Jesus Christ: Our Source of Hope
Colossians 1:1-14
659 “Him, Him, Him”
Dr. S. D. Gordon tells of an old Christian woman whose age began to tell on her memory. She had once known much of the Bible by heart. Eventually only one precious bit stayed with her. “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I committed unto him against that day.”
By and by part of that slipped its hold, and she would quietly repeat, “That which I have committed unto him.” At last, as she hovered on the borderline between this and the spirit world, her loved ones noticed her lips moving. They bent down to see if she needed anything. She was repeating over and over again to herself the one word of the text, “Him, Him, Him.”
She had lost the whole Bible, but one word. But she had the whole Bible in that one word.
That is the theme of Colossians, that Jesus Christ is supreme and that he is all we need. He is our all in all. Jesus is all we need for salvation, forgiveness of sin, peace, comfort. It does not matter what the question is or what the need is, Jesus Christ is the answer.
We will begin going through the book of Colossians by looking at Chapter 1 vs 1-14 and in these verses we will see that Jesus Christ is our Source of Hope.
These first fourteen verses can be outlined in the following manner: Paul’s introductory greeting, Paul’s thankfulness, and what Paul prays for on behalf of the Colossians and us. One of the powerful aspects of prayer is that prayer is not bound by time or space. This prayer that Paul prayed for the Christians in Colosse 2000 years ago also applies to you and me today. Let’s read the text.
Col 1:1-14
1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
2 To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father.
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints- 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
9For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11
being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. NIV
1. Intro/Context/Greeting
The Apostle Paul writes this letter to Colosse from a prison in Rome. This is Paul’s first imprisonment. During this 3 year prison term he wrote Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon and Philippians under divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Unlike his letter to the Philippians and Ephesians, Paul does not personally know the people he is writing to. He had never been to Colosse but his ministry to Epaphras, Philemon, and Onesimus played a significant role in the formation of the Colossian Church. Colosse was declining in stature and was surpassed by the neighboring towns of Hierapolis and Laodecia. It is likely that Epaphras was in Ephesus and Laodecia when Paul ministered and preached the Gospel in those cities and then took the message of salvation and hope back to Colosse and established the church there.
Paul heard of the success of the gospel in Colosse from Epaphras and also over time heard about some of the heresies that were beginning to creep in. Paul’s purpose for writing this letter was to refute the rise of Gnosticism which taught that everything that is Spirit is good and anything that is of physical matter was evil. It taught that salvation was attained by “special knowledge” not through Jesus. Another heresy taking root at this time was that Jesus Christ was not enough for salvation. You had to have Jesus plus obey the Jewish laws and rituals of circumcision and festivals. They were missing out on the point that salvation come from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that His sacrifice for you and me on the cross was sufficient and that there is nothing we can ever do in and of ourselves to earn salvation. Paul refutes both of these heresies by declaring the total sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
Paul introduces himself as the author and identifies the position or office he holds as well as by whose authority he holds that office. He is an “apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” By definition an apostle must have seen Jesus personally after his resurrection, they must have been called to that office by Christ, and they should be infallibly inspired, and thus secured against all error and mistake in their public teaching, whether by word or by writing. They were tasked to be the founders of the Church. This was an office that was not transferable and therefore the office of Apostle ceased after those that were initially called by God. The message Paul is going to share with the Colossians and us is from an authority higher than Paul himself. It is the divinely inspired word of God. Paul tells us later in a letter to Timothy that “all Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim 3:16)
Paul is writing to the Christian Church in Colosse. He addresses them as the “holy and faithful brothers in Christ.” They and we are made holy or “set apart” by the substitutionary sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the cross for you and I. He took our place on the cross. He bore all of our sins, past, present and future so that we would not be eternally separated from God. He replaced us on the cross which offered us only eternal death and he offers us eternal life through the forgiveness of sin.
Paul extends to us the common greeting he uses in all of his letters, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father.” It isn’t grace and peace from Paul. It is God’s grace and God’s peace. I like to think of the word “grace” as an acrostic: “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” God’s riches are the forgiveness of sin and assurance of being with God in heaven for all eternity and we can only receive these glorious riches at Christ’s Expense. Grace means that we can never earn and never deserve the glorious riches that Jesus purchased for us on the cross and offers to us as a free gift. Once we receive forgiveness of sin and the assurance of eternal life then we have a peace that surpasses all understanding as we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our Comforter, throughout our daily lives.
What excites me is that this is just the introduction and greeting, something we usually only read with a cursory glance.
2. How Paul Prays
Paul moves from the introduction and greeting into thanksgiving and prayer. For Paul these two things, thanksgiving and prayer, are inseparable. In Philippians 4:6 Paul instructs us to pray with an attitude of thanksgiving and he demonstrates that here in verses 3 thru 8. Notice he is not thanking the Colossians for anything they have done in and of themselves. He is thanking God for what HE has done in and through the Colossians.
Paul thanks God for their salvation. It was God who was active in the lives of the Colossian believers that drew them to the Father. It was God who sent Epaphras to share the Gospel of Salvation and establish the church in Colosse. It was God who allowed Paul and Epaphras to cross paths and allowed Epaphras to be influenced by Paul. It was God who revealed the Colossians’ need of Savior. It is the same God who today draws us here together tonight by His grace. It is the same God today who gives us His word, divinely inspired and is completely TRUE from cover to cover. It is the same God today who reveals Himself to us and tells us that He will never leave us nor forsake us. It is the same God today who says “Come to Me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” It is the same God today who says that if we “confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead” we will be saved. You see, Paul was thankful to an awesome and gracious God for what He was doing in the hearts and minds of the Colossians and what He is doing in the hearts and minds today of the people at Kirkuk Airbase and FOB Warrior. The Colossian Christians that Paul is writing to accepted the forgiveness of sin that Jesus purchased for them and offered to them as a free gift. What about you? Have you ever received and accepted God’s gracious gift of forgiveness. If you haven’t or are not sure then please talk with me before you leave tonight. It is the single most important decision of your life today and forever.
There are three key words that Paul says he is thankful for. He is thankful for the Colossians faith, hope and love. These three words are verbs and not nouns. You can think of a noun as a couch potato or armchair quarterback. A noun is a spectator that watches verbs running all around getting things done. The verbs are actually in the game. The Colossians’ are in the game. They are living out their faith and expressing their love for others in service. The text says that these actions “SPRING from the hope that is stored up for them in heaven.” This is a powerful and central part of the text that we should not overlook. Their motivation for their outpouring of faith and love comes from the hope, the assurance of eternal life with God the Father in heaven. It is a hope that cannot fade nor be taken away. It is this joyous hope that they have and the Truth that they have accepted that frees them up to give sacrificially, to love unconditionally and to obey the Father uncompromisingly.
Paul expresses thanks to God for the growth that is taking place in the lives of the Colossians. I believe He is thanking God for being true to His word and continually proving Himself to be faithful. God tells us that His word will not return without accomplishing what the Lord desires. Paul is witnessing God at work in the lives of others and it strengthens his own faith and love for God. He hears from Epaphras the things they are doing for one another, the ways that they are choosing to be obedient to the Scriptures not because they are forced to but because of their faith and love for Jesus who first loved them and gave Himself up for them. They are bearing the fruit of the Spirit which is living in them and through them which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. They are bearing this fruit because they are growing in Christ who is the vine. Jesus said in John 15:5 that “I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in you will bear much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.” Are you bearing fruit? Is there a fruit on the list that is missing your life? Is there a fruit that needs to grow some more and ripen? Are you connected to the vine or are you kind of hanging out there on your own and trying to live the Christian life in your own strength?
3. Paul prays for the Colossians
After Paul thanks God and praises Him for everything that He has done and is doing he begins to intercede on their behalf. He prays specifically for their spiritual knowledge, their spiritual understanding, their spiritual wisdom and their spiritual strength.
The word Paul uses for filled means to be completely under the control of knowledge. But it is not just any knowledge. He uses the word epignosis. The word gnosis means knowledge. When the prefix epi is added it means a deep and thorough knowledge. Paul is praying that we and the Colossians would be filled, or completely under the control of a deep and thorough knowledge of God’s will. Paul prays that we would be able to concisely and accurately collect the principles for living from Scripture and then apply those principles to our daily lives.
Paul prays that we would grow in spiritual knowledge and understanding what God’s will is for our lives. He prays that we would have a vibrant faith that is active in our lives and the lives of everyone around us. He prays that we would be strengthened by His glorious might so that we may stand firm in the midst of spiritual battle. He reminds us that God has qualified us by his grace to share in the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven. We are not qualified because we won a race or a lottery or because we are good enough. None of us have ever been or will be qualified based upon our own merit. We are qualified by the grace of God and by His glorious might that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. It is the same glorious might that created the heavens and the earth from nothing. And it is that same glorious might that dwells within you after you receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. It is Christ in you! And that is why Paul can confidently say “I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me!”
4. Conclusion
We have examined Paul’s prayer and saw that he prayed thankfully to God for what God had done and was doing in the lives of the Colossians. Then we saw that Paul prayed for their spiritual knowledge, wisdom and strength. This week you have a homework assignment to pray for other people. We typically pray for ourselves and there is nothing wrong with that. This week though, let’s focus on praying for others. In a foxhole our lanes of fire are designated to cover the person either to our left or our right. We are not providing fire to cover our personal area of threat. Instead, our buddy to our left or right is covering our front. That provides inter-locking fire which is much more difficult for the enemy to penetrate. We need to practice inter-locking prayer for one another so that our spiritual enemy will have a more difficult time penetrating our defenses. This week, pray for family members, friends or co-workers. Pray thankfully to God for them and then pray for their spiritual knowledge, wisdom and strength.
One of the most powerful ways to pray for someone is by praying Scripture for them. That simply means to take a biblical text and pray that text in a personal way for that individual. Here is an example of what I mean:
On the screen is the text of Col 1:10-14 modified in a personal prayer for my wife:
God, I ask you to fill Margaret with the knowledge of your will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And I pray this in order that Margaret may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please you in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to your glorious might so that she may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified her to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For you have rescued Margaret from the dominion of darkness and brought her into the kingdom of the Son, in whom she has redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
When we pray Scripture for someone we are automatically praying in God’s will, we are praying Truth, and we are praying with divine power and inspiration because it is the divinely inspired word of God we are praying into that person’s life.
As we prepare for the Lord’s Supper let’s consider the questions that were raised during this message. Have you ever received and accepted God’s gift of forgiveness by receiving Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? If not, this is the perfect time to do that. Please come up to me after the service and I will assist you with your decision.
