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Book of Colossians 2:1-7 In Whom Are Hid All the Treasures

[Study Aired September 8, 2026]

“For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:1–7).

A Conflict for Men He Had Never Seen

The last study left Paul spent — “whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily” (Colossians 1:29). “Striving” is agōnizomai (G75), the word of the contest.

The chapter division is not his. It falls in the middle of a man explaining himself, and we do best to read across it as though it were not there. The first thing Paul names on the other side of it is that word’s own noun.

“For I would that ye knew what great conflict (G73) I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.”

“Conflict” is agōn (G73). The two words stand in consecutive sentences, joined by “For.” Paul has said that he strives; here he says what the striving is, and who it falls on.

So these verses are the underside of the last ones. The last study watched an apostle work himself to exhaustion on strength that was not his own, and it did not say what the exhaustion was spent on. Here he tells them.

Two churches are named, and Paul has stood in neither. Laodicea lay up the same valley and would have this letter passed on to it (Colossians 4:16). Then a phrase best read as describing them both rather than adding a third party beside them — “as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” Some take it to gather others besides. The weight falls the same either way, and the first study had established the fact from another direction: Paul did not plant this church and had never been in it.

So the striving is spent on strangers.

That tells us what kind of thing it is. A man may wear himself out for people whose faces he knows, and be repaid in the seeing of them. Paul is in a prison, contending for churches he had never stood in, none of whose members would know him if he passed them in the street.

The fifth study found the same direction and named it: nothing he was given was given him to keep. Here we are told what the giving costs.

He wants the fact known — “I would that ye knew.” Not to be admired for it. The next clause says what the knowing is for.

That Their Hearts Might Be Comforted

Paul states the aim of the conflict before he states its object.

“That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding.”

A man contending against teachers who deal in error might be expected to aim at correction — that his readers would think rightly and answer the arguments. Paul aims at their hearts.

He aims there in a particular way. “Comforted” is parakaleō (G3870), and the letter itself shows what he means by it. He uses the same verb on the same object at the close, of the man he is sending to them: “that he might know your estate, and comfort (G3870) your hearts” (Colossians 4:8). It is not the easing of a grief. It is one brought to another’s side so that the other is strengthened where he stands.

Then “knit together in love” — sumbibazō (G4822). This word runs two ways.

It can mean putting things together in the mind. Paul confounded the Jews at Damascus, “proving (G4822) that this is very Christ” (Acts 9:22), and that sense is live here, with understanding standing in the next clause of this very verse.

It can also mean joining things into one, and Paul uses it that way of a body — the whole “having nourishment ministered, and knit together (G4822), increaseth with the increase of God” (Colossians 2:19), and “from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted (G4822)“ (Ephesians 4:16). The object here is hearts, not conclusions. What Paul labors for in these people is what the body is said to have at Col 2:19.

The third thing he asks is riches — “all riches of the full assurance of understanding.” An earlier study prayed for a knowledge filled to the brim, and the last found riches at the center of the mystery. Here they are riches of assurance. The word is plērophoria (G4136), a being carried full: “the full assurance of hope unto the end” (Hebrews 6:11).

So the striving is aimed at settledness. Not at a people who know more, but at a people who are steadier, joined, and sure.

The Mystery of God

That assurance has an object, and Paul names it.

“To the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.”

“Acknowledgement” is epignōsis (G1922). The KJV renders that same word knowledge three times in this letter — at 1:9, at 1:10, and at 3:10 — and acknowledgement only here. One word, two English words for it, and it is the word the second study handled at 1:9, and handled under restraint.

Its force is intensive: a fuller and more settled knowing than bare knowledge. That study declined to press it further, into a knowledge gained by experience, since the word will not secure that by itself. Nothing here changes the ruling. What Paul asks is what he asked before — not that a people acquire a knowledge they lack, but that a knowledge they have be filled up.

Then three names close the clause: God, the Father, Christ. The KJV sets them apart with three ofs, and the Greek does not part them so widely. What that closeness amounts to is a question about the Person, and the Person is taken up eight verses on, where Paul says that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). It waits there.

The mystery is God’s. That much the clause holds however its last words are read.

Paul does not leave the mystery as a title. He says where it is kept.

In Whom Are Hid All the Treasures

“In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

Eight verses back, Paul said the mystery was hidden and has now been shown. Here he says the treasures are hidden. He says it in the present tense, in a letter whose whole point is that the hiding is over.

That is more than awkward. It is the opening the teachers need. If something is still hidden, then something is still to be found. A man who claims to know where it is kept has something to sell.

Start with the word. “Hid” is apokruphos (G614), and it stands three times in the New Testament. Two of those are one saying of the Lord, written down in two Gospels: “neither was any thing kept secret (G614), but that it should come abroad” (Mark 4:22), and “neither any thing hid (G614), that shall not be known and come abroad” (Luke 8:17). One saying, heard twice. In both of them the hiding is mentioned only to say that it will not last.

Paul handles hiding the same way in this letter, with a different word. The mystery was “hid” (G613) at 1:26 — and hid only so far as “but now is made manifest.”

Now set the two verses side by side.

At 1:26 the hiding is measured against time. The mystery was hid “from ages and from generations.” There is somebody it was kept from, and a stretch it was kept through, and “now” ends both.

At 2:3 there is no from at all. Paul names nobody the treasures are kept from. He names no age they were kept through. The only weight in the clause is “in whom.”

So the verse is not telling us that something remains dark. It is telling us where the store is.

Whose store is it? “In whom” could look back to God, or to Christ, or to the mystery. It does not matter which. The mystery is “Christ in you” (Colossians 1:27). The whole fullness dwells in Christ (Colossians 1:19). The nearest noun is Christ. Every reading ends in the same Person.

None of this means that nothing is hidden. Paul says hid, and we let the word stand. What the verse settles is that nothing is hidden somewhere else.

That grants the teachers everything true in what they said. More does remain. Paul preaches “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8), and he breaks off before what he cannot measure: “how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33). A man in Christ has not seen the bottom of what he stands in.

What Paul denies is the direction. The teachers offered a route out and up — a discipline, an ascent, a rank of beings, a knowledge held by a few. Paul puts the whole store in the Person these people already have. So every route away from Christ is a route away from the thing being sought.

The third study reached forward and took this verse in advance, using it to say where the treasury is. It is that. It is also this: a treasury a man can go on opening for ever without once leaving where he stands.

Paul says “all.” Not most of it, with a remainder put somewhere else for the diligent. If the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are all in Christ, then a wisdom offered from outside Him is not a supplement. It is either already His, or it is not wisdom.

Lest Any Man Should Beguile You

Only now does Paul say why he has told them any of it.

“And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.”

“Beguile” is paralogizomai (G3884), to reckon falsely — to cheat a man by reasoning rather than by force. It stands twice in the New Testament, and the other place shows what it does: “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving (G3884) your own selves” (James 1:22). A man is cheated by an argument he accepts. And “enticing words” is pithanologia (G4086), which stands nowhere else, built of persuasion and speech: a case that sounds good.

That is the whole description. Paul names the danger and does not describe the doctrine.

He will describe it. One verse on, the warning becomes specific — philosophy, vain deceit, the tradition of men, the rudiments of the world — and that is where the next study begins. However, it is not here. Here Paul has a church with teachers at its door, and what he gives it is seven verses on what it already holds before a word of the error is quoted.

That withholding is the argument, and the series has watched Paul do it from the first study: the ground taken before the warning is spoken. Here it is tightest, because the warning now stands one verse away and Paul still will not begin with it.

Absent in the Flesh, Present in the Spirit

Instead he tells them how he sees them.

“For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ.”

He has just said he has never seen their faces. He now says he beholds them, and the two do not fight; he is naming a presence that is not of the body. He speaks the same way to another church, “absent in body, but present in spirit” (1 Corinthians 5:3), and to a third of an absence that never reached the heart: “being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart” (1 Thessalonians 2:17).

What he beholds is two things. “Order” is taxis (G5010), things standing where they belong — the word Paul uses of an assembly, “let all things be done decently and in order (G5010)“ (1 Corinthians 14:40). “Stedfastness” is stereōma (G4733), which stands nowhere else in the New Testament: a solid thing, a firmness. The one is arrangement and the other is solidity, and between them they describe a church that has not shifted.

So the man is glad. A church with error at its door, and Paul’s report on it is that it is standing where it was put.

That governs how the charge which follows must be read. It is not spoken to a people who have given way. It is spoken to a people who are standing, by a man who says so first.

As Ye Have Received, So Walk

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.”

Here the letter hands this series its own spine, and hands it over plainly.

There is a receiving, and it is behind them. There is a walking, and it is before them. Between the two stands “therefore.” The walk is not what secures the receiving; it is what answers to it. What was received is not a doctrine or a benefit but a Person — “Christ Jesus the Lord” — while the walk is “in him,” in the same One and not toward Him.

Every study in this series has had to argue for that order. The first found faith and love growing because of a hope already laid up (Colossians 1:5). The second found a fitness granted before a step was taken (Colossians 1:12). The fourth had to defend the order against a conditional clause (Colossians 1:23), and to say plainly that the foundation was laid by another hand. Here nothing needs defending. Paul states the order himself, in one sentence, with the hinge word standing in the middle of it.

Notice what the receiving does to the offer at the door. A man who has received a Person cannot be sold a supplement to Him. What is left to a teacher is not addition but displacement.

Nor is that peculiar to Colosse. Wherever the receiving has happened it happened the same way round: not a road walked toward Christ until He was reached, but a Person received and then a walk taken in Him. Whatever we hold, we hold on those terms, and the terms do not change with the century. The offers at our own door are dressed differently and shaped the same — something to be added, from somewhere He is not.

Rooted, Built Up, Stablished

Paul describes that walk in three words, and they do not all point the same way.

“Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”

“Rooted” is rhizoō (G4492), and it stands in the tense of a thing done and still holding. It is not a charge to take root. It describes men already rooted, and rooted by a hand not their own — which is what the first study said of a sower, taking the saying from Paul: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). He joins the same word to the same kind of thought writing to the Ephesians, “rooted (G4492) and grounded (G2311) in love” (Ephesians 3:17), and that second word is the one the fourth study weighed at 1:23, the word for laying a foundation. A house does not found itself.

“Built up” is epoikodomeō (G2026), and it is not finished. It is going on. A building rises on a foundation it did not lay, and Paul uses this very word of that — “I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon (G2026)“ (1 Corinthians 3:10). In the next breath he says why the foundation is never replaced, and names it: “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11).

“Stablished” is bebaioō (G950), to be made firm. Where Paul uses it of persons, somebody else always does the establishing: “now he which stablisheth (G950) us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God” (2 Corinthians 1:21). The agent is not left to be guessed at.

Set the three together and the shape is the shape this series has found from the beginning. One thing done, and holding. Two things going on, on top of it.

The fourth study met that pair at 1:23 and had to work to hold them together, because a conditional clause stood over them: grounded was what had been done to them, settled was what they were charged to be, and that study had to insist the two not be pulled apart. Here they stand side by side with no condition attached at all, and nobody has to insist on anything.

Then the last word, and it is not an effort: “abounding therein with thanksgiving.” The walk overflows, and what it overflows in is thanks. A man who is thankful has not paid for anything. He has received. Which is as plain a test as we are given of where we think we stand — whether the walk runs out of thanks for what is already ours, or toward something we are afraid is not.

What These Verses Establish

Read whole, the passage takes a man in chains and shows what he is spending himself on, and then shows the people he is spending it on what they already hold.

The conflict is for strangers, and its aim is not that they should know more but that they should be steadied, joined, and made sure. The object of that assurance is the mystery of God, and Paul says where its whole store is kept: in Christ, and nowhere else. Not all of that store has been seen. All of it is in the One these people already have.

Then the danger is named and not described, because Paul will not let a church hear the error before it has heard what defeats it. He tells them instead that he sees them standing. He tells them to walk as men who have received — rooted in what they did not root themselves in, building on it, being made firm in it, and spilling over in thanks.

The order the series has found six times holds a seventh, and this time the text states it rather than implying it. As ye have received… so walk ye. The standing comes first and the walk after, and the walk never becomes the ground of the standing.

What is new is the nearness of the danger. The earlier studies established what the Colossians have; this one says where it is kept, and warns that a man may be talked out of the keeping place. The next verse names who is doing the talking.

Threads Held for Later

One thread is added here, and it belongs to a question already routed.

The knitting together Paul strives for in verse 2 is the same word he uses of the body in verse 19 — sumbibazō (G4822) — and verse 19 is where this series has sent the question of what holds a man who might be moved. That the word stands first as the object of an apostle’s striving is worth carrying to that verse. Whatever holds the body, it is not on this evidence a thing the body does alone.

A second is added at the end of verse 2, where God, the Father, and Christ are named together and the English parts them more widely than the Greek does. What that says of the Person belongs with “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), and the next study reaches it.

The ledger is otherwise unchanged. How a man is moved, and what he ceases to hold, waits where the letter warns of a teacher who takes the umpire’s seat and of a man “not holding the Head” (Colossians 2:18–19). What he forfeits waits at Colossians 3:24–25, where Paul names both sides of the reckoning.

Two debts come due together in the study that follows. The body — the body of His flesh at 1:22, His body the church at 1:24 — comes due where the letter says that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). And the reach of the reconciling of “all things,” left standing since the third study, comes due where Christ “made a shew of them openly” (Colossians 2:15). Reconciled, and triumphed over: the next study has both verses in front of it, and will have to hold them together.

Next study: (Colossians 2:8–15)

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”