Living As God's Colony In the Midst of the Earth

Paul introduced a section of Christian ethics, Christian obedience, with chapter 3. He told us to set our sights on things above and we discovered that things above were things that by the Spirit God could impart to human beings living on earth because we are a colony of heaven on earth. He has moved us through two categories of Christian ethics and now he is ending the book with a third. The first category was personal obedience and we saw God given characteristics of the citizens of heaven that every citizen should possess. Then he moved through our relations to one another in our various relational estates, specifically focusing on family, husbands, wives, children, parents, slaves, masters. And now the language in the epistle begins to be plural again. He's speaking to ya'll and he is explaining how to live as a citizen of heaven in the context of being the church all together. He makes a very logical progression and he now focuses on what the church should be for, especially in the context of Colossae but clearly for all of God's church. He has two broad admonitions that he gives. The first is an admonition to prayer and the second is to evangelism.