Colossians 1:6-8

⁶... All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. ⁷You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, ⁸and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

In v6, Paul uses hyperbole, saying, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing.” His exaggeration is to point out his ministry in the urban centers of the Roman Empire has effectively brought the gospel to the civilized world. It’s meant to bring hope to the Colossians. The gospel has not merely affected them, as if they believe foolishly; and it hasn’t been unlocked by false teachers in the areas only where they’ve traveled. No, the gospel is the unchanging word of truth, and its effects are worldwide. Because the Christian faith is transmitted when it is explained and understood, the gospel is intellectual in nature. We can think about it, talk about it, explain it, and understand it. The gospel is information about God’s grace that is “heard,” “learned,” and “understood” by the mind, so that it can produce the intended effects in those who affirm it. Thus “knowledge” is crucial to the gospel.

Some say that “knowledge” is controversial and divisive, especially in Colosse since they were facing early forms of gnosticism (i.e., in order to have a deeper experience of God, you must obtain this special knowledge); but that “knowledge” was merely intellectual and speculative – the gospel is simple practical truth to be learned, embraced, and experienced. Thus, Peter, as Paul does throughout his epistles, can encourage us to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). Paul says this: “Not only have you heard it, not only is the gospel everywhere, not only is the gospel effective, and not only did Epaphras preach to you the whole of the gospel, but you understood it” (v6). “Do not be tricked by someone saying that you need a new and improved teaching. You understood the grace of God when Epaphras first taught it to you. And I see the evidences that you understood it, because God has worked in you faith and love and hope.”

Paul has never been to Colosse, and so he is likely responding both positively and negatively to the Colossians regarding what he has learned of their situation from Epaphras, the man who shared the gospel, the word of truth, with them in the first place, as we see in v7. Epaphras had been in Ephesus some hundred miles to the west of the Lycos Valley and he had heard the preaching of the Apostle Paul there. Paul compliments him, calling him that faithful man, who took the gospel back to the Colossians, who in turn came to Christ and formed a church in that city where Paul had never been.

Epaphras had visited Paul, and one of the things that he told Paul was that there were apparently false teachers in the congregation confusing young converts. They were teaching an odd mixture of Christian truths with Jewish ritual practices and even pagan beliefs and practices. They were not outrightly denying Christ, but they were mixing the gospel of Christ with truth and error. They were teaching a hodge-podge of things, which Paul will outline for us in chapter 2.