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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 1:3 - 14 Previous Section - Chapter 1:1 - 2 Next Section - Chapter 1:15 - 23 Thanksgiving And Prayer (ch. 1:1 - 14) Paul opens this section in verse 3 by saying that he always gives thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he prays for these Colossian believers. As I point out so many times, Paul uses this phrase "God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ". There is only one God. The God that Christians serve is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is not the God of any other name under Heaven, no matter how important that name may be. To believe in the one true God of the universe, you must first believe who Jesus Christ the Lord is, because the God we serve is the Father of Jesus. Therefore, if you believe that Jesus was not God in a human form while He was on earth in a human body then you don’t believe in the true God, because God is the Father of Jesus. The truth that God is a Father and that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is very important in this day when the push is on to unite all religions, especially Islam and Christianity. Muslims do not believe that God is a father because they do not believe He ever had a son. Therefore, logic dictates that the god of the Muslims is not the God of the Christians. It thus makes no since for Muslims and Christians to join in worshipping the same god because they just don't worship the same god. People just don't seem to get this logic these days. It's a lie from satan. Why
does Paul give thanks to God for these people? Verse
4 provides us wit the answer. It's
because he hears of their faith in Jesus and their love for one another.
The words faith and love are two words Paul often uses together.
He believes that true faith will express itself through loving actions
(Galatians 5:6). Faith is
productive. Faith is not stagnant.
Faith is an action word. Faith
produces good works of love. Our
salvation is not based on any type of good work that we can do, but once we have
genuine faith; once we have true trust in Jesus: we will begin to do good and
loving things. These good things do
not keep us saved. Only by
maintaining our trust in Jesus do we stay saved.
These good works will bring rewards some day for us in Heaven.
See 1 Corinthians 3:12 and following.
We
should be reminded that faith is simply trust.
If we have faith; if we believe, we trust.
When we say we have faith in Jesus it means that we trust Him.
As a matter of fact, we are not only to trust Jesus for our salvation; we
trust Him with our very lives, all of who we are. Most
commentators say that when Paul wrote this letter he had not yet visited these
believers. It is for this reason the
text says that Paul "heard" of the faith and love these people had. In
verse 5 Paul goes on to say that this faith and love "spring from the hope
that is stored up for them in heaven…" Paul
is not suggesting here that their faith and love comes from something that they
are hoping for in a worldly sense, meaning, maybe I'll get what I'm hoping for.
It's not something in the future. Paul
says that what they hope for is already in Heaven for them.
It's real and tangible, right here and now in the present tense.
The Greek word translated as "spring up" suggests "laid up".
What
are these people homing for that is already stored up in Heaven?
Jesus went to Heaven to prepare a place for us as stated in John 14:1-4.
All that Heaven is belongs to us right now.
We don't have it in our earthly hands, but it is ours.
It's what Christians throughout the decades have called the glorious hope
of the saints. It's our inheritance
and upon our death it will be in our hands.
Just
as these Colossians heard and received the truth of the gospel, so the whole
known world was hearing this gospel from the lips of Paul and others.
People everywhere were believing the good news of Jesus, and it was
producing good fruit in their lives. Many
people understood God’s grace in all its truth as Paul says in verse 6.
The gospel is based on truth. It
is truth. Jesus Himself is ultimate
truth as He said in John 14:6. This
is the fundamental reason why I am a Christian.
I have come to understand that Jesus and what He has to say is the
ultimate universal truth. I,
therefore, have no other logical choice but to give all of whom I am to Jesus.
All other truth comes from this universal truth which is found in Jesus
alone. If this is foundational in
our thinking, we will not likely depart from the truth of the gospel.
If we come to Jesus for any other reason or for benefits He has to offer,
then there is a chance we will not stick with Him through thick and thin.
Sooner or later, when things get rough, we may leave Him. We will begin
to doubt His reality since we based our choice to serve Him on what He should
give us, not on who He is. Too many
so-called Christians fall away when what they expect to get from Jesus doesn't
arrive on their doorstep. They get
discouraged or angry and just give up. Being
sure in the very beginning that Jesus is the ultimate truth of the universe will
give us a good foundation for our faith, our very lives.
More than salvation and all that it consists, Jesus offers me Himself.
He is enough. Note
in verse 7 Paul says that the gospel is bearing fruit throughout the known
world. This leads me to think of the
term "church planting". The
modern concept of an apostle is a church planter.
Missionaries today go into the entire world with the hope of planting
churches. I do not see this as the
calling of either an apostle or a missionary.
Paul's calling that is clearly stated in Acts 9 when he gave his life to
Jesus was not to plant churches. His
calling was to proclaim the name of Jesus to Gentile kings and to the people of Note
the term "God's grace in truth" in verse 6.
The gospel is all about God's grace.
In this context grace means God's unmerited favour.
His unmerited favour, as Paul points out here, is in truth.
That means there are boundaries to God extending grace to us.
He just doesn't extend grace everywhere, anywhere, and to anyone.
For example, grace is extended when we repent.
God doesn't save those who reject Him.
His grace is limited by His truth.
In
verses 7 and 8 we learn of a man named Epaphras.
He was the one who told Paul about the Colossian believer's faith and
love. Paul says that he was a
faithful minister; minister meaning servant, of the gospel.
Here is a man that we know little about, but he, like many other
believers were faithful preachers of the gospel.
I'm sure if we knew his story, it would be an inspiration to us all.
Note
the words "love in the Spirit" in verse 8.
Paul knows well that the Holy Spirit is vital in both the preaching and
receiving of the gospel, as well as the working out of our salvation. Simply
put, we cannot demonstrate God's love as it should be demonstrated without the
Holy Spirit's influence in our lives. In
verse 9 Paul tells his readers that he is praying for them. I wonder how many
times Paul prayed each day, and for how long.
I wonder just what it would be like to see Paul in prayer.
His prayer is that God will fill these people with the knowledge of His
will, through spiritual wisdom and understanding.
These are important words in light of the teaching going around in
Colosse concerning angel worship and the over emphasis of a false spirituality.
Paul is saying that one can know God’s will through spiritual means,
yet, the will of God that people claim to know should be full of true Godly
understanding and wisdom. Paul puts
emphasis on understanding and wisdom. In Romans 10:2 Paul says the Jews have a
lot of zeal, but it was not based on knowledge.
It was not based on real understanding of the truth.
Paul is not against zeal, or knowing God’s will.
He is for true understanding of the truth of the gospel that is found in
Scripture. Once again, we need to
distinguish what is really God’s will and what is a figment of our
imagination. Knowing
God's will in a general sense and in an individual sense is important.
We need to understand where God is heading and we need to understand
where He is leading us as individuals. I
believe Paul is just being simple and practical here.
Coming to grips with God's will is based on knowledge that leads to
understanding which we can apply to our lives in all wisdom.
This is not a matter of flakey spirituality that I've seen so much in
Pentecostal and charismatic circles. Verse
10 reads; "And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the
Lord…" Paul goes on to say
that knowing God's will is seen in doing good works that please God.
God's will is practical. It's
worked out each and every day of our lives.
We're not angels floating around the streets of our cities.
We're human beings, saved unto good works.
We get our hands dirty as we walk among fallen humanity.
That's God's will. Therefore,
as we walk among falling humanity and proclaim Jesus to a fallen world we must
act appropriately as people worthy of who we now are in Christ.
This was Paul's prayer for these people.
Also
in verse 10, if we know God's will, live God's will, and please God in our
lives, we will grow in knowing who God
is. Isn't that what we really want?
Don't we want to know God today better than we knew Him yesterday? One
result of knowing God's will and living God's will is that, as Paul says in
verse 10, we will live a life of endurance, patience, and joy.
Remember, these people are suffering for the name of Jesus.
Some of them might well be executed for their association with Jesus.
They need the ability to endure. They
need patience in the midst of the struggle.
They also need joy, despite all of the tragedy that surrounds them. Paul
says that these qualities are found in the "might" that belongs to
Jesus. In
verse 12 Paul says that the Father has qualified us to share in the inheritance
of the saints. Note that Paul says
that it’s the Father who qualifies us, not Jesus.
Why would Paul say that? Well,
when thinking of an inheritance, the inheritance comes from a father, not a son.
God is the Father. Jesus is
His Son, who is also our brother. We
share in the same inheritance that God gave Jesus.
What a wonderful truth to ponder over.
In
verse 12 the word "inheritance" is in reference to the kingdom of
light. That's the In
verse 13 Paul says that Jesus "has rescued us from the kingdom of
darkness." The first century
church saw the world around it as being dark and sinful, thus the term
"kingdom of darkness". Look
at what Peter says in Acts 2:40. "Save yourselves from this corrupt
generation." Peter, Paul, and
the rest of the early church believed that there were only two kingdoms, the
kingdom of darkness, and the kingdom of light, or the Kingdom
of Note
the present tense in verse 13. We
are already, right now in real time, living in the kingdom of light.
In one real sense of the word we live in another world.
I may be a citizen of
Paul
says in verse 14 that we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins through the
Lord Jesus Christ. Being forgiven of
our sins is relatively easy to understand.
The idea of redemption is that Jesus has paid the price that was
necessary to bring us back into right relationship with God.
The price that He paid was with his own life, with His shed blood on the
cross. He did not pay the price to
satan as some think. He paid the
price to God Himself, His Father. Jesus
may have rescued us from the kingdom and the power of the devil, but the price
He paid was not to the devil. The
price that He paid was paid in order to satisfy God’s perfect justice.
When thinking of a court of law today, Jesus paid our fine to the judge,
the one who sentenced us. Jesus went
to prison on our behalf. Jesus
received the penalty for our sin so that we might stand acquitted before the
Judge of all things. Jesus
may have rescued us from the kingdom of darkness as Paul rightly says here, but
in the long run, Jesus rescued us from God Himself.
If Jesus had not paid the price for our sin, had not redeemed us, we
would all be eternally condemned. We
would all be subject to the wrath of Almighty God.
We really have been saved from God Himself.
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