing leaflets, sharing messages on social media, making sure there are custard creams and tea bags at the ready, and ensuring the sound system is…

In Colossians 2, Paul urges the young church in Colossae to stick firmly to what we might now call orthodox Christian views. In the background, this church faces a danger now know as the Colossian heresy. This is not a church that has gone completely off the rails and reinvented itself into a cult: Paul…

Today we are going to look at three of the big ideas in Colossians 1:24-29, including an especially big idea about “progressive revelation”. 1. Christianity involves suffering Although the Holy Spirit has been provided to us and many miracles have taken place, God has not offered us a magic wand in which anything miraculous will…

Sometimes you’ll hear Christians promote the idea: “Once saved always saved”. It’s a reassuring claim – though not one that I subscribe to, in part because of passages such as Colossians 1:22-23. Andrew David Naselli, a prominent Calvinist scholar and pastor in the US, says the concept is “misleading“. What does Colossians 1:22-23 say? Paul…

In the second portion of Colossians 1, Paul switches to talking about Christology – the part of theology that studies the nature and work of Jesus. But before we dig into the content, let’s quickly look at the style. Some consider the passage to be an early Christian hymn, called The Hymn in Honour of…

Colossians 1 starts with Paul giving some encouragement to his audience. But who are they? Paul’s readers in Colossians Colossae was part of a major trading route in the Lycus valley, named after a river in Phrygia in Anatolia. This is now modern-day Turkey. It was famous at the time for manufacturing woollen fabrics. There…