I have the privilege of teaching a small preaching class at Cornhill Sydney. At the moment our students are working systematically through Colossians, presenting a 5 minute summary of their designated passages prior to actually preparing talks next term.

Today one of the students had Col. 2:6-7.

⁶ So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

He described it as the “heart and hinge” of Colossians in that it was situated at the “heart and hinge” moment in the letter. All that led up to it, the great reminders of Christ’s cosmic supremacy (not least Col. 1:15-22) was crystalised in a short pithy sentence. They had received Christ Jesus as Lord and were rooted and built up in him. In the context, of course, Paul is showing them that if Christ is all, there is no need for anything else. Thus the “hinge”; they are to “continue to live” in him (lit. “continue to walk”). Their lives ought to be in Christ, not in the other “extra” requirements that the false teachers of Colossae were urging upon them.

The more he made his case, the more convinced we were. Everything Paul had written to that point flowed into it and every application afterwards flowed out of it.

So what other “heart and hinge” gems are there in the epistles? What say you?

image: Sarah’s scrapbook