St. Paul’s letter to the Christians
at Colossae – Sunday 18th Jan 2015
The letter to the Colossians answers
many of the questions people have today about the Christian faith and how to
live it. Indeed the principal reason why Paul wrote to the Colossians was
because he wanted them to become mature
Christians – to be able to know, to understand, and then to put into
practise confidently but humbly, unashamedly but lovingly, their calling by God
to be salt and light in His world, servants, witnesses, His instruments and
channels of His Truth and His love, which are for all people that they might be
saved and become His people. Colossians answers many of the questions people
have about what it means to be a faithful Christian.
Some of
these questions, I know, are very much on the minds of people here; either
because they’ve raised them or
because they have been too afraid or embarrassed to raise them: you can tell a
great deal from what people don’t ask you or don’t say to you. And of course the
answers that the Gospel of the kingdom of Jesus gives to people are not always what they want to hear:
I do find lots of people, both outside the Church and even inside the Church,
holding views on Christianity – often quite tenaciously – that are clearly at
odds with the teaching of Jesus and his apostles.
Sometimes I struggle to know
where on earth they got them from; but more often than not their views are very
obviously the result of that person accepting as authoritative a higher authority than that of Jesus and the
Apostles: sometimes that authority claims to be sympathetic to or even
supportive of Christianity; at other times it actually takes pleasure in saying that it is plainly at odds with Jesus and
the apostles. And sometimes, let’s be honest, it’s just because the answer treads
on the eggshell of our most cherished likes and prejudices; or else, well, it’s
just plain inconvenient – what Jesus and the apostles say - for what I want to be or what I want to do. No wonder then people
often find the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, for a number of reasons -
social, intellectual, emotional and practical, really very hard; and so go off
somewhere where they will hear what they want to hear or else just give up on Christianity
altogether.
Over the
years I have come to value three particular signs of Christian maturity. We’ll find Paul talking about them or touching
on them as we study this letter; but they are to be found pretty much
everywhere in his letters and in the teaching of Jesus. I say ‘Christian’
maturity because these three are often – not always, but often – at odds with
popular ideas about what constitutes human maturity. The first is this: accepting
the ‘Lordship’ of Jesus Christ in our lives and evaluating the truth and the worth
of all other claims to authority for our lives by His authority – and not vice
versa.
And this covers all, every, area of our living and thinking –
whatever the cost to ourselves
socially, politically, financially, or whatever else. But if we do genuinely accept and apply His
authority in our lives we will find that he will never let us down, whatever
the world says or does that is at odds with him or in some way persecutes us.
Why? Well because ‘the One who is in you’, as the apostle John tells us, ‘is
greater than the one who is in the world’ (I John 4:4)
The second sign is this: desiring to know and to grow within the local family of Christ.
Desiring to know Christ more (through prayer, bible study, fellowship and
service) and to grow in our lives the fruit that changes not only our lives but
the lives of those around us. God chooses, says Paul, to bring others to know
His truth and His love chiefly through you and me: this is how God has chosen
to spread the good news: it is just as Jesus commanded. It is when others see
in far from perfect us changes for
the better in attitude and behaviour that are out of character for the people
they thought they knew, that Jesus is able to knock on the door of their lives. Whereas all the time we
are content to stay as we are, to keep Christ at arm’s length, to bow to the social authority that says that talking
about one’s faith is taboo, or to invest our time in things other than the
nurture and growth of our faith, we are at best remaining as spiritual babies
in need of wrap around care, at
worst actively, by our inactivity,
preventing others from coming to know the saving and life-giving truth and love
of Jesus.
Thirdly, not being ashamed to confess that
‘Jesus is Lord’ of our lives – however feebly or failingly we manage to get
it right. Over the years I have come to realise that fear of what others might think of us is, at heart, for most people,
the greatest barrier to their growth to Christian maturity.
Well, just
for the next few weeks, on Sundays, we shall be looking at this letter to the
Colossians expressing Paul’s great desire that his readers should grow to
maturity in faith. It is a letter in which I very much hope that you will find
some of the answers to some of your questions about the Christian faith. You
can prayerfully study these through the Study Notes accompanying the sermon:
better still, join the Ladies’ Monday afternoon Study Group or come to the Lent
Study Group on Monday evenings at 8pm in the church starting on 27th
Feb. Put it in your diaries now and let me know if you’d like to come. The
topic will be ‘How to grow in Christian maturity’, using Colossians as our
primary text; an eminently suitable topic for the season of Lent. Well I hope
you agree!
I just want
to say a few more things about the letter and in particular about these
introductory verses that we had for our reading this morning.
Colossians,
one of the shortest of Paul’s letters – did I hear one or two sighs of relief?
– was written from Ephesus somewhere between AD 53 – 55. Paul was writing to a
young church discovering what it was like to believe in Jesus Christ and to
follow him.
He wants to encourage them to explore this new reality and to frame
their lives accordingly. It seems that
some of them were being strongly influenced by the local mystery religions or by
Judaism, and tempted by others or themselves to bring in additional requirements for what it meant to be a Christian and to
follow Christ. This of course can be true of any age, with different
‘churchmanships’ preferring or even insisting that Christ is worshipped more
faithfully in their particular tradition or style.
But Paul will have nothing
of this and urges them to be content with the Gospel and with what they already
are ‘in Christ’, in belonging to Him and simply ‘taking up their cross’ and
following Him. So, knowing what the Gospel, the ‘good news’ about Jesus, is and then walking ‘in Christ’, i.e.
genuinely accepting His ‘lordship’ in our lives, is all that is needed. And the
truth, says Paul, us that you Colossians already have this: so don’t look
elsewhere for more.
After his
initial greeting in verses 1 and 3,
the next 6 verses are Paul’s prayer of thanksgiving for the Church at Colossae,
for what God has done for them and in them.
And here we learn a vitally important
principle to apply in our own lives: we
will find what we seek and desire in the Christian life if we begin not with
questions, not with complaints, not with excuses, but with thanks – thanks
for what God has already done for us
in Jesus Christ and what He will do
for us as we are prepared to give up
our independence and rebellion and accept His lordship in our lives. It is a heart full of thankfulness and a
voice full of praise that will lead us into greater understanding, greater
confidence, greater peace, greater joy, greater courage, and greater
effectiveness as Christians. People have said to Joe and to me, ‘Why is it
in your sermons you keep on about the cross and repentance?’ Well, because that
is where all of us need to keep returning in order to remind ourselves of why
we are here and to inspire us to greater self-sacrifice,
which is the only way to Christian maturity.
It is when we look at the cross
and see the love that God has for us that our thankfulness can flow again and
our lives become more effective channels of the grace of God – which is our
calling.
Paul v1 is not writing as just some private
individual but as ‘an apostle of Jesus Christ’, his God-given task - and refers
to the Colossians as ‘saints and faithful brothers and sisters’. Three things
are very important to note here: first, the authority with which Paul writes;
secondly, that the early Church understood itself from the very start to be a
family, a family intimately related in Christ; and, thirdly, that he describes
them, as elsewhere, as saints – not because they are especially advanced in holiness
but purely to describe their calling, which is to be ‘set apart’ for God’s
work. And the word ‘faithful’ here
means not so much ‘having faith’ but being ‘firmly committed’ to Christ. It begs the question, does it not? Is
there any other kind of genuine Christian than a ‘committed’ one? How often do
we hear people described in sneering terms as ‘committed Christians’. Next time
you hear that phrase, ask the person what they mean by it; and what on earth
the opposite is!
In verses 4&5 Paul tells them that he thanks God for their faith, their
love, and their hope; all these the result of what? Of hearing ‘the word of
truth’ v5, and ‘comprehending God’s
grace within it’ v6, allowing it to produce the faith, love, and
hope for which he thanks God. What we learn here is how God has chosen to bring
the Gospel of Christ’s redeeming and life-changing love to people: it is through us, through ordinary
Christians. Where its truth is recognised and its command obeyed it will
produce the fruit God requires. And what
we must understand is this: that the ‘Gospel’
is not primarily an invitation or a technique for changing people’s lives, or a
‘lifestyle choice’ (as I head on the radio the other day): it is a command to be obeyed
and a power let loose in the world.
And this is why it encounters so much opposition.
But as these
verses clearly show us, God’s grace
works primarily through the proclamation of the Gospel: and the proof that God’s grace has indeed taken
hold, by the working of His spirit (v8),
is in the presence and practise of faith, love, and hope in the local church
family, one desiring to grow to
maturity.
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