(full purposed)
What the church is to Christ, emphasizing her heavenly place in Christ, and the mystery (known only to the initiated) of the body, by the Spirit uniting Jew and Gentile believers to their hidden Head. God con- fides His plans, according to the riches of His grace as having chosen us in Christ and adopted us as sons to Himself. The saints are not the inheritance (1:18) but co-heirs with whom He will share it. “Out of the depths He lifted me” (ch. 2). “The breadth, and length and depth and height” is the immensity and blessedness which God’s eternal glory fills, centering in Christ.
“Of the vast universe of bliss,
The center Thou and Sun.”
Then practical exhortations commence in chapter 4:1-3 and continue from verse 17 on. In verses 4-16, by annulling Satan’s power of death, He captures Satan’s captives and makes them His own instruments of delivering others and building them up, Next comes guidance for walk, as His dear children, wives, husbands, children, fathers, bondmen and masters; and then the need of the whole armor “of God” in entire dependence on the strength of the Lord. His word and praying in the Spirit.
The absence of personal salutations, as well as the name of the epistle in the Vatican and the Sinaitic manuscripts, also Basil’s verification, has caused some to believe that it may have been a circular epistle, such as is suggested by Col. 4:1616And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. (Colossians 4:16).
Written by Paul about A.D. 62 from the Roman prison.