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Col_4:17. The particular circumstances which lay at the root of this emphatic admonitory utterance[184] cannot be ascertained, nor do we even know whether the διακονία is to be understood in the narrower sense of the office of deacon (Primasius), or of any other office relating to the church (possibly the office of presbyter), or of the calling of an evangelist, or of some individual business relating to the service of the church. We cannot gather from ἐν κυρίῳ any more precise definition of the Christian διακονία . Ewald conjectures that Archippus was a still younger man (Bengel holds him to have been sick or weak through age), an overseer of the church, who had been during the absence of Epaphras too indulgent towards the false teachers. Even Fathers like Jerome and the older expositors regard him as bishop (so also Döllinger, Christenthum u. Kirche, ed. 2, p. 308), or as substitute for the bishop during the absence of Epaphras (similarly Bleek), whose successor he had also become (Cornelius a Lapide and Estius). Comp. further as to this Colossian,[185] on Phm_1:2.
The special motive for this precise form of reminding him of his duty is not clear.[186] But what merits attention is the relation of disciplinary admonitive authority, in which, according to these words, the church stood to the office-bearers, and which should here be the less called in question with Hofmann, since Paul in the letter to Philemon addressed jointly to Archippus would doubtless himself have given the admonition, if he had not conceded and recognised in the church that authority of which he invokes the exercise—and that even in the case, which cannot be proved, of the διακονία having been the service of an evangelist. The expedient to which Oecumenius and others have recourse can only be looked upon as flowing from the later hierarchical feeling: ἵνα ὅταν ἐπιτιμᾶ Ἄρχιππος αὐτοῖς , μὴ ἔχωσιν ἐγκαλεῖν ἐκείνῳ ὡς πικρῷ … ἐπεὶ ἄλλως ἄτοπον τοῖς μαθηταῖς περὶ τοῦ διδασκάλου διαλέγεσθαι (Theophylact).
βλέπε κ . τ . λ .] Grotius, Wolf, Flatt, Bähr, and many, take the construction to be: βλέπε , ἵνα τὴν διακ . ἣν παρέλ . ἐν κυρ ., πληροῖς , from which arbitrary view the very αὐτήν should have precluded them. The words are not to be taken otherwise than as they stand: Look to the service (have it in thy view), which thou hast undertaken in the Lord, in order that thou mayest fulfil it, mayest meet its obligations; ἵνα αὐτ . πληρ . is the purpose, which is to be present in the βλέπειν τ . διακ , κ . τ . λ . Comp. 2Jn_1:8. On πληροῖς , comp. Act_12:25; 1Ma_2:55; Liban. Ep. 359; Philo, in Flacc. p. 988: τὴν διακονίαν ἐκπλήσαντες .
ἐν κυρίῳ ] not: from the Lord (Bähr); not: for the sake of the Lord (Flatt); not: secundum Domini praecepta (Grotius). Christ, who is served by the διακονία (1Co_12:5), is conceived as the sphere, in which the act of the παραλαμβάνειν τὴν διακονίαν is accomplished objectively, as well as in the consciousness of the person concerned; he is in that act not out of Christ, but living and acting in Him. The ἐν κυρ . conveys the element of holy obligation. The less reason is there for joining it, with Grotius, Steiger, and Dalmer, to the following ἵνα αὐτ . πληρ .
[184] Bengel: “vos meis verbis dicite tanquam testes. Hoc magis movebat, quam si ipsum Archippum appellaret.”
[185] Theodoret already with reason declares himself against the opinion that Archippus had been a Laodicean teacher (so Theodore of Mopsuestia, Michaelis, and Storr), just as the Constitt. apost. vii. 46. 2 make him appointed by Paul as bishop of Laodicea. Recently it has been defended by Wieseler, Chronol. des apost. Zeitalt. p. 452, and Laurent in the Jahrb. f. D. Th. 1866, p. 130, arguing that, if Archippus had been a Colossian, it is not easy to see why Paul, in ver. 17, makes him he admonished by others; and also that ver. 17 is joined by καί to ver. 15 f., where the Laodiceans are spoken of. But the form of exhortation in ver. 17 has a motive not known to us at all; and the reason based on καί in ver. 17 would only be relevant in the event of ver. 17 following immediately after ver. 15. Lastly, we should expect, after the analogy of ver. 15, that if Archippus had not dwelt in Colossae, Paul would have caused a salutation to be sent to him as to Nymphas. Besides, it would be altogether very surprising that Paul should have conveyed the warning admonition to Archippus through a strange church, the more especially when he had written at the same time to himself jointly addressed with Philemon (Phm_1:2).
[186] Hitzig, p. 31 (who holds also vv. 9, 15, 16 to be not genuine), gives it as his opinion that Archippus is indebted for this exhortation, not to the apostle, but to the manipulator, who knew the man indeed from Phm_1:2, but probably had in his mind the Flavius Archippus, well known from Plin. Ep. x. 66–68, and the proconsul Paulus, when he adjusted for himself the relation between the Apostle Paul and his fellow-warrior Archippus (Phm_1:2). I do not understand how any one could ascribe even to an interpolator so singular an anachronistic confusion of persons. Yet Holtzmann finds the grounds of Hitzig so cogent, that he ultimately regards vv. 15–17 as the rivet, “by means of which the Auctor ad Ephesios has made a connected triad out of his own work, the interpolated Colossian epistle, and the letter to Philemon.”