Bible Studies in the book of Colossians

Prepared by Winston Mattsson-Boze

Herald of Faith, Inc.

winstonmb@gmail.com

Foreword

This booklet grows out of a desire to help village pastors teach their congregations the scriptures. It grows out of a series I taught on Colossians at the Church of the Good Shepherd in McAllen, Texas in 1981-82. I have realized through the years what an impact that teaching had on my own life, and I share it here in the hope that it will impact others as well.

I hope that pastors and teachers in the church will meditate on the book of Colossians, and use these comments as helps in bringing the truth to their students. The teaching should be consistent, week after week, and not sporadic. Consistent teaching has a much greater possibility of producing change that isolated teaching topics. There are twelve sections, but as I taught the series, I occasionally devoted two lessons to a section. Other sections are shorter, and can be handled in passing as you see fit.

Before starting the series, I suggest that you read through the book of Colossians every day for a month. This will help you to understand the structure and content of the book. When you teach, I suggest that you move slowly, and look for illustrations within your own experience and culture. The purpose of teaching is to change lives rather than to fill people with knowledge.

My primary source, other than the Bible, in studying Colossians was FF Bruce’s commentary in the New International Commentary on the New Testament series, published by Eerdmans.

I have tried to write in plain English and as culturally neutral as possible. My purpose is to distribute this booklet in languages that have little Christian literature. I want village pastors to have material in their mother tongue.

When I read a book I want to teach from, I often make my own notes and additions on separate paper. This gives a better opportunity to absorb the teaching, and makes the presentation my own, rather than that of the author of the book.

General Introduction

The apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians from prison in Rome. Many of his letters came from prison. Perhaps that was his time of prayer and meditation, since he was prohibited from going places. Instead of using the time to feel sorry for himself, he used it to benefit the churches.

I’m sure that Paul thought that he was simply writing to confront local situations, and without any thought of his writings’ later becoming what we know as the New Testament. I’m sure that he would rather have been able to go directly to the churches to talk the matters over, but had that been done, we could never have received the letters.

Paul heard about the problems in Colosse from Epaphras. Paul had never personally visited Colosse; he only received the report on their situation through one of his coworkers, the faithful Epaphras. Consider that this man also went to considerable expense to travel to tome to meet with Paul. He also undertook personal risk, because it was possible that he too would be arrested, in fact there are indications in the book of Philemon (v. 23) that he later did share time with Paul in prison.

There was an incipient heresy in Colosse in the church. It had to do with a teaching called Gnosticism. The term Gnosticism comes from the word gnosis, meaning knowledge. (The word agnostic comes from the same word, with a negative prefix). The Gnostics believed that they had received a special spiritual revelation that transcended the scriptures, and that was given to only a select group of people. They put a very strong emphasis on orders of angels, and believed that God ruled the universe through a series of angelic mediators. They felt God was too holy to have direct contact with the world and the flesh, so we had to be several steps removed from him by these orders of angels.

The practical application of this teaching showed itself in the people’s doing things to appease the angels, as if this would somehow make things go better for them. There was much legalism, because it was felt that this too would please the angels.

Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians to set people free from this bondage, and to demonstrate that the fullness of God dwells in Christ, and is not spread out among various hierarchies of angels. The angels are creatures, and are not divine beings. If the Colossians concentrate on angels, they are missing the fount of their salvation, which is Jesus.

Paul adapts himself to the language of the Colossians in his letter. The people used the term gnosis. Paul uses a new term epignosis, implying a knowledge that surrounds and transcends mere gnosis.

The book is short, 4 chapters. The first two chapters contain the doctrinal teaching, and the last two show how it is to be applied in life.

Paul’s Introduction. Colossians 1:1-8

In the introduction to the book, Paul identifies himself as an apostle, a term he does not share with Timothy and Epaphras (verse 7). Even though Paul had never visited them personally, he is still considered their apostle. Even though Epaphras had evangelized Colosse and apparently had established the church there, he is not considered their apostle. Somehow Paul and the Colossians and Epaphras all knew that Paul was the apostle and the others weren’t. An apostle is a man chosen by God to have special authority, and special influence. He is also chosen to undergo special suffering and special persecution. Usually, it seems, apostleship is within a fairly specific geographic area, though Paul is seen in many parts of the Roman world. It is through the influence of the apostle that the churches are established, but he seems not to be specifically identified as a member of any of these churches.

Paul was sent as an apostle from Antioch, a gentile church, where he served as a prophet or a teacher, according to Acts 13. But as time went on he came to be identified with the apostles.

Anyway, he is an apostle. He knows it and they know it. He greets them with grace and peace, a combination of a Greek and a Jewish greeting. The Greek word grace, sounds very much like their greeting “Hail”, and peace was the Hebrew blessing (shalom) that meant all the good things associated with God. Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, refuses to be sectarian either for the Greek or for the Jew, because the wall that separates Greek and Jew is removed in Christ. (Ephesians 2:14)

After his greeting Paul stops to give thanks to God for the church at Colosse. This custom was also found in early pagan letters, where they paused to thank their gods after a salutation. It is a good custom, even when you have correction, to give to remember to thank God for your brothers and sisters in Christ, remembering that what unites us is much greater than what might divide us.

In verses 3-5 the great triad of graces are mentioned, faith hope and charity. They occur in conjunction throughout the New Testament, most notably in I Corinthians 13. Faith hope and love are permanent things: they remain.

Paul thanks God for their faith in Jesus Christ. There are two senses of meaning in this phrase. One is that of Jesus as the object of their faith. A faith that is always looking to Jesus as the leader and the model of their faith, trusting in him for their salvation. The second sense is Jesus Christ as the environment in which their faith is exercised.

I want us to consider this for a moment; Jesus is the environment in which our faith is exercised. We try to give time to the presence of the Lord, in our prayer and worship, making ourselves consciously aware of his presence. As we enter into the manifest presence of the Lord, we find that our faith begins to activate. We hear from the Lord. The noise of doubt from the world diminishes, and the word of faith from the Lord increases. We have entered into a “room” called Jesus Christ, and that presence turns on our faith-activator.

Now this picture is short of the ideal, because we obviously cannot be in a prayer meeting twenty-four hours a day. But we can be in the presence of the Lord all day, and in that presence, we exercise faith. Apart from Him, we cannot exercise divine faith.

We have a microwave oven at home. I can put a cup of water for tea in the microwave oven, and it heats the water without heating the cup. Eventually the cup will get warm because of the heat of the water. That is sort of what happens to our faith when we come into the presence of t he Lord. It begins to heat up, to activate. And it begins to have its effect on our surroundings.

We become men and women whose lives are marked by faith. Not faith in a Jesus who is off in heaven someplace, but a faith that has grown because we walk around in an environment that is Jesus.

There is a worldly kind of faith that says, “Believe in yourself. Affirm positive truth. Never give in.” We have no special criticism of this human faith; we need more of it. But Christian faith comes from a heart that has been touched by the presence of God. The mind has also been renewed, but the renewing has been done by the Spirit of God, and not by the formulas of man. The worldly kind of faith tends to reinforce the worldly kind of value system, and directs our lives towards worldly kinds of success. The divine kind of faith reinforces God’s value system, and directs our lives to please him, and heads us to spiritual success.

Faith operates in Jesus, not separate from him. We speak of praying “in the name”. The name of Jesus is not a magic formula that we put at the end of a prayer to assure success. No. We pray within the sphere of the authority of Jesus in our own life and his authority over the situation at hand. We pray with the spirit of Jesus, in His will, and with His purposes in mind. Our prayer operates in Jesus, not in the realm of self with Jesus standing off in the cosmos straining to hear our voice.

Hope is the second of the graces mentioned. It has to do with the future. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for. That means that present faith includes a future aspect. We realize much here is our present life by faith, but we also know that there is much more yet to come. The theological term for future perfection is Eschaton, the root word for eschatology. Eschaton refers to that perfect state toward which God is pointing us, the new Jerusalem, the complete revealing of the Sons of God, the second coming of the Lord Jesus. There can be no eschatology without this glorious Eschaton to look toward.

Thank God our hope is not merely an baseless hope that is uncertain of its fulfillment. We may lack and meet with despair as we walk faithfully in this life, but we have a living hope, a more sure Word of prophecy, a revelation by the living God. There is an Eschaton in our future.

The third grace is love. It suffers long and is kind. It believes all things, endures all things, hopes all things. Other things fail, but not love. (1 Corinthians 13) The scriptures teach us that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. (Romans 5:5)

How were these three virtues, and by extension all Christian virtues created in the Christians at Colosse? Verse 5 shows us, “whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the Gospel.” They heard it, they were taught it in the preaching. The normal process of developing Christian character is through sound teaching. Good teaching leads to good Christian living.

In verse 6 Paul gives us an indication of the scope of his thinking. “Even as it is also in all the world bearing fruit and increasing. Paul is well aware of the geographic extension of the word of God. He is not thinking of only Asia Minor, but his concern extends to Rome, to Greece, to Africa, the entire earth. (Romans 10:18) And it is also growing in its spiritual strength, because Paul says it is producing fruit. (This is thought to be a reference to the parable of the sower, which the Gnostics used frequently in justifying their arguments.)

Paul thought in global terms, and so ought we.

In verse 7 Paul refers to Epaphras, the evangelist to the Colossians, possibly a pastor or teacher within the church. They learned these things from Epaphras. Let us briefly note some of the characteristics of this man.

1. He is a bondslave of Jesus Christ.

2. He is the Lord’s servant on Paul’s behalf; that is to say he is serving Paul as well.

3. He is a man of earnest prayer (chapter 4:12)

4. He is one who reaches out for the answer to the problem in the church, undertaking a long journey to Rome to speak with Paul in prison there.

5. Later he joined Paul in prison (Philemon 23). (He is probably not the same person as Epaphroditus in Philippians 2:25 and 4:18)

Paul is thankful for one more thing in his prayer here. There is love in the Spirit. In spite of the problem with the Gnostic heresy, the people still loved each other, and the love was not merely politeness, but a genuine love in the spirit. Remember that when strife wants to enter. Love helps us work out the problem. This is the only direct reference to the Holy Spirit in this epistle, possibly because the Gnostics claimed their knowledge came from the Spirit.

Paul’s Prayer, part 1. Co1 1:9-13

Paul is continually found praying for the churches, and his description of the prayers reveals much about the developmental needs in our Christian lives. This particular prayer in Verses 9-12 flows into a great description of the work of Christ in this world and in our lives. Later in the chapter Paul brings us into the establishing of God’s kingdom all over the world.

Change begins with prayer. That is something that we all need to learn, whether we be Bible school students, pastors, teachers or givers or helpers. Until we have been in prayer and heard from God, there will be no change.

Paul prays that God will fill the Colossians with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. The phrasing of this prayer seems to reflect a primitive Christian confession of faith, and that may be why the words are condensed into such heavy meaning.

Paul wants them to have knowledge. That is a key word in the epistle. The word used is epignosis, which is in contrast to the word gnosis that the Gnostics were using to describe their false doctrine of angels. Epignosis could be translated “super-knowledge”, not in the sense of some giant computer filled with words of knowledge, but in the sense that is deeper and fuller than those who were presenting mere sophistry and calling it divine wisdom. Epignosis is a knowledge that is greater than ordinary knowledge. It transcends it, and surrounds it.

There is a worldly knowledge, and it is useful. But God has said that His ways are higher than our ways. He has made the wisdom of man foolishness by comparison. To function in the spirit requires a knowledge that is imparted by the Holy Spirit, and revealed through the word of God. The word epignosis—”super-knowledge”—is almost a technical term for the decisive knowledge of God, which is involved in conversion to the Christian Faith. Our “super-knowledge” makes a difference in our lives. Knowing Him as we do, we cannot merely function as nice people in a nice world. Or, as someone described it once, to put a sign in front of the church saying, ‘the bourgeoisie prays here.” Our “super-knowledge” has changed our action materially, because now we are motivated by the great commission rather than by mere social acceptability. “Super-knowledge”. It could become a code word, and I don’t want that to happen, because that would in itself be Gnostic, and could lead to spiritual pride. But Paul prays that the Colossians, and we by extension, will increase in this “super-knowledge”.

The “super-knowledge” is to be the knowledge of his will. Knowing the will was probably a current expression in Jewish religion at that time. Paul says in Acts 22:14 “The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will.” And in Romans 12:2 it refers to testing what the will of God is. It is clear that the meaning is much deeper than our expression given to young people about seeking the will, of God for your life. The will of God has to do with his entire plan for the universe.

I wish I could stand up and announce in one paragraph what the will of God is. I know that world evangelization is a part of carrying out that will. But time and time again Paul refers to the mystery and the secret of God (Eph. 1:9,3:3-9, 5:32,6:19, Col. 1:26-27, 2:2, 4:3, 1 Tim 3:16). If it could be explained in a simple paragraph, Paul would have written that. But it comes through our continuing meditation and study of God’s revelation.

Paul wants us to be filled with that knowledge of His will. That means that we develop our understanding and get a more complete insight into the holiness of the will, the glory of the will, and the power that flows from the understanding of that will. We learn, as we grow in grace and knowledge, to act in accordance with the will in our continuing walk with Christ.

Knowing God’s will involves understanding His plan for the earth and for the universe, and understanding the times in which we live from a divine perspective. This is a continual struggle. In Ephesians 4:23 Paul says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” In Romans 12:2, he says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” To adopt the divine perspective, to adapt our thinking to the divine pattern, requires a decision to reject the carnal mind. Our growth in grace involves erasing worldly thought patterns and replacing them with divine thought patterns.

Let’s stop and try to illustrate. A few years ago Hal Holbrook acted the part of Abraham Lincoln, the American President who freed the slaves, and was later shot and killed. In order to act well, Holbrook read everything Lincoln ever wrote, and every biography ever written about Lincoln. He visited all the places Lincoln went to, and did his very best to adjust his mind to the middle of the 19th century. Those who saw him act said that he looked like Lincoln, he walked like Lincoln, he spoke like Lincoln, and they didn’t think he would be satisfied until somebody shot him. He had ceased being Hal Holbrook and had become Abraham Lincoln for a time.

Do you see why we are so concerned with studying the scriptures and with living lives in the Holy Spirit? We want more than anything to be renewed in the image of our Creator, so we read everything He ever wrote. We listen to other people’s understandings of Him. And we are not dismayed if they come to crucify us.

What does this have to do with God’s will? Well, God’s will is like ours in this, that the will is the decision maker in our being. As we come up against decisions, we face them confidently in our spirits, because our minds have already been renewed, so that we have begun to think like God in many respects. Our wills have become so aligned with His, so that we don’t have to struggle against Him. Knowing His purposes in this world, and loving Him as we do, we simply move in His will without experiencing major crises in our lives over it.

This prayer is interesting in that it begins with the knowledge of God’s will, and it also ends in v 10 with growing in the knowledge of God. The deep cry of Paul’s life was “that I may know Him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, that I might attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10)

If we are not filled with be knowledge of the divine will, we may be filled with other kinds of religious knowledge, and we will still qualify for church member­ship, and we will probably get to heaven with a ticket called cheap grace, but we will have missed God’s purpose. I talked with a man who believed in seed-faith. He was doing a certain thing that would cost him quite a bit of money on the principle that there would be a greater return to him personally because of it. He paid his tithes in advance as part of his investment. I think he received his return. But I understood that his charitable giving had nothing whatsoever to do with the Kingdom of God, but only with his seed faith principle. He is, I fear, sowing to the flesh, and will reap along with his monetary reward, corruption. I see in him a contrast with being filled with the knowledge of the divine will and being filled with religious knowledge.

The knowledge of the divine will is also an intimate term. In scripture, knowledge is always associated with love and obedience and willing acceptance. It is impossible to know in our heads and disobey with our hearts. In fact we more frequently obey with our hearts before we know with our heads, for Jesus said in John 7:17, “If any man will do my will, he will know the doctrine.” So our knowledge, our “super-knowledge”, is an active embracing and absorbing of God’s thought patterns. I find that I don’t have too much problem with God’s overall will, and I usually don’t have much problem even with the specific outworkings of Hs plan. But there are times when I have to pray to get the right plan of action, and there are times when it seems like He leaves that plan of action for me to decide.

We should not get too “spiritual” in our making of everyday decisions, like what color tie we should wear, but let us concentrate on being in serious communion with God day by day. That is how our wills will be remolded into conformity with His will.

When I was still in college, I had a Baptist roommate, and we had rented an apartment on the West Side of Chicago. He commented one day on someone who had complemented him on his maturity. His reaction upon reflection was that he really hadn’t made his own decision; he had made his parents’ decision, even though they weren’t there. That comment could be commended or attacked, depending on the point you were trying to make. But for certain, He had been so influenced by his parents’ decision-making process, that he used the same process in making his own decisions. I am aware of similar influences from my own parents; we think alike. I’m thankful I have good models at home who have trained themselves to think after the divine pattern.

But even if we have the best of examples in training our minds to think, we still fall far short of the divine thought pattern. We still must search out in the scriptures the way that God thinks. Not merely the final result of his decision-making process, but the process by which He reaches his final decision. To know this will lead us to think in the same way. We need more than anything to learn to think as He thinks; then we will be as He is, we will act as He acts.

Paul’s Prayer, part 2. Colossians 1; 9-14

We have been moving slowly, and I think we will continue to move slowly in this part of the book of Colossians. The first two chapters have much to reveal to us concerning the Lord, and His centrality in the entire universe as well as in the life of the Christian.

Paul prays in Verse 10 that the Colossians will walk worthily of the Lord. This was a phrase that the heathens used in relation to their gods. They wanted to walk worthily of, for example, Diana of the Ephesians. We want to walk worthy of our calling. (2 Thessalonians 1:11)

Walking worthily implies that there is already a basic acceptance by God. We do not move from the position of doing good works to attaining salvation. But rather we move from our salvation into good works. We must be born of the spirit before we can do spiritual works. As we mature in salvation, we increase in good works.

The verse (10) continues to talk of bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. The divine seed is what produces the fair fruit of good works. (FF Bruce) The knowledge of God is like a rain that nurtures the growth of the spiritual plant. It is only as we receive more of the Lord himself that we can do more of His works.

Verse 11 begins with the phrase “strengthened with all power, according to the power of his glory. The Christian walk is not only knowledge, but also power. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that he did not want to know the words of the false teachers, but their power. (1 Corinthians 4:15) It is not only the power to live a life victorious over sin, though that is an essential of the power of God. But God’s power enables us to live above the circumstances of life, and to have dominion and authority over them. Jesus demonstrated the flow of power when he calmed the sea and again when he walked on the sea. He demonstrated it when he healed the sick and raised the dead. And he demonstrated it when he gave instructions on how to find the money to pay the taxes.

We should not limit the power of God to only spiritual things. And we should not limit it only to the physical things. God’s power is available in every realm for the purpose of establishing his kingdom.

The phrase, “According to his glorious might,” is rendered in the King James Version as “according the power of his glory,” and that is more accurate a translation. The power is something that is present in His glory. The glory is the Shekinah, or the brightness of God, as it is manifested to man. There is a special emphasis on the glory’s being revealed. It is not referring to the glory that is in heaven, and the glory that is the special nature of God, but rather the revelation of that Glory to man. When God wanted to show his presence in Israel, he descended in a cloud on the tabernacle or the temple. They knew He was there.

Earlier we talked about the faith that we have in Christ. The faith that flows from our being in His Presence. The same thought is present here. Our works of faith, our works of power, all flow out of His presence revealed to us.

In fact we can expand this thought to say that God’s revelation to us, however it may come, whether by scripture, by prophecy, or by inner knowledge, is the source of all our highest strength. (Lightfoot) The point is that our faith begins with God. As we grow in Him, we do more works of faith, more exploits in this world.

Charles Price tells of several incidents in his book, The Real Faith, where someone with an obvious need would come for prayer, but he would not pray directly for that need. The Lord was working in some other area. Dr. Price would not try to pray for a situation for which he had not received divine faith, but he would instead explore the situation until the Lord revealed what he should do. One woman, for example, came to the meeting in a wheel chair. They brought her on a truck, and when she got there, God gave her great faith. She told the people in the truck that she wouldn’t need them to take her home, because God was going to heal her. God healed her, and she left her wheelchair for some other person who might need it, and took public transportation home. Later in the week another wheelchair-confined woman did the same thing. At the end of the meeting the leaders were all trying to command her to rise and walk, but it didn’t work. Dr Price looked on sadly, because he had not received faith to deliver the woman either. She was trying to imitate, to use the trick that worked for the other woman. But she was not exercising divine faith. Faith is brought to birth by revelation, not by imitation or by a formula.

What God reveals creates faith in our hearts. That faith is the power of God that does the miraculous here in this world.

Paul points out that that the power of God also produces patience and longsuffering with joy. As we well know, not everything turns out the way we expect it to. But we still do not go around frustrated and unhappy. We turn out patient and longsuffering (which means suffering for a long time). But we do it with joy.

One of the cities near Colosse, Hierapolis, gave birth to a philosopher named Epictetus. He was the principal proponent of a philosophy called Stoicism, which taught a deliberate and unfeeling acceptance of all that comes your way. A Stoic does not smile; neither does he cry. Neither mad nor glad, he simply functions and does his duty in this world. There are many good things in Stoicism, many of them even Christian, if Christianity were centered in philosophical thought instead of in the person of Jesus. But joyfulness in the face of suffering was lacking in Stoicism.

We Christians can rejoice at birth, and we can weep at the grave. We can exult when we conquer, and we can bite our lip when we are defeated. But in all these things we have the joy that the world can’t give and the world can’t take away.

Verses 12-13 speak of the change from the domain of darkness to the inheritance of the saints in light in the kingdom of Christ. We are already partaking of the Kingdom. The reign of Christ has already begun; His kingdom is a present kingdom. Therefore whatever is essential to the Kingdom of Christ must be capable of realization now. There may be some exceptional manifestation in the world to come, but this cannot alter its inherent character. (Lightfoot) So we take all the promises of the heavenly land. They are potentially ours right now. The blessings that we are receiving now from the hand of God--we will receive more and better of the same when the Kingdom comes in its fullness. Paul often makes reference to these things.

It is interesting that Paul does not concentrate on the judgment of those in bad doctrines. Instead he points to the tremendous potential of the believers.

We are delivered from the power or the domain of darkness. Lighfoot translated this verse like this: “We were slaves in the land of darkness. God rescued us from this thralldom. He transplanted us thence, and settled us as free colonists and citizens in the kingdom of His son, in the realms of light.”

The phrase “the power of darkness” implies an arbitrary power or tyranny. A capricious unruly rule. You know how it is when some people get a little authority-—they make rules, and then make new rules, contradicting themselves. You never know where you stand with them. They are arbitrary and tyrannical. So it is with serving sin. It doesn’t rest on a consistent base. What is right in one situation becomes wrong in another. There is no overriding principle except the convenience and feeling of the moment.

How sharp a contrast to the kingdom of His dear Son. This is a well-ordered sovereignty of the Son, not of angels or astral powers or any such things. Often we hear someone say of some wild idea, [especially on the mission fields, for some reason], “Well, God told me to do it this way.” And it is clearly out of order with the way we have experienced the hand of God working before. We reject such ideas because we serve a well-ordered and consistent sovereign. Paul’s Gospel is universal, not subject to localized judgment. The scriptures show us God’s ways, and our works follow our understanding of those ways.

Jesus, verse 13 says, delivered us from the confusing and unstable darkness and translated us to His well-ordered and consistent Kingdom.

We used to play a game where I grew up called Capture the Flag. We would set off about a half a block as the playing field, and each team would have a flag placed at some spot on their territory. The idea was to get the other team’s flag, and bring it back to your territory. But you could get caught, and put in “jail.” Provision was made for this, however. If someone from your team could touch you in your jail, without being caught himself, you would go free. He would enter into the enemy territory, find you there, and remove you to safety. And once you were free, you could go after the enemy’s flag again, and you were also free to go and set other prisoners free.

The problem is that the realm in which we were held captive was the realm of death. And from death there was no return. . Who could enter into such a situation to set us free without being trapped there himself? Only someone over whom death has no power! He entered into our darkness, became sin for us, though he knew no sin, and he translated us, like Enoch, living, into the kingdom of light. And the scriptures say that that will go on until the last enemy is destroyed, which is death itself. That is the flag. Jesus will enter in, take the flag, and the game will be over. In the meantime, it is our job, protected by the blood of Jesus, to enter into the realm of darkness and rescue people bound there. (Jude 23) The scriptures say that the gates of hell will not prevail against us. (Matthew 16:18) We can launch a massive assault to bring back those that are lost.

Verse 14 says, “In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The K.JV says redemption through his blood. The phrase through his blood is not in the best ancient texts of Colossians, but the thought is certainly consistent with the rest of Paul’s teaching.

To redeem something is to buy it back. If you take your watch to the pawnshop, you have to return later to buy it back. When man fell, he freely and voluntarily chose to eat the forbidden fruit. This put him under Satan’s control, his mind, his actions, everything. To get free from that control requires redemption.

God could not speak redemption into existence. The result of eating the fruit was death, and in that spiritual death, Satan had every right to man’s spirit. He had the right because man had sinned.

But Jesus had not sinned. Satan had no right to His Spirit. When Jesus died, it says he gave up his spirit. When he entered into death, it was not because Satan could demand it, but because He voluntarily entered into it. He went into death, in such a way that it was not possible that death should hold Him. (Acts 2:24)

It is as if death were a one-way door. You could go in, but you could not come out. Jesus died, and went into the realm of death, and put new hinges on the door so it swings both ways, and provided for escape from spiritual death through his blood.

Justice was satisfied--the righteous died for the unrighteous. Love was satisfied--God expressed his nature in Christ. Peace was established-—man was reconciled, redeemed to God. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (Psalm 85:10)

Man could not buy himself back from the dominion of death, because a dead man cannot enter into a transaction. But a man over whom death has no power can make an eternal transaction, and if He has all power, he can enforce that transaction. So we are redeemed, bought back from the control of sin over our minds, our bodies, our lives, our spirits, through the blood of Jesus.

The Eternal Nature of Christ. Colossians 1:15-18

These verses, along with the passages in John 1: 1-4 and Hebrews 1: 2-4 show us the eternal nature of Christ. We involve ourselves with his cosmic significance, when we realize that he is not only involved in redemption and the consummation of God’s purpose for the universe in the new creation, but that he was also the creator of the old creation. Jesus Christ is God’s agent in creation, in redemption, and in the new creation. In Him all these things find their fulfillment.

He is the image of the invisible God. The invisible becomes visible in Jesus. We know from John 1:18 that no man has seen God at any time, but that the only begotten Son has revealed him. Jesus says in John 14:9 that any one who has seen Him has seen the Father.

Jesus is the express image of God; the perfect expression of what God is like. Man is deformed because of sin, though man still bears God’s image. But Jesus was not warped by sin. What Jesus said was an exact phrasing of what God said. What Jesus thought was exactly what God thought. And what Jesus did was exactly what God did. In Him, according to John, dwell grace and truth. Where does that leave fallen man, or even redeemed man? We, who have put on the new man, are being renewed in knowledge in the image of our creator (Colossians 3:10) We are becoming more and more expressly the image of God through our walk in the Spirit.

There is a close association between man being created in the image of God and God becoming man in Jesus. Man, in the created order, bears the image of his Creator. Because of that it becomes possible for God to become incarnate as man and take a human body to display the glory of the invisible God. Because man is in God’s image, God does not consider it demeaning to become man. Because man is the only being in God’s image, God did not choose to become incarnate in some animal that is not made in the image of God. It is with man that God has to do in this world

Jesus is described as the firstborn over all creation. (v. 15). The phrase firstborn may disturb some people, because in being firstborn, it seems to imply that Jesus was a created being before the rest of creation. That is not what is intended by the phrase. It has to do with that is called primogeniture, or the rights that came to the firstborn male in the families of that time. He inherited the estate from the father, and thus gained complete control. So in Jesus the creation was accomplished, and He received complete control over it. He is from eternity, and yet He is personal, and not so completely “other” as to be incomprehensible.

Jesus is personal and also cosmic. He is over all creation, and all creation moves toward Him. (1 Corinthians 8:6) All that exists in the universe is there with Christ as its purpose for existence. If we could read the minds of the protozoa or the amoebas, they would declare the wonders of Jesus Christ to us. If we could listen to the innermost yearning of the cow chewing her cud, she would be groaning for the revealing of the Sons of God and the fulfillment of the grand design of God for this world. (Romans 8:22) All creation moves toward God, and finds its unity in Jesus.

Of course some wise will bring up the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy principle. It states that things tend to disorder, not towards order. Anyone who has ever tried to keep their filing system in order knows the second law of thermodynamics very well. Things never stay neatly in their places. I don’t have a simple and quick answer, but I think that the reason things tend to disorder, or “unity” as they call it, is that sin rules in the world. The rebellion was a rebellion against God’s order, and it seems that creation has been despising authority and order ever since. But the very fact that we yearn within ourselves for order is an indication that our spirits are aware of the possibility of something better than what we see right now.

Verse 16 says that in him all things were created. Again we have the preposition “in”, which we have talked about in relation to having faith in Christ, and praying in the name of Jesus. In other places it says that creation was through Christ, but here it says in. Jesus is the sphere in which all things were created. The universe is not separate from Him, but is in Him. His presence permeates it.

Knowing this, the universe holds no ultimate terrors for those redeemed by Christ. The Redeemer is the Creator of all things, and the one to whom all things tend. The only thing that may cause ultimate terror is if I am moving against the direction toward the other things are going, that is if I am moving away from Christ.

If the lion in the jungle and I are moving in the same direction, we will not disturb each other. It is when he and I come face to face with each other that we both begin to sense unrest. That is why it is so important to fix our minds on Jesus. To do so is to align ourselves with the reality of the scheme of things.

Paul specifically brings up this point of Jesus as the creator of all these spiritual powers, whether in heaven or on earth, whether thrones powers rulers or authorities. The Colossians had given these things pre-eminence in angel worship, and Paul is setting them straight by fixing their minds on Jesus.

There are several passages where Paul shows that Christ is the goal of creation. Romans 8:19-24 Ephesians 1:10, I Corinthians 15:24-28

In verse 18 Christ is presented as the head of the church. The one who is the head of the universe is also the head of the church. There is not one God for the creation and another for the spirit. There is not one emanation for the soul, another for the body and another for the spirit. All things are summed up in Christ.

Christ and His people are always viewed together as a single unit. He is the head; we are the body. He gives the direction to those under his control; we obey his directions and perform his work. We do it in the power of his resurrection life, the power that comes to us by the Holy Spirit. He shares His resurrection life with us, and to the extent we receive that life, we can do His works.

The church is His body. That is to say, we are fellow members, and are interdependent. We have duties to one another, and we have common interests, because we know that if the body dies, all of the members die as well.

Body ministry was a popular phrase these a few years back. It involves the so-called lay people ministering to one another within their special gifts. But I see the individual gifted people as also ministering to the entire body, though not necessarily publicly.

There are people in the church who are like ears, because they have a special ability to hear what God is saying to us. There are those who are like eyes, because they can see where there are special needs. Others are like hands, because they are quick to offer themselves in carrying out what needs to be done. All are a part of the body, even though their function may be different from that of others in the body..

The church as the body also involves the concept of the incarnation, though some have carried it very far implying that the church is an extension of the incarnation. We are not exactly as Jesus was on the earth, because we are both imperfect and sinful. But as we act in obedience to the head of the church, we become a picture of the incarnation to the world.

There is special emphasis on the fact that it is the risen Christ who is the head of the church. In both the creation aspect and in the resurrection aspect, Jesus is given the titles beginning and firstborn. He is Lord of the old creation and of the new creation. In his resurrection he triumphed over all the forces that hold men in bondage, those powers that entered into the old creation. He has made a spectacle of them, (Colossians 2:15) and the new creation is free of their powers. Because of this, we walk in newness of life.

H Moule, a German theologian wrote:

“The head of the Body.” This is His “preeminence” with relation to his people. In that word head much lies involved. It betokens, of course, primacy of authority, the right of supreme direction. Over “His Body” the son of God, Incarnate, Sacrificed, Glorified, absolutely presides; and so over every limb of His body; and so over my reader, and over me. In everything, at every moment, I am under my Head, Christ (I Corinthians 11:3). He is my sovereign, and I His vassal, His bondservant, His implement, to the uttermost.

The more entirely I recognize this, and the more I love it, the greater freedom and the less friction of my life. But along with all this, the word Head tells me that He is my life as well as my law; my secret of energy, my power to do His will. He lives in me; He carries our His glorious life, in true measure, through me. And in that fact here lies an inexhaustible secret of rest and strength for the “limb” as it yields itself to the order of its head.”

The Fullness of Christ. Colossians 1:19

Colossians 1:19 says, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.” Chapter 2:9-10 says, For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.”

The word fullness is the key to this description of Christ. Fullness refers to all the qualities of God, to everything that comes forth from God, whether it be spirit, word, wisdom, or glory. It refers not to the individual things, but to all those things together. The sum total of the godhead is found in Christ. In Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form.

The first chapter of John states the same idea in different words. The word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.” All that God is, all wisdom, all power, all knowledge and “super-knowledge”, all of it is in bodily form in Christ.

This is in contrast to the Colossian heresy, which stated that God divided up his various powers and vested them in subordinate, created spiritual powers, such as angels and principalities. Man would naturally reason that way because it is in agreement with his own experience. We demand organization, because we know that none of us is omnipotent nor omniscient. We are limited in both power and knowledge. But God is not, and so he can place all of his fullness in a human body.

The power and fullness of God is not distributed among saints, nor among other gods. There is neither god nor angel nor saint in charge of the sea nor of any other created thing. So we need not go to any intermediary if we need help or protection with regard to the sea. God is supreme, and His fullness is in Jesus. We go directly to our source for our help in times of need.

It says that all of God’s fullness dwells in Christ. There is no divine power that has not been revealed in turn. There is no higher, unearthly knowledge, and no special revelation given to man that can comes separate from Christ. We do not have to visit every planet and every star and every black hole in order to have knowledge of God. His fullness is revealed in Jesus.

What does this imply for us? We don’t need to seek human sources for wisdom, knowledge, and philosophy. We don’t need a new age “spirit guide.” We find all that we need when we increase in the knowledge of Christ. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10)

But let us not get to be like the woman that I knew who didn’t read the newspaper because she observed that the Bible was up to date in all things. And let’s not be like those who hide from the world with their nose in the Bible exclusively. The fullness of Christ is revealed in the work of creation that He has done. It is revealed in history, if we read our history with spiritual minds. He is not only a spiritual Jesus, in the narrow sense that we Evangelicals have used the term spiritual. He is cosmic; His person fills the entire universe, the stars being the work of his fingers. We know Him better through a careful reading of the Bible, a careful reading of history, and a careful study of creation. All of them help us understand His fullness.

Chapter 2:20 says, “you have been given fullness in Christ.” John 1:16 says, “And of his fullness we have all received.” Ephesians 3:19 and Ephesians 4:13 refer to being “filled to the measure of the fullness of Christ.” The fullness of Christ, the presence of all the power and riches of the godhead, is not for Jesus alone to possess for our wonderment. He says, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. And he says, “Lo I am with you always even unto the end of the earth.” (Matthew 28:20) To the extent that we have within us the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells, we also have within us the fullness of God.

We are complete in Christ. We are incomplete apart from Him.

God’s fullness is revealed in Christ. That is, it is not hidden from the world. God created man in His own image, and when Christ came to perfectly and sinlessly reflect that image, it became possible for us to understand God’s fullness. Understanding it, it became possible for us to be conformed to the image of Christ.

During my lifetime the Gospel has come to be called the full Gospel. The Gospel that reflects the fullness of God, in all His power, his wisdom, his gifts, his glory, his word, and even his wealth.

For the fullness to dwell in man requires a vessel that is clean and uncontaminated. That is why this teaching on fullness is tied in with the reconciliation and redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ. We were enemies from God because of evil behavior, and as such did not welcome the presence, much less the fullness of God in our bodies. But through Christ’s physical death, we are presented holy in God’s sight, without blemish and free from accusation. This makes us eligible to receive of this fullness, enabling us to function in divine power.

We believe in salvation. But salvation only makes us eligible to function in the new dimension, even as we live in the old dimension. It was God’s intention that Adam should be the prince of the world. We know Adam failed by disobedience, and forfeited his power over the old creation. The last Adam (the new man!) came to provide a new creation.

Are you and I genuinely living as a part of the new creation, motivated and empowered by the divine fullness within us? We have heard numbers of testimonies of how the divine voice within directed someone to take a certain action or go to a certain person, and in doing so they gave expression to the divine fullness and accomplished something with a value only eternity will be able to judge. Many have expressed the fullness in healing the sick. Some will express the fullness in their generous and sacrificial giving. You are moving motivated and, empowered by a force other than yourself and your own interests. There is a treasure in the earthen vessel. And it is becoming more dominant as you learn to know the Lord better.

The Mystery of Salvation. Colossians 1: 21-2: 12

Paul presents the Gospel in both its simplicity and its complexity. Here is the simplicity. “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—if you continue in your faith.”

Sin is not only disobedience to the will of God; it effectually severs our fellowship with God and forces us to live without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:2) The universe becomes unfriendly, and we become lonely and terror-stricken. In Christ we are reconciled to both the creation and to one another and to God. Jesus became man, bore our sins in his body on the cross, and cleared us from every charge against us. We were accused; we became un-accused. The sentence that has been pronounced on us is the judgment of justification. Holiness is being worked out in our lives, and not sinfulness. We look forward to the judgment day with the knowledge that the judgment has already been pronounced, and we have been acquitted.

But it is conditional. Verse 23 says, “If you continue in your faith.” If I abide in Christ and Christ abides in me, and I am not moved away from the hope of the Gospel by philosophies of men, or by trying to trust in good works of my own, I can rest in the assurance that the judgment of my sin has already been born on the cross.

We are going to come back to this idea later, but let us rest assured that the condition is only that we continue in our complete trust in the work of the cross. We either trust or we do not. The Bible does not teach any kind of a partial punishment after death to appease or compromise God in some way. By no means. If my children have done something wrong, and I forgive them, I do not use that mistake as a club to punish them in the future. When I forgive them, it is a complete forgiveness, and I never bring it up again. I do that deliberately, because I want them to know that the heavenly Father operates the same way. We receive forgiveness in Christ by faith, and it is absolutely unconditional. It absolutely nullifies any divine punishment for our sins. Jesus already bore that punishment on the cross.

With that background, we come to a difficult verse. “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.” The question is if the work of the cross is complete, why does Paul have to fill up in his flesh something that is still lacking? Paul’s sufferings did not produce the work of redemption--that is complete in Christ. But they had to do with the advance of the Gospel. Paul realized that by bearing hardship on behalf of the people of Christ, he was entering into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, as he wrote in Philippians 3:10.

When Paul was converted, the Lord spoke to him, “Saul Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4) Was Jesus was being persecuted even though he had ascended into heaven? He was being persecuted in his people. To lay hands on God’s anointed ones is to lay hands on the Lord Himself. (Psalm 105:15) Remember also that the Lord showed Paul what great things he would have to suffer. The suffering that Paul, and we, go through is not for our salvation, but for the sake of the body of Christ, principally for the sake of the call to evangelism.

In another sense, Paul is suffering because he wants to relieve the other members of the body from suffering. Paul goes to prison in Rome so that he can present the most effective defense of the Gospel, and that this defense will soften the waves of persecution against the other believers. It is preferable to have Paul defend us in Rome to having a weak believer defend us. Paul allowed himself to become a test case, and that became a blessing to all of us.

The spreading of the Gospel truth comes most often through suffering, whether physical, spiritual, or emotional. When God chooses to reveal truth, people—-especially religious people-—usually want to build monuments to old truth and reject those who come with what seem to be new ideas. And so they are persecuted. They persecuted the Baptists in the 19th century. They tried to kill Martin Luther in his time. They went after the early Pentecostals in the 20th century. Recently they have attacked the faith message. Let us not consider it strange when we enter into the fiery trial. But let us keep our minds off the trial and on the purpose for which God created us.

Paul moves on to describe his presenting the message of God in its fullness, its complete fulfillment. It has been presented, and it has been received with faith for the salvation of men’s souls and the renewing of men’s minds. They have come to know God’s mystery, which had been hidden for ages. That mystery has especially to do with reaching gentiles with salvation.

Let us consider this for a moment. In Old Testament times, and remember that those times had just terminated when Paul wrote, Israel was considered the special people of God. Their common belief was that you had to become a Jew to please God. They had not realized that God had called the Jewish nation to be a blessing to the whole world, that through them the Messiah would come, and he would restore the gentiles to fellowship with God. Now Paul declares the mystery, that the Gospel is universal. It is available to all men, free from nationalistic or religious trappings.

The mystery is “Christ in you —that is you gentiles--the hope of glory.” Why is Paul suffering? Why is Paul agonizing in prayer day in night for the care of the churches? Why does Epaphras wrestle in prayer for the Colossians? It is so that Christ will be formed in them! Paul says in verse 29, “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so power fully works in me.”

Paul has never seen these people! And yet he is burdened for them. He has no opportunity to be with them and to disciple them. And yet he believes in his power in prayer because God’s energy is mightily moving in him. Paul has no chance to establish a follow up program in the church, no chance to develop a catechism, and yet he follows through with prayer, and he catechizes in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I like the phrasing in the New International version for verse 29, “Struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Have you ever been so full of God’s energy that you had to struggle with it? I was in a meeting in Sweden once when God gave me a message five minutes before the meeting started. It was a specific word for the congregation and the glory of God fell. I was to speak in another church in the evening, and during the afternoon I tried to rest. But it was impossible. This energy was working in me, and struggle as I tried to calm it down, I just couldn’t. We have the Prince of Life within, the fullness of the godhead. We are filled with praise, filled with power, filled with glory. And we are responsible to channel this energy constructively in obedience to the Lord.

In verse 28, Paul speaks of teaching and admonishing everyone with all wisdom. There is a special emphasis on everyone, or every man. There is no part of Christian teaching reserved for a spiritual elite. There are no secret meetings or secret teachings that are reserved for the initiated. The prospect of glory and holiness is held out to all Christians.

In the first verse of chapter two, Paul says, ‘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.” Paul wants them to know the all-surpassing mystery, Christ alone, and that they should know him as an indwelling presence at all times.

But this knowledge cannot come apart from the cultivation of brotherly love in the Christian community. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge have been stored up in Christ. Before his advent they were hidden in heaven, but now they are displayed to those who have come to know Him. But they cannot be known if we are unwilling to love our brothers. God is love. When we fail in active love, we begin to lose communication with other believers. We are not near them, and so we miss the things that God may be saying to us through them. We cannot isolate ourselves with only our books.

Verse 6. “As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in your faith, even as ye were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” There is continuity in Christian teaching. What Paul received, he taught to the others, who in their turn taught to the Colossians, and they in their turn were responsible to pass it on to others. (2 Timothy 2:2) Christ is the supreme authority. Their lives are dependent on the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. If they establish their faith in Christ and in Him alone, nothing will be able to subvert their faith.

Philosophies of man will come and will try to subvert men from the simplicity which is in Christ. Verse 8 talks about deceptive philosophy. We are not against studying philosophy and trying to figure life out. But so often philosophy says something like this: “In more primitive times we used to follow a superstition that actually believed that Jesus rose from the dead. But now we are sophisticated, and we realize that this was just an expression of the cycle of the seasons applied to human life. At Easter we talk about it, but we believe it only after we have removed the myth factor. We really have to make our own rules.” And then we set about making rules that suit the current leaders. But none of those rules lead to victorious life-—they only lead to lostness and hopelessness.

Let us briefly talk about verses 11-12. “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”

The reference to the circumcision of Christ here is not primarily His circumcision as a Jewish infant on the eighth day of his life, but rather a reference to his “putting off” the body of his flesh in the crucifixion. The circumcision ceremony of’ the Jews was a shadow and a type of this future act that was fulfilled in Christ. What is involved in the crucifixion is much more than the removal of a small piece of flesh, as in the old circumcision; it is the removal of the entire body of flesh, the putting off of the old man. In the circumcision of Christ, the believer has put off the whole personality that is organized for and geared for rebellion against God.

Now if that body of flesh is circumcised, or taken away entirely, the best thing to do with it is to bury it. Put it out of sight. Demonstrate to the church the world, and all the evil hosts, that that old life is past and you shall never return to it. The old order is gone, and your baptism proclaims that a new order has been inaugurated. You do not remain in the baptismal water. You get up and walk in newness of life, the life of the Spirit.

Baptism is a demonstration of our faith, a public declaration that we have committed ourselves to Him. That is why we baptize believers and not infants. It is a logical step when we have come to faith. It is not the last step; it is the first one, but when Satan comes and wants to tempt us with the old life, we can declare that that old life went away with the water. These days we are not dominated by it; we are walking on top of the water instead.

Jesus Abolishes the Rules. Colossians 2:13-23

Paul returns to the simplicity of the Gospel. When you were dead in sins, God made you alive. He forgave us all our sins. But in spite of the simplicity, and the clear understanding that the new life is a divine one in both its motives and its actions, he leaves us with words to discuss and argue.

The phrase says in verse 14, “Having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”

The question is “What was taken away?” I was talking with a 7th day Adventist friend, and this scripture came up. His position was that the code referred to here is all of the ceremonial laws of Moses, but not the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments, he says, are a reflection of the very nature of God, and as such are eternal.

The other position is that all the law was nailed to the cross, and for the person whose trust is in Christ, the law is completely taken out of the way, and presents no threat whatsoever to him. He is living after the spirit, and that life, while in agreement with what the law teaches, is independent of the law.

If we hold to the position that it is only the ceremonial code that is done away with, we must hold fast to all the Ten Commandments, including the honoring of the seventh day as the Sabbath. It we are functioning independently of the law, we are free from the 7^th day regulation.

The purpose of the law was to shut our mouths, to judge us in such a complete way that we could never defend ourselves before God, but would have to rely exclusively on His mercy. But once that purpose is fulfilled, it has no more purpose. It has become our schoolmaster that has brought us to faith. The technical word for the term schoolmaster in Galatians 3:24-25 is one who gets the child and sees to it that he comes to his lessons. He is more like a truant officer.

The law is something that witnesses against us. You remember when Moses read the law before the Israelites, they all said, “We will obey,” and in doing so essentially signed their names to the covenant document. The immediately began breaking the law, and thus the good law became their Judge, because they themselves had consented to be judged by it.

Consider in the book of Jude, verse 9. We are told that Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil over the body of Moses. Some grand cosmic battle was going on. Moses had died on the mountain, separate from the people of God, after he had been permitted to view the Promised Land. The devil, I think, had a copy of the law in his hand. And he declared, ‘Moses presented the people with this document that says, “thou shalt not kill! And yet he killed a man.” And then, “Moses was disobedient to the voice of God when he struck the rock that he should have spoken to.” And then again,  “Moses did not even circumcise his own son until God threatened him with capital punishment.” And he waved the copy of the law in front of the ange1 of God. Moses had assented to it, countersigned it, proclaimed it, and attached his own handwriting to the ordinances. So his own signature rose up to judge him. Satan is using it as blackmail to obtain the body of Moses.

How does the angel respond? He says, “The Lord rebuke thee” The angel himself did not dare to bring an accusation against the devil, which says something about those who want to speak evil of God’s people. But the angel realized that there was something yet to come in the cross of Christ Jesus. That paper, its handwriting, its signatures, its ordinances, were going to be blotted out and nailed to the cross, and Satan was going to be made a fool of.

Now I might add that it is not a ceremony that applies only to the Jews who assented to the law in Exodus and Deuteronomy, but for all men who in their consciences have assented to a code of conduct to gain salvation. Something magnificent and liberating has occurred. We walk in the Spirit. It scares us, because when we walk in the spirit, we have no legal club with to control people; we have only spiritual authority.

Verse 15 says that Jesus disarmed the powers and authorities. He made a spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross. As he was suspended on the instrument of terror, bound hand and foot, they imagined they had him at their mercy. They flung themselves at him, full of malice. But instead of being defeated before them, Jesus grappled with them, mastered them, and stripped them of all their armor in which they trusted. Finally he simply held them up in his outstretched hands for the universe to behold. He defeated them on the cross, when he was physically in the most vulnerable position. And the soldier said, “Truly this man is the son of God.” (Matthew 27:54)

What kinds of threatening spirits are attacking you? Is it the fear that your subconscious internal forces will eventually take over and master you? Is it the fear that your head will be stamped with the mark of the beast? (Incidentally, for those who claim that those who don’t honor the seventh day have taken the mark of the beast, it says in chapter 2, verse 16 that we should permit no one to judge us with regard to honoring or not honoring a Sabbath, or a new moon or any other holiday.) Is your fear that the computer will gain control, and malignantly destroy?

civilization? Or are you bound by the fear of the bomb or of cancer or of AIDS or herpes? So alone was Jesus. Suspended and helpless as far as this world was concerned. Not an ounce of human power, alone facing all the hostile forces of the universe. And He conquered, once and for all. The ultimate horrors attacked and they were conquered. You and I are crucified with Christ, and they no longer have any dominion over us either.

One more theme in this chapter. There was at Colosse a group of people who had rules like “Don’t touch this, don’t taste that, don’t handle this.” Paul said the rules seemed to be wise, but he strips them of their appearance and calls them, in verse 23, self-imposed worship, false humility and harsh treatment of the body, and he adds further that the rules are of no value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Asceticism is what they were advocating. There are interesting books with special emphasis on meditation and simplicity. One of the constant warnings in the books is that you can get kind of a reverse pleasure out of asceticism if you become anchored in the method instead of being anchored in Jesus. The fasting, the extreme simplicity, the voluntary poverty and celibacy, can all become a kind of masochistic pleasure. They have no value in restraining sensual indulgence; quite the contrary, they feed a sick sensuality. They may result in pride.

I hope I am not justifying an opulent life style. If you must err, err on the side of simplicity. But all of us have had times when we felt very religious and we have determined to really discipline ourselves. The harsh treatment of the very sleepy body at five o’clock in the morning. The false humility in submitting to people and situations that we ought to be protesting against. Even trying to do something called the “sacrifice of praise,” which is praising the Lord when we don’t think we feel like it. We have tried in the flesh, sincerely to be sure, to uphold an impossible spiritual standard. But it hasn’t worked.

What has happened to these people? Verse 19 says they have lost connection with the head. Their flow of spiritual life is no longer coming from the Lord, but from their own minds. And they are trying to bring others down that same dead path.

There is only one way to live this life, and that is to be in touch with the Lord. To receive and live by the revelation that He is placing in our hearts day by day. Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16) Your sins are forgiven and will never be held against you; the law itself was nailed to the cross. The law had power over you until you came to the cross. But now you are free to walk in the Spirit, a fountain of life in this world.

Seek the Things Above. Colossians 3:1-4

We have been raised with Christ. There was in the second chapter reference made to baptism, and our burial and resurrection with Christ. In baptism, we have died to the world, and something creative has happened in the Spirit. We have become a new creature with new goals, new motivation and new interests. We rise up to new life and new interests. It we have not, our baptism hasn’t taken full effect.

Since we have been raised up from our spiritual death with the living Christ, there are two things that we have to set on things above. First, our hearts, and secondly, our minds. The phrase seek in verse 1 is referring to the inner motivation that causes us to aim for the heavenly. That is why some translations say set your hearts on things above. And in verse two the King James Version says set your affections; the literal translation is mind things above.

To set our hearts and our minds on the heavenly things is to commit ourselves heart and soul to God. We not only seek heaven, but we think heaven. We not only expect it in the future, but we act according to heavens principles now.

I wonder how heavenly minded I am. It is told that Frank Laubach, an eminently practical man who has done more for literacy around the world than most of the professors, marked in his diary each day 7O%, 8O%, 3O%. Why? you ask. He was trying to concentrate his thoughts on the Lord all the time, and he used this system to help discipline himself to set his mind on things above.

It seems such an impossible task, because we still have to pay our bills and see that the children get to school. The Phillips translation translates verse 1 with “Reach out for the highest gifts of Heaven.”

If we are reaching out for the heavenly, our point of view on the problems of this world changes radically, and our standard of judgment changes. Where we used to be controlled by self-interest or our own class’s economic interests, now we are motivated by love. One friend had a driving ambition before his salvation was to become wealthy. When he got saved, his whole value structure turned around, and wealth or lack of it no longer dominates his life. He has a new point of view, a new value system. The new system wants to be obedient to God, and the old system has become irrelevant.

To set your heart and mind on things above also implies to cease concentrating on the earthly, on laying up treasures here, on providing for some super-security for ourselves.

Does this really work? Are we so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good? Isn’t it really necessary to maintain a tension between what we call the practical and that we call the spiritual? There seems to be two little angels inside us struggling. Their names are Piety and Practicality.

That is the wrong question, of course. True spirituality is eminently practical and is able to function with grace here on earth. We do not struggle with practicality. We struggle with carnality and the desire to rely on the arm of the flesh instead of the word of the Lord. The most spiritual people are also the most practical and the most natural.

Philippians 3:19-21 says, “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

The things that are associated with earthly mindedness are listed. Their destiny is destruction. How often have we seen it A tragic flaw in someone’s character appears, and though he is brilliant in everything else, this trait comes back to haunt him and eventually destroy him. Achilles has his heel. King Lear continues in his self-flattery until it is too late. King Saul refuses to listen to the voice of the Lord and eventually orders himself killed. They have been earthly minded; they are destroyed.

What is still more tragic is those who are earthly minded, and they continue functioning, in blissful ignorance, deliberately ignoring the broken lives they leave in their wake. They find excuses, and they go on to destroy still more lives. They will be judged, and they will be judged severely.

Another characteristic of the earthly minded is that their god is their stomach, or in broader interpretation, their appetites. They become uncontrollable, ever seeking new delicacies to quench their appetites. Proverbs 23:1-2 says “when you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive.”

A third characteristic of earthly mindedness is that they glory in their shame. They take the things that should normally be hidden away and hushed up and make them matters of pride.

But the scripture says that our citizenship is in heaven. We have been changed so that what we used to be is phased out of our lives. I remember when my mother was studying to become a United States citizen, though I was quite young at the time. She had to know about the Constitution and the Bil1 of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. She had to learn some US history. She had already learned the language of her new country. Finally the day came to stand before the Judge and take the oath be loyal to the nation and to uphold the constitution. To declare before the world that she was now a citizen of the United States of America.

What has happened to us? We have been studying the language of our new country. We have been learning the principles of the heavenly life. We are studying the basic documents in the scriptures, and are functioning as members of that commonwealth. And in our baptism we took the oath of allegiance, leaving behind what we used to be, and forever identifying ourselves as citizens of heaven.

In Colossians 3:3 it says, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

In our baptism, we were taken under the water, out of sight to the world. There is no longer any outward splendor as men count outward splendor. In fact Paul says he has become the offscouring of the world. (1 Corinthians 4:13) By the world’s judgment, we have gone off the to a religious extreme. But in reality, we have come home to where we belong.

Remember that our life is hidden. There is a veil that shrouds your spiritual life from others, and even from yourself. But there is a day coming when the world that now despises, persecutes, or merely ignores you, will be blinded with the dazzling glory of the revelation of what you really are.

Your life is hidden with Christ in God. On the final day when the Son of God is revealed, the Sons of God will also be revealed. (Romans 8:19) We have shared in his sufferings; we shall also share in his glory.

1 wonder if God keeps something like a computer file on us. That file has everything on it, including a delete button that causes it to erase and forget all our sins. There is a program that keeps track of the hairs on your head, so that every time you drop a hair the computer drops one. But in that machine there are stored many great spiritua1 things about you and me that we don’t even know about, or perhaps things of which we do not know the significance. Perhaps you by chance happened to meet someone, and by chance managed to show some kindness that caused them to receive the word of the Lord. It was a great action, but you didn’t realize its significance. You forgot about it, but God entered it on the record.

Your life is hidden. If it were open, you might become proud and fall. But it is hidden.

Why don’t we see the immediate results of our words of faith, and of our righteous acts here on earth? It is because our lives are hidden. A day is coming when all things will be revealed. Sometime, even here in this life, God lifts the veil to let us see how we have blessed others. What joy it brings to our hearts!

It also says, “When Christ, who is our life, appears.” Christ is not only our rescuer, our friend, our king. He is our life. The fountain from which flows all of the things that we do. The source of all our spirituality. The root of our tree.

When we come before the throne and they bring up all those wonderful things, we will respond that we were unable to do those things in our own power. In fact we were dead, and the new life came from another. So they will present the crown, and we bring throw it down at the feet of Jesus declaring “Thou art worthy to receive honor.” (Revelation 4:11) He is our life.

The Disciplines of the Hidden Life. Colossians 3:5-14

Paul gives two instructions in this section: Put off, or put to death, all that is evil. And put on your spiritual clothing, that is, your divine qualities.

Earlier we considered the asceticism that the Gnostics tried to impose on the early Christian community. There was, and is, a danger that pride will enter in because of the things we have suffered or sacrificed for Christ’s sake. But here we find a Christian asceticism that removes all sinful tendencies and pursuits. It allows the new nature that God has planted within to find expression in holy living.

Verse 5 says we are to put off the old nature. We know that even after salvation, the carnal nature and the spiritual nature struggle. The flesh fights against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. (Galatians 5:17) As long as we live on earth we will have this battle within.

We are conscious that we live in 2 worlds: God’s kingdom and the earthly kingdom. Our citizenship is in heaven, but our feet are on earth. In our hearts, we lean forward to the future kingdom, and grasp hold of its promises. We make those promises a reality on earth in spite of the fact that the world system is contrary to them.

The earthly nature’s expression takes various forms. Paul’s description of them moves from the physical to the attitudes of the heart. He starts with sexual immorality. The Scriptural model shows us that physical intimacy is limited to a man and a woman who are married to each other. Any intimacy outside of that is considered immoral, whether it involves unmarried people, people of the same sex, prostitutes, or animals.

Impurity is a lack of singleness of eye. When your eyes wander and lust, it is wrong, even if the body doesn’t follow. Fantasies of immorality need to be brought under the control of the spirit. Jesus says that looking on a woman to lust after her is sin. (Matthew 5:28)

Lust is desire that is not governed. It expresses itself in many ways. People are willing to break laws and cultural norms because they have an overwhelming desire for something, whether it be physical pleasure, wealth, position, fame, or a house or automobile. Self-control marks the believer’s life, and he recognizes lust for what it is and keeps it controlled.

Evil desires often come when we are angry or when someone disagrees with us. We may find ourselves wanting bad things to happen to them. Some even go as far as putting curses on people. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who treat us badly. (Matthew 5:44) Paul says we must not repay evil with evil. (Romans 12:17)

Paul mentions greed, and associates it with idolatry. Greed seeks things and idolatry keeps them. The two tend to focus on all kinds of temporal things that satisfy the senses. We are taught to set our affections on things above (in verse 1). Christ is the center of our life; when greed and idolatry enter in, He is pushed aside. Strangely, greed is in many ways a respectable sin. We seem to give special honor to people who have nice things, and we think if we only had those nice things, people would honor us as well.

After listing all these vices, Paul reminds the Colossians that they used to be like that (verse 7). There are believers who want to deny that they were ever sinners. It is tempting to imagine that you were “different” from the other sinners. But the fact is that God saved us when we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). We have been forgiven, and the old things are in the past. There is no more judgment against us for those old sins because Christ took them away on the cross.

Still, the old nature wants to express itself. There are vices of anger, rage and malice, which express themselves through the tongue by slander and bad language. Anger is when you are upset about something specific; rage is when you are angry, but can’t define the thing that upsets you. Malice is an evil disposition toward your neighbor.

It is very tempting to move beyond the thing you disagree about and begin to speak evil about the character of your brothers and sisters in Christ. We must remember that God gave us language in order to praise Him and to speak truth and blessing. The power of death and life is in the tongue. (Proverbs 18:21) Every idle word that we speak will be brought into judgment. (Matthew 12:36) Nothing causes as much destruction as the careless use of the tongue.

Verse 9 tells us specifically to put off lying. Mostly we lie to protect ourselves or to make ourselves look good—it is often an expression of our pride or selfishness. We need to put off that old, defensive attitude.

The new man is to be renewed in the image of his creator. Let us stop and comment on this phrase. When God created man, He created him in His own image. Man fell, as we know from Genesis 3, and the image was marred, but not taken away. When Jesus came as the second Adam and the New Man, he lived perfectly as the exact representation of the fullness of the Godhead. He is the image, and through our salvation, we are being renewed into that image. Paul says we are being change from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), that is, we are becoming more like Christ as we mature in faith.

This section on putting off the old and putting on the new is similar to the section on the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:19-22.

A result of putting on the new self is a tearing down of the barriers that formerly separated people. Galatians 3:28 reinforces this. In our time we find Christians overcoming their tribalism, caste prejudices, and racism. They meet in spite of cultural differences because of their common passion for Jesus.

Paul continues in verses 12-14 with a list of the virtues that we put on. It seems that these things do not come naturally, but must be disciplined into our lives. This is part of the struggle of renewing our minds. (Romans 12:2)

• Compassion means feeling what the other person is feeling, and sympathizing with them.

• Kindness is acting towards the other person in accordance with our compassion.

• Humility is giving others proper honor, and not seeking superiority.

• Gentleness is speaking and acting is a way that lets the other person feel comfortable.

• Patience is enduring, whether in suffering or in persevering action.

• Forgiveness is setting the other person free of the consequences of his offence against us, so that our relationship can be restored.

• Love is treating the other as you would like to be treated.

God’s Peace in our Human Relationships. Colossians 3:15-4:1

In this section we find the Peace of Christ, the Word of Christ, and the admonition to do all in the name of Christ.

In verse 15 Paul says, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. since as members of one body you were called to peace.” Differences arise in churches, and frequently cause divisions. Many divisions come because we fail to let God’s peace rule (or arbitrate, as the word implies) in our hearts.

Then Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom,” and as you sing “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” That is what happens every time we gather together to worship the Lord and learn from His word. We are receiv­ing the word of Christ. We let it come into our lives.

It is crucial that we continue to receive the word of the Lord, both in our personal devotional life and in the public worship service and in the teaching. It is to dwell not marginally, as an addendum to our lives to sort of satisfy our spiritual itch, but richly, as the central force of our lives, out of which all other action flows. The word of Christ dwells in us; it doesn’t enter our lives only to be torn away by the cares of life on Monday morning. We are to allow it to remain in us, to guard it so that it is not taken away from the central place of our lives.

In Genesis 15, Abraham had offered sacrifice to the Lord, and the Lord had not yet responded. Birds came to try to eat the sacrifice, and Abraham took a stick and drove the birds away. Let me put this in another context for a moment. Jesus gave a parable of the seed, which is the word of God. He said that sometimes the birds of the air come and want the seed, and take it away before it has a chance to root itself. When we have received the word of God, the first thing Satan wants to do is to take it away before it has a chance to change our lives in any way. We need, in those circumstances to be like Abraham, to get some sort of disciplinary stick, and drive him away. There is a discipline of consciously receiving God’s word. We can take notes and review them to help us remember it. We can talk about it with others to reinforce it. It is so easy to forget, especially when the enemy tries so hard to distract us.

There are times when we have heard new things that we have a hard time receiving, usually because we are carnal. Our human thinking rebels at certain teaching, largely because we prefer the liberty of the flesh to the liberty of the spirit. In such times, we need to suspend judgment on the word of the Lord, and give it a chance to grow in our lives. There are times, of course, when what we hear is wrong. But the Lord will reveal that. I am more concerned to receive with joy that which is right than to pounce in immediate judgment on that which is wrong. Let us be careful what we say about the preaching and teaching. Let us guard that word of the Lord like Abraham guarded his sacrifice that day. When we have received the word, the Lord will come and reveal himself to us.

The text also speaks of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Church music, if you please. They are a part of our worship. They are not the only thing is worship. Worship involves much more than just the music department. We are always on the guard against showmanship, and an inordinate concern with our ability to perform. But still we give great atten­tion to psalms, that is scriptural songs; hymns, or we might great verse set to music; and spiritual songs, or simple words set to music given by the Spirit. Let us sing them, and profit from them. Music helps us worship, and it reinforces the teaching that we hear. It is also a communal activity, binding us closer to those around us.

The next section of Colossians is a set of guidelines for the smooth running of the household. It was a custom even back in Paul’s days to have some sort of guideline written on the wall to let everyone know the basic rules of the home. Here Paul gives his version of the rules for the home. Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives. Children, obey your parents. Fathers, do not embitter your children. Slaves obey your earthly masters. Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair.

We seem to think that these rules are only relevant to the twentieth century, and that there was never problem in the order of the home before. But what is good for Paul was also good for Peter. These guidelines were the accepted doctrine of the early church, and we can’t inter­pret ourselves around them while remaining true to the letter and the spirit of the scriptures.

Submit is the hard word. As believers we are to submit to one another, according to Ephesians 5:22, but there is a special emphasis on the wives submitting to the husbands. Is the wife inferior? Not at all. In Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28). We are individually answerable to the Lord. And our submission to one another is in the Lord.

I want to go to 1 Peter 3:1 for help in working with this passage. There it says, “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without talk by the behavior of their wives.” The key word is “in the same way.” In the same way as what? 1 Peter 2:13 says to submit for the Lords sake to all authority instituted by man. And verse 18 says for slaves to submit to masters with all respect, suffering if need be because Christ suffered and yet committed no sin. Wives are to submit, but the exception comes when there is sin or disobedience to the voice of the Lord involved.

Peter himself was called before authority instituted by man and commanded not to preach Jesus. Notice that he was not ordered to enter into open sin; he was simply told to be quiet. He responded with civil disobedience: “we ought to obey God rather than man.”  (Acts 5:29) I don’t know how Peter would have responded later in life, because we know that while Peter was more of a zealot at the beginning of his life; he was a broken man and a shepherd type at the end of his life. But here, he makes it clear that God’s command takes priority over man’s command.

Servants also are to be submissive, realizing that they are not working for the masters, but for the Lord. So we do all that we do wholeheartedly, with the end of pleasing the Lord. The only exception is if we are ordered to sin in some way.

We can interpret the scriptures, which are spiritual, carnally. And that carnal interpretation of these kinds of passages is what leads to people giving up personal responsibility for their faith. They look for someone to go up on the mountain to meet with God in their place so that they can avoid the personal responsibility of going to meet with the Lord themse1ves.

Submission does not mean giving up your talents and abilities. It does not necessarily mean giving up you career. There is another submission on the part of mothers that I feel is important, and that is a submission to the needs of preschoolers. Preschoolers need mothering more than anyone. Not simply good caring for, but mothering, uncon­ditional love and attention to the small things in their lives. Their personalities and attitudes are formed in the early years. They are at home, and they have a right to see their families at their very best, and not only when they are tired out after a day’s work away from home. It’s good for a small child to have his mother at home, if it is possible.

“Husbands,” Paul continues in Colossians 3, “Love your wives and do not be harsh with them.” In Ephesians 5:25 he says to love them as Christ loved the church. Women are different from men, so husbands have to be gentle with their wives. When you are leaving the house to go someplace, men tend to get ready quickly. Women have to get children ready, and it also takes more time for them to get ready themselves. It requires patience!

The King James translation says, “Do not be bitter against your wife.” Catherine Marshall wrote that “there is no such thing as two compatible people.” Of course it is the nature of man to think of himself as perfect. But the old complaint is still there, “my wife just doesn’t understand me.” If she only understood, we could start this new business and do really well. If she only understood, she would make allowances for my special weakness. And so communication breaks down between husband and wife. Men especially become afraid of being vulnerable, and so they become defensive instead. The next step is bitterness. Some poison enters our soul, and instead of being gentle, we begin to snipe and criticize.

No two people are perfectly matched. The challenge in marriage is to adjust to one another, not seek to dominate or to change your partner.

So the scriptures say, “do not be harsh with your wife.” Only tenderness, and never violence. Hitting does not belong in Christian families, whether it is done with the hand or with the tongue. Only kind words, and never harsh words. Only open doors of communication, and never closed ones. Only welcome, and never rejection.

The next advice Paul gives is that children should obey their parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Clearly Paul has the Christian home in mind, and does not give consideration here to an order from the parents that would conflict with the law of God. We know that there have been parents who force their children into stealing or prostitution. Unfortunately that occurs, and it is a sign of the ungodliness of the age in which we live. But Christians don’t do that.

Children are to obey their parents. That does not mean that they have the same attitudes as their parents. It does not mean that the orders their parents give them are full of wisdom and divinity. Obeying your parents does not mean you will be successfu1, but it is associated with long life. Honor your father and your mother is the first commandment with promise. (Ephesians 6:2)

That places a responsibility on parents. Our first responsibility before the Lord is to teach the children to obey. There are a lot of other things that we are trying to teach the children, like the twenty-third Psalm, how to be a good football player, and how to coordinate the colors on your clothes. We want them to have right attitudes. But first of all let them learn to obey.

How do you do it? Remember that in order to obey an order, they must understand clearly and specifically. If I give a vague order that the child cannot understand, or if I give an order that is impossible for the child to fulfill, and then spank the child for my own weakness, I am working against the injunction to obey your parents in all things.

Let me be presumptuous enough to give child-rearing advice. I have not had to spank my children much. But when I did, it was because they didn’t obey what I told them to do. If they broke the window or spilled the milk, I knew that those things are unintentional. If they acted like four year-olds when they were four year-olds, and it got on my nerves, I spoke to them, but I recognized that they weren’t grown up yet. But if they disobeyed a direct order they violated God’s commandment for the children, and they exposed themselves to corporal punishment.

I was slow to administer spankings, because I usually gave them an opportunity to go ahead and obey, sometimes even going through the action with them, thus forcing them. I didn’t want to punish them; I wanted them to obey.

The book of Proverbs says that wickedness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it away. (Proverbs 22:15) Notice that it refers to the rod. One of the things that irritates me is seeing parents give their children half-corrections. They half-slap them out of a sense of their own irritation. And they have to keep on doing this. Instead of speaking and expecting obedience, they hit, and awaken further hostility.

In fact, in Hebrews it says that our fathers chastened us after their own pleasure, but the Lord for our good. There have been times when I have realized that I was not punishing my child because of some need for teaching that the child had, but because I had an inner need to relieve a sense of frustration. I was doing it according to my own need, and not the child’s.

That is why Paul continues in this passage, Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. Give them definite and consistent rules to live by, and enforce those rules fairly. There is no need to threaten; only a need to follow through on your word.

We are bringing our children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, realizing that we are saved by grace alone through faith. Some parents allow their children wide latitude in their development; others are very stringent in their demands on the children. You have to do what you feel is right, as long as it is in love and it is consistent. But certainly, you must teach them to obey their parents by using the means at your disposal to persuade them.

Parents tend to raise their children the same way their parents raised them. When we become Christians, we learn new, Biblical ways to raise the children. It is also so with husband and wife. They tend to treat their spouses the way their parents treated each other. Rather, we must learn what Biblical love is, and treated our spouses according to the direction of the scriptures.

The next part of Paul’s advice has to do with the slaves and the masters. There were both slaves and masters in the church, and both were responsible before the Lord to do well. The church did not initiate a war on the master class, and pride itself of its absolute identif­ication with the poor. It addressed itself to the spiritual responsibilities of both groups of people in a spirit of Christian love. It was clear that the relationship between slaves and masters belonged only to this world and not to the coming one because it says in verse 22 ‘your masters according to the flesh.” In fact, there were situations in the early church where the slave had a position of authority over his own master in the church. In any case, the slave, or we would say in current relevant language, the employee, is to serve his employer with all of his heart, willingly, as if he were doing service for the Lord himself.

I heard of a churchman who went to Cuba and was inquiring about the churches among the working class. He found out that a large number of people from a certain Pentecostal church worked in a certain factory, so he went to talk with the leader of employment there about these believers in order to find out the purity of their faith. First of all they talked about the weather, and later the churchman slipped in his key question, “Have you had any experience with these Pentecostal believers?” “Oh yes, “ answered the employer, “They are my best people. They don’t steal. They continue to work hard when there is no supervisor. They are absolutely reliable, because their religion tells them that God is always watching them.” Who were the foremen and leaders in that factory in Communist Cuba? The believers. Why? Because what they did, they did as unto the Lord.

Most of us belong to this working class of people. Whether we are directly working for someone, or whether we are in some sort of service occupation working for ourselves, our responsibility is before God to serve well and fairly, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

I was talking with a couple who owned a small business in our town. They had a girl working for them who went to our church school. When they heard that I went to the church, they said it was a good church because they knew what this young lady was like. You reflect the church and the Christian testimony much more in the way you act on the job than in anything else.

Employers have the additional responsibility before the Lord to treat their employees fairly. It is not enough to only be nice to your business partners and customers. You hold a special responsibility for the well being of your employees. That means keeping your word with them. That means not promising them things you cannot fulfill. That means defining their responsibilities well, paying them fairly, providing the benefits that are appropriate. You make profits because of faithful employees and the grace of God. Employers must be fair, not only from their own point of view, but also from the employee’s point of view. We are heirs together of the grace of God.

Paul’s Prayer Request. Chapter 4:2-6

Paul says, “Devote yourselves to prayer,” and proceeds to explain what he means. He doesn’t say, “Say your prayers,” but calls for disciplined devotion to them. Watching is defined as wakefulness or alertness. He also says we should pray with thanksgiving. That is, when we pray we remember the past blessings and answers to prayers, and that encourage our faith in our current prayers.

Disciplined prayer comes by arranging our lives so that prayer is done. I met a woman who said to me, “I’ll be praying for you.” I responded, “Are you sure?” The woman was startled, but I explained that many people say they will pray, and their intentions are good. But they forget.

It helps to have a list. I personally keep a list of people I pray for daily. I keep it as a marker in my Bible, so it is included as part of my daily devotions. I have people I pray for every day, and then I have a list for each day of the week of people I pray for weekly. So if I tell someone I will pray for them, I write their name on my list. There are people I have met only casually, but have promised to pray for. I probably have taken my commitment to pray more seriously than they realized. But I expect to meet those people in heaven one day.

At times I write out a specific prayer for individuals on the list. This helps me to enter into their situation and to pray according to their interests and needs rather than my own.

Paul instructs the Colossians how to pray for him. He wants liberty to proclaim the Gospel to the captives, his fellow-prisoners. He wants to proclaim it “clearly, as I should.” That it, he wants to speak so it produces change in those who hear, and not merely as a way of discharging his duty as an evangelist.

It was not easy to proclaim the Gospel in Rome, the world’s capital, with all of its politics. So Paul asks for special wisdom. It is so in our day with those Christian leaders who have to deal with government authorities. We must pray for them.

Paul admonishes the people to walk in wisdom toward outsiders. Christian views and actions have always been distorted by unbelievers, and any misbehavior can be exaggerated to try to bring scandal on the church. Because of that, we take special care to be honest and ethical in our dealings with unbelievers. The reputation of the Gospel is closely bound up with the behavior of individual Christians.

Paul advises us to make the most of every opportunity, to redeem the time, whether collectively as a church or as individuals. This means we keep our primary focus on the growth and development of God’s kingdom.

Then he addresses the way we speak. It is to be with grace and salt. Grace, so that it is pleasant and acceptable and appropriate. Salt so that it has substance and is not merely sentimental. We want our speech to help others and to build them up.

Paul’s Friends, and Final Greetings. Colossians 4:7-18

Paul apparently sent the letter by Tychicus, who would report verbally on Paul’s situation. Onesimus, a Colossian himself, would accompany him. Tychicus is described in 3 ways: beloved brother, faithful servant, and fellow bondservant in the Lord. He was faithful to Paul and faithful to the Lord.

In the list of those whose greetings Paul conveys, there are three Jews (Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus Justus) and three Gentiles (Epaphras, Luke and Demas). This is a living example of the barriers between peoples and cultures was being removed.

We learn here that Aristarchus was in prison with Paul.

We also see that Paul is fully reconciled to Mark. We learn that Mark was related to Barnabas, which may shed light on Paul’s disagreement with Barnabas in Acts 15:39. Paul, who had once rejected Mark, now encourages the others to receive him.

We learn from this passage that Luke was a physician.

At this point, Demas is still faithful. In 2 Timothy 4:10, we learn that Demas forsook Paul, “having loved this present world.” Worldly concerns took the upper hand in his life. (Could we hope that he, like Mark, would later come back?)

We see that there is a close relationship between the churches at Colosse and Laodicea. They seem to be a pair. It is good that churches relate to each other.

Paul gives special advice to Archippus, reminding him publicly to fulfill his ministry. It is easy to back off from the ministry, and occasionally we need the reminder to continue to work in God’s kingdom.

Finally, Paul signs the letter with his own hand. There may have been forged letters claiming to come from Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:2), but here Paul assures us that he himself has written the letter. He asks them to remember his chains, the fact that he was in prison for the sake of the Gospel.