Fruit Bearing Fruit
Colossians 1:3-23
Cascades Fellowship CRC, JX MI
July 18, 2010
Series: Through the Bible in a Year
It was about nine years ago that Rachel and I planted some gladiolus bulbs in front of our house – well… really Rachel planted them. I had been gone for some reason or another and when I returned Rachel had cleared out some of the area in front of the house, marked off some flower beds with edging stones and filled them with fresh dirt and gladiolus bulbs. We were excited to see them take off – first, just little green shoots peaking up through the soil, then stretching out like large blades of grass, dog-eared and waving in the breeze. We could not wait for the explosion of color that would come with full-bloom.
We were a bit disappointed with the anemic response – only a few bloomed, and in less than dramatic fashion. We wondered what we did wrong – was it too much fertilizer, not enough water, did they need more sunshine? Unfortunately, the gladiolus were not too forthcoming – nary a word did they say in response to our inquiries.
The next year was even worse – some of the gladioli never even came up. By the third year, I was no longer sure what was gladiolus and what was day lily. After that, the day lily grew and bloomed every year, but the gladiolus seemed to be all done – until this year. Out of nowhere this year, one bold gladiolus plant grew and bloomed, throwing out yellow flowers in a vibrant display of life.
As I reflected on our lone gladiolus plant, I began to see parallels to the Christian life – or maybe I should say to our life in Christ. To me this is a helpful distinction – let me explain why.
The Christian life, at least today, is really not defined so much by faith and obedience to Christ as it once was. Today the term is packed with ideas of language, behavior and moral stances – all good things except when they exist for their own sake as a subset of what it means to be a Christian. I am a Christian, therefore I belong to a particular political party or I don’t drink beer or don’t use foul language.
Our life in Christ, however, informs and defines our language, behavior and moral stances. In other words, I don’t do things because I am a Christian, I do them because they please my Savior, Lord and King, Jesus Christ. They are points of obedience in following Jesus Christ. Because I love him, I do what he commands, what makes him happy. My actions define me to the world around me as a Christian, but my reason for doing them is because I love Christ. That is the truest definition of Christian – one who loves Christ, as evidenced by how he lives or how she chooses to respond to both blessing and adversity.
At any rate, as I thought about our gladiolus plant, I began to wonder about the Christian life and one of those great mysteries of the faith – why is it that sometimes we don’t see the growth in the life of other believers or ourselves that we expect?
I think this is a question that occupied the Apostle Paul quite often – as evidenced by how many letters he wrote to churches struggling with different issues of faith. For the Corinthian church it was a question of understanding what it means that we are brothers and sisters in one Body of Christ – our essential unity and purity. For the Thessalonian church it was the question of hope for our future – what is our hope in life and in death? For the Galatians it was a matter of sufficiency – was the death of Christ sufficient for all our sin or just what came before we accepted Christ? Were there certain rules and regulations we had to follow to remain in the grace of God in Christ?
The Colossian church had issues of its own concerning the nature of the Gospel. What has become known among theologians as the Colossian heresy had a mixture of Jewish asceticism and Greek philosophy injected into the Gospel. But the exact origin of the heresy is not what concerns Paul the most; rather it is how the false gospel the Colossians are hearing devalues Jesus Christ and his atoning death.
I suppose the question might be asked: what attracted the Colossians to this variant on the Gospel in the first place? But that still doesn’t get to the root of the problem or Paul’s message to the Colossian church. The real point to ponder is what was Paul expecting from the Colossian church? Why write them at all?
It seems to me that the question we are asking still is not fine enough because I don’t believe that Paul’s expectations rested upon a human response. I think it was Paul’s expectations for the Gospel that compelled him to write his letter. He knew the Gospel was the power of God for salvation and what that should look like.
Like most of his letters – Galatians being the glaring exception – Paul begins his letter to the Colossians with a word of thanksgiving and a prayer, both of which serve as a prelude or an introduction into what he is writing about. In the case of the Colossians Paul expresses his gratitude that they have believed the true Gospel and that this faith is manifested as love for all the saints and is anchored in their hope of a certain future with Jesus Christ.
Now we must pay attention to the way Paul describes the Gospel – the word of truth, he calls it. This is not just a description, not just another way of saying, “the gospel.” Paul wasn’t trying to be literary when he chose his words here – he was trying to be emphatic in response to a false Gospel that was creeping in. Essentially, Paul is trying to impress upon the Colossians that the Gospel he preached is the real thing. How can you tell it’s real?
The real thing bears fruit – the real thing produces real life.
Now don’t gloss over that too quickly because there is something instructive for us here. You see Paul tells the Colossians – the word I preached to you, the real gospel, well… it not only took root here, but everywhere it is preached. You can tell the read deal because it grows into something – lives really change and become new; hearts really do soften and love, forgiveness and reconciliation are the results. The Word of God does not return void, but accomplishes what God has sent it forth to do.
So right from the start of his letter Paul is encouraging the Colossians to compare what they were taught before with what they are now being taught by the false teachers. How do they stack up? Don’t compare them according to how rational they sound or how eloquent the teacher is – look at the results. Which one shows evidence of God’s power being released through obedience to the Word?
You see, what Paul is hinting at and will make clearer as the letter continues is that by its very nature the Gospel grows the life of Christ in us. When the Holy Spirit quickens our heart to understand the message of the Gospel, birthing in us faith to believe, the power of the Gospel produces life in us, bringing redemption. Our old, dead life – the one lost in sin – is replaced by a new life; Christ’s life. He implants his very life in us. We leave the ranks of those born dead in our trespasses to join the ranks of those born again to new life; to become part of the new creation in Christ.
That sounds all well and good, but under what conditions does this new life grow in us? Well, let me stretch the garden illustration a little further. For a plant to grow, what does it need? You need sun, water and the right kind of soil. In other words, you don’t grow palm trees in muck and you don’t grow roses in a sand dune.
So what kind of soil does our new life in Christ need to sprout and grow? Well, it begins when we come to a knowledge of God for who he truly is and what he has done for us in Jesus Christ. In other words, when we finally realize that we are creatures and our life is dependent upon the good pleasure of our Creator – the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom – the environment of our heart starts becoming hospitable to the Gospel that brings life. When that knowledge is coupled with a realization of our sinfulness – the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding – the conditions are right for the Gospel to take hold, sending out roots into every corner of our life. As the seed of the Gospel sprouts in our life, our understanding of who God is and what he wants from us grows and as we act in obedience to the Word implanted, we begin bearing fruit in every good work – we begin to not only do the things that please God, but we begin to desire them. As we do more and more that pleases God, our knowledge of him grows – we seek him more and we find more.
But how do we know that this cycle of growth Paul outlines for us is active in our lives? Are we suddenly able to spout off sophisticated, theological formulations and theories about the inner workings of the Trinity? Not likely, nor – do I think – all that desirable. I am not talking here about a theoretical knowledge of God, but a real knowledge of God – a personal knowledge. The evidence of this knowledge is something much more concrete than just some esoteric awareness – it is joy expressed in gratitude; patience in suffering, humility in prosperity. As we grow in our knowledge of God, we grow in our knowledge of ourselves. As we grow in our knowledge of ourselves, we see how great our need for God and his boundless grace really is. As St. Augustine said, we see that God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until we find rest in him (Augustine). Our knowledge of God leads to an understanding of our purpose – what it means to really live; to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We begin participating in the life God created us to enjoy and that brings contentment and excites our gratitude. We serve him gladly, knowing who we are and why we were made – we experience that peace that passes all understanding.
Well all that sounds great – but if that is the way of it, it brings us back to our original question; why don’t we see the growth we expect?
Now, I have approached our passage this morning by asking a series of questions of it, questions that popped into my head as I was reading the text and working my way through it. But Paul takes a much different approach – he leaves the questions unasked and simply prays for the Colossians that the Gospel that has borne fruit in their lives and all over the world would continue to bear fruit through their lives. He prays that their knowledge of God – and so their joy expressed in gratitude – would grow. But is there a specific knowledge that leads to growth?
I suppose one might ask the question a different way – perhaps by saying, “How could Paul pray so boldly for their growth knowing that they were already on the road to heresy?” What was needed to set the Colossians on the right path again?
Listen carefully to Paul’s answer:
He is 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 rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham and prominent New Testament theologian writes in one of his commentaries on Colossians, “What [the Colossians] need to know above all, if they are to grow as Christians, increasing in wisdom, power, patience and thanksgiving, is the centrality and supremacy of Christ” (Wright 150).
One of the weaknesses of modern Christianity is that it seldom considers Jesus beyond the cross, so much so we hardly know what to do with thoughts of his resurrection and even more so with his ascension to the right hand of the Father. I sometimes think that the church today believes he ascended simply to make room for the Holy Spirit and to have a place to come back from – dramatic returns are fun to talk about.
We’re all for remembering that he died for our sins – it stirs something emotional in us. Christ died for me. As true as that may be, it fails to capture the full majesty that Paul outlines for us in vv. 15-20 that we just read. He expresses Jesus, not only as the Savior but as the source and power of creation: Jesus is the sovereign Lord of all things seen and unseen. Every star spinning in the heavens, every fiber of our being holds together because Jesus Christ wills it to be so. And not only that, Paul says, but he is the first in all things and all of history is working its way to one ultimate conclusion – the revealing of Jesus Christ in his fullest glory. Every question will find its answer in him, every desire its fulfillment. Christ will be all in all.
Perhaps the reason we don’t see the growth we expect is because we’re not seeing Jesus Christ as we should. Maybe our vision for him is a little too myopic – maybe we’re too busy thinking about what he can do for us rather than what we should be doing for him. Maybe our vision needs correction. The reality is if our vision of Christ came even close to the real thing, we would not dare consider him lightly. If we truly understood him as the Risen Christ who has ascended to take the throne reserved for him by the Father, our knees would knock out of sheer awe every time we whispered his name.
Paul prayed for the Colossians that their vision of Christ would match his actual majesty – that their knowledge of him would deepen, feeding the cycle of growth that results in the fruit of the Gospel bearing fruit through lives of those who have believed – fruit revealed in every good work. This is my prayer for my children, my family, my friends and for you. And I hope it’s your prayer for me, as well so that the fruit the Gospel produced in our lives may blossom like the gladiolus in my yard in brilliant colors of faith, love and hope.
