Colossians 2:3

in whom Christ, the Secret of God, is now characterizedas such; the Secret is Christ as the Treasury of wisdom and knowledge.

are hid&c. Better, regarding the order of the Greek, in whom are all the treasures, &c., hidden ( there). The thought that they are "hidden" is emphasized. See below, note on "wisdom&c."

all So that He is absolutely sufficient, and supposed supplies from elsewhere are a delusion. So "all riches" just above; and Colossians 1:19.

the treasures A rich (and frequent) plural.

wisdom and knowledge Words recurring together Romans 11:33; 1 Corinthians 12:8. In such a passage they are scarcely perhaps to be minutely distinguished [82] (as they must be in 1 Corinthians 12); they blend into the one idea of the resources of the Divine Mind. For surely here, as in Romans 11 (a near parallel), it is the wisdom and knowledge of Godwhich are in view; a point not noticed by Ellicott, Alford, or Lightfoot. (There is doubtless a reflectedreference here to human speculation, exercised upon the treasures of Divine thought.)

[82] Where wisdom (sophia) and knowledge (gnôsis) have to be distinguished, the essential difference appears to be that sophiais a moral-mental term, gnôsisa term purely mental, or rather one which fixes attention on the cognition of truth simply as such. Conceivably, the man of "knowledge" maystop with a mere sight of truth; the man of "wisdom" reflects upon it, receives it, in a way affecting character and action. The words "wise." "wisdom", in the Greek, are thus "never in Scripture ascribed to other than God or good men, except in an ironical sense" (Trench, N.T. Synonyms, 2nd Series).

The treasures of this Divine "wisdom and knowledge" are in Christ "hiddenly" (Ellicott), inasmuch as they are (a) to be found in Him alone, (b) to be found therefore only by entrance into Him, (c) never, even so, to be "found out unto perfection." The Greek word, as Lightfoot shews, is in all likelihood borrowed from the heretical vocabulary, and transfigured. The embryo "Gnostic" of St Paul's days probably, as his successors certainly, gloried in an alleged possession of inner, esoteric, secrets of being and of knowing, treasured in books thence called apocryphal(secret, hidden); a word identical with the Greek adjective here (apocruphoi). (So that, in the Fathers, by "apocryphal" books are not meant the Jewish religious books we commonly call so, but the "secret" literature of the heretical sects.)

Christ is thus the glorious "Apocrypha" (if we may dare to say so) of the Christian; our "esoteric wisdom" is only an ever-deepening insight into Him revealed. "Jesus Christ is a great Book. He who can indeed study Him in the word of God will know all he ought to know. Humility opens this Divine Book, faith reads in it, love learns from it" (Quesnel).