NOTES for Col 4:2-9

Paul singles out one very important aspect of spiritual life: constancy. And, judging from the apostle's words, this should be constant thanksgiving. To people without faith, such a call sounds somewhat artificial: the demand to thank God for everything, even for what cannot in any way be called good for a person, seems unnatural to them, and often hypocritical.

Still, one has to admit that even a believer, if he remains within traditional religious boundaries, usually gives thanks for problems, hardships, and misfortunes, if he does so at all, with some strain and more out of religious duty. That is understandable: God does not want evil for a person and does not create it at all; any evil is the work of the hands and wills of those who either directly oppose God or ignore Him. Evil does not come from God, although at times He permits it to exist, and then the Bible speaks of such evil as "evil from God."

But even permission turns out not to be God's desire to do evil in order, for example, to punish someone, as religious consciousness sees the situation, but a consequence of the abuse of the freedom that God gives every being He has created who possesses self-awareness and therefore the ability to build a conscious relationship with Him. What, then, can a person thank God for when, as it appears, nothing good is happening in his life?

The answer may be Paul's mention of prayer, the very constancy in which he urges. Of course, if we treat prayer only as a religious duty, as words we are required to say to God some number of times a day, it can hardly help us, especially in a difficult situation. With that kind of prayer, what usually happens is what believers who find themselves in such a situation often complain about: there are already plenty of problems, there is no strength and no time, and now one still has to find time to pray...

But the apostle is plainly not speaking about that kind of prayer. He speaks of real prayer, the kind that involves the meeting of two wills, God's and human, in that inner space of a person where his spiritual life is born. This is something entirely different: such prayer opens another reality to a person, the reality of God's world, the reality of the Kingdom. And here there is always something for which to thank God. Here is the fullness of life, which is always with the one who prays and which no one will take away from him. A fullness for which thanksgiving is entirely natural, just as the apostle says.

Of what "mystery of Christ" does Paul speak? And how should it be "proclaimed"? It would seem that the answer is clear: the issue is Christianity, Christian teaching. And everything would indeed be clear if Jesus had left the world some teaching that His disciples and followers were to spread. But the point is that He left the world no teaching.

And the apostles, like their contemporaries, the representatives of the first Christian generation, knew this very well. Christian teaching, dogmatics, theology, morality, appeared later, after two or three centuries. The first Christians knew perfectly well what we today often forget: Christianity is not a new teaching, but a new life. Life with Christ in His Kingdom.

Of course, people living in the Kingdom can, and inevitably must, have their own specific perception of the world connected with the experience of this life. A perception capable of giving rise to a new morality and a new theology. But all this is secondary, while at the foundation of Christian experience lies precisely life, the life of the Kingdom. And it was precisely the mystery of the life of the Kingdom that Paul had to reveal to those to whom he bore witness about Christ and the Kingdom. Moreover, he had to do this while in prison. It would seem that imprisonment is not the best situation for preaching.

However, judging by the testimony both of Acts and of Paul himself, his imprisonment was not very strict. At least visits were permitted to him, and he used this permission quite actively. But the matter is not only the possibility of communication. If the issue were preaching one or another idea, one or another teaching, everything would be simpler. Words are words, ideas are ideas; what matters here is what a person says. Paul, however, had to show his listeners, even while in prison, not words and not ideas, but life. The very life of the Kingdom that is the main "mystery" of Christianity.

The apostle does not accidentally speak of a "mystery": the corresponding Greek word even in pre-Christian times meant something connected with another, unearthly life, the experience of which belonged to those initiated into pagan religious mysteries. Those initiated into these mysteries spoke of them little and reluctantly, not so much because they sought to hide them from the uninitiated as because they understood that their experience could be lived through personally, it could be demonstrated, but it could hardly be conveyed in words.

It is likewise very difficult to convey in words the experience of the life of the Kingdom. But if it truly exists, if a person lives this life, it cannot be hidden. Even when one is sitting in prison. People coming to an inhabitant of the Kingdom will see not the prison in which he is located, but the Kingdom in which his life takes place. The main thing is that it take place precisely there, even when physically one is in prison. This is what Paul asks prayer for.

Interesting, who Paul is calling "without"? And what does he mean by calling to communicate with these "without" reasonably, using any possibility (that implies the Greek corresponding expression, which means exactly "to use time the best way")? Usually in the early Christian Church, were called "without" all those who did not belong to it. If that is the case, then it turns out that Paul recommends to treat reasonably these people, who have no relation with the Church. But in what sense he says it?

Obviously, people not belonging to the Church, could either sympathize with the Christians, by being interested in their life and doctrine, or be enemy with them, or remain indifferent. Naturally, with the enemies, fruitful contacts could hardly be possible, but with the two other categories - completely. And it is all the same perhaps about not only that the contacts with those that are without, with whom they maintain, would be just as effective from the point of view of the resolution of concrete problems and questions, that it came to solve with these people.

It was also probably about the fact that every communication with those that are without became a witness. Indeed, if man lives in the Kingdom, he cannot hide it. He may not witness in the sense that we understand this word today, he may even say nothing about the Christianity. But the problem in fact is not only in what is said, but also in how. Ultimately, the Kingdom consists of relationships, the relationships of its residents between themselves and each of them with Christ.

And the man living in the Kingdom and knowing how to build and maintain such relationships, cannot simply treat differently the man that is without, who, certainly, will not be able not to notice a certain, at least, of such unusual relation to him: because in the non transformed world nothing similar can happen. And in such case, even ordinary, for example, a business meeting still turns out to be a witness of the Kingdom. At least because it allows to see on the example of a concrete person, the alternative to the non transformed world and the non transformed order of things.

Like any letter, the Epistle to the Colossians ends with friendly wishes and instructions, greetings from those who are near the Apostle, and brief news. Everything is as in an ordinary letter, apart from several aphoristic phrases that have become laws of Christian life. Again and again, Paul reminds us that a person's daily duty and need is prayer with thanksgiving—that is, unceasing communion with God, a dialogue in search of truth, and gratitude that this possibility has been given to us. We can continually contemplate the One who is Truth. Through this, our whole life is transformed into something wonderful and, as the Apostle puts it, we can conduct ourselves wisely toward outsiders.

Paul concludes the discussion of the Kingdom and spiritual life in his letter to the Colossian Christians with a call to prayer, so that when witness is required, everyone, including the apostle himself, may prove to be a worthy witness (vv. 2-6). This call of Paul's echoes another, in which the apostle calls his Colossian brothers to keep the word of Christ (Col. 3:16). Such a call is quite traditional with regard to the understanding of the sacred text and its role in spiritual life. Indeed, in Paul's day the rabbinic tradition saw in the Torah not only a text that required study and fulfillment, but also a way of communion with God and knowledge of God, which reading the Torah was for the believing Jew. Normal and full spiritual life required everyone to cultivate in his heart what was called the inner Torah: the spiritual core of the person, based on the practice of keeping the commandments and bearing witness to faithfulness to God and to the Torah, not only by word but by one's whole life.

Paul, however, as it appears, transfers this traditional idea of the inner Torah to those relationships of the faithful with Christ without which there is no Christianity. The inner Torah was always thought of as something inseparable from constant communion with God, so much so that in the Gospel era rabbinic circles even discussed the question of whether unceasing prayer was obligatory for the believing Jew. Paul also advises the Colossian Christians to remain constantly in prayer, perhaps having in mind some practice of this kind (v. 2).

Yet in this case the apostle considered the chief task to be not only the formation of the inner Torah in the hearts of his addressees, but also their rooting in the life of the Kingdom. This was the continuation of the former tradition, newly understood in the light of the new messianic revelation and the experience of the life of the Kingdom. And now the faithful were called to bear witness not only to their faithfulness to God and to the Torah, but also to the Kingdom of which they had become partakers. The apostle calls his Colossian brothers to such witness, considering it the chief task of every Christian in our transforming world, which has not yet been transformed to the end.