Expository Studies in Colossians

A series of 12 sermons on the New Testament Epistle to the Colossians preached at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California by Ray C. Stedman in 1986.

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Where Hope Begins

WHERE HOPE BEGINS

by Ray C. Stedman

It is with a sense of excitement and anticipation that I begin with you a series of studies in Paul's letter to the Colossians. This is one of the prison letters of the apostle, written, most scholars believe, while he was a prisoner in Rome, although one scholar makes out a good case for an imprisonment in Ephesus. It is not really of any great importance as to where the apostle was when he wrote this letter: the important thing is the message of the letter itself. It was written to a church located in what we now call Turkey, in the Roman province of Asia Minor, about one hundred miles south and east of Ephesus. Near Colossae were two other cities, Laodicea and Hierapolis, located about ten miles apart on the Lycus river.

The church at Colossae was one of two New Testament churches (the other was Rome) that Paul never visited before he wrote to them. It was founded under the ministry of a man named Epaphras, who is introduced in the opening verses of this letter. Of these three cities, Colossae was the smallest and the least important. But this church at Colossae became the founder of other churches which started up in the nearby cities. This letter also is connected closely with the letter to Philippians, who was a businessman friend of Paul and a citizen of Laodicea.

In many ways the letter to the Colossians is very similar in its teaching to the Ephesian letter. Some of you may ask, if that is the case, why do we need a letter to the Colossians? The answer is, because it is not quite the same. Colossians has a distinctive message, one that is extremely relevant to people living in our area today. It is primarily a letter of hope: the hope that comes by means of the gospel. At the time it was written, there was a serious threat to the faith of the Colossians. A garbled mixture of religious error, arising from both a Jewish and Greek background, was threatening the church.

Such an uncertain theological atmosphere, where different religious ideas compete with one another, is always an indication of great unrest in society. It indicates that people have lost their bearings and do not know quite what to believe. That condition is reflected in the letter to the Colossians and you will recognize it is what we face today. We are assaulted on every side by cultists and various philosophies, all of them claiming to be the truth. Thus the letter to the Colossians is very important in the New Testament record.

In the opening verses the apostle emphasizes the word hope, in marked contrast to the hopelessness of the world of his day. How hopeless many people are growing today! Yesterday I received a phone call from a friend in another state seeking comfort and advice on how to handle the suicide of a very dear woman friend. This woman had been for years an outstanding Christian, but her husband was an alcoholic who had brought great grief to the family. He had stopped drinking for a year but, much to his wife's chagrin, had gone back to it again. Last week when he returned home from a late evening of drinking he found a note from his wife with but two words---"No more." Going out into the garage he found her dead in the family car.

How do we explain that kind of hopeless despair, especially even among Christians? Today, teenage suicide is rising to unprecedented heights. Alcoholism, drug abuse, a hurtful lifestyle, homosexuality, financial failure, broken marriages, false friends and failed health are some of the causes for people losing hope. Some here today may be struggling to keep a sense of hope. The glory, the zing, has gone out of life. That is how the Colossians felt when Epaphras first began to speak the truth of the gospel to them.

Alexander Pope was the author of the oft-quoted proverb, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." But it is really not true. At times we all lose hope, and it is not always because of loss or failure. Right here in Silicon Valley there are thousands of affluent people, living in luxurious homes, driving expensive cars, but if you talk to them you will discover that they are dead inside, empty, hollow, without hope.

Just a few weeks ago I learned something about one of our former elders which I had not known before. Years ago, before they ever became Christians, this man and his wife invited my wife and me to dinner. We spent the whole evening talking about Christ and the gospel. We had a delightful time but had no idea of the seriousness of their situation. After we left that night the man opened his heart to Christ, but the story I heard recently was that for that same night he had planned his own suicide. Had he not heard the gospel that night he would have taken his own life. He went on to become a glowing, joyful Christian and served as an elder with us here for quite a number of years.

The Colossians too were once hopeless but they had found hope. And with it they found two other enormously valuable commodities, called faith and love. Listen to these opening words of the letter:

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae."

These days it is necessary to point out that when the Scriptures talk about "brothers" and "brethren," it always includes sisters as well---"sistern," we might say. If we understood the biblical truth about mankind we would not have gotten into the awkward situation we find ourselves in today, where we wonder whether we ought to call a woman a "chairperson" or "chairwoman," or what. That entire situation would be happily taken care of if we observed what the Bible says. "In the beginning," it says, " God created man, male and female he created them, and he named them man." Thus, women have as much right to the word "man" as males do. They can properly call themselves the "sons of God" just as men do, and they can properly include themselves in the term "brethren" as much as men do. Both are "men" in that generic sense. If we understood that there would be no need, as some are threatening today, to republish the New Testament, eliminating all so-called chauvinist terms.

Paul continues,

"To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints---the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and which you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you."

Did you pick out the three words that are crucial there: faith, hope, and love? We could say these are favorite words of the apostle. He uses this triad in several of his letters. In 1 Thessalonians he writes about "your work of faith," "your labor of love," and "your patience of hope." Many of you have already remembered that wonderful triad at the end of 1 Corinthians 13, "And now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love."

Yes, love is what is needed in our world. But according to this Colossian statement love comes from faith. And where does faith come from? The NIV puts it this way: "the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and which you have already heard about in the word of truth." It is extremely important to recognize that these wonderfully warm words, faith, love and hope, are related. Notice that two of them are four-letter words (love, hope), so not all four-letter words are bad. These words mark what we could well call qualities of authentic Christians. If you are really a Christian, if you are one of the "holy and faithful brothers," the mark will be: you have faith and love which spring from hope, and that hope is found in the gospel.

Paul calls the Colossians "holy brothers." Many think of the word holy as a synonym for grim. Holy people, they feel, are sanctimonious, long-faced killjoys. Remember what one little girl said on seeing a mule for the first time: "I don't know what you are but you must be a Christian; you look just like grandpa!" But the word holy really means "separated unto God"---or in modern terminology, "claimed by God." Christians are holy because they belong to God. This morning we sang "Bless His holy name." Why is God's name holy? Because it is his name. We call his book the "holy" Bible because it is God's book. We call Palestine the "Holy Land" because it peculiarly belongs to God, more than any other spot on earth. In that sense, therefore, "holy" has nothing to do with how you act but more with who you are. You belong to God. By faith the Colossians had believed what God said, therefore God claimed them for his own; they belonged to him.

Paul also calls them "faithful brethren." Here is the first hint of the struggles going on in the church at Colossae. There were strange doctrinal ideas floating about in an effort to upset these people and turn them away from their faith. But Paul is encouraging them to remain "faithful brethren"---consistent, dependable, genuine believers, because of a constant supply of love and hope from the Spirit (verse 8). By the way, that reference in verse 8 is the only time the Holy Spirit is referred to in this letter. It is not because the truth about the Spirit is not important, but Paul is not focusing on the Spirit's work in this letter; rather he is dealing with the results of the Spirit's work, faith and love arising out of renewed hope.

The important thing is to notice that hope produces faith, and faith in turn grows into love. Hope is the root, faith is the plant, and love is the fruit. Thus, hope is foundational. This gives rise to the question, what produces hope? We all desperately need hope. Without hope men lose the desire to live. We have all had hopeless moments when we felt like saying, "What is the use of going on?" What, then, produces hope? Here is Paul's answer, "hope stored up for you in heaven and which you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come unto you."

Hope is awakened by the gospel. That is the good news. The gospel addresses itself to losers. Not to the successful, but to the failures, the weak, the empty, the lost among us---and it gives them hope. When nothing else can give them hope, the gospel will. But how does hearing the story of Jesus: his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection and his coming by the Spirit, give hope that awakens faith and stimulates love for others? The answer is in this one phrase, "the hope stored up for you in heaven."

To most, that immediately suggests life after death. After this life we will go to be with the Lord and all the glory of eternity will then be ours. That is a wonderful hope, but that is not what this phrase means. If we take it that way, it gives credence to Marx's accusation that "Religion...is the opium of the people." If all the gospel offers to Christians is that they will go to heaven when they die, this may well tend to make them content with their lot on earth and do nothing to correct or improve their conditions. That is the accusation of the Communists. They say we are putting people to sleep, turning them away from changes they should make if only they got stirred up about the problems and injustices of society. That charge is not without some merit if this is all the gospel offers.

But though it is a wonderful truth that there is hope of life after death, this translation obscures what is really being said. The singular word "heaven" is what misleads us. What the Greek text actually says is, "hope is available to you in the heavens"---plural. This term "the heavens" (or, as it appears in the letter to the Ephesians, "the heavenlies"), is a reference not to heaven after death, but to the invisible spiritual kingdom that surrounds us on all sides right now. Thus, what this is saying here is that the gospel reveals there is hope for us immediately coming from that invisible spiritual kingdom which surrounds us right at this very moment.

What is that hope? It is patent all through the New Testament. Jesus himself said, "Let not your hearts be troubled for I am with you." That is the hope that is awakened by the gospel. It is the good news that right now, whatever you are facing, in your moment of weakness peril, or hopelessness, Jesus is available to you. His strength can be imparted to you, his wisdom granted to you to steady you, strengthen you and make you to stand. That is the hope of the gospel. That is what awakens faith.

Faith means to act upon that hope. Faith means you believe that Jesus is there. At once you feel your spirit steadied and strengthened and you are able to go on and take whatever is coming. We have all known what it means to have some dear friend come along in a time of trouble to stand by and steady and encourage us. If that friend is the Lord of Glory himself, what tremendous hope there is in that fact. That is what this means here: the hope that is in the gospel. Hebrews 11 says of Moses that "he endured because he saw him who was invisible." That is what Paul writes to the Colossians about: an invisible reality that is available right now in Jesus. He is there, ready to help and encourage.

Paul also calls this gospel "the word of truth." That is what marks its realism. Dorothy Sayers, the great Christian philosopher, said, "The test of any religion is not whether it pleases us or is comfortable, but whether it is true." Does it accord with reality? Does it do what it says it will do? That is the test.

The great thing about the gospel is that it is true. It really works. It does deliver people. When you lack hope, feel defeated, cast down, or betrayed, Jesus stands there, available to you. That is the word of the gospel. He offers to go with you to face the drug pusher. He offers his love and his acceptance when loneliness or horniness tempt you to wrongful sexual activity. He offers to steady you in times of pressure and stress. And he offers forgiveness and restoration if there is any failure.

That is what the apostle now affirms, saying to the Colossians in verse 6:

"All over the world this gospel is producing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth."

I have come to see that this is the most neglected truth among Christians. I am always amazed at how many Christians, facing difficulty and trial, give up because there is no human help available. The woman I told you about earlier who took her own life, knew about Jesus. But she did not avail herself of him at the moment of pressure. She gave up, and in that moment of unsupported stress did a deed that she could not reverse.

I confess that in my own life it is easy to look only for human help, forgetting that God's help is instantly available to me. We are like the little girl who kept calling for someone to sit with her in her bedroom at night. Her mother told here, "Now you will be all right. Don't worry. The angels will be with you." "But I don't want angels," the child replied, "I want people with skin on their faces." Many of us feel that way. We do not want invisible help. We are angry and resentful if human help is not available. But God will sometimes deliberately deny us human help in order that we may learn how much greater is the help waiting for us from his invisible kingdom.

Further, Paul says, this help works anywhere in the world. I think this is one of the most amazing proofs of the authenticity of the Bible. I know all the apologetic arguments for biblical authenticity, but I have to confess they do not help me much at times. All of it can be argued away by various intellectual approaches. Apologetics do not really steady and strengthen our faith very much. Oh, it helps at times to relieve some of the problems we face in working out our faith, but the primary proof of Scripture is, it works! Right when you need it, and anywhere in the world.

My wife and I were in Northern Ireland this summer, meeting with young Christians in the most troubled part of that troubled country. At a conference one evening there was an interview with a man who had been a member of the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, the terrorist group that has caused so much bloodshed in Northern Ireland. He had been a wild and rough man, raised in a Catholic area, and who would have nothing to do with Protestants. He joined the IRA and became, in fact, what was called "an enforcer." He was responsible to see that orders for terrorist acts---murders, bombings, or whatever---were carried out even if he had to break the legs of the person who refused to carry them out. He had been in prison several times and during one of those prison experiences somebody gave him a New Testament. Reading it, he heard for the first time of the grace of God and the availability of Jesus Christ to forgive his sins.

He received the Lord, and was wonderfully changed. We heard him that night, interviewed by a Protestant pastor whose cousin had been killed some months before by the IRA. The men ended the interview by embracing one another before one thousand people in riot-torn, strife-filled Northern Ireland. What a change the gospel makes!

That kind of thing had been happening also in Colossae. It was happening all over the world, wherever the apostle went, and it still happens today.

The proof of the Colossians' faith was love, the apostle declares in verses 7 and 8:

"You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit."

Just as though I were there, Paul seems to say, Epaphras has been teaching you the truth. Epaphras was the man who started it all. We do not know much about him, although he is mentioned in a couple of the other letters of Paul. He evidently was a layman, and had probably been part of the group that Paul himself taught when he was resident in Ephesus for three years.

There, as Acts records, Paul rented a hall (the school of Tyrannus), and for five hours a day, six days a week for three solid years he taught the Scriptures. I would have given almost anything to have attended that special curriculum, taught by Paul. Many who were present went out through all the provinces spreading the truth, and among them was Epaphras. He came into the insignificant city of Colossae and probably started a home Bible class. He had friends also in Laodicea and started another class there and another one over in Hierapolis.

Epaphras simply told the people who came the truth about Jesus: the meaning of his death, the glory of his resurrection, his accessibility to them by means of the Spirit who came on the day of Pentecost. That began to excite them and awaken them in their hopeless condition. They found hope again, and faith and love came along with it. A healed community of beautiful people came into being and caught the attention of many in those pagan cities. That is God's favorite way of evangelism.

As you hear the Scriptures expounded here on Sunday, perhaps some of you may be thinking that if you only knew the Bible like one of the pastors, then you could be of use to God. But don't you see that you already are the important people, the true evangelists? You are out there, rubbing shoulders with people who have no hope, hearing their sad stories, meeting them in the streets and in the stores, having coffee with them. You are the ones who can spread the word of hope. That is how the gospel spread throughout the Roman province of Asia, and hundreds of churches came into being. The gospel has power to change, power to awaken, power to give hope, and out of hope springs faith and love. What a remarkable thing it is!

This area is our corner of the world. We too can see these very things happening here. What excitement will come into your life when you reach out with the good news, the only source of hope in the world, to the hopeless ones around.

Prayer

Our Father, thank you that you are the God of hope. You have sent a word of truth into this broken, despairing world. What a remarkable thing it is, in a world where everything comes to us biased and slanted by those with axes to grind, to find a place where there is a word of reality, a word of truth that we can trust! Send us now back into our world, to our friends, our neighbors, the hopeless ones around us, and help us to demonstrate, by the joy and peace of our lives, that we have found the answer, we have found the place of hope. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Catalog No. 4019
Colossians 1:1-8
First Message
November 30, 1986

Copyright © 1995 Discovery Publishing, a ministry of Peninsula Bible Church. This data file is the sole property of Discovery Publishing, a ministry of Peninsula Bible Church. It may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file or online versions must contain this copyright notice. This data file may not be copied in part, edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays or other products offered for sale, without the written permission of Discovery Publishing. Requests for permission should be made in writing and addressed to Discovery Publishing, 3505 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, CA. 94306-3695 or directed to webmaster@RayStedman.org.

Growing Up

GROWING UP

by Ray C. Stedman

We are now well into the Christmas season, and everybody is enjoying the return of the great symbols of our faith in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus. The central symbol of Christmas, of course, is a baby. Perhaps the most loved carol is Martin Luther's cradle hymn, "Away in a manger, no crib for a bed/The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head." Yes, it's wonderful to focus upon the baby Jesus but we sometimes idealize---even idolize---babies.

In all honesty, we who have been parents and grandparents know that babies are not always pleasant to be around. I have often quoted the description, "A baby is a digestive apparatus with a loud noise at one end and no responsibility at the other!" Babies are notoriously selfish and self-centered. Immediately upon birth they bear the imprint of the fall of Adam; their whole world is centered around themselves. That is all they think about, all they know. Those who take care of them long for the day when they will begin to learn self-control: to sleep all night, to become potty trained, and to feed themselves.

It is the same in the Christian life. The Scriptures liken new Christians to babies. Peter, in fact, says, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby." Like newborn babies starting out in life, new Christians are loved and welcomed; but they need special care and though they show a great deal of promise and potential, yet everybody waits and hopes for them to grow up.

In the letter to the Colossians we have come to that point in Paul's concern for these Colossian believers. The apostle has recognized the true Christian life of these believers. They have already shown the unmistakable marks of newborn babes in Christ. There is a new hope in their lives; a far cry from the hopelessness of their former lost condition. That hope is born of the fact that in the gospel they have learned that Jesus himself was available to them personally to help in the struggles of life. From that hope came faith: they believed that hope and had begun to count on Jesus' presence with them and to draw strength from him. Out of their faith, then, had come compassion and concern for others, especially their brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Those are the marks of a Christian: faith, hope, and love, as Paul so beautifully puts it in 1 Corinthians 13.

But now the apostle is concerned that they go on and grow up. This is also the emphasis of much of the New Testament. The weakness of the church in many places today is that Christians often remain babies all their lives. They settle down and never grow up. The church, as a result, flounders in weakness and turns many people off. It is growing up that is important, as Paul emphasizes in these words:

"For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, with joy..."

I'm going to stop there briefly although it is difficult to stop anywhere in this wonderful paragraph because it is all one thought.

Paul knows that the Colossian Christians are living in a dangerous world. As we go on in this letter we discover what is threatening them.A seething volcano of false teaching has begun to erupt and engulf them, threatening to destroy the simplicity of the faith that is producing such beauty and liberty in their lives. Paul is in Rome, a prisoner in chains, and unable to travel to Colossae, a thousand miles east, to help them. There is nothing he can do physically for them. But spiritually, he is a powerful prayer warrior who can create in their midst a tremendous opportunity to know truth that will free them and enable them to withstand the assault of false teaching. That, then, is what he is doing: he is praying for them.

The striking thing about this prayer is the very first sentence of it: "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you..." This was a continuing prayer. As far as we know, Paul had never been to Colossae. Apart from one or two among them, he did not personally know these believers. And yet he prays continually for them. When we come to statements like this in Scripture it is quite fair to ask, when did he do this? Day and night he is chained to a Roman guard, he never has a moment to himself. Awake or asleep, he is bound to his jailer. Furthermore, when he is awake, his friends are dropping by to see him to seek his counsel and instruction. He even ministers to the Roman guards, many of whom came to Christ, as we learn in the letter to the Philippians. He is busy writing letters, too, so when did he find time to pray for the Colossians?

The answer lies in the form of prayer that Dr. Carl Lundquist calls "living prayer." Here is a quotation from a recent letter I received.

This is the description of an ongoing life of prayer, used by Maxie Dunnam in his Workbook of Living Prayer. It refers to quiet, whispered prayers and praises that flow from our hearts all day long. Dunnam suggests that we use interruptions, people or events that break in unexpectedly upon our day, as calls to specific prayer. Most of us use mealtime---grace time---to think of God and to voice our thanks to him. But more than food can call us to prayer. Frank Laubach, the modern mystic, challenges us to use the newspaper or the television set in the same way. As world decision-makers are pictured before our eyes we can breathe a quiet prayer for them by name. We can read a newspaper prayerfully, whispering back to God our intercessions for those in need, about whom we are reading. When someone calls our attention to himself, even in an impolite way--- tripping us on the bus, jabbing us with an umbrella, dodging in front of us (in traffic)---Laubach suggests that of the four billion persons in the world, God may be calling that particular individual to our attention in order to inspire prayer for him.

Have you ever prayed for people who cut in front of you in traffic, asking God to bless them, not blast them? That is what this is suggesting: that continual prayer arises constantly as a reaction to what you are going through. I am sure this explains the apostle's words here.Through the day he would think of the Colossians; how they were doing and what was threatening them, and he would breathe a prayer for them. This is what he means when he says, "we have not stopped praying for you." We can pray for each other in that same wonderful way.

The illuminating aspect of this is what Paul prayed for. Notice what he says: "...asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding." That is the content of his prayer; everything else in the passage flows out of that. The one thing he asks for is that the Colossians might come to understand God's will. It is clear that this is the important thing to Paul. He knows that if they begin to understand the will of God, everything good that he desires for them will follow. Thus, the chief aim of a believer's life ought to be to know God's will.

Here is where many young Christians go astray. They think the will of God is an itinerary they must discover: where God wants them to go, and what God wants them to do. Most of their prayers are addressed with those thoughts in mind. What should I do today? Where should I go? Whom should I marry? etc. There is a deep and profound psychological principle involved in this. God knows us, and he knows that our behavior flows out of who we think we are. Have you ever asked someone who upset you, "Who do you think you are, anyway?" We instinctively know that offensive behavior is a result of who we think we are. That is why such challenges are given.

God, too, knows that. The glory of the good news is that he has made us into something different than what we once were. Therefore the primary course in the curriculum of the Spirit is to learn who you are now, what God has made you to be, and, especially, your new relationship to him. This is beautifully captured in a verse we consider so important we have written it right across the front of our auditorium, "You are not your own ...you are bought with a price." You no longer belong to yourself, so you are no longer to live for yourself. Your will, your pleasure, your comfort are no longer to be primary in your life, but what God calls you to be and what he has made you to be. The more you understand who you now are, and what God has done to make you that, the more your behavior will automatically change and you will do the things that follow here in this passage. That is why Paul puts the knowledge of God's will first.

Where do we find that out? Paul goes on to say: "...asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding." There are two things that enable us to discover the will of God. The first is "spiritual wisdom," i.e. wisdom that comes from the Spirit, not from the natural mind of man. In 1 Corinthians the apostle contrasts these two, saying, "our ministry is not according to the wisdom of man, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power." He goes on to say, "We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages, for our glorification." Paul is speaking of divine insights into human life---how to understand ourselves and how the world functions---which God reveals, but of which natural man knows nothing, no matter how well educated he may be.

I will never forget listening to a prominent psychiatrist a number of years ago telling me about his life before he became a Christian, of his honors and his wealth and how sought---after his advice was by industrial leaders all over the country. But his inner life began to break down and he felt more and more hollow and empty. At last, when he took his six-year-old son, dead, out of a swimming pool, he began to read the Bible. As he read, there came a moment when he sat with his head in his hands saying, "My God, what an ass I've been." His wisdom had led him to nothing worthwhile. Then he began to learn what God says about life.

That is what Christians need to discover: what God thinks about life. That is reality. If you want to be realistic, then read and study your Bible to discover how God looks at things. Everything else is fantasy. It is like perfume advertisements on television; outrageous, out-of-this world fantasies. But that is the way the world thinks. If you want to live realistically, learn spiritual wisdom, the wisdom of God.

The second thing necessary to discover the will of God is "understanding." That is the application of the wisdom you are learning to the specific circumstance you are going through. As someone has well put it, "a clear vision of what needs to be done." Some of you are struggling with problems and you don't know what to do. The first thing you need is to understand how God sees your problem and what he says about it, in his word. Then there will come, as you pray and seek his face, a clear vision of what needs to be done. What steps to take or not to take. That is how to discover the will of God.

This all comes from the Spirit. These are not natural abilities. They are given by the Spirit, and therefore possible to all believers. So when you open the Bible, pray that God will help you to understand what it says. I often pray Henry Van Dyke's beautiful prayer,

Grant me the knowledge that I need
To solve the questions of the mind.
Light Thou my candle while I read,
To keep my heart from going blind.
Enlarge my vision to behold
The wonders You have wrought of old.

That is asking for what Paul speaks of here: spiritual wisdom and understanding.

The apostle goes on to say why he wants them to understand God's will. It is what he knows will follow if the Colossians gain the knowledge of his will. Here is what he says will happen: "And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and with joy give thanks to the Father." There are five things here, the first three of which are activities that believers have a choice in---we can deliberately choose to do them---and the last two are results that will grow out of these three.

First, that you may "live a life worthy of the Lord." When you understand what God has made you to be, though you don't deserve it at all---his child, cherished by him, your guilt and sin taken care of, and that God is your loving Father who protects you, guides and guards you, and when you see him in all his majesty and beauty then you will become concerned about whether your behavior reflects his beauty, and what others will think of your God when they are watching you. That is "a life worthy of the Lord." In others of his letters the apostle urges Christians to "walk worthy of their calling." This is the first thing we are to be concerned about: our impact upon others, how our lives are impacting theirs, and what our actions make them think about our God.

The second activity that will flow from a knowledge of who we are is to seek "to please him in every way." The chief aim of every believer ought to be that he is pleasing to God; that he seeks to live in a way that delights God. What quality of life is pleasing to God? The Scripture probably puts it most effectively in a negative way. In the book of Hebrewswe are told, "Without faith it is impossible to please God!" Faith is what pleases him. Every time Jesus approved or commended people it was because of their faith. "You have great faith," he said to the woman who pled with him to heal her flow of blood. "Your faith is great," he said to a centurion who asked him to heal his servant. Whenever our Lord commends people for anything it is because they believe him and act on what he says. They don't conform to the customs of people around. Rather, they swim against the stream of life and stand firmly upon what he says, trusting him. That is what pleases God.

Here is the third result: "bearing fruit in every good work." The "fruit," always and everywhere in Scripture, is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, and peace, in our relationships and actions with regard to others; concern, compassion, encouragement, and help in a time of stress, bringing a word of peace into a troubled, hostile atmosphere. "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God." That is what Paul is talking about: "bearing fruit in every good work."

After these begin to take place in our lives, two results will follow. The first is given at the end of verse 10: "growing in the knowledge of God." Paul has been praying that the Colossians come to know God's will. Now he says that as they put these things into practice they will know God better than ever before. Seeking to walk worthy of God, and to please him with fruitful activity results in knowing God more and more intimately.

Now I want to call attention to what I am going to say next so that you will not miss it: knowing God is the most exciting thing that can ever happen to you! Knowing God is the secret of excitement and vitality in a life. People who know God are never bored for the opposite of knowing God is boredom. If you are bored, as a Christian, it is because you do not adequately know your God. In his presence it is impossible to think of anything else. He is an exciting, captivating Being, filled with fresh ideas, concepts and possibilities of which you never could have dreamed.

To know God means that you are always turned on about everything because you see God everywhere: in nature, in people you meet, in trials, hardships and challenges, everywhere. That is why people who know God are always exciting to be with. They lift your spirits when you meet them. Faces light up as they enter a room: They know God, and the excitement of that captivates and changes them. That is what Paul says will happen as we "grow in the knowledge of God" and put into practice these three goals in our lives. This is what Jesus means when he says to the woman at the well, "I will put in you a well of water, springing up unto eternal life." It is always there: that refreshing quality of knowing God.

The second result is found in verses 11 and 12: "being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, with joy, giving thanks to the Father." These days there is a new cycle of emphasis in the Christian world upon signs and wonders as the mark of spiritual power. I have lived through several of these cycles, so I know what will happen. All the initial enthusiasm will ebb and fade, and life will inevitably return to the spiritual doldrums. That is because these signs and wonders are never the emphasis of Scripture. The sign of true spiritual power is right here: people who learn how to become patient and longsuffering, with joy! It is these who have touched the wellsprings of true spiritual power. It is as plain as the nose on your face. Paul says: "being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might."

When you are faced with irritating circumstances, or difficult people, it takes power to remain patient and longsuffering. Our natural tendency is to get upset, to scream in impatience, or to become resentful and angry. It takes power to resist these when you feel them rising within you. Every believer has that power, and the sign is that they lead quiet, cheerful lives, that hang in to the end. That is what is meant by endurance. The word is best translated "stick-to-it-iveness." People who have this quality don't quit. They hang in there with their relationships, despite the pressures of their work or their circumstances. Endurance is a word that relates primarily to circumstances. The second word, translated here "patience," is really "longsuffering," a willingness to wait and not pay back in kind. It has to do with willingness to forgive and refusing to take revenge.

The third mark is that of joyful gratitude, a cheerful spirit that never gets discouraged. Years ago I read of a Christian businessman who had a cleaning woman named Sophie. He said to her one day, "Sophie, why are you always so cheerful? You don't have much in life but you're always cheerful. What's your secret?" She replied, "Well, it's the way I read my Bible." He said, "I read the Bible too but I don't find myself being cheerful like you are." She said, "You don't read it right. My Bible says, 'Glory in tribulation.' G-l-o-r-y doesn't spell 'growl.' That is what you do. You growl in tribulation. If you gloried in it, then you'd find yourself looking at it as a challenge, as an opportunity for your Lord to display what he can do, and you'd be cheerful about it." There is a great lesson in that story. It is what will reveal that we are growing in the knowledge of God.

The closing paragraph states clearly the three things that we can always be grateful for. We may in weakness feel like complaining about a few things, but we can always come back to these three things for they are continually true of every believer. The more we think about them, the more an attitude of gratitude will control our life. Paul continues,

"...giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Such a marvelous statement of truth hardly needs any exposition. Here are three things to be grateful for. First, for privileges we don't deserve. We have been qualified by God (not ourselves) "to share in the inheritance of the saints," in the resources available to all the saints. What are these? A Father's love, a Savior's presence, a family of brothers and sisters to support and uphold, a certain destiny of glory after death. Nothing can take these away from us. If we remember these we can rejoice in the midst of whatever comes. These are privileges we don't deserve for which we have been qualified by God.

Secondly, there are perils from which we have been delivered: "He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness." Oh, what that ought to awaken within our minds! Think of the terrible things that might have happened to you if you had never become a Christian. Did you ever think where you would be if Christ had not intervened in your life? Knowing my own heart, my own rebellious spirit and devil-may-care attitude, I think I'd either be dead or in jail! I almost made it anyhow! But we have all been delivered, as if by one of those SWAT teams that snatch a victim out of a dangerous situation. So the Lord Jesus has "rescued us from the dominion of darkness," from increasing uncertainty about life and from groping after futile goals. He has delivered us from blindness and death.

The third category is pressures from which we have been freed: he has "brought us into the kingdom of the Son that he loves." We have been freed from the feeling of being unwanted. That is one of the most devastating feelings any human can experience: the feeling that nobody cares, nobody wants us, nobody loves us. That is forever rendered untrue by the work of Jesus. He has brought us into his kingdom and, with him, we share the love of the Father.

Near, so very near to God,
Nearer I could not be.
The love with which He loves His Son,
Such is His love for me.

We are wanted, cherished children of a loving Father.

We have been delivered also from the feeling of being unworthy. We have "redemption, even the forgiveness of sins." I often think of that wonderful verse in the old hymn, Beneath the Cross of Jesus:

Upon that cross of Jesus
Mine eye at times can see,
The very dying form of One
Who suffered there for me.
And from my smitten heart with tears,
Two wonders I confess:
The wonder of redeeming love,
And my unworthiness.

By natural birth we are all unworthy, but love has set us free, and made us both wanted and worthy. The forgiveness of sins means we can start every day with a fresh, clean slate. All of yesterday's mistakes have been washed away, not in order that we might go back and repeat them, but that we might have nothing against us as we begin again. Every day we start in afresh until we learn to do it right. God is with us. He cleanses the past continually. The forgiveness of sins is something we ought to rejoice in every day, because the burden and guilt of yesterday is no longer dragging us down. We are free to walk into liberty and peace. How grateful we should be for these incredible blessings!

Catalog No. 4020
Colossians 1:9-14
Second Message
December 7, 1986

Master of the Universe

MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE

by Ray C. Stedman

Charles Wesley's wonderful phrase from "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing,"

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail the Incarnate Deity

captures the central truth of our Christian faith. Since the appearance of Jesus on this earth two thousand years ago, Christians have believed that the man called Jesus of Nazareth is and was God the Creator; that the eternal Son dwelt in a human body, thus "veiled in flesh the Godhead see." Every other doctrine of Christianity flows out of that great truth. If it be denied, one has denied the heart of Christian faith and has embraced heresy.

Recently I attended a conference of two hundred and fifty theologians, pastors and Christian leaders in Chicago. We met to restate in contemporary terms, and apply to the problems of today, the great truths of the Christian faith. The first paper delivered was on "The Living God." It was a marvelous statement of this central truth of all: that Jesus Christ is God. The paper developed the concept of the Trinity: that God does not exist as a single individual, but there are three persons who act together as one in the Godhead. The skeptics have pointed out that nowhere in Scripture can be found a flat-out statement that God exists in three persons and thus many claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is not really taught in the Bible. But what we do find in Scripture are passages where both the Son and the Spirit are described in terms that can only be applied to God himself. It is such a passage as this that we come to today in our studies in the letter to the Colossians. Here are the dramatic words of the apostle Paul:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation."

That plainly states what Charles Wesley has captured in his phrase, "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see." Paul brings this truth boldly to the Colossian believers for two basic reasons. As we have already seen in this letter, he is very concerned that these new Christians begin to grow up. They must not remain immature believers---born again, but still filled with all the frailty and foolishness of the flesh. They must grow up and become vigorous, exemplary, compassionate Christians, forsaking their apathy and hostility and becoming whole people. Paul is well aware that they are in danger of losing their clear vision of Christ. That was the nature of the Colossian heresy which attacked the person of Jesus. They were in danger, therefore, of losing a proper sense of the profound power and eminence of Jesus Christ in their own world.

Many Christians are like this today. Many true believers appear to have little sense that Jesus is active in their lives here and now. Some churches seem to treat Jesus as the British treat their monarch: they strip him or her of all political power, and do not expect the sovereign to do anything at all except to look good. They treat their monarchs with great respect and reverence, and pay much lip service, but they really do not expect anything from them. That is the way Christians all too often treat the Lord Jesus. This passage calls us back to face the fact of who Jesus is: simply, he is in charge of the universe!

The second reason why Paul includes this is his own unforgettable experience on the Damascus Road. As young Saul of Tarsus he believed that Jesus of Nazareth was only a tub-thumping rabble-rouser who was causing a great deal of trouble in Israel. Saul considered him nothing more than a deliberate blasphemer who was claiming things about himself for which he ought to be put to death. As an ardent Pharisee Saul hated the name of Jesus. Then came the experience on the Damascus Road. There, in the dust of the road, surrounded by a blinding light of glory, he heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" In amazement and wonder he cried out, "Who are you, Lord?" and in the passage we are looking at today, Paul states the answer he found to his own question: "He," says the apostle, "is the image of the invisible God, the Creator of all things." That Damascus event is what changed Paul's life.

This passage is a truly astounding claim. In these brief phrases the apostle points out Christ's nature as God, his work as Creator, and his continuing relationship to the worlds that he has made. Let us look in more detail at such claims. What does it mean that Jesus is "the image of the invisible God?" I have often described the little boy who was drawing pictures on the floor one day as his mother was working. She said to him, "What are you drawing?" He said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." "But no one knows what God looks like," she said. "They will when I get through!" the boy replied.

There is a rather profound truth in that story when it is applied to Jesus. It is as though that little baby lying in the manger in Bethlehem is a picture being drawn for us. It would be proper to say of that baby that when he finishes his life's work, men will know what God is like. That is what Jesus did. Today, if you come to Jesus, you discover that in a remarkable way you have come also into the presence of God; you know God personally and intimately. That has always been the central claim of Christian conversion.

This sentence also includes a second phrase that is very descriptive: "The firstborn of all creation." What does that mean? Here is where many of the cults have had a heyday. Jehovah's Witnesses say that this phrase proves that Jesus was a created being and not God. That is the claim of several other cults as well. They say that "firstborn of all creation" means that Jesus is the one born first, i. e. the first one to be created. It is true that in Greek the word that is translated here "firstborn" is used of Jesus himself in the Bethlehem story. Luke, chapter 2, says that Mary brought forth her "firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger." Thus, say the cults, the word "firstborn" clearly implies that Jesus is the first of several children born to Mary. Scripture reveals there were other children born to her: the brothers and sisters of Jesus who would come later. Used in that sense, of course, it would mean that Jesus is the first created being. Thus, there is some sense to that argument.

But (and this is the important point) there are other meanings of the word. It is most frequently translated "firstborn" in the sense of heir, the owner, the possessor of creation. This is certainly the meaning it conveys here. I found myself recently standing next to Dr. Carl Henry, whom I regard as the greatest theologian alive today. Since I knew I would be preaching on this passage I took the occasion to ask him how he would translate this phrase. This was his answer: "It should be translated," he said, "'the Primeval Creator of all created things.'" Jesus is the one who possesses, as heir or owner, all other things.

This sense of the firstborn as owner or possessor is a concept that is strongly supported in the Old Testament. Esau, one of the twin sons of Isaac, was born first, therefore he had the right of the firstborn to inherit the estate of his father. But through a strange series of events, Jacob, the other twin, tricked his father into conferring that blessing upon him. He stole from Esau, by trickery, the right of firstborn. Yet that act was honored of God. The right to be firstborn was transferred from Esau to Jacob, and Jacob became the heir of the promises of God to Isaac. Thus, we must understand that the one born first is not necessarily the "firstborn."

Jacob himself later had sons, one of whom was Joseph, who in turn had two sons whom he named Manasseh and Ephraim. At the end of his life, Jacob went down to Egypt to visit his son Joseph, and Joseph brought his two boys before him, Manasseh, the firstborn, and Ephraim, the younger. Joseph placed Manasseh under Jacob's right hand, and Ephraim under his left hand, so that Manasseh would receive the blessing of the firstborn. But Jacob did a very unusual thing. We are not told why, but for some strange reason, known only to God and himself perhaps, Jacob crossed his hands and laid his left hand on Manasseh, the one born first, and his right hand upon Ephraim. Thus, Ephraim became the "firstborn," though he was not the one born first. By means of a cross the right of the firstborn was transferred to the younger son!

This is an example of how marvelously Scripture handles events. There is significance in even the slightest details. Thus, we may rightly apply this title to Jesus, as not the one born first of all creation, but the Owner, the Possessor, of creation.

Paul goes on to describe the work of Jesus.

"For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."

That verse clearly reveals that Jesus could not be part of God's creation, for all created things---all created things---were created by him. He is, then, not a part of that "all." Notice the words, "by him" and "for him." He was the agent of creation and the purpose of it as well. The whole of the cosmos was made for him! This is what Paul also declares in that great Christological passage in Philippians. The time is coming when at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The realistic thing to do today is to live with that knowledge in our world, remembering that Jesus not only created all things but he is also the reason for it all.

Creation, of course, involves the work of the whole Trinity. It is proper to say that the Father willed there should be a creation. All the initiatory movements of history begin with the Father. He willed it. The Son, then, planned it. He programmed it and designed it, even to its slightest detail as its Architect and Designer. The Spirit is the executor: He carried it out. He made it actually appear, according to the plan and program of the Son.

A familiar incident in the gospel of John, the first miracle of Jesus, illustrates this. At the wedding feast in Cana the wine ran out and his mother said to him simply, "They have no more wine. " She apparently leaves it up to Jesus. He makes very clear in his response to her that he is not going to act because she asked him to. He replies, "Woman, what have I to do with you?" That is not uttered unkindly. He is simply declaring that her request is not the motive for his actions. But he does act. And, as he declared in many places, he acts only because the Father tells him to. Thus the initiation of this act is from the Father. The Father willed that when his Son appeared on earth there would be miracles that would accompany his appearance to support his claims and establish his credentials among the sons of men.

Immediately our Lord began to plan the miracle. He said to the servants, "Fill these six empty jars with water." The servants did so. It must have taken fifteen or twenty minutes at least to fill those great thirty-gallon jars with water. Our Lord waited until they did. Then, without a word---I always appreciate this: there is no fanfare, no ostentation, no magic---without a word of command the water became wine. The Spirit had changed the water into the finest of wine.

C.S. Lewis has a comment on this that is pertinent to our study:

If we open such books as Grimm's Fairy Tales or the Italian epics, we find ourselves in a world of miracles so diverse that they can hardly be classified. Beasts turn into men and men into beasts or trees. Trees talk, ships become goddesses, and a magic ring can cause tables richly spread with food to appear in solitary places. Now if such things really happened, they would, I suppose, show that nature was being invaded. But they would show that she was being invaded by an alien power. The fitness of the Christian miracles, and their difference from these mythological miracles, lies in the fact that they show an invasion by a power which is not alien. They are what might be expected to happen when nature is invaded, not simply by a god, but by the God of nature, by a power which is outside nature's jurisdiction, not as a foreigner but as a Sovereign. They proclaim that he who has come is not merely a king but the King---nature's King and ours!

Surely that is what the apostle Paul is proclaiming here when he says that Jesus is the "creator of all things...things were made by him."

Now, as this verse goes on to say, that includes more than merely the material universe around us: more than stars, galaxies, superstars, planets, and solar systems, or even trees, grass, mountains and seas. It includes the earth, Paul says, but also heaven. Both the visible and the invisible. It would also include all forces. Electricity was invented by Jesus (not as a man, but as the Eternal Son) before the creation of the world. It would include radiation, magnetism, and the peculiar and mysterious dance of electrons from one level of energy to another within the atom that makes light. All this was the design of the Eternal Son.

But not only forces, but concepts and attitudes as well: grace, mercy, truth, love, and life itself. Jesus is the originator of all life. And, as Paul specifies here, a whole pantheon of invisible beings (and their visible counterparts in earthly government): "thrones and rulers and powers and authorities"---all were created by him.

The Colossian heresy here becomes visible in our modern experience as well. The Colossians began to believe, because of the Greek teachers among them, that the universe consisted of a "hierarchy of angels." One must begin down at the bottom, with raunchy, unpleasant angels, and work one's way up through the whole hierarchy to the good angels and, finally, to God. From that idea has come the eastern concept of reincarnation for that too was part of the Colossian heresy.

We find a counterpart today, not only in the theory of reincarnation, but also in horoscopes and astrology---the idea of stars influencing and governing our lives. The claim that Transcendental Meditation is the means of getting in touch with invisible beings is another example. We are told that there are Astral Teachers and Divine Masters who appear from time to time to impart degrees of knowledge to the human race. Gradually, we are told, this is to result, after centuries and centuries of progress, in our being lost in the Divine presence. All this is nothing new. It is very old, but it is also new, appearing again and again in history. This is what the apostle labors to correct. He is telling the Colossians, "Jesus is above all angels. You are freed from bondage to these lesser beings when you see the true authority and power of your risen Lord."

Bishop Lightfoot, who wrote in the last century, captures this well in a paraphrase of Paul's words:

Paul is saying, "You dispute much about the successive grades of angels. You distinguish each grade by its special title. You can tell how each order was generated from the preceding. You assign to each its proper degree of worship. Meanwhile you have ignored and have degraded Christ. I tell you it is not so. He is first and foremost, Lord of heaven and earth, far above all thrones or dominations, all princedoms or powers; far above every dignity and every potentate---whether earthly or heavenly, whether angel or demon or man--- that evokes your reverence or excites your fear."

That is the supremacy of our Lord in his own world! Nothing can make us more confident and enable us to speak boldly of our faith than to bear in mind the tremendous truth that Jesus is Lord. He is in charge of all life. Nothing can happen in history or in space without his permission. He rules over the present age.

But creation is not only by him, it is also for him. It all operates for his honor and glory. A few decades ago Albert Einstein announced to the world a new view of space. He declared that space is not, as we had thought for centuries, a linear concept, extending outward in a straight line, but that it was curved upon itself. This is what this passage is proclaiming as well. Though creation originated with the Eternal Son---perhaps in a "Big Bang"---it also converges again toward him in a great concentric cosmic cycle. Thus it is totally under his control. He is the reason why all things have been made. Eventually all the cosmos and all the events of history will find their place in the great purpose of the Father to honor and glorify the Son.

Verse 17 declares, in two marvelous phrases, just how Jesus controls space and history:

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

"He is before all things," means he is outside his own creation; he was there first. This describes his eternity as the Son of God. As C.S. Lewis has pointed out, he is over creation as a King and a Sovereign, not subject to it or part of it, but intimately related to it.

When Paul uses the phrase, "all things by him hold together," he is speaking of our Lord's power to sustain and to prevent breakdown. The scientists who work on the great linear accelerator at Stanford University, trying to smash the atom apart, know that it takes incredible power. Years ago I was taken to see the predecessor to today's linear accelerator, a relatively small instrument. The professor who took me through showed me the power source for it. I have never forgotten what he said: "The power to operate this instrument," he said, "is equivalent to all the electricity it takes to run the city of San Francisco." Yet that was a very small instrument.

Something holds the atom together with enormous, incredible power. That power, according to the Word of God (both here in Colossians and in the letter to the Hebrews is vested in Jesus. He has the authority to rule as Sovereign. He has the power to sustain, because he is the Eternal Son.

The great Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, who was also the President of the Netherlands, put it this way:

When Jesus looks at his universe from his exalted throne at the right hand of the Father, and he sees the great galaxies whirling in space, the planets and the people upon this planet, and all the minute details of life here including the details of our individual lives, there is nothing that he sees anywhere of which he cannot say, "Mine!"

The most astonishing phenomenon today is to see men who work with this physical universe, who intimately observe the beauty, order, and power inherent in the natural world as well as in the world of humanity, yet who fail to see the Power behind it all; the ordered Intelligence that possesses and originates all these things. I do not understand how a man like Carl Sagan can work in the field of astronomy, knowing of the great secrets that are now coming to light in the universe, and yet go on breathing air which God has supplied, eating the food with which God has stocked this earth, and relying moment by moment on a heartbeat whose continuation rests in the will of Someone other than himself, yet can busy himself telling us that only man matters! It is a phenomenon beyond my understanding.

One of the most profound incidents in the gospels is the story of Jesus and the rich young ruler. This first century yuppie, expensively dressed, very wealthy, young and handsome, knelt at the feet of this apparent peasant from Galilee and said, "Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus looked into the heart of that young man and saw the hunger and emptiness of it. Wealth had brought him no lasting pleasure; Jesus saw his anguish and the desire for something more. He tested him as to whether he understood the Law and when he saw that the young man was in earnest about finding the secret of life, he told him to do an unusual thing: "Go and sell everything you have and give to the poor and come and follow me."

We usually focus upon the first part of that command: "Go and sell all you have and give to the poor." Some say that what Jesus is teaching is that it is wrong to be wealthy. But this is answered by the fact that he had friends among the wealthy of his own day, yet he never rebuked them for their wealth. That is not the issue of the story. What Jesus is saying is, "Your money keeps you from seeing what you desperately need. Get rid of it, for it is blocking what you really need in life." And then he makes clear what that is: "Come and follow me." What the young man lacked was a King! He had no final authority beyond himself, no cause to which he could give even his life. He had no anchor in life.

As I think of the world in which we live today surely this is the reason for the terrible sense of lostness among people. We are a generation adrift. We have thrown out all the absolutes, and found ourselves adrift on the tossing ocean of life. No one has an anchor any more. What men desperately need is a King, a God, an Authority, an Anchor to cling to. I am convinced we will never solve the terrible drug traffic until we teach people that there is an answer to the hunger and anguish of their empty lives. We cannot stop the drug traffic by simply confiscating all the drugs that come into this country. Drugs are merely a symptom of the terrible anguish of people; of their empty lives, their lack of a sense of worth. They have no King to worship, no authority to serve, no cause greater than themselves.

Thus the central truth of our faith, and one that makes for strength in the Christian life, is this truth. In Jesus is found the center of life. "He is the image of the invisible God...the Creator of all things, who is before all things and holds all things in his hand and power." Is he your Lord?

There has been a chorus running through my mind all week as I have been preparing this message. It is one we used to sing in the early days of PBC, but I do not hear it much any more. The words are simplicity themselves:

My wonderful Lord, my wonderful Lord,
By angel and seraphs in heaven adored.
I bow at Thy shrine, my Savior Divine,
My wonderful, wonderful Lord!
No distant Lord have I,
Loving afar to be;
Made flesh for me
He cannot rest
Until He rests in me.
I need not journey far
This dearest friend to see;
Companionship is always mine, He makes His home with me.
I envy not the twelve,
Nearer to me is He;
The life He once lived here on earth
He lives again in me.
Ascended now to God
My witness there to be,
His witness here am I because
His Spirit dwells in me.
O glorious Son of God,
Incarnate Deity,
I shall forever be with Thee
Because Thou art with me.

Catalog No. 4021
Colossians 1:15-17
Third Message
December 14, 1986

The Reason for the Season

THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

by Ray C. Stedman

Most scholars feel that the magnificent description of Christ found in verses 15-20 of Colossians 1 represents an early Christian hymn which Paul is quoting. These verses may represent the very first of all Christmas carols. If so; it is a hymn of two stanzas. The first concerns Jesus as Lord of creation, i.e. the material universe, and all forces at work within it. The second stanza speaks of Jesus as Lord of the new creation, the new humanity. We have lost the tune for this hymn, but we still have these words which focus upon our Lord's overall supremacy.

Here are Paul's words:

"He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy."

The church, of course, is the new creation. It is healthy to remind ourselves of that because many churches seem to forget it. The church is something eternally new which the world has never seen before. It is quite different from any other organization or organism among men. It is a sad thing to observe the loss of this concept among Christians. As I travel about I have noted the way people think about their church. I am afraid that the most widespread concept is that the church is a religious country club, operated for the enjoyment and benefit of the members; it makes its own rules and exists for its own purposes. That is a far cry indeed from the New Testament description of the church.

Others look upon the church as a collection of emotional misfits who are waiting for the first bus to glory. I fear some of us give them good reason to think that! Then there are those, like the Colossians, who are a group of eager beaver religious fanatics, running after every new doctrine that comes along, especially if it offers a good feeling and has a sense of magic and mystery about it. That to many is the church.

But here the apostle corrects these false ideas and declares that Jesus is the Head of the body, which is the church. Paul relates the two together as a head and trunk relate in a physical body. This is one of the most important statements in the New Testament about the church. God has actually given us a model to carry around with us (our own body), so that we may understand how the church is to function. The church is a body, and we all have bodies. The church has a Head, and we too have heads. To understand the church and how it should function, think about your own body and how it functions.

If you stand in front of a mirror you will notice, I hope, that there are two divisions of the body. The knob up on top, with more or less hair, we call the head. It is the control center of the body. The rest of the body, with its appendages of arms and legs, etc., is all part of the trunk.

That is a body---and the head runs the body! Many churches seem to forget that. Think what would happen to your body if somebody removed your head. It doesn't appear that any of you has had that experience since most of you seem to be well attached. When I was a boy growing up in Montana, we did not buy chickens at the grocery store all nicely packaged in plastic. I had to go out and run one down, and then remove its head. A chicken with its head cut off acts very strangely. It does not simply quietly perish, but jumps and runs around, out of control for a minute or two, before it finally dies. Churches that lose their awareness of the Head are like that---they too go out of control. They do not know what to do. They run about and become involved in things they ought not to have anything to do with. They have, for all practical purposes, lost their Head.

That was the trouble at Colossae. In chapter two Paul says they "have lost connection to the head." It is essential, therefore, that a church must have its Head in place and functioning: supplying direction, maintaining order, giving it health, solvingits difficulties, coordinating its activities, and supplying to every single member its own kind of life. That is what your physical head does, and that is what Jesus, as Head of the body, desires to do. This must find application on an individual basis. Oftentimes we fail to see that a church consists of individuals. You are the church! It cannot act as a corporate body very often---it is not expected to. Yet, because we have false concepts of the church, we often expect the corporation to act for us. But Christ's body is not designed that way. Each individual is directly related to the Head. It is he who should direct each of us in our activities through the week. That is where the church truly functions, not here on Sunday morning. Here is where the church is taught by the Head, where we learn how to function. But we actually function away from here, in our homes and neighborhoods. There we must relate directly to the Head, expecting him to open doors, provide energy, wisdom, comfort and forgiveness. That is where the church touches society on every side.

Yet, despite the fact that we are to function as individuals, we must never forget that we belong to the whole, not only this local body but the whole body of Christ all over the world. We are all related to one another. This marvelous mystery of relationship constitutes one of the most exciting things in the world today. When the church functions properly it is far and away the most powerfully effective body on earth. That is what Jesus means when he said, "You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world." As individuals we must remember that our part is to respond to personal direction from the Head: to do as he says and obey his word.

Now Paul tells us, in two marvelously descriptive phrases, exactly why Jesus is the Head of the body. First, he says, "he is the beginning." The beginning of what? The beginning of the church! He is the One from whom the church gets its life. There are several "beginnings" in Scripture. The Bible opens on that note: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But that is not the beginning referred to here. There is another"beginning"in the gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word." That goes back even before creation. But that is not the "beginning" spoken of here either. The "beginning" here is the same one which John speaks of in his letter: "We know him who was from the beginning." He is referring to the beginning of the church, when the disciples saw Jesus, touched him and handled him. From the risen life of Jesus flows the new life of the church. That is what Paul teaches so clearly in 2 Corinthians 5: "If anyone be in Christ he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, all things have become new." We are part of a new humanity that God is bringing forth upon this earth, a humanity that is "bought with a price": "You are not your own, you are bought with a price." Remember, "He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

This should remind us of that simple, often misunderstood parable, that our Lord told among several others, in Matthew 13. He says, "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it." Unfortunately, that parable has been interpreted to mean that Jesus is the pearl of great price, and that when we see what a valuable person he is we will sell all we have and buy him. But that is entirely contrary to every other teaching of Scripture. We do not buy God. We cannot purchase him or purchase our salvation in any sense. We have nothing to offer him! We must come, as the old hymn puts it, "Nothing in my hand I bring,/Simply to thy cross I cling." No, it is Jesus who is the merchant looking for a fine pearl. And he finds one: it is the church! For it, "he went away and sold everything he had and bought it."

This is most instructive if you remember how a pearl is made. A pearl, you know, starts out as an irritatedoyster! A grain of sand gets under the oyster's shell. To the oyster that feels like crackers in bed do to us. It is very uncomfortable, and the oyster sets about getting rid of it. What it does is to cover the irritating grain of sand with a beautiful nacre that hardens into a lustrous and gorgeous pearl. That is how the church was born. It emerges from the wounded side of Jesus. It was the irritation that we represent by our sinful lives that put him to death, and he covers it over and heals it, making it into a beautiful pearl of great value. That is the church. That is what Paul is describing here: Jesus himself is the beginning of the church.

Then, secondly, Paul says, Jesus is "the firstborn from among the dead." Many take that to mean he is the first one ever to be resurrected. That is certainly true. The resurrection of Jesus is the only resurrection that has ever occurred on this earth. Lazarus, and all the others who came back from the dead, were simply resuscitated: they came back to the same life they had left. We may even feel a bit sorry for them because they had to come back to take it up again. But Jesus was truly resurrected. He was given a glorified life: he came from the grave at a far higher level than he went in. He returned in a glorified body, subject to different laws and governed by different principles. But that is not what is meant here. That is what Paul calls "the first-fruits of them that slept." But here "firstborn" means what it does in verse 15. We have already seen that it means the owner, the possessor, of the old creation. Here then it means the owner, possessor, of the new creation. He is the One who alone possesses the resurrection life that he gives to each of us. That is what John is saying in his first letter, in chapter 5, verse 11: "This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life [deathless life, resurrection life], and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." He may be moral, he may be a nice person, but he does not yet possess the life of eternity, the resurrection life of Jesus, because that life comes from Jesus alone.

Now it is a clear biblical fact that Christians who have received Christ and been born into the new creation have this life. That is the reason they can no longer excuse themselves for wrong behavior by saying, "Well, after all, I'm only human." It is true you are human yet in the body, in the flesh, and that is why you are tempted, but because you also have a new life it means you do not need to yield to that temptation; there is now a new power within.

I feel constrained to get this across to people. When you become a Christian you have a new source of power which the world knows nothing about. Therefore, you are expected to live at a different, higher level. And you can. You cannot excuse yourself by saying, "I'm only human." True, that is why temptations come, but God has given us an ability to say no to these and to say yes to the power of Christ. We will not feel powerful---we are never expected to---but we have the power to say no; that is what the new creation is all about.

Thus, because our Lord is Master of the old creation (the old, material universe all around us)---and also master of a whole new humanity that is now coming into being, Paul goes on to say that he is both firstborn of the old and firstborn of the new "in order that he might have the supremacy." There is nothing left out of his control. One of the old Christmas carols captures this beautifully,

King of kings yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human nature,
In the body and the blood.
He will give to all the faithful,
His own self for heavenly food.

That is the difference that being a Christian makes: we have Christ himself dwelling in us, and that enables us to be more than we once were.

Paul now turns from our Lord's position as Head of the body to his work as the reconciler of all things.

"For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."

Notice how carefully the apostle links together the reconciling work of Christ and his deity. Jesus had to be God to do what he did! At the Chicago Conference on Biblical Application which I mentioned last week I was thrilled to hear Dr. Bruce Waltke make an impassioned plea that we who are working with these great themes of Scripture find some way to reduce these theological statements to contemporary terms, because, as he put it, "the world is lost without a sense of God. Men and women everywhere desperately need to know that there is Someone in charge of life, and that there is a Source to whom they can turn for help and for deliverance. The world needs to know that Jesus Christ is God." He made the statement personal with these words, "If Jesus is not God, then I do not have a Savior." That is surely true. If Jesus is not God there is no bridge that can span the chasm between God and man.

This is why Christianity is often offensive to people of other faiths. They say, "Why can't you recognize that all religions have leaders who can lead us into truth? Why do you claim that Jesus is different and above all the others?" That is often called "the scandal of exclusivity," the exclusive claim that only one religious founder is both God and man. As C. S. Lewis well states, If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, "Are you the Son of Brahma?," he would have said, "My son, you are still in the vale of illusion." If you had gone to Socrates and asked, "Are you Zeus?" he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, "Are you Allah?" he would first have rent his clothes, and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, "Are you Heaven?" I think he would have probably replied, "Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste."

There is only One who claims that he is both God and man. This explains the name which the shepherds whispered when they came into the stable after the angels' announcement. They knelt in awe before the Babe lying there and breathed the one word, "Immanuel" (God with us). He is the reason for the season! I want to tell you it makes me angry to see the commercialization of Christmas. All this flim-flam about trees, and presents, and Santa Claus tends to obscure this marvelous truth: that Baby was "God reduced to a span/Incomprehensibly a man" and he is the only hope we have out of the mess we find ourselves in. That is the glory of Christmas.

But because Jesus is both God and man he is able to bridge the gap, "to reconcile to himself all things." This verse has been used as a proof text to substantiate the idea of universal salvation; that ultimately every person and every being is going to be redeemed. Even the devil and his angels (this concept maintains), and even the wickedest of men such as Hitler and Stalin and those who are far worse because of spiritual evil are someday going to be redeemed. There may be a temporary punishment, but eventually everything in the universe will be restored to God, and there will be no hell and no eternal judgment. That is the teaching of universalism.

It is true that the word "reconcile" upon which this whole teaching hangs, does mean salvation in the case of those who believe. It is used in that sense in the very next verses, where Paul goes on to say,

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation."

That is clearly salvation in its fullest degree. But "reconcile" often means things other than salvation. This is where we must be very careful. Heresy can creep in at places where we do not expect it. It is wrong to take a single meaning of a word and press it everywhere as its only meaning.

If you look elsewhere in Scripture you will find that "reconcile" is broader than salvation. In Ephesians 2, for instance, Paul uses it of the healing of hostility between Jew and Gentile. He says Jesus has come "and broken down the middle wall of partition and reconciled Jew and Gentile in one body," by which he means the hostility is ended. Not that every Jew and every Gentile will be saved, but they will be able to live in harmony; that is his point. In 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle says that husbands and wives are to be "reconciled" to one another. There may be some husbands and wives here who need to have their hostility end and begin to live together in peace. Parents and children need reconciling at times. Friends often need it. Christmas is a time when reconciliation between estranged family members takes place more than it does at other times of the year. The basic meaning of this word is "to remove all impediments to peace" so that harmony prevails.

What does it mean, then, that Jesus shall "reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven"? It means a day is coming when the hostility of evil against righteousness will be brought to a sudden halt. Evil men and angels will find themselves unable to function in their enmity against God. They will be subdued, and will cease their rebellion. It does not mean their punishment ends; it is their active hostility that will cease. Then, at last, the terrible question that every one of us has asked at times, "Why does God permit evil?" will be answered. There is coming a day, according to this verse, when all will be explained to us: Why do the good suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does injustice reign triumphant at times? Why are innocent children raped, tortured, and killed, or ruined in mind and body by drugs or molestation? Why were six million Jews gassed to death in Germany? Why were millions of others elsewhere shot, speared, drowned, burned or hanged by the tyrants of history? Why?

We have all asked these questions. Why do accidents occur, ruining our joys? Why does insanity rage in so many? At last this question is to be answered. At last we will learn why it was necessary to allow evil. Then we will see it was part of the working out of God's program. Every hurt will be resolved, every tear will be wiped away, every pain will be relieved. At last the whole universe will live in peace and harmony with one another. "Nothing shall hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain." Read the great promises of Isaiah in this regard. What glorious language he employs to picture an earth where nothing is out of step, nothing is eccentric, nothing is out of balance; everything is in harmony with everything else. That is what this declares. Surely this is what Paul is describing in that great passage in Philippians. An hour is coming when "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." That is where history is headed.

The marvelous thing about this is that it flows out of the death of Jesus on the cross. It is the cross that has brought this to pass. That is why it has been the central symbol of Christian faith since the very beginning. We put crosses up in our sanctuaries, not to make us think that the cross was a beautiful piece of wood, for it was a dirty, bloody, rugged means of death. But out of that death has flowed life to all the universe. That is what this is telling us. We find it described very clearly in chapter two of this letter, in the words, "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" (2:15). It is the cross that is the center of all life.

Christians should never allow themselves to forget that wonderful scene recorded in the book of Revelation, where John is caught up into glory and sees the end of history, the end of all human affairs. Here is how he describes it:

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they said: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!" Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped.

That is what Christmas initiates: it is the beginning of the great process that shall end in the perfect harmony of all creation. We are privileged to have a part in proclaiming this good news right now, and in our hearts to give honor and glory to the Lord Jesus, even before the rest of creation joins in the song. Revelation closes with this reminder:

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life... He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all God's people. Amen. (Revelation. 22:17ff)

Catalog No. 4022
Colossians 1 18-20
Fourth Message
December 21, 1986

The Great Mystery

THE GREAT MYSTERY

by Ray C. Stedman

You have all seen the television commercial for the Armed Forces that says---to a musical accompaniment---"Be all that you can be." It implies that if you join the Army, the Navy, the Air Force or the Marines, then you can be all that you can be. I don't believe that! Does anybody? But a word like that has strong appeal. Everybody wants to be all that he can be. I have never met anyone who doesn't want to be all that he feels himself capable of being. We all hunger for that. No matter how degraded, downcast or frustrated, everyone longs for fulfillment. And yet, as we observe the bewildering tragedy of human life, we are left shaking our heads at the seeming impossibility of that. I have been listening to stories all week from relatives, friends, and on the media, describing endless shame, hurt, pain, murder, divorce, cruelty, abuse and personal failure. Is there any real possibility of reversing this in someone's life? Can the downward slide be arrested?

The good news of the gospel answers with a resounding Yes! It can be done! In fact, that is what the apostle Paul is saying here in his letter to the Colossians. This is what I would call a first century description of how a life can be changed:

"Once you alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation--- if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel." (Colossians 1:21-23)

What a marvelous thing to find hope like that in this dark world of ours! And how wonderful that God himself undertakes to make this change! I read this morning a statement from a man who felt he heard God saying to him one day, "I wish you would leave all this reconciling of things to me, since you are so hopelessly unequipped for it, and that you would use whatever influence you have with your fellow fussers and worriers to do likewise. I know what I am doing and I will go over it with you when you get home."

That is a good word for us to remember. God is at work. He is sovereign. And he can and does reconcile people to himself and make a change in their lives. This passage, from verse 21 on through the end of the chapter, is a tremendous description of the process of change in a human being. It traces it in three stages, and I propose that we consider them this morning.

First, there is a beginning that involves an inner reversal of attitude. A total change of outlook occurs when you come into contact personally with the Savior himself. As Paul states here, there was a time when all of us who are now Christians were "alienated from God." We did not have any use for God. We did not take him into our reckoning. We did not consider him important. We started and ended each day without a thought of him. We went about our own plans, lived for ourselves, and did what we felt like doing, never giving a thought to God. Or if we did think of him, we regarded him as merely a remote Being on the horizon of life, but we never expected anything from him. Because we cut him out of our thinking---even though he was sustaining our very life---we ended up, as Paul describes, "enemies in our minds," hostile toward God. We did not want anything to do with him. You remember how that felt, don't you? We avoided God. We thought he would interfere with our plans; that he was a cosmic killjoy out to make us live uneventful and unhappy lives. We were not open to him in any degree whatsoever. We were enemies of God, and as a result we expressed that enmity in evil behavior.

That is really what this text says. The translation, "because of your evil behavior," is a very poor one. That sounds as though evil behavior is the cause of inner alienation and hostility toward God. But it is quite the other way around.It is inner alienation, estrangement from God and hostility toward him, that causes evil behavior. That is what the Greek text clearly declares here.

"But now," Paul says, "we are reconciled to God." Something has happened within us. It occurred when we saw that the death of Jesus was for us, that somehow he had done something to set aside our estrangement, our brokenness and hurt, and that if we came to him in faith he would deliver us. So we came. Something happened then to our inner attitude. We were changed in the way we thought. We no longer saw God as an enemy and a Judge, but as a loving Father. We recognized that the cross was not a symbol of failure in the life of a religious fanatic, but it was a moment when the great enemies all men face were conquered; when death was overcome and all the evil powers against mankind were set at naught. Thus our whole life was changed.

Just this past week I received a letter from a man describing the change that occurred in his life. Here is an excerpt from it:

I visited your office about four and one-half years ago at the request of my wife. When I met with you I was away from my wife and planning to divorce. After meeting with you I listened to many of your tapes and read several of your books and through this and other Christian materials I developed at least a vague sense of the personal nature of God and that he does, in fact, hate divorce. Out of a guilty conscience I moved back into my home, with my wife. I truly did not believe I could ever love my wife again and that my life would be forever miserable, but the guilt of leaving was so great I had to stay.
After I had been home for about six months, during which time my wife encouraged me to attend church and Bible study, the Lord saved me and demonstrated his love for me. In a moment of surrender he freed me from drugs and alcohol. I had been drinking a quart of whiskey per day for years, and my health clearly revealed it. Since that time my love relationship with Jesus has continually grown. As the world views it, my life has totally fallen apart. I have lost my business and everything our family has ever owned in the last three years. The world does not know what I and my family know. Our riches are no longer in things (the created). Our riches are in the Creator. He is our Rock. He is faithful and he will deliver us and we only desire that our will be in conformity to his will.
He has given us a wonderful peace of heart, joy in our spirits and the strength to bear up under whatever circumstances he allows to mold us into conformity to his character. I have found in my wife everything I had ever hoped to have in a wife, and the Holy Spirit has encouraged me for some time no~ to share with you this wonderful miracle worked by God through you his servant and others like you.

That clear testimony confirms what the apostle says to the Colossians. God is in the business of changing lives. That is what this good news is about. If you need your life changed, that is where you start.

The process of change begins, as we have seen, with opening the heart to Christ, and receiving him as Lord. But it is a process that is headed for a specific goal, which, according to the apostle, is "to present you holy [whole, complete, well balanced in spirit, soul and body] in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation." That is God's goal, and he fully intends to accomplish it. The sign that it is happening---don't miss this---is, "if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel." It is continuing that is the proof of reality. Many people start out the Christian life, filled with joy because they have found a new sensation. But it does not last. Somewhere along the line it fades. Finally, they set it all aside and go back to the way they once were. That is a sign there was never real faith at the beginning. It is continuance that proves reality. Someone has well said, "If your faith fizzles before you finish, it is because it was faulty from the first!" You get an "F" for that performance! That does not mean that faith cannot waver and wobble at times. It does with all of us. Sometimes faith grows dim, but true faith never ceases. We never give up the realization that God has changed us. There is a new attitude, a new life imparted, and that is the sign that we cannot give up being a Christian. I received a phone call from a young man one day who said, "I'm going to quit being a Christian. It's too hard. I don't want to pay the price." I said to him, "I think that is what you ought to do." There was a long silence for a moment, then he said, "You know I can't do that." I knew he could not, and he did not, for it is continuing that is the proof of reality.

The second step is the realization of the part others play in this process of change. Listen to these words:

"This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness..."

One of the remarkable things that Christians learn is that others have had a part in bringing the gospel to them. Oftentimes that part was played long before we ever came to Christ, but when we learn of it we are greatly moved. I will never forget the Methodist evangelist who preached to me when I was a boy ten years old. I remember to this day the text he preached from because when I heard the gospel from him I came to Christ. I do not know where that man is or what has happened to him, but his name and the memory of that occasion are still fresh in my mind.

Some may wonder what is meant by the statement, "the gospel...that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven." How could that be, we ask? When Paul wrote this he had preached in a few cities of the Roman Empire, which was but a small part of the planet on which we live. Then, they did not even know about North and South America. How could this statement be true? We find the answer in chapter 10 of Paul's letter to the Romans. There he argues that there must be preachers who must be sent, etc., in order for people to hear. Nevertheless, he asks, "Have they not heard?" Then he quotes from Psalm 19, "Their voice has gone out to all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." The psalm states, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork." Nature is the first preacher of the gospel. There is order in the universe. There is clearly intelligence behind it all. Hebrewssays, "He that comes to God must believe that he is [that is what nature tells us] and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him." If anyone, anywhere, responds to the facts that nature presents about the existence of a God of power and glory, and begins to seek him, then God himself assumes the responsibility to bring him to hear of the Redeemer, the Savior. It is still true that "there is no other name, under heaven, given among men whereby we must be saved." God will bring the seeking soul to Jesus.

The second thing Paul states is that the character of those who truly preach the gospel is that they are servants. They count it a delight and joy to be used of God. This is a major distinguishing mark by which you can tell whether a preacher is true or false. If you listen to the television evangelists today, as I frequently have done, you can hardly escape the feeling that Christianity is a matter of trying to get something from God---to get God to work for us. We humans are the ultimate reason for all that happens in life. But the truth is, we Christians are given the high privilege of serving the Living God, of God using us in our weakness, failure, folly and faultiness to proclaim this truth to others. The realization that the God of Glory is willing to do that should create in us a deep sense of gratitude that we can be his servants. That is the difference between the false and true witnesses. The false think God works for them; the true delight in the fact that God is using them, and they they do not regard it as an intrusion or a burden, but the highest honor that could ever be given.

But, says Paul, such service involves much pain and sacrifice: "I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church." What does he mean, that something is lacking in the afflictions of Christ? Clearly, he does not mean that something was lacking in the atoning work of Jesus; that the suffering of the cross was not sufficient to settle the question of sin. The fact is, the word "afflictions" is never used in the scriptures to describe the death of Jesus. Afflictions are what Jesus went through before the cross from the opposition of the enemy, the devil, and from our Lord's willingness to make himself a servant to others and to minister to human needs. That was when he endured "afflictions."

But there is nothing lacking in what he did on the cross. Scripture says, "He is able to save to the uttermost all those who come unto God through him." John adds, "He is the propitiation for our sin, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world." There is nothing lacking there!

But when we are engaged in fighting against the opposition of the devil and his angels, when we are opposed by the lusts of the flesh and face the subtle lies and deceptions of the world around us, then we find we are engaged in a combat, and combat is always costly! Someone must pay a price in order that others might come to Christ.

Have you ever asked yourself, how many prayers and tears, how much heartache and disappointment has someone gone through for you in order that you might come to Christ? I never read the Scriptures without a momentary thought, at least, of what it cost others for me to have this Bible in my hand: the blood of martyrs, the fears and tears of persecuted people throughout centuries, the sweat and labor of translators, and the effort of teachers to make it plain and clear. We should never read the Scriptures without remembering that someone has died to make it possible.

When we come to Christ we are to take up this battle and suffer on behalf of others. It not only benefits others but it benefits us as well. That is why Paul says, "I rejoice in my sufferings on your behalf." "It does something for me," he says. "It keeps me usable. I am reminded constantly that it is out of weakness that I am made strong." That is what suffering for others will do for us: it will keep us humble and useful. But it also has great effect upon others: it shows them that we are deeply concerned. We pray for them, we long for them, we grieve over them, we hurt when they hurt. That is the process by which others come to Christ.

Finally, this process requires, as Paul goes on to say, an understanding of a truly great mystery:

"...the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him [not simply Christ, but "Christ in you"] counseling and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ [that is the goal which in v. 22 he says God is aiming at]. To this end I labor, struggling with all the energy he so powerfully works in me."

There is the great mystery. It is the greatest truth taught in the Bible, and yet it is the most seriously missing element in many churches today. Most Christians in our churches understand that Christ died for the forgiveness of their sins---they believed that and came to Christ because of that---but that is where most of them stop. Relatively few, it seems, ever go on to grasp the fact that Jesus died for them that he might live in them. It is his life in them that is the source of power, change and deliverance, and the ability to resist temptation. That is how loneliness is met and Companionship provided. It is not enough to know that Christ died in order that we might go to heaven. We are also to know, understand, and practice Christ actually living in us now!

That is surely the most astounding truth in the Bible. As Paul declares here, it is a mystery that "has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to his saints." Think of that! Nowhere in the Old Testament will you ever find a single verse that describes the process by which God is going to help his people. There are great promises in the Old Testament, such as Isaiah's word at the end of chapter 40, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." That is true. Old Testament saints understood and believed that promise, and they actually experienced it: they waited on the Lord, and they were strengthened; they were lifted up, comforted and helped. All that is clear as you read the Old Testament. But what was never told them was the means by which God would do this.

It was not until Jesus came and taught his disciples that we learn at last what means God would employ. In Matthew 13, that amazing chapter of the parables of Jesus, our Lord took these words on his own lips, quoting one of the Old Testament prophets, "I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world." Gradually he sought to impart to the disciples this amazing truth: through his death and resurrection, and through the coming of the Holy Spirit, they would be indwelt by Jesus himself. In the Upper Room, just before the cross, he uttered these words, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home in him." Dr. Robert Munger's great little booklet, "My Heart, Christ's Home," is a magnificent development of this statement. It is the mystery hidden from the foundation of the world, but now made known to his saints.

Paul himself lived this way. That is what he is telling us in the last verse of this chapter: "To this end I labor, striving with all the energy he [Jesus] so powerfully works in me." There is a new power at work. When you understand that you possess the Lord Jesus---that he is in you---you have a totally new source of power. You also have a new desire, a new motive: you long to see change take place and you are motivated to take the steps that will bring it into being---to obey, to read, to study, to learn, to grow. You have a new Companion along the way. The problem of loneliness is ended because you are never alone when Jesus is present in your life. What a mighty truth this is! It is what delivers people. It is more than the fact that Jesus died on a cross. He died that he might live in us! This is the highest truth of all, a truth that God labors for us to understand and apply. When it happens, things begin to change in any human life.

Our long-time friend, Major lan Thomas, used to put it very succinctly. He is a former British Army officer, and has made it his lifelong ministry to travel all over the world and teach this wonderful truth of "Christ in you, the hope of glory." He puts it this way:

He had to be what he was, in order to do what he did!

We have been seeing that in Colossians. Jesus had to be both God and man in order to die in our place, be raised again, ascend into the heavens, and send the Holy Spirit, and thus come into our life. Second,

He had to do what he did, in order that we might have what he is.

We could never have this new power, this new source of energy, this new comfort and strength in our life, if Jesus had not done what he did. It is on the basis of his death and resurrection that we have what he is. Third,

we must have what he is, in order to be what he was.

That is what this great text is saying. God wants to present us "holy, without blemish, and free from accusation," just as his Son was. We are being conformed to the image of his Son. He is "bringing many sons to glory." We must have what he is in order to be what he was. That is why it is important to understand this great mystery, "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

The world knows nothing of this mystery. You will never find it mentioned by the media, except by Christians. You will never learn about it in the great universities of the world. In all secular wisdom and knowledge there is no recognition of this incomparable source of change in a human life. It is found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why this message is such a powerful, world transforming, revolutionary statement, and why we ought to give ourselves to understanding it more than any other thing in life.

Let me summarize this passage, in closing. The apostle points out three stages of change. First, the new birth begins a process which is intended to perfect us, spirit, soul and body. To advance that process requires pain and commitment on the part of others on our behalf; and when we come to Christ we are to undertake that same pain and commitment on behalf of others. Finally, all progress occurs only by coming to understand and to practice the mystery of "Christ in you, the hope of glory." That is how to stop the terrible downward slide of any human life!

There may be some who have come to this service and have never yet begun that process. If so, I want you to know that this transaction can take place between you and God alone right here. In a moment of quietness, as we close this service, you can say, "Lord Jesus, here I am. Come into my heart. Receive me. Begin to change me." He will respond, as he promises to do, to those who in true faith invite him into their lives.

Prayer

"Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

Catalog No 4023 Colossians 1:21-29 Fifth Message December 28, 1986

The Overflowing Life

THE OVERFLOWING LIFE

by Ray C. Stedman

The end of a year always brings news articles that highlight the events of the past year. I read this week an article entitled "The Most Boring People of 1986." Some may place me in that category, but at least I was not included in this article. A group calling themselves "The Boring Institute of New Jeremiahsey" picks the most boring people of the year every December. You may be interested to know that in 1984 Michael Jackson was the "Yawn of the Year," primarily because of his over-exposure in the media. In 1985 it was Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who, as this article says, "debunked the cherished myth that talking about sex is always interesting." The winner this year was Joan Rivers. "Her rival talk show," the article says, "reveals the genius of Johnny Carson."

Whether we agree or not with this article, it does point out one of the major problems of life---boredom! I would not be at all surprised to learn that most of the toys that were opened at Christmas have become boring now and are lying neglected. Even fathers have tired of playing with them! Have you ever asked yourself, what is boredom? Why do people grow bored? I believe boredom comes as a result of looking to something outside yourself to keep you excited. We blame our boredom on everything else. "There's nothing to do," is a frequent complaint of children, as though it were somebody else's fault. But boredom is really our problem. There is something wrong in us. There is no inner resource from which we can draw. Boredom comes when we find ourselves demanding satisfaction from some instrument or activity, or even some person, outside ourselves. It indicates there is a real lack within us.

The letter to the Colossians is actually dealing with the problem of boredom, of apathy, and lack of vitality. Life had no zest, no zing and delight for these Colossian Christians. That is why the apostle Paul seeks in this letter to reveal the true secret of a turned-on life: it is the discovery of a Person who can live within us. As we have already seen, that is the great mystery, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Christians who have discovered this---not merely in an intellectual sense, but have begun to live on that basis day by day---are very seldom bored. To them, everything is exciting. Even difficulties and trials are regarded as adventures and they look forward to how the Lord will work them out. They may feel a sense of risk, perhaps even danger, but they also have a sense of excitement and anticipation as they look for God to act.

This is why the Scriptures often refer to the word "riches." Paul frequently makes mention of the "riches of the gospel." In one place he says his greatest joy was to declare "the unsearchable riches of Christ." The gospels make frequent mention of "treasures." Jesus talked about "laying up treasures in heaven." We have within our bodies, Paul says in Second Corinthians, "a treasure in earthen vessels, that it may be evident that the power is not from us but from God." That inner treasure is what makes the Christian life rich, zestful, and worth living. So these letters of Paul seek always to create a sense of this in people, to help them understand that the answer to the problem of boredom and apathy is a "well of living water," as Jesus put it, "springing up from within." That is what will refresh our spirits, and save us from perpetual boredom.

Hear these words of Paul from the opening verses of the second chapter:

"I want you to know how strenuously I am exerting myself for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

The apostle's purpose for writing is stated very clearly there. He specifically wants to enrich their lives, encourage their hearts, and enable love to spread throughout the congregation.

But do not overlook the process! There is an unfortunate chapter division here that separates verse 1 from the closing verse of chapter 1. These two verses actually belong together. In verse 29 of chapter 1, Paul says, "To this end I labor [or, I toil], struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me. And I want you to know how strenuously I am exerting myself for you..." Notice how he calls attention to the effort and toil he was putting into this matter of bringing the Colossian Christians into vitality, excitement, and a sense of adventure.

You may ask, how could a man who is chained to a Roman guard day and night, in the city of Rome, a thousand miles from Colossae, so toil as to help the Colossians? Paul does not tell us here but elsewhere we are given ample information as to his method. Earlier in this letter he talked about laboring continuously in prayer for them. That is one way he toils for them---through frequent prayer.

I want to stress again the tremendous importance of praying for one another. You can do all the right things to help someone, but if his attitude is wrong nothing you do will serve to assist him. What can change that? It is your praying for him! Prayer can change the heart and mind, the inner attitude. It is a powerful force to transform an atmosphere and make something acceptable when otherwise it would appear to be dull and uninteresting. Paul prayed ("agonized" is the word) for these Colossian Christians over and over again, even though he had not personally met most of them. Also, it is evident from his letters that he was alert to every word of information about them. When Epaphras brought news to the apostle in Rome about the church at Colossae, Paul questioned him and extracted from him all the information he could in order that he might know how to pray for the Colossians. That is an indication of his special concern for them.

But probably the most strenuous toil of the apostle on behalf of the Colossians was to compose these letters. These are extremely powerful and thoughtful letters. They are not something he dashed off effortlessly, although he had a marvelous mind and was capable of tremendous spontaneous statements of truth. The letters reveal that much thought had gone into them. When did he have time to think? I have always felt that he worked through these deep theological statements on occasions when he was unable to sleep at night. I find that happens with me. When I can't sleep I often start thinking about a passage of Scripture that I am studying, and insights come in the quiet hours of the night that I never seem to get during the daytime hours. Oftentimes I am able to work through a whole message and outline it in those night hours. Then I go back to sleep and usually sleep peacefully till dawn. Perhaps Paul found his chain made sleep difficult and he used the night hours for difficult mental toil.

Notice that Paul's immediate goal is to encourage the hearts of the Colossians and to unite them in l