4 After hearing of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which you have for all the saints,
For this cause I, having had news of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and which you make clear to all the saints,
Having ever in mind your work of faith and acts of love and the strength of your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father;
Hearing of the love and the faith which you have to the Lord Jesus and to all the saints;
And not by his coming only, but by the comfort which he had in you, while he gave us word of your desire, your sorrow, your care for me; so that I was still more glad.
But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has given us good news of your faith and love, and that you have happy memories of us, desiring greatly to see us, even as we do to see you;
But about loving the brothers, there is no need for me to say anything to you in this letter: for you have the teaching of God that love for one another is right and necessary; And, truly, you are lovers of all the brothers in Macedonia; but it is our desire that your love may be increased still more;
For God is true, and will not put away from him the memory of your work and of your love for his name, in the help which you gave and still give to the saints.
Who through him have faith in God who took him up again from the dead into glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God. And as you have made your souls clean, being ruled by what is true, and loving one another without deceit, see that your love is warm and from the heart: Because you have had a new birth, not from the seed of man, but from eternal seed, through the word of a living and unchanging God.
And this is his law, that we have faith in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love for one another, even as he said to us.
And we have seen and had faith in the love which God has for us. God is love, and everyone who has love is in God, and God is in him.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Colossians 1
Commentary on Colossians 1 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 1
We have here,
Col 1:1-2
Col 1:3-8
Here he proceeds to the body of the epistle, and begins with thanksgiving to God for what he had heard concerning them, though he had no personal acquaintance with them, and knew their state and character only by the reports of others.
Col 1:9-11
The apostle proceeds in these verses to pray for them. He heard that they were good, and he prayed that they might be better. He was constant in this prayer: We do not cease to pray for you. It may be he could hear of them but seldom, but he constantly prayed for them.-And desire that you may be filled with the knowledge, etc. Observe what it is that he begs of God for them,
Col 1:12-29
Here is a summary of the doctrine of the gospel concerning the great work of our redemption by Christ. It comes in here not as the matter of a sermon, but as the matter of a thanksgiving; for our salvation by Christ furnishes us with abundant matter of thanksgiving in every view of it: Giving thanks unto the Father, v. 12. He does not discourse of the work of redemption in the natural order of it; for then he would speak of the purchase of it first, and afterwards of the application of it. But here he inverts the order, because, in our sense and feeling of it, the application goes before the purchase. We first find the benefits of redemption in our hearts, and then are led by those streams to the original and fountain-head. The order and connection of the apostle's discourse may be considered in the following manner:-