The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon. Alexander Maclaren
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Alexander Maclaren
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664609120
Table of Contents
I. THE WRITER AND THE READERS.
IV. THE FATHER’S GIFTS THROUGH THE SON.
V. THE GLORY OF THE SON IN HIS RELATION TO THE FATHER, THE UNIVERSE AND THE CHURCH.
VII. THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF RECONCILIATION AND ITS HUMAN CONDITIONS.
VIII. JOY IN SUFFERING, AND TRIUMPH IN THE MANIFESTED MYSTERY.
IX. THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY IN ITS THEME, METHODS AND AIM.
X. PAUL’S STRIVING FOR THE COLOSSIANS.
XI. CONCILIATORY AND HORTATORY TRANSITION TO POLEMICS.
XII. THE BANE AND THE ANTIDOTE.
XIV. THE CROSS THE DEATH OF LAW AND THE TRIUMPH OVER EVIL POWERS.
XV. WARNINGS AGAINST TWIN CHIEF ERRORS, BASED UPON PREVIOUS POSITIVE TEACHING.
XVI. TWO FINAL TESTS OF THE FALSE TEACHING.
XVII. THE PRESENT CHRISTIAN LIFE, A RISEN LIFE.
XVIII. SLAYING SELF THE FOUNDATION PRECEPT OF PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY.
XIX. THE NEW NATURE WROUGHT OUT IN NEW LIFE.
XX. THE GARMENTS OF THE RENEWED SOUL.
XXI. THE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF THE PEACE OF CHRIST, THE WORD OF CHRIST, AND THE NAME OF CHRIST.
XXIII. PRECEPTS FOR THE INNERMOST AND OUTERMOST LIFE.
XXIV. TYCHICUS AND ONESIMUS, THE LETTER-BEARERS.
XXV. SALUTATIONS FROM THE PRISONER’S FRIENDS.
I.
THE WRITER AND THE READERS.
“Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colossæ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”—Col. i, 1, 2 (Rev. Ver.).
We may say that each of Paul’s greater epistles has in it one salient thought. In that to the Romans, it is Justification by faith; in Ephesians, it is the mystical union of Christ and His Church; in Philippians, it is the joy of Christian progress; in this epistle, it is the dignity and sole sufficiency of Jesus Christ as the Mediator and Head of all creation and of the Church.
Such a thought is emphatically a lesson for the day.
The Christ whom the world needs to have proclaimed in every deaf ear and lifted up before blind and reluctant eyes, is not merely the perfect man, nor only the meek sufferer, but the Source of creation and its Lord, Who from the beginning has been the life of all that has lived, and before the beginning was in the bosom of the Father. The shallow and starved religion which contents itself with mere humanitarian conceptions of Jesus of Nazareth needs to be deepened and filled out by these lofty truths before it can acquire solidity and steadfastness sufficient to be the unmoved foundation of sinful and mortal lives. The evangelistic teaching which concentrates exclusive attention on the cross as “the work of Christ,” needs to be led to the contemplation of them, in order to understand the cross, and to have its mystery as well as its meaning declared. This letter itself dwells upon two applications of its principles to two classes of error which, in somewhat changed forms, exist now as then—the error of the ceremonialist, to whom religion was mainly a matter of ritual, and the error of the speculative thinker, to whom the universe was filled with forces which