Colossians 4:12, commentary and pictures

Epaphras, one of the believers and a servant of Christ, greeted the believers and always labored fervently for them in prayer that they might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. Perfection in the verse means maturity and completeness in living according to all of God's will. Standing perfect and complete means living in full alignment with God's will with character shaped after Christ. This completeness is not rooted in self or human ideas, for God's truth guides and controls the life, and the Holy Spirit through Christ's grace forms a new nature and perfects Christ's image in the whole person.

The verse means that people may regain the first perfection lost in the fall and stand complete in Christ. God has placed every facility within reach for this restoration, and He expects people to do their part through well-directed effort as His purchased possession bought at an infinite price. The verse expresses the desire for a person to be saved by standing perfect before God. This requires abandoning a perverted unchristian course that puts carrying out personal plans above every temporal and spiritual interest and brings sorrow and anxiety and discouragement upon God's cause, for no excuse for such a course will stand before God, and the person must see the course as unchristian in order to be extricated from the snare of Satan.

Epaphras had great zeal for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis, which proves that the church at Laodicea had been faithfully instructed and had much excellent labor bestowed upon it toward perfection. The call to perfection was laid upon the Laodiceans. Yet the Laodiceans did not follow up the work begun, hearing truth without appropriating it to themselves and without carrying out the instruction given. Their rejection of warning and entreaty brought its sure result.