The hope of Paul: The gospel keeps bringing blessings and is spreading throughout the world, just as it has among you. Colossians 1:6

The apostle Paul began writing his epistles when the confluence of Christianity and pagan thought, with its worldly philosophies, began to gain significant momentum, starting with his second missionary journey when he visited the important cities of Athens and Corinth. Until then, there were only important Christian communities between Antioch and Jerusalem. And all the epistles in general pursue the same objective: to defend the purity of the Christian faith and doctrine from the different heresies that prevailed until that time. It was not clear in those times, when the transmission of the gospel was fundamentally oral, whether Jesus was an angel, a prophet, or the second person of the holy trinity.
Colossae had been evangelized by a disciple of Paul, a certain Epaphras, and it was so that Paul, having learned from this disciple of the difficult situation of this Church, addressed an important epistolary letter to them.
And so the apostle Paul began his epistle speaking of the hope to which all believers are called by that faith and that spiritual love preached in the gospel of the Lord. In his message, Paul mentioned the importance of Epaphras' preaching, and that this preaching was also his own. And Paul taught in the epistle that this hope in Christ, was not a vain hope, but that it produced fruits of life, as a prelude to that hope which unites with the spiritual gift of eternal life, and so with these words he called the members of that Church to give an example of this beautiful gift, which is essentially a hidden treasure for every believer: "So your faith and love are based on what you hope for, which is kept safe for you in heaven" Colossians 1:5.
And then the apostle spoke of that new life that hope in Christ brought, a hope that was gaining more and more believers and transforming the world: "The gospel keeps bringing blessings and is spreading throughout the world, just as it has among you ever since the day you first heard about the grace of God and came to know it as it really is" Colossians 1:6. In Paul's thinking, then, Christian hope is the driving force that encouraged each believer to improve, to build up, and to educate those who fall into error, a hope grounded in the perfect word of Christ.

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