Colossians 1:9-14. Yesterday we started reading a letter written by Paul to the church at Colosse. The church was started by a guy named Epaphras who probably heard about Jesus in Ephesus from Paul and then traveled back to his hometown and told people what he had learned. Paul considered Epaphras a fellow servant of Jesus. Epaphras had kept in touch with Paul and kept him informed about how the new believers in Colosse were doing (By the time Paul wrote Colossians the church there was between 5-8 years old).

Paul heard that the believers there were filled with hope about their eternal future with God. They had a strong trust (faith) in what they had been taught about Jesus and were living their lives dedicated to serving God through serving others. This love was prompted by the Holy Spirit living in and motivating each believer. In verses 9-14 Paul tells them that their faith and lives encouraged him to pray to God for them all the time.

In verse 9 Paul uses two words to describe his how he talked to God: Pray and ask. The first one basically means to “talk to” although he used a prefix that seems to make the word more personal. The second word means “to crave, desire, want, or beg.” What we see here is Paul strongly and sincerely asking God to act in the lives of the believers in Colosse. Specifically he was asking God that they would know what God wanted them to do (the knowledge of his will) and that their understanding would include the spiritual part of life too.

In verse 10 we see that he was asking God to help them understand so that their lives would honor Jesus (worthy of the Lord), would please God, would be “fruitful”, and would help them understand even more. Lives worth of the Lord involve sacrifice and service. Jesus came to earth to give his life as the payment for all our disobedience and rebellion (sin, the price of sin is death, spiritual separation from God. Mark 10:45, Romans 3:23). When we want the same things that God wants and live that way it pleases God. This includes “bearing fruit”. That doesn’t means we turn into a tree and grow oranges from our fingertips. Fruit is often a metaphor for our actions (Matthew 3:7-12), in this case Paul wants them to live lives that honor God. Paul also wants them to keep understanding more and more about God and their relationship with him.

In verses 11-12 we see that the power to live for God comes from God and that that power makes us stable in our relationship with God. We also see tat this is source of joy and thankfulness to God. At the end of verse 12 Paul brings what he is saying full circle back to the “hope” of verse 5. As his request to God is fulfilled and the Colossians live more and more for God each day, their lives are filled with thanks to God; thanks for lives that prove the reality of what they had been hoping for; living with him for eternity. The light at the end of verse 12 is probably a metaphor for Jesus (see Matthew 4:16; John 1:5). Verse 13 echoes the quote in Matthew 4:16. We are all in a dark place spiritually but Jesus helps us see and understand spiritual reality and provides a way to return to God. In verses 13-14 we see that God is helping us return to the “kingdom of his beloved son”. We need to remember that God is one but exists as three persons all at the same time. Sometimes it is difficult to separate the persons and what they have done since ultimately there is one God (see  “Three or One?”). Was God the creator or Jesus? Is the kingdom God’s or Jesus’? Both, all three, don’t forget the Holy Spirit. Don’t get too stuck on trying to completely understand it all, know that the information we have about God and Jesus in the Bible is completely accurate. That, by the way, is part of Paul’s point here, our faith is based on facts and reality. If you read the “Intro to Colossians” you would know that part of what Paul is doing here is combatting people who are trying to get the believers in Colosse to become more Jewish, even to follow some of the stranger Jewish groups or sects. The Essenes were heavily into supernatural stuff, things that mysteries are made of. Paul is using word and examples that are here and now and out in the open; no mysteries just real life stuff out in the open.

There are lots of cults and religions in our world just like in the days of Paul. God’s not like that though. Everything is out in the open; God wants us to know about sin and separation, His son and salvation. The only mystery is why people would reject God’s offer of a free anew relationship with Him, one that will last into eternity and one that is filled with joy and peace. God has given hope to a hopeless world. If you don’t think your world in hopeless look at all the darkness in our entertainment, movies and games, and books and TV shows about Zombie Apocalypse and the Undead. Stories about an ugly bleak future. That is what we invent. God gives us hope for a new and renewed eternity. One filled with light and goodness, where there is no death, nor sorrow, no hunger nor thirst (Revelation 21:4, 7:16) One where we live with him forever. Wow I feel like Paul’s prayer is being answered in my life too.

Thank you God for showing me. Thank you for helping me learn more about you each day. Thank you for making the truth of your word, the Bible, more and more obvious each day. Give me the strength to keep on keeping in your word. Thank you for paying for me, thank you for forgiving me, thank you for a great future home, help me show this reality to others.

Colossians 1:1-8. Today we begin the book of Colossians. This is a letter to the church in a city called Colosse in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). For more about the letter the city and the author check out the “Intro to Colossians”. It is important to read the introductions because the books of the Bible were written at different times and places and for different reasons. Without the backgrounds it can be difficult and sometimes impossible to understand what you are reading.

Verses 1and 2 are a typical greeting for a letter in those days (about 62 AD). Verse 1 tells us it is from Paul and Timothy. Paul is the actual writer but he wants the readers to know that Timothy is there and at least agrees with what he is writing. Paul calls himself an “apostle”. The New Testament is written mostly in Greek and the Greek word here means “sent one”. In the New Testament the word is usually used in a technical way, sort of like a job title or “office”. Paul certainly was given the job of going and telling people, especially Gentiles or non-Jews, about Jesus. You can read more about Paul in “Paul: Sent One to the Gentiles”. The second “author” is Timothy. Timothy was a companion of Paul on some of his journeys around the Mediterranean world. He was from a town about 150 miles east of Colosse, Lystra. Timothy had become sort of a “right hand man” to Paul and was given many responsibilities. Here in verse 1 he is called “our brother”. Paul is comparing believer in Jesus to a family.

In verse 2 he tells us who the letter is to, “saints and faithful brothers in Christ who are at Colosse”. Saints is a word that mean holy or dedicated to a particular purpose. If you play soccer you might have a pair of cleats that you only use to play soccer in, they are holy, dedicated to playing soccer. These guys are special because they are part of God’s family. They are also faithful brothers they stick together for God. We also see that these people are “in Christ” and “in Colosse”. It’s interesting that “in colosse” is at the beginning of the verse in the original language. These people were in that physical location but they were a dedicated and faithful family “in Jesus”. Colosse may have been the city they lived in but Jesus is where they really lived. By the way the word Christ means “chosen one” in the Greek language it is equal to “Messiah” in the Old Testament. In this letter it is used technically to refer to Jesus the Chosen One; the Christ.

The second part of verse 2 is a typical blessing from Paul to the Colossians. Paul’s prayer to God is for the Colossians to have “grace and peace”. Grace is referring to a gift. In this case the gift is from God. In the New Testament the gift of God is a place in his forever family, forgiveness and payment for the wrongs we have done. This gift is “in Christ” and it is from “God our Father”. Again the family connection, the idea of a father is one of protection and provision.

Verse 3 begins the next part of Paul’s greeting, a prayer of thanks. In verse 3 Paul tells the Colossians that he is thankful to God for them. Again he uses the picture of a family, again calling God a father, this time of Jesus Christ. In verse 4 Paul tells us that he thankful because he has heard of the faith of the Colossian believers in Jesus and the love they have for “all the saints”. Evidently the way put the words together in the Greek language stresses the actions associated with their faith more than the object (Jesus) of it. Their belief in Jesus had caused them to go out and live differently especially in the lives of others.

Verse 5 tells us why that had this life changing belief, it was their hope. They knew they had a place in Heaven, Jesus had opened up eternity with God to them and that knowledge, that hope. Set them free to love God and others. They had heard about this “before” when they heard the “word of truth”; the “gospel” (the word translated “gospel” means good news). What they heard truly was good news, it gave them hope for all eternity and made their lives radically different.

In verse 6 we see that this truth wasn’t just some sort of “head knowledge” it was active in their lives and in the lives of people everywhere who had heard it. The language that Paul uses here is the language of reproduction. Bearing fruit is the kind of language that would be used to talk about having children. The idea of “increasing” has the idea of becoming mature. So the “gospel” was having children and they were growing up quite well. The Colossians were some of these “children”. At the end of verse 6 Paul returns to “good news” that they had heard and confirms what it was they had heard and understood. It was about the “grace” or free gift of God. Remember it was “in Jesus” and it was the fact that Jesus had dealt with the penalty for disobedience, death. The “gospel” is also true, something they could see because of their changed live and the changed lives of others.

In verse 7-8 we see that the believers in Colosse originally learned about Jesus from a guy named Epaphras who was a faithful servant of Jesus. I think the mention of him being faithful is important. We see that it is not just words that communicate the good news about Jesus it is the change he makes in peoples lives too. In Matthew 5:16 Jesus told his followers to let their changed lives “shine before men” so that those men would in turn honor God with their lives.

Here in the very beginning of the book we see several things that hint at what might be going on in Colosse. First of all we need to understand that they were in a pretty good place with God. First of all they were part of God’s forever family, they were “in Jesus” and were “brothers”. This was their hope and it was building their faith. It was also affecting their actions, their faith or trust in the reality of what Jesus had done for them was growing and they were living and caring for others.   Their love (agape- a word for love in the Greek that has the idea of sacrifice) was for “all the saints”; they were caring for others without thinking about the cost.

A couple of groups of words seemed to show up quite a lot in the greeting. First was the idea of truth or facts. The gospel was something that they had heard and seen and experienced. The truth that they had taken hold of changed things; it had given hope and changed their lives. They had a new relationship with each other and with God. God was their “father” and they were his children. Later we will see they were being tempted with other ideas, ideas that claimed to give them a better relationship with God. Here in the beginning Paul wanted to make sure that they already had a great and real relationship with God.

God thank you for making it all so real and so simple. Thank you for giving me a sure place in your forever kingdom. Help me be faithful like the Colossians. Let me live each day in ways that draw others to you.