Colossae was located about 80 miles inland from the city of Ephesus, in the Lycus River Valley, in what is today the western part of Turkey (click on map below to enlarge or more photos of Colossae click HolyLandPhotos.org).

Click this map for the geographic relationships of Laodicea ("justice of the people" - description), Hierapolis ("holy city" - see description) and Colossae ("punishment" - see description).

The tributaries of the Lycus River brought a calcareous deposit of a peculiar kind that choked up the streams and made arches and fantastic grottoes. In spite of this there was much fertility in the valley. At one time Colossae was one of the prominent towns of the valley. Herodotus describes Xerxes’ march westward in 480 B.C. writing that "He came to Colossae, a great city of Phrygia situated at a spot where the river Lycus plunges into a chasm and disappears. Antiochus III (223-187 B.C.) transported about two thousand Jews from Mesopotamia to Phrygia and Lydia (Jos., Ant., 12:147-53). By the NT era Colossae was a small town in the shadow of its nearby neighbors, Laodicea and Hierapolis. Apparently the Colossian church came into being during Paul’s ministry in Ephesus, because Acts 19:10 says that Paul remained in Ephesus "for two years, so that all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” Thus a new, thriving church sprouted in Colossae though Paul had never been there himself. Although the specific word is not mentioned by Paul, most scholars agree that Paul wrote Colossae to counter the growing influence of Gnostics (Gnosticism) who considered themselves of superior knowledge who could help “lesser” ones attain deeper spirituality. Gnosticism is from gnosis, “to know” and thus Gnostics were the “people in the know” who considered themselves the spiritual elite. According to them, it was by knowledge as opposed to faith, that humanity was to be regenerated. Faith was suited only to the rude masses, the animal-men. Gnostics held the basic doctrine that matter (physical or created) was evil and that only the spirit was good. They reasoned that God could not be involved in creation, because being perfect he could not touch matter which was intrinsically evil. Therefore, the world came into being through a complicated process as God put forth thousands of emanations (or lesser gods), each of which was a little more distant from him, so that finally there was an emanation (a little god) so distant from God that it could touch matter and create the world. Of course, this lesser god of creation was so far removed from the ultimate God that it was evil. This reasoning led to the belief that Jesus Christ, if he really was the Son of God, could not have taken on a human body because matter is evil. This delusion spawned the Gnostic lie that Jesus was only a ghost-like phantom. To the Gnostics, Christ was not Creator, the Incarnation was not real, and Christ was not enough! So the Gnostics built a system by which one could begin with Christ and work one’s way up the series of emanations to God. In Colosse, this system (gnosis) appears to have consisted of ascetic disciplines (see notes Colossians 2:20-23),  mysticism, and legalism, all complex and proudly intellectual.

Kenneth Wuest adds that

"From these philosophical speculations, two opposing codes of ethics emerged, a rigid asceticism and an unrestrained license. The problem confronting the Gnostic was as follows: Since matter is evil, how can one avoid its baneful influence and thus keep his higher nature unsullied? The answer, according to one group, was a rigid asceticism. All contact with matter should be reduced to a minimum. Thus, the material part of man would be subdued and mortified. One should live on a spare diet and abstain from marriage. The edible flesh of animals was forbidden. The anointing of the body with olive oil, so necessary in hot climates, was prohibited. But with others, such a negative course of procedure produced but slight and inadequate results. These argued that matter is everywhere. One cannot escape contact with it. Therefore, one should cultivate an entire indifference to the world of sense. One should not give matter any thought one way or the other, but just follow one’s own impulses. (this sounds all too modern doesn't it?)...This group argued that the ascetic principle gives a certain importance to matter, and thus he fails to assert his own independence to it. The true rule of life is to treat matter as foreign or alien to one, and as something towards which one has no duties or obligations, and which one can use or leave unused as one likes. This philosophy led to unbridled license...Paul warns every man and teaches every man in every wisdom, that he may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. The word “perfect” was the term applied by the Gnostics to members of the exclusive group which possessed the superior wisdom. The Gnostics made much of wisdom (sophia), intelligence (sunesis), and knowledge (epignosis). Paul takes up the language of the Gnostics and translates it to the higher spheres of Christian thought. Against the false wisdom of the Gnostics, the apostle sets the true wisdom of the gospel. The initiatory rites of these Gnostics in which certain were inducted into their order, were secret mysteries. Paul sets over against these the fact that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in that comprehensive mystery, the knowledge of God in Christ. Paul had also to combat the Gnostic teaching of successive emanations from deity, the angelic mediators who were responsible for the act of creation, and for the headship of the spiritual creation, which took the place of the Lord Jesus as Creator of the universe and Head of the Church. The apostle meets these false doctrines by showing that “all things were created by Him,” and “He is Head of the body, the Church.” As to the teaching of the Gnostic to the effect that the divine essence is distributed among the angelic emanations from deity, Paul declares that the pleroma, or plenitude of the divine essence is permanently at home in the Lord Jesus. For the totality of the divine essence, the Gnostics had this word pleroma, “fulness” or “plenitude.” Paul says that Jesus Christ is not only the chief manifestation of the divine nature. He exhausts the God-head. In Him resides the totality of the divine powers and attributes. From the necessities imposed upon Paul by the character of the Gnostic heresy, it is easy to see that as Bishop Lightfoot says: “The doctrine of the Person of Christ is here stated with greater precision and fulness than in any other of St. Paul’s epistles.”