Colossians 1:28-29

Paul’s paradigmatic passage of Colossians 1:28-29 provides his vision of Christian education. “We proclaim Him, teaching everyone and admonishing everyone with all wisdom, so that we might present everyone complete in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy so powerfully working in me.”

Replete with educational implications, this passage portrays the Who, What, Why, and How of Christian education. The Who in this passage entails the one(s) teaching, the one(s) being taught, and the One whose proclamation provides the substance of the educational exchange. First Paul pictures a pedagogical partnership as he utilizes first-person plural for the ones proclaiming.

In contradistinction to the Gnostics of the day, no secret society precludes partnering in reaching and teaching this next generation with the transformative truth of a theocentric educational experience. The Christian school movement has not infrequently referenced such partnership as a three-legged stool of parent, Christian school, and local Church; these three biblically viable institutions together proclaiming the centrality of Christ.

Whether counting or calculus, alphabet or algebra, Bible or band, science or science fiction, classroom or boardroom, the centrality of Christ occupies the centrality of the argument of Colossians and the impetus for Christian education.

Even as vain, Christ-less philosophies of the first century preyed upon the minds of ancient Asia Minor, so also the tepid and vacuous worldviews of the twenty-first century command our attention and demand a Christ-full response.

A Christ-full Response

“We proclaim Him…” Proclaiming Christ as central not only to Christian truth but to all truth substantively differentiates Christian education from secular curriculum. Such Christian curricular cogency and cohesion contrasts with any exclusive mystery religions of that day or this—such as within the gnostic framework, only special prerequisite qualifiers allowed for further elucidation.

Contrastingly, in Christian education, the apostle unveils the audience as everyone. Some Christian schools, therefore, practice so-called open admission, others require a profession of faith at least from one parent to satisfy the terms of the prior partnership implied in the aforementioned subject of the predicate of proclamation.

In either case, it warrants noting that Paul uses a particularly emphatic construction. In Colossians 1:28 alone the word everyone gets used three times. By virtue of the hermeneutical principle of repetition, a careful reader can deduce a particular Pauline emphasis.

Perhaps controverting human tendencies toward preferences, comfort zones, or even teacher’s pets, this inspired text preempts such particularity, requiring rather a relational regard for each and every student as being a viable recipient of Christian education.

The What of Colossians 1:28-29 entails teaching, admonishing, and wisdom. Teaching (didasko) covers a broad semantic domain and a concomitantly broad pedagogical domain, as well. This broad pedagogical domain likely includes but is not limited to didactic, demonstration, and other deliveries, as well.

Some have referred to this as pertaining to the cognitive domain of the head. Admonishing (noutheteuo), on the other hand, connotes that aspect of education alluded to in the antiquated axiomatic adage, “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” This so-called cognitive and affective domain pertains to the head and the heart.

the Skill of Living: Wisdom

Finally, wisdom (sophia) not unlikely hearkens back to Paul’s native Hebrew term hokmah. Hokmah, generally translated as “wisdom” refers to the skill of living. Used of carpenters exacting a precise cut, mariners navigating a stormy sea, teachers preparing and presenting well-crafted lessons, or students developing the craft of living life the way life was designed to be lived, the hands that execute such a life have been well-educated in the behavioral domain of wisdom.

The Why of Colossians 1:28-29 of presenting everyone complete in Christ conveys a teleological aspect of education. Maturity, well-roundedness, preparedness, and flourishing; such pursuits constitute the “bull’s eye” at which Christian education takes aim every day in every way. Additionally, and noteworthily, Paul utilizes a singular end in v. 29, “to this end.”

Just having noted multiple means of proclaiming, teaching, and admonishing, Paul demonstrates that each of those aspects of Christian education come together toward a single end.

The How of Colossians 1:28-29 involves three components, 1) each of us, 2) effort, and 3) energy. Contrasting with the we of the Who at the opening of the passage in v. 28, Paul utilizes first-person singular when it comes to how Christian education gets done in v. 29. It seems that the implication includes individual responsibility in the actual doing of Christian education.

Whether teacher, student, parent, or administrator, each member of the Christian school educational endeavor as an individual maintains individual dignity and responsibility for an aspect of the education. Paul, the exemplar, asserts that collectively “we” proclaim, but individually “I” (i.e., each of us), ought to exert the effort necessary and sufficient for true, transformative Christian education to transpire.

He describes such effort with ascending intensity. “To this end I labor, struggling…” (v. 29a) not passively, but actively; not perfunctorily, but intentionally; not meagerly, but energetically for each educator (e.g., teacher, student, parent, or administrator), the standard is laboring and struggling—in other words, working hard at doing it well.

Finally, Paul identifies the Source by which all the aforementioned gets accomplished. None other than the energy of Christ which so powerfully works within each believer engaged in the Christian educational enterprise.

Anything less than that eternal, infinite, immutable, reliable, durative Source would prove insufficient for such an infinitely important engagement, but Christ’s energy in and through each individual laboring and struggling proves both necessary and sufficient for the ends of a biblical philosophy of Christian school education as delineated in Colossians 1:28-29.

Proclaiming Him together,

Keith