Colossians 1:9-10
All right, open your Bibles to Colossians. We’ve started into a study of this short little letter, but make no mistake, though it’s short, it punches far above its weight and delivers to the church of all the ages the first of several New Testament treatises on the supremacy of Christ.
The, the other two treatises that deal with this same subject, on the supremacy of Christ, Hebrews, but also John’s Gospel, both Hebrews and John’s Gospel are written later than the Colossians letter. So this is really the first of those three larger treatises on the supremacy of Christ.
So we are getting in, as it were, so to speak, on the ground floor, as we are following the thought of the Holy Spirit through the writing of the Apostle Paul in his apostolic, pastoral care for this precious little church and this care comes in the form of proclaiming the supremacy of Christ over all things, showing how they are in Christ, and Christ is in them.
This church in Colossae, at the time of this writing, was not yet ten years old, and it’s a first-generation Christian church. It’s planted in the hostile soil, as we’ve said, of a native paganism, imported Judaism, and then the philosophies of its conquerors from Persia to Greece.
None of that non-Christian thinking, paganism, Judaism, philosophy, none of that was any match for the Gospel which came with unstoppable power to pluck some of these people out and save them and sanctify them.
The stuff of paganism and Judaism and this religio-philosophical speculation, as we see today as well, all of it is man-centered. All of it is based on arbitrariness and myth-making. None of it can get to the heart of the matter. All of it focuses on the external, the rites, the ceremonies, the personal disciplines, just normal stuff that we do as human beings. They try to make a religion out of it, and they turn them into religious acts, religious deeds, all puffing up the man, puffing up the individual, elevating the self. None of it, though, can change the heart.
By contrast, Christianity is thorough. It’s comprehensive conversion of the whole soul of man. God does his work in Christianity by beginning on the inside. It’s an internal conversion that targets the heart, changes the nature, gets to the control center of the man, of the woman.
And it works from that internal starting point to the outside, outwardly, to define the man, to characterize him such that God’s will is what sets the priority for his life, gives the marching orders, directs all of his life. And all of that then results in a Christ-like look, a Christ-like attitude, Christ-like speech.
And that’s what Paul is rejoicing in, here at the start of the letter, that conversion has happened to these Colossians, that the power of the Gospel has shown itself yet again in this faraway place of Colossae, and that these people, though he has not met them, yet, these people are his brothers and sisters in Christ.
Again, let’s take a look at verses 3 to 8, his thanksgiving. “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 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the Word of truth, the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and multiplying, just as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard and understood the grace of God in truth; just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow slave, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, who also informed us of your love in the Spirit.”
Now that he’s thanked God for saving them, Paul wants to tell them about his prayers for them, how he’s praying, how he’s petitioning God for their continuing growth in grace.
That issue of continuance in grace is really the highlight here, verse 9, “For this reason also, since the day we heard, we’ve not ceased to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work, and multiplying in the full knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light, who rescued us from the authority of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
We can divide that prayer report into three parts: the petition itself, verses 9 and the first part of verse 10, and that’s what we’re going to cover for today. And then the particulars come in four participles, action verbs like a verbal noun, verses 10 through 12, bearing fruit, multiplying, being strengthened, giving thanks, those four words.
And then finally, in verses 13 and 14, he speaks again to the power of the one who is petitioned, the power of God, so that the Colossians can see very clearly why it is that Paul prays to that one because he’s the one who started the work, and so he goes to the one who started the work to finish the work, to complete the work. And so he wants the Colossians to see their need to join Paul in praying to that one, verses 13 and 14.
Now the goal in all of this, if you look ahead to verses 21 to 23, the goal is their continued growth in the gospel. Again, that emphasis on continuousness, continuing. And this is threatened by the draw of deceptive doctrine and the attractive but destructive offer of how they can live.
We face this today, don’t we? So much in our modern world that is pleasing. With a tap on your iPhone, a click, you can get any kind of food you want to deliver to your door in minutes. You can look at any kind of entertainment you want. You can almost with, relatively speaking, very little money in comparison to what it would have cost in these days, you could travel the world, you can see things, you can experience things.
There is so much in our day to pull us away and allure us, and believe me, this is the religion of the modern world. These are the gifts of the gods of progress and development and technology and communication, to deliver to us at the touch of a button anything we want, any time we want. It is alluring. It’s a powerful delusion, and it steers us, turns us away, pulls our hearts away from Christ. Not good.
Look what Paul’s concern is, then, in verse 21. This could be written today. “Although you were formerly alienated, enemies in mind and in evil deeds, but now He reconciled you in the body of His flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach; if indeed you continue in the faith, firmly grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.”
In other words, though God has accomplished reconciliation in Christ, and that’s a completed work, the outworking of that reconciliation continues, and it will continue through our lifetimes until “the day,” verse 22, “that the Son of God presents you before his Father, holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
So although that salvation has happened, in reality, in our experience, that salvation’s just getting started. We work out our salvation, we pursue our salvation, we pursue the Christ of our salvation, we pursue the God who is the hope and the joy and the reward of our salvation. That’s what it is to be a Christian.
And those who look back to some profession that they made or some aisle that they walked or some water that they were baptized into, and they say from that point forward, I’m a Christian, I’m a Christian, I’m a Christian, and yet never pursue and never continue and never grow and never mature and are not steadfast, well, we have to wonder, is there any life there? Is there a new nature? Has the saving work been done? If the sanctifying work is not there, has the saving work happened?
It’s the continuance of salvation that Paul prays for in verses 9 to 14, because continuing in grace is how our salvation is manifest. It is a true power with real effects, to do what only God can do. Continuing in grace is how we’re made strong in faith, steadfast in hope, fervent in love. Continuing in grace insulates us from false gospels, helps us to discern and resist bad influences, and assures us that our faith is real.
So beyond matters of protection from false teaching in Colossae, beyond matters of the assurance that they needed of their salvation, what Paul is concerned about is beyond that. The protection and the assurance is one matter; but really, that’s to get them to the experiential nature of Christianity, which is the really good stuff of being a Christian, to enjoy our salvation.
We commune with the triune God, with our Father in the fellowship of Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit. We submit to the Lord Jesus Christ, and we participate in, by the Spirit, in the working out of our salvation and growing in grace.
And we enjoy freedom, true freedom in Christ, which is Paul’s point in writing to the Colossians. It’s about the joy of God’s goodness. It’s about the experience of Christ in us, the hope of glory.
All this so, so very practical. We discover we really do have freedom from sin, power over it, power to say no, power to say yes to righteousness. We really can walk in holiness. The power of this gospel and the God of this gospel: it’s real. It produces actual fruit with concrete, visible effects in our lives.
We participate in the joyful fellowship of the community of saints, which is the local church. Our hearts are filled with the Word, and we respond to the Word of God and the knowledge of God in joyful singing, even as we’ve done this morning. Our relationships are enriched in the community of faith.
We positively bear the fruit of the Word. We show the work of the Spirit through the Word. Our families are changed, the workplace, other relationships in our local community are affected, enriched, blessed by our pursuit of righteousness. We make wise decisions by putting God’s Word into practice in our lives. All that is the fruit of God’s power, his gospel, his salvation, and it’s worked out in our continuing outworking of salvation.
So Paul starts, here, where he must start, of course, in prayer. He goes to the God who is the right source of our salvation, and he asks for the right resource, which is going to enable us in the right practice to reach the right goal and all according to the right desire.
Those words are going to be the five points we’re going to use to make our way through these verses, verses 9 and 10: source, resource, practice, goal, and desire. And we’re going to expand those a bit as we go.
But I want you to know that this really is our prayer as elders for all of you. It’s often the case, and I know it is for the other men as well and other mature saints in this church. It’s not just the leadership, it’s also dear members of this congregation, many of them senior saints, many of them maybe not having the strength to get out of their homes at night, and they can make one service a week or something like that. They pray, and this is how they pray.
It’s often the case when I come across prayer reports like this one from the Apostle Paul that I pray along with him. And I pray according to the same points for all of you. I give thanks for the same things about you that God has done in you. And I pray according to these same points.
I rejoice to do that because God has put his love for you in my heart, for you. And all the elders feel the same way. The deacons feel the same way. Mature saints of this church feel the same way. It is no burden for us to pray for you, give thanks for you.
So if you want to know the, so what, of this sermon, how you can apply this sermon, it’s easy. Just follow along in your listening and think with me through the text. Practice praying this way for yourself and for others, and then practice what you pray for. That is, be a part of the answer by continuing in the grace of God.
So here’s a first point to help you continue on from your conversion to the full and final completion of your salvation, number one: Go to the right source. Go to the right source and I’m also going to give just a couple words that kind of summarize the feel of this point. So go to the right source. And this is really about prayerful affection, prayerful affection.
“For this reason also, since the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that,” and then he goes into it. So “for this reason.” For what reason? Paul’s talking about what he’s just told them. He tells them everything he’s giving thanks for, about true conversion that’s evident in the practice of an obedient faith, a visible love that’s grounded in the hope of the gospel.
“Since the day we heard.” Heard what, exactly? Again, it’s what he’d heard from Epaphras. Not just the report about the threats to the Colossian church; it goes further back than that. It’s about his good report to Paul about the fruit of the gospel that had been growing up in their church.
So from the first day that he heard this report all the way until now, and Epaphras’s most recent visit, that prompted this letter, Epaphras has told them about their love in the Spirit, Paul is thanking God, praising God, praying for them.
So by reason of their conversion, because of what he’s heard from Epaphras, Paul just goes immediately to prayer, and isn’t that interesting? Again, remember, the reason for putting pen to paper in the first place is the threat to their spiritual stability.
There’s a concern about their departure from a simple faith in Jesus Christ to chase offerings of the world. That’s the reason Epaphras had come to Paul in Rome in the first place. When Paul hears about it, he goes immediately to prayer.
What a contrast that was for me as a younger man. When I was a younger man, and in my earlier days as a pastor, if I heard something troubling one of the sheep, I’d immediately grab my sword, not the physical one, the word of God, grab my sword and go run to find the trouble and then I’d start hacking away, wailing, flailing with the Word of God.
I have learned, though, over the years, there’s very little that truly demands that kind of immediate attention that I used to think was so urgent. Whatever problems somebody faces, whether it’s moral, relational, financial, physical, if it didn’t pop up overnight, it’s not going to be resolved overnight, either. So get some sleep, get some good rest, and then give yourself to prayer, and prayerfully search the Scripture before you meet and address and patiently deal with the problem.
Epaphras had that frame of mind. He knew that he could leave the flock in the hands of other men, entrusting the care of the flock to his fellow elders. Even though they were under attack by false teachers, even though there were immature believers being enticed by bad doctrine and false ways of living, he knew he could leave them there to go get Paul’s help. That’s strategic thinking. That’s how leaders think.
You know what else is a good call? Prayer. That’s what Paul does when he hears about the threat to the church. In fact, as a wise Apostle, vastly experienced at this point in his life, he knows that God uses enemy attacks to cull the flock, to expose false sheep and separate the false from the true, and then to strengthen the true sheep, maturing them, growing them, because they have to respond to false teaching. They have to clarify the false from the true. They have to turn away and grow strong to turn away from enticement, temptation, false offerings of how to live.
There is so much in our day to pull us away and allure us, and believe me, this is the religion of the modern world.” Travis Allen
So Paul didn’t start praying when he heard about the spiritual danger that was facing the church. He says, “We have not ceased to pray for you and to ask.” We haven’t stopped. The LSB translation turns those participles into infinitives. So it’s to pray, to ask, but the emphasis is really participial. It’s on these participles, and the present tense is continuousness. “So we have not ceased praying and asking.” That’s the idea. His prayer is constant.
And whenever he prays for these Colossians, he’s compelled to give thanks for them, verse 3. And you know what? He’s constantly praying for them, constantly petitioning God for them, as is his habit and his chief apostolic duty.
Paul is a man who is sanctified by the truth that God revealed to him as an Apostle. He’s sharpened by the continual exposure to the truth. He’s seasoned by the wisdom of so many years of applying the truth of walking with the Lord.
Paul is the epitome of submissiveness and obedience. He’s walked by the Spirit. He’s mortified the flesh. He’s vivified the virtues of the Spirit. He’s communed with the living God. He knows what to pray for. Now, would you want that caliber of Christian praying for you? Of course you would.
So then let me ask, what are you doing to become that caliber of Christian so that you might pray in the same way for others in your church, in your family, in your sphere of relationship and influence?
What are you doing to follow the Apostle Paul, to set aside silly, foolish, worthless, futile things and to give yourself instead to pursuing Christ as he pursued him, to know him “in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings,” so that you can be this caliber of Christian, who’s a blessing to others in praying for them?
It starts here by following Paul’s example, going to the right source, practicing his habit of ceaseless praying. That’s how we love one another. We’re motivated and compelled to pray with a spirit of brotherly affection. That’s why we call this prayerful affection.
We come to a second point. When we pray, we, number two: ask for the right resource. We ask for the right resource. This is talking about biblical revelation. We ask for the right resource: Biblical revelation. He says, here, in verse 9, “praying and asking that you may be filled with the full knowledge of his will.” “Filled with the full knowledge of his will.”
We have to remind ourselves as Christians who live in the modern world, a modern world that’s characterized by advancement, technological development, all kinds of inventions that bring benefits to us, blessings to us; but it’s also, because of all those things, it’s a world that’s characterized by a radical individualism, and what we need to remind ourselves about, here, is that when Paul says he’s “praying and asking that you may be filled,” he’s not talking to the individual per se. He has the entire church in mind as a corporate group, as a whole assembly, not just the individual.
He obviously acknowledges individual significance. After all, salvation is an individual thing. But having been saved individually, we are joined immediately to a group. Individuals then become significant by participation in the whole, in one body, many parts.
Both are important. Individual identity is defined by another. It’s defined by membership in his body, connection to our head. First Corinthians 12:12, “For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, they are one body, and so also is Christ.”
And I’m trying to make this point, here at the start of this little section, want to make it explicit because we are today so far removed from the context and the situation to which this letter was written. When we hear Paul praying “that you may be filled with the full knowledge of his will,” we tend to think of that individualistically, subjectively, as a private matter.
Where’s the knowledge of God’s will found? Well, God’s revealed his will in the Bible, right? So if we’re to be filled with the knowledge of his will, we immediately tend to think that Paul is asking God to help us to be more faithful in our daily devotions and in reading our Bibles.
And look, I am all for staying faithful in Bible reading and prayer. I’m all for you studying the Scriptures and going deep and using commentaries and resources to help you mine out what’s in the text.
But that is not precisely what Paul is talking about, here. We tend to take for granted our daily habit of devotional Bible reading is only possible because we own Bibles, personally, personal copies. Most of us have several copies.
No early Christian had their own personal copy of God’s word. Far too expensive. Not until Johannes Gutenberg invented a movable type printing press, which is not until mid-fifteenth century, not until well after that could people even conceive of owning a personal copy of the Bible, let alone reading it daily and studying it personally. So that’s not what Paul’s referring to, here: Go read your Bible and have daily devotions.
We are richly blessed with our own personal copies of God’s Word, and yet I wonder if familiarity has not bred a very tragic form of contempt in us. We own numerous copies of God’s Word, yet how many of us take advantage of this great treasure that sits on the shelves in our homes, or on the night stand or on the coffee table?
The point is, first, well, we need to take advantage of the gift that he’s given us of a personal copy of God’s Word and a good translation that actually conveys the sense directly from the Greek and the Hebrew. What a gift!
But Paul’s point, he’s not addressing them as individuals per se when he prays that you, plural you, “that you may be filled with the full knowledge of his will.” He is praying, here, for something that will capture the entire church as a whole. He’s speaking to the whole church as an assembly, as a congregation.
This is clear from Colossians 3:16, where he says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” you being the plural again. And it’s manifest as you see, as you continue reading in the, one another, effects in the entire congregation. That’s how the word of God dwells richly in you, church. It’s by you gathering together, receiving the Word together, and then there’s an effect. There’s fruit in singing, in thinking, in speaking to one another. It changes you, changes you inside your church and comes to characterize your entire group.
And then that goes from that church into the family, into the marriage, into the home and then that individual goes from that home where these truths are nurtured and practiced in an intimate, personal way. They’re taken out into the workplace. Following Paul’s thought in Colossians chapter 3 and 4, takes it out into the workplace, and that’s where the word then affects the world.
So as to what Paul is praying about, “that you may be filled with the full knowledge of his will,” what is this? What is he talking about? First, as we said, this is biblical revelation. This is biblical revelation, not some personal prophecy, not some mystical experience of a personal revelation from God. It’s what Moses said back in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to Yahweh our God.”
So we’re not talking about, who does God want me to marry? What job does he want me to have? Where does he want me to live? He’s not talking about things that aren’t revealed, things that are secret, things that are hidden. Who’s going to win the next election? What country’s going to attack this country? Who’s going to win the war? That’s, those things are not revealed.
Those are secret things that belong to Yahweh, our God, and they’re kept by him and revealed by his providence so that we can look back and see what God has done, so we can marvel not at the fact that we know the exact particulars of every detail in our future, but that we trust him for the future, because we look back and see how he’s handled the past. We know that he’s faithful, he’s powerful, he’s good, wise.
“The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever that we may,” what, “do all the words of this law.” That’s what Paul’s praying for, here, that they would be filled with the full knowledge of the revelation of God, which for them was the Old Testament, the Old Testament canon.
Also, now, this Colossian letter, and that was perhaps added to some of Paul’s earlier letters that may have reached them, that they may have copied, like Galatians, the Thessalonian letters, maybe the Corinthian letters, maybe even Romans, written early enough maybe to have made its way to them.
They may have had Matthew’s Gospel, which is the earliest Gospel, Mark’s Gospel as well, which followed it. They may have had the New Testament epistle of James as well, which is the earliest of all the New Testament epistles.
When I say, they may have had, again, I don’t mean they may have had this or that portion of Scripture in their homes. I mean that they had it in their church. Maybe some wealthy members of the church had a copy, but not each and every one of them.
So Paul’s petition, it’s clearly about biblical revelation. Where is the knowledge of God’s will found? Not in your own intuition, not through your experience, not through some personal revelation of God speaking to you. It’s found in the written Word of God put down by the hand of a prophet, an Apostle.
Paul’s petitions about biblical revelation, then, further, second, this is about full knowledge, fullness of knowledge. The word for knowledge, gnosis, is what the false teachers talked a lot about. They were speaking to these Colossian Christians as if they lacked this gnosis.
In fact, the word gnosis is what gives form to the second-century heresy that came to be known as Gnosticism, it’s about gnosis. It’s about secret knowledge, esoteric knowledge that you could reach if you pass through certain gates and attain to certain levels. All of a sudden it opened up to a room of the gnosis.
And once you have that gnosis, you practiced certain rituals and went through certain disciplines, and you eventually went up the stairs and climbed the ladder into another room of more gnosis. And the gnosis would eventually lead you to leave the material world behind and enter into pure spirit, which is full gnosis. The pleroma, the fullness of gnosis. That’s what the false teachers talked a lot about. It’s what they had tried to intimidate the Christians with, that they didn’t have this.
And Paul wants them to know they have it. They have all that needs to be known, revealed to them in the Word of God. In fact, Colossians 2:3, “In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and gnosis in Christ.” All that remains for them, then, is to know it completely, to know it fully.
So Paul is speaking, here, in this verse not of the gnosis which they had already in Christ, in his Word. He uses the word epignosis, which means full knowledge, experiential knowledge, the practice and understanding of knowledge.
And he’s asking God that they would listen carefully to biblical revelation, that they’d think deeply about it, that they would meditate on it and reflect often on it and always, so that they would know and be familiar with and absorb the knowledge of God’s will. God’s will is revealed in the Scripture, so he wants them to pay attention to the Scripture, to mine, M-I-N-E, the mind, M-I-N-D of God.
He wants them to hear the Scripture with an attentive ear, tuned in, a reverent mind, a sincere, worshipful, obedient heart, so that third, they would be filled by God’s will. Filled by it, that is, so they would be under the control of God’s will, directed by his will. That’s what Paul wants for them, is for them to be excited by God’s will.
How cool to know the mind of your creator, the eternal God, the all powerful one! What an amazing gift to have insight into how he thinks, who he is, why he does what he does. Is there anything better in life?
Paul wants them to be excited by the will of God, compelled to do it, rejoicing to know it, then to participate in working it out and having their own part and fulfilling it. They get to be brought into the will of God by participating, by obedience.
“To be filled,” here, is an aorist passive verb. The aorist looks at the action as a whole. It encompasses that which Paul wants to characterize their entire Christian life. But then it’s the passive idea that we want to focus on because that points again to the source of the resource. And the source, again, is God.
This is, as we have heard before, this is another divine passive. That is, it’s a passive voice that hides the subject, but we know who the subject is. Hidden in that passive voice is the subject, who is God. God is the one who does the filling. Filling, here, is not in a literal sense, as if the Colossians are enabled to open their mouths and just receive Bible verses poured into their mouths and so that at the drop of a hat they can spit out Bible verses. It’s not about that.
It’s not about just reciting them from memory, though many of them could do so. Without their own personal copies of God’s Word, you know what they relied on? Preaching. The reading of Scripture in the church. You know what they did when they heard it? They memorized it.
They went home and then talked about it, recited it with one another. That was their devotional time. That was their family Bible time at home, the recitation from memory of the Scripture and the preaching that they heard on Sundays. Strong, strong memories. Stronger than ours because they use them, because they practice them. We have it, too. It’s just we don’t use the tool like they did.
But to be filled with the full knowledge of God’s will, again, it’s not just about opening our mouths, God pours Bible verses into us and fills us up with facts from his Word. That’s not the issue. This is a figurative use of the word, filling, and it refers to influence. It refers to the idea of full control. Same idea we find in Ephesians 5:18, “Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.”
It’s a great analogy. Think about when someone takes a fermented substance into his body, or some altering substance into his body, drinking it, smoking it, ingesting it. There’s a physiological effect, isn’t there? There’s an interaction between the chemicals of the substance or the drug in the plant, or the mushroom, or the slime of a Colorado River toad. Yes, that’s a thing, licking toads.
But that chemical reaction from whatever that substance is goes into the body and it interacts with the physiology of the body, the chemistry of the body and the brain, causing a person to think, say, and do things that he would not normally and reasonably think, say, and do. We all understand that. We’ve seen it, tragically, lamented the tragic consequences of it.
But Paul, again, he turns this matter of drunkenness into an analogy in a very positive way. He says in Ephesians 5:18 saying, “be filled,” or, it’s a present tense, so it’s “be being filled,” passive voice “be filled” and then present tense “be being filled.” So it’s a continuous idea. So “be being filled with the Spirit” is what he says, by taking in the Spirit, just as you would take in some substance. It has a reaction.
Here, by taking in the Spirit, and we’re going to see this when we come to Colossians 3:16, by comparison, taking in the Spirit is the same as taking in the Word of God and letting it dwell richly within us.
There’s a spiritual reaction that takes place, causes the spiritual man, causes the Christian to think and to say and to do what he would not if left unto the influence of an unredeemed sin nature, what he would not normally think, say, and do.
This is what Paul is petitioning God for, that these Colossians that all believers, which includes you and me, beloved, that we would be so completely under the influence of God’s will, so thoroughly and completely controlled by knowing God’s revealed will, that we would think his will and speak his truth and do his bidding, all according to his will. That’s what he’s after.
And by the way, just to make sure it’s said, this is not about the control of coercion. This is not about forcing you to do what you don’t want to do. No, this is about the compelling of affection, because those who know the will of God with a new nature given to them by God, that new nature responds.
The new nature loves the will of God, loves to be fed by the truth, and it responds. Its affections respond. Its will is directed. This is about the compelling of an affection for God. It’s being motivated by love from God and by love for God that we can’t wait to discover, and to understand what God has revealed so we can go out and put it into practice. That’s what he wants.
Why? Because we love to know what our father thinks. Because we’re thrilled to discover God’s wisdom. We rejoice to see his perfect justice, the perfection of his standard, the clarity of his truth, the goodness of his righteousness. We delight to practice that. We’re eager to go and to try it out, to test it for ourselves, to put it into action in our own lives and see how it works.
This is what Jesus promised his disciples on the night of his betrayal. He pointed to the experiential knowledge of truth when he said in John 15:15, he says, “‘No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my Father, I’ve made known to you,’” told you everything. I brought you into the inner circle. You’re in the SCIF, you’re in the the heart of the control center and you know everything. Nothing is withheld from you.
So knowing the father’s will, following our older brother’s leadership, empowered by the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit and the animating force of our spiritual family, sets the heart on fire, doesn’t it? Causes our affections to burn hot, bright; instigates our will, sets in motion our desire to continue in the grace of God.
So having said that, we need to understand, and Paul makes us clear in the next phrase, that this is not about running off half-cocked and driven by this impassioned zeal that lacks any wisdom.
We commune with the triune God, with our Father in the fellowship of Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit.” Travis Allen
So Paul adds that clarifying compound preposition which we see in this third point. Just to remind you, Paul goes to God in prayer, which is the right source. He asks for the right resource, the biblical revelation of the will of God, that they are controlled by it, but his concern is not merely for knowledge, but it’s for a wise application of knowledge.
So the third point, which really just modifies, it’s kind of like a subset of the second point, but we’ll make it a third point, number three: seek the right practice. Seek the right practice. We could just call this, summarize it with, skillful application. Skillful application.
Paul prays “that you may be filled with the knowledge, the full knowledge of his will,” here it is, “in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” Paul uses that phrase, it’s a compound prepositional phrase “in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,” and it’s really, it’s “in all wisdom and understanding spiritual.” He puts spiritual at the end, but it’s, in our text, spiritual comes first.
But he says “in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” to qualify what he’s praying, that they will do the will of God when they learn it, and how it is, the means by which it comes out, how it ought to control them. Very important.
Now the Colossians had heard those words before, wisdom and understanding. They’d heard those words. They were very common words among the educated elite. And it sounds a lot like the philosophical, sophisticated talk of the philosophers of his day.
Those two terms, wisdom and understanding, sophia and sunesis, were two of the three intellectual virtues that were widely acknowledged in the ancient world and the philosophies of the ancient world. The third word is phronesis, often translated as prudence. So you’ve got sophia, sunesis, and phronesis. Prudence, the third one, it refers to taking careful caution in implementing wisdom.
But the first word is wisdom. The first word is sophia, most basic. And that’s really a word that summarizes what Paul is meaning by “the full knowledge of God’s will.” “The full knowledge of God’s will,” he puts it in the form of wisdom, wisdom, the highest understanding, the fullest understanding.
As the commentator Lightfoot puts it, he refers to, quote, “mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense.” End quote. It’s a good concept, there, for wisdom of God: mental excellence. As we practice wisdom, it’s mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense. It’s a good expression.
The second word, there, understanding, or you could use the word intelligence, sunesis; and then the third word, phronesis, which Paul does not use here, in a literally, he doesn’t put that word down, but Lightfoot says these two words are derivative and special. They’re derivative of wisdom, and they’re a special application to wisdom, to the details of wisdom.
So we start with wisdom, which is knowing the will of God with mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense. And Paul would have them, the Colossians, he would have us to then use sunesis, understanding, to consider how to best apply wisdom, to think carefully and strategically about what we know in our highest and fullest sense.
We’re not talking about using it, yet. We’re still talking about thinking, careful thinking, mature thinking, developed thinking, disciplined thinking. That’s what we’re talking about.
The use is reserved for that final term. As I said, Paul doesn’t use it, but it’s phronesis. He doesn’t use that word, here, literally. He doesn’t write that word down. But conceptually, we do see that concept of phronesis come out, prudence come out. It’s about taking action.
The tactical use of wisdom comes in what follows, verses 10-12. He illustrates that concept of putting wisdom into action prudently in four action words, four participles. He pictures phronesis in concrete terms as fruit-bearing, multiplying, being strengthened, and giving thanks, that is prudence lived out, demonstrated through action.
But it’s all based on wisdom in the first place, and then the careful consideration of how to strategically put that wisdom into effect, and then prudently working it out. That’s the idea here.
He adds spiritual or pneumatikos to the end of the sentence. Spiritual, as I said, in our text it’s, it’s the start of the phrase, makes, kind of sounds better in English, but Paul intends to use this pneumatikos, spiritual, to modify both those terms to distinguish the source. He’s insisting that this wisdom, this understanding, and this prudence in the application of it, it comes from God. It’s revealed in his Word and by his Spirit.
So Paul prays to the right source, he goes to him for the right resource, and he seeks for us the right practice, that is, the skillful application of God’s Word in every circumstance, in every situation, which comes about by the working of the Spirit of God. It’s Paul’s concern in Colossians 4:5-6 when he commands, “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, redeeming the time.” It’s careful thinking, isn’t it? “Let your words always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should answer each person.”
You hear the wisdom, there? The consideration of sunesis says, “Huh. How should I strategically use my words?” You hear the prudence in carefully applying each word to each person’s need? Very important. Ephesians 5:15-16, “Therefore, look carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise,” sophia, “redeeming the time because the days are evil.” And then verse 17, “On account of this, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
That’s why Paul prays in Ephesians 1:17 “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of God.” He’s drawing on what he recognized early in Ephesians 1:8, that “God has caused the riches of his grace to abound to us in all wisdom and insight.”
And there it’s sophia, the start of the matter, and phronesis, the end of the matter, from knowing in the highest mental excellence, fullest sense, to the application, prudently. So praying for them, asking God to fill them with the knowledge of his will, all for the wise, intelligent application of his will, a skillful application.
And fourthly, verse 10, it comes to the practical aim, number four: To pursue the right goal. Pursue the right goal and pursue the right goal, we could summarize by calling this noble ambition, noble ambition, “asking that you may be filled so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.” Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord; knowing and practicing God’s revealed will with an interest in wisdom, intelligence, and skillful living.
This is what the practice of true Christianity looks like. We want to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, not live sloppily; not squandering time, but redeeming time; not letting our words fly according to whatever the emotion of the moment is, but carefully restraining our words, disciplining our words so that we speak targeted, encouraging, edifying words.
This is excellence in living. That’s what Paul is praying for, here, that we live, here it is, “in a way that is befitting of the one whom we serve as our King.” Because that’s how he was. That’s how he lived.
Worthy, such a big word. It’s actually very small in the Greek, it’s axios, but it’s huge in its implications. It comes from the idea of adding weight to one side of a scale, one side of a balance, to bring up the other beam of the scales. So the concept in this worthy idea, axios, is to make something equivalent to something else.
What’s the equivalency Paul has in mind? He would add weight to our living, to our lifestyle, to our priorities, to our behavior, to our speech, to our use of time, to all of our other resources, add weight to it so that we balance out, we live in a way that is equal to and befitting of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Wow. Equivalent to the way he lived? Equivalent to the way he spoke, thought, planned, restrained, loved? G. K. Beale summarizes it by saying, “The ethical character of the believer is to be fitting with or matching the character of Jesus.”
Think he’s going too far? Consider what Jesus countered as the worthy walk when he said this in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:48, “‘Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’” In another place Jesus said, “‘Love your enemies, do good, lend expecting nothing in return, that your reward will be great, and you’ll be called sons of the Most High. For He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and evil. So be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’”
You see the equivalency there? Father perfect, you perfect. Father merciful, you merciful. The Lord Jesus Christ perfect in every way, you perfect in every way. You say, I’m crushed, I’m undone. Never happen.
Well, you know what not living that way is, what we call it? Sin. Not perfection according to the manner of the perfection of God, you know what we call that? Sin. You know what Jesus died to pay for? Sin. You know what he covers you with in the gospel? His perfection, his righteousness.
You know what he wants to work out in you now? The perfection of his righteousness. He wants you to grow, to become more like him. You know who the happiest, most joyful being in the universe is? God. You know what he is? Perfect in holiness, righteousness, goodness, purity.
You want happiness, joy, satisfaction, contentment? You want everything that this world promises but never delivers on? And whatever you chase that the world offers in a sinful way, you know what it delivers? Not only false promises, but it delivers a heap of guilt, shame, degradation, dissatisfaction, loathing, contempt, hatred, malice, and the list goes on.
But “God is the giver of every good and perfect gift that comes down from the Father above, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” This is what he wants for you.
Paul follows the same pattern of our Lord when he says in Colossians 3:13 that “we’re graciously to forgive each other.” And then the reason? “Just as the Lord graciously forgave you, so should you.” He graciously forgave us, and when we graciously forgive one another, we balance the scales, which is what it means to walk worthy of the Lord.
I’m sorry to say, and I, I say this with sadness in my heart, that we look long and hard these days to find anything resembling this in so much of what is popularly purported to be Christian, whether it’s in church life, home life, Christian living, Christian family life, even in preaching. So many pastors stand behind pulpits, and some who even read and explain Bible passages, but they have no sincere interest in seeing people change, to grow like this, to repent and grow and mature.
They’re happy to say churchy things and use Bible-y words and tell Bible stories and encourage religious practices but there’s no earnestness in their exhortation. There’s no boldness or courage in their correction. There is no correction. There’s no insistence on obedience. There’s no rebuke, exhort with all patience.
Which means at best they have an underdeveloped sense of what love is, so that they’re really immature and they shouldn’t be in ministry at all, and at worst they have no interest in loving anyone really, so they’re sinful, hypocritical, and shouldn’t be anywhere near the ministry.
In either case, we get these men out. Pastors like that are interested in a professionalized form of ministry which is polite and safe, which never risks any offense, but is always interested in encouraging. I just want to be an encourager.
And it’s not that they’ve defined that word biblically. They’ve gutted that word of its actual biblical meaning. They turn the word encouraging into meaning nice and inoffensive and pleasant and polite, friendly, tolerant. May those insipid, misleading ministries perish.
And yet at the same time, may God show mercy on their souls even as he delivers the souls under their ministries, who may know no better, may have no other option, who have to suffer that influence week in and week out. It just weakens them and hardens them and fills them with pride.
The right goal of our lives and our ministries and our Christian families and our Christian witnesses at work is to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to live as he lived, to draw attention to his teaching and to his ways by the way we live our lives. That’s the right goal. And it is truly a noble ambition.
And this is the aim of Paul’s prayer. So having the right goal in mind, he points to the right desire that propels us forward. Fifth, final point, number five: cultivate the right desire. Cultivate the right desire. And you could sum this up by saying humble devotion. A humble devotion. He says “so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please him,” and then this little phrase “in all respects.”
The way this reads in the original, if we translate it literally, is to walk worthy of the Lord, and it’s “unto all pleasing.” So the infinitive to walk, it’s modified by two adverbial phrases, “worthy of the Lord” on the one hand, and “unto all pleasing” on the other.
It’s the second of those two phrases that keeps this noble ambition of walking worthy from becoming coerced by brute duty, or even worse, motivated by a pharisaical pride.
It’s not worthy for worthiness’ sake. It’s worthy for the Lord’s sake. And if it’s worthy for the Lord’s sake, it’s a worthiness that is motivated by true love, by brotherly affection, by devotion to him. It’s knowing him and loving him, and then wanting to do that to others, for others, so that they experience the same joy that you have experienced from God and find rest in the same contentment that you have in him. You want that shared.
In other words, it’s to please him in all respects. We’re children of the father, verse 2, and he is also the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so we’re to have a familial devotion to the Lord, a family love, a family affection. We’re slaves of the same Lord, and we’re servants, deacons in the same household with Paul, with Epaphras, verse 7. So we have a humble devotion to the Lord.
We’re creatures of his creation, verse 15, so we have a creaturely devotion to the Lord. We’re beneficiaries of his salvation, his reconciliation, verse 21, so we have a humble and grateful devotion to the Lord.
How could we be anything but eternally grateful to the one who rescued us from the authority of darkness and then humbly devoted, forever devoted to the son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins?
As I said, beloved members of Grace Church, maybe those who are here who are not yet members, or maybe just visiting, but you share in the same salvation, this is how the elders habitually, joyfully, eagerly, cheerfully pray for you.
With Paul as our example and with his prayer report as our guide, we love going to God, who is the right source. We love asking for the right resource, which is the written Word of God. We love to ask him to enable you to the right practice of his word, of his will.
That is skillful Christian living. That’s what we want to see in you: intelligent, skillful Christian living. So we reach the right goal because we have the right desire, just as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:9, that “whether we’re home or absent, we have as our ambition to be pleasing to him.” It’s what we long for, for all of you. It’s what I want for myself, my family, for you, and for all Christians everywhere.
Next time we’re going to continue with this prayer report. We’re going to follow Paul’s thought to learn what this worthy walk entails, kind of the tactical action component, here, as we take this as a result of knowing and being controlled by the will of God and then intelligently, skillfully applying the Word of God. Verses 10 through 14 is really what it looks like. Let’s go to the Lord in prayer now.
Our God and our Father and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, we want to give you thanks once again for making us partakers in so great a salvation. You have brought us into the inner chambers, as it were, of your throne room, the council of the holy, where we can hear and know and understand your mind because you’ve given us a new nature. And you put your Spirit in us, who illuminates the truth to us and teaches us internally as we hear externally and read externally your Word. Thank you for revealing your mind to us.
We pray that you would give us a, a child-like love, devotion to you, that we would hang on your every word; and then not as children, but as growing, maturing adults, we would go out and put that Word and that will into practice because we love to do your will. We love to share your truth. We love to spread your love to everyone, everywhere.
We do pray that through this, as others chosen of you hear the voice of God and hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, that they would come running, eager to know more, eager to learn, eager to practice, because they, too, have been saved by this good, kind word of the gospel. Thank you for your grace to us in salvation. Thank you for your love for us in Christ. We pray that you would help us to devote ourselves to you, fully holy, to be controlled by you and compelled by your love. In Christ’s name, amen.