WHEN WAS THE last time you wrote a letter? I don’t mean an email or a text message; I mean a letter. And if you did write a letter, did you actually put pen to paper, or did you type it on your computer and then print it out?

I grew up in a world without personal computers or electronic messaging of any kind. When you wanted to communicate with someone that you couldn’t see face-to-face, you had to call them or write them a letter. Children were all required to learn penmanship in school, scrawling out cursive letters over and over on lined paper until we could reliably produce something reasonably legible.

It took time and thought to write out personal letters longhand. There were social conventions to follow, and if you didn’t pay attention to them, the recipient might think you to be clueless or boorish. Most letters began with the salutation “Dear So-and-so,” and ended with “Sincerely” or “Yours truly,” before the writer signed off.

But the salutation and sign-off weren’t just meaningless formalities. The wording suggested the level of intimacy in the relationship. “Dear” could be used to greet anybody, but not “Dearest,” or for that matter, “My dearest.” And there’s a world of difference between signing off with “Cordially” and “Love.” There’s no way to know, but I suspect that there’s been many a man who’s received a letter from a woman who signed off with “Love,” misinterpreted her warm friendliness as romantic intent — and then reciprocated those feelings in a way that created all kinds of awkwardness between them.

Now, even people of my generation depend on email and text messaging, and letter-writing is becoming something of a lost art. Electronic communication makes it possible to exchange greetings and information far more quickly, sometimes almost instantaneously. That’s good where efficiency is concerned. An exchange that used to take weeks can now be done in seconds.

But what we’ve gained in speed we often lose in subtlety, style, and nuance. Messages are dashed off quickly and misunderstandings are common. Where we once savored letters because they were so infrequent and represented such an investment of time and thought, we scan emails for the gist of the message. Or we don’t read them at all. I was recently at a conference in which one of the icebreakers was a competition around the tables to see who had the most unanswered emails in their inbox. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was well north of 10,000.

I say all this because I don’t want us to skate too quickly past the opening lines of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. It’s obvious that we’re centuries removed from the time Paul wrote the letter. But the cultural distance may be harder to see, even when it comes to letter-writing. We can’t just treat the first two verses as if they were nothing more than a fancy way of saying, “Dear Colossians…” As he does in his other letters, Paul takes the existing conventions of his day and transforms them in a way that would have had more meaning for his contemporaries than it does for us.

Let’s see how this works.

IN PAUL’S DAY, a typical letter would have begun with three quick elements: the name of the sender, the name of the recipient, and a brief word of greeting. If Paul and Timothy were both to be understood as the senders, the letter could simply begin with these words: “Paul and Timothy, to the churches in Colossae: Greetings.” That’s it.

Remember: unlike, say, the Philippians, the Colossians probably did not have a direct relationship with Paul. It was one of Paul’s missionary associates, Epaphras, who brought them the gospel and planted the church. Thus, the Colossians would not likely have expected anything beyond the typical brief opening, the first century equivalent of “Dear Colossians.”

With that as a background, notice how Paul actually begins, in a manner similar to how he begins his other letters:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. (Col 1:1-2, NIV)

We’ll break this down a little at a time over the next couple of posts. Here, we’ll begin with the senders. For Paul to include Timothy’s name in the salutation could mean different things. Timothy may have been his amanuensis (or secretary), and may have had a hand somehow in what the letter said. Indeed, as New Testament scholar James Dunn has suggested, if neither Paul nor Timothy had a direct personal relationship with the Colossians, having his name mentioned here could mean that Timothy had more to do with the writing than Paul did; Paul’s name comes first out of respect for his seniority and authority.

And the basis of that authority is his apostleship. In general usage, the word “apostle” referred to someone sent out by someone else and bearing the sender’s authority. For Paul, that personally meant that he understood himself to be commissioned by Jesus himself to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, with that commission in turn being in accordance with God’s will.

Moreover, it may be significant that Paul refers to Jesus as “Christ Jesus” — as opposed to “Jesus Christ” — as he will three more times in the letter. We’re more used to the latter, and sometimes seem to treat the term “Christ” as if it were nothing more than Jesus’ last name. But “Christ” is the Greek equivalent for the Jewish term “Messiah,” an idea that would have had little significance in itself to Gentiles.

How much of the background Jewish narrative was taught in these newly founded Gentile churches? Who knows. But if the Colossians or the believers in other Gentile churches knew something of the story, that might have lent some weight to the phrase “by the will of God.” The coming of the Jewish Messiah was the fulfillment of an ancient promise by an almighty God, and Paul’s apostleship bore the authority of that Messiah.

Not that Paul ever got a big head about it; quite the contrary. In 1 Corinthians 15, for example, Paul thinks with deep regret back to the days before Jesus confronted him on the Damascus Road. He writes, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am…” (vss. 9-10).

Nevertheless, he cannot deny his apostleship without denying the one who sent him. And as we’ll see throughout the letter, what Paul wants the Colossians to understand is just how amazing the one who sent him truly is.