Colossians 1:1-14
Introduction:
Starting off the New Year focusing on our relationship with Jesus.
We are going to be focusing on the person and work of Christ and trying to develop relational thinking about Jesus. As we’ve been going through Luke, we’ve been learning a lot about the historical Jesus and all that makes Him great and admirable.
My prayer is that this year we will think more and more about Jesus in a relational way. By this I mean, we will grow in looking to Jesus as someone that you can turn to when you are in trouble, someone you enjoy being with, someone to guide you and protect you and who knows you. Basically, my hope is that by the end of this series, Jesus will enter your thoughts more and you will talk with Him more than you did before we started.
To help us to grow in that kind of thinking, we’re first going to go through Colossians for a little while. Colossians presents Jesus to us as “the image of the invisible God.” Colossians, perhaps better than any other book, helps us to see that Jesus is God. It makes very clear that all created things were made by Him, including earth, all it’s creatures, and heaven and all its angels. The heavenly throne that God sits upon was made by Jesus, the glassy sea that stretches around it was made by Him, the angels adoring God were made by Jesus, the crowns that redeemed believers will one day throw at Jesus’ feet were made by Jesus. And they were made by God the Father and God the Spirit too – all in cooperation and conjunction one with another.
And everything that can be said to be true of God the Father – His unlimited power, His eternality, His infinite knowledge, His sinlessness, His majesty, His glory, His holiness – is also true of Jesus.
Colossians also tells us about how Jesus has saved us from our sins and transferred us from the domain of darkness into His kingdom. And having been delivered from darkness into light, we are able to be strengthened, to gain wisdom and understanding, to walk in a holy way, and to endure all things with patience and joy.
Coming to a better understanding of Jesus as Divine, Jesus as our Savior, Jesus as our Righteousness, and Jesus as our Leader I think can help stir in us a desire to develop our personal relationship with Him.
He is worth so much more and able to do much more for you than just be an interesting historical figure. He is able to see and know all there is about you, guide you through any problem, and satisfy the deepest longings of your heart. He is someone you can look to when you need help and when you need joy. He is alive today and He has told believers that He is always with us.
Link: So, let’s begin! We’re in Colossians 1:1-14
Text: Colossians 1:1-14
Now, before we get into explaining these verses specifically, I want to mention a couple things just about the book of Colossians in general that will help us to understand it better as we go through.
First, Colossians and 1 John actually have some things in common. They might look a lot different because they have two different earthly writers – but the same source of absolute truth: God. Though they read a lot differently in style, they are similar because the church at Colossae and the unnamed church that John writes to were facing the same problem: Gnostics or “Knowers.”
Just like with 1 John, this church was facing people who were teaching a different Jesus. Precisely what they were teaching is not entirely clear, but it’s evident that it’s an early form of Gnosticism. It’s clear from chapter 2 of Colossians.
Paul warns these believers not to be taken captive by philosophy: Remember when I read a little bit of the Gospel of Thomas to you and it portrayed Jesus as a “philosopher?”
Paul warns them not to be taken captive by elemental spirits of the world – remember that the gnostics believed that everything spiritual was good?
Paul tells them that all mysteries and wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ – remember the fascination the gnostics had with receiving wisdom and knowledge from angelic beings?
Paul tells them that all the fullness of God dwells in Jesus – the gnostics did not think that Jesus was the divine Son of God.
Paul says that Jesus made all things in heaven and earth – the gnostics believed that God made spiritual things and the devil made physical things.
Colossians 2:18 is especially telling “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind.” That has Gnosticism written in bold letters all over it.
I point this out once again to say – what you believe about Jesus is very important for how accurately you live the Christian life. People at the church in Colossae were being taught about the wrong Jesus. Belief in the wrong Jesus had led the false teachers into asceticism, worshipping angels, fascination with visions, pride, and sensuality.
Paul writes to them to remind them about who the real Jesus is and to strengthen their relationship with the real Jesus. As we will see in these opening verses of Colossians, a strong relationship with Jesus – the real Jesus – leads to love for the saints, fruitfulness, wisdom, spiritual strength, endurance, patience, and joy.
Link: Alright, let’s start with looking at verses 1-5
Letters at this time had a certain pattern to them, especially Paul’s letters. The pattern was not so different from letters today. He introduces himself, says who he is writing to, and asks for God’s grace and peace in their lives.
The body of the letter begins in verse 3 where Paul says that he and Timothy have been continually thanking God the Father in their prayers for these believers. Here is why they thank God – these people have been saved through faith in Jesus Christ and now love all the saints. Notice that the thanks is given to God, not to the believers themselves. This is because salvation is a gift from God and love is a fruit of that. Salvation isn’t something they did themselves, God did it, and so they thank God.
Here is what was causing the believers to love all the saints – side point here – all Christians are saints. Sainthood is not reserved for an elite cast of Christians with exotic names like Valentine and Bartholomew. Joes, Toms, Bobs, Sues, they are also saints.
Well here is what had caused the believers to love all the saints – the hope laid up for them in heaven, which they had learned about through the Gospel. Belief and thought life leading to godly action.
In other words, these believers had come to believe that their hope, their treasure, all the things they want and need most – were waiting for them in heaven. This genuine belief in eternal blessedness and reward had enabled them to be particularly loving toward other people.
They didn’t need to be greedy for earthly gain. They didn’t need to cling tightly to all of their stuff. They could endure annoyances and frustrations with patience. They could consider the needs of others. They could say kind words when they didn’t feel like it. Because they knew that everything they could ever hope for was waiting for them in heaven. Their best life is guaranteed and will come in heaven. They don’t need to be selfish and unloving in this life.
Life is not a rat race to climb to the top and over top of everyone, crushing them if need be, in order to get what’s yours. It’s not a ladder that you climb and yank at the ankles of those who are also on the ladder and kick down in their face as you make your way to the top. They knew that. Life is a short time of representing Jesus on earth until it is time for us to go home to our hope in heaven.
Are you in the habit of thinking about Jesus who waits for you in heaven? Are you in the habit of thanking God for your salvation? Are you in the habit of believing that your best life is a guaranteed thing in heaven for you? Or are you in the habit of thinking that your best life is to be found on earth? These believers knew it was in heaven by grace. It resulted in loving other Christians.
This knowledge about their hope in heaven came through the gospel. The Gospel is the story of Jesus and how He came to earth one Christmas morning, lived a perfectly righteous life, and loved God and us to the point that He willfully chose to be our substitutionary sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. After being crucified, He lay in the grave for three days until He rose victorious over the grave – proving that God loved Jesus and had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. And now through faith in Jesus, you and I can have eternal life and one day go to be forever with God in heaven, where our hope is laid up for us.
This Gospel, verses 6-8, was bearing fruit and increasing throughout the whole world.
The Bible says that the Gospel came in the fullness of time. The events happened just at an unusually ideal and peaceful time. It came during the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. Roman peace, Roman roads, Roman freedoms made it particularly easy for believers to go out by foot, horse, boat, whatever to all the ends of the empire to rapidly deliver the good news of Jesus – the Savior of the world.
The universality of the Greek language made it easy to communicate the Gospel to many people. The Gospel was indeed bearing fruit and increasing throughout the whole world.
But, like all good things, people with evil intent took notice of this blossoming community of love and grace and forgiveness and started to think about how they might be able to turn it to their own ends. This was happening to the Colossians, so Paul needed to remind them of Jesus and the Gospel once again.
Surely that is a big part of why Paul and Timothy felt the need to pray for these believers. Here is how they prayed: *Verses 9-14*
There’s a lot of things I could draw attention to in these verses, but I want to draw especial attention to the interworking of one’s relationship with Jesus, one’s thought life, and how that affects how life is lived. Your relationship with Jesus, your thought life, and how your Christian life is lived are all related.
Paul prays that they will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. He prays for all kinds of good works for them. In fact he prays that they would bear fruit in every good work. There are too many to list. He also prays for their being strengthened in all ways and that they might grow in endurance and patience and joy and thanksgiving. That’s the fruitful Christian life in a nutshell. That’s good Christian living.
But notice what walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work, having endurance and patience and joy – notice what these things come from. They come from the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
The prayer is specifically that they would have knowledge of God’s will, spiritual wisdom, understanding, and the result the “so as to” of that is all this other stuff. The prayer isn’t simply “God make them walk worthy.” The prayer is “God make them knowledgeable, wise, and understanding in godly things so they will walk worthy.” Thought life matters.
Knowing God’s will, having spiritual wisdom, understanding, enables the believer to walk in the right manner, to bear good fruits, to be strengthened with all power. Having your thinking informed by God’s will, wisdom, and understanding is important for good Christian living.
There is no ability to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord apart from knowing what the will of the Lord is. That just makes good sense. It is difficult to impossible to follow the right path when you have no idea what the right path even is or where you are going.
I can remember a funny story about a time that Jenni and I got a little lost together. We just had finished lunch with some friends in China at a school not terribly far away from my own. We were now walking back together toward another school where some more of our friends were.
Well, little did she know I had made up my mind that I was going to finally express my interest in her. Here was my chance! We were alone, it was a lovely day, I was going to go for it. Let her know and see what she says. So, I was pretty nervous about that and not paying a lot of attention about where I was going. I was kind of just following her while I was at war with my nerves.
Well, where we were was in my area of the city. I was the one who was supposed to know where we were going. Jenni didn’t know I was a nervous wreck, so Jenni was following me. I didn’t know the path, she didn’t know the path, I was following her, she was following me, of course we got lost.
Being that I am occasionally an imbecile, I decided to tell her about my interest anyway. So here’s poor Jenni, lost, flustered, and here I am “actually I secretly love you.” Well, she turned me down as you can imagine. It took a long time for her to come around after that I think.
Anyway, I lacked the common sense at the time to know – you have to know the path where you are going. If you don’t know where you are going or how to get there, you aren’t going to get there. And right thoughts are important to keep you from around in foolishness.
And so it is with the Christian life. The Christian life cannot be navigated successfully without knowing God’s will, spiritual wisdom, and understanding. And at the root of that, you need to be in a relationship with God. Your relationship with God needs to be good or else right thoughts are more likely to be neglected.
First, for a good relationship with God, you need to get saved – notice that through faith in Jesus we are qualified to receive our heavenly inheritance, we are transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of Jesus, God’s beloved Son. We receive redemption and we receive forgiveness.
Apart from faith in Jesus, you are still in the domain of darkness. That’s not a good position. Good luck living wisely in that domain.
Having been saved, that’s not necessarily a guarantee that you are going to live the best Christian life that God would have for you. To do that, you are going to need to grow in knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. And so that’s why Paul prays for that.
And so, second of all, you need to grow in your relationship with God. You need to be reading His word, praying to Him, incorporating thoughts about Him into your life, looking to Him for help, trusting in His protection, taking rest in His approval, responding to Him in repentance when He brings conviction. Because if you are relationally disconnected from the source of true knowledge, then you aren’t going to be growing in that knowledge.
Grow in Relationship with Jesus: Why? Some had the wrong Jesus. No relationship with Jesus + Wrong thoughts about Jesus -> Unfruitful Life
Paul writes to remind them of the true Jesus. Because good Relationship + Thoughts -> Fruitful Life