Colossians 1:7 Study Bible: even as you learned of Epaphras our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf,

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◄ Colossians 1:7 ►

You learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf,

You learned it
The phrase "You learned it" indicates the transmission of the gospel message and Christian doctrine. The Greek word for "learned" is "μανθάνω" (manthano), which implies not just acquiring knowledge but also understanding and internalizing it. This suggests that the Colossians received a deep and transformative understanding of the gospel, which is foundational to their faith. In a historical context, this learning would have been through oral teaching and personal discipleship, emphasizing the importance of community and mentorship in the early church.

from Epaphras
Epaphras is identified as the source of their learning. His name, derived from the Greek "Επαφράς" (Epaphras), is a shortened form of Epaphroditus, meaning "lovely" or "charming." Epaphras is a significant figure in the early church, likely a native of Colossae, who played a crucial role in establishing the church there. His mention highlights the importance of local leadership and the spread of Christianity through personal relationships and dedicated individuals.

our beloved fellow servant
This phrase underscores the deep affection and camaraderie between Paul, his companions, and Epaphras. The term "beloved" (Greek: "ἀγαπητός," agapetos) conveys a sense of deep, unconditional love, reflecting the Christian ideal of love among believers. "Fellow servant" (Greek: "σύνδουλος," syndoulos) indicates a shared mission and purpose, emphasizing the unity and equality among those who serve Christ. This highlights the communal and cooperative nature of early Christian ministry.

who is a faithful minister
The description of Epaphras as a "faithful minister" speaks to his reliability and dedication. The Greek word for "faithful" is "πιστός" (pistos), meaning trustworthy or dependable. "Minister" (Greek: "διάκονος," diakonos) originally referred to a servant or attendant, but in the Christian context, it denotes one who serves the church and its mission. This emphasizes the servant-leadership model that is central to Christian ministry, where leaders are called to serve others selflessly.

of Christ
This phrase identifies the ultimate authority and focus of Epaphras's ministry. The Greek "Χριστός" (Christos) means "anointed one," referring to Jesus as the Messiah. By serving "of Christ," Epaphras's work is not for personal gain or recognition but is dedicated to advancing the mission and message of Jesus. This aligns with the Christian belief that all ministry should be Christ-centered, aiming to glorify Him and spread His teachings.

on our behalf
This final phrase indicates that Epaphras's ministry was not only for the Colossians but also represented Paul and his companions. The Greek "ὑπέρ" (hyper) can mean "on behalf of" or "for the sake of," suggesting that Epaphras was acting as an emissary or representative. This highlights the interconnectedness of the early Christian communities and the shared responsibility in spreading the gospel. It also reflects the apostolic authority and endorsement of Epaphras's work, reinforcing his credibility and the authenticity of his teaching.

Persons / Places / Events

1. Epaphras
A key figure in the early church, Epaphras is described as a beloved fellow servant and a faithful minister of Christ. He played a significant role in the establishment and nurturing of the Colossian church.

2. Colossae
An ancient city in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), Colossae was the location of the church to which Paul wrote this letter. It was a place where early Christians were taught the gospel.

3. Paul
The apostle who authored the letter to the Colossians. He acknowledges Epaphras as a fellow worker in the ministry of the gospel.

4. The Colossian Church
The recipients of the letter, this early Christian community was taught the gospel by Epaphras and was being encouraged by Paul to remain steadfast in their faith.

5. The Gospel
The message of Jesus Christ, which Epaphras faithfully taught to the Colossians, forming the foundation of their faith.

Teaching Points

Faithful Ministry
Epaphras is a model of faithfulness in ministry. His example encourages us to be diligent and committed in our service to Christ and His church.

The Role of Teaching
The Colossians learned the gospel through Epaphras. This underscores the importance of sound teaching and the responsibility of those who teach to convey the truth accurately.

Partnership in the Gospel
Paul’s reference to Epaphras as a "fellow servant" highlights the collaborative nature of ministry. We are called to work together in spreading the gospel.

Prayerful Support
As seen in Colossians 4:12, Epaphras’s commitment to prayer for the Colossians is a reminder of the power and necessity of intercessory prayer in supporting fellow believers.

Legacy of Faith
Epaphras’s impact on the Colossian church shows how one person’s faithful ministry can leave a lasting legacy. We are encouraged to consider the legacy we are building through our own faithfulness.

Bible Study Questions

1. How does the example of Epaphras challenge you in your own ministry or service within the church?

2. In what ways can you ensure that the teaching you receive or give is faithful to the gospel message?

3. How can you foster partnerships in your local church or community to further the work of the gospel?

4. What role does prayer play in your support of others in their faith journey, and how can you be more intentional in this area?

5. Reflect on the legacy you are building through your faith and actions. What steps can you take to ensure it aligns with the example set by Epaphras?

Connections to Other Scriptures

Philemon 1:23
Epaphras is mentioned as a fellow prisoner with Paul, indicating his deep commitment to the gospel and his close relationship with Paul.

Colossians 4:12-13
Further describes Epaphras as someone who is always wrestling in prayer for the Colossians, showing his dedication and pastoral heart for the church.

2 Corinthians 8:23
Paul refers to his fellow workers as "messengers of the churches," highlighting the importance of faithful ministers like Epaphras in spreading the gospel.

Sermons

A Faithful Minister of Christ	R. McAll, D. D.	Colossians 1:7
A Picture of a Faithful Minister	Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."	Colossians 1:7
Epaphras	J. Daille.	Colossians 1:7
Ministerial Responsibility	H. W. Beecher.	Colossians 1:7
Ministers Must be Faithful		Colossians 1:7
The Praise of Service	A. Maclaren, D. D.	Colossians 1:7
The Hope Laid Up in Heaven	R.M. Edgar	Colossians 1:1-8
Apostolic Thanksgiving	U. R. Thomas., G. Barlow.	Colossians 1:3-8
Christian Love the Chief Grace	H. W. Beecher.	Colossians 1:3-8
Five Christian Elements	J. Hirst.	Colossians 1:3-8
Pauline Sorites	R. Finlayson	Colossians 1:3-8
Thanksgiving	T. Watson, B. A.	Colossians 1:3-8
The Apostle's Thanksgiving for the Spiritual Progress of the Colossians	T. Croskery	Colossians 1:3-8
The Apostolic Thanksgiving	U.R. Thomas	Colossians 1:3-8
The Connection Between Thanksgiving and Prayer	Passavant.	Colossians 1:3-8
The Prelude	A. Maclaren, D. D.	Colossians 1:3-8
The Thanksgiving	E.S. Prout	Colossians 1:3-8
The Gospel, its Spread and Fruitfulness	J. Daille.	Colossians 1:6-8
The Progress of Christianity	Dr. Haven.	Colossians 1:6-8
The True Gospel Universally the Same	George Barlow.	Colossians 1:6-8

People

Colossians, Epaphras, Paul, Thessalonians, Timotheus, Timothy

Places

Colossae, Philippi

Topics

Behalf, Beloved, Bond-servant, Christ, Dear, Dearly-loved, Epaphras, Ep'aphras, Faithful, Fellow, Fellow-bondman, Fellowservant, Fellow-servant, Helper, Learned, Minister, Ministrant, Servant, Stead, Well-loved

Dictionary of Bible Themes

Colossians 1:7

     7944   ministry, qualifications
     8248   faithfulness
     8253   faithfulness, examples
     8304   loyalty
     8331   reliability

Colossians 1:5-7

2420 gospel

Library

February 11. "Strengthened with all Might unto all Patience" (Col. I. 11).
"Strengthened with all might unto all patience" (Col. i. 11). The apostle prays for the Colossians, that they may be "strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness." It is one thing to endure and show the strain on every muscle of your face, and seem to say with every wrinkle, "Why does not somebody sympathize with me?" It is another to endure the cross, "despising the shame" for the joy set before us. There are some trees in the …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

February 18. "Christ in You" (Col. I. 27).
"Christ in you" (Col. i. 27). How great the difference between the old and the new way of deliverance! One touch of Christ is worth a lifetime of struggling. A sufferer in one of our hospitals was in danger of losing his sight from a small piece of broken needle that had entered his eye. Operation after operation had only irritated it, and driven the foreign substance farther still into the delicate nerves of the sensitive organ. At length a skilful young physician thought of a new expedient. He …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

Twenty Fourth Sunday after Trinity Prayer and Spiritual Knowledge.
Text: Colossians 1, 3-14. 3 We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have toward all the saints, 5 because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, 6 which is come unto you; even as it is also in all the world bearing fruit and increasing, as it doth in you also, since the day ye heard and knew the grace of God …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. III

'All Power'
'Strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joy.'--COL. i. 11 (R.V.). There is a wonderful rush and fervour in the prayers of Paul. No parts of his letters are so lofty, so impassioned, so full of his soul, as when he rises from speaking of God to men to speaking to God for men. We have him here setting forth his loving desires for the Colossian Christians in a prayer of remarkable fulness and sweep. Broadly taken, it is for their perfecting …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Thankful for Inheritance
'Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.'--COL. i. 12 (R.V.) It is interesting to notice how much the thought of inheritance seems to have been filling the Apostle's mind during his writing of Ephesians and Colossians. Its recurrence is one of the points of contact between them. For example, in Ephesians, we read, 'In whom also were made a heritage' (i. 11); 'An earnest of our inheritance' (i. 14); 'His inheritance in the saints' …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Saints, Believers, Brethren
' . . . The saints and faithful brethren in Christ.'--COL. i. 2. 'The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,' says the Acts of the Apostles. It was a name given by outsiders, and like most of the instances where a sect, or school, or party is labelled with the name of its founder, it was given in scorn. It hit and yet missed its mark. The early believers were Christians, that is, Christ's men, but they were not merely a group of followers of a man, like many other groups of whom the …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Christian Endeavour
'I also labour, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily.'--COL. i. 29. I have chosen this text principally because it brings together the two subjects which are naturally before us to-day. All 'Western Christendom,' as it is called, is to-day commemorating the Pentecostal gift. My text speaks about that power that 'worketh in us mightily.' True, the Apostle is speaking in reference to the fiery energy and persistent toil which characterised him in proclaiming Christ, that …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Gospel-Hope
'The hope of the Gospel.'--COL. i. 5. 'God never sends mouths but He sends meat to feed them,' says the old proverb. And yet it seems as if that were scarcely true in regard to that strange faculty called Hope. It may well be a question whether on the whole it has given us more pleasure than pain. How seldom it has been a true prophet! How perpetually its pictures have been too highly coloured! It has cast illusions over the future, colouring the far-off hills with glorious purple which, reached, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Next Performance is Mainly Directed against Faith in the Church...
The next performance is mainly directed against faith in the Church, as a society of Divine origin. "The Rev. Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton, Hunts," claims that a National Church shall be regarded as a purely secular Institution,--the spontaneous development of the State. "If all priests and ministers of religion could at one moment be swept from the face of the Earth, they would soon be reproduced [76] ." The Church is concerned with Ethics, not with Divinity. It should therefore …
John William Burgon—Inspiration and Interpretation

All Fulness in Christ
The text is a great deep, we cannot explore it, but we will voyage over its surface joyously, the Holy Spirit giving us a favorable wind. Here are plenteous provisions far exceeding, those of Solomon, though at the sight of that royal profusion, Sheba's queen felt that there was no more spirit in her, and declared that the half had not been told to her. It may give some sort of order to our thoughts if they fall under four heads. What is here spoken of--"all fullness." Where is it placed--"in him," …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 17: 1871

Thankful Service.
(Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.) COL. i. 12. "Giving thanks." In one of our northern coal-pits there was a little boy employed in a lonely and dangerous part of the mine. One day a visitor to the coal-pit asked the boy about his work, and the child answered, "Yes, it is very lonely here, but I pick up the little bits of candle thrown away by the colliers, and join them together, and when I get a light I sing." My brothers, every day of our lives we are picking up blessings which the loving …
H. J. Wilmot-Buxton—The Life of Duty, a Year's Plain Sermons, v. 2

Twenty-Third Day for the Holy Spirit in Your Own Work
WHAT TO PRAY.--For the Holy Spirit in your own Work "I labour, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily."--COL. i. 29. You have your own special work; make it a work of intercession. Paul laboured, striving according to the working of God in him. Remember, God is not only the Creator, but the Great Workman, who worketh all in all. You can only do your work in His strength, by Him working in you through the Spirit. Intercede much for those among whom you work, till God gives …
Andrew Murray—The Ministry of Intercession

Knowledge and Obedience.
"For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness; giving thanks unto the Father."--COL. i. 9-12. The Epistles …
W. H. Griffith Thomas—The Prayers of St. Paul

The Inheritance.
Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.--Ep. to the Colossians i. 12. To have a share in any earthly inheritance, is to diminish the share of the other inheritors. In the inheritance of the saints, that which each has, goes to increase the possession of the rest. Hear what Dante puts in the mouth of his guide, as they pass through Purgatory:-- Perche s'appuntano i vostri desiri Dove per compagnia parte si scema, Invidia muove …
George MacDonald—Unspoken Sermons

The Disciple, -- Master, if Thou Wouldst Make a Special Manifestation of Thyself to The...
The Disciple,--Master, if Thou wouldst make a special manifestation of Thyself to the world, men would no longer doubt the existence of God and Thy own divinity, but all would believe and enter on the path of righteousness. The Master,--1. My son, the inner state of every man I know well, and to each heart in accordance with its needs I make Myself known; and for bringing men into the way of righteousness there is no better means than the manifestation of Myself. For man I became man that he might …
Sadhu Sundar Singh—At The Master's Feet

Victory Found
AT THE close of this little volume it seems fitting to recount again a wonderful personal experience, narrated in The Sunday School Times of December 7, 1918. I do not remember the time when I did not have in some degree a love for the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour. When not quite twelve years of age, at a revival meeting, I publicly accepted and confessed Christ as my Lord and Master. From that time there grew up in my heart a deep yearning to know Christ in a more real way, for he seemed so unreal, …
Rosalind Goforth—How I Know God Answers Prayer

section 3
But we will go back from this glimpse of God's ultimate purpose for us, to watch the process by which it is reached, so far as we can trace it in the ripening of the little annuals. The figure will not give us all the steps by which God gets His way in the intricacies of a human soul: we shall see no hint in it of the cleansing and filling that is needed in sinful man before he can follow the path of the plant. It shows us some of the Divine principles of the new life rather than a set sequence of …
I. Lilias Trotter—Parables of the Christ-life

Christ and Man in the Atonement
OUR conception of the relations subsisting between God and man, of the manner in which these relations are affected by sin, and particularly of the Scripture doctrine of the connection between sin and death, must determine, to a great extent, our attitude to the Atonement. The Atonement, as the New Testament presents it, assumes the connection of sin and death. Apart from some sense and recognition of such connection, the mediation of forgiveness through the death of Christ can only appear an arbitrary, …
James Denney—The Death of Christ

The Mystical Union with Immanuel.
"Christ in you the hope of glory." --Col. i. 27. The union of believers with Christ their Head is not effected by instilling a divine-human life-tincture into the soul. There is no divine-human life. There is a most holy Person, who unites in Himself the divine and the human life; but both natures continue unmixed, unblended, each retaining its own properties. And since there is no divine-human life in Jesus, He can not instil it into us. We do heartily acknowledge that there is a certain conformity …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

A Preliminary Discourse to Catechising
'If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled.' - Col 1:23. Intending next Lord's day to enter upon the work of catechising, it will not be amiss to give you a preliminary discourse, to show you how needful it is for Christians to be well instructed in the grounds of religion. If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled.' I. It is the duty of Christians to be settled in the doctrine of faith. II. The best way for Christians to be settled is to be well grounded. I. It is the duty of Christians …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Fourthly; all the [Credenda, Or] Doctrines, which the True, Simple, and Uncorrupted Christian Religion Teaches,
(that is, not only those plain doctrines which it requires to be believed as fundamental and of necessity to eternal salvation, but even all the doctrines which it teaches as matters of truth,) are, though indeed many of them not discoverable by bare reason unassisted with revelation; yet, when discovered by revelation, apparently most agreeable to sound unprejudiced reason, have every one of them a natural tendency, and a direct and powerful influence to reform men's minds, and correct their manners, …
Samuel Clarke—A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God

The Best Things Work for Good to the Godly
WE shall consider, first, what things work for good to the godly; and here we shall show that both the best things and the worst things work for their good. We begin with the best things. 1. God's attributes work for good to the godly. (1). God's power works for good. It is a glorious power (Col. i. 11), and it is engaged for the good of the elect. God's power works for good, in supporting us in trouble. "Underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deut. xxxiii. 27). What upheld Daniel in the lion's den? …
Thomas Watson—A Divine Cordial

Of Love to God
I proceed to the second general branch of the text. The persons interested in this privilege. They are lovers of God. "All things work together for good, to them that love God." Despisers and haters of God have no lot or part in this privilege. It is children's bread, it belongs only to them that love God. Because love is the very heart and spirit of religion, I shall the more fully treat upon this; and for the further discussion of it, let us notice these five things concerning love to God. 1. The …
Thomas Watson—A Divine Cordial

The Rise of the Assyrian Empire
PHOENICIA AND THE NORTHERN NATIONS AFTER THE DEATH OP RAMSES III.--THE FIRST ASSYRIAN EMPIRE: TIGLATH-PILESUR I.--THE ARAMAEANS AND THE KHATI. The continuance of Egyptian influence over Syrian civilization after the death of Ramses III.--Egyptian myths in Phoenicia: Osiris and Isis at Byblos--Horus, Thot, and the origin of the Egyptian alphabet--The tombs at Arvad and the Kabr-Hiram; Egyptian designs in Phoenician glass and goldsmiths'work--Commerce with Egypt, the withdrawal of Phoenician colonies …
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 6

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