Colossians 1:10-12
Well, as we turn to God’s Word this morning, you can open your Bibles to Colossians 1, which is Paul’s prayer report for the Colossians. So encouraging, strengthening, aspirational, and really, it’s worth reflecting on the power of giving prayer reports like Paul has done here. It’s a good, profitable, deeply encouraging thing, when more mature Christians tell less mature Christians that they are praying for them and how they are praying for them.
Now, if some Christian comes to you and tells you that he’s praying for you or she is telling you how she’s praying for you. Don’t be offended, if she’s making a judgement on your immaturity or something like that, just know that we all need prayer. We all need maturing in some way. In comparison, we’re always going to be immature in some ways and needing to mature, and mature in other ways. So pray for one another and tell one another how you’re praying. Even makes an impression on non-Christians, that when they’re told that they’re prayed for, how they’re prayed for.
My saintly old grandmother used to tell me how she prayed for me while I was still lost in my sins and breaking my mother’s heart. She would tell me, Travis, I’m praying for you. I’m praying that you will become a Christian and that God will make you: Her first choice was a missionary or second choice, a pastor. That always haunted me in my sins. I always remembered she was praying. To me, in my life, that grandmother, in particular, was, I mean, maybe some evangelicals looked to Billy Graham, Catholics looked to Mother Teresa. I looked to my grandmother and saw her, as that.
Boy, if she’s praying, boy, God’s listening, troubled my mind, but it also encouraged me that she loved me, cared for me, prayed for me. That’s the power of a prayer report and a thanksgiving report, when we give that to one another and share those things with each other. Parents, when you tell your children how you’re praying for them. Grandparents, when you do the same. Children when you tell your parents how you’re praying for them. In addition to conveying genuine love, mature Christians really have a lot to contribute in their praying for others.
Mature Christians provide a practical example of praying, and they convey doctoral truths in their praying, seasoned by years of experience and infused with wisdom. They encourage others for whom they pray who listen to their prayers. They encourage others to aspire after good things and set godly ambitions and pursue holy living.
And that’s really what we are seeing manifest and laid out for us in Paul’s prayer for the Colossians. And you’ll find that the prayer report itself starting in verse 9 of Colossians 1, Follow along as I read, “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 into the Kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
We divided that section, that prayer report into three parts. Last time we talked about that. I’ll remind you, address the petition itself in verse 9 through the first part of 10; covered that last time, and that’s followed by the particulars that we’re going to get into today. The particulars are coming four participles in verses 10 through 12 and then Paul ends by focusing on the power of him that we petition, verses 13 to 14; focusing us on what God has done.
Paul’s concern in the petition itself is that the Colossians would “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,” to live in a way that benefits their profession of faith. He prays that the life of Christ, on the one hand, and their lives on the other hand, would come into parity with one another. That’s the, the term, worthy, is talking about doing whatever you can to put weight in one side of the scales, to bring it into balance with the other side of the scales.
So there’s no difference in the weights, that’s a worthiness, that’s a one life befitting the other, our lives befitting the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and his life working in and through us. And this pleases the Lord greatly when we walk worthy of him, when we do so in all respects, in every way we please him. And to get a bit more specific, moving from, kind of, maybe an abstract thought of walking worthy, it’s kind of out there.
Worthy walk, getting more concrete with the idea, Paul paints a picture for us using those four participles starting in the middle of verse 10, going through, the, really the end of verse 14, that whole section. But he has four participles in verses 10 through 12. Walking worthy is about what we do, what we know, how we do it, and why we do it. That’s intended to bring us out of the abstraction of walking worthy.
How do we balance that out? How do we come into parody and live the life of Christ? What we do it by focusing on what we do, how we do it, what we know, why we do it, all those things. What are we to do? Paul says we’re to bear the fruit of good works. What are we to know? We’re to know the knowledge of God in an increasing measure, a multiplying measure; the latter feeds the former.
Knowledge causes fruit bearing, the good of the works being defined by truth. How are we to do these works? We’re to do it by divine power, verse 11, evident when we stick with it, remain steadfast in trial, patient in affliction, and enduring and never giving up. And why do we do these works? Well, we do these works out of a deep sense of gratitude, don’t we? Deep gratitude, which Paul further elucidates and educates us in, in verses 13 to 14.
All that draws our attention back to the father, the one to whom Paul prays in the first place. Based on what the father has done for us, we’re encouraged yet again to come to him in prayer, just as Paul has. So what we’re going to do is follow Paul’s train of thought as he describes what a worthy walk looks like, by looking at these four participles that will be our main purpose for today.
Keep in mind, Paul is asking God for what he knows God has already willed to produce in them. Paul is praying, in other words, according to the will of God. And why does he know the will of God? Because he himself is filled with the knowledge of God’s will, and he prays accordingly. Knowing what God’s will is for his saints, for his church, for his people, he prays accordingly. He’s lined up with God’s will. He loves God’s will. He loves what God has in mind, what God has in store, the goodness he’s prepared and he joins in.
He expresses back to God what God has already revealed about his people. So Paul prays for God’s will, for God’s best to be done for the Colossians. And he knows that goodness from God is what, as true believers, good from God is what they want. I mean, what believer is there who does not want to follow God’s goodwill? What believer is there whose heart is not captivated by God’s will, his mind instructed by God’s will, his understanding illuminated?
What believer doesn’t want his or her affections set on fire by the will of God, to get into God’s way of thinking, to have his ends as their own ends, his aims as their own, to be so controlled by God’s will, to live in total, joyful, perfect submission to God’s will? What believer doesn’t want to know that?
What believer is there who doesn’t want to live his life skillfully growing in the application of wisdom, his daily living coming into parity with the life and the thoughts and the words and the attitudes of Jesus Christ; most pleasing to him, most worthy of him. Every believer wants that right? Every believer, and if you are a believer and some of this is not quite as familiar to you or owned by you, let it be as Paul says in Philippians 3:15, “Let us therefore as many as are perfect,” that is mature teleios, “but as many as are perfect, think this way; and if anything you think differently, God will reveal that to you.”
Let’s just keep walking in step with the same standard to which we obtained, doing what we know to do by God’s grace, and God will cause fruit to grow by his Spirit, by his Word in our lives. Just do what you know in the Word of God and God will pour accelerant onto that growth and you will start to think more and more like what Paul lays out here in his prayer.
And again, beloved, you just need to know this is how the elders pray for you. And by what I know from talking with a number of church members here, this is how much mature members of Grace Church are praying for you as well, praying for one another. God is doing something very, very special in our midst. When I see the quality of your lives, the quality of your prayer life, the habits, the priorities you set, when I hear about that and I know that you’re praying for one another.
God is doing something very special and we have the privilege of joining him and participating with him in this work. We’re going to talk about four concrete realities of a worthy walk or a God pleasing, a Christ pleasing walk. And the first concrete reality for which Paul prays, walking worthy of the Lord, pleasing him is about, number one: A fruitful life. Number one: A fruitful life and you can put down to a little phrase, good fruit that glorifies God, good fruit that glorifies God.
Remember that we said last time, Paul did not write to these Colossians as disconnected individuals with some kind of privatized form of religious practice. He wrote to them as a corporate body. He wrote to them as a local church over whom Christ is the head and each one then is connected to the other. And so bearing fruit and all the other participles that follow in this section, it’s not first and foremost about the individual considered subjectively, isolated from the whole. The fruit of good works grows in the context of local church life. It grows in the context of a community of believers, interconnected, joined together underneath one head, Christ. So God glorifying fruit.
True fruit will always be connected to the local church, and it will grow up from out of it, affecting families, affecting communities, affecting governments, affecting destinies of nations. Now, does this have implications for each Christian, for each and every Christian, how he uses his time and stewards his resources and sets his priorities? Does it have implications for how she thinks and speaks and acts when away from the corporate gathering? Yeah, you bet it does. Of course it does. But there’s no Colossian Christian listening to the first reading of this letter or any subsequent reading.
No Colossian Christian is going to think of walking worthy in isolation from the church. Their lives, as individuals, have meaning for them in connection to and as an out working of their community of believers. They love the church. They are not like many Americans today who say, yeah, I want God and I want spirituality, but it’s institutions that I don’t have any room for, any time for. No way. That is not biblical Christianity. It’s something else entirely.
The Christians of the New Testament, they love the identity with their local church. They love the identity with that Christian community. So when we come to the first reality of a worthy walk, verse 10, “bearing fruit in every good work,” and then Paul adds, “multiplying in the full knowledge of God,” that is done for them. It’s done together. It’s done in community with one another. But it’s also done then, as they break away and go on to the individual vocations to which God has called them, it’s carried out there too.
It’s carried out there too, but “bearing fruit and then multiplying in the full knowledge of God.” Syntactically, Paul is joining those two participial phrases. He keeps bearing fruit on the one hand and multiplying in knowledge on the other hand. He brings those things together and keeps them connected. Both of those are participles, verbal nouns.
In English we call those ING words. Remember from your grammar days in grade school. So think about words like running, thinking. We use them as adjectives or to complete a state of being verb: is running, is thinking, that’s the idea here. Both are in the present tense, which in the Greek means that Paul wants to see this as an ongoing, continuous, habitual thing.
This bearing fruit on the one hand and increasing or multiplying a knowledge on the other hand, they’re to be continuous, ongoing, habitual part of a normal Christian life. That’s why we opened the service with Psalm 1, because this is the blessed man of Psalm 1, that Paul is praying for “to be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season.” It’s an ongoing idea. Continuous fruit bearing even its weakest part is strong and resilient and in the harshest of conditions its leaf does not wither.
Paul has echoed the words of his Lord in John 15 verse 8, “By this is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.” A fruitful life brings glory to God, gives evidence of, of true discipleship because that’s really what a disciple is and what he becomes is a more fit vessel for glorifying God. This is the picture of the true Christian. He lives a fruitful life. He lives a life of continuous spiritual productivity glorifying God.
True fruit will always be connected to the local church, and it will grow up from out of it. Travis Allen
Using a tree and its fruit is such an apropos metaphor, because it really points to this principle of fecundity or fruitfulness, that’s illustrated in all organic life. God designed organic life to take energy from the sun captured by photosynthesis, to power its growth, to take the nutrients of the soil and the water and combine those in chemical processes that work with the trinus of the tree.
Whatever the energy is or whatever the chemistry is in a tree, that takes energy from the sun and the nutrients of the soil and the water and combines it all to bare branches, stems, leaves, buds, flowers, and fruit. And that fruit then feeds the creatures of the earth, animals, squirrels, birds, all kinds of animal life fed by the fruit of the tree.
But then even further, those, there’s tiny little seeds inside each piece of fruit. And each one of those tiny little seeds contains power, life in itself to produce more trees, to bear more and more fruit. Well, how does this happen for the Christian? Well, he recognizes what he is and what he’s not. He is not the root, he’s not the trunk, he’s not the fruit, he’s a branch, and what is a branch, but a conduit between the tree and its fruit.
To be a productive branch, the Christian has to remain in close, vital connection to the trunk, for he recognizes that the life is not within himself, it’s in the trunk of the true vine. And that’s why Jesus said, “abide in me, and I in you. And as the branch cannot bear fruit from itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I’m the vine, you’re the branches.” So get your roll straight, right?
“He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” You’re just a branch; you’re just a conduit. Life flows through you not because of you, it flows from God through you to bear fruit on the other side. So the fruit is not the fruit of the branch itself, but it’s the fruit of the vine itself, that fruit bearing in the productivity and the fruitfulness. The abundance of the fruit is the result of the cultivation of the skillful hand of the vine dresser who is the father.
So what fruit is on the productive branches of the true vine? We need to look no further than to our Lord Jesus Christ himself. He modeled it. Think about the grace that animates the inner life of Jesus Christ, which the Spirit of Jesus delights to produce in us too. It’s outlined in Galatians 5:22 to 23. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Did we ever see that in Jesus Christ? And when we say love, we don’t mean niceness.
I was talking with a man this last week who told me, I said, are you a Christian? He’s like, yeah, but I’m kind of more, more like the, you know, not the Old Testament kind. I’m the New Testament kind. I said, you know, you mean, like what you see in Jesus Christ. He said, yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, not that old, not that Old Testament God, but New Testament. And I said, you know what Jesus was? He was an Old Testament guy. I was like, gotcha.
Love tells the truth. Love is all about justice. Love is all about saying hard things in unpopular times. Love is about looking a sinner square in the eye and saying, listen my friend, this is going to kill you. Don’t pursue sin, repent, turn from your sinful ways and live. ‘The fruit of the Spirit is about joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.”
And so all of those virtues and graces, inform the other. And so you can have somebody who says loving things, but in a very harsh way, right? Love is gentle, self-control, patient, kind. They all work together and we see them all in Jesus Christ who lived by the Spirit. Never by the flesh is evident in the fruit of the graces in his life. We also see the fruit in Jesus Christ of the speech that comes from his lips, a speech which is always with grace.
Again, the animation of the inner life coming out in his speech. His lips always with grace, “seasoned with salt,” as Colossians 4:6 says. And yet at the same time, make no mistake, he spoke with authority, divine authority. Matthew 7:29 after the preaching, the Sermon on the Mount, everybody said, “no one ever spoke like this man has spoken, for he speaks with authority, not like our scribes.” The scribes cited one another’s authority.
Their sense of authoritative tone came from the harshness of their speech or trying to inform everybody how unstudied they were. They didn’t speak boldly and confidently though, as everybody can hear when they speak the oracles of God himself. That’s how Jesus spoke. Think about the grace that animates his inner life, the speech that comes from his lips, but then also the deeds that he did in compassion and righteousness.
Isaiah 61:1 and 2, was the text of his very first sermon. He preached in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth and the people, though they liked his gracious words, when he started to apply the sermon to them, they want to throw him off a Cliff. But “he preached the gospel, to the poor, he proclaims release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, he sets free those who are oppressed.”
He proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor. How does he do that? Speaking the truth in love, addressing sin, correcting, confronting, caring, loving, deeds in speech, actions in words; all of it, fruit manifest in our Lord, all of it growing out of a heart that’s fed by God, watered by the Word of God, nurtured by the Spirit of God, a heart abounding in true spiritual fruit, having been captivated by the love of God, which is directed outward toward true love for man.
These fruits, all of them, were abundantly and perfectly manifest in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re produced in us too, and by increasing measure, multiplying measure by his Spirit. Though they are often mimicked and faked, they can’t truly be reproduced, either by man or by devil, by false doctrine, by error. And it’s testing that proves whether the fruit is sincere or insincere. It’s testing and affliction and difficulty and conflict that reveals whether that fruit is real or it’s faked, whether it’s the genuine article or just a cheap knockoff. And we’re going to return to that concept in verse 11.
But the life of a true Christian, first of all, is fruitful. It’s abundant in good works. Things we can see, things we can hear, things we can follow after, mimic. It’s not abstract, something ethereal, something that’s whimsical, mystical, no, it’s something concrete, real and it’s abundant in good works. Even though tried and tested, it’s found true.
The second concrete reality is living a spiritual life. So first of all, a fruitful life, now a spiritual life. And also scribble in this phrase, full knowledge that magnifies God. So number two, a spiritual life, full knowledge that magnifies God. Notice as Paul continues this thought, he says, “we’re asking that you may be filled with the full knowledge of his will, skillfully applying wisdom to walk worthy of the Lord, to please him in all respects.”
And in this way, it’s bearing fruit, never good work and then this multiplying in or as many translations have it, increasing in the full knowledge of God. Paul’s repeating that same word he used back in verse 9, full knowledge, epignosis. It’s translated full knowledge in the LSB, which refers to the breadth of the knowledge, the depth of the knowledge, the precision and the accuracy of the knowledge.
It’s intensified with that preposition, epi, and then, gnosis, knowledge. But the concern here is for a knowledge, a full knowledge, and a fullness of knowledge that magnifies God. And by magnify, we’re not here referring to the Worshipful sense of the word extolling God, praising God. Those are other synonyms for magnify.
Even though it is true that the full knowledge of God does indeed lead to worship, But the sense of magnify that I’m using it here is that the full knowledge of God enlarges him in our minds to magnify. It increases his grandeur, his greatness, not by making him out to be something that he’s not, but by actually recognizing what he really is. Ideas have consequences, don’t they?
Bad ideas like Marxism, socialism, Nazism, all those we recognize easily produce bad consequences. You know what they seemed like at the time? Good ideas. People don’t jump into a way of thinking that they know from the start is a bad idea and say, come on, let’s get on board with this. Everyone. This is going to completely ruin our country, divide us, tear us apart, make us poor, you know, have other people conquer us and stuff. Who’s on board? No, they jump into it ’cause they think it’s good. What are they? Deceived
There are many people deceived thinking a bad idea is a very good idea at the time. The tree is known by its fruit, isn’t it? By what it produces? But good ideas, which is what we find in all Christian truth. Good ideas have good consequences when they’re rightfully, wisely, and skillfully applied. And that’s what Paul is showing us here, the truth.
Good ideas start with the full knowledge of God, magnifying God to us, knowing who he is, what he’s like, what his will is. As God is magnified to us, as the glory of his essence bears its proper weight in our hearts. When we know his will for the world, for the church, for our lives, it moves all that thought and all that truth, all those abstract ideas from the outer fringes of our consciousness to become the most compelling of all reasons for why we do what we do, why we get up in the morning, why we live, why we breathe.
Paul has the same concern, by the way, for the Ephesian church. He prays in the same way for them. In fact, you can kind of hear in Colossians 1, a distilling down of some of the more broad ideas you hear in Ephesians chapter 1. Listen to this Ephesians 1, starting in verse 15. He says, “for this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ which exists among you and your love for all the Saints,” does this sound familiar,
“I do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation,” and here it is, “the full knowledge of him,” epignosis, “so that you-the eyes of your heart having been enlightened-will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of the might of His strength.” And on He goes.
What is that, but the magnification of the full knowledge of God, his will, his ways, his purpose. So Paul’s concern for the development of his churches is for their spiritual life, and by that I mean their intellectual life, the invisible aspect of what it is to be human. We have spiritual reality and a physical reality. We are material and immaterial beings, aren’t we? Composite, joined together, and the one feeds the other, the one informs the other. It’s what it is to be human.
But here Paul is after the intellectual life, the spiritual life, the immaterial part of us, that the full knowledge of God will bear its proper weight in our minds, his will being made known to us, the will of God which is revealed in the Word of God. It’s taught by Christ’s chosen men, Ephesians 4:11, “the apostles and the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers.”
It’s illuminated by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God who leads the whole church according to the will of Christ. Its members are parts of the whole, and they walk together in obedience to the will of God. So when the Word of God is read and preached and taught, when it’s apprehended by the understanding, and understood by the mind, it’s received by the heart.
Listen, in that process, nothing less than a communion is taking place. Deep communion. The mind of the human reader communes with the mind of the divine author. The mind of the human hearer is brought into communion with the mind of the divine speaker. There’s a communion taking place.
Back in 2010, I read a book by Nicholas Carr. Nicholas Carr is a journalist, author, specializing in technology, business, culture, how those things, kind of, come together, influence the world. He published a book back in 2010 called The Shallows, subtitled, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. His title gives away his thesis, doesn’t it? Fascinating book, more I could talk about, but my point is to draw out the power of reading to illustrate Paul’s prayer that we grow in the knowledge of God.
Nicholas Carr is concerned about the shallowing effect of reading on the Internet, the shallowing effect of the Internet on our thinking, keeping us continually distracted and flitting from thing to thing, popping from here to there, this website to that website, this article to that article, this video to that video. We’re unable any more to concentrate, just to focus. You notice this in your Bible reading.
Those of you who have to live, and do live and move, and have your being on the Internet. Ever notice this in your Bible reading? You’re like, I can’t concentrate. We’re trying to get through a book, just 100 page book, 200 page book. Like boy, that was exhausting. When we’re not able to concentrate and get into the flow of a book and reading, we become more superficial in our thinking. We’re robbed of the gift of what Nicholas Carr and others call deep reading.
As our brains have adapted to reading and absorbing and processing information from the Internet, it’s had an adverse effect on our ability to read and hear sustained arguments. We really struggle to comprehended; to comprehend printed literature like our Bibles or follow rhetorical arguments like from preaching. By deep reading, Carr is talking about active reading, getting into the flow of an author’s argument.
Deep reading lets us join our thinking with the author’s thinking; to join our minds with his mind in that moment of reading. The joining of thoughts and deep reading becomes so close that there’s an intimate connection and communion created between author and reader. Carr writes this, he says, “In one fascinating study,” he cites that, I’m not going to cite it, but he says, “in one fascinating study, researchers use brain scans to examine what happens inside people’s heads as they read fiction.” So stories, “they found that,” now he’s quoting the study, “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. Details about actions and sensation are captured from the text and integrated with personal knowledge from past experiences.” End Quote.
Carr continues, he says. “The brain regions that are activated often,” then he’s quoting again, “mirror those involved when people perform, imagine or observe similar real-world activities.” End Quote. He continues, “Deep reading, says the study’s lead researcher, Nicole Spear, is by no means a passive exercise.” Nicholas Carr says, “the reader becomes the book.” He goes on to say, “the bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one. The words of writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations and perceptions, sometimes even epiphanies.” End quote. Ideas from one, getting into the minds of others and affecting them.
If reading fiction, made-up stories creates a tightly symbiotic bond between author and reader, beloved, consider the implications for us, for those of us who spend time not in fiction made-up stories, but in the Bible; divinely inspired, God breathed Bible truth, how about those ideas. Do they affect us? Oh, you bet they do. Deep reading, like no other discipline, is what allows us to commune with the divine author of Scripture, to form a tight bond with our God.
And although the symbiosis is not a two-way symbiosis, as if God benefits from his connection with us, that’s not true. He is self-sufficient, fully sufficient in every way, infinite, unchanging, eternal, he’s not affected, changed by us, but we are most certainly, benefited, much improved by that close, intimate joining of our minds to his.
So if it’s true that the reader becomes the book, well, it’s no wonder God wanted his revelation recorded in a book. Not a movie, not a docuseries on YouTube or Netflix or wherever it’s found. No. A book. He wants us to slow down and look at words on a page and have to follow the arguments and the train of thought of the Holy Spirit. The divine author, get into his mind and his mind gets into us. You get the picture.
It’s no wonder God put his revelation recorded it in a book. It’s also no wonder at all why our enemy wants to put constant distraction before us, encourage us to window shop all the time, with the latest news and media and entertainment. The devil wants us to find it really difficult to stay focused and avoid distraction, to say, you know, reading is just not my thing. He wants us to lose patience following logical arguments, sustained teaching, rhetoric, preaching.
He wants us to react emotionally, not logically. He wants us to be impulsive and not thoughtful, this his whole intent. Turns out for us believers, what does the Bible say? “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Oh, Amen to that. Turns out we have power within us. We have a new nature. It’s fed by truth, grows in strength, by habituation of truth.
We have the Holy Spirit himself, the living God within us, illuminates truth, motivates us in truth, changes us, renews our minds, transforms us. Turns out we can turn away from all those cheap thrills and easy payoffs and endless distraction, With a new nature indwelled by the Spirit of God the author of life is on our side. In fact, he’s not just by our side; he’s inside. He’s doing that work from within us, enabling us to turn off all the powerful delusions of the world around us and participate in true spiritual life, which, beloved, is exciting and joyful and productive and fruitful, magnifies God to us.
God has created us with the capacity for abstract thought and language acquisition, language development. He’s created us with imagination and he uses all these different tools to draw us close to him, into his very mind, so we can apprehend his truth internally, spiritually, so we can come to a full knowledge of him.
The knowledge of God increasingly magnifies God to us in our hearts, in our minds, in our intellects. His truth is to our hearts like the sun to the leaves of a tree. We take in the energy combined with the nutrients in the soil and the water and it comes out in juicy delicious life-giving fruit. That in itself has the seeds for more life-giving fruit, isn’t it amazing.
A fruitful spiritual life leads to a third concrete reality for which Paul prays that we live number three: a durable life. A durable life and write down this phrase, real strength that reifies God. You’re like, what was that reifies? Great word, REIFY in the singular or just add IES for the plural, or for that tense of the verb really, real strength that reifies God.
Reify is the idea of bridging the gap between what may seem to be an abstract concept, in this case divine power, and representing that concept as something concrete or real. We see it in Genesis 1:1, “Let there be,” God spoke. There’s abstract words there, but then there was, he reified his power. Everything came into existence by his word. So to petition God here for the reifying of his power is to ask God to give it shape and form in the way that he intends, so that what is otherwise invisible, namely his power, is made visible, namely in its effects, it’s what we see in verse 11.
Paul, Timothy praying and asking that you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience. And then some translations will add the next prepositional phrase, with joy, to verse, they’ll pent it on to verse 11. So it becomes just another way the power of God is reified. The power of God shows its effect.
Abstract invisible thing becomes visible in all steadfastness and patience and with joy. Makes a lot of sense, I think to add, with joy, to verse 11, the previous phrase there. If you add, with joy, to the next participle, giving thanks, as some commentators point out, it seems redundant because joy and gratitude really go hand in hand. What you’re grateful for, you’re joyful for, and then vice versa.
So the trouble with putting, with joy, with the verse 11, not putting it with verse 12, giving thanks, is, it would break the pattern that Paul had established in the first three participles, because all three are modified by prepositional phrases. So if, with Joy, goes with what precedes rather than with what follows in verse 12, well, verse 12, then giving thanks would have no modifying participle attached to it, and it could go either way. Doesn’t make much difference.
All four participles from verse 10 to verse 12 are really united together, rolled into the same picture to illustrate what worthy looks like. If I’m forced to choose, I’ll just tell you Paul has no qualms about establishing a pattern, then breaking that pattern without warning to express a really salient thought. That’s what I think he’s doing here.
So I’m going to connect, with Joy, just as the Apostle has to verse 11, being strengthened because of the expression of a broader thought, which in all Paul’s writings and, in really, all the writings of the New Testament, and really you could say all writings of Scripture, suffering with joy is a very, very common theme.
You say, wait a minute, I’m stuck on this matter of suffering. You talked about suffering. Where are you seeing suffering in verse 11? Well, Paul has piled up several terms here, strength, power, might, but all those words are aimed at a particular target for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, with joy.
The life of a true Christian, first of all, is fruitful. It’s abundant in good works.” Travis Allen
So what is it that draws forth the virtues of steadfastness and patience? What’s the situation that is most glorifying those virtues when they’re accompanied with joy? The participle being strengthened with all power. That’s a divine passage, to be strengthened. God gives the strength. It’s according to his glorious might, or literally according to the unstoppable force of his glory.
I love that the word is kratos. It’s a great word. Kratos, it sounds like what it means. Kratos, it’s don’t get in the way. You’re going to be run over by kratos. But it refers to the limitless omnipotence of God. That’s where we draw the strength from, the infinite power of God, an unstoppable force. It was that divine kratos, that creates and destroys. It brought heaven and earth into existence, and it also will destroy the same by fire. Same kratos that’ll judge the souls of men and angels.
That power, out of that supply, God gives to his children for the attaining of all steadfast and patience with joy. The results of his power at work in us, number one: steadfastness. hupomone, the ability to hold up under pressure. Meno is the word to stay or to remain and hupo is to stay or remain under something. It’s preposition, under something. So it’s to bear up under difficulty, hold up under pressure, hupomone. And then the word patience, makrothumia. Macro, you understand, is big, large and then thumia, anger, so long angered, literally, it doesn’t mean angry for a long, long time. It means rather, takes a long time for anger to come.
Paul keeps steadfastness, patience joined together, and he shows that this divine power enables the believer to bear up underneath the external pressures of trials and afflictions. That’s hupomone, steadfastness, but also to maintain internally godly attitudes, that’s patience, makrothumia, all the internal attitudes we struggle with because of difficulties, trials, afflictions of all kinds.
You can maintain an even keel on the outside when you’re talking to other people, but there are some of us, aren’t there, that inside we’re really struggling, boiling, resentful. I had a little cold this last week. I was tempted at times to be a little resentful of that. You know how much I have to do. Oh, Lord, you see this list? Lord said, yeah, that’s why I give you a cold, for the attaining, Travis, in your life of all steadfastness. Yeah. Not just bearing up, with patience. You need to grow in patience, Travis. Thank you, Lord. I mean it.
I’m not being flippant when I say that, he uses those trials and afflictions and suffering and conflicts and all those things to grow that in me and in you. Well, there’s financial trials, relational trials, social trials and tests. Concrete reality that Paul is praying for is that which will reify the power of God, putting it to use in a concrete and visibly manifest way. Paul is praying for a durable life for you, real strength from God which enables us to be stable and steadfast and stand firm and even joyful under difficulty. Who does that? Christians do that?
Paul is praying for us. Unless you diminish the prayers of this mighty Apostle for you, for us, or the elder’s prayer according to this for you, or mature Christian’s prayer according to these patterns for you, lest you diminish it, keep in mind these are the words of the living God. This is holy scripture.
This is how the Spirit himself prays for you, beloved. He’s going to produce this in you. You say, oh, but I am the weakest link. I’m that little flimsy leaf on the tree that is just drying up and about to blow off, “A faintly burning wick he will not snuff out and a bruised reed he will not break.” That’s our God. That’s his strength and his power that fans into flame what seems like it’s dying.
He will make a durable life out of your life by his power working within you. I’d rather go to war with a flimsy little leaf in my hand and face the entire Taliban and the whatever forces that are out there, the Russians or whoever, with a flimsy little leaf in my hand, but coursing through that leaf, the kratos of God, than an entire army at my back.
This is the true test of spiritual fruit. Whether it holds up during trials, whether it weathers the storms, whether it acts godly and righteously and impartially in making decisions and in conflicts, whether it endures, lasts, perseveres. You know the bad influences that were seeping into the Colossians church and have been seeping into churches ever since and have really set the pattern for much of evangelical Christianity Today.
They made a lot of false promises, offered more than Christ could supposedly give. Christ is great. I’m glad you have him and here’s what else you need. Claiming to teach more knowledge in addition to that which comes from the Bible with an interpretive grid that could bring the student deeper, take him higher. That’s what the Colossians were hearing.
They offered in Colossae and in the Lycus Valley, a communion with deity, a walk with the angels, a mystical experience of personal or ecstatic revelation. All of it, they said, was stifled under the strictness and the severity of the kind of Christianity that Paul brought to them. You need to break free from all that stuff. It’s too repressive. We got other offerings today, but they’re the similar kind of pattern. Be Christian and never say anything that seems unkind to anybody.
If anybody’s feelings are hurt, it’s because you did something wrong. It’s not true. Especially in a thin-skinned culture in time like ours, people can’t bear up under truth spoken in love. So Paul, as he prays for them, he knows these false teachers are trying to siphon away members of the Colossian church, and in some cases, they were succeeding. And it hurts his pastoral heart. It breaks the heart of Epaphras, who knows these people who evangelized them, minister personally to them, and then he sacrificed greatly in ways that they will never know.
But as Paul prays for them, he understands the Lord knows those who are his. 2 Timothy 2:19, Paul knows that everyone who names the name of the Lord abstains from iniquity, whether in iniquitous doctrine or lifestyle or influence. And it’s by this seal that the firm foundation of God stands, right doctrine, right practice, even under testing, even under difficulty.
So as Paul prays, knowing the fruit of the Spirit can be and often is, faked and mimicked by the enemy to draw away the naive, to draw away the proud and the disobedient, he draws attention to the litmus test of true spiritual fruit, durability. Does it remain? Does it last? Unlike false philosophies, which are always proliferating and prevailing then and now, the fruitful spiritual life of the Christian is a durable life. It lasts because it’s being strengthened.
Again, think of that channel, conduit, branch idea from divine, from the power, it’s being strengthened by divine power for a real concrete durability right here, right now, in real time, in the physical temporal world, where sin exists and is very active and where pain and suffering afflict us. Those who follow what is false, those who are peddling what is false, they can’t produce genuine spiritual fruit.
Anyone can look good at a glance on a sunny day, when sailing is smooth on glassy seas of ease. Send that vessel into the storm and you see what it’s made of. It’s the storms that test the mettle of a man. It’s the trials of life that draw out what’s really on the inside. It’s the afflictions that reveal the true heart, the conflicts that expose what’s really important, reveal what a person really values.
I’ve met those who seem gentle and kind on the outside, but for those who cross their wills and those who arouse their ire, it’s all-out war. Psalm 55:21, “His speech was smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil. Yet they were drawn swords.” Don’t let that be you, beloved. Watch for that.
The weakness, the ineptitude, the flimsiness, the fragility of what is false, it’s revealed in trial, it’s revealed in affliction, it’s revealed when the heat is turned up, when feelings are hurt, and you find no forgiveness is coming. This is what the false teachers were peddling. It’s what their doctrines produced, weak, flimsy people. But for the true Christians, as it was for these Colossians, or as these beloved Saints here at Grace Church, trials and afflictions are used by God to prove those who are his and to separate out those who are not.
Our confession, we quoted earlier from the London Baptist Confession, but in chapter 5 and section 5 it says this, “The most wise, righteous and gracious God doth often times leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations. Then goes on to list several kinds of temptations, gives the reasons for that which are these, that they may be humbled, and to raise them to a more close and constant dependent for their support upon himself, and to make them even more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for other just and holy ends. So that whatsoever befalls any of his elect is by His appointment for His glory and their good.” That is so true. That is so true.
Notice that line, “to raise them to a more close and constant dependence on Him.” That’s what we’re doing in the previous one to the full knowledge of God. Constant dependence on him and trials direct us back to him. It’s how all these things work together. This is what genuine believers look like. It demonstrates the genuine durability of his endurance and what is most remarkable, what can never be reproduced by the kind of teaching that will talk of good game, but leaves people fundamentally unchanged and comfortable and satisfied in their self-centered living.
This durability in trials and afflictions is with joy, the strength of God reified. It’s turn from abstract to concrete in the durable life of a true Christian, “the one who considers it all joy to encounter various kinds of trials,” James 1:2. Not that he’s perfect in this, but boy, these trials have a perfecting effect, don’t they? Amen.
Amazing, isn’t it? Amazing that in just a simple prayer report we can learn so much about the Christian life. The need of faith produced works driven by an increasingly accurate, precise understanding of theology, so that theology and praxis, the doctrinal, the practical, are joined together. This is genuine Christianity, except no substitute. The practical doctrine of Christian suffering, that God, by his good and wise providence, plans it and uses it for our good and his glory to test us, to prove us, to strengthen us, to make us durable, steadfast, patient, rejoicing in what others seek to escape.
What does that but the power of God in us? Others want to run from difficulty, leave what’s hard, not face what they find upsetting. We feel the same impulse. We don’t condemn them, we understand. Oh, but beloved, we look at it, in the eye. We pray to our God and he drives us forward to be faithful.
So a fruitful life, spiritual life, durable life. Finally, fourth: conquer reality. It really unpacks what walking worthy means and what pleasing him looks like is living, number four: A grateful life, a grateful life. And then just write in this phrase, deep gratitude that sanctifies God. Grateful life, number four, grateful life, deep gratitude that sanctifies God.
Fruitful, spiritual, durable lives are also deeply grateful. Verse 12, “Giving thanks to the father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light,” which sends Paul into further elaboration on that theme, piling up several further reasons for profundity of gratitude. “For he delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Concrete reality here by which Paul illustrates what a worthy walk looks like. It culminates in gratitude over what God has done for us, gratitude over the resulting benefit to us. We can unpack this, recognizing how blessed this life is, Psalm 1. Again, that rude idea of blessed is that life which is much to be envied and sought after or striven for. The blessed man delights in God’s law. What is that? But Colossians 1, terms increasing in the knowledge of God, he bears fruit in its season, or in Colossians 1 terms, bearing fruit in every good work.
Sleep does not wither or in Colossians 1 terms, it’s being strengthened during trial for steadfastness and patience with joy. “But the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish and so in the end, forever and ever.” He’s what? Colossians 1, giving thanks to God, giving thanks to God, knowing he could have been, if God had withheld his grace, he could have been swept away into the fire along with the rest of the wicked and perish with him. But because of God’s grace, the Lord knows the way of the righteous.
He’ll walk with the Lord forever. The grateful life is total contentment in God, utter satisfaction in God. It’s perfect peace with exultant joy because of what God has done, which means the results of the fruit bearing, knowledge, receiving, trial suffering life is a worshipful, eternally grateful contentment in God.
I don’t have time to unpack this fully today. We’ll look at it next week. But in verses 12 to 13, Paul lists what God has done for us. He’s qualified us, rescued us, transferred us and then in verse 14, Paul names the resultant condition that we’re in. We’re redeemed. We’re forgiven.
It’s quite remarkable when you think about it, because consider what our life was when he sought us, when he found us, we were all bearing the noxious fruit of death. Romans 7:5, “While we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law, we’re at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.” We were dead, dying people. There was no spiritual life in us.
“We were dead in trespasses and sins,” Ephesians 2:1. We’re being driven along by the lusts of flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and the mind, verse 3. We wandered about blindly as ignorant, soulless animals, rummaging through the trash to see what tastes good with the rest of the unbelieving world. Our thinking was bound by futility. Our understanding was darkened. We were alienated from God and from his life. It wasn’t until grace arrived.
There were no ideas passing from the true and living God and his mind to awaken us and change us and impart life to us. No communion. We’re isolated, left alone in the cold. Therefore, no wonder we had no durability. Trials all proved to be our undoing. We were weak, feckless, cowardly, resentful of any trouble and affliction. We saw no point in it. We tried to escape trouble if we could, rather than discerning that all our trouble was meant to drive us to God. We didn’t get that, and so we just tried to make peace with our trouble, call a truce, maybe just soak in it for a while, nurse our hurts and our grievances.
Our worship was entirely of ourselves, empty and dead as we were. We were pursuing all the idols we chase, which were dead like us. We didn’t honor God as God. We didn’t give him thanks. We were utterly cut off, disconnected from his life, ignorant of him, unjustly resentful of him, unjustly angry at him. Who are we little pipsqueak creatures? Shaking our fists at the sovereign of the universe.
So to recognize here in Paul’s teaching through this prayer report that by God’s incomparable and infinite grace he qualified us. He did the qualifying. He qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints and light, the light of truth and holiness and purity and excellence. And in qualifying us, he rescued us, plucking us out of our deplorable, pitiful little condition of condemnation and wrath and judgement, pulled us out of that, and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son.
To say that, means he redeemed us, he bought us back from the slave market, as it were, and it’s a slave market that we chose for ourselves in sinfulness. We wanted to be chained to slave master sin, rather than being bound to Christ in his easy yoke. He cleansed us, purified us from the filth of our sins, forgave us by the shed blood of his son Jesus Christ.
He took the King of the kingdom into which he transferred us. He took that King and put him on a cross instead of a throne and punished him instead of us. He erased our stains with his blood. He made us white as snow. Beloved, what remarkable kindness is this? What unheard of grace? There’s no story like this ever in the world, except here.
What undeserved favor has been shown to us? What mercy. What infinite condescension for this eternal God to condescend, take on human flesh and reveal himself to us, die for us. What tenderness with sinners Christ has shown. Paul would have the Colossians hearts and our hearts as well, filled with overflowing with gratitude to God the father, filled the overflowing with joy. And to what point and purpose? So “we sanctify God as God in our hearts.”
So we set him apart in our affections, as our chief affection, our summum bonum, our greatest good. And he’s set apart as holy, holy, holy. So we worship him for the God that he really is and come to him, as the father, he’s become to us. We trust in him and him alone and obey him with the gladness of heart and pray to him in confident trust.
So more to say, but our time is gone but let me just say this, Paul is ending here where he started, giving thanks to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ in verses 3 to 8, and he’d have us do the same, because gratitude sends us back through this process. It reinforces it. It sends us back through, and it serves to be the fulfillment of this entire prayer.
The fruitful life informed by the spiritual life produces the durable life and leads to the grateful life. And the grateful life goes back to the beginning and does it all over again. Fruitful, spiritual, durable, grateful, over and over and over. Good fruit glorifies God, makes him known by the good works that he produces in us. It’s unexplainable by any human means.
The full knowledge of God magnifies God to us. It teaches us who he is, what he’s like, with an accuracy and precision unparalleled, so we bear true fruit according to his will. Real strength that God gives is unstoppable. It shows up in the various trials that he sends our way. With many kinds of tests, he causes us to pass through, and thus his strength is reified, moving us from abstract concept to concrete reality.
And when we stand under those trials, when we pass through the test, we’re steadfast, patient with joy, God is assuring us all the way through that we really do belong to him. We’re his children. That’s what his children do, they endure the end with joy, because his life is present within us. His Christ is leading us; his Spirit is empowering us. All this results in a deep and deepening gratitude which sanctifies God and sets him apart from all false gods and sets his way apart from all lesser ways of living.
And all sub-Christian gospels and fake ways of doing Christianity and doing church and doing life, this is everything. It’s all packed in here at the beginning of this Colossian letter, and he’s going to unpack all the reasons why to turn away from any false way. As I said before, beloved, I’ll say it again, this prayer of Paul for the Colossians is our prayer for you. We love you so much in the Lord. He’s given us his love in our hearts, and then that love is expressed in love in prayer for you.
We’re lifting you up in our prayers and those, our prayers I mean, we’re not inventing anything new. We’re going right back to the pattern. We’re praying these things for you, and you can do the same. You can join us in the same kind of prayer life. Bow with me as we close.
Our father, we’re so grateful to you for giving us salvation, true Christian doctrine, giving us your son, giving us redemption in the forgiveness of sins. We thank you for inserting us into this process by your grace that we would bear fruit, increase and multiply in knowledge of you. So we live durable, faithful lives, pleasing to Christ, walking worthy of him, and all of it producing a gratitude in us that is unexplainable. But it is explainable, because when we look at what you’ve done, when we look at what you’ve accomplished, we’re just overwhelmed. We’re amazed. So we love you, father, we give our hearts to you yet again. We ask that Christ would be fully formed in us and Holy Spirit, would you do the work to magnify God to us and magnify Christ in us. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.