Commentary on Colossians 3:1-11

The striking language and descriptions in Colossians 3:1–11 build on the claims Paul (whom I here identify as the author for simplicity) has developed since 2:6. In 2:11–15, Paul writes of the Colossians’ transformation (see also 1:13–14), which is at once an anthropological (2:11–12), christological (2:9–10), and cosmological (2:8, 13–15, 20) event. Importantly, the Colossians have, in their baptism, experienced a type of death, burial, and resurrection into new life with Christ (2:11–14; see also Romans 6:1–11). It is that experience of resurrection to which Paul alludes in 3:1: “So, if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (New Revised Standard Version).

This verse introduces Paul’s instructions in the whole of 3:1–11, which consist of moral imperatives grounded in the Colossians’ present form of (transformed) existence in Christ. Their transformation is, in other words, the condition for the possibility of new moral life for the Colossians. Thus, in the following I examine aspects of that change, as Paul describes it, rather than progress through verses 1–11 in a sequential order.

In 3:5, Paul gives a brief glimpse into “that life” (verse 7) the Colossians lived before their conversion. They were “earthly,” living in “fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)” (New Revised Standard Version). Put simply, vice characterized their past lives, and such vices seem still to pose a threat (verses 8–9). Yet Paul writes that at the threshold between their previous and current lives lies a change that has transformed the Colossians morally. He uses multiple metaphors to describe that change.

As stated above, Paul uses a death-burial-resurrection metaphor. In so doing, he envisages two “spheres” of existence: One is constituted by the “power of darkness” (1:13) and characterized by sins like those he lists in 3:5. Yet, after dying, they are raised to new life in a new sphere of existence—the sphere of new life in Christ (2:13; 3:4). Through a religious experience of transformation that Paul describes as death, the Colossians have, to borrow language from 1:13, been “rescued” from one sphere and transferred (methistēmi) into the sphere of the resurrected Christ (New Revised Standard Version). In a real sense, their life is joined with the living Christ, who is now “seated at the right hand of God” (3:1). Such is not apparent to the ordinary observer.

Inhabitants of Colossae could surely recognize that this group of Christ-followers had somehow changed. Yet, that they now live as united with the resurrected Lord (who dwells in heaven) is simply beyond the scope of what can be perceived based on empirical evidence alone (in other words, with “earthly” senses). Such is, perhaps, why Paul writes that their “life is hidden with Christ in God” (3:3). In short, with a metaphor of death and resurrection, Paul describes a transformation that is not only moral but anthropological (people are changed through a powerful experience) and cosmological (change involves a transfer between spheres of existence).

Paul also uses clothing metaphors to describe the Colossians’ experience of transformation. He writes in 3:9 that they have “stripped off (apekduomai) the old self (ton palaion anthrōpon) with its practices” and have “clothed (enduō) [themselves] with the new self (ton neon)” (New Revised Standard Version). In the Septuagint and some Second Temple Jewish writings, changes of clothing can symbolize some type of change in one’s identity.^[1] Paul, likewise, sometimes uses clothing metaphors to signify a transformation in selfhood or identity (for example, Galatians 3:27; 1 Corinthians 15:53–54; 2 Corinthians 5:1–5).

Here in Colossians, the clothing metaphor functions to portray a human transformation at the most fundamental level of one’s existence: A person has changed so substantially that Paul can identify the pre- and post-transformation person as two selves—an “old self” and a “new self” (New Revised Standard Version). That change is so profound that it relativizes (though without erasing) ethnic identities and socioeconomic statuses. To combine this metaphor with the one discussed above, the old self has died and the new self lives in Christ and experiences ongoing transformation in the form of “being renewed in the knowledge of its creator” (verse 10). It is that premise of continued renewal that grounds Paul’s moral instructions in 3:1–11.

A new self must adopt a moral way of living that corresponds with its new sphere of existence. On that basis, Paul instructs the Colossians to “put to death … whatever in you is earthly” (New Revised Standard Version). Although the Colossians have undergone a significant transformation, their moral conduct must continually come into alignment with the way of the risen Lord and his followers.

It seems, moreover, that the Colossians have been pressured to conform to alternative teaching or “philosophies,” which also entail alternative ways of living (2:4–8, 18–19). In light of such pressures, the logic of Paul’s rhetoric in 3:1–11 comes into view: Against the grain of their environments, the Colossians have been transformed to the extent that they have become new people in Christ. Paul urges them now to discard vices like dirty laundry, as they did their old selves, and to clothe themselves with new virtues that are befitting of those who live in Christ (3:12–14).

The mechanism for such continued change is renewal (3:10) and growth “in the knowledge of God” (1:10). Paul, in effect, writes to the Colossians, “You have become a new person in Christ; continue to grow morally into the people you’ve become.”

Notes

1. For examples and discussion, see Frederick David Carr, Being and Becoming: Human Transformation in the Letters of Paul (Baylor University Press, 2022), 129–32.