About a month ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Peru where my daughter was completing a six-week rotation at as a pharmacy student. She is in her final year of pharmacy school and her professors encourage their students to get a wide variety of experiences including some in foreign countries. It had been many years since I traveled outside of the United States and I had forgotten about the one thing you literally guard with your life when traveling internationally. No, it was not the money in my wallet, nor my cell phone, nor my credit cards. It was my U.S. Passport. Perhaps it goes without saying but let me ask you why a person’s passport is so important when he or she is traveling abroad? This document is important because of what it says about me. It is my identification and it declares that I am a citizen of the United States. It is also important to me because of the connection it gives me to our nation. All U.S. passports declare, “The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.” That is not an insignificant statement! And perhaps that says it all regarding why we protect our passport so carefully when traveling—it is our identity and it brings us a promise of protection.
You may recall that the Bible uses the image of citizenship to talk about our salvation. The Apostles Paul used that comparison in two of his letters—Philippians and Ephesians. In Philippians 3:20 he declared, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” And in Ephesians 2:19 he reminded his readers that through faith in Jesus, “you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people.” So do we have a passport that reflects our heavenly citizenship? We do. Maybe it can’t be as easily carried in a pocket or purse. But God’s Word is in a sense our passport. Here he tells us who we are. Through his Word he connects us to salvation. Through the Scriptures we are told the Good News that Christ has died for our sins. This same Word of God has created faith in our hearts to believe the Gospel. And it is this Word also connected to water in baptism and to the bread wine in the Lord’s Supper that protects and sustains our faith as we travel through life.
So what do we do now? We hold on to this heavenly passport with even more diligence and eagerness than we would show toward our U.S. Passport. Today let’s take to heart a portion of God’s Word that encourages us to continue in our faith. We ask God the Holy Spirit to work through the Epistle Lesson for this Sunday from Colossians 1:21-29. (Read text.) Did you catch the phrase that seems to put a condition on our salvation? As Lutheran Christians it may strike us as not very Lutheran! The Apostle Paul declared that we have salvation “if you continue in your faith.” Let’s take the “if” out of it! Although that is a sober warning. Friends in Christ, let’s make it our goal through God’s strength to continue in our faith. Yes, brothers and sisters in the faith, my heartfelt encouragement to each of you is:
“CONTINUE IN YOUR FAITH”
I. Stand firm in the Gospel that brought you to faith
II. Mature in the fullness of faith through the gospel
From what we can piece together, false teachers had been leading the Christians in the city of Colosse away from the true faith as they had learned it from the Apostles. The Colossians had become confused about what it meant to live as Christians. Therefore, as he did in a number of his other inspired letters the Apostle Paul directed his readers back to the basics of the Christian faith. He reviewed the undeserved love that God showed the world by sending his Son as the substitute for sinners. He again declared that those who put their faith in Jesus receive the benefit of his sinless life and sacrificial death. It then makes sense that the Apostle Paul warned the Colossians to continue in their faith so they didn’t lose the treasure that was theirs. They would do that by standing firm in the Gospel that brought them to faith and by maturing in their faith through the Gospel.
I.
To remind the Colossians what was at stake in their spiritual lives the Apostle Paul contrasted what they had been before the Gospel brought them to faith. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” Prior to the Holy Spirit’s work in their hearts to turn them from unbelief to faith they were separated from God and unable to please him. In his Word to us God declares that he cannot tolerate or overlook sin. He is completely holy and so he must drive unholy sinners away from himself. And that separation would have to continue forever in hell. But what had God done for the Colossians and for all people? “ But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation…” Although the word “reconcile” may not be commonly used among us we can understand the basic concept. Most of us know how to “reconcile” our checkbooks. Even with online banking it’s something we still need to do. We look at the statement our bank gives us and we compare it to our check register. We hope that all of the deposits and withdrawals match up. And the word reconcile is still used in connection with husbands and wives who may have been separated or considering a divorce. When they are brought back together we say that they “reconciled their differences.” Here the Apostle Paul told the Colossians that God had reconciled them to himself through Jesus’ suffering and death. It was done by Christ’s physical body when he took the place of sinners and suffered their punishment. The sins of all people were deposited on Christ. His innocent death and perfect life are then credited to guilty sinners. And like a husband and wife that were reconciled with each other God reconciled people to himself through Christ. He only sees the holiness of Jesus when he looks at believers. Their sins have been atoned for and forgiven.
The Bible tells us that the same things that the Apostle Paul declared about the Colossians are true of each of us. We too were separated from God because of our sinfulness. And as if it couldn’t get any worse, it does! In his Word God explains even more about our sinful separation from him. Ephesians 2:1 states the sad truth, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” We were born spiritually dead! In Romans 8:6-8 the Apostle Paul declared, “The mind of sinful man is death…the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” We were born enemies of God. And finally 1 Corinthians 2:14 says it so well, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” Without God the Holy Spirit we are blind to spiritual truth and consider everything God’s says to be foolishness.
Thankfully what the Apostle Paul said to the Colossians in our reading is true of us also. The Gospel has created faith in each of us to believe that good news and to receive the personal benefit of what Jesus has done! With that in mind let’s get back to the idea of traveling with a passport. The passport of our faith and the connection to our citizenship in heaven is God’s Word. So to continue in that faith by standing firm in the Gospel is the most important thing in a person’s life! Listen again to the words of our reading, “…if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.” Why do we stand firm in the Gospel that brought us to faith? If faith in Christ is lost a person also loses the benefit of all that Christ has done! That’s why the little word “if” appears where it does in these verses.
Is this a warning for us? As we say in Minnesota, “You betcha it is!” If we are tempted to be careless with our faith and our connection to our spiritual passport we need to hear these words. If we are letting ourselves be moved from the hope that is ours in the Gospel God is calling us back. On the other hand if we are fearful and worried about losing our faith God takes the “if” away. There is no “if” when it comes to God’s promise to use his Gospel to enable us to continue in our faith. As we by God’s grace stand firm in the Gospel that brought us to faith the Holy Spirit will keep us in the faith—no if’s, and’s, or but’s.
II.
Although the Apostle Paul seems to take a detour in our Scripture Lesson we can actually see how his next words support the point that Christians need to continue in their faith. They do that not only by standing firm in the Gospel but also by maturing in the fullness of faith through the gospel. Let’s go back to our reading, “I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people.” So that the Colossians could see the big picture of their spiritual life Paul made the point that he was called by God to present the Word of God to them in its fullness. We could say that in the Apostles’ eyes these Christians needed to move on from the basic truths that they had learned about Jesus and mature in their faith. That would mean that they would study the Old Testament prophecies about the Christ and find their fulfillment in Jesus. They would learn more about all of God’s revelation to them in the Bible.
But perhaps we are asking why it matters if we mature in our or faith? Isn’t a simple childlike faith all that a person needs to be saved? Will it hurt anything to never go beyond a basic knowledge of God’s plan of salvation? God’s Word offers multiple answers to those questions. A person with an immature faith can be more easily led astray into false beliefs and eventually into unbelief! Additionally, when a Christian never learns more than the basics they don’t grow in their relationship to God and don’t receive some of the additional blessings that come from knowing more about God through his Word.
The spiritual maturity for the Colossians that Paul had in mind is found in the last two verses of our Scripture Lesson. “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” The Apostle Paul had a vision in mind for the Christians at Colosse and for every other believer. He saw it as his mission in life to help them mature in their faith so that he could present them to Jesus with an ever deeper and richer faith. That would require the use of the God’s Law to point out their sins. And of course, that would require the use of God’s Gospel to point them to Jesus.
Just as Paul wanted the Colossians to become fully mature in Christ so to God encourages us to maturity in faith. These words lead us to examine whether or not we are maturing in faith. Have we fallen for the classic Lutheran misunderstanding of thinking of our confirmation as “graduation” from studying God’s Word? We may think that we learned what we needed in order to be confirmed and that should be good enough! Or perhaps we think we are just too busy to attend Bible class, or to read personal devotions, or to have time in God’s Word as a family. But the truth remains that if we aren’t diligent students of God’s Word then we are not becoming mature in our knowledge of God’s Word. God wants us to have what the Apostle Paul asked in his letter to the Ephesians, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
I want to leave you with a personal story about my passport in a foreign country. 30 years ago, I was backpacking through Europe with a friend of mine. Because we got on the wrong train we ended up going through the communist country of Yugoslavia. We didn’t have a visa to travel across that country which angered the border patrol officer on the train. So he took our passports and put us in a train car with others who had tried to escape from Eastern Bloc countries. Poland…East Germany…Turkey. Those folks were all sent back to their countries. After scraping together enough U.S. dollars to satisfy the border agent he stamped our passports with a visa and returned it to us. What a relief! I can say that I held onto my passport more tightly after that as well. My prayer for each of you is that you treasure God’s Word like that. In a way it is your passport for your citizenship in heaven. As you travel through life it is your identity and your promise of protection. Take the encouragement that we find in Colossians to continue in your faith. Hold on to your passport, friends in Christ! Stand firm in the Gospel that brought you to faith. Mature in the fullness of faith through the Gospel. Amen.
