Imagine writing a letter to a pigmy living in the deepest, darkest parts of Africa. In your letter you must describe life in the Lower Blue Mountains. What would you say? How would you describe the fabric of our society? What is our reputation?
There’s lots of good things to write about: Australian mateship in all its various forms. The Victorian bushfires and the incredible outpouring of generosity. We are a very open and friendly society. We have some friends from Austria across the road who are surprised that we so readily open up our homes to others. It doesn’t happen like that in Austria. We are a sporting nation: if it moves we chase it, if stays still we lift it, if it’s not too high we jump over it, and if its really high we climb it. Insulting our politicians is a national past-time. We love the great outdoors and only Australians glorify villains such as Ned Kelly.
And yet an honest report must probe a little deeper. Many in our society cheat in their tax returns. Alcohol and drug abuse ruins families. Domestic assaults are on the increase. There are high rates of divorce and too many children living in broken homes. Political correctness sends us around the twist. Road rage. The homeless. The scourge of cancer. The depressed and mentally ill.
My letter to Central Africa would be a mixed report of highs and lows. Another blank page and I can become a little more philosophical. My society has a reputation for greed, consumerism and denial of the supernatural. The only truth is there is no such thing as truth. In my world we dare not question the dream that humanity can save ourselves and that we are the masters of the universe. We disfigure and pollute the world in the name of progress.
So although I would report many good things, the unfortunate reality is that our world is rotten at the core. In Col 1:14, the Apostle Paul sums up the state of our world, it is the ‘the dominion of darkness’. Stamped across my letter to Central Africa are the words, ‘my society lives in the dominion of darkness’. And this is not just a summary of our society, it also sums up first century Asia Minor and the city of Colossae.
But the church is not like the world. Christians are people who have been rescued by God from the dominion of darkness—as Col 1:13 explains—the church is a people who live in the kingdom of the Son. Paul is thankful that the Colossian church has grasped the life-changing power of the gospel. They are in the kingdom and are struggling in a world of darkness. Have a look with me at Col 1:3–5, ‘We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints—the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven’.
These are words of re-assurance. Paul thanks God for the saints in Colossae because they have three things: a genuine faith in Christ, they have a love for the saints, and they hope for that which is stored up for them in heaven. Such praise and thankfulness from the apostle is re-assuring. For you see, some scoundrels in Colossae were raising painful doubts as to whether or not Epaphras had given them the whole truth. There were rumours circulating that Epaphras had not passed on a full and complete gospel. Maybe there was a spiritual experience that the Colossians had not yet entered into because Epaphras had it wrong? Is there something more than faith in Christ, love for the saints, and the hope of heaven? Is there something more to the Christian life than faith, hope and love?
Paul is thankful to God because the Colossians are the ‘real deal’: they have faith, hope and love. Epaphras didn’t get it wrong, ‘You learned the gospel from Epaphras’, Paul says in verse 7, ‘our dear fellow-servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf’. Epaphras was faithful and trustworthy, he didn’t leave anything out—he didn’t distort the truth. And the gospel flourished, producing saints with an unswerving faith in Christ, love for the saints, and a hope that will be realised in the heavenly reality.
Paul’s thankfulness for the Colossian church extends to every church which demonstrates the fullness of the gospel. What an excellent reputation for this church to have! A church known for its faith in Christ Jesus and its love for all the saints. A church that has its heart set on the realities of heaven. A healthy, vibrant church unscathed by the barbs of false teaching. We are invited to imitate the maturity of the Colossian Church. The gospel preached to the Colossians is the same gospel—the same life-giving word of God—which was preached to us. It is fundamental to the Christian life that we embrace the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ who has reconciled us to God.
As we look at verses 3 to 8, they are in fact one long sentence in the original text—one thought explored in different ways. In English we don’t like long, meandering sentences so our translators carve up the text into ‘Tim-Tam’ size sentences. In this section, Paul says that the maturity of the Colossian church for which he is so thankful is but one example of the power of the gospel to bear fruit as it spreads throughout the world. Epaphras planted the seed, it bore fruit in the hearts of the Colossians, and this same gospel bears the same fruit as it goes throughout the world. And whilst false teachers may call the Colossian conversion into question, the Colossians can confidently know that they have the ‘word of truth’ because it has produced faith, hope and love.
The first chief Christian virtue is faith in Christ. We trust Jesus to do what we cannot do—he satisfied God’s anger at us by taking upon himself the punishment that we deserve. The gift of faith in Christ puts us right with God and then by the grace of God, it enables us to live as sons and daughters of God. Hugh Latimer lived in the late 15th-early 16th centuries and he said, ‘We must first be made good before we can do good; we must first be made just, before our works can please God. When we are justified by faith in Christ, then come good works’.
In God’s mercy he gives us faith in Christ who rescues us from the ‘dominion of darkness’ (Col 1:13) into the kingdom of his Son. Then the Christian life starts and we exercise our daily faith by continually trusting in the promises of God. C.H. Spurgeon defines ‘faith’ this way, ‘Faith is believing that Christ is what He is said to be, and that he will do what He has promised to do, and then to expect this of Him’.
Genuine Christian faith is always active in works of love (Gal 5:6). Martin Luther said, ‘The true, living faith, which the Holy Spirit instils into the heart, simply cannot be idle’. It is quite natural, therefore, that Paul should move on to mention, in verse 4, the love that the Colossian Christians have for all the saints. In the Lycus Valley there were Christians in other cities, and other Christians passing through Colossae. And the Colossians are commended by Paul for loving the saints who came across their path.
It is natural that as Christians we have a love for those in the household of God. Baptist, Anglican, Brethren, Salvation Army, Springwood Community Church, it doesn’t really matter. Our love should and must extend to every Christian who we meet. The commendation is for loving all the saints—not just those in our own backyard. We are all one in Christ Jesus. One of the reasons I love Katoomba Conventions is simply because it doesn’t matter your Christian pedigree. There is a bond that all of us have with one another because we know the grace of God and one day soon we will all gather around the throne of God proclaiming, ‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise’ (Rev 5:12).
Our gospel unity binds us together with love.
The love we are called to have for one another is something which the world cannot know. Many people know the joys of family love. Sometimes in the community we come across love which is truly self-sacrificial. But unless they are Christ’s they cannot share the love that binds the Christian household together—that distinctive gift of the Spirit given to every child of God. It is a love which binds people of different national and cultural backgrounds into a fellowship which is unique. In the fellowship of the redeemed, Paul says in Col 3:11, there ‘is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all’.
Faith, love—and the third Christian virtue is hope. Notice in verse 5, that that ‘faith and love’ flow from the hope stored up for us in heaven. It’s the hope of the future which shapes our present Christian experience. Usually I’m not very good at thinking about the future because I’m so caught up trying to survive in the present. But we cannot survive in the empire unless we lift our heads high and take a good look at the heavenly realities which lay ahead of us. Otherwise we’re like an aircraft not knowing what direction to fly in because we don’t have a fix on where we want to be. And then if things get so bad in this life, if the empire crushes in upon us, at least we have death to look forward too.
There’s been times when I’ve felt disorientated in the Christian life—overwhelmed with circumstances and not understanding God’s call on my life—at times like this I realise that I have taken my eyes off the finishing line and the glorious prize in heaven which awaits me. There is too little said about these days about the hope stored up for us in heaven because we want it all now and some even adjust their theology in order to legitimate their enthusiastic claims.
Paul says that the substantial realities are yet to come, they are reserved for the future, ‘stored up’ in heaven for us. Therefore, we are not to think of ourselves as largely enjoying the fruits of Christ’s victory now and heaven is no more than the ‘icing on the cake’, a kind of finishing touch. Rather we are to recognize that heaven holds most of the great things won for us by Christ, and that our present experience is no more than a precious foretaste of what is to come.
The gospel that came to the Colossians and to us is the real gospel—the gospel of faith, hope and love. The ‘word of truth’ was proclaimed and they ‘heard’ it (verse 5), they ‘understood’ it (verse 6) and they ‘learned’ it (verse 7). The gospel is heard, learned and understood and by the power of God results in a saving faith in Jesus. In the Colossian situation, the gospel wasn’t brought to them alongside spectacular healings or manifestations—the Colossians simply listened to persistent preaching and teaching which called for a response to trust in Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
Indeed, the gospel the Colossians heard is the same gospel being preached all over the world. Verse 6, ‘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’.
This language of ‘bearing fruit and growing’ echoes the Genesis account and God’s command to humans to ‘be fruitful and increase in number’ (Gen 1:28). After the Flood this command is repeated and it came to pass. In Egypt the Hebrews were so numerous that Pharaoh panics and enslaves them (Ex 1:8–10). In the exile the people are scattered and prophets such as Jeremiah speak of a time when God’s people will re-gather and once again be great in number, ‘I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number’ (Jer 23:3).
Paul may well have had this in mind when he speaks about the gospel ‘bearing fruit and growing’ throughout the world. For as the gospel is proclaimed there is a huge transformation of people into the image of God—there is numerical increase as people leave the ‘dominion of darkness’ and come to live in the kingdom of the Son. The gospel brings with it spiritual and numerical growth. A number so large that around the heavenly throne those there will be uncountable. So in his heavenly vision, St John exclaims, ‘After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb’.
Even now the gospel is bearing fruit. The same gospel—the word of truth—has transformed all of us who have put our faith in Jesus. People sitting here today have been rescued from the ‘dominion of darkness’ and are now living in the kingdom of the Son. We are in Christ: we know the grace of God and we have peace with God.
And we are called to fruitfulness. The gospel has been working amongst us since the day we heard it. In the Colossian community, at least, there was the constant claim that fruitfulness and fertility were to be found outside the church. The might of the Roman Empire, its social organisation and persistent images found on buildings, statues and household items. These images called the citizens to acknowledge Rome as the source of fruitfulness and abundance. Rome expected its citizens to dream the dream, to go with the flow, to pay tribute to the emperor and submit to the values and ideals that made the empire a light in an otherwise darkened world.
It’s a familiar story. The language of fruitfulness in our world is the language of economics: investments, dividends, productivity and profits, the share market, small and big business. Economic rationalism. The fruitfulness of our world is the ability of its citizens to produce profit and create wealth. And as we live this dream, as we wish upon a star, then we may one day own a house (or pretend we own it because the bank really owns it). As we live the dream, we congregate at the new Temple which is the shopping mall. And if we’re really good, if we’re really productive, we can take an early retirement and travel and live the high life before that fatal heart attack.
The world calls us to be fruitful on its own terms. It invites us to share its dream and it scorns us when we reject its agenda. ‘Keep religion to yourself’, the feedback columns chant, ‘because it risks interfering with the religion of the Empire’. No-one describes the religion of our empire as a ’religion’, although blind faith is needed to accept its basic tenets. Our world is a seductive version of reality. But that’s all it is, a version, its not reality, Western society is a constructed reality built upon lies such as a denial of the supernatural, a confidence in the power of individual minds, and a belief that things are getting better (not worse).
Middleton and Walsh say that ‘The modern man knows what he knows and he knows it with certainty because he knows it scientifically. He needs no authority outside himself because he is autonomous. And he certainly needs no salvation outside himself. Once he has liberated himself from past authorities and superstitions all he needs is the courage to follow his reason. With such courage and employment of his rational abilities, he will together with all other rational men, undoubtedly experience and enjoy the fruit of human progress’ (Truth is Stranger than It Used to Be, 14-15).
This is life in the dominion of darkness! If you’re a Christian, then you’ve left the dominion of darkness behind. Haven’t you? We can’t have a foot in both worlds. If you think you can live with a foot in the humanist dream and a foot in the kingdom of God then you’re living in your own constructed reality which is a lie. You have been recreated by God for priestly service. For each of us, all of life is full-time Christian ministry. There’s no moment when we are not following the Lord Jesus. So if you’re house and mortgage steal you away from following Jesus, buy a smaller house and have no mortgage or a smaller mortgage. If you can’t be a Christian at work, change jobs. It’s funny how God always calls people to be lawyers, accountants and engineers, but never street sweepers and sewage workers.
If any Christian thinks they can live with a foot in the empire and a foot in the kingdom of God, then this calls for repentance. Don’t be like the man who said, ’Lord, I will follow you, but first let me go back and say good-bye to my family’ (Luke 9:61). And Jesus said, ’No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God’ (Luke 9:62).
The fruit of the ‘dominion of darkness’ is just as seductive and luring as the fruit from ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. Paul is saying that the gospel bears the fruit of faith, hope and love. The fruit that comes from faith in Christ who reigns supreme. The fruit that comes from knowing that the Lord Jesus is sufficient for life in this world. The fruit that comes from the Spirit of God (and notice in verse 8 that Paul commends the Colossians for their love in the Spirit). The fruit of the Spirit is ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law’ (Gal 5:22).
Faith in Christ—love for all the saints—the hope stored up for us in heaven. This is the gospel that we heard and the gospel that is bearing fruit in our lives and throughout our world. We do not have anything lacking. There is no further instalment. We have everything that we need for salvation. So keep your heads held high—look to the hope stored for you in heaven—and live with thankfulness to the one who has recreated you for his honour and glory.
