es, his essays, differentiates two varying usages in the Pauline letters. When Hupatasa, this is number one, when Hupatasa was used in the active or in the sense of something grammatically called the divine passive, which I'm not going to unpack here, when it's used either of those situations, therefore as a description of the name of God, the act of subjugation and the fate of submission reveal the existence of a hierarchy or establish the proper order of right and might. What he means by that is when you have Hupatasa in a sentence, and it's an active verb, then the subject, the one who's doing the action, really describes, again, subjugating something. Again, and again, a number of contexts, you're going to, again, have the exertion of state authority or spiritual authority, like in God with these powers of darkness and whatnot. There are times Bart is saying, look, when it's active or when God is the actor, that's with divine passings. God is the external force. It often has this sort of rougher or more heavy-handed kind of feel because of God's own authority in a particular situation. But secondly, number two, he writes through the use of the middle or passive where God isn't the actor. When you get that situation, Paul is describing, and other New Testament writers would be describing, a voluntary attitude of giving in, of cooperating, of assuming responsibility or carrying a burden. This kind of subjection is demanded only of Christ or of persons who are in Christ. That's just some of his observations on how the New Testament uses this. In Colossians 318, this is what we have. We have a middle, a grammatical middle. Paul is telling the believers a classy, you voluntarily do this. Why do you voluntarily do this? Because it's easy, because you like it. No, this is a way to honor the Lord. At the end of the section, in particular, it's the references to what he's talking to slaves or servants. He says, just know that you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.  They have no legal standing. God sees that and he will repay. In the end, you will receive your inheritance as a reward, as a believer. Again, it's really the best that Paul can offer. When we get into the slavery section, I want to say a little bit more about that. You get the question, well, why doesn't Paul just demand that Christians rise up and revolt and declare slavery just the awful thing that it is?  You have to think of the context. The person who is vulnerable, the most vulnerable, in some cases, really the only person that's vulnerable is the slave in that situation. But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. We'll stick to the wives here in verse 18. Again, Bart's point, Dunn's point, Moose point, as what we're going to see here, is about, there's a voluntary aspect here. It's about order and accommodation. It's about humility. It's not about belittling someone, demeaning someone, this aggressive, heavy-handed feel. One last comment from Bart, he says, outside of Pauline writings, these observations aren't really applicable. I think that's important because we are in Paul's writings. What Paul has in view, again, is this kind of flavor to the term. Yes, well, that's all well and good. But how should we take this? What does it mean? How should we think about this? I think Moose has a handy section here. I've picked out a few things that he says. Then I'm going to offer something that, if you're really interested in this topic, you'll be able to get something on the episode site, episode page for this particular section and Colossians, if you really want to drill down into something particular, but we'll get to that in a moment. Moose writes here that the message, the translation of the message, translates Colossians 318 as understand and support your husbands. But as the data reveal, this illegitimately weakens the meaning of the verb. To be sure, as the husband loves his wife, he will often, in effect, put himself under her, deferring to her interests and needs. He cites Philippians 2, 3, and 4 there about the mind of Christ. But this submission of the husband to the wife is of a different character than the submission required of the wife to the husband. In this latter sense, the wife puts herself under her husband in recognizing and living out an order established by God himself within the marriage relationship and within the marriage relationship and by extension in the family of God. Again, because you're going to have some of these principles that are going to apply elsewhere. But I think we're wise with Dunn's earlier comments and a few of the others. Now, what's in view here is husbands and wives, Christ and the church. Yes, we have an analogy going on there, but on the human level, we've got Paul talking to wives, not just women everywhere. Again, because you have women who can function quite well independently. They don't have husbands. They're independent households, and that's just fine. And that becomes really important not only in the early church, like with house churches, but even in the New Testament. You have women who are conducting these house churches in their own homes. They have the means to do it. When you come into their home, it's their home. They're the ones in charge. So there's overlap between the individual home and the church. That's inevitable because you're meeting in somebody's home. Just like it would be today, you're meeting somebody's home. It's their home. We're not carrying over a husband-wife relationship as though it means that all the men in the church get to treat all the women in the church, get to demand submission or something like that. That is not in view. Unfortunately, we get that in some of our own some things that I'm sure all of us have heard about culturally either that we've experienced that we've just heard in the broader culture, but that is not in view in what's being discussed here. Now, back to Mu. He adds here, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11-3, the head of a wife is her husband. The husband as the prominent and directing member of the relationship is to take the lead in the marriage relationship. The submission of the wife can, of course, take the form of quote-unquote obedience, but three caveats at this point must be introduced in order to strike the right balance in Paul's teaching. First, it is probably significant that the household code here in Colossians urges wives to submit to their husbands, but children and slaves to obey their fathers and masters respectively. Let me stop there. Did you catch that? Paul does not use the word obey for the wife in relationship to the husband. He uses that vocabulary for the children and for the servants. He does not use it of the wife. Instead, the wife is to voluntarily put herself under the authority of her husband again in the orderly household relationship that Paul is zeroing in on here in the culture. Mu says it's probably significant. I would think it is because you can very easily have the same verb for all three things, all three groups, but he doesn't. Back to Mu, he says this pattern is typical, though not universal in the New Testament. It suggests that the New Testament writers put the relationship of wife to husband in a different and less authoritarian category than these others. Obedience naturally fits a situation in which orders are being issued and in which the party obeying has little choice in the matter. Submission, on the other hand, suggests a voluntary willingness to recognize and put oneself under the leadership of someone else. To submit is to recognize a relationship of order established by God. But submission to any human is always conditioned by the ultimate submission that each believer owes to God. Let me just stop there. Again, we have an ultimate authority. This statement in Colossians 318 isn't all Christian men do all Christian women. It's not that. It's also not about heavy handed authority. Paul doesn't even use the word obey here. He uses instead the word submit. Ultimately, the one voluntarily putting himself under the authority of someone else, ultimately, the person that they're submitting to isn't the final authority. The final authority is God. This is not a legitimization of an unbelieving husband telling a wife to do a certain thing that is contrary to the faith. It's not a legitimization of that at all because her ultimate authority is not her husband. At that point, it's God. There is an order and we can't just sort of pluck one part of the order out and harp on it and forget about the rest, the rest of what's going on theologically and back to move. He says, in any hierarchy we can imagine, God stands at the top of the chart. This means that a wife will sometimes have to disobey a husband, even a Christian one. If that husband commands her to do something contrary to God's will, even as she disobeys, however, she can continue to submit in a sense by recognizing that her husband remains her head, just not her ultimate head. Second caveat now that Mu has, that was all under the first one. The second caveat is that the submission of the wife to the husband is inevitably and necessarily conditioned significantly by the demand that husbands love their wives. And in so loving them, will often do the reverse. They will submit to their needs and their desires and wishes. He references Ephesians 5.21 there. The mutuality implied by the one flesh union of husband and wife and the husband's love of the wife must be given full weight, even as the need for wives to recognize the headship of their husbands is upheld. Third caveat, we might cautiously suggest that without eviscerating the word of its meaning, submission may take different forms in different cultures. I think that's certainly true again just to jump in here. Paul's is back to Mu. Paul's was a patriarchal culture in which a man, husband of a wife, father of children, master of slaves, the man ruled the household. The New Testament certainly does not abolish a certain kind of patriarchy in that sense, although it must be said that the etymological sense of rule in the word is not the best way to express the New Testament concept of the headship of the husband. Nevertheless, we may tentatively suggest that the New Testament teaching about the oneness of all in Christ, coupled with the demand that husbands love their wives, as Christ did the Church, no less, sets a trajectory that leads to a more equal sharing of all dimensions of the marriage relationship. I think that's well said. That's well put. If you have a situation where the guy is just proof texting this verse and other verses as a means to get what he wants, or as a means again to show off as a means to prop himself up in the eyes of other men, he's just operating with a completely wrong motivation. How is that loving your wife? I mean, honestly, how is insisting on of your wife, you proof text this verse to her, if it makes her feel demeaned and belittled, how in the world? I mean, prove it. Let me hear it. How is that loving your wife?  If you don't have a clue that this is demeaning her or belittling her in some way, okay, now you've got the added problem of cluelessness, okay, and you're still, you're actually violating the command. You're taking the command and severing it from what follows. Husbands love your wives. Again, both of these things are in the same passage, and both of them are framed by do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Sometimes, speaking as a man here, a lot of times, the way to love your wife is to not get your way. You may not like that, but that's the reality of it. If you do that, you can actually honor both of these because your wife is going to, again, if she has a clue, your wife is going to see that, and that's going to encourage her to voluntarily accommodate and work with you. You can't just take one side of the coin and pretend the other doesn't exist. They both have to work in tandem, and that's what makes the whole passage interesting, that they're both there, and there has to be this symbiotic relationship. This is another observation from Bart. He's quoting a scholar named Kehler, a German. Kehler also emphasizes that in the New Testament, the element of voluntariness is associated with huppataso. She differentiates this verb sharply from to obey, and again, we've already seen that Paul doesn't use the word obey here. The Greek word for that, he uses huppataso. She differentiates this verb sharply from to obey because where the concern is obedience, it is already decided for the subordinate ones why their obedience is necessary. This is not a concern with huppataso. Wherever it occurs, any kind of compulsion is excluded. The key word there is compulsion, okay? Because you've got voluntary, to quote Bart, voluntariness, if that's a word, in the context. So, voluntariness and compulsion don't really work together, which is why, as he quotes Kehler, and Kehler's work, Kehler's work again suggested, if you actually look this up, wherever huppataso occurs, any kind of compulsion is excluded. Again, when you have a middle voice going on, middle or passive that doesn't involve God. When concern is with the order of God, back to Bart, who desires observance and response, and when this answer is expressed by huppataso, it is an entirely voluntary decision. She, Kehler, observes for this passage, quote, their subjection that of the wives is valid for the order of God, not really that of the husband as the final goal. Thus their subjection can never be blind obedience, which she would have to render to her husband or which he can even demand. In other words, the wife has to keep God in mind as well. That's the motivation. It's not just blind obedience. Whatever the husband says, I have to do because of this verse. No, there's an ultimate, there's a higher authority here. Bart adds, these observations of Kehler can be verified basically in Colossians. The ethical admonitions proceed from the glorious abundance of the now revealed secret, so that the action to which they are summoned can be understood as the joyful affirmation of that which is given, and the idea of compulsion and involuntariness is misplaced here. In addition, especially for Colossians, we are ultimately dealing with subjection to the Messiah, to Jesus. Additionally, verse 18 does not contextually deal with blind obedience since it is preconditioned that women, insofar as they are married to non-Christian husbands, can refuse this obedience. That's an essential point, he says, namely in that they do not venerate the gods or their husbands. That's his example.  You're married to a non-Christian husband. This doesn't force you to venerate the gods, pagan gods that your husband worships. Again, that's an immediate, pretty obvious example of how this command is ultimately about obeying Jesus, being conformed, putting yourself under submission to him. Again, I think that's just helpful, again, to frame things that are going on. Done adds, with the last phrase, as is fitting to the Lord, he adds this. The one distinctively Christian feature is the additional words as is fitting to the Lord. The Greek word, aneko, translated as is fitting, reflects the typical stoic idea that one's best policy, indeed one's duty, was to live in harmony with the natural order of things, a sentiment shared by Hellenistic Judaism and the early Gentile mission. In this case, once again, reflecting a patriarchal view of human society, but in the Lord, again, fitting to the Lord, fitting in the Lord, implies a different perspective. It reflects both the claim that Christ is the fullest expression of the creative wisdom within the cosmos and the thematic statement that life should be lived in accordance with the traditions received regarding Jesus as Christ and as Lord. Now, what do we do with that? I think just to summarize what's going on for 318. The submission command is not about obedience being owed or required to the husband in all cases. And it's not about blind obedience. Again, Paul uses the obedience terminology for other relationships in the same context. He does not use it of the wives. And secondly, rather, the idea is voluntary subordination to a divine order, an order which has God as the highest authority, not the husband. Now, when Mu, in the passage I read with Mu, he references First Corinthians 11.3 here, which says the head of a wife is her husband. That's the way the ESV puts it, anyway. If you're interested in the meaning of the word head in that passage and just more broadly, and this whole idea of order, I've plucked out from Thistleton's commentary, a commentary that I've not referenced yet, has a long sort of, not an appendix, but a subsection of his commentary on the meaning of the Greek term for head, kephale. This has been a decades long, I mean, lots of centuries, I guess, but it's really in this country, in the West, the debate over the meaning of kephale has been raging for a couple of decades now. And Thistleton has a really nice summary of the back and forth, the scholarship about what headship actually means. And so I've plucked that out of the commentary, made a PDF of it, and we're going to put that on this episode's webpage. So if you want to read that, I don't know, I think it's like 18 pages or something like that. It's a really nice summary, again, for those of you who really want to drill down on the point, but I'm going to move beyond it now, that the basic debate is, does this head mean source or does it mean authority? Okay, that sort of thing. So you can drill down on that and get some more information there. But I want to move on to verse 19, you know, husbands love your wives, do not be harsh with them. Done, again, notes that we have the verb agapao here, which again, if you have an inner linear, you're going to detect that. And he, and I would agree, thinks that there's some significance to that. He writes a distinctive Christian note comes through in the use of the verb agapao, which as elsewhere in the Paul lines, he gives a few references from Paul's letters, gains its characteristic emphasis from Christ's self-giving on the cross. And he references Colossians 1, 4, and 3, 14. Thus agapao plays the role in Colossians 3, 19 of the in the Lord, or as is fitting to the Lord in the previous verse. Okay, and again, later on in verse 20, to do something because it's fitting to the Lord is the same thing as sacrificially loving them. So in verse 18, wives are to submit themselves to their husbands, because that's what the Lord wants. And really, he actually did that by example, putting himself under not only God's authority, but becoming a man, the whole mind of Christ thing, doing that voluntarily. And so the flip side of that, husbands love your wives, using agapao is again, what they do there, that verb choice takes us back to the love that Jesus exercised in a number of contexts. Again, it's the mind of Christ thing. So back to done, he says, this is one of the points in the parallel treatment of Ephesians, at which the author takes off into a lyrical account of the love of Christ for his church. The allusion to Christ as the model of love and action is true, did not alter the subordinate role attributed to the wife in Colossians 3, 18. So it doesn't alter the role. However, he says, you know, again, that's true. But again, we have to let agapao conditioned how we, again, see this whole thing working, again, this symbiotic relationship between submission and love. And Bart says, you know, it needs to condition the role and prevent the abuse of power in the culture. Now, he uses a term in his commentary here that I don't know if I'm going to cite something that uses it later or not. But if you're studying this passage and you're into, again, serious commentaries, you're going to find out that in the Greco-Roman culture, part of the Roman culture, something called the paterfamilius, the man of the house had absolute life and death authority in the home, literally life and death authority. And what, you know, done, and Bart and again, some of these other writers, you know, when they comment on how we need to view these commands, not only in the context of household rules and household order, but in the wider context, you have to realize how much power that the man of a Roman household, the husband had over the wife, over his children, over his servants, it was literally life and death authority. And so what the commentators are saying here is that Paul doesn't go there. I mean, Paul's all in favor of order, but he blunts that kind of thing by telling husbands, you need to love your wives and don't be harsh with them. And that's the flip side of the whole submission thing. And again, Hupataso being voluntary and it's not, he doesn't use the word for obedience, then you get to verse 19, and he flips around and says, look, you know, we're not repeating the paterfamilius style here, where whatever the husband says is law and he has absolute life and death authority. No, husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Why? Because that honors the Lord. How do we know that he cares about honoring the Lord? He uses Agapato as the verb. And Agapato is going to take their minds back to the context where that verb is used, especially in the Gospels, especially of Jesus. Again, why? Because verse 17 says that you're supposed to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. We talked last time about letting the word of Christ, what Christ's teachings dwell in you richly.  And the paterfamilius model just doesn't do that. It's far too harsh, far too sweeping and all-encompassing. A person's literal life and death fate in the hands of the man of the house. Again, that's not what Paul is endorsing here. Paul is endorsing order within the household as Jesus would do it on all sides, as Jesus would do it. And again, that's just the guiding principle. So in other words, humility, kindness, not the lust to be obeyed and served should dictate how a husband treats his wife. This is not a proof text endorsement for getting what you want. And that is not the mind of Christ. That is not the framework in which what Paul is writing works. It just doesn't work that way. Now, Mu also comments on Agapao. He says this, as is fitting for such a list of rules for the household, Paul turns quickly and somewhat abruptly from wives to husbands. Requiring wives to submit to husbands, as we've noted, matches widespread Greek and Jewish teachings about marriage. Again, it's a very secure cultural perspective there. Requiring husbands to love their wives, however, does not. In other words, that's something the culture wouldn't have expected. So yeah, the submission verse in verse 18, you got plenty of Greco-Roman and Jewish teachings about that. But when Paul throws in, oh, husbands love your wives and don't treat them harshly, that would have turned heads. That wasn't common. Mu says the concern in the secular codes was usually effective household management, especially since the household was typically viewed as a key building block of society and of the state. Accordingly, the focus of the codes was on the paterfamilius, the head of the household and what he should do to maintain order and decorum in his household. Referring to a husband's love for his wife would not fit this purpose. And indeed, no other code we have discovered from the ancient world requires husbands to love their wives. But that's kind of startling. I'll read it to you again. No other code. And there are a lot of these household codes from the Greco-Roman world. No other code that has been discovered from the ancient world requires husbands to love their wives. This is an altogether different ethic. Mu adds, moreover, the word for love here is distinctly, though certainly not uniquely, Christian word for the kind of sacrificial, self-giving love whose model is Christ himself. Perhaps significantly, the only other occurrence of the verbal love in Colossians refers to God's love for us, his people. These are really good nuggets from the text, again, that really help us frame what is being discussed here and what isn't in view. Now, again, I would say as a final point of advice for verse 19, an application, I think you can summarize this well in a statement like this. If you want your marriage to fail, micromanage and nitpick your spouse in a heavy-handed way. That's a good recipe for failure. If you want it to succeed, examine yourself and love your wives. Think about what do I need to do as a husband to love my wife so that she won't be sitting there thinking about accommodating me with fear and trembling, because that isn't the point. You want your marriage to fail, micromanage, nitpick, be heavy-handed with your spouse. You want it to succeed. Do that to yourself. Examine yourself and it's probably just going to work and help you, again, honor both sides of the relationship, both sides of the coin. Let's move to verses 20 and 21. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. The problem for us here, again, is the cultural disconnect with the Greco-Roman world. We not only have that with the Potter-Familius, but we have it in other ways. Bart, for instance, says the Greek word of her technon, which is translated offspring or child, technon doesn't really have any specific age in mind. The word alone doesn't give us sufficient reason to think of a minor child, and only that. It is possible, he says, and probable, that grown children are addressed who live in one household with their parents, as was customary in the extended family in antiquity, where the father remained head of the household until his death. Again, there's a cultural disconnect there. We don't really have that kind of situation now. Even if you have older kids still living at home, we don't have a culture that says the father remains the head of the household until his death. Basically, it's this Potter-Familius life or death kind of power, and that sort of thing. We don't really have that, but there's a reason why, Bart, what he's essentially saying is there's a reason why technon is used, and technon doesn't really have a specific age in mind. It's because culturally, you'd have older children, even adult children living under the same roof. That was just sort of normal. It also doesn't really reflect the Jewish understanding of patriarchal, nomadic life. When you had the patriarchal age, this is before you have cities and urbanization, before they're in the land. To sort of proof text these sorts of things from Genesis ignores the fact that the family life changed when Israelites got into the land. They built houses and cities and so on and so forth. It wasn't that you all lived under the same tent. When you got married, you just sewed on another section. Everybody's in the father's tent, and he's the patriarch. He's the head of the household until he dies. It doesn't stay that way. That's not a static sort of thing, because you also have verses like Genesis 2.24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. There is a sense that you have your own unit.  We don't want to press one culture into a passage to justify again the way we want to interpret a passage. Muad's Paul emphasizes the absolute and sweeping character of this relationship, parents to the children, by adding that children must obey their parents and everything. Again, he's going to unpack why that wording. This universal and apparently unqualified requirement of obedience naturally raises questions about its implementation in our culture. We do not, especially in the West, have households of the sort that Paul had reviewed in this passage. This does not mean, of course, that his exhortation can simply be dismissed, but it does mean that wisdom rooted in broad biblical principles will be required to apply the requirement of, quote, obedience in all things, unquote, to children in our culture. As long as children are living under the protection of their parents, we would suggest they are expected to obey their parents. Although even here, of course, exceptions in the case, for instance, of abusive parents have to be recognized, but when children are no longer under the protection and care of their parents, we would suggest that while deference and honor are still appropriate, obedience is no longer necessarily to be expected. In the Ephesians parallel, Paul requires children to obey their parents because it is right, and then quotes the fifth commandment of the decalogue as justification. As he does, throughout the admonitions to husbands and wives, children and parents, here in Colossians, Paul abbreviates the idea, claiming simply that children should obey their parents for this pleases the Lord. The Lord again is Jesus in the context. Done adds, the legal status of children under Roman law was still more disadvantaged, comparing it to women. Technically speaking, they were the property of the father. The children were the property of the father. For example, the formalities for adoption were essentially the same as for the conveyance of property. He cites an ancient text for that. It's called the Patria protestus law. The child under age, in fact, was no better off than a slave. A point Paul had been able to put to good use in Galatians 4, 1 through 7. Note how closely parallel are the instructions of Colossians 3, 20 and 22. 20 says, children, obey your parents and everything for this pleases the Lord. 22 says, bond-servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters. You have the everything language in both. This situation, back to done, is presumably reflected in 321 sandwiched in between. Fathers do not provoke your children, unless they become discouraged, where the responsibility for the child is thought of as exclusively the fathers. And that's a cultural thing. For although the mother was the main influence over the children until they were seven, and he cites, again, an ancient text there, the father was primarily responsible thereafter for the boys, at least. Again, this is Greco-Roman culture. Bard adds this, for a comprehension of the Declaration in Colossians 3, 20, the situation in the society of the time needs to be considered as well by the fact that children in a household became Christians in opposition to their parents. They put the Roman patria potestas, again, this idea of children as property. The position of the father in the household and antiquity, they put that whole situation in a questionable position from a non-Christian viewpoint, which could leave them subject to their approach that they were undermining the Roman societal order. Let me stop there. Again, what Bard is saying is that in a Christian context, the relationship of fathers as children isn't, again, going to be as categorical and as clear cut and as overlordish when we have Christians involved. Even if it's a Christian child to a non-Christian father and vice versa, it's going to change the dynamic a little bit. And Bard says, that could put this part of household order. That could create problems. People on the outside could look at something going on in a home where you have a mix, Christian and non-Christian, and think that the Christians are undermining the Roman social order. Now back to Bard, he says on this basis, we can understand the emphasis of Paul when Paul says, obey in all things. It is expressed because just this decision of children against the religion of their parents and in the Jewish Messiah is accepted from obedience. In other words, accepted as an, not accepted ACC, but accepted EXCEPTED. That's an exception. Obedience to parents is emphasized as a characteristic concern of the faith of the Messiah against all accumulated accusations, as these are formulated not only by Tacitus and other secular authorities, but as they are also transmitted in the New Testament. Again, let me translate that a little bit. What Bard is saying is, you're going to have these situations where, because the children might be Christians, and again, you have adult children here, they're going to view Jesus as the higher authority, higher than the father, the potter familias. And so the advice is, because you might run into this exception, you really, really need to obey your fathers in everything else. You need to have a good track record here, because that, again, maybe, maybe not, but it might help in the situation where when you have to obey to honor the Lord, it's not just going to be one of many instances where, well, he's doing that because he's a Christian. He just disobeys his father all the time. They're just social disruptors. They're just trouble. They're against the social order of thing. No, you have a pristine record is what Bard's saying that is in Paul's mind. Paul's concern, you need to have a pristine record, because when push comes to shove, if you're ever in this situation and you have to disobey, Lord willing, maybe that'll be taken into consideration, and it won't have a terrible ending or something like that. So, again, this is Bard's point saying, this is probably why Paul does use this kind of terminology. Again, you need to have a really, really, really good track record of obedience to your parents because of this context, you know, the eventuality here. It really could happen. And of course it did. Colossians 3, 22 through 25, let's just finish up the passage. You bond servants, Paul says. He addresses the slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service, as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ for the wrong doer will be paid back for the wrong he has done. And there is no partiality. Again, as the commentators are very quick to point out, slaves are just part of the household order. They're members of the household, very common. The household slaves, Bart says, are the ones addressed here and not slaves on large estates in mines or on galleys, the whole Ben Hur thing. He's saying, look, these are rules for household order. So there's a subset of what we might call the whole issue of slavery and antiquity here. There's a subset in view here. For the author of Colossians, Bart says, this kind of slavery was not a major problem. He proceeds naturally from the point that in the relationship of slave master, master slave, what it means to have put on the new self can be made manifest. The fact that there where this new self is put on is neither slave nor free person does not mean for Paul the abolition of slavery, but it is a summons for him to shape the contact with each other in such a way that it will be revealed that the Messiah takes slaves as well as masters into his service in order to proclaim that he the Messiah is master over all things. So when you have a proper orderly relationship and not just again a heavy-handed orderly relationship, but when you have in a household, you have masters who are believers and slaves who are believers, they need to let their status as equal in the sight of God, equal members of the family of Jesus. That needs to frame how they relate to one another. And for a believing master, that needs to frame and influence how he treats his slave or his servant and vice versa as well. And of course, the wording here in verses 24 and 25, Paul knows that you're going to have a situation where you have believing slaves and unbelieving masters and the unbelieving master could be abusive. That's why he reminds the slave, look, you're going to receive the inheritance as your order. You're actually serving the Lord Christ and the wrongdoer will be paid back. And he's trying to encourage people in that situation, slaves in that situation. Dunn says the slaves are clearly members of the Christian congregation and treated as responsible individuals. It was evidently another characteristic feature of the early Christian churches that they contain as members of one body, both masters and slaves, presumably in some instances, in a powder-familias context. You could have a powder-familias come to the Lord and some of his slaves would be in the same household. Dunn cites Philemon as an example. This too was not entirely distinctive in the ancient world, but the no slave or freedman of Colossians 311 made the equal membership of master and slave a principle of far-reaching significance. Again, people are watching in the wider culture, what Christians are doing within their homes, within their households. Dunn adds, the instructions which follow are directed primarily to slaves and their responsibility toward their masters. Four verses, in fact, with only one verse directed to the masters. And that's going to follow really in chapter 4 verse 1, which says, masters treat your bond-servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. This is quite a good turn of a phrase on Paul's part. And there's only one verse to that effect, and then you get all these other verses at the end of chapter 3, directed toward the slave. This probably indicates that there were more slaves than masters in the typical Pauline church, strengthened in the impression that Christianity initially drew its greatest numerical strength from the less advantaged groups in society. He cites a few, you know, church historical texts for that. It's also a reminder that the rules of the game were, as always, dictated by the powerful. Christians who wanted as much freedom as possible within these structures to pursue a Christian calling as members of the church were wise to carry out their responsibilities as slaves with all diligence because of the rules of the game. Done continues, this should not be criticized today as merely social conformism. Those who live in modern social democracies in which interest groups can hope to exert political pressure by intensive lobbying should remember that in the city of Paul's day, the great bulk of Christians would have no possibility whatsoever of exerting any political pressure for any particular policy or reform. In such circumstances, a pragmatic quietism was the most effective means of gaining room enough to develop the quality of personal relationships, which would establish and build up microcosms, that is, churches, of transformed communities. That's the end of the done quote. Again, you know, why doesn't Paul advocate slave rebellion in any of his epistles? Didn't he know it was wrong? Well, yeah, he knows about the image of God. He knows about the fact of, in Christ, there's neither bond nor free. Paul knows this, he wrote the stuff except for the image of God, but Paul talks about imaging a lot using the Old Testament language to talk about being conformed to the image of Christ. Again, Colossians 3.17, this is why he's given the commands because you're supposed to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. You're supposed to let the word of Christ, the teaching, the example of Christ dwell on you richly, and that's going to frame your conduct. Paul knows all this. So why doesn't he advocate rebellion or protesting and mass?  Rebellion or protesting level of advocacy. Well, the short answer is he didn't want the slaves to be killed or taken away from their masters and sent to worse masters. Again, they are the most vulnerable in the entire situation. They don't have rights. This is not a democracy. I mean, a lot of people living under Roman authority don't even have Roman citizenship. You know, you can't make the assumptions. You can't transfer the assumptions we would make about our own culture back into the New Testament.  They have no incentive or reason to tolerate it. This is a tyranny. It doesn't work this way. You know, maybe think of North Korea or something like that, where you just can't handle the situation in the way that we in the West would love to see it handle the possibility literally does not exist. And so when Paul writes about slavery, he can suggest to Philemon that, you know, he's a brother in the Lord now, and he can suggest, you know, to let him go. Now, let's say Philemon does that. That, yes, it sets onesimus free, but it also puts onesimus in a position of vulnerability. You say, how am I, how does that work? I would recommend to you, I mean, again, this is fresh in my mind because I just got done reading the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, which is a great book. But Douglass actually talks about even the status of people, you know, blacks who had their freedom in the pre-Civil War and during the Civil War, even the post-Civil War context, not so much post-Civil War, then the issue was Jim Crow. But before and during, even in northern states, places where he escaped, he was still vulnerable because if someone knew, he wasn't owned by someone else. He was like fresh meat. No one is, you know, they could capture him and he can't protest. No one is going to protest on his behalf. But no, you can't have this guy because he's my property. Here's the proof. If there is no legal relationship binding, in this case, Frederick Douglass to a master that, okay, he's a good master, but I'm still a slave and I don't like it. You know, Douglass had those situations, he had bad situations, he had good situations in terms of, you know, the violence and the subjugation. But if he wasn't attached to someone and somebody else just wanted to literally pick him off the street, they could do it. And in a Roman context, if there was no legal attachment between Philemon and Onesimus, and somebody picked Onesimus off the street, Philemon is going to lose that case in court if it ever gets there. And Onesimus is in big trouble. You know, so, I mean, we can't know if Philemon ever released him or not. We don't know that. All I'm saying is that these situations are not as simple as you might think. And I think, you know, ultimately, this is why Paul doesn't demand his release. I think he leaves it to the wisdom of Philemon as to what to do, what would be the best, what's the best thing to do for this person in his situation and in your context. I'm going to leave that to you, but I want you to know that this is a good guy. He's a believer. I love him. He's very, very useful to me. I wish I could keep him here, but I'm going to send him back. You know, all that stuff. There are other things going on. And maybe this is the best way for Paul to say, do the wisest thing here. What is the way to make him least vulnerable in the context of the culture and in the context immediately of where you're living? What is the thing that makes him the least vulnerable or that gives him the most legal protection? Or, you know, it's just literally the best situation. Again, we don't know all of the ins and outs of this. On a wider scale, you know, on a cultural scale, Paul is not going to advocate for overturning, you know, slavery. And he's not going to run in there and set people because again, you're going to have a lot of people. Yes, they might have it bad, but they're going to die. They're going to be tortured. They're going to lose limbs. They're going to die.  I mean, the Romans did all of this stuff. And the people who are the most vulnerable again, have no legal recourse. They just don't. And so we have to realize that Paul understands his own context better than we do. And so we shouldn't be going around judging Paul. He doesn't endorse slavery by not saying, hey, they, you know, we need to go out there and free everybody or they should all be let go. He doesn't endorse it. There are other considerations going on that, you know, we can guess at with reasonable, you know, accuracy, like, like, this is a very realistic possibility. And so maybe the best thing is just to sort of leave things as they are and treat each other like brothers and sisters. Maybe that's the best thing to do here because I don't want to make you more vulnerable.  Again, all of these things are realistic possibilities. We don't know them because they're not spelled out in the New Testament in all these cases, but they are, they are nevertheless real concerns. So let's not be blaming Paul or anybody else in the New Testament context for endorsing something like slavery. That isn't what they're doing. They're being cautious. They're taking the culture into consideration and they're reminding both sides, both servants and masters that, look, ultimately, ultimately, you have a higher master, okay? Colossians 4-1, masters treat your bonds, servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. You know, God is watching. Okay, God, the Lord is watching. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father through him, Colossians 3-17. That is what's supposed to frame all this and not just the master-servant relationships, but all these relationships, again, as we've talked about. So again, scripture doesn't, there is no such thing as a sanctified culture. A lot of scripture is given to us presuming the culture of the writer and, of course, the original readers. It is what it is and we need to let, again, the Bible be what it is without, again, accusing the authors of endorsements and approval and whatnot. They're not laying out a case. Paul is not laying out a case for the goodness of slavery as an institution. It's just part of his world and he's trying to give the best advice he can give and advice that honors the Lord and that also creates a good name for the believing community, because he knows that there are going to be occasions when Christians are going to disobey their masters. They're going to disobey the paterfamilias. There's going to be friction, so as much as is possible, obey your masters, obey your fathers in everything. Build up the goodwill, if that's at all possible, because, again, he knows what all of the possibilities are, both within the unit and externally, again, with the power of the state. So let's not treat the passage simplistically. Let's not filter it through our own system of government, our own culture. It is what it is and, again, let's try to look and think a little bit more carefully about what Paul is really concerned with. He's concerned about people. He's concerned about the believers in all these situations, no matter what side of the situation they're on, and he's giving the best advice he can possibly give, again, in the context of their status as equal believers in the family of God. Mike, in college, I got a job as a dishwasher. You know what I was the best dishwasher there is, and I worked my way up, you know? And look today, look, I'm on the Naked Bible Podcast from Washington. So maybe just whatever situation you're in, you do it to the best of your ability. And some of the people try to relate it to the employer-employee analogy, but I don't know if that really fits. That slightly issues you such a hard. It is. There'll be some overlap, but some obvious disconnect, too. And even employment in another country is going to be different than employment here, just because of laws and whatnot. But I hear you. And I'm not making up this number. I actually counted. I kept count. I had 35 jobs from the time I left high school to the one I have now. Yeah, I mean, retail is a long haul.   Well, I achieved your PhD and whatnot. There were a few, the last year of my doctoral, this was partly my fault, but we needed the money. But there were two days of the week that I didn't sleep at all. And that was poor planning, I guess you could say. For a few months anyway, I was in that situation. But you do what you have to do. But I always had two or three or in some cases four little part-time jobs. I'd cobble them together. My wife occasionally worked. Sometimes I couldn't provide everything. We didn't have this sanctified rule about the wife can't work or anything silly like that. But we tried to keep her at home. Most of the time it worked. Some of the time it didn't. But you do what you have to do. And I was just in a situation where I, if I was going to get through school and if I was going to be married and have kids, it's on me. It is on me.  And you just do what you have to do. And you can do anything. My motto is you can do anything for a short time. It's not going to be forever. But that's just what you do. And I was security. Did a lot of security work, which was great because you get to do your homework. Problem, of course, is sleeping. Because you miss that. And a lot of custodial work. Once I was done with what I needed to do, the rest of the time was mine. I mean, you try to be strategic when you're in situations like that. But yeah, there were some pretty low-level jobs there. And I don't want to minimize them. Because actually, they're important. They were important. There were a couple of times that I'm the lowly security guard that saved the company a few million dollars. That happens. They're important jobs, but they don't have status in our culture, is really what it amounts to. It's all about status. You do what you have to do. And we need all of that. Absolutely. We all have to start somewhere. That's why young people, you got to pay your dues and stay with it and take pride in your work. And if you do that, if you do that, your boss will notice. Just trust me. Absolutely. Because there aren't a whole lot of people who just approach whatever the job is with that kind of attitude. It will get noticed. Someone will notice it. Absolutely. They just will. Because it's not the norm. Absolutely. Well, at least God will notice everything. So we're in good hands. So we won't. Yeah. But all right, Mike. Well, I want to remind everybody to send me your Colossians questions at Traystrickler.gmail.com. If you have any, I will be collecting those. Next week we'll be getting into Chapter 4. And with that, Mike, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. The upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 237 Colossians Chapter 4. I am the layman, Traystrickler, and he's the scholar, Dr. Mike Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you? Pretty good. Pretty good. I hear your family has increased by one. That's correct. So we had a good week. You know, it's a good couple weeks, actually. We have a new black pug, which we've been looking for for a year. So we finally got one, and he is a two-and-a-half-pound terror. And Maury, how's Maury taking it? Maury has been a little clingy, a little dejected, but he's coming around. Yeah, he's pouting. He has competition for attention now. So what's the new pug's name? Norman. I did not. I wanted Loki, you know, because we have this like super villain, crazy villain kind of thing. That's how we view our pugs. You know, they're just like these wild-eyed super villains. So Maury is Maury already from Sherlock Holmes. And I wanted Loki, you know, from the Avengers. But they wanted Norman for Psycho. They like the Psycho. So that's crazy. I don't know. That's a good Norman. The Norman I'm used to right now is that me and my wife are going back and watching Cheers on Netflix. So when I hear Norman, I hear Norman, you know, when he comes in to the bar. So it's funny how watching Cheers back there. There's quite a difference between that Norman and this Norman. Yes. Yes. So that's the Norman that springs to mind right now for me. But nonetheless, I bet he's, are the pugs, do they sleep in the bed with you? We let Maury do that. And then I'll get up and I'll take him out in the morning. But now Norman, we have in the room in his little crate because we got to take him out at three in the morning. You know, we'll have a couple weeks of that before he, you know, doesn't need that anymore. But he's, he just goes on command. It's great. So whoever had him, you know, the owners, initial owners must have worked with him a little bit because he is no, no trouble at all. And like Norman Bates, he is attached to mommy. He has a mommy thing going on. Oh, yeah. Well, there you go. Well, that's fun. Dreen is liking that. So, you know, yeah. So as you get the kids out, you just basically bringing more kids in to the home. It sounds like what y'all are doing. Yeah. And I see there's a comment in there about how much more obedient these are than the other ones. Yeah. All right, Mike. Well, hey, this is the last week of Colossians. So I wanted to remind everybody that we're going to be doing a Colossians Q&A. In probably two or three weeks, we've got to do a couple of regular Q&As before that to give us time to collect the questions. But if you have a question specifically about the book of Colossians, send me an email at TrayStrictline.com. We'll collect those. We obviously can't answer everybody's email questions. But send me your questions anyway. I'll collect them. We'll go through them and we'll put together an episode of specific questions about Colossians. So, you know, with that, I'm excited that this has been a good series. I'm glad that people voted on this. I was wanting to go back to the New Testament and maybe we'll go to the Old Testament next, but I've enjoyed the book of Colossians very much and we appreciate you taking the time to do it. Yeah. Like you just mentioned, we're almost at the point now where we've got to vote again. So that's coming around the corner. But Colossians, I think, was worth the time that we spent on it. I mean, today it's Colossians 4 and, you know, you read through the last chapter of Colossians and it seems like there's really not much there beyond, you know, Paul saying, hey, so-and-so is still with me. They haven't left and boy, they're a good worker and I appreciate them and say hi to other people in Colossia.  They're actually toward all of them, toward the end of the chapter. So there are a few things I want to hit on as we work our way there. But we'll just read through, you know, the fourth chapter here. And when we hit something, again, as is our typical pattern, you know, I'll say something, but we're really angling for most of this episode on some of the things at the end. There's a little more to think about in some of these than you might suspect. So last time when we were talking about the relationships, you know, that the pairings, you know, husband, wife, father's, children, master's, servants, we included the first verse of Colossians 4 in that because it should be included in the first verse that masters treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. And it echoes a thought that preceded it in chapter 3. So we're not going to backtrack and do any more with that. So we'll begin this episode in verse 2. And again, continue all the way through the end of the chapter. So first few verses in Colossians 4, read as follows. And again, I'm reading in the ESV. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Now we run into right here, again, the concept of the mystery. And we had touched on this earlier in the book of Colossians. But I want to, again, just draw attention back to it, because here we have Paul in jail for declaring the mystery of Christ. So for anyone who either doesn't remember the earlier reference to Wisdom in the book of Colossians, because it was pretty early, I want to hit a few things. Again, we're not going to backtrack through all that information. You can go back and the episode where we covered Colossians 1, 26, and 27 is going to have a few more things that I'll allude to here. Why don't I just read that, the earlier reference in Colossians, again, this same letter to the concept of the mystery. In Colossians 1, I'll go back to verse 24 and start reading there. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh. I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the Word of God fully known. The mystery, hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. To them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Earlier, I had quoted a little segment from DPL, the dictionary of Paul and his letters that noted musterion, the Greek term there, appears 21 times in Paul's letters out of a total of 27 New Testament occurrences. Overwhelmingly, this is a Pauline phrase. DPL added, usually it points not to some future event hidden in God's plan, but to his decisive action in Christ here and now. Even more specifically, Christ's role in the salvation of humanity and reconciling or resetting all things to the original creation order. The Gentiles, here's the key core element of the mystery, that the Gentiles are a specific element of this for a couple of reasons. One, their disinheritance as part of the family of God by God himself at Babel. And two, all of this, again, this whole plan, not only broadly of the salvation of humanity, but even more oddly or pointedly, again, this is why Paul refers to it as the mystery, but even more pointedly, it all depended on a Jewish Messiah who was the child of Abraham and David through whom all of the disinherited nations would once again be brought back into the family of God. Again, the Deuteronomy 32 worldview again in play, that God had disinherited the nations, Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, again, for those who are familiar with my content. This is a very familiar theme in the content. It's a very familiar, very important point of biblical theology, this whole idea of disinheriting the nations as a punishment at Babel. It was the third sort of rebellion, stanza of the Old Testament that essentially frames the entirety of the rest of the Bible. The first one being the Fall, the second one being Genesis 6, 1 through 4, the third one being what happens at Babel. And of course Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, a big player there, Psalm 82, again, gives us information on how to parse what happens at Babel. So that's a big deal. And Paul is looking back at all that and of course knows his Old Testament really well and says, you know, this is what I was called to do. And this is a mystery. This is the musterion, Christ in you Gentiles, not just Christ for the Jews. That would just be sort of obvious. But Christ in you, the work of Christ being the catalyst, the linchpin for the Gentile nations being brought back into the family of God or at least people who live among those nations who are Gentiles. Paul lives to this in other places. 1 Corinthians 2, of course, he talks about the hidden wisdom of God. We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. And again, had the rulers of this world understood this, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Why is that an important thought? Because the rulers of this world in Pauline theology and in his terminology are these geographical rulers. And this is why Paul uses the vocabulary of geographical dominion, principalities, powers, rulers, authorities, thrones, dominions and all this kind of terminology. And what Paul is saying is had those rebels, had those fallen powers of darkness known, what all of this meant, what the arrival of the Jewish Messiah really meant, that it was going to be the key to nullifying their authority and bringing the Gentiles back into the family of God, they never would have crucified Jesus. I talk again at length about this in unseen realms, so I'm just going to leave that point for there. Again, dictionary of Paul in his letters adds this thought, the mystery which focuses on salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ is not new for God had decreed it quote before the ages, and it references 1 Corinthians 2.7, which we just read. It has been kept hidden from the rulers of this world, 1 Corinthians 2.8, only ignorance of the mystery can explain their crucifixion of the Lord of glory, but now the mystery of God's salvific plan, which includes the divine inheritance. Again, the full divine inheritance I would add, which means Gentile inclusion, all of the nations, not just one. All of this is being revealed through God's spirit post-Pentecost. I mean, this is why as we've talked before, a couple episodes ago, I believe it was, we sort of took the time to talk about when Paul talks about resurrection, somehow in his head, the other light that goes on is the defeat, the nullification, the de-legitimization of the rulers and the authorities, the powers of darkness. Why? Because those are the ones over the nations and Paul's saying, this is my mission to go, tell them that they don't have to worship the gods that they worship. Yes, the Most High created a certain situation that went haywire because of the rebellion of those beings. Again, God didn't choose them when they were evil and wicked, but they became corrupt. So there's this tendency among the Gentiles. We've talked about this before as well. Plato writes about this, lots of pagan classical Greco-Roman texts allude to this idea of the parceling out of the nations and their locales to distinct gods. This is the same worldview in the pagan world as we see in the Bible. Of course, in the Bible, the one who sets this up is the Most High, Yahweh of Israel, and it's a judgment. It's a thing to alienate the nations, but then God, right after that, goes to Abraham, creates a covenant with him that includes the nations, includes a pathway back. The mystery is how the pathway back would work. What would finally achieve this? And that's the mission of Christ. It's the cross event. And so we've spent a lot of time in Colossians talking about that and linking it again to these thoughts. And here again, Paul refers to the mystery, the mystery of Christ. Ephesians 3, for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons and men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. You know, they get to see it play out in real time. This mystery, verse 6, Ephesians 3, 6, this mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. So I just wanted to again reiterate those thoughts. You can get more detail in the earlier episodes of Colossians, really earlier episodes, because we've hit this a couple times. Again, a few episodes ago, specifically the link between the resurrection and the ascension, of course, that triggers the sending of the Spirit, which at Pentecost goes out, penetrates all the nations through the Jews initially who are at Pentecost, hear the message of Jesus, believe, and then they go back home and they start to plant the seed that will produce a remnant among the Gentiles to be brought back into the family of God and our series on the Book of Acts. You can go back and listen to that in Acts chapter 2. At least begin there and it's going to pick up really all the way toward Acts chapter 10. You get glimpses of how this works to the Jew first and then transitioning to the Gentiles, how this whole plan is coherent in light of what happens, what's described historically in the Book of Acts. Now, if we go to verse 5 here in Colossians 4, Paul says he tells his readers, walk in wisdom toward outsiders. Again, he's just talked about, hey, this is the mystery and they know by now what he means by that that the Gentiles are being brought in. Of course, this is part of what is being opposed by the mystic Jewish element that Paul has been opposed by. He's alluded to throughout this letter for what they teach and how they want to tear him down and teach contrary to what Paul was saying. Right after again commenting on reiterating his mission, the mystery, he says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Now, this comment concerns a lot more than good principles of time management. Unfortunately, that's typically how you're going to hear it preached. You make the best use of the time then somebody will go off and talk about how to make schedules and how to not waste time, don't spend too much time watching TV. Again, that's really not the point. There might be some application in there to what I'm going to say, but that's really not the point. He links this thought to the two outsiders. Again, those who would be both outside the community in terms of people who need to be redeemed, need the message that Paul has, and also those who would be out there opposing it. You link those two thoughts and what Paul's really getting at here is a sense of urgency for the mission, for completing the fullness of the Gentiles, which is a phrase he uses elsewhere in other letters about this notion that we've seen the gospel now go to all the places, and again, read the Book of Acts or listen to the series. We've seen the gospel go to all the places that are connected in some way with Jewish inheritance, covenant inheritance. Now, I was on the Damascus road. The Lord picked me out who I'm the worst of all men, the worst of sinners. He chose me to go to the Gentiles to complete the plan, to make sure that the gospel penetrates all of the places, at least that they were aware of in terms of their Old Testament history and their knowledge of the world, all those places the gospel has to go to so that the fullness of the Gentiles can be brought in. Why is that important? Because then those who are now hardened against the Messiah, which would be a lot of the Jewish community, then that's going to soften them up. That's part of God's plan to include the Gentiles. Then the hearts of his fellow Israelites, his fellow countrymen, again, will be opened to transition, come back to the Lord. Romans 11, I don't want you to be unaware of this mystery. Brothers of partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. When we get that point, Israel, all Israel will be saved. We've talked about that, what that might mean, that phrase. But at the very least, Paul linked this idea with the return of the Lord and the ushering in of the final age, the reconsumption of the kingdom. This was a big deal. When Paul talks about walking wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time, it's both be on guard for an alternative gospel, but also be on the lookout for opportunity to minister to Gentiles. This is where you're the Colossians. This is where you live. I want to quote a little bit from Mu's letter, his commentary to the Colossians on the Colossian letter. He writes this, the word for time here, kairos, can sometimes have the sense of a particular time or an opportune moment, as opposed to kronos, which usually refers to time in a general way. It is not clear whether the word has that particular nuance here or not, but it does not make much difference to the meaning. More significant is the wider salvation historical significance of the concept time here. Paul views the time in which believers find themselves as caught in the tension of the already, but not yet. We talked about that earlier in the podcast, especially as it relates to the kingdom and the mission. Believers becoming what they are ultimately going to be. Back to Mu, he says, believers live after the initial coming of Messiah and the inauguration of the redemptive kingdom, but they also live an expectation of a second coming of Messiah to complete the work of redemption. Paul has alluded to this tension in Colossians 3, 1-4, and his call for believers to watch in verse 2, as we have seen, may also allude to this eschatological sense of time. Therefore, the need to buy time, so to speak, is especially imperative because of Paul's sense of the shortness of the time. Mu references 1 Corinthians 7-29, again where Paul uses that language. He does not mean by this that the Lord will return within a specified short period of time, but that the return of the Lord is always impending, rendering it entirely uncertain how much time we will yet be given again to complete this mission. An important aspect of wise living is to use the short time God has given us to the best effect. In Colossians, because of the focus on outsiders, this will refer specifically to making the most of the open doors that God gives us to evangelize. He connects the reference to make the best use of time specifically to the mission, to the whole fullness of the Gentiles idea. I thought that was important because, again, you hear this preach that it becomes something about keeping a schedule, keeping a day planner or something like that. That's really not what's in view here. It's a much bigger concept. Verse 6, we read, Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Now, this is an odd phrase, seasoned with salt, because in our day, when we talk about someone who is a salty mouth or salty speech, we're actually talking about somebody who swears a lot or is really crude or something like that. That's actually not what Paul is shooting for here. Salt had a different meaning in the biblical world. It actually had a number of meanings, but, again, what he's angling for here is something positive so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. I want to read a little bit from LBD, the Lexham Bible Dictionary, on salt. It has a really nice entry on salt. If you don't have LBD, you should. You can get it for free online. This is one of the free resources that Faithlife, my employer, gives out.  This has a really good entry on salt, so I'll read a few parts of it. Salt as a symbol of life. That's a header, and the writer says, in the biblical world, salt was associated with life due to its uses as a preservative, a purifying agent and a seasoning. Many of the symbols attached to salt reflect its practical uses. For example, because salt can delay the rotting or decaying process when rubbed into meat, it is a symbol of incorruptibility. Salt was also a symbol of provision, and eating someone's, quote, bread and salt, unquote, left the eater obligated to the giver. Put that person in debt in a practical sense. Other practical uses of salt attested in the ancient world include a purifying agent that is ancient people's rubbed babies with salt at birth, and that's actually alluded to in Ezekiel 16.4, and the prophet Elisha used salt to purify a polluted spring. That's alluded to in 2 Kings 2, 19 through 22. It was also a seasoning for food. Job 6, 6 and 7 references this, and tasteless salt, therefore, was worthless and thrown out. Matthew 5.13 alludes to that. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? Answer, it ain't going to happen. It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Salt was also, on the other hand, a symbol for death. I mean, there was a flip side to this coin, and LBD writes, despite salt's practical uses, too much salt, if you think about it, too much salt can lead to death. For example, land that has too high of a salt content, such as salt flats, marshes, or pits, is typically incapable of producing good crops and thus unproductive and uninhabitable. Victorious armies in ancient times would sometimes use salt to render land infertile. Again, you actually get a reference to that in the Bible. Judges 9.45, Zephaniah 2.9, I refer to this practice. Scripture refers to God's covenant as a covenant of salt, and here's another aspect of salt. Reflecting salt's unique place in the covenant, the phrase, quote, covenant of salt, unquote, is usually understood to refer to the perpetual obligation of the covenant, perhaps due to the concept of loyalty owed to the provider of salt. Let me just stop there. You get the picture, salt was viewed as so valuable that when someone gave it to you in a meal or just gave it to you for your use, there was an implied debt, an implied obligation owed to that person because they were good to you. There was this implied loyalty obligation, something that bound you to reciprocate in some way. The LBD writer is saying, that's probably what's behind this phrase covenant of salt that's used occasionally in the Bible in reference to the covenants that are made. The salt of the covenant, therefore, is necessary for life, again, in the endurance of the covenant. One more category of meaning salt and discipleship. Several New Testament passages connect salt with discipleship, including Jesus calls his disciples to be the salt of the earth, perhaps referring to salts preserving or flavoring properties. We read Matthew 5.13, it's in other synoptic passages. Second Jesus calls his disciples to have salt within themselves and to live at peace, perhaps referring to God's Word and the effect it was to have on their lives. Mark 9.50 is one such reference. Paul admonishes the Colossians, that's where we're at here in Colossians 4.6, to season their speech with salt. Again, in light of those other contexts about discipleship and loyalty and enduring quality and whatnot, this isn't a negative thing. Paul's not telling the Colossians to behave negatively toward other people. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. This, again, has to be interpreted in line with, again, being like Jesus, in line with discipleship, in line with being wise in the way that you answer people, the way you treat people. So it's, again, part of discipleship there. Paul moves from there into verse 7. Here's when we get the whole section on Paul mentioning traveling companions and greeting other people in Colossians and so on and so forth. I'm going to read through a good part of the passage here, beginning in verse 7. Paul writes, Dickicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you. And Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions if he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is called justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God and they have been a comfort to me. A few comments here, again, drawn from Mu, Dickicus, we've run into this name before in passing. But Dickicus, Mu writes, was apparently the person chiefly responsible for delivering the letter since he plays the same role in Ephesians, there at the end of that letter, Ephesians 621, and is accompanied by Onesimus. And we mentioned Onesimus last time, or an episode or two ago. Yeah, I guess it would have been the previous episode about the servant-master relationships. So Onesimus, again, that particular slave, is accompanying Dickicus. So he plays the same role Dickicus does in Ephesians and he's accompanied by Onesimus. And since Ephesus and Colossae are no more than 120 miles apart, we can reasonably surmise that he, Dickicus, is carrying the letters to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, and to Philemon at the same time. Again, that makes sense if Onesimus is with him, because he's obviously going to be the subject of the letter to Philemon. Back to Mu. Dickicus makes his first appearance in the New Testament as a Christian from the province of Asia, who accompanied Paul on his trip to Jerusalem to deliver the collection. Again, the money Paul's been collecting for the poor community back in Jerusalem, that's referenced in Acts 20 verse 4. So Dickicus is kind of an important figure, very trusted figure in Paul's life. Mu writes, accompanying Dickicus on his mission to Colossae is, of course, Onesimus. He is the slave about whom the letter to Philemon is written. From that letter we can conclude that Onesimus encountered Paul in his place of imprisonment, that he was converted through Paul's ministry, and there's an illusion there in verse 10 of the letter to Philemon, and that Paul had become deeply attached to it. Again, I think that's fair. Aristarchus, Mark and Justice again are referenced here. Aristarchus, like Dickicus, figures in the later stages of Paul's ministry being mentioned first as a traveling companion of Paul's from Macedonia. During the Apostles of Ephesians ministry, there's another connection to Ephesus. According to Acts 24, he hails from Thessalonica though. He accompanied Paul on at least the early stage of his voyage to Rome. He's mentioned there in Acts 27 too, and may have gone all the way to Rome with Paul. Just don't know. This might be particularly likely if, as we think, Paul is writing this letter, Colossians, from Rome shortly after his arrival there. Mark, of course, is more familiar. He is the cousin of Barnabas. One note about the term anepseos means cousin and not nephew. King James has sister's son. It's not nephew. It's cousin. You could look up the word in a good lexicon for that. Mu writes, Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, is the same Mark who had a checkered career in Paul's early missionary labor. That's significant because Mark is a nice way of putting it. He wasn't always a shining success and a help to Paul, but here in Colossians, Paul tells them. He even alludes to, well, I've already given you instructions about this guy, and he says, welcome him. So whatever rift there was has been healed. Mu writes, Mark, whose other name was John, John Mark, was the son of a woman whose house the early Jerusalem Christian community met. We know that from Acts 12-12. After Barnabas and Saul had delivered the money collected by the church in Antioch to the Christians in Jerusalem, Acts 11, 27-30, they took, quote, John, called Mark, unquote, with them back to Antioch. He then accompanied Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey only to abandon the trip in Pamphylia in Acts 1538. It was for this reason that Paul refused to take Mark with him on the second missionary journey, creating a rift between himself and Barnabas. That's Acts 1537-39.  And we hear nothing more about Mark until 12 years or so later. Paul's simple conveyance of greetings here and in Philemon 24, along with his commendation of Mark in 2 Timothy 4-11. Let me just read you that. 2 Timothy 4-11, Paul writes, Luke alone is with me.  And back to move. So the greetings here and in Philemon 24 and along with Paul's commendation of Mark in 2 Timothy 4-11 reveals that they must have become reconciled at some point. And again, there's this 12-year gap. Mark apparently had a significant ministry in Rome since Peter, writing from there, also mentions him, 1 Peter 5-13. And it was probably from Rome that Mark wrote the Gospel bearing his name. What's the point here? The point is that failure is not the end of the road. I think in terms of John Mark, this is a good lesson to learn. There are a lot of people out there who think God has put them on the shelf, for some personal failure, in Mark's case, it was just bailing out of ministry. That's not the case. I mean, there are plenty of scriptural examples like this where God doesn't look at a person who fails and say, well, we're done with you. That just isn't the portrayal of not only of the Lord, but also these ministry situations. And Mark is sort of exhibit A for what? You can come to your senses. You can deal with what you did.  You have something to contribute to the Kingdom of God, so get up and do it. Don't live in the past and all that sort of thing. And again, he's just a great example for that. Mu has a couple of comments on Jesus who is called Justice. Jesus was a popular name among first century Jews. This feels like ancient history now. It may actually be almost 10 years, but the whole Jesus tomb thing, I wrote an article on this that you can find on the Internet about the discovery of a tomb and Jesus is on one of the Ashiwaries and what not. Jesus was a common name in the first century. Even in the New Testament, Jesus is a common name. And then you get these second names to clarify what individual we're talking about here. And Mu, again, is pointing this out. Jesus was a popular name among first century Jews, fading in popularity only in the second century because of growing Jewish Christian tensions. Again, that's interesting and kind of obvious too. If you're a Jew, you're not going to name your boy Jesus Yeshua in the second century because, well, that's the guy from Nazareth and we don't like his followers and we don't like this theology. So it falls out of disuse later on. In the multilingual environment of the first century, Jews often took a second Greek or Roman name, often one that sounded like their original Hebrew name. The classic example is Saul and Paul. Justice is a surname that is born by three different men in the New Testament. One of the candidates to take place, take the place of Judas among the twelve has that name, Joseph, called Bar-Sabbas, also known as Justice in Acts 1-23. So that's one. There's a Gentile Godfarer in Corinth, Titius Justice, Acts 18-7, and the Jesus Justice, of course, in this text. We know nothing else about this man, although the name Justice, as Lightfoot notes, was common among Judeans and Gentile proselytes. So we can't really necessarily even get the ethnicity there, but it's just kind of an interesting observation. What Paul says in verse 11, I think, is worth just a passing note when he writes about these four men. These are the only men of the circumcision. He's the only Jewish guys among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God. In other words, everybody else that's helping Paul is a Gentile. These are the only four Jewish guys among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. So of course, the irony is here you have Jews laboring with another Jew to evangelize Gentiles for the sake of the kingdom of God, which is a Jewish, i.e., Old Testament concept. So again, the irony of the situation is pretty transparent there. Paul goes on to mention a few other people in the verses that follow. He mentions Epiphras, Luke, and Deimos. They're all Gentiles, again, as far as we know. I'll just read from verse 12 here. Epiphras, who is one of you, and he's a Colossian, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God, for I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you, and for those in Laodicea, and in Heropolis. Luke, the beloved physician, greets you, as does Deimos. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the Church of the Laodiceans, and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. And say to Archipus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord. I'm going to stop there. There's one more verse in the chapter, but I'm going to stop there. Paul mentions a number of Gentiles here. Epiphras, of course, is one of the Colossians. He's part of the Colossian community. Deimos is referred to elsewhere in Philemon 24. Again, along with Aristarchus there, and Mark, and Luke. Again, same group. In 2 Timothy 4-10, though, it's not a positive reference. Paul writes, again, this is going to be after the Colossian correspondence. For Deimos, in love with this present world, has deserted me, and gone to Thessalonica. Crescent has gone to Galatia, Titius II.  So Deimos, again, gets mentioned here in 2 Timothy, not in a good light at all. Paul, in 2 Timothy 4, in that chapter, he also adds, only Luke is with me. So some had gone away from Paul to do ministry, Titus, Crescent. We don't know much about Crescent, but of course, Titus we know more about. But Deimos has just bailed. Paul says, only Luke is with me. Get Mark. This is where he mentions Mark.  And then he adds, I sent Titicus to Ephesus. That's 2 Timothy 4-9 through 12. So this was a, apparently, sort of an entourage, a group, in this case of Gentiles, who had stuck together and helped Paul. I mean, obviously they're mixed in with Jews as well. But for the most part, Paul has success in gaining help from them. They stick with it. They stick with the ministry. But unfortunately, as it turns out, Deimos, who is among the list here, is going to defect. Again, before I hit the last verse, again, we stopped in our reading right at the end of verse 17, and we got one more verse. There are a couple other things before we hit verse 18 that I want to mention that are very, really easy to read over. But again, I think just worth spending a few moments on. Back in verse 15, Paul said, Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And we'll just stop there now. Here we have a character. We alluded to her last time when we were talking about the husband's wives command of Colossians 3 and how it was really directed at wives and not just women and generally, because there are women, both in the New Testament epistles, of course, in the Gospels, Book of Acts that seem to be self-sufficient, self-supporting, head of their own households, and whatnot. And one of these, I think it's fair to say most commentators would lump Nympha in with that group. There is a bit of an ambiguity here, and I'm going to bring this up because it's kind of like, I don't know how many listeners are aware of this, but years ago, I have a friend, John Hobbins, who's a pastor in Wisconsin, and his wife is also a pastor at their church. And I have a number of other friends who, their wives are in some sort of pastoral ministry, and I have still other friends who just don't think that that's right. So years ago, I asked John to sort of blog with me on my site about the women in ministry issue, and his task was simple. I said, John, make me care about this because I can erect beautiful arguments on both sides of this. And ultimately, you really argue this subject to a stalemate, and surprisingly enough, it really comes down to very arcane things about the text, and that's in part what produces the ambiguity in many respects, many aspects of this issue. And this is actually going to be one of them. That's going to be like the issue of Junia in Romans, in the book of Romans toward the end, when she is quote, one of the apostles, or among the apostles. Again, it depends how you translate that. Well, her name in certain manuscripts to do, it's also a male name. So there's this debate, is it a man or is it a woman? And it actually, this is going to sound crazy, but it actually comes down to the accent on the name. And the problem is, is that in original, you know, the oldest Greek New Testament manuscripts, when they used capital letters on seals to write, and that that's always the writing style in the oldest material, they didn't use accents. So there's, there's, it's just completely ambiguous. Nympha, as we're going to find out here, I'm going to read you a little section from a commentary. Nympha's also like that too, it's just really kind of odd. So this is from Moose Commentary. Again, he has a nice little summary of this. He writes, in the second part of verse 15, Paul requests that his greetings be extended to an individual in the church in that person's house. You didn't notice how he words this. Take back to Moose. He says, the gender of this person is not entirely clear. The confusion arising from two sources. Number one, the Greek form, depending on how it is accented, could be the name of either a man, nymphas, or a woman, nympha. Second, the manuscripts differ in the possessive pronoun, modifying church, some having out to his church, others having outase her church, and still others have outone their church. The last option, though it's defended by light foot, can probably be eliminated. It depends on reading brothers and sisters and nympha or nymphas together, which is unlikely. The other two variants undoubtedly arose because of uncertainty, among the scribal copyists here. Uncertainty about the gender of the name nympha or nymphas, which is it? It depends on the accent. Back to Moose. None of the variants commands a very clear preference in terms of external evidence, but the feminine name with corresponding pronouns should probably be preferred. So Moose is going to cautiously land on the female side, since it would be more natural for early scribes to think of a man as the one in whose house of church met rather than a woman. In other words, let me just intrude here. Why else single out this one person? If it was a man, that's just expected, but what Moose's argument is here, or at least how he's trying to articulate this is, since Paul singles out this one individual for having a church that met in the house, he thinks that sort of tilts the scales over to the side of a woman. In other words, she'd be exceptional. So Paul commends her and says hello to her. Back to Moose, he says, the scribes would therefore have been more likely to change an original feminine pronoun into a masculine one because that was the norm. The feminine nympha then is the option preferred by most of the modern translations and commentaries. Nympha then was perhaps a wealthy widow who used her home and resources to support the church. Because of the sequence in this verse, we should probably conclude that she lived in Laodicea and that there was then more than one house church in Laodicea. Why Paul singles out nympha and the church that met in her house for special mention is impossible to know. So I only bring that up again to highlight the fact that you've got this one, you've got Junia in the book of Romans in the last chapter, again, in these sort of meet and greet kind of sections. It's just what it is. You have the same textual ambiguity when it comes to this. So I think no matter what side of this you take, we need to sort of be aware of this. And again, I don't like proof texting. So it's very easy to proof text this in an argument like this. And depending on what translation you want to use to defend what view you have, if you know what I just told you, that's a little dishonest. If you don't know it, well, now you do. You should know that you can get really, really granular when it comes to these kinds of issues. And a lot of these things that Christians tend to really sort of fight about really hinge on stuff like this. Like, how do you really know what kind of accent was on the original text? Especially when they didn't use accents with unsealed script. How are you supposed to know? And my advice is, well, if you're going to discuss this, this is sort of neutral. The Romans 16 thing is neutral. This reference is neutral.  Build your case with some other material because neither side really has anything here is the point. Another thing I want to bring up again, we're still, you know, we're stalling a little bit, I guess, well, not really, but till we hit verse 18, the letter from Laodicea. Let me go back and read this. Right after he says, he greets Nympha in verse 16, he says, and when this letter, the letter to the Colossians, has been read among you, you Colossians, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans and see that you read the letter from Laodicea. So Paul wants the Colossians to, when they get his letter, hey, read it among yourselves and then, you know, either copy it or make sure that the church over there in Laodicea, make sure they get a copy or get to read it too. And the assumption is the letter I sent them, you need to read that one too. Now, here's the, you probably already see the issue. We don't have a letter to the Laodiceans in the New Testament. So is this a missing letter of Paul? And how does that work with inspiration? Again, this is really easy to read over, but it actually prompts this question in the commentaries. Again, you might think there's nothing really to think about here. Well, you know, that's not quite true. You know, even arcane, or not arcane, but even sort of mundane things like this, sometimes they generate good questions. Now, Dunn in his commentary sort of gets into the discussion this way. He says, presumably, the cities, you know, the Laodicean Colossi, presumably the cities were so close that any threat to the church and one would certainly be a threat to the other. And so Paul wants to both places to read his letters. But how, what's going on with Laodicea? Okay, you know, what is that, the Laodicean church? Now, the mention of a letter to Laodicea, this is still done in his commentary. He says, the mention of this letter provokes a further round of speculation. Possibly we shouldn't be reading, you know, a letter from, you know, Laodicea, or maybe we should be reading the letter to Laodicea. It's either to or from it. You could actually translate the Greek either way. So the options are on one hand, it was a letter that had been written in Laodicea by someone else, not Paul, and Paul just knows about it, and maybe written to Paul. Okay, maybe that's why, you know, it has importance. We don't know. Again, how else would the present house of Paul know about it? Or maybe it was written by someone else, but was well enough known to be familiar to Paul, to the writer of this epistle. You know, and then therefore it should have already been known to the, to the Colossians, you know, as well. So he's just, he's sort of engaging in open speculation. I'm paraphrasing what Dan is writing here. He says, maybe another view is that it was written by Epiphris. And if that was the case, because some commentators go there to try to explain this, when did it have been logically been referred to as the, you know, Epiphris's letter? Okay. If though, and here's we're done, you know, and a lot of other people want to park, and I've already alluded to the issue. If, however, this is a letter to Laodicea, but viewed from the perspective of the Colossians as seems more probable, then we may assume that it is envisaged as coming likewise from Paul so that he as author could determine to whom it should be read. And that's the issue. You could very well look at the Greek here and conclude that, you know, let me read the way ESV handles it again, you'll see the difference. When this letter has been read among you, you have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. See that that divorces Paul from it, like Paul just knows about this other letter. You know, I want you to read that one too. It's a good one. I read it. It's good. If you translated though, see that you also read the letter to Laodicea. That suggests that Paul is alluding to something he wrote to that church. So again, we actually can't again, conclusively determine which one it is. But I think it's worth talking a little bit about let's just assume that it's it's Paul line, you know, Paul wrote it. Now, what Dunn says here, I'll just read you what he has and I'm going to throw my own two cents in here. He writes, in that case, again, if this is a missing Paul line, you know, we have some possibilities, two possibilities, he says, one is that the letter has been lost. Okay, one option is if we think this is a letter Paul wrote, it's gone. It's lost. That would require us to qualify the reflections of the preceding the penultimate paragraph since it would mean that some of Paul's letters were not valued so highly as to be carefully preserved unless that is the loss was wholly accidental and unavoidable. This seems to have been the case with some of Paul's correspondence with the Corinthian church. Let me let me read you first Corinthians five nine. This is a comment made in first Corinthians. Okay, not second Corinthians, but first Corinthians five nine. Here's what we read. Paul says, I wrote to you in my letter, not to associate with sexually immoral people. Now, since that appears in first Corinthians, it very clearly alludes to the fact that Paul had written them earlier. We don't have that. Okay, we don't have that. Dunn mentions that there is an apocryphal letter to the Laodiceans, but that it can only be dated to the fourth century, you know, or later. And he said, he speculates that was evidently written to make good the gap here and was widely regarded as authentic for 1000 years in Western Christianity, unfortunately, again, among some sectors. Dunn says the other possibility possibility one is that this letter is lost. This letter the Laodiceans Paul wrote to the church at Laodicean it's gone. The other possibility is that the letter to or from Laodicea has been preserved under some other name. The most obvious candidate would be Ephesians, which is so geographically close to Colossians and thematically close to Colossians in so many respects. Ephesians was perhaps a circular letter. He later passed from church to church rather than addressed to any one church in particular. It's just that we know it as letter to the Ephesians. So that's how we understand what the letter, what the destination was, and what the context was. Because, you know, the beginning of the letter has that as well. So that's how we read it. But maybe Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians intending that it be passed around in the region of Laodicea. You know, who knows? It's impossible to really know. So back to the question. Okay, what about the earlier letter to the Corinthians? What about this? If this is a Pauline letter, could it be missing just like that original first one to the Corinthians that precedes first Corinthians? That's gone. We don't have that. Is this a problem? I used to, in class, I used to like to address this this way. Let's say you were a traveling companion with Paul and you get up in the morning and you go to make breakfast. Paul opens the fridge and says, oh, man, we're out of eggs. You know what? You need to go down to the market and get some eggs. I could really, I really want an omelet today. So wait a minute, let me make a list. And here's, here's what to get in the market.   Is the grocery list inspired because Paul wrote it? I mean, just the fact that Paul wrote something, does that mean that we have inspiration happening? You already know my view of inspiration not being an event but a process. And so you can guess at my answer. No. Just because it came from the hand of Paul doesn't mean that it was intended, that God intended it in his providence. Again, I take a very providential view of inspiration. It's a providential process, not a paranormal event. Just because Paul wrote something, maybe he wrote a laundry list. Maybe he wrote a thank you letter to somebody. You know, there's nobody running around collecting these thinking, oh, this came from the hand of Paul. This is the word of God. You know, just because it came from Paul's hand. No. It's quite possible, I think, normal that Paul would have been writing a number of things that God, again in his providence, never intended to be part of the canon, part of the sacred body of literature that we know today as the New Testament. And so it doesn't bother me. I mean, I don't know. I don't know anything about. I don't know which to choose. Is the letter to or from the Laodicea? Is that really Ephesians or not? I don't know. And either it is anybody else. I mean, it's a reasonable guess because of the region Laodicea and Colossae and Ephesians real close together there. And the letters are a lot alike. So that's reasonable. But again, we don't know. And even if we did know, it doesn't solve the earlier letter to the Corinthians, the one that preceded first Corinthians. But in my view, I don't really care. It's just because Paul wrote it doesn't mean that we have to presume that either God couldn't handle the situation all like God really intended that to be in the canon. He couldn't stop the process of it being lost. God failed. That's incoherent. It's as incoherent as the other idea again, that everything that comes from the fingertips of Paul has to be considered part of the sacred text. Neither of these things makes sense, but they extend from again, a spooky view of inspiration. And I'm hoping again, if you're not familiar with how I look at scripture in this regard, go up to the podcast website, NakedBiblePodcast.com at the top. There's Hey, are you new here? Click here. And one of those videos is how I might use scripture.  You'll also find things on YouTube about again, inspiration is a process, not a paranormal event. There are lots of things you find in the text. And here's one of them that just aren't accounted for by a dictation view or a view that has the spirit of God having to whisper everything in the writer's ear. That doesn't conform to what you actually find in the text. And so that ought to tell you it's a bad view of inspiration. So again, I just thought I'd rabbit trail on that a little bit. And now we'll hit verse 18. Paul finishes his letter this way. He says, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, remember my chains, grace be with you. Now, what's interesting here is Paul's reference to writing this greeting. Now, is the greeting verse 18? Or is the greeting all those greetings that came before, you know, a few lines, a few verses, okay? Is that Paul's, it could be either. But he says, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, remember my chains, grace be with you. You say, well, what does it matter? What does it matter if Paul just wrote the last verse or a few verses or, you know, there are other references to Paul sort of commenting about, look, look, you know, I'm writing this. There's, again, a very interesting study and you should be able to find this online. Chris Keith is the author's name and the article is entitled In My Own Hand. The subtitle is Grapho Literacy and the Apostle Paul. The journal is Biblica and they put a lot of their stuff again online, 2008, volume 89 verse one, or not verse one, but number one, 2008. So let me read you his first paragraph of this article because it gets into this subject about do we learn anything or can we learn anything about Paul's level of literacy in not only from this verse, but from some of the other verses where he talks about, you know, hey, look, look, I'm doing this with my own hand. Okay, let me just read you the first paragraph and then I'm going to summarize some of the content here. Keith writes that the Apostle Paul was a literate individual as well established and beyond doubt. However, in the ancient world as today, literacy was not a homogeneous entity, but rather existed in shades and gradations. The present essay is thus concerned not with Paul's literacy per se, but rather the degree of literacy Paul held in Greek. And more importantly, how he employed and displayed his literate status in a rhetorical fashion. Recent research in the school papyri of Greco-Roman Egypt. These are like, I'll just intrude here, these are like lessons, school children lessons, you know, and just general reading and writing lessons that have been recovered archaeologically back to the abstract here to the summary. Recent research in the school papyri of Greco-Roman Egypt has yielded new insights into the process by which individuals learned to read and write in the Greco-Roman world. Insights that shed new light on five passages where Paul or someone writing in his name highlights the fact that he has written in the epistle with his own hand. I will suggest that these passages enhance Paul's arguments in the epistles and social position in the congregations by underscoring not only his literacy, but his grapho literacy, his ability to write, not just read, but write, and not only his grapho literacy, but his ability to avoid using it. That's the beginning, you know, section of the article. Now the five passages are 1 Corinthians 16, 21, and I'll read that, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Okay, 1 Corinthians 16, 21. The next one is Galatians 6, 11. See, with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. Okay, Colossians 4, 18, which we just read. I'll read it again. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains, grace be with you. The next one, 2 Thessalonians 3, 17. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine, every letter of mine. It is the way I write. And then Philemon 19. I, Paul, write this with my own hand. I will repay it to say nothing of your owing me, even of your own self. That's a little aside, of course, to Philemon about the whole unesimist matter. But I, Paul, write this with my own hand. Now, a couple of observations. Again, I'm not going to go through this article. Again, you should be able to get it if you're interested in it. But just a few general observations that he makes in this article. The article highlight, I mean, these six, let me just count them again, these five passages. When Paul alludes to the fact that he's written something in the letter in his own hand, whether it's that verse or a few verses associated with it. When he does that, that highlights the fact that he used an eminences for most of what he wrote. In other words, he dictated his letters. Someone else was the actual writer, and Paul verbally dictated the letters. Now, when he wanted to write something in his own hand, he does, doesn't have to, but he does, and then he points it out. So, again, it's just kind of interesting. Maybe there's some in the audience that have never heard that Paul used an eminences, but he did, and it was actually very common even for literate people in the ancient world to do it this way. Second observation, these passages demonstrate that Paul's Greek education was, at the very least, sufficient enough that he could write formulaic greetings and short phrases in his text. Now, a note here on Philemon XIX. Some scholars believe that Philemon XIX, and also because of the shortness of the letter, when Paul says, I write this with my own hand, it's not at the end, it's not at the end of Philemon. All these other ones are sort of at the very end of the letter, but this one's not. And so, because of that, and because the letter's so short, some scholars see that as a comment by Paul and take it as proof that Paul wrote the entire letter himself. Some people say, oh no, Paul, he just interrupted the eminences here and wrote that verse in and then let his eminences continue as he dictated. I mean, we don't know, but there are a number of people who feel, because, again, this doesn't fall at the exact end that he wrote the whole thing, he say, well, why, who cares? It's because that was unusual. I mean, it was not unusual. And again, you could read the whole article. It was not unusual for people to be able to read in another language. And when I say not unusual, I can't be too generous, because the article actually goes into some studies on this based upon textual evidence that probably about 10% and 10% might be generous of the people in Paul's world at the time could read and write. So that sounds really, really, really low. And it was, and it's not that everybody's a dunderhead. It's just that this is an agrarian culture. There's a lot of servants and slaves in the culture too. This is the Roman Empire. So there are a lot of professions and a lot of cultural situations where reading and writing was not necessary at all. Beyond maybe the ability to write your name or to count a tabulation or something like that for economic purposes. It just wasn't part of life. It's hard for us to imagine, but it wasn't. So again, the studies have put the number at 10%. And again, even the people who are doing the studies say it's probably a little generous, but we're just going to go with 10% that could read and write. So if Paul, if Paul was capable, and it seems like, again, you can build a good argument from Philemon 19. And there are scholars who have, I'm not just going to go, not going to go into all of it. But if Paul could do that, if he could write the whole letter himself, that means he was in the upper echelon in terms of education. He could certainly do it in Hebrew and Aramaic. Those would be his native tongue. And of course, he's going to know Hebrew really well as a Pharisee, Pharisee of the Pharisees. In Greek, he was quite possibly not only trilingual, but he could write in all three languages as well, which would have put him really in a very small percentage of people in the ancient world. It would have really elevated his status of people who could both read and write. Again, apparently he could do all that. Now, he still though uses an Emanuensis, but when he does that, it doesn't mean that he's not capable. And there's an interesting parallel to this of a well-known person, Josephus. Josephus actually tells us in his own writings is this is specifically in against Apion 1.9.51. He specifically tells us that he needed help when composing Greek. Now, again, from what we know about Josephus, he's probably really versed in Aramaic because he's Jewish, but he's also employed by the Romans, so he's probably really good in Latin too. But he confesses he needed a little help. He needs some help to learn Greek well enough to write in it because that's what Josephus has written in Greek. So Josephus actually says, here's a little section. Afterward, I got leisure at Rome. He went to Rome. And when all my materials were prepared for that work, I made use of some persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue. And by these means, I compose the history of those transactions. So he tells us he had to have an adult as an adult. He had to learn how to write in Greek didn't mean he was illiterate at that point. He wasn't, but he just had to acquire this new skill. And so again, the article, the article by Keith quotes another study by Hetzer, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, it's H-E-Z-S-E-R. And it's from a book called Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. And that author says this, Josephus should probably be seen as an example of those upper class Jews who had achieved a relatively high level of Greek education. Being able to read and discuss Greek literature, although not able to write a faultless and stylistically sophisticated Greek without outside help. And, you know, Heser's quote is used by Keith to say, that's probably Paul. Paul's probably in the same group. Upper class Jew, high level of Greek education, not perfect, but he could do it. He could do it when he had to. He still prefers an Emanuensis. So the fact that he uses an Emanuensis, here's the larger point, is no indication that Paul was some dundering peasant. Okay, he was well versed.  Again, he's in the upper elite, you know, for his day educationally, intellectually, which again, I think at some points in what he does write in terms of his content is probably good to know, probably significant. So that's how I wanted to end Colossians. Again, those last few verses have some interesting things in there, places you can drill down if you're really interested. So, you know, it's been a good ride, but this is the end of Colossians for us. And as Trey mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we're waiting for your questions, and I'm happy to get them. And we will, you know, revisit Colossians in that way in the future. All right, Mike. Another one in the books. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, it's an interesting insight. I wish we could get through all 66 books of the Bible, but unfortunately, we just don't live that long. And that's true. I always appreciate it when we've completed a book. And I think our listeners thoroughly enjoy it too. And I want to remind everybody that we will be voting on the next book, probably in a month or two. I think Mike and I discussed that we would hopefully like to kick it off in January. So our next book will probably be in the new year. We've got some Q&As to get to. And maybe a topic or two. Yep. Yep. Again, send me your questions via email to treystrickler.gmail.com for the Colossians Q&A. And with that, Mike, you know, we really appreciate you taking the time and energy to go through the books. I know they're probably not your favorite, but it's not Israelite religion or do I? But you run into it everywhere. So it really doesn't matter. Yeah. And people are interested in your take on these matters. So I know our listeners thoroughly appreciate it as do I. And that Mike, I just want to thank you and thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless.