Colossians 2:3

In whom are hid all the treasures. — The order of the original is curious: “in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, as hidden treasures.” The word “hidden” (apocryphi) is an almost technical word for secret teaching given only to the initiated; used originally as a term of honour (as the participle of the kindred verb is used in 1 Corinthians 2:7, “the wisdom of God in mystery, even the hidden wisdom... which none of the princes of this world knew”), afterwards, from the character of these “apocryphal” books, coming to signify spurious and heretical. St. Paul evidently takes up here a word, used by the pretenders to a special and abstruse knowledge, and applies it to the “heavenly things” which He alone knows “who is in heaven” (John 3:12). From our full comprehension they are hidden; if ever we know them, it will not be till “we know even as we are known.” But the previous words show that we can have full practical apprehension of them by our knowledge of Christ, who knows them — a knowledge begun in faith, and perfected chiefly in love.

Wisdom and knowledge. — Comp. Romans 11:33 and 1 Corinthians 12:8 (“the word of wisdom”... “the word of knowledge”). On the true sense of “wisdom” and its relation to other less perfect gifts, as “prudence,” “intelligence,” “knowledge,” see Note on Ephesians 1:8. “Knowledge” is clearly the development of wisdom in spiritual perception, as “intelligence” in testing and harmonising such perception, and “prudence” in making them, so tested, the guide of life. The word “knowledge” (gnosis) was the word which, certainly afterwards, probably even then, was the watchword of “Gnosticism” — the unbridled and fantastic spirit of metaphysical and religious speculation then beginning to infest all Christian thought. It can hardly be accidental that St. Paul here, as elsewhere, subordinates it to the higher gift of wisdom.