Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Colossians 2:5

"For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ." — Colossians 2:5 (ASV)

Paul was no indifferent spectator of his readers’ problems but had a sincere interest in them. Though not physically with them, he felt his spiritual oneness with them and rejoiced in their orderliness and in the firmness of their faith. “How orderly you are” contains a military term connoting the orderly array of a band of disciplined soldiers. “Firm” (GK 5106) also belongs to military parlance and means solidity and compactness. If this is the imagery Paul intended, he sees the situation of the Colossians as being like that of an army under attack and affirms that their lines were unbroken, their discipline intact, and their “faith in [reliance on] Christ” unshaken.