Colossians 1:8

8 and moreover he has informed us of your love, which is inspired by the Spirit.

Colossians 1:8 Meaning and Commentary

Colossians 1:8

Who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit.
] Not only their love to God, and Christ, and to all the saints, which is before mentioned, but their love to the apostle; though they had only heard of him, and of his great capacity for, and faithfulness and usefulness in preaching of the Gospel, which had greatly endeared him to them. This, he says, was in the Spirit; it was spiritual love, to distinguish it from a carnal and worldly one; they loved him for the spiritual grace that was in him, the spiritual gifts bestowed on him, the spiritual service he was engaged in, and the spiritual usefulness he was of: or they loved him in, and with their spirits, with all their hearts, sincerely, and without dissimulation; and though they had never seen him in the flesh, yet being, as it were, present with him in spirit, their affections were knit unto him: or this their love was "in the Holy Spirit", as the Ethiopic version reads it; it was a fruit of the Spirit of God, which he had implanted in their hearts in regeneration, as is also love to God, and likewise to Christ.

Colossians 1:8 In-Context

6 For it has reached you, and remains with you, just as it has also spread through the whole world, yielding fruit there and increasing, as it has done among you from the day when first you heard it and came really to know the grace of God,

7 as you learned it from Epaphras our dearly-loved fellow servant. He is to you a faithful minister of Christ in our stead,

8 and moreover he has informed us of your love, which is inspired by the Spirit.

9 For this reason we also, from the day we first received these tidings, have never ceased to pray for you and to entreat that you may be filled with a clear knowledge of His will accompanied by thorough wisdom and discernment in spiritual things;

10 so that your lives may be worthy of the Lord and perfectly pleasing to Him, while you exhibit the results of right action of every sort and grow into a fuller knowledge of God.