Colossians 1:3-8
It is a good spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving that we find in our text this morning. Turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 1, as we start to make our way through this short epistle, just start making some progress into it.
We’re at the very beginning of the letter, just past the greetings and the salutations in verses 1 and 2. We’re entering into a section of thanksgiving that begins the long introductory section that goes from 1:3 through 2:5.
As we learned last time, Colossae is one of the cities of the Lycus Valley, located in what’s known today as the country of Turkey. Colossae is a city that Paul had not yet visited in his life up to this point. He may have visited Colossae in the Lycus Valley after his release from his current imprisonment in Rome, the first Roman imprisonment. Now we don’t know that for sure, but there are indications that he did.
Epaphras is a convert of Paul’s, converted during Paul’s three-year ministry in Ephesus, and he was God’s chosen vessel, gifted, prepared and sent by the Lord Jesus Christ to bring the gospel to the Lycus Valley.
And it was through Epaphras three churches were planted in that valley. They were growing even at this point into maturity: Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae.
The Colossian church, by the point that Paul writes the letter, is only ten years old. It’s facing a formidable threat. This kind of alluring and yet pernicious form of teaching is troubling the Christians. It’s distracting them. It’s turning them away from Christ, and it’s not by calling them to deny Christ outright.
These alluring, pernicious doctrines would say, no, keep Christ. He’s important, he’s essential, but they want to add other things to Christ, other philosophical viewpoints, add other practices. You will achieve a greater understanding and a greater experience of Christ and a greater success and victory in the world if you follow what we’re telling you.
Soon enough, these add-ons really served to supplant Christ, to turn the hearts of some, to drift away from Christ altogether because the message of simple faith in Christ just wasn’t working for them. It just wasn’t addressing, maybe, some of their deeper problems, taking them to their higher heights that were promised by these other “isms” and schisms and doctrines.
So Epaphras, he sees all this developing. He’s concerned about it. He loves the people, but he needs some help. He’s dismayed at the threat to the stability and the steadfastness of the church. And he’s heard, now, of Paul’s imprisonment. He knows that Paul’s been moving a lot, moving around, and now he’s going to be in one place at one time for quite some time.
So he says, I’m going to go ahead and make a trip, makes a trip west from Colossae to Rome to seek his counsel, to get some instructions so he can return home, confront the threat, and really, essentially, rescue his church.
Paul, for his part, received Epaphras, took the threat seriously, so seriously, in fact, that he immediately sat down to write this epistle. He’d already written the Epistle to the Ephesians, probably wrote the personal letter to Philemon, too, who was one of their number. And so, following the pattern of the Ephesian epistle, he wrote to the Colossians, sent it out right away by the hand of Tychicus.
Paul shares the concerns of Epaphras, which is evidenced in this epistle, in its content. But in reading this from the start, you don’t get the sense, really, of alarm, do you? There’s no anxiety as he starts the letter, no fretting tone.
It’s kind of in contrast to the letter that he wrote to the Galatians, when he said, “I wish I could be present with you now so I could change my tone because I am perplexed about you.”
And that was entirely appropriate, writing to the Galatians, because many of those people that he knew personally, people who he loved, who he discipled, who he taught, they were wholesale abandoning the gospel and embracing another gospel, which is not a gospel at all.
But that’s not here. We don’t hear that, here. Here in Colossians, Paul sees that he has time to move at a, a little bit of a different pace. He can write to them with a far different tone.
Epaphras is there in Colossae. Well, he’s with Paul right now at the writing of the letter, but he is a present minister of the gospel there in Colossae. So is Philemon, two very good men of the helm, steady hands at the wheel.
And based on his friendship with Epaphras, his communications with Epaphras prior to this current crisis, but now that they’re facing this crisis, Paul knows, based on what Epaphras has told him, he can write to this dear church, write to them as genuine believers. He’s a well-respected older brother writing to his beloved siblings, and he tells them what he thinks about them.
He reminds them of who they are and what has happened to them and why. And it’s all feeding his heart of gratitude and love to God, praise to God for what has happened in their midst.
Let’s take a look at those opening verses. We’re going to cover verses 3 to 8 today, but I’m going to read starting in verse 1 all the way through verse 14 just to kind of set the tone of this opening section.
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ in Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father.
“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.
“For this reason also, since the day we heard, we have 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.”
If you know what’s coming in the rest of the letter, you know that he has dropped little indications of what he’s about to address, but it’s not in any confrontational way. It’s in a way that reminds them of who they are, what’s happened to them, who God is, what he’s done. It fills their heart with remembrance, draws them to gratitude to see that God has been working in their midst. This is not only a beautiful and so encouraging way to start this letter, but this is so strategic.
He begins this way with a report of how he thanks God for them and how he’s praying for them because he is really, strategically, he’s identifying his audience. He’s identifying the true targets, the true recipients of this letter. He’s clarifying to whom he speaks, who he’s writing to protect.
Having called them saints and faithful brothers in Christ in verse 2, he proceeds in this thanksgiving report to give the evidence, to set forth the evidence of who they are right before them, right from the start in this thanksgiving report, verses 3 to 8.
Now, giving thanks, notice Paul is not commending the Colossians. He’s not commending them for their faith in Christ or for their love. Those are good things. He loves to see them, but he’s not commending them for it. He’s acknowledging it, but he’s not praising them for it because they’re not the reason for themselves. They are not the cause of themselves. They are not the explanation. God is. You see that?
Every true believer understands this. No believer takes credit for his own faith. No believer seeks to be praised for his love because every true believer knows, the love that I show to other people or to God is not from me. I would have no love were it not for God showing love to me first.
No true believer wants to be recognized for bearing fruit in his life or for understanding of the truth. The heart of every true believer resonates with Paul, here: humble, grateful, humble to the floor, grateful to the heavens, giving all praise and glory to God because he’s done it, not them.
Listen, whatever your doctrine is, and if you understand the doctrines of grace, that’s what the doctrines of grace ought to do for you. Not to fill you with pride in your knowledge, but to humble you to the floor because of what God has done, because we undeserving sinners have been recipients of his kindness, his forgiveness, his grace.
Who are we, and and more importantly, who is he? Holy, holy, high above the heavens, the creator of all things. And we have the audacity to offend him with our sins, to not honor him as God and give thanks? We ought to be snuffed out of existence. No, worse than that, we ought to be cast into eternal Hell and yet he’s done something very different to us, the very opposite to us. He’s drawn us into the heavenlies in Christ.
By reminding the Colossians of this, they, go back and read what he says, here, in this thanksgiving report. And following this, they see how he prays for them. And as they read why he’s giving thanks to God, they are able to reap a great reward of assurance because they find themselves held fast by God himself, knowing that he is the cause of them. he is the One who brought them this great salvation.
And beloved, if we could see the same thing, we too are going to be fully assured and confident, knowing that God is what explains us. He is the reason for us, not we ourselves. He’s done it, and that should lift your hearts. You should be floating through life untroubled, unfazed by any trial, any trouble.
Look again at verse 3. Again, he says, “We give thanks to God,” and here he calls God “the Father,” repeating that term “Father,” but here it’s “of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now remember the verse before, Paul called God, father, there, but he did so in relation to us, not in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We said last time in, in the first verse, Paul introduced his loyal partner, younger brother in the faith, Timothy. Paul calls Timothy, our brother and then, as we noted, he refers to the Colossians as faithful brothers, as well.
So if Timothy is brother to Paul, then the Colossians as brothers of Timothy, well, you see the connection. They’re also brothers of Paul, right? There’s a family connection, here.
And to sharpen the point and to draw forth the implications, to firmly ground our assurance, Paul introduces the progenitor of the entire family, saying “Grace to you and peace from God, our Father.”
He’s the one who’s given birth to us. We’re all brothers because we have one father. We’re all brothers; Apostles to new converts, everyone in between, whatever stage of maturity, male, female, slave, free, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free. Whatever we are, we’re all brethren, and God is our one father.
The Colossian church, by the point that Paul writes the letter, is only ten years old. It’s facing a formidable threat. Travis Allen
Oh, and one more family connection to point out. Our father is also the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And they’re not joined together so specifically, here. He separates them by that verse. He calls “God our Father,” and then he says God is also “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” because he’s father in a different way to the Lord Jesus Christ than he is to us. He’s still Father.
So if he’s father to the Lord Jesus Christ, though in a different way than us, and he’s father to us, then what does that make Jesus Christ? He’s our what? Brother. Paul is an elder brother, yes, but Jesus Christ, as verse 15 says, he is “the firstborn of all creation.” Verse 18 says he’s the “head of the body of the church because he is the firstborn from the dead.” The word head, kephale, it means superior in rank, superior in authority.
So kephale or head means not just head, where all the thinking happens, though that’s true. Christ is the one who’s thinking for us, and we’re just following after his thought. But that’s not the way it’s used. It’s used in the Scripture and in the New Testament in terms of superior in rank, superior in authority, preeminent.
Then he uses a term that means preeminent, prototokos, firstborn, preeminent. As creator, he is before all things. He’s preeminent over all creation, verse 17, but he is specifically, verse 18, firstborn from the dead. And that means he has first place in everything: in creation and in redemption. He has first place in everything.
And this is why Paul appends the title kyrios, Lord, to his name in verse 3. He’s drawing attention, there, to his sovereign Lordship. “We give thanks to God the Father of the Lord of us,” is how it literally reads, Jesus Christ.
So Paul wants us to see this connection, here at the start. As he’s giving this thanksgiving report, he wants us to see the connection, to know the family relationship which heartens us from the very beginning. This great, preeminent one with sovereign authority, preeminent supremacy of rank, he is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, a man who shared flesh and blood with us.
He’s the unique and only Son of God, begotten, not made. He was anointed by God as the Christ of God. He is prophet, priest and king, and he is the rightful Lord of our lives and yet he is our brother. He knows us and he draws us into intimate relationship and knowledge and fellowship with him. If God is our father and God is the father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, then, is our brother, and we are in this family.
This is the only family that lasts for eternity. And by God’s grace, because of the finished work of Christ, because of the application of that finished work to us, by his Spirit, you know what? We bear a resemblance in the family. We bear a resemblance to the father, who brought us into being. We have a resemblance to his son, into whose image we are being made.
And this is the strategic importance of this thanksgiving report in verses 3-8, to ground these believers’ assurance by reminding them of who they really are, not according to flesh and blood, not according to family lineage, here, not according to wealth or status or any prominence or any position in society, not because of money, not because of fame, not because of accomplishment. It has nothing to do with that.
It has everything to do with what’s happened to them; a decision made from eternity by the will of God. And that’s quite a contrast with those who are trying to lead them away from the family, those who bear no resemblance to the family, but are really pretenders, false professors, deceivers.
Now, as we get into our outline, we just want to note the assurance that Paul has provided for the Colossians, and we want to grow in the discernment that that gives them by looking at the reasons for his thanksgiving.
So I’ve got three points. First point, we look for the fruit of salvation. Number one, we look for the fruit of salvation. “We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,” and so the clearer way to translate that is to connect the adverb, always, with the thanksgiving.
Paul’s not saying, as this translation puts it, they’re not praying all the time, but it’s actually whenever Paul and Timothy are praying for the Colossians, they are always giving thanks for them, that’s the idea.
And this is the way I feel about Grace Church. You’re always on my mind and on my heart. But when I bring you to mind and you’re in my heart, I have so many reasons to give thanks. That’s in my heart. So I could say when I pray for you, I’m always giving thanks. There’s so much to give thanks for, to see the work of God in our church, in our midst. I’m so thankful, and I hope you are, too.
There are other churches like that for me, churches that I’ve known and, and have fellowship with. Whenever I think of them, I give thanks for them. The pastors of those churches, I give thanks for them. That’s what he’s saying, here.
But what follows through verse 8 provides the evidence, the reasons for his thanksgiving. God is their father, the Lord Jesus Christ is their brother. They’re members of the same family, and he knows that.
And he starts out with two reasons, here, in verse 4. He says, “Since we heard,” pointing back to the report of Epaphras, his friendship with Epaphras, his communication with Epaphras, “since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints.”
Those are the first two virtues in a triad of Christian virtues. He talks about faith and love in this verse, verse 4 and then the third virtue is hope, comes in the next verse. But here he begins with faith in Christ and love for the saints as the evidence of the fruit of true salvation.
First, we look for the fruit of faith in Christ Jesus. By the construction here, Paul is really identifying two components of the fruit of faith. He’s talking about the bare possession of true saving faith on the one hand, but he’s also talking about the manifestation of that faith by believing in all things having to do with Christ.
“Faith,” as Paul says in the companion epistle, Ephesians, “faith is the gift of God.” It’s not as the result of works. That is to say, it’s not generated from within us, but it does operate within us.
It engages the whole of the man, the whole of the woman, the whole of the soul, the whole heart is the way the Bible puts that: mind, will, and emotions. It’s by faith that we understand with the mind and we believe. It’s by faith that we, we love what we’ve come to understand and believe. Our affections become engaged by what we intellectually know and understand.
Our emotions, then, properly align. They become useful to us in service and not a hindrance to us, not a distraction to us. So the mind, and the affections, and the emotions and then by faith we obey, and we obey willingly. There’s the will engaged in true saving faith. When we obey, we obey cheerfully and trustingly and gratefully. We don’t begrudgingly offer service to our King. No, we run to serve him. Our wills are driving us forward and our affections and our emotions are fueling the fire, just pouring coal into the engine.
But true faith like this, saving faith, again, it’s not generated from us. We’re not the explanation of it. God is. True saving faith, like described there, is from God. It’s granted as a gift of his grace. And as such, faith has certain identifying markers. There are clear, telltale indicators that that comes from God. That is not explainable at a human level. Something has happened to that person who believes like that.
The devil may try to counterfeit faith. He does all the time. False professors may try to claim faith. Deceiving heretics are sent by the devil to enter into churches and try to promise the benefits of faith and replicate faith, but none are able to do so successfully because they have no faith, because they can create no faith, and therefore they can manifest no faith.
So those who possess true faith will manifest true faith. This manifestation of true saving faith is in the realm or the sphere, and that’s kind of the indication of the language, here, using the preposition en instead of ace, not to Christ or direct object of Christ, but it’s in the realm or the sphere, in Christ Jesus. That’s where true saving faith is manifest.
What am I saying? I’m saying that it’s who he is, and it’s what he taught, and it’s what he commands, it’s how he lived his life, the example he put before us and everything he instructed. It’s how he instructs us to live, that’s what we do. That’s what we follow.
It’s clear in the Great Commission, right? We’re to make disciples, and we are to baptize them according to the trinitarian pattern that our Lord Jesus Christ laid out there. So that means with everybody who would be a disciple, we teach them the Trinity, teach them about the name, singular, Matthew 28:18-20, Great Commission.
The name, singular name, is about the essence of the true God, a God who is one, a God who is of single, simple spiritual essence. And sharing in that name and in that essence, there’s a defined plurality of persons, three persons to be exact, no more, no less: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We teach that to those who would be baptized.
There’s a lot of teaching that goes into sharing the gospel, preaching the gospel. It’s not, throw a tract at them and then, pray a prayer with me; there’s instruction, there’s careful teaching, there’s precision. Don’t let that intimidate you. You, if you’re a Christian, you got all this. You know more than you think you do and when you open up your mouth to try to teach others, you know what comes out? Trinitarian theology.
Jesus also said in that Great Commission in Matthew 28, we’re to teach those baptized disciples after we baptize them. We’re to teach them to observe all that he commanded, which refers to all that he said and all that he taught during his life in ministry. That encompasses all the things written about him, Luke 24:44, that we’ve recently studied, everything written about him, in the law of Moses and the prophets and the writings.
What is that? The entirety of the Old Testament that reaches back all the way to Genesis 1:1 and looks forward to everything that Jesus has taught since ascending into heaven, things taught by the Spirit, as Ephesians 3:5 says, revealed through his holy Apostles and prophets.
If you’re not picking up what I’m laying down here, true faith believes the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, from the table of contents to maps and everything in between because that’s what it means. To possess faith in Christ Jesus is to manifest that faith, to live in that sphere, that that sets your priorities, that that defines your terms.
So you don’t just pick any definition you want of love or faith or prosperity or success. It all comes from Scripture. It’s our rule book, it’s our canon, it’s our standard.
Now does that mean we understand everything in the Bible equally, fully? No, of course not. We have a lot to learn, but we are willing and eager learners. We’re teachable people. And when we are confronted with what the Bible says, and we’re taught so that we can understand it, we believe it and we embrace it and we obey it.
We don’t argue with the Bible. We don’t distort the Bible to fit into our own preferences and opinions. We don’t conform the Bible to our own suppositions or intuitions or feelings. No, as Jesus said in John 10:27, “‘My sheep hear my voice, heed my teaching.’”
When he speaks, and we don’t understand it, the problem’s not with him. He’s been clear. Problem is with us. So we pray and we work and we study so that we can understand what he’s saying. “‘My sheep hear my voice,’” he says, “‘and I know them and they follow me.’” They possess faith; they manifest it by following him.
The fruit of salvation begins with true saving faith. The possession of it, yes, but there’s a manifestation of it in understanding and believing and loving and obeying the voice of Jesus, which echoes from start to finish in the whole of the Bible.
Second, we look for the fruit of love for the saints. We look for the fruit of love for the saints. All of this is in that first point, is that we look for the fruit of salvation. In doing that, we look for faith in Christ Jesus, and we also look for the fruit of the love for the saints.
The fruit of love for the saints is, we can put it this way, it’s a necessary fruit of faith. That is, if you possess faith in Christ, you will of necessity manifest that faith in loving the saints. Why do I say, of necessity? Because you love what Christ loves. Christ died for the saints, lives for the saints, makes intercession for the saints. Why? Because he loves them.
So the fruit of salvation is love for the saints, to share his heart for his people, for his family, to want to be around them. And you know what Christ has done? He’s organized his body at a local level into little local things, little local assemblies, congregations, that he calls churches.
And he gives those churches a plurality of qualified men to serve as elders. He gives them the ordinances, he gives them the Word, he gives them teaching, he gives them doctrine and understanding, and gives them the discipline of the church. He gives them these different elements. And he says join it, come underneath its authority, submit to one another in the fear of the Lord. Follow the teaching. Learn, grow, serve one another in love. Mature together, building yourselves up in love.
And I can’t tell you how many times I hear people say, Yeah, I’m a Christian. I’m just not going to join a church. Well, why not? Christ died for the church. He loves the church. He wants you to be part of. Yeah, that’s, that’s where I draw the line. I’m not an institutional guy. Oh, really? You know better than the Lord? I guess you don’t love what he loves and I guess that calls your claim to love him and to belong to him, it calls it into question. It makes your profession suspect.
In stating this reason for thanksgiving, “the love which you have for all the saints,” Paul is once again referring to a love that they have as a possession. It’s a thing that they have. The word, have, is a verb, there, and it’s an abiding possession. The aspect of the verb for have, echo, it’s a present-tense verb. That means it’s an ongoing possession. They have it continuously. They’re exercising it all the time, ongoingly, increasingly. They are characterized by loving.
This virtue of love, as we know from the Apostle of love, John, this love comes from God, 1 John 4:7. It can only grow as the fruit of the Holy Spirit, as Paul says in Galatians 5:22.
So the abiding, continuing possession of this love, which is a gift of God by the Holy Spirit, Romans 5, it grows only as a fruit of the Spirit, and it’s evidenced, the evidence of this love is manifest by a love for God’s people. Paul specifically says “for all the saints.” And what’s interesting, here, in the syntactical construction, he’s not talking about just a general love for Christians as a group, like as a whole or as a movement. It’s obviously true. We love Christians wherever they are.
But Paul is referring, here, to the Christians that they can see, that they can know, maybe some new Christians or immature Christians who are not fully sanctified yet, who can have the tendency to sin and offend and hurt other people. Paul’s saying that’s where your love is really proven to be genuine. Do you love the people in your midst who are true Christians, and yet they offend you, hurt your feelings, say something that is rude, not nice? What are you going to do then?
He’s referring, here, and the construction’s very clear, he’s referring to a specific and an individualized love for each and every believer, for each saint without any partiality, without exception, without a preference or a prejudice.
John says, back to the Apostle of love, John says, “If someone says I love God and he hates his brother, he’s a liar. The one who doesn’t love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” Are there professing Christians who do that, who are lying in their profession by claiming to love when in fact they hate? I’ve heard some professing Christians say, oh, I don’t hate her. I just can’t stand to be around her.
I’ve heard a pastor, of all people, say something like that. Oh, I have to protect myself, keep my blood pressure from going up, keep my heart rate down. So I’m going to avoid that person, stay away from that guy because he upsets me. Oh, really? Man, it’s even worse when you justify shunning someone, when you justify avoiding someone for the sake of self-protectiveness.
Really? What is that if not the very spirit of the age in a wicked act of self-love that’s cloaked with hypocrisy, the mask of niceness? What does it mean when a professing Christian avoids what’s uncomfortable for herself? When he doesn’t mind being unloving and unkind to another believer?
John doesn’t allow that, not at all. He says in the very next verse, he says, “This commandment we have from him.” He didn’t say, this suggestion we have from him. “This commandment we have from him, that the one who loves God must love his brother also.”
Okay, God says anything that ruffles your feathers, are you going to avoid him? You’re going to shun God? Some Christians, professing Christians, do that. There’s certain sections of their Bible they won’t go to. Some sections are well-worn, other sections they’ve never been to. But others, who feel very comfortable reading all about God and talk a lot about their love for God, they will still turn away from a brother or sister.
No, John doesn’t allow that. He says by the same active, intentional love that we demonstrate in our worship and our obedience to God and our affection for him, if it’s true love, you know what we do in the midst of the body? We set self aside, and we actively and intentionally love our brother.
And what is that love? That is to do what is good for another, what is best for another. So it’s not about sentimental feeling, though there’s often sentimental feeling involved in our loving when it’s affection, right? But it’s easy to love when everybody’s nice and polite, when everything’s going swimmingly well.
You know when our love is tested? When someone offends, when someone sins. And so what does love look like, then? Lovingly confront. Bring it to the attention of somebody. Follow the steps of Matthew 18. Help a professing believer see, because every true believer wants to be free from sin, to live in righteousness and holiness and not offend with our words, with our behavior. No, we don’t want to bring any reproach to Christ. So we welcome the confrontation of another believer. That’s what love looks like.
Once again, this is, this doesn’t happen in the world. In the world, everybody avoids each other. Or when they can no longer avoid each other, what do they do? Kill each other.
But this is tell-tale evidence of true salvation, this unprejudiced love for all the saints without any preferential treatment, each individual saint without exception is loved.
Any lesser love, which is niceness or politeness or pleasantness, oh, that’s easy to reproduce by the natural man. Oh, it’s easy to produce by the natural woman apart from the spirit. Even the rankest pagan could be nice to other people.
But this love, which grows in its affection and fervency and ardor for each and every believer without regard to personal preference, well, that’s a love that only comes from God. This love which causes us to do the hard thing, to say the hard thing, to make the hard call, that’s a love that comes from God. It can’t be mimicked or successfully counterfeited.
You see this when believers meet one another. They share an affinity for each other, and as they grow in knowledge and relationship with each other, they spot the family resemblance in each other. By the same Spirit who indwells each one, they detect true faith and true salvation. Their God-given natures resonate with one another like a note hit on one piano resonates in the piano of the other.
That’s what happens in our hearts. They’re drawn to each other, and they’re drawn for mutual good and for edification. Despite having to work through offenses, difficulties due to remaining sin, occasional hurts and wounds, they still love. They forgive each other, help one another, disciple each other, help each other work out repentance, care for each other. Practically, spiritually, they love.
As I said, that kind of love is completely and utterly foreign to this world. It’s strange, alien, and yet this same Christ-rejecting, loveless world longs for this kind of love, and they appreciate it when it’s shown, and get this, they see it on display, characteristic of those who are truly saved.
And you say, how can that be? I mean, isn’t a love like that, like you’re describing, doesn’t that leave someone vulnerable to be taken advantage of? Doesn’t that leave the one who loves like that, takes down the armor, loves, let people close and in, doesn’t that leave them wide open to hurt? We could go further and say, isn’t it a bit reckless and dangerous to insist?
Oh, and I am insisting that true saving faith in Christ Jesus is manifest by obeying all that he said and following after all that he did, which means loving as he loved.
Isn’t that reckless? Isn’t it dangerous? Yeah, it’s dangerous, very dangerous, but it’s not reckless. The faith and the love that I’ve described was possessed of and manifest perfectly in Jesus Christ, and it got him killed.
Dangerous, sure. He was maligned, scorned, rejected, crucified, but it was not reckless. It’s calculated choice. Hebrews 12:2, “It was for the joy that was set before him that he endured the cross, despising the shame.” Why? How can you do that? Because he looked ahead then to where he is now, taking his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Haven’t we, brothers and sisters, haven’t we, according to the same pattern of our Lord, haven’t we made the same choice? We have, indeed.
That brings us to our second point. These points get shorter as we go here, so don’t worry. But the second point, another reason that Paul gave thanks with the Colossians, which really serves to strengthen their assurance and increase their discernment, number two, we seek after the hope of salvation. We seek after the hope of salvation.
Don’t interpret that as salvation by works, that we are going to earn our own hope and realize it, fulfill it. No, we believed in this hope from the very beginning in the gospel. But we strive after this hope, the fulfillment of this hope, and long for this hope all through our salvation.
Most people in our world trade future glory for present comfort, present enjoyment, fun, pleasure. They all want to enjoy their best life now. They don’t want to wait for God to fulfill his promises. Pie in the sky is how they demean God’s gracious promises. It’s how they malign him and his gifts.
But Christians are those who bear the fruit of salvation because they’ve been made willing to sacrifice comfort in the present for glory in the future. That’s how Paul put it to the Romans in Romans 2:6 and following. He said, “God will repay to each according to his works, to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and anger,” will come to them.
The selfishly ambitious that Paul speaks about, there, those who do not obey the truth, that’s not describing the irreligious. He’s talking about religious people, like those who professed Christ in Colossae, but who were leading others astray by their life and by their doctrine. It’s those who do good works, fruit of faith, the practice of love, they trade their present comfort for future glory, honor, and immortality; and that’s why Paul speaks in Romans 2.6 of those who must persevere in doing good.
True faith believes the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, from the table of contents to maps and everything in between. Travis Allen
It’s not easy; it’s hard. We have our own flesh to deal with, our own temptation to deal with. We have the solicitations of Satan in the demonic realm, speaking enticing words to allure us away from the truth. We have all kinds of temptations from the world, all the people of the world who don’t get us at all, drawing us away.
But perseverance in doing good, that’s what explains us. And why do we do that? Because of hope. We’ve staked our future on the promises of God. What we’ve sought from the very beginning, what we seek after still, is the eternal life, glory, honor, immortality that’s promised in the gospel.
Look at verses 5 and 6. This faith in Christ, this love for all the saints, is explainable “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.”
Paul speaks, here, of hope as something concrete, as an actual thing, as something of substance, as something they could stand on, something they can build their life from. Hope, it’s a summary term, here, but it’s like a bucket that God has filled with everything that he has promised in the gospel.
And he’s taken that bucket of his promises, big bucket, and he’s stored it in his own personal treasury, guarded by his angelic warriors, the angels, guarded by his own omnipotent strength, and he’s secured it for you.
Paul uses that verb apokeimai to portray that hope is something that’s set aside. It’s, it’s tucked away. It’s reserved there. It’s in your account, in Fort Knox, guarded, safely stored. But better than Fort Knox, it’s, it’s in heaven, and God keeps it for us there, safe and sound, where no marauder can barge in, no thief can break in and steal, no decay can come in and infect it or corrupt it. That’s where it is.
Same apokeimai verb secures Paul’s hope in, he speaks of in 2 Timothy 4:8 as he’s anticipating his head being removed from his body after that second Roman imprisonment, where he was in 2 Timothy. He speaks to Timothy, he says, “In the future there is laid up for me,” apokeimai, “the crown of righteousness.”
Again, another summary term to talk about everything that God will reward to those who fear him, to the faithful. Stefanos is the word, there, for crown. That’s a victor’s wreath, those who’ve triumphed in the games, those who’ve triumphed at war. “And the Lord, he will award that crown to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who’ve loved his appearing.”
This is the hope of the gospel. Yeah, forgiveness of sins, the gift of perfect righteousness. Those things are necessary. They are by which God has justified us, because of which we’re reconciled to God. We’re joined to Christ by the Spirit; we’re made members of God’s family. But what else? We look forward to the hope of the resurrection from the dead. Resurrection! Study that doctrine. See it illustrated and played out in who Jesus Christ is. There’s glory ahead for us, folks. Immortality. Read 1 Corinthians 15. Remind yourself.
What else? No more sin. The very presence of sin, all that ails you and troubles you and clouds your mind and distracts you and entices your heart, gone. And the only impulse that you have in your heart forever is goodness and righteousness. Those terms, goodness and righteousness, you know what longing for that produces? Everlasting energy for the good, to build, to construct, to create. Perfect immutable love, perfect immutable desire for good. That is the true freedom of a free will. The absence of sin, no more evil choices, only good ones: that’s freedom.
The hope of the gospel? It’s not streets of gold, playing endless rounds of golf, but the hope of the gospel is God himself. Perhaps we could say it this way. It’s “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” 2 Corinthians 4:6. That light, undiminished by sin, undiminished by any nature that’s fallen, gone.
If we are possessors of God, believing his promises, that our eternal hope is certain, Hebrews 11:1 says this is the essence of faith, really. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; it’s the conviction of things not seen,” but longed for.
So having been assured by faith that we have what we hope for as a current possession, but it’s waiting for us, promises of God to be fulfilled in God’s timing, in God’s way, look, we’re not reckless at all in believing, are we? We’re not reckless in our loving, even though we know it may lead to danger, hardship, suffering, even death.
No, we’re, we’re striving for it, seeking for it by believing in what we hope for. We’re free now to walk obediently and fearlessly by faith in Jesus Christ. We’re free to walk in love. We’re free to be the conduits of God’s love through us to others, loving deeply, sacrificially, eagerly, zealously, because we know that whatever blowback we get for loving others, it does not matter. We’re not going to suffer any loss. We will never be ashamed.
Faith in Christ Jesus, love for all the saints, it’s explainable because of hope, because we hope in God, believe in his promises. There’s no loss for us.
Paul describes this hope as that which they had previously heard. They didn’t previously hear it just before he’d written this epistle or just before they were threatened by the false apostles. Paul takes them all the way back to that blessed day, that moment when they heard and understood and believed the gospel, which he calls in verse 6, “the grace of God in truth.” He’s taken them back to their salvation, to their conversion. And their hope is good and true. Their hope is a shared, universal, productive hope.
What’s true for these Colossians is true for us, too, and so we’re going to put our points in the first-person. First, ours is a good and a true hope. It’s a good and true hope. Paul identifies this hope as that which they had heard, which means it was conveyed to them by means of a spoken message, or we could say biblically, by preaching.
They heard the Word, the gospel of truth, this hope, they heard about it by the preached word. Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.” And that hearing, in context, verse 14 says, comes by means of preaching. “How then shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?”
So they heard this message by means of a preached Word. Yes, Epaphras was a preacher. He’s called here, as we’re going to see, a syndoulos, which means a fellow slave. He’s called, here, a diakonos, which means a deacon. But man, this guy was a preacher.
They heard the message by means of Epaphras’ preaching, and as they heard it, they heard it and recognized it for what it is. By the grace of God, they heard it as the word of truth. So it’s a true message further clarified as the gospel. So it’s a good message, gospel, literally, euangelion, good news, good message, a preached Word that is good and true.
We hear a lot of good messages today, lots of gospels being passed around, spread everywhere. The so-called good news of almost-Christianity has been shared and liked and followed ever since the Garden of Eden.
And now there’s such thing as an Internet. It accelerates all these gospels, blowing them all through the ether like digital dandelion seeds. And these gospels may sound good, but we have to ask, are they true? Come to Vegas, spend thousands of dollars playing games and go home wealthier that Croesus. Sounds good, true? Not according to the statistics.
We’ve become well versed in our philosophy, bring it back to Colossians. In addition to Christ, add this philosophy, add this viewpoint, and you will share in the fullness, the pleroma, of deity. Read the books we’re reading, follow the followers and the influencers that we tell you are important, that you must listen to, the podcast you have to get into, and you will be in the know. You’ll be part of the movement. You’ll really be taking the world and making it bow the knee to Christ the King. You just need a little bit of this, little bit of that.
This is one that’s really popular. It’s, again, focused on all the elementary principles of the world. Severe treatment of the body. Get up at 4:00 a.m., crush your workout, jump in an ice bath, down a protein shake before you head out the door. Dominate in business and crush it.
Oh, but keep it real by wearing flannels so no one knows how much money you make. But make tons of money because you got to sustain that farm-to-table lifestyle and keep up with the better-body family cults out there, becoming as crunchy as you like.
To the uninitiated, which I’m thankful to hear is most of you, crunchy means something these days. Now the older term for the hippies was granola. Remember that one? Today it’s crunchy. Basically the same thing, but it is now, crunchy is the gold standard of good parenting. All-natural, no processed foods. Churn your own butter, make your own bread. It’s a neo-hippie movement, environmentally conscious, eco-friendly. It’s all about sustainability and green technology and holistic medical practices that look a lot like shamanism.
It’s a constant stream of this out there, folks. I know you know what I’m talking about. All of it perpetrated on the young and the naive, all promising them good. But are they true? What has God really said in his Word? Is true godliness a matter of food and drink? Paul said, “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Now that is good, and it is true. What they previously heard and learned from Epaphras is true. It’s the Word of truth and it is good. It is the gospel.
Second, not only is it a good and true hope, but it is a shared and a universal and a productive hope. Shared, universal, and productive. By shared, we mean everyone who believes shares the same hope and seeks after the same promises. We share this family resemblance.
By universal, we mean all Christians everywhere experience the same effect in seeking after this hope. By productive, look at verse 6. Notice how what is shared and universal is abundantly, concretely productive. It does something. There is a true power, there. The gospel has come to you, just as in all the world, also, it’s constantly bearing fruit and multiplying, just as it has been doing in you.
Two comparatives, there, with a double use of the subordinate conjunction kathos, just as, so, just as the Colossians could see in their lives, in their church, in their midst, total contrast from the, the culture and the society around them, which Epaphras could see, take a picture of, or I guess back then, paint a picture of. He could hear, he could tell Paul about.
Same way, everywhere else in the world where this gospel hope has been believed and embraced and obeyed, it’s doing the exact same thing. This gospel causes constant fruit-bearing, fruit according to the Holy Spirit.
It never runs out of energy, either. It keeps on multiplying, keeps on increasing. It’s contrary to what we know as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the law of entropy, which is very apparent in our physical world. All energy dissipates in natural processes.
This hope does not do that. It’s spiritually productive, it’s energetic. It does not dissipate in its energy. It never suffers loss, but it increases in its productivity.
Why? Because it’s powered by the eternal, omnipotent, unlimited God. His power is driving it. His power, which never suffers loss because God is unchangeable. He can’t change. He can’t lose energy. He doesn’t bleed off energy. He’s an eternal, infinite supply. That’s what flows through this hope, through this gospel into the church, into Christians.
Now, that productivity driven by spiritual energy, the power of God, leads to fruitfulness, increasing in fruitfulness. But it doesn’t happen apart from our participation. That is to say, we’re not passive in this growth process. We’re active participants, partners, fellowshippers with God in the process.
And that’s also the universal experience of all Christians. It was very common in the ancient world, we see testimony to this in Scripture itself, where it was a belief of the ancients that the God of some other place was the God for that place. But when you get to our place, you worship our gods because our gods are protecting us or giving us strength. And that’s where, you know, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
But God continually showed his power, Old Testament to New, in saying, I am the God of heaven and earth, and I will flex my muscles and show my power and do what I do and execute all my will wherever I want to. I will call Cyrus to do my bidding. I’ll call Nebuchadnezzar to go in and execute my judgments. I will call whoever I want to whenever I want to. I’ll even use a donkey to rebuke an errant prophet. I’ll do what I want, and I’ll do it when I want, and I’ll do it wherever I want.
And that’s why this gospel is unhindered and unlimited by any culture, any place, any time, any way. It’s not hindered at all. In fact, you know what the last word in the book of Acts is? The very last word in the book of Acts is the word unhinderedly. You know what unhinderedly, it’s a weird adverb in English, but it’s cool in Greek. It’s referring to the gospel that goes forth from Paul, there in prison. He’s chained. The gospel’s not. God has power everywhere. His gospel is productive everywhere. It’s a universal gospel. It’s shared, and it produces, and it produces in us through our own participation.
Point number three, we grow in the grace of salvation. We grow in the grace of salvation. Let’s get a running start in verse 6, Paul gives thanks that “the gospel has come to you. It’s bearing fruit, it’s multiplying just as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard and understood the grace of God in truth,” there’s grace, “just as you learned it from Epaphras,” there’s growth, “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.”
So Paul knows through Epaphras, the beloved syndoulos, that, his fellow slave, beloved by his master, Epaphras is a faithful diakonos of Christ. He’s a deacon. In that culture, it’s not the deacons we understand that serve in our churches. A deacon was a broader term. It referred to a highly competent minister. Maybe an ambassador could be a deacon of the government, but he is an important, highly competent minister of Christ.
And what this, what this is pointing out, here, is this man, Paul is trying to, to build up this man in their eyes, not by flattery, but by true words about Epaphras. This man bears a a trustworthy testimony to Paul. So Paul knows without a shadow of a doubt that what Epaphras says about the Colossians is true, reliable, faithful.
Paul knows that these Colossians have heard the grace of God in truth, that they’ve understood the grace of God in truth, that they have learned and have begun to imitate the grace of God in truth.
They received the Spirit by effectual hearing, or in the language of Galatians 3:2 and 3:5, the “hearing with faith.” In Jesus’ words, they have “ears to hear,” evidence, proof positive the Spirit’s miracle of regeneration has taken place. They truly possess a new nature. They have ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to understand, to respond. With those God-given ears to hear, equipped with a new nature by the new birth, these Colossians are not only able to hear, but to understand the grace of God in truth.
And further still, to learn, the verb manthano, they acquired even more knowledge. They kept on hearing, kept on understanding, line upon line, precept upon precept, discovering, growing, all from the preaching of Epaphras and other faithful pastors and elders in their midst.
That’s how the grace of God works, energizing the life, causing growth. So we participate in our own fruitfulness, in our own increasing productivity. There’s endless power and energy coming from God to us through the Word, through the preaching, through the teaching into our lives to fuel us.
The grace of God is so clearly, manifestly active in these believers that Paul had no doubt they’d received the gospel, just as in all the other churches all over the world, they demonstrated the same evidence that the gospel had taken root. They’re showing the same signs of life.
The Colossians bore the same family resemblance to every other Christian in Jerusalem, in Judea, all the cities of Samaria like Damascus, Antioch, Tarsus, all the cities in the towns of Galatia that Paul had been to: Lycea, Phrygia, Asia Minor, here.
And we now have twenty centuries of evidence from all over the world, don’t we, “every tribe, tongue, people, nation,” that what we’ve seen in these few points this morning, what we’ve learned from these few verses of Paul is that the evidence of the true grace of God is universally recognized.
So when someone comes into your midst and says, oh, I’m the exception, when you don’t see faith in all that Christ Jesus has said and trusting in him and obeying in him, when you don’t see them loving or they’re partial in their love, when you don’t see that the hope of the gospel is driving their lives, setting their priorities, changing their schedules, don’t you believe them for a moment.
There are no exceptions. All of us look the same, we bear the same family resemblance. True Christians bear the fruit of salvation, faith in Christ Jesus, love for all the saints.
Paul circles back in verse 8 to restate that this faithful Epaphras disclosed to him the ways in which their works of faith by the true grace of God are springing forth from a Spirit-produced love. He says it again. It’s remarkable.
But it is normal Christianity. True Christians, they’re banking on the hope of salvation. It’s a hope that produces spiritual fruit in their lives. It’s a hope that keeps on bearing spiritual fruit. It shows no signs of slowing, but keeps on increasing, just as this hope does with all Christians, everywhere, at all times. No exceptions.
True Christians are those who keep on hearing, keep on learning, keep on understanding the grace of God taught to them by gifted, qualified, faithful men of God from whom they are able to learn, whose lives they’re able to see, whose lives and families they’re able to know, whose habits of faith they’re able to imitate, Hebrews 13:7, whose faith they follow: “Imitate them.”
So, beloved, look for the fruit of salvation. Look for in your own life and in the lives of others and when you find the fruit of salvation in your life, let it strengthen your assurance. It didn’t come from you. You don’t believe because you’re smart. You don’t love because you’re nice. You don’t hope because you’re idealistic.
If it’s faith, love, and hope that’s described by Scripture, defined by Scripture, it didn’t come from you, it came from God. Whatever else is going on in your life, whatever else is going on in the world, whatever else is going on in your body, your family, your finances, your work, let that sink in.
You belong to God. He’s done a work in you, and “he who began a good work in you will,” what, “complete it,” right,
“to the day of Christ Jesus.” Let that hearten you in a disheartening time. Let it encourage you in discouraging times, that the grace of God is never in vain, and God’s power is at work in you.
And Paul lays out this thanksgiving report, as I said, also to help us discern the spiritual condition of others because sadly, not all have faith. There are some, dare I say many, who are false converts, false believers. Their lives look nothing like this. Some of them are dangerous. They want to make merchandise out of you.
But many others are more innocuous. Their presence, though it doesn’t seem troubling at first glance, their presence is weakening to the strength of the body, weakening to the unity of the body. It’s like wax filling in the cracks between the clay; it doesn’t adhere. They hinder the growth of the body.
But people like that are to be loved, pursued, cared for, perhaps evangelized. Maybe it is that they just need to be corrected, brought back to a thanksgiving report like this, so they know who they are, what happened to them, who did it.
But when you look with these eyes of discernment at others, and you see this evidence of spiritual life, when you see the fruit of salvation and faith and love, and it’s because of the hope of the gospel, beloved, give thanks to God. Let that drive your thanksgiving, your joy, because you see it in others.
I see the evidence of true saving faith right here at Grace Church in so many of you. The evidence is abundant because you constantly bear this kind of fruit, and you keep on increasing in the knowledge and understanding of God.
You’re doing church, if I could put it that way, practicing the habits of church life, more accurately said, you’re doing that so much better now than you were ten years ago or twenty years ago. Me, too. We’re learning together, we’re growing together. And this is not because we’re just so smart. We’re not that smart. We know each other. God is great. That’s what explains us.
As we’re going to see next week, Paul’s about to teach us how we can turn from our gratitude and our thanksgiving and this joyfulness and let it become productive to fuel our supplication for one another in the context of this thanksgiving. So that’s what we’ll look at next week as we all continue in the true grace of God. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you so much for what you have done in our midst, causing, being the cause, the reason for the faith in Christ Jesus, yes, faith directed to Christ, trusting in him, trusting in your great salvation and all you’ve accomplished in Christ, yes, but it’s a faith in him. It’s a faith that’s exercised in the sphere of Christ, in all that Christ touches, which is all of life. It’s in him we live and move and have our being. And so that obedient faith, that knowledgeable faith, trusting faith, a willing faith, you’ve done that in us. We thank you for that.
We thank you that we love one another. It’s a constant refrain I hear from people who visit our church for any length of time. When they look around in this congregation, they say, well, these people really seem to like each other and love each other. I say, Yeah. It’s because God has done a work in us, united us as brothers and sisters in Christ, making us all children of one father.
Father, you’re the ever-loving God with an infinite supply of love, and that love comes to us and through us. It’s resident within us; it waxes stronger and stronger in us, and it is a joy to love one another as you’ve loved us. Let us never lose sight of our hope, that blessed hope of the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ and the hope beyond that of a fulfillment of all of our longing met in you. We love you; we praise you in Christ’s name. Amen.