A Gospel For Everyone

“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature [complete - NASB] in Christ.” (Colossians 1:28, ESV)

The ethnically mixed—full of Jews and Gentiles alike—congregation of Christians in Colossae, was beset by errors that came from both Jewish and pagan backgrounds. 

Gnostic heretics tried to combine Christian thought with pagan philosophies. They often claimed various types of secret knowledge that only an elite few could have access to or even understand. 

The Jewish based heresies taught that Gentiles converts must become like the Jews, observing the rites and rituals of the Mosaic law and its practices if they were to be saved. 

Some of these issues separated brethren by supposed intellectual and consciousness-based divisions, while the others separated them along ethnic and cultural lines. But the apostle Paul was having none of any of it. 

Three times in this short span of words of vs. 28 the proclamation, the admonition, the teaching, the wisdom, and the maturity was present to EVERYONE. In the gospel proclamation all are to be warned.  All are to be taught.  This was to bring all who would receive the teaching to the full goal of making them all perfect, complete, mature.  

Sometimes we sing the old hymn, “The Gospel Is For All.”

Of one the Lord has made the race

Thro' one has come the fall

Where sin has gone must go His grace

The gospel is for all

Received ye freely, freely give

From ev'ry land they call

Unless they hear they cannot live

The gospel is for all 

The blessed gospel is for all

The gospel is for all

Where sin has gone must go His grace

  The gospel is for all

I’m sure that the apostle Paul would sing this with us.