What God Calls You
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
Right away, before he says anything else, Paul hands the Colossians a set of titles. He is an apostle - not by ambition or self-appointment, but through the will of God. Timothy is called a brother. Just two verses later he will call the believers themselves saints. None of this is small talk. It is Paul establishing, before any teaching begins, who these people actually are.
It is easy to let other things answer that question first. A job title, a mistake, a comparison to someone else, a bad week - any of these can quietly become the label we carry into a day. Paul does the opposite. He starts with identity that was given, not earned: apostle by God's will, brother in the family of faith, saint by belonging to Christ. These are not descriptions of performance. They are descriptions of position.
That distinction matters more than it might seem. A title you earn can be lost the moment you stop performing well enough to deserve it. A title you are given by God does not work that way - it rests on his will, not your output. Paul was still an apostle on his hard days. Timothy was still a brother whether or not he felt strong that week. The same is true for anyone in Christ: the naming comes first, and it holds.
If you have been letting a harder label define you lately, Colossians 1 is worth sitting with. Before Paul asks anything of his readers, he tells them who they already are.
For more on this, take a look at Thoughts of a Simple Man's full piece, "Identity" - a good next stop if you have ever struggled to answer the question "who am I?" with anything other than God's own answer.
Read the source: Thoughts of a Simple Man →