The opening prayer rises cut of the foregoing thanksgiving, and leads up to the chief doctrinal statement of the Epistle (Colossians 1:15-20 : compare, for the connection, Ephesians 1:15-23; Romans 1:8-17).
The burden of this prayer, as in other letters of this period, is the Church's need of knowledge (comp. Ephesians 1:17, Ephesians 1:18; Philippians 1:9, Philippians 1:10). Here this desire has its fullest expression, as the necessity of the Colossians in this.
respect was the more urgent and their situation, therefore, the more fully representative of the stage in the history of the Pauline Churches now commencing.