The Lost Letter To Laodicea

The other day I was reading the book of Colossians and I came across a verse that surprised me. In fact, it surprised me so much that I stopped what I was doing and started looking for commentaries to see what was going on. The verse that grabbed my attention was this one:

Colossians 4:16: “And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.”

What Paul is saying is simple: the Colossians were to take the letter that he wrote to them and have it read in the church of Laodicea. They were then supposed to take the epistle from Laodicea and read it in their church. Yes, you read that correctly: Paul wanted the Colossians to read a letter that he apparently sent to the church at Laodicea.

Needless to say, you will not find the book of Laodicea in your Bible. There is a letter to Laodicea in the New Testament, but it was written decades later by the apostle John and is part of Revelation (Rev. 3:14-21). If you do a word search on “Laodicea” you will discover that it is only mentioned 6 times: 4 times in the book of Colossians and twice in the book of Revelation. That’s it. There is simply nothing in the Bible that says “Paul, to the church at Laodicea”. It doesn’t exist.

This came as a tremendous surprise to me because I’d never heard anything about this before. I’ve done a fair amount of research when it comes to the Bible and I’d never heard anyone mention a lost epistle. This is apparently one of those topics that never gets talked about. It seemed like a big deal to me, though. So what’s going on?

The commentaries that I read revealed that no one had any idea what was actually going on. All theologians have are some theories that cannot be proven one way or another. One theory is that Paul did write an epistle to Laodicea and it has just been lost. Another theory is that the letter might not have been addressed to the Laodiceans themselves. Instead, the letter that was now in their possession may have been sent to another church entirely and was being passed around from church to church (which is exactly what Paul asked the Colossians to do with the letter he sent to them). If that’s the case, the letter may have been the one Paul wrote to the Ephesians, since Ephesus and Laodicea were both located in Asia Minor. The problem with this theory is that Ephesians was probably written after Colossians.

But no one really knows. The Bible never speaks of this letter again and provides no further information. It could be a letter written to another church that was now in the possession of Laodicea, but the text doesn’t actually say that and there’s no way to prove that. If we interpret the verse as meaning “Paul’s letter to the church at Laodicea” – which is not unreasonable – then we are faced with the fact that this letter is simply gone. It joins a long list of books that the Bible refers to but have been lost to history – the Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13), The Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14), the Book of Jehu (2 Chronicles 20:34), etc..

Since there’s no way to tell, let’s assume that the letter actually was written to Laodicea. Let’s also assume that the letter was authoritative (since Paul wanted the churches to pass it around and read it). If that is the case – if an actual, inspired letter was lost and not included in the Bible – isn’t that bad?

Nope. It actually doesn’t matter. This is why:

I Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

What this verse means is that the information contained in the Bible that we possess is enough to make us perfect, furnished unto all good works. I’m not talking about being sinless here (that’s another discussion entirely); what I mean is that the Bible is not lacking in any area. There is no information that we need that the Bible does not provide. All spiritual information and insight that we must have in order to live our lives may be found in its pages. It is not missing anything. The books that it contains are enough.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are many inspired words of God that are not included in the Bible. I know that sounds like a terrible thing to say, but stop and think about it. Jesus lived for more than 30 years, and ministered for around 3 years. Does the Bible record every single word that He said? Of course not. Does it record His every conversation, His every sermon, His every act? Nope. This is important, because whenever Jesus speaks He always speaks authoritatively. Jesus, being God, cannot lie. He cannot be wrong. He is, after all, God. By definition, His words are the words of God. John tells us that there were actually a staggering amount of things that Jesus did that were not recorded:

John 21:24: “This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.
25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.”

In other words, John did not tell us everything. There were many other things that Jesus did that he simply did not record. The point is that the things that were recorded are enough. The Bible gives us everything that we need so that we may perform all good works. Even though there are words of Jesus that it does not contain, the words that it does contain are enough for us.

This means there’s no need for us to go around hunting for a letter to Laodicea, or for lost books of the Bible. We don’t need a book of Mormon to tell us the rest of the things that somehow got left out of the Bible. The Bible is enough, and is complete. It lacks nothing.

My point is that even if the worst-case scenario is true and there was an actual, inspired letter to Laodicea that was lost, it wouldn’t actually matter. The Bible is missing nothing. You don’t have to wonder what valuable insights that letter contained that have been lost to us forever. Likewise, if someone comes along and claims that they have discovered a “lost gospel” or “lost book”, run from them. There are no missing doctrines, no forgotten teachings. We are already fully equipped.