At any rate, the epistles of the captivity differ from those of the former group in being for the most part quieter in tone. During the third journey Paul had had to continue the great battles of his career against various forms of Judaizing error. Christianity at one time seemed to be in danger of being reduced to a mere form of Judaism; the free grace of God was being deserted for a law religion; faith was being deserted for works. In Galatia, the question of principle had been uppermost; in Corinth, the personal attack upon Paul. Everywhere, moreover, the gospel of salvation by faith was exposed to misconception. Pagan license was threatening to creep into the Church. Unless it could be kept out, the legalists would have some apparent show of reason on their side. Taking it all in all, it had been a hard battle. But it had been gloriously fought, and it had been won. Now Paul was able to turn his attention to new fields of labor and to new problems.
The Epistle to the Colossians is peculiarly "Christological." More fully and more expressly than in any other of his letters Paul here develops his view about the person of Christ. Even here, however, this teaching is incidental; it was simply Paul's way of refuting certain errors that had crept into the Colossian church. Except for those errors Paul would perhaps never have written at length, as he does in Col. 1:14-23, about the relation of Christ to God and to the world. Yet in that case his own views would have been the same, and they would have been just as fundamental to his whole religious life. In the epistles, which are written to Christians, Paul takes many things for granted. Some of the things which are most fundamental appear only incidentally. Just because they were fundamental, just because they were accepted by everyone, they did not need to be discussed at length.
So it is especially with the person of Christ. From the first epistle to the last, Paul presupposes essentially the same view of that great subject. Practically everything that he says in Colossians could have been inferred from scattered hints in the earlier epistles. From the beginning Paul regarded Jesus Christ as a man, who had a real human life and died a real death on the cross. From the beginning, on the other hand, he separated Christ sharply from men and placed him clearly on the side of God. From the beginning, in other words, he attributed to him a double nature--Jesus Christ was always in Paul's thinking both God and man. Finally, the preëxistence of Christ, which is so strongly emphasized in Colossians, is clearly implied in such passages as Gal. 4:4; and his activity in creation appears, according to the best-attested text, in I Cor. 8:6.