“I want you to know by this letter that we here are constantly praying for you, and whenever we do we thank God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because you believe in Christ Jesus and because you are showing true Christian love towards other Christians. We know that you are showing these qualities because you have grasped the hope reserved for you in Heaven - that hope which first became yours when the truth was brought to you. It is, of course, part of the Gospel itself, which has reached you as it spreads all over the world. Wherever that Gospel goes, it produces Christian character, and develops it, as it had done in your own case from the time you first heard and realized the amazing fact of God’s grace. You learned these things, we understand, from Epaphras who is in the same service as we are. He is a most well-loved minister of Christ, and has your well-being very much at heart. As a matter of fact, it was from him that we heard about your growth in Christian love. JB Phillips translation of the N.T., Colossians 1:3-10
This is another of the letters Paul wrote while imprisoned in Rome. This man, Epaphras, described by Paul as ‘our beloved fellow bond-servant who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf’, has apparently visited Paul and Timothy there in Rome and told them of the work God had begun in Colossae through his preaching of the gospel.
It is supposed that the primary reason for his visit to Paul is the coming of false teachers to the Colossian church who were introducing heresy and mingling philosophy with theology and confusing the people.
He may have been there to ask Paul by his Apostolic authority to send something back to the church that would support the doctrine he had been teaching them and combat the deception of the false teachers.
If that is the case, then this letter would be what Paul handed Tychicus to take to Colossae with him, and in his usual fashion, Paul begins with praise and blessing and talking about Jesus.
WORD OF TRUTH
The temptation exists in constructing a sermon, to focus on the verses that have been chosen as the text to the exclusion or at least a negligence of the larger context.
The danger of doing that is that the preacher limits himself in his own understanding of what is being said or is not being said, and thereby limits whatever he ultimately gives to the people.
So in coming to these verses, 3 through 10 of Colossians 1, for example, if we just dive in and try to glean what we can out of them without looking at the larger context first, then we would miss some important points that could be made in getting ourselves settled down for the sharper focus.
I’m telling you this because this is also something the lay person should keep in mind in their private Bible study. Reading the scriptures is important. But do not only read and never stop to really study and meditate.
Read in large chunks to get the big picture, then go back and pay attention to what the smaller pieces have to say about the whole.
Now here before us we have this letter which was born of a need to address heresy. There is also some instruction later on for the Christian walk and behavior. Looked at as a whole, we have defense of the gospel, and then some discussion on the sort of life the gospel both makes possible and requires from the believer.
With that big picture in mind then, there is more dimension given to these opening words of Paul when we realize that before he goes on to defend the gospel he first just puts it all out there as though there is nothing else to consider.
This is the gospel and this is what comes from faith in the gospel and this is the One, the Person, who did all of this and to whom we now belong and He is preeminent. Ok, now let’s talk about these folks among you who are confusing the issue.
Now I go to sermon websites and I drive by church signs and I flip channels now and then and over all I get an impression that there is very much preaching out there about the ‘hot topics’. One guy wants to attack the issue of homosexuality and he certainly wants to address the issue of homosexuals in church leadership.
Someone else wants to make some things clear about abortion. Another is an expert in refuting the theory of evolution, and so forth.
And they all want to hold these things up against Scripture and tell us what the Bible would say about them and there is a degree to which this is needed. Christians should know what the Bible has to say about issues that are going to come up in conversation; with which they are going to be challenged at some point unless they live in a bubble, and they should know what to say.
I would caution however against getting so focused on society’s particular sins and the topics of popular debate that our primary message being handed down from the church to the world is one of condemnation of what is not right, to the exclusion of the good news which, when believed upon for salvation becomes the point of healing that is otherwise completely lacking in these other circumstances.
This is far too often the case and the result is that the homosexual thinks the only thing the church has to say is to bring scathing condemnation down on the homosexual. The person considering abortion thinks the church only has disdain to communicate. The evolutionist, of course, must believe that the creationist is a poor, ignorant, backwards and uneducated slob who is living in a fantasy world, and since this is the sort of person that makes up the church then the church is a total insignificance.
Paul might have just jumped right in with his letter, addressing the specific claims of the false teachers and trying to prove what is wrong at each point, and in the end the Colossian congregation would have been as confused about his words as they ever were by the empty deceptions of the false teachers.
In an exposition of Hebrews 11 delivered by C.H. Spurgeon he was making the point that when the righteous walk in a Godly way their very life judges the ungodliness of the unrighteous. He said, “I have heard it said that if there is a crooked stick, and you want to show how crooked it is, you need not waste words in description. Place a straight one by the side of it, and the thing is done directly.”
Can you now see what I meant by getting more out of the text if we look first at the larger context? Paul is not just rejoicing at the evidence of the gospel at work in these believers, although he is doing that. He is also laying out the straight stick so when it comes time all they’ll have to do is lay it along side the crooked one to get the clear picture of how perverse it really is.
So Paul, if I may paraphrase a little here, listens to the report of Epaphras, goes to his room and I would imagine after some prayer picks up his writing implement and says, ‘I just praise and thank the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because Epaphras has come here with a good report about you all. He says your love for your fellow believers just abounds in mercy and good deeds, and all of this is a result of the great hope you have of eternal life in heaven that fills your hearts because of the word of truth that came to you, which is the good news of Christ Jesus’!
See what he has done? He has started right out reminding them that out of all the garbage they’re hearing now, there remains the truth they first believed that they began with and that inspired their hope and their faith and their love for one another, and it was there before all this other stuff.
It was and is the ‘word of truth’, and it is the gospel that Epaphras preached! It hasn’t changed, it hasn’t been superceded, and it certainly does not need to be added to.
Quite to the contrary, adding to it would be as damaging as taking it away.
FOCUS ON THE FRUIT
Notice that Paul did not attribute their faith, hope and love to anything but the word of truth. Not the gospel and good works, not the gospel and some philosophical insights to get you through the day, just the gospel.
As I worked this sermon I took a coffee break and perused a Christian book catalog laying on the counter. On the front page there was a book advertised, written by a guy the ad called “America’s Pastor”, which is insulting to the rest of us pastors, and I can speak freely for my congregation and say they would not want him as a pastor because he is a false teacher so he must be a pastor to some part of America, but not our part… and besides, I wonder who dubbed him with this moniker, whether he gave it to himself or paid his publicity manager to tag him with it or what… anyway, his book is about being a ‘better you’, and the synopsis goes like this.
This book, “…guides readers on a groundbreaking journey of self-discovery…(and)…will help you realize the better things you were born for…your unique purpose and destiny!”
Listen, Christians, it is not all about you and your self-discovery and becoming a better you and finding your unique purpose. It’s about Jesus Christ and the good news that although in you, that is in your flesh there is no good thing, that although you were radically depraved and spiritually dead, He raised you to life and gave you the hope of heaven and faith in Him and love for all the saints and it’s all because to you came the word of truth, the gospel, and that is the only reason any good fruit will come from your life at all. There is no better you to be found. There is Christ in you the hope of glory because of the gospel preached.
Let’s look at the fruit, that is, the tangible manifestation of the presence of the word of truth in the Colossians and in you.
If we just take them in the order in which they appear in the text, which I suppose is the easiest thing to do, we come first to Paul’s mention of their faith in Christ Jesus.
The preaching of the word of truth, or the gospel, brings forth the fruit of faith in Christ. That makes sense. The gospel, meaning ‘good news’, is the message that when we were spiritually dead in our sin the Son of God came to shed His blood and die on the cross to take the quilt and penalty for us. Then, as He promised, He rose bodily from the dead on the third day, glorified and in victory over death and the grave, never to die again, and because He lives all those who hear His word and believe in the Father who sent Him will never come into judgment but have passed out of death into life. That’s the gospel, and you should memorize John 5:24 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 so you may use them in your witnessing.
So the gospel, the word of truth, is about what Christ accomplished in order to give eternal life to those who believe, therefore faith in Him is of course going to be demonstrated as fruit.
I want you to observe that it is faith in Christ and not in anything else. It is not just a general faith for the sake of faith. What I mean by that is the silly thing you’ll hear people say, that they have faith that everything will be alright when in the midst of a problem. Or they have faith that their child will come out ok as they mature and so forth. But they are not naming the thing or person or condition that they are putting their faith in. Faith is belief and belief must have an object.
You don’t hear people saying, “I believe”. So you ask, “What do you believe in?” and they say, “Nothing, I just believe”. You’d think they’d gone daffy and you would be correct. And yet they’ll say, “I have faith that we’ll get through this” and never realize that they haven’t really said anything at all.
Faith does not save, but saving faith has an object, and that is Christ and His death and resurrection.
The next thing we see listed is their love for all the saints. Let’s look at that.
First, notice that he mentions it in close relationship to faith. Paul has heard of their faith in Christ and their love for other Christians.
One is invisible and the other is manifest in action. Faith happens in the heart at the moment of justification. You don’t see it. When a person first believes in Christ he may be standing right in front of you but you don’t see that faith do something. He might even tell you “I have just believed in Christ for the first time”, but you still haven’t seen anything.
I’ve had people tell me that but I knew they were saying it so maybe I’d shut up, but even if they were being sincere I wouldn’t have seen some aura over their head or flashes of lightning in their eyes or smoke coming from their ears.
But what happens when that faith is real; when the Holy Spirit has brought that person to life and granted them repentance and faith at the preaching of the word of truth?
They are immediately and radically changed forever. They are a new creature, a new creation in Christ, and everything changes. The Christians they once despised they now love. The God they hated is now living in them and through them and they suddenly love Him and want to please Him and that desire is demonstrated in acts that manifest faith in Christ and love for His saints – His people.
Now I want to remind you at this point that this letter is going to be carried back to a church in trouble. Paul is hearing from Epaphras the evidences of a community of people who were changed by the gospel and began immediately thriving as a church, but the Judaizers have crept in and placed the burden of the Mosaic law on them and pagan philosophies have seeped in and things are a mess.
Folks, a church that gets its attention drawn away from the basics and starts listening to ear candy and feel-good stuff and lists of things they must do and be in order to be ‘good Christians’, will in very short order find itself joyless, confused, weak, directionless, worldly.
When this letter finally came back to Colossae and Epaphras or one of the other leaders stood up and began to read, and got to, “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints…” I would imagine that some of them began to look around and think to themselves, “Oh. Yeah. I remember it wasn’t that long ago that we were all so happy when we gathered together, no one wanted to leave at the end of the service. And there was a lot of love being shown, wasn’t there? But that hasn’t happened for a while. What happened? What changed?”
Have you ever been in that situation? I have. I have been involved in churches where love abounded for a time and at the end of the worship no one wanted to leave. That’s the sign of a healthy church, you know. One of the signs at least…
I like that here at C3. When we’re done and folks stand around and chat, sometimes for quite a while, it confirms to me that you want to be here.
But I’ve also been in places where frankly, I wondered why they met at all! People come in looking like somebody just shot their best hound, they grunt a greeting or two and sit down, the music starts, the singing is half-hearted at best, they either fidget or sleep through the sermon and when it’s over they’re beating feet for the parking lot. Do you know why?
They’ve let the world and the cares of the world creep in; creep into the church, creep into their hearts. They’ve forgotten that in the beginning they were filled with faith in Christ and love for all the brethren.
And they have lost sight of their hope.
That’s the next fruit listed that comes from the hearing of the word of truth.
“…because of the hope laid up for you in heaven…”
The translation I read to you at the beginning of the sermon is the JB Phillips New Testament. I like his wording of this part of verse 5.
“We know that you are showing these qualities because you have grasped the hope reserved for you in Heaven”
If you are ever confronted with someone claiming to be a Christian but you’re not sure, just ask them if they know for sure they’re going to Heaven. If they say, “I hope so” they are either not a Christian or they have learned absolutely nothing about being a Christian since becoming one.
Let’s skip ahead for a second. Go to verses 25-27
“Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
These things are imbued in the believer at spiritual birth from above; faith in Christ, love for the brethren, the hope of heaven.
When the folks from these cults that go around knocking on doors are asked if they know for sure they’re going to Heaven they will always answer, “I hope so”, or something very like that, but it will never be a happy, confident, “Yes, I am!” They cannot know, they cannot have that assurance because it is Christ in you who is the hope of glory. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit who gives confident assurance to the living child of God that Heaven is his or her inheritance, and that confidence is not in himself but in Christ who won it for him.
Where has he heard of this hope? In the preaching of the word of truth!
It is at just this point that the false teachers in the midst of the Colossian church should have been slowly backing toward the door, because at this point the true believers should have been starting to whisper to one another. “Hey. The things the Apostle is saying in his greeting are reminding me of the things taught at the first by Epaphras. He told us the gospel and we believed and immediately we had faith in Christ, love for one another and the hope of Heaven laid up for us in our future. We didn’t feel we needed anything more then, so why have we gone back to considering these other things that only confuse us and bring us under a weight of legalism?”
Well, in a perfect situation it might happen that way. They probably needed some further teaching and that’s why we have the whole letter and that is why we’ll study the whole thing also.
But you get my point, don’t you? The plain things are the main things and the main things the plain things.
Turn your back on the prosperity lite doctrines and the empty promises of blessing if you pray like Jabez, and the shallow, deceptive legalism of questions such as ‘what would Jesus do’. Shun anyone who would come in with teachings that instill fear about your future or hatred for a particular group or tend to put you under a weight of guilt for what has been forgiven.
Remember the word of truth that was brought to you and began to bear the Godly fruit of faith, hope and love in and through you. It will restore your joy and be a blessing to the church.
THE GRACE OF GOD
Let’s reread verse 6 and I’ll say a few words in closing.
“…which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth;…”
I remind you from verse 5 that Paul is talking about the message of the gospel and he says, “…which has come to you…”
The gospel went out as Jesus declared it would, from Jerusalem to all Judea and Samaria and the remotest parts of the earth Acts 1:8. This was God’s doing.
It was the grace of God that provided salvation through Christ, it is by His grace alone that messengers were appointed to take it, and it is by His grace that it spread to the Gentiles, to Galatia, to Ephesus, to Philippi, to Colossae and eventually to the rest of the world, and it is by His grace alone that it has borne fruit and continues to bear the fruit of salvation of the lost and sanctification of the saved.
This again, should serve to prep their hearts and minds to be turned back to the simple message that came to them at the first. What does the keeping of law have to do with faith, hope and love? Can the law produce even one of those?
“But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;…” Rom 3:21-24
Christians we as the true church of Jesus Christ in the 21st century will begin once more to function in the power and leading of the Holy Spirit, only when we can set aside the pettiness that argues over types of music and non-essential doctrinal differences, quit quibbling over policies and pet evangelistic strategies and all else that distracts and divides, and collectively experience a renewed awareness that by God’s amazing grace to us was delivered the word of truth, the fruit of which was faith, love and the hope of Heaven, and leaving all that other junk behind let Him continue to bear that fruit in and through our lives and for His glory.
It is always a cleansing and helpful thing, to be reminded of the basics.
