Intentional Commitment Series

Commitment. Colossians 1:24-2:5.

I am so excited about being in Fiji. (This is my first Sunday in Fiji of a three-year appointment at this stage.)

This weekend that has just gone; the officers of the Fiji Division along with Territorial staff have engaged in teaching on the 'we commit statements' which are a Territorial initiative about how The Salvation Army does mission.

I tried to find a good illustration about commitment. This is not as easy as you might think.

While I was sitting at Auckland Airport waiting for the flight it dawned on me that someone you really want to know is committed to their role are the pilots who are taking you to Fiji.

Imagine how you would feel if you sat down and the plane was taxing out to the runway and the Pilot came on the intercom and introduced themselves and said something like: “On today’s flight today we think we might be able to reach Nadi; well we’ll give it a go.” Or “We will be flying through cloud, I had a bit of trouble getting my instrument rating and hope that I can remember how to work the instruments, I’m pretty sure that the navigation systems will be okay.”

When flying you want a man or woman who is focused, intentional and knows everything there is to know about their role and their plane plus some.

In regard to those who get things done, they are intentional, committed some are even heroic!

I have a few heroes, one of my heroes of the faith is Paul. Paul is really one of the greats of the Church, from an early age committed to God and through encountering the risen Saviour, his life changed, and he became committed to Jesus. Paul was intentional about his new mission to be a leader in The Church.

Paul was initially described as a hard man, who was present at the stoning of Steven, who persecuted the infant Church. Because Paul was a hardnosed religious man who had been trained in the way of Jewish believers and believed that what he been instructed in was right and that Jesus was a fraud and that his followers needed to be stamped out.

In the passage that we have just heard from Colossians 1 and 2 we hear from this former hard man, this enemy of the early Christians rejoicing in his suffering for the Church at Colosse. He says, “I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body which is the Church.” Paul had obviously had a change of heart from making the Church suffer, from wanting to destroy the early believers, to be a man who stood in the gap and suffered on behalf of the Church, suffered on behalf of believers. In this passage of scripture, he describes that he is suffering for the believers he was writing to in Colosse and for the Church at Laodicea. Paul was intentional about his mission to be a leader in the Church.

Paul this great apostle and now encourager of the early Church was sold out, fully intentional and committed to live for Jesus. His Damascus road encounter (Acts 8) with the risen Jesus was enough to turn his whole view of religion, of life, of the world on its head. In encountering Jesus, Paul’s way of thinking had been changed, he was radically different to the man he had been before meeting Jesus. In this passage from Colossians, he describes how he is “a servant … commissioned by God to present the word of God in its fullness”, not only that, but this “mystery has been kept hidden for ages and generations.” Here he is talking about Jesus. After encountering Jesus, Paul’s world changed so much that he went from being a man who would have only mixed with is own people, because he would have seen all non-Jewish people as unclean, to a man who reached out and shared his life with all peoples. Pau was now intentional and committed to his new mission, to be a leader in the Church.

So, all his former religious teaching had set Paul up with knowledge. Enough knowledge to know once he had had this life-changing encounter with Jesus that there was so much more to Jesus than he previously believed. That Jesus was the mystery hidden for ages, that Jesus was now disclosed to the saints, to those who had encountered him. That Jesus was now disclosed to the saints, to those who had encountered him, that in Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Paul then writes to the people of Colosse to encourage and help make the faith in Christ firm. If we look back at verses 15-17, we see Paul describe Jesus as, “… the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers, or authorities, all things were created by him and for him.” He is before all things and in him all things hold together.