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This series has revealed Paul’s Christo-centric cosmology which is fully embodied in and as our lives, This discovery frees us from institutional overreach, and also opens up a new way to live in the world apart from rule based religion. This Christoform pattern of identifying with Christ’s life, death and resurrection, provides a unique way of changing our identity by putting off our old self, and putting on Christ.

This letter also revealed it has nothing to do with Gnosticism which wouldn’t exist for 100 years, and couldn’t promote the Christian religion, which also didn’t exist. This gives us confidence that Paul’s exhortation is a reminder of the love and life of Christ living in and as our own lives.

Chapter four brings the closing credits, with Paul’s final greetings and reminders to Colossae. These rolling credits provide historical validity and remind us that this was a letter and not their Bible. I’m sure verses 7-18 can be mined for spiritual training and encouragement, but I don’t think they were intended for our modern day. These verses seem to have a timestamp and purpose for a specific audience. This can also be said about all the books of our Bible, therefore, it’s Paul’s training in living and dying with Christ as Christ that changes the rest of the letter into something helpful for modern believers.

With that being said, let’s consider his last nugget of advice before he rolls the credits:

² “(proskarteréo- associate closely, continue with intense effort) in prayer, being (alert, awake, alive) in it with thanksgiving.³ At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word (logos), to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— ⁴ that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. ⁵ Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. ⁶ Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” (Colossians 4:2-6)

In good circular Jewish thought, Paul lands right where he started, with the “mystery of Christ”, the word (logos), the gospel. We know this word is not the bible, and not limited solely to a message, but the Word is Christ Jesus. The message of this mystery is that Christ is alive, in us…as us. This message was not well received in the time of Colossae. Christ followers where known as “little Christs” or Christians because their mysterious message was that Christ was now inhabiting them, and since God was with and in them, religious rule keeping became superfluous, and they also need not follow the patterns of their world in politics. These “unaffiliated” Christ followers were viewed as potentially disruptive to social systems and their message resulted in Paul being placed in prison.

Despite the persecution and marginalization of this sect, Christ followers were motivated by the love of God to engage with all comers in such a way that whenever someone met them, they could essentially meet Christ Himself. Paul is appealing to a deeply spiritual awareness that requires our constant, ongoing, attention and focus upon the Lord, tying back into Paul’s admonishment to “set our minds on higher things.”

As we close out this study, may I ask you some questions that I believe are required based on Paul’s exhortation.

1. Has Paul’s necessary deconstruction of religion found a place in your own spiritual orientation? Paul said he lived as a strict Jewish pharisees (Acts 26:5), and in Philippians 3:3-7, he explains how he was more religious than anyone, but now counts it all as a loss for the sake of Christ. Could you count your entire religious experience as a loss for Christ? Your church, your denomination, your tradition, your community, your social, economic, and religious power which pretends to connect you to God, would you trade it all in to experience the mystery of Christ, bodily in and as your life? If your answer is no, then your faith is in your faith, and you haven’t understood Paul’s message. The logos (Word) has been obscured by your faith, and isn’t the basis for your faith.
2. Can you tell the difference between rule based morality and love based compassion? The religious systems of our world (kosmos) divides the world into “God’s people” and “Not God’s People” based upon behavior modification and compliance to external rules. Obedience is an external score card that determines eligibility. Paul’s internal flow of “putting on Christ in love” and “putting off” that which the world systems (kosmos)are concerned, redefines who are actually “God’s people.” Surprisingly, the religious don’t automatically make the cut. If your impulse is to “do religion” because you are supposed to, and not to join Christ who is your life, then Paul and Jesus would say you haven’t entered the Kingdom of God.
3. Are you willing to stop convincing yourself that you possess the love of Christ because you possess a religion? Are you willing to truly embrace Paul’s requirement for spiritual maturity which is measured by honest self awareness? Do you love Christ as He is embodied in your life? Or do you love the idea of Christ evacuating you from your life when you die? If your faith is to get you out of your body upon death, then you do not share the faith of Paul or the church in Colossae. So what must you do to establish such a faith? How can you become free of religion, and experience an embodied Christo-cosmology? If Christ is ALL, in ALL, then do you live as if that’s actually true?

I think you can see now how the implications of this small letter can transform a stuck religious heart into a totally new, love based Christ follower, who embraces their life as Christ’s life being lived a new, freshly told, in the present reality. What will it cost you to fully possess that experience? And are you willing to put off everything that isn’t that? Unfortunately, religion hasn’t led us in this direction, so an honest appraisal is that to follow Jesus, and Paul and the footsteps of the Apostles in the early church, it necessarily means we must put off religion. Paul put it best when he asked:

“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?”

Maybe it’s time we took seriously the invitation toward self reflecting via contemplation and solitude, and in so doing, perhaps the world would begin to see the return of Christ who lives closer to us than we are to ourselves.