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Col_1:1-2. Διὰ θελήμ . Θεοῦ ] see on 1Co_1:1. Comp. 2Co_1:1; Eph_1:1.
καὶ Τιμόθ .] see on 2Co_1:1; Php_1:1. Here also as subordinate joint-author of the letter, who at the same time may have been the amanuensis, but is not here jointly mentioned as such (comp. Rom_16:22). See on Php_1:1.
ὁ ἀδελφός ] see on 1Co_1:1; referring, not to official (Chrys.: οὐκοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς ἀπόστολος ), but generally to Christian brotherhood.
τοῖς ἐν Κολ . ἁγ . κ . τ . λ .] to the saints who are in Colossae. To this theocratic designation, which in itself is not as yet more precisely defined (see on Rom_1:7), is then added their distinctively Christian character: and believing brethren in Christ. Comp. on Eph_1:1. ἁγίοις is to be understood as a substantive, just as in all the commencements of epistles, where it occurs (Rom_1:7; 1 Cor.; 2 Cor.; Eph.; Phil.); and ἐν Χριστῷ is closely connected with πιστ . ἀδ ., with which it blends so as to form one conception (hence it is not τοῖς ἐν Χ .), expressly designating the believing brethren as Christians, so that ἐν Χ . forms the element of demarcation, in which the readers are believing brethren, and outside of which they would not be so in the Christian sense. Comp. on 1Co_4:17; Eph_6:21; in which passages, however, πιστός is faithful,—a meaning which it has not here (in opposition to Baumgarten-Crusius, Ewald, Dalmer), because everywhere in the superscriptions of the Epistles it is only the Christian standing of the readers that is described. No doubt ἐν Χριστῷ was in itself hardly necessary; but the addresses have a certain formal stamp. If ἁγίοις is taken as an adjective: “the holy and believing brethren” (de Wette), ἐν Χριστῷ being made to apply to the whole formula, then πιστοῖς coming after ἁγίοις (which latter word would already have, through ἐν Χ ., its definition in a Christian sense, which, according to our view, it still has not) would be simply a superfluous and clumsy addition, because ἁγίοις would already presuppose the πιστοῖς .
The fact that Paul does not expressly describe the church to which he is writing as a church (as in 1 Cor.; 2 Cor.; Galatians 1 and 2 Thess.) has no special motive (comp. Rom., Eph., Phil.), but is purely accidental. If it implied that he had not founded the church and stood in no kind of relation to it as such, and especially to its rulers (de Wette, by way of query), he would not have written of a Λαοδικέων ἐκκλησία (Col_4:16). Indeed, the principle of addressing as churches those communities only which he had himself founded, is not one to be expected from the apostle’s disposition of mind and wisdom; and it is excluded by the inscription of the Epistle to the Ephesians (assuming its genuineness and destination for the church at Ephesus), as also by Php_1:1 (where the mention of the bishops and deacons would not compensate for the formal naming of the church). It is also an accidental matter that Paul says ἐν Χριστῷ merely, and not ἐν Χ . Ἰησοῦ (1 Cor.; Eph.; Phil.; 2 Thess.), although Mayerhoff makes use of this, among other things, to impugn the genuineness of the epistle; just as if such a mechanical regularity were to be ascribed to the apostle!
χάρις ὑμῖν κ . τ . λ .] See on Rom_1:7.