6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
MATURITY
The Exhortation. Paul’s words here unlock the central theme of Colossians. Sometimes God’s people go looking for extra experiences and blessings due to their lack of growth and maturity. They have received Christ, but their faith has shriveled and dried up. This is the opposite of the New Testament expectation.
As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so now live. When we turn to Jesus Christ, through his Spirit he takes up residence in our lives. And as there are many things in our lives with which he is not comfortable, there is a lot of cleaning up to do. But, as anyone who has been involved in renovation and repairs knows, it takes longer and costs much more than expected. It’s like that with our lives. It takes longer and costs a lot more to make our lives a place fit for the king. The challenge is to make Christ Lord in every part of our daily lives.
Paul often uses the imagery of putting off the old and bringing in the new. Colossians 3, as we will see, provides examples of the kinds of practical things Jesus wants to see happen in our lives.
As you were rooted… be built up. Paul seems to be mixing his metaphors here – one from the world of botany, the other from building. But his meaning is clear: he is keen to see growth. He doesn’t want stunted followers of Jesus Christ in Colossae – or anywhere else. What then do we need to do? Look for more ecstatic experiences? No! A genuine experience of Christ rarely comes to someone who is not spending time in the Bible. This is one of the reasons for this 40-Days of Readings and Reflections.
Sometimes we aren’t motivated to dig deeper into the Bible until we have experienced a crisis, sickness at home, or the death of a friend. Only when we see the houses, cars, the costly jewels of the world for what they are, goods and trinkets that have a fading and passing splendor, we see the reality of God’s truth. And then we begin to grow.
As you were taught… be established in the truth. For some years a little saying kept me focused on the need for consistent Bible reading in my life: ‘No Bible, no breakfast; no prayer, no paper.’ The danger with this kind of line is that Bible reading and prayer become a law. But if it is taken as a guide it can be a useful reminder of the need for daily Bible reading and prayer.
And don’t ignore Paul’s concluding exhortation: …abounding in thanksgiving. To have a thankful heart is to have a contented heart. How often do we get anxious because thankfulness to God is not part of our psyche. The sense of thankfulness within us is a real measure of our growth in Christ. We cannot get taken up with our own desires and moans and groans for long if a spirit of thankfulness to Christ is an essential part of our thinking and attitudes – because we know deep down that he is the Lord, he is the good shepherd bringing good for us out of all the confusion and frustration of life.
You may want to consider:
how you can be rooted and built up in Jesus Christ – developing and maintaining a meaningful relationship with God – in tough times as well as good times;
what abounding in thanksgiving might look like in your life.
1 For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face. 2 I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I am saying this so that no one may deceive you with plausible arguments. 5 For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ.
GROWTH
The Agony In his first words in Colossians 2 Paul implies that he is praying for his readers – I want you to know how greatly I strive for you,…(lit. how much I am struggling for you). At the end of chapter 1, Paul had spoken of the way he agonized over his work of teaching and preaching. Now, he implies, ministry involves more than teaching: it also involves prayer. It was not something he did when all else failed. Prayer was an essential part of the hard work of his ministry. As with Jesus, it was a major investment of his energy.
And notice what he prayed: I want their hearts to be encouraged (strengthened) and united in love,… The issue of unity is at the heart of his concern. Lack of unity in a church often hinders the growth of God’s people and limits the witness of God’s gospel in the city. Paul goes on to set out his goal – that all may know Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The key to the transformation is a unity in mind and heart centered on Jesus Christ. Paul knows all too well that lasting unity depends on truth and love.
RICHEST BLESSINGS
The richest blessings in life are found in knowing Jesus Christ. Paul reminds us that true faith is not a matter of mystical experiences or intellectualism. It involves a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If we don’t know anything about a living, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we are God’s people in name only. There’s all the difference in the world between waking up in the morning and saying, ‘Good Lord, it’s morning’ and ‘Good morning Lord.’
In Christ all the treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge are found. In the past these were hidden. Now in Jesus Christ they have been revealed. But Paul is concerned that the Colossians might be drawn to people who would distract them from a vital, unambiguous relationship with Jesus Christ. None of us can add to who Jesus is, or to what he has done for us.
The Ecstasy. Despite his concerns, joy and happiness bubble through Paul’s next words: I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ. He had heard good things about God’s people in Colossae. Even though he couldn’t see them in person – he was in prison – he wanted them to know that he was with them in spirit. Prompted by God’s Spirit (1:8), they had responded positively to Epaphras’s preaching and had turned in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ as the Lord from heaven.
You may want to consider:
the place of prayer in your life;
why it is that professing Christians can sometimes feel that either their faith is dry or they need a new experience of God.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. 21 And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, 22 in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him,…
THE KING
Christianity, Judaism and Islam, three monotheistic religions, have certain essentials in common. However, the New Testament insists that God is the eternal and unique Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 1:15-20 is one of the most profound, concise statements about Jesus.
John’s Gospel makes a similar point. In John 1:1 we read: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And in 1:14, John tells us: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.John makes the connection between the Word of God and God in terms of a Son / Father relationship. This tells us so much about God’s very nature: He lives and behaves as a Father.
Let’s think about this. **To be a father carries the ideas of someone who gives life and who loves. This is what John’s Gospel and Paul’s Letter to the Colossians are saying. From eternity God the Father has given life to a Son.
Some theologians use the analogy of a fountain to illustrate the relationship. In the same way that the essential nature of a fountain is to pour out water, so God the Father is eternally flowing with life and love, eternally begetting his Son who, to use Paul’s words, is his image. Jeremiah 2:13 tells us the Lord says of himself that he is the ‘spring of living water’.
God did not become a father at some point. His very nature is to beget a Son. In the same way a fountain is not a fountain if it does not pour out water, so God the Father would not be who he is, unless he was giving life to his Son. No wonder Paul wrote, Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. Jesus is not just God’s image from a certain point in time. The Son of God, whom we know as Jesus Christ, has always been and will always be, the true, outward manifestation of God.
Consider what Paul goes on to say: for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him.
From eternity God the Father’s nature is to give life and to love which we see in Jesus. It is entirely consistent that he would hand over to His Son the task of creating others also to love. God doesn’t need to do this to make up something lacking in his nature. This is who he and what he does. He loves and he gives life.
To draw this together: Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of God, is the eternal image of the invisible God. Created in the image of God we are designed to conform the image of God’s eternal Son – in our love for God and our love for one another. As Michael Reeves in his, Delighting in the Trinity notes (p.43), our existence is all part of ‘the continuation of that outgoing movement of God’s love’.
So, what went wrong? Paul tells us, You, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds (1:21). Estrangement and alienation are words that describe our human tragedy. We didn’t stop loving – we were made for that. Our problem is that our love turned away from God. Yes, our relationships with one another are broken, but our primary problem is that we have broken our relationship with the God who has made us to love.
So what has God done? In profound, beautiful words Paul tells us: You, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him,..
God could have written us off. Instead he chose a very costly path for himself. Indeed, through Jesus’ death on the cross we see deeper into the very being of God. For the crucifixion of Jesus awakens us to the seriousness of our sin, and also what it means to say that God is love. As Michael Reeves comments (Delighting in the Trinity, p.76),‘Knowing God as our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, not only wonderfully gladdens our view of God, it gives us deep comfort and joy… This God welcomes and embraces us as his children, never to send us away’.
You may want to consider:
the nature of the unique relationship Jesus has with God;
9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
PRAYER FOR THE NEW COMMUNITY
So often in life we are not sure what we should pray. Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1 provides a helpful insight. Having begun with thanksgiving for the Colossian church, he goes on to pray for it. Interestingly, given his comments about growth (1:6-8) it is surprising that he does not pray for more converts. Rather, he petitions God first for growth in the Colossians’ spiritual maturity.
When we think about it, growth in spiritual maturity is the New Testament pattern. When Jesus concluded his public ministry we find twelve disciples and about one hundred or so others. Jesus invested himself not in quantity, but in quality. It is easy to focus on numbers. But that was not Paul’s dream, nor his prayer. He understood Jesus’ Commission: ‘Go and make disciples’ (Matthew 28:18). Paul wanted to see people growing in the caliber and integrity of their faith and lifestyle.
Two growth components: In 1:9 Paul prays for growth in biblical thinking—so, he prays for knowledge, wisdom, understanding. In 1:10 he prays for growth in Christian lifestyle – living a life …; pleasing…; bearing fruit… Notice the link between thinking and lifestyle. He prays for growth in their minds in order that they might see growth in behavior. These elements are essential if a church wants to see spiritual renewal and growth.
Knowledge of God’s will… When the Bible speaks of knowing God’s will, it is talking about our need to know God, loving him because he first loved us, and finding our joy in him. The more we come to understand the privilege of what it means to have been created in his image and now to be restored in that image, the more we will long to live in love and loyalty to our God. Psalm 143:10 says: Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Let your good spirit lead me on a level path.
These words help us understand Paul’s point. The psalm writer doesn’t say, Lord, teach me your will…, but rather, teach me to do your will… He knows God’s will, but needs to be taught to do it.
This is why Paul asks that the Colossians may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,…This is how God fills us with the knowledge of his will.
How different this is from the way we often think about the will of God. For most of us, the will of God has more to do with what work we do, whom we marry and where we live. Yes, God is concerned about these matters, but not nearly as much as with the issues of our understanding of him, how we live, how we relate. Paul knows that knowledge and understanding of God don’t come naturally. Some think that what we need is faith. But that is not what Paul is saying. He prays that our minds might be enlightened so that we may live more worthily of God.
FOUR MARKS OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH
Bearing fruit in every good work: God’s people are saved by faith alone, but, as James puts it, faith without works is dead. By their fruits you will know them, Jesus said of his true followers. If there is no discernable difference between our lives and the lives of those around us, we need to ask what kind of Christians we are.
Growing in the knowledge of God: God’s people are growing organisms – they’re not robots that have come off the end of the Christian assembly line. An important element of that growth is growth in the knowledge of God. Paul is praying that the Colossians will be filled with the knowledge of God, so that they might have the ability to discern God’s mind in the diversity and complexity of life’s issues. With the passing of the years all of us have new and greater responsibilities. How will we know how to make decisions and judgments if we don’t increase in our understanding of the mind of God?
Strengthened to display great endurance and patience: Paul speaks here of the kind of mentality that tackles the tough issues of life and the stamina that perseveres. He knows too well that it’s one thing to start, but another to finish.
Joyfully giving thanks to the Father: Thanksgiving pleases God. Not to thank him is to fail to understand the magnitude of his love expressed through Jesus Christ for, as Paul puts it, God has transferred us from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of his beloved Son. We have been brought under the rule of a greater king, a loving king, a king who is committed to our eternal good. Our only true response is one of joy and gratitude. It’s one of the reasons we want to sing!
Paul’s prayer is a rich prayer. As with all relationships, a process is involved. Understanding flows out into a new way of living – a change that is aided by the Holy Spirit of God. But, as with all relationships, the changes take time.
You may want to consider:
the link between thinking and lifestyle;
the implication that we need to see life God’s way if we are to live God’s way;
the compelling power and significance of Paul’s words that God rescues and transfers his people into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. 3 In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. 7 This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, 8 and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
A NEW COMMUNITY
For many, church is an irrelevant institution filled with self-righteous hypocrites. The Letters of Paul the Apostle paint a very different picture of church – a picture of vitality, community and growth. We see this for example in Paul’s thanksgiving for the church in Colossae.
Thanksgiving. Paul doesn’t thank God that the followers of Jesus in Colossae were ‘religious’. Instead he focuses on three features: their faith, love and hope.
Faith. The Colossians did not just have ‘faith in God’. Their faith was in Christ Jesus who, Paul tells us, enjoys a unique relationship with God the Father. People often say they believe in God, but it is Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, who supremely reveals God to us.
Love for all the saints. Their faith was not just intellectual, simply giving a mental nod to God. Rather, their relationship with God showed itself in their relationship with one another. They were a new community, the people of God. The love of which Paul spoke is one that binds people of different national and cultural backgrounds into a unique community.
Hope. It is instructive to note Paul’s expression here: because of the hope laid up for us in heaven. His words are unexpected. There is a causal link between hope and faith and love. Hope is not the outcome of faith and love: it is the cause of it. And this hope is not just Christian optimism. It is the certainty of the coming again of Jesus and the new heaven and earth that he will bring in. The object of our faith is not yet in our full possession. All this opens up quite a different dimension of our understanding of life now. It suggests we need to learn to live now in the light of the age to come – to live now with the taste of that reality in our mouth.
The theme of growth bubbles through these verses. The global expansion of Christianity is going on all over the world, Paul says. And, you may have noticed the emphasis Paul puts on the truth.The gospel, he says, is the word of the truth. He could have left out any reference to the word truth, but he didn’t.
As someone has pointed out, Paul wanted to stress that the Christian message is true – in a counter-intuitive sense: the statements it makes about God and men and women are beyond human invention and imagination. It is also true in an historical sense: the eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were no lie: they are trustworthy. The Christian message is also true in the experiential sense: when we put our trust in Jesus Christ who is at the center of the gospel message, we discover that our faith is not a hoax but a genuine experience.
Because it was the truth, the church in Colossae had formed and was growing. People there had heard and responded to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, in all its truth, preached by pastor Epaphras, empowered by the work of God’s Spirit.
You may want to consider:
the significance of the expression, faith in Jesus Christ, as the focus and meaning of faith;
that the phrase, love for all the saints, implies that faith is not just intellectual or simply the expression of a relationship with God;
Paul’s meaning of hope: it is not a pious ‘hope’ but confidence in the ultimate fulfillment of God’s original promise; we should see life now in the light of the reality that is to come;
the implications of the way that people hear and respond to the gospel.
…Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” 37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 40 And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
EMPOWERED TO SPEAK
Pentecost. The day Jesus switched on the power and the waves of the impact of his life began to spread. In Acts 2 we read of the Day of Pentecost when God came with fire and wind. This Pentecost God was not imparting the Law, as at the time of Moses. Rather he was sending his Spirit and formalizing his new covenant. As God had promised long ago, and as Jesus had taught, the Spirit would not just bring the commands of God; he would also bring a new inner motivation and enthusiasm to keep them.
In the miracle of the wind and fire that day, God signaled how he would achieve the changes he intended. The sound of a mighty wind symbolized the power of Jesus; the fire symbolized the purifying, cleansing work of Jesus; the speech pointed to the good news of Jesus reaching people from every nation. It is on the element of speech that Luke focuses.
THE HOLY SPIRIT
It is the Spirit who empowered those first followers and who empowers us today. It is the Spirit who fans the witness and testimony of God’s people. Consider what happened to those disciples: one moment they were demoralized and defeated and then Pentecost came. Peter, who had so vehemently denied that he even knew Jesus, was now publicly proclaiming that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah. He turned from being a coward to a courageous preacher.
At Peter’s words that Jesus is both Lord and Messiah, his hearers were cut to the heart. It was as though their eyes had been closed but now they suddenly saw who Jesus was. Whereas they had mocked and jeered when Jesus died, they were now ashamed as they saw the truth about him and about themselves. The Spirit not only enabled Peter to preach; his hearers saw the truth. Three thousand responded to the call to repent and be baptized. That day the church was born.
The challenging and exciting thing is that Jesus wants to involve you and me in his work of touching and transforming lives with God’s good news. This is his plan and passion. He wants to draw failed, flawed men and women to the truth, back to what we were meant to be – people made in his image, made to know him and delight in him forever.
You may want to consider:
the content of Peter’s message and the call to repent;
the way in which Jesus’ prayer on the cross, Father, forgive them, has in part been fulfilled by the positive response of so many that Pentecost;
the place of prayer, thanks, and the Word of God in God’s new community.
Sometimes we aren’t motivated to dig deeper into the Bible until we have experienced a crisis, sickness at home, or the death of a friend. Only when we see the houses, cars, the costly jewels of the world for what they are, goods and trinkets that have a fading and passing splendor, we see the reality of God’s truth. And then we begin to grow.
In Christ all the treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge are found. In the past these were hidden. Now in Jesus Christ they have been revealed. But Paul is concerned that the Colossians might be drawn to people who would distract them from a vital, unambiguous relationship with Jesus Christ. None of us can add to who Jesus is, or to what he has done for us.
God did not become a father at some point. His very nature is to beget a Son. In the same way a fountain is not a fountain if it does not pour out water, so God the Father would not be who he is, unless he was giving life to his Son. No wonder Paul wrote, Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. Jesus is not just God’s image from a certain point in time. The Son of God, whom we know as Jesus Christ, has always been and will always be, the true, outward manifestation of God.
Love for all the saints. Their faith was not just intellectual, simply giving a mental nod to God. Rather, their relationship with God showed itself in their relationship with one another. They were a new community, the people of God. The love of which Paul spoke is one that binds people of different national and cultural backgrounds into a unique community.
At Peter’s words that Jesus is both Lord and Messiah, his hearers were cut to the heart. It was as though their eyes had been closed but now they suddenly saw who Jesus was. Whereas they had mocked and jeered when Jesus died, they were now ashamed as they saw the truth about him and about themselves. The Spirit not only enabled Peter to preach; his hearers saw the truth. Three thousand responded to the call to repent and be baptized. That day the church was born.