Hope of Glory

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

HOPE OF GLORY

Col 1:24-27

24 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. 25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27 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.

NIV

We have to remember that the reason Paul is in Rome in the first place is that certain Jews had planned to kill him because he was considered a trouble maker. Paul was insisting that Jesus was for the gentiles as well as the Jews. Because of the charges against him, his only hope of escaping judgment by the Jews, and thus being murdered by them was to proclaim his Roman citizenship and thus had the right to want his charges brought before Caesar. So he is in chains in Rome as he makes this statement about rejoicing in what he suffered for them. All this is recorded for us in the Acts of the Apostles. It is doubtful that we would have to experience that type of suffering for the sake of the gospel. Although perhaps we are not stirring up enough trouble in the unbelieving world to be persecuted as Paul was. There are many Christians in parts of the world who are being killed for their faith, however, not by Jews, but by Muslims. We do have some Christians in this county who have been killed right in their churches. Perhaps the day is coming when we believers will not be so welcome in sharing the gospel message openly. will we be able to stand our ground even under those types of difficult circumstances? The question that arises from considering this is that, as we already suggested, are we conforming too much to be like the world so as to not stir up too much trouble? Oh, we go to church, being in church is not the issue. As long as we confine our faith to the confines of the church building the world does not care about us. It is when we start declaring the gospel outside our building, basically saying that if someone does not accept Jesus, they are going to hell. We might have been cornered, so to speak, into simple saying, “Jesus loves you” as a way of sharing the gospel, instead of He is the only way to heaven, all other ways lead to hell. This is the mystery that Paul says was kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. Although all throughout the Old Testament Jesus is present, he was not openly exposed as when he came to earth in the form of a man. Now all the fullness of the gospel is available to all mankind, both Jew and Gentile. The greatest mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory. Even though we say we have faith, that we are believers, there is still this mystery as to how Christ is in us. Although we have previously made the point there is no mystery, which is about Christ, there is a certain amount of mystery as to how he is in us. We consider the Holy Spirit as the person who now dwells within us, and that Jesus is now at the right hand of the Father. So then how can Christ be in us? The fact is, Jesus, as we consider him as a person, God in the flesh who ascended into glory, is not actually in us, however, the spirit of Christ, the hope of glory is within us. It is only through this faith we have, this inner conscience of Christ that we have any hope of attaining glory. In that sense, Christ, the hope of glory is within us, in our inner being, our awareness, our thoughts, and heart. We live with that hope, the hope of Christ coming for us to take us home to the place he has prepared for us. So, in fact, there is no mystery after all. It is crystal clear. We live in Christ and he in us and he and he alone is our hope of glory.

Living in the "If"

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

LIVING IN THE "IF"

Col 1:21-23

21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 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— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. 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.

NIV

The big “If” is at the core of this truth. However, first, we need to see this truth. Indeed, there is no question that because of the way we once thought and behaved we were enemies of God, but not in the physical sense, as we were enemies in our minds. God has always loved us, but we once hated him. He was never our enemy, we were his. We are the ones who waged war on his way of life, on his standards, on faith, proclaiming it to be a religion of man, only using God for their own self-interests, if in fact, there was a God. We separated or alienated ourselves from God and his love for us. We kept him at a distance and would not have anything to do with him if in fact he actually existed. We know now that we were evil because we were not in Christ. However, we have been reconciled by Christ’s physical body through death. This word reconciled is the exact same word in the meaning of the Greek word. It means to restore friendly relations. Once being an enemy, or not on friendly terms with God, he took the first move, he initiated the treaty through sending his Son to earth in the form of man, to die on the cross, being the perfect sacrifice for our sin thus reestablishing a way for us to be restored into friendship with God. Through the work of Jesus on that cross, he now presents us holy in the sight of God, without blemish and free of accusation. That simply means we are no longer accountable for our sin. When God looks upon us, he sees his Son, perfect in every way, thus God sees us sacred to him, holy, set apart for him and free of faultiness, without blemish, or perfect, and free of accountability of our sin. Now that big “if”, which actually does appear in the Greek. All this truth we can enjoy if we continue in our faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This simply means, continuing to have faith in Jesus, living by faith, and not by works. We must stand firm that it is by faith alone that we are saved, and not by works, lest we boast. This kind of flies in the face of the idea of being a “good Christian”. We are Christians because of our faith in Christ, not because we complete a list of things we need to do right and things we need to not do. We cannot live checking off lists, that would be work, but we must live a life worthy of our Lord and that is a life believing, a life of faith. Sure, we want to please him, and do the work he has prepared in advance for us to do, and what is the work of God? To believe in the one he sent. The one work we have to do, is to have faith in Christ. We cannot be moved from our faith. Nothing can deter us from that faith. We live right in the middle of the “If”. We will not be moved.

Making Peace

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

MAKING PEACE

Col 1:15-20

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 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. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And 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. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 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.

NIV

What we want to connect to this continuing thought is what he sort of finished with his preceding thought (13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins) which is really all one complete concept, yet we have to parcel it out a little in order to ponder all the aspects of the truth. What we have to remember is that Paul is talking about the Son of God, Christ Jesus as being the image of invisible God. Although he makes the statement that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation, we do not think Paul was saying Jesus was actually born, as though he did not exist until he was born, for we are confident Paul is aware of the infinite triune God who has always been. However, we also should understand the culture and time in which Paul lived with all the influences of the Roman-Greco cultures and multiplicities of mystical gods that existed. There were plenty of various philosophies and religious persuasions that came from both the Romans and the Greeks. Paul was making the point that Jesus came before all of them, and in fact, they were created by him. It did not matter how powerful or what kind of authority a ruler on earth had, no matter how much power any one throne had in a country, they were all created by Jesus and he created them for himself. All mankind belongs to Christ, we are not our own, despite what anyone might think, as far as being their own person. Jesus created all things, including us, and he is before us and everything is held together by him. What this means in this crazed culture with its man-centered ideas about climate change, is that Jesus holds the whole of everything together, including the climate. All of heaven and earth were created by him and are being held or controlled by him. They stand in him. Paul moves specifically into the relationship of the church, which is us, believers. Jesus is our head, what rules the rest of our body. He is the ultimate authority over the movement of the church, as our head, our brain is the ultimate authority over these fingers moving over the keys of the computer. Jesus does not exist for us, but we exist for him and all our movements, that is how we live, where we live, how we work, where we work, how we church, where we church, in other words, every aspect of our lives, our goals, aspirations, desires should be influenced by our head, Jesus. He must have absolute supremacy over all things, including us. Now, Paul makes all that perfectly clear for this the one reason that it is Jesus who reconciled himself to his creation. This was the plan from before the creation of time. We would be brought back into fellowship with God by Christ, by the shedding of his blood. It is his act of reconciling himself to his creation, we are saved as we believe in him and his action, his work on the cross for our redemption and his forgiveness of our sin so that he is at peace with us and we are at peace with him. We have to understand that we cannot make peace with God, it is Jesus who is making the peace.

Rescued

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

RESCUED

Col 1:9-14

9 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. 10 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, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

NIV

It is time to think about being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that we may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father. We can see the reason, for this, but let’s first deal with being strengthened. We still have to connect this strengthening to living a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God. It would seem right we would need his mighty power in order to do all that, although we also considered it is the work of the Spirit within us. Yet when we add in the reason of being rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves, we see the work of the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit at work in unison within and for our lives. Yes, it is the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. He did that through his Son coming to die on the cross for us, to satisfy His own need to justice. There is no question we were once lost in the dominion of darkness. Having known real darkness in the physical sense, complete darkness without a shred of light, as if being blind, we can understand the spiritual darkness we were in before we were rescued by God and brought into the kingdom of light. How we managed to survive in that darkness still baffles us. How we were not completely destroyed has to be due to the hand of God in his providence keeping us safe until we were rescued, knowing in advance we would respond to his offer to come out of that darkness into His light. We still need endurance and patience in this life although he has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. In some sense, we have received that inheritance as we have already begun our eternal life. In the other sense, we are still captive, so to speak, in this corruptible physical body and must endure its death in order to enjoy its resurrection into a glorified condition. In that sense we need that patience, but with joyfully giving thanks to the Father. We always have the knowledge that we have been rescued from our darkness, our blindness, and we are now living in the light, seeing the truth and understanding someday we will be in glory with our Lord. However, our joyful thanking the Father is also for our present life, living in the light, but also having been redeemed, and our sins are forgiven. God will never bring up our sins to us ever again. That is what forgiveness is all about. We are not held accountable to our sins, they are forgiven. This means not only all our past sins but the ones we still struggle with and the ones we are going to struggle with. Because we do still live in this corruptible body, it will get caught up in some form of corruption which is sin. So then we could say we still live in this sinful body, although we make every effort, at least we think we do, not to commit some sin, we still fail to be perfect. So we need that strengthening by his mighty power and endurance and patience as we continue to walk in the light because we have been rescued.

Pleasing Him

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

PLEASING HIM

Col 1:9-14

9 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. 10 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, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

NIV

Having looked at God filling us with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding, we need to see why he does that. Paul goes on to tell us the reason is so that we may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work as well as much more, but we need to stop here for now. Again it is difficult to segment this whole thought, but if we don’t our thoughts spawned or rather inspired by the whole would turn into a book. Because God has filled us with what he has, there is no mystery considering his will for us and the reason we are fully aware of his will is so that we may live a life worthy of him. It would make perfect sense the only way we could live a life worthy of the Lord is by knowing his perfect will and the only way we are going to know his perfect will is by him filling us with it. There is also no way we could possibly please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work unless we were absolutely positively filled to the brim with his will for our lives. The question which arises out of this thought, is how would those believers have all that knowledge, or how did God fill them? Sometimes it seems we believers think the method by which we can know God’s will for us, is by reading his word. Certainly, his word is filled with all kinds of knowledge about him and his will for his creation, his plan for their salvation and how they should conduct their affairs or rather how they should live by faith. But the people of Colosse did not have the word of God as we do. They did not have multiple translations, with all the reference books and commentaries to help them decipher what others think is the truth. What the believers had available to them is the very same person we have available to us, the Holy Spirit. He reveals the will of God to us in an up-close and personal way, as he dwells within us. If we need to know something about the Lord, the Holy Spirit will reveal it to us. He is the one who began the work in us in the first place and he is the one who is going to bring that work to completion. Sure, we spend many hours, years, in fact, in the study of the scriptures. But, again, the Colossians did not have the scriptures yet Paul prays they will be filled by God so they can know his will in order to live a life worthy of the Lord. What we really need to listen to is the voice of the Holy Spirit because he is who God has filled us with. The Holy Spirit is the person who gives us the knowledge of His will with all spiritual wisdom and understanding. As we allow Him to guide us into all truth we then can live that life worthy of the Lord. Without the Holy Spirit, it would be impossible to live worthy of the Lord. There is no way in our humanity we could live in a manner that pleases the Lord. It is only as we are filled with the Spirit and allow him to bear his fruit in our lives that we are going to live that life worthy of the Lord and please him in every good work. How else are we going to live pleasing Him?

No Mystery Whatsoever

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

NO MYSTERY WHATSOEVER

Col 1:9-14

9 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. 10 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, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

NIV

There is not any way to cut this whole thought into little segments as we would lose the context of everything, however, having the whole context, we might be able to deal with portions of this one at a time. Last time we were thinking about Paul praying for them, it was whenever he prays for them, and that we might have thought that he only prays for them when he remembers them. However, he goes on to say that since he heard about them, he has not stopped praying for them. Again that may not mean he was in constant prayer for them, and no one else or that is all he did was always being on prayer for them, thus not ever doing anything else. Still, the point is that as we do pray for others, when we think about them, it would be good to pray that God would fill our fellow believers with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. However, if we were to personalize this, then we would have to think that someone is praying for us in order that God fill us with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. This then leads us to the fact that God has available to us the knowledge of his will. He is not hiding His will from us. He is not keeping it a secret but wants us to know his will with all spiritual wisdom and understanding. The Greek word translated as knowledge means full discernment, in order words, lacking in nothing, fully knowing, not partial knowledge. We also should note this is not something we can spend years in study learning as we go. This is an act of God who fills us with his knowledge and he does it through all, again not some, but all spiritual wisdom and understanding. The Greek word translated wisdom is Sophia and it carries the meaning of broad and full intelligence. But even having full wisdom, or intelligence without understanding can leave us lessor than God intends. So with all that wisdom, he bestows on us regarding his will, he gives us understanding. This Greek word means a running together, a flowing together, which implies everything makes sense, it brings everything in place. So as God fills us with the knowledge of his will and he does it by giving us the full intelligence of it and puts it all together for us. In other words, we get it, we can wrap our mind around his will, and have no doubts about what his intent for our lives are. There is no mystery here whatsoever.

Faithful Minister

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

FAITHFUL MINISTER

Col 1:6-8

All over the world this gospel is bearing 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. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

NIV

First, we should note that Epaphras is the man, perhaps a disciple of Paul, or a dear friend, or both is the man who started the Colossian church and reported back to Paul what had been happening in the church. It appears this is all we know about this man, however, what we do know is that he is a faithful minister of Christ and a fellow servant. What this tells us is there should be a real sense of humility in being a faithful minister of Christ. The idea of being a servant gives us that picture. What we also need to see is from this church's growth. This is not the growth in numbers, but in their relationship with God. The idea Paul is portraying here is there should always be an effect of the gospel upon the church. We, the church should be bearing fruit and growing because we understand God’s grace in all its truth. It is interesting this time the Greek word translated grace is charin, not charis. This should be seen as a favor, not that divine influence definition. Sometimes charin is translated as a gift. In this context, it seems right to see that grace is meant the favor or gift of God, who is Christ Jesus. This is seeing God’s grace in all its truth. They learned the gospel message, the gift of God, Jesus on the cross, dying for their sin from Epaphras. This should be the main point of all evangelistic concepts, declaring the gift of God, his grace, his sending his Son to be the sacrifice for our sin. Much of all the rest of the truth is for the church, to learn and grow in their walk in the Lord. We have both tasks. We need to be that faithful servant who tells of the gift of God, his grace, as well as always be about bearing fruit and growing. We fail far too much at both of these. Will we ever learn to be that faithful minister? Will we ever learn to listen to the voice of God more than our own? Will we ever be so filled with the Spirit, we exhibit his love? We still have a way to go, always learning, always pondering how we fail, yet his love never does. So, we keep trying to be who we should be, keeping on keeping on. Someday we might just get it right, being that faithful minister of Christ.