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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Colossians 1:23 - 1:23
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If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled: this if doth not import the believers’ continuance in faith to depend merely upon their own free-will, or a carnal doubting of being kept to salvation, 1Pe_1:5, but infers that they are then reconciled to God when they do indeed persevere in the faith; implying that by reason of the seducers amongst them all and every one might not really have that sound faith they would be thought to have. Wherefore the apostle engageth them to prove their faith, whereby only they can have peace with God, Rom_5:1, to be real, by taking care it be well founded and firm, Mat_13:23, as a house built on a sure foundation, a tree well rooted, Eph_3:17,18 Heb 13:9.
And be not moved away from the hope of the gospel; and be not as temporary believers which have no root, Luk_8:13, or as those who want anchorhold are tossed to and fro, Eph_4:14, and put off from that hope of eternal life, set before us in the gospel, which is sure and certain, Heb_6:18,19, built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Eph_2:20, the sweet promises of eternal life.
Which ye have heard; not the works of vain philosophy which leave the minds of men unsettled, but the plain and solid doctrines of Christ, wherein the believers at Colosse had been instructed, Col_1:7.
And which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; and which the faithful apostles, according to the commission of Christ, had promulgated to every creature beneath the heavens, i.e. every rational creature here below, i.e. to all men, collectively, or nations in the world, as Col_1:6 Mat_28:19 Mar_16:15. Creature with the Hebrews doth eminently signify man, by an antonomasia, or a synecdeche, putting the general for a particular. In the original it is, in all the creature; and so it may be, in all the world, (creature being sometimes used for the system of the world, Rom_8:19-21), in opposition to Judea, i.e. in those other parts of the earth which the Greeks and Romans knew to be then inhabited: under heaven, which is a pleonasm, but of the greatest emphasis, as Act_4:12.
Whereof I Paul am made a minister; and the more to confirm them in what he had said, he adds of this gospel of reconciliation so spread, he was immediately called, Gal_1:1, and constituted to be a minister for the promulgation of it amongst the Gentiles, it being, with others, most notably committed to him, 2Co_5:19 1Ti_1:11.