Grace and peace to you from Him who
is and who was and who is to come,
Pauls’ letter to the Colossians encourages us to think about
the worthiness of Christ and the value of our Christian faith. That’s our topic
this morning – the necessity of Christ and the benefits we receive from the
faith he gives us through the Holy Spirit.
Christ is very dear to us; our faith is precious. The
congregation at Colossae had the same high regard for God’s spiritual blessings
to them. Paul began his letter by thanking God for the Christian faith and the
Christian love they had for each other. He was pleased that the gospel bore
fruit in their lives – and also all over the world.
Paul wanted the Colossian congregation to keep on bearing
fruit, so he admonished them to continue living in Christ. You may have noticed
four key phrases that Paul used at the beginning of our text this morning to
describe mature Christian living. The first is “being rooted in Christ.” We
think of a tree with deep roots. The roots anchor and support the tree. They
also store food and serve as the means by which the tree receives oxygen and
water. If you’ve ever studied biology or tended a garden, you’ll have had
first-hand experience of how important roots are. Jesus is our root. He
supports us and our spirits receive nourishment from him. He is our source.
Just as it’s hard to take a tree with strong roots out of the ground, so it is
hard to remove a mature Christian from Christ, since God is everyday rooting us
more deeply in him.
The second key phrase Paul uses is “being built up in him.”
Think for a moment of a new house going up in a subdivision. The construction
workers build it up carefully piece by piece, according to a plan. So God’s
Word builds us up. First by showing us our faults and our need for him, then by
convincing us that God exists for us and that we are forgiven in Christ, and
then by showing us that God’s forgiveness means our salvation, and then by
sending us out to do good works that are pleasing to him. We are built up in
Christ.
A third term Paul uses is “strengthened in the faith”.
Everyone experiences buffets and blows. But since we are strong in the Lord,
who suffered every calamity we suffer and yet came out triumphant, hardship
doesn’t break us. In fact, it strengthens us, because it brings us closer to
our Lord’s strength. The faith of the apostles belongs to us. James, the
brother of our Lord, said, “As you know, we consider blessed those who have
persevered. You have head of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord
finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” God uses our
faith to strengthen us. It’s not an abstract or theoretical faith, but a living
faith that will keep us close to the Lord until we reach our heavenly goal, so
we ask God to give us strong hearts, not faint ones.
You may have noticed, by the way, that Paul wrote about
teaching. We grow stronger as we stick with what we’ve learned from God’s Word.
Excursions outside the Word may interest us for a time, but they weaken us in
the long run. Strength comes from the God of scripture. We’ll go back to this
point in s minute or two.
A fourth key phrase is “overflowing with thankfulness”. We
Christians are grateful people. I once heard someone say that gratitude
releases the power of God. We’re thankful to God for our salvation, for the
blessings in our daily lives, and the hope that the Lord will go on treating us
as his beloved children. Moreover, we don’t express our thankfulness drop by
drop. Instead, it flows out of our hearts. As Paul said in another letter, “In
everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning
you.” Thankfulness delights God and pleases our neighbors.
So Paul wants the gospel to flourish in the hearts of the
Colossian Christians. They should be mature followers of the Lord, rooted in
him like an old pine tree, built up in him like the sturdiest house, strong as
Paul and the apostles in the true Christian faith, and overflowing with
thankfulness. God will keep on establishing our lives in him, so long as we
stick with him, for we are his children, who need daily building up and
strengthening in Christ.
Now, I want to keep our focus on the Colossian congregation
for a moment, because they had some difficulties that could happen to anyone. A
few of the people paid attention to false teaching that somehow had got into
the life of the community. These heresies took many forms. Some said that Christians
ought to follow strict rules about food and religious customs. Some encouraged
the worship of angels. Others emphasized human traditions and human wisdom,
arguing that believers needed secret knowledge to live full lives with God. All
of them tried to convince people that salvation required more than the life and
work of Christ. Paul was concerned that a few people in the Colossian church
had begun to think that something was lacking in the Christian faith, so he
wrote to argue against false teachers who were ready to supply what they
thought was missing.
As I say, this sort of thing can happen anywhere. Many
features of the modern world tempt us to think that there’s something missing
in the Christian faith. Advertising, marketplace values, emphasis on living by
the letter of the law – all these features of present day life bring us
benefits, but if we live for material things, we’ll come to think that new need
more than Christ. Nobody openly persecutes Christians in North America, but trends
of the time subtly work on us, so that we may think that Jesus is only for
Sundays, and the rest of the week belongs to urgent practical matters.
With the power of Jesus on our side, we resist the spiritual
temptations of the day and live rooted in him, established and built up in the
sturdy Christian faith. In order for this centeredness in Christ to happen, the
Lord convinces us that the Christian faith doesn’t lack anything, that Christ
is all we need. This is the reason Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians.
He uses eight phrases in the first chapter to prove the
sufficiency of Christ. We’ll look at each one briefly.
To begin with, Paul says that the fullness of the deity
dwells in Christ in bodily form. This means that everything to do with God takes
place in Christ. God’s power over nature, his wisdom, his forgiveness and
compassion, his indestructibility all occur in Christ. Not a portion of God’s
qualities, but all of them, dwell in Christ.
Paul affirms that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
this means that if we want to know who God is or what he thinks or what his
nature is or his intentions for the human race we have only to look at what the
Bible tells us about Jesus.
Thirdly, Paul claims that Jesus is the firstborn of all
creation. He came before the stars and the light and all creatures. Everything
else came after him.
Fourth, Paul tells us that Jesus created everything and that
he is before all things. Jesus created all the angels and the rules and the
basic principles of the world that the Colossian people were tempted to
worship. Paul hints that there is no point worshipping something inferior when
the real thing is available to us.
Then Paul states that everything holds together in Christ.
The universe isn’t random disorder. It follows a rational plan with a set
pattern and certain laws. Actions have consequences; causes have effects;
decisions have outcomes. Everything that exists, everything that happens finds its purpose and
meaning and place in the universe in Christ. He is like a thread that joins
everything together.
Paul then tells us that Christ is the first-born from the
dead. He is referring to Jesus’ resurrection. Paul means that God has power
over death and that he uses his power first of all in the case of Christ and
then on behalf of everyone who believes in Christ. When we look to God in
faith, we look to the source of life and learn that he has conquered death for
us. Besides that, Paul wrote that God reconciles everything to himself in
Christ. He isn’t angry at the world; he see his creation as good; he takes
delight in the people he has made. No barriers exist between God and the human
race except the ones we human beings put up without knowing what we’re doing.
Finally, Paul declares that God has made peace through the
blood that Christ shed on the cross. This is the central fact of the Christian
faith. Christ’s death reminds us of our own sins. Because of the cross, we have
a definite, unvarying approach to God. We lay our sins before him with the
assurance that he will cast them away because of Jesus’ sacrifice.
So these are eight points Paul brings up to instill Christ’s
worth in the minds and hesrts of the Colossian Christians and to assure them
that nothing is missing from the faith God has given them. The fullness of
divinity dwells in Christ. Nobody has done or can do more. To look beyond him
is to trifle with the inferior.
Paul doesn’t end his argument here. He tells us that God
passes the fullness of Jesus’ deity on to us. He releases us from the sting of
eternal death; he puts off our old sinful natures and gives us new lives in
Christ.
The various distractions that tempted the Colossians –
ceremonies, strict rules, secret knowledge, and invitation to angel worship –
didn’t make people alive. Christ made them alive.
It’s the same with us. We shouldn’t look for more from the
marketplace or technology or advertising than they can provide. These features
of our lives help us but they don’t bring us salvation or eternity. We are made
alive in Christ. We don’t let the secular ways of thinking that surround us
take over our minds. We learn from Paul that Christ is sufficient and that he
will get us safely from here to life in eternity with him. In his name we give
thanks. AMEN.
The peace of God that passes all
understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge of Christ Jesus.
AMEN.
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