Colossians 1:3

thanksgiving for the colossian saints

3. We give thanks So Romans 1:8; 1 Corinthians 1:4; Ephesians 1:16; 1 Thessalonians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Philemon 1:4. Thanksgiving is the instinct of the life of grace. These thanksgivings recognize God as the whole Cause of all goodness in His saints.

God and the Father Better, with the more probable reading, God, the Father. Here, as often, the Father is called simply, and as it were distinctively, God. Not that He is more truly God than the Son, but that He is the Fountain of Godhead in the Son. Cp. Pearson, Exposition. Art. i., pp. 34, 35, 40.

praying always for you Better perhaps, always, when at prayer for you. The "prayer" here meant is prayer in its most inclusive sense, worship, of which thanksgiving is a part. For St Paul's prayers for his converts cp. Colossians 1:9; Ephesians 1:16-17; Ephesians 3:14; Philippians 1:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Timothy 1:3; and see below, Colossians 4:12.