such as we are given these days to
talk about that word together.
It's a privilege to use you as some
guinea pigs for some of my ideas about
Colossians.
I am very interested in genuine dialogue and
I hope that many of you will feel
free, both individually and perhaps in the group
as we have some question and answer times
to come back at me as I talk
about some of the things I see in
the letter in contrast to some things you
might see there.
I would like to have, to present to
you right now, a very neat outline of
exactly where I'm gonna go in the four
talks for which I am scheduled, but I
don't.
We're just gonna kind of start in basically
with verse three, chapter one, and see how
far we get because I know we're not
gonna get through all of the letter.
To do that would have to be to
skate over so much of it that we
would all be frustrated.
So I have some passages I'm hoping I'll
get to to dig into that I think
are especially significant in the letter.
We'll see how that goes.
So join with me, if you would, turning
to Colossians.
And I have some overhead projections I'm going
to use here to talk a little bit
about some of the structural things going on
that I see, some of the context issues
that we should be aware of.
So I hope that these will be visible
to you.
I'm sure the first one will not be.
This is, you know, when you're learning PowerPoint,
this is what they tell you.
Do not do this at all costs, you
know, when you're doing PowerPoint.
But there is a reason I'm violating the
rule here.
I need to get enough text up here
so that hopefully, and the focus is gonna
be a problem here with our keystoning, I
guess, but.
So if the bottom's in focus, the top's
not gonna be.
We'll maybe aim for about halfway here.
But I wanna get enough text up here
to try to show you in this first
section of the letter as I see it,
one, three to 23, what some of the
broader kinds of structural clues are to help
us kind of take a look at the
wood before we start getting into the trees.
So I hope at least you can see
some of the colors and things and I'll
try to point them out as you look
at your Bibles and you can see what
the actual text is because you're not gonna
figure that out from here, I realize.
The four paragraphs that I'm dividing this into,
I think, are obvious enough.
You have Paul beginning, as he so often
does with his thanksgiving, verses three through eight.
Note, by the way, I've deliberately taken the
verses off of here.
We need the verses to figure out where
we are so we can talk to each
other about what are turning the Bible, we
understand why they're there.
But we also, I think, understand that they
are often a quite serious hindrance to good
reading of the text.
Paul didn't stick those numbers in when he
wrote the letter to the Colossians.
And the reality of those numbers and chapter
divisions and so forth can tend to break
up a passage that is intended to be
read continuously.
So I've deliberately dropped some of the numbers
out here.
You have Bibles and you can see what
verses they are.
At any rate, we're talking about the thanksgiving
of verses three through eight, first of all.
Then Paul turns to prayer for the Colossians.
And again, this is a typical sequence you
find as Paul begins the letters.
Thanksgiving for the people, introducing some of the
themes of the letters, we will see.
Prayer for the people, where he also will
often launch into some of the themes that
the letter will develop in a more expository
fashion.
Then we have our famous passage about Christ,
one of the great Christological passages, of course,
of the New Testament, verses 15 to 20.
After that, then, we have verses 21 to
23, in which Paul talks about the way
God in Christ has reconciled the Colossians to
himself through Christ.
Now, let's just, again, get a sort of
big picture first.
I'd like to point out first that there
are some very obvious parallels between the opening
here, the thanksgiving, and the paragraph here.
And I've tried to highlight those here.
Paul talks in both of these passages about
the gospel as a centerpiece of what's going
on.
He talks about its universality.
You see, if you look up here at
the thanksgiving, Paul has talked about the true
word of the gospel, bearing fruit growing throughout
the whole world.
There is this universal advance of the gospel
that Paul is concerned to highlight to the
Colossians.
Partly, as we will see, because he knows
they're disturbed by some false teaching.
And Paul's concerned to put the gospel out
in front of them and its universal significance,
one of the great themes of Colossians.
But you have that there.
You have that again, as you can see,
down at the end of our passage.
The gospel, reclaimed every creature under heaven.
Quite an interesting statement in its own right,
of course.
I'm trying to figure out what Paul means
by that.
In the same way, as Paul begins thanking
God for the Colossians' faith, love, and hope,
he turns to their faith and their hope
here again.
Tied note to the gospel, one more time,
in verses 21 to 23.
So I think that acts as a bit
of a frame that Paul intends us to
see from the beginning of the thanksgiving into
the end here of this paragraph, 21 to
23.
Now, moving inward a bit, Paul begins by
thanking God, as you can see here.
And he then goes and returns to this
idea of giving thanks down here toward the
end of his prayer.
Giving joyful thanks, you see here, to the
Father.
Thanks to the Father.
Thanks to God, the Father.
I think there's a bit of what we
call an inclusio.
Paul beginning and ending on the same point
to frame this section as well.
Finally, you see the underlining here, because I
think that Paul moves from verses 12 to
14 and connects those very much with verses
21 to 23.
12 to 14 talk about God's power displayed
and qualifying us to share the inheritance of
God's people.
Talks about rescuing us from the dominion of
darkness, bringing us into the kingdom of the
Son he loves.
There's this transfer that's going on, you see,
from the state in which we once found
ourselves now to the state in which Christ
has given us.
And that's very similar to the point that
Paul makes here in verses 21 to 22.
Alienated from God, enemies, because of evil behavior,
now reconciled by Christ's physical body.
And all of this then note that 15
through 20 does stand out a bit here.
I'm not gonna spend a lot of time
on this particular point because it's more maybe
a background issue than an issue that pertains
to our understanding of the text as we
now have it.
But I think there is indeed good reason,
as most scholars believe, to think that Paul
is here quoting some kind of early Christian
hymn or confession.
The passage does sort of stand out from
its context.
It's different in style.
There are differences in vocabulary that I think
mark this passage out in a way that
suggests Paul, at least partially, is using language,
again, that has already been formulated by early
Christians to describe Christ.
His concern in these verses then, I think,
is to ground the point that he's making
in verses 12 through 14.
God has rescued us.
He has done that in Christ, the son
he loves.
And we can have great confidence about this
rescue.
We don't have to worry about that rescue.
We don't have to worry about our security
because of what God has done, because he's
done it in and through the one who
is Lord of the universe.
This magnificent figure whom Paul describes in verses
15 to 20, picking up language from what
was perhaps a popular Christian hymn that the
Colossians themselves would have known.
Remember, as I think you might know what's
going on in Colossians, Paul's writing to a
church he didn't found and he's never visited
before.
He tells us over the beginning of chapter
two that he's never seen the Colossians personally.
He is the grandfather of this church.
Apparently Epaphras who gets mentioned here along the
way founded the church, probably converted by Paul
when he was ministering in Ephesus.
So it's interesting to wonder how many churches
Paul grandfathered over the years as people who
were converted under his ministry would go back
perhaps to their hometowns and other areas and
plant churches themselves.
So Epaphras finding himself apparently in some pastoral
hot water has written to Paul, his mentor,
kind of SOS.
I need some help, Paul.
I've got some difficulties here.
Could you assist?
And Paul writes the letter accordingly.
But again, if Paul himself has not visited
this church, if he doesn't know them personally,
an attempt to establish some common ground by
quoting a passage that they are familiar with
would make eminent sense.
I think perhaps that's indeed what Paul might
be doing there.
So again, as we look over the bigger
picture here in verses three through 23, we
find Paul engaged in his typical Thanksgiving and
prayer, but Thanksgiving and prayer that focuses on
certain things that are gonna become very important
in the letter, hope, the gospel, knowledge of
God and insight into God's will and wisdom,
the decisive transference from the old realm into
the new, affected by none other than the
one who is the supreme figure in the
universe.
These are themes that Paul is going to
come back to in Colossians again and again,
as we will see.
All right, it gets better from here.
All right, a little better.
It's still not PowerPoint approved probably, but we're
getting closer.
As close as I can get, I guess.
Again, following your own Bibles, obviously if you're
having trouble seeing the text up here, which
is by the way, the today's new international
version in case you were wondering what version
this might be.
Paul, when he gives thanks for the people
to whom he writes, if you look at
those thanksgivings, they are often somewhat formulaic.
That is Paul does some of the same
things in each of the letters.
There is a sort of pattern that he
falls into, but there are also significant differences
that pretty clearly have to do with the
burden of the letter that he is about
to write.
So when we read these thanksgivings and these
prayers, the beginning of the letters of Paul,
we should be sensitive to some of the
ideas that are introduced because we're often gonna
see them developed in greater detail as the
letter unfolds.
Note, for instance, that Paul in an unusual
way here calls God the father of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
It's kind of unusual for Paul to describe
God that way.
But clearly running to a church that's having
some problems with Christology, Paul wants to get
out on the table right at the beginning,
the relationship of father and son, God, the
father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul is praying about them then as he
thanks God.
Why?
Because he's heard of the three great cardinal
Christian virtues that the Colossians are displaying.
He notes that they have faith in Christ.
They have love for all his people.
And this faith and love spring from the
hope stored up for you in heaven.
A couple observations here.
One of the things that would be interesting
to do as I've done in some of
my texts is underline in Colossians where the
word all or every appears.
You'll be surprised, I think.
Again, is not sort of a major point
that Paul makes anywhere in particular, but it
is a thread that in way binds the
whole letter together.
It's a theme, a motif that Paul develops
in significant ways because again, of the problem
in the Colossian community.
Christ, apparently they have been led to believe,
was an important figure.
A critical spiritual leader.
One through whom indeed, they have come to
experience God's grace.
But in the syncretistic atmosphere of first century
Asia minor, these Colossians had also fallen into
the habit of viewing Christ as perhaps the
most important, but nevertheless one among other spiritual
figures.
The situation in which Paul writes is a
situation in which a lot of different ideas,
various religions and philosophies were all jostling together.
The Colossians were trying to make sense of
Christ from the standpoint of that worldview.
And like many have done and continue to
do, they were trying to make sense of
Christ by fitting Christ into the worldview they'd
already adopted, rather than allowing Christ to be
the one who determines and judges that worldview.
They have things backwards.
It seems is what's going on in the
Colossian community.
They are trying to make Christ conform to
these welter of beliefs that they hold, mixture
of paganism, Judaism, folk religions in the area
of ancient Asia minor.
One of my good friends and colleagues, Clint
Arnold out of Talbot School of Theology wrote
his doctoral dissertation on this whole matter, doing
archeological and historical studies showing the kinds of
beliefs on the street that would have been
present in a place like Colossi.
You can read the great classic poets and
philosophers.
You can read the Jewish literature and so
on.
And of course, this gives you a certain
perspective on the culture, but it's not until
you really begin doing careful investigation of other
kinds of evidence that you begin getting a
better idea of what the people themselves actually
believed.
Imagine trying to describe the average person in
Eastern Pennsylvania by quoting Declaration of Independence and
the Gettysburg Address and works of contemporary philosophers.
How much help do you think that would
give you in terms of what people we
know and rub shoulders with and talk with
actually believe?
Well, some help, all that stuff feeds into
what people believe, but it gets mixed up,
it gets influenced by all kinds of other
things and ways that are awfully difficult to
predict.
I think that's again the situation in the
first century church of Colossi.
I don't think we can pin down precisely
what this false teaching was.
Scholars have written books and articles for generations
trying to figure that out.
No one can agree.
Why?
We don't have enough evidence.
Scholars hate to admit that.
They always like to come to theories and
to propound them and to argue their theory
against someone else's theory.
Spend a lot of time doing that.
And sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not.
In this case, I'm convinced people can't come
to resolution because we just don't have enough
evidence.
Too many things going on in first century
of Colossi.
Too few obvious clues in the letter.
But what we can know about the situation
again is that it is a situation in
which the worldview of that time with its
religious and philosophical syncretism was dominating the way
the Colossians were understanding Christ and their spirituality.
And in a sense, perhaps God in his
providence has kept hidden from us some of
the specifics of that false teaching so that
the general contours of the problem could match
so nicely the situation Christians and churches have
faced through the millennium.
Think of the situation in which we minister
here in North America.
Very interesting.
Maybe you've done this.
Survey your congregation.
Give them some kind of a questionnaire or
do some kind of oral exam.
What are your base worldview beliefs?
And then try to track what's influenced them
in those beliefs.
And can you imagine the rich variety of
responses you would have?
Well, that's the context in which we are
ministering week by week.
We can't figure out what everyone we speak
to believes and exactly what worldview they're coming
from.
But what we can do is what Paul
attempts to do in Colossians that is establish
a robust Christocentric worldview that will take care
of any problem that these people might be
having along these lines.
We'll see how that develops again as the
letter unfolds.
But we need to see that, I think,
as we look at some of the emphases
that Paul has here.
And all of that was a very nice
exposition of the word all.
That's not all gonna appear in the commentary.
So you're getting a real benefit here because
my editor would scratch all that out if
I tried to pack all of that into
an explanation of the word all here in
verse four or whatever it is.
Faith and love.
What's particularly interesting here is the way hope
appears.
And that's why I've highlighted it.
Nowhere else in Paul does he use the
combination in the way that he does here.
Again, the TNAV has taken a particular interpretation
of the language, which I think is pretty
much on target here, suggesting that faith and
love rest on or spring from hope.
Now that's an unusual way to put it,
isn't it?
Again, Paul never puts it that way anywhere
else.
New Testament never puts it that way anywhere
else either, making hope in some sense, the
foundation for faith and love.
I mean, we would perhaps, if we were,
you know, ask ourselves, we would not put
it that way.
We would say faith is basic and faith
leads to my love for others and faith
in turn is what is the foundation for
my hope.
Certainly be a natural way to think of
the relationship of these three.
But Paul startles us by not putting it
that way here.
And clearly his intention is to draw our
eyes to this word and its significance.
Somehow it's important for Paul to talk about
hope in this context that he's addressing.
That hope is fundamental and the basis for
their faith and their love.
Why?
Because it's hope stored up in heaven.
The reality and security of the hope we
have that enables us to believe and to
love as we should.
You see, by calling it hope that is
stored up for you in heaven, Paul makes
clear that the hope here is not our
subjective hoping.
Oh, I hope that I will merit God's
favor one day.
Oh, I hope that I will get to
heaven.
Oh, I hope that I win the lottery.
No, it is not the subjective hoping on
our part that Paul focuses on here.
It is the objective reality of hope that
is there in heaven for us.
It's already there, stored up for us.
We don't have to wonder whether we're going
to get to glory.
We don't have to wonder about what the
outcome is going to be because God has
already secured that for us and has worked
for us in Christ through his death and
resurrection.
And he's, as it were, put that hope
up in a treasury for us.
It's like a bank account that's up there
that we can draw on when we need
it.
So it is that security that we enjoy
as God's people, Paul suggests, I think, that
have enabled the Colossian Christians to love other
people, to step out perhaps and do some
things that are uncomfortable and difficult in showing
that love, sacrificial love that can give because
of the security that we have.
And our faith that Paul talks about, our
faith in Christ Jesus also is increased and
deepened and able to express itself when it
rests firmly on a belief that what God
has done for us has been accomplished.
It's there, it's a reality, and our faith
therefore will not disappoint us.
Think of Romans 5 in this regard where
Paul makes some similar points.
Going on with the Thanksgiving, the connection here
is with hope.
Paul picks up that word now, says, okay,
you've already heard about this hope in the
word of the gospel, the good news.
One of the points that I think emerges
from these verses is the very high regard
that Paul has for the power of God's
word, the gospel.
Note how he describes it.
He says the true word of the gospel,
true, authentic, real, reliable are flavors of the
word Paul uses here.
This gospel has come to you and he
will talk about how it came to them.
Epaphras, our fellow servant, faithful minister.
But note that Paul says this gospel is
not something that only pertains to you Colossians.
This is not some local folk religion.
And again, in the context of the first
century world, this would have been a particularly
significant point to make perhaps.
First century world had their big religions that
we read about and study sometimes that perhaps
would have some degree of widespread acceptance.
But the ancient world was also riddled with
various folk religions.
And often one town would be distinguished from
another by the God they worshiped or by
the temple that was located there or by
particular local traditions or superstitions.
And one of the points that obviously Paul
is making here is that in contrast perhaps
to some of the other options the Colossians
are dallying with, these religious and philosophical options
that they're apparently being tempted to adopt, the
Christian faith is something that is universal in
its focus.
It comes from the one God through his
one son and is by definition therefore for
all people, not for one region, one town,
one people, but for all.
Paul will talk about that later in Colossians
3 verses 9 through 11, which you might
wanna look at sometimes because it's very doubtful
that we're gonna get there ourselves.
This gospel, Paul says, is bearing fruit and
growing throughout the whole world.
Bearing fruit and growing.
Where do we hear that kind of language
elsewhere in scripture?
Two places that come to my mind.
What do you think of?
Okay, that was one of them, parable of
the sower or the seeds, however we describe
it.
The parable, of course, of Jesus is the
sower of the word of God who goes
out and scatters it.
And of course the growth comes or not
as the case might be.
And where else?
John 15, that's possible, but that's not the
right answer.
Oh, this is okay.
This is a bigger kind of bread box
sort of thing here.
We'll get into it.
He's gonna narrow me down here.
Nope, nope, nope, wrong answer.
Nope, wrong answer.
Well, it's obviously not so obvious, is it?
I'm thinking of Genesis one.
Why are you laughing, Fred?
That's not very nice.
You're supposed to be supporting me.
Well, I might be off base on this,
but I do think that there is an
illusion here to Genesis one of the creation
story as well here.
This language of bearing fruit and growing is
something that God talks about in terms of
his original creation.
It's a very interesting story as you pursue
it through scripture, in fact, because what God
was hoping to accomplish in a sense in
his creation is a mandate that comes to
Israel.
And the same language is then used to
the people of Israel, how they grow and
bear fruit and so forth.
And of course they ultimately fail.
And then that same language is picked up
in the book of Acts where Luke gives
that refrain six times about how the word
of God or the church grew and bore
fruit and so forth.
So it's a rich biblical theme that Paul
is tapping into here.
But I think it reminds us that the
gospel is something which has built into it
this intrinsic power.
Look what Paul says here, in the same
way, your choruses are bearing fruit, no.
Your preaching is better, no.
Your ministry, no.
The gospel is bearing fruit and growing.
As I have taught Colossians on other occasions,
one of the points that I have made,
particularly in churches struggling to find their identity
and there are a lot of churches like
that these days.
They bought into this myth that you've got
to spend years and years writing your bylaws
and figuring out who you are and what
your mission statement is and so forth.
Some of which is helpful, I admit, but
a lot of which is, I think, time
wasted if this central point is not put
in place first.
That our church, our ministry is to be
an instrument by which God's word can accomplish
the purposes he's designed it to accomplish.
That's where the power is gonna be.
Not in my PowerPoints, not in my eloquence,
not in particular strategies that may or may
not be helpful.
What's going to proclaim and be an effective
instrument of the gospel should be the question
uppermost in our minds, it seems to me.
Again, bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole
world since it has been doing and you
heard it and truly understood God's grace.
Now, of course, as Paul makes clear here,
the gospel of God has this power only
as people receive it.
They have to hear it, they have to
understand it.
So clearly God needs to work in the
hearts and minds of people in order to
make the gospel that which will affect them
and become something that will be transforming for
them.
But this in no way takes from the
point of the intrinsic power of the gospel.
Now, in 9 to 14, let me just
try to keep this up here for a
moment.
What's interesting to me, first of all, is
the striking repetition of this language of bearing
fruit and growing.
Okay, just seen that here in, and I
see this is the problem, you don't have
the verses.
Whatever verse that is, is that verse six?
Okay, and then down here again in verses
of 10 or 11?
10, thank you.
See, that's why I know you have to
have the verses at some point, but boy,
they sure get in the way too.
Bearing fruit and growing, bearing fruit and growing.
So clearly Paul is kind of linking these
paragraphs together with that language.
As Paul prays for the Colossians now, his
prayer for them takes the form that we
might expect, granted the situation that he's confronting.
His prayer focuses, especially on the wisdom and
understanding and insight that he knows the Colossians
so badly need.
We continually ask God to fill you with
the knowledge of his will, you see.
Through wisdom and understanding that the spirit gives.
Again, another somewhat interpretive rendering there that's trying
to get at this idea of spiritual, but
spiritual as my colleague on the translation committee,
Gordon Fee never tires of telling us, is
a tired, worn out and very ambiguous word
in our culture.
People mean all sorts of things when they
use the word spiritual as they do when
they use the noun spirituality, which can be
a good thing if you define it the
right way, and it can be a pretty
bad thing if you define it in other
ways, because it can become a sort of
amorphous, oh, let's all feel good about having
some kind of contact with a different world
than ours sort of experience.
So I think there is benefit when we
come to this word spiritual in the New
Testament to be very careful about how it's
gonna communicate in our modern context.
And again, as my colleague Gordon Fee, who's
written that wonderful book on Paul's view of
the spirit God's empowering presence, as he points
out there in Paul, particularly language of spirit
is a reference to God's Holy Spirit.
Spiritual relates to God's Holy Spirit.
It's all tracked back to that fundamental point
and hence translating spiritual here as what the
spirit gives, I think gets at the point
Paul is interested in getting at.
He prays that they might have that knowledge
and wisdom and understanding, but it comes through
the spirit and the spirit's ministry in and
among the Colossians.
Now, as typically, of course, we find in
the New Testament, prayer for knowledge and wisdom
and understanding is a prayer that that knowledge
might lead to practical works of service to
God and his people.
Knowledge and behavior are always linked in scripture.
Indeed, it is fair to say that the
concepts of knowledge and wisdom, especially as we
many of us will know, have in the
scriptures a very practical side to them.
Wisdom especially is the ability to understand God
and his ways in a way that enables
us to live before him successfully.
It's applied knowledge.
It's practical understanding.
So it's again, a very short move indeed
to go from a prayer that we might
have understanding of God's will, insight into what
he's doing and accomplishing to the life that
we are to lead worthy of the Lord.
Now, this knowledge and wisdom and understanding or
insight, however our versions translate, Paul uses several
words to try to get the idea before
us here and make sure we understand what
he's after.
This of course, in this context involves what
we might call the big picture.
Paul is here is talking about our understanding
of what God is doing through Christ, with
his people, where we stand in a sense
in the history of God's redemptive purposes for
the world and how we fit into those
purposes.
The analogy has become popular of late.
And I think it's a very useful analogy
in many ways to think of ourselves as
Christians, as actors in a play.
The play has been going on for some
time.
We've been there to see act one and
act two and act three.
And now suddenly we're called on the stage
in act four and we've read the play.
And so we know what act five is
going to be.
And our job, obviously, and faithfulness to the
playwright is to enact our parts faithfully in
the spirit of the play.
We think of creation as act one, the
fall is act two, the history of Israel
is act three.
I'm mixing up my acts.
Jesus is act four.
We come on the scene as God's people
in act five, knowing what act six is
gonna be, where this whole play is gonna
end, what the climax, what the goal is,
as God receives glory ultimately for his reestablishment
of full sovereignty over his creation.
Our job as actors on the stage is
to faithfully fulfill our roles in act five.
And to do that, we need to know
the big picture.
We need to have an understanding of what
God's plan is, where it is and its
fulfillment at this point in time, how we
relate to that plan and fulfill our roles
accordingly.
So understanding God's will, particularly in this context,
is not a matter of the specifics.
It's a matter of the big picture without
which the specifics are going to be impossible
ever to figure out.
In verse six, as we saw, bearing fruit
and growing is something the gospel does.
Well, here, in a sense, we have the
other side of the coin, because this life
worthy of the Lord that pleases him in
every way will involve our bearing fruit and
growing.
Of course, the two are intimately tied to
each other.
The gospel bears fruit and produces growth in
and through the people that the gospel claims,
in and through the people who bow their
knee to Christ, in and through the people
who understand and respond to the gospel, receive
it into their hearts and their lives so
that it becomes a transforming presence.
We will bear fruit in every good work,
growing in the knowledge of God.
There's that knowledge language again, you see.
I'm sounding too much like a college professor
now, I guess, talking about knowledge all the
time, but that's what Paul's talking about.
Scripture often talks about, cannot hope to produce
effective Christians without knowledge of the right kind.
What Paul is doing here, you see, and
I've underlined these four participles, is that he
is unpacking this life worthy of the Lord.
In fact, he's saying, what is this life
that God wants us to lead?
What does it look like?
What are its components?
What are some of the parameters?
Well, Paul, of course, is not attempting to
give a full description here, but he does
mention these four things, bearing fruit, growing, being
strengthened with all power.
Can't grow and bear fruit very well if
you don't have some strength to rely on.
And that strength comes from God himself.
He supplies the power in accordance with his
glorious might.
Again, Paul piles up the words here to
make sure we get his point.
Strengthened, power, glory, might.
By the way, I don't like the translation
glorious.
I don't want to be accused of being
a slavish defender of the TNAV.
I don't like the translation glorious here, the
might of his glory.
And I very seldom in scripture like it
when we take the idea of glory and
turn it into an adjective like this.
I think almost all the English versions do
here.
I'm not sure there's an exception indeed.
So it's not the TNAV that's an outlier
here, as it were.
But it tends to me to detract from
the significance of that word as a way
of describing God, the glorious one.
I would prefer to translate something like the
might that belongs to God's glory, the might
that belongs to him as the glorious one
or something of that sort.
Because I think that gets more the flavor
of the word here.
At any rate, interesting that Paul says the
strengthening is so that we might have great
endurance and patience.
Kind of an odd thing for him to
say here in some ways.
Why that particular emphasis at this point in
the letter?
Why not talk about the strength God gives
to produce other Christian virtues?
Why these?
Well, again, perhaps Paul has one eye here
on the situation of the Colossian community in
which they are being tempted to fall back
from a full, strong Christian conviction by the
pressure being put upon them and their culture.
And they need patience and endurance.
Whether these words are distinct in meaning is
a good question.
This is we know very often in our
own English language and in the language of
scripture, words like this will overlap considerably meaning.
It's not that they're always gonna be distinct,
but there is a tendency in the New
Testament to use these in slightly different directions.
In a sense, we are patient with people
that we have a hard time with and
we endure circumstances that we're having a hard
time with.
There's a little bit of a different focus
in those words, maybe both are included here.
Another interesting emphasis is this giving joyful thanks.
You see, as I've suggested, Paul is sort
of giving a very simple sketch here of
four qualities that pertain to this life worthy
of the Lord.
I dare to say that if you were
asked to give four simple descriptions of what
that life that pleases God looks like, the
giving thanks might not make the list.
It's particularly interesting because Paul comes back to
this matter of thanksgiving at several times in
Colossians in places where it's kind of surprising.
If you flip over quickly to chapter two,
for instance, Paul's doing something very similar there,
talking about this life that God wants us
to lead and using four verbs to describe
it.
And again, thankfulness is in the list, two,
six through seven.
Paul says, continue to live your lives in
Christ, rooted, one, built up in him, two,
strengthened, does that sound familiar?
And four, overflowing with thankfulness.
How is it by chance that the last
two in both these lists are the same?
Strengthened and thankfulness.
I don't think so.
Paul, again, tailoring these points to the Colossian
situation.
We need the strength, of course, that God
gives to endure, to maintain our strong Christian
conviction in the midst of the welter of
opportunities and options that we have around us.
But we also need to be giving thanks
to God as a kind of offensive measure.
Because as we give thanks to God, we
are reminded of what he has done for
us.
We are immediately brought into a situation in
which our relationship to God, our creator and
redeemer comes right to the forefront.
As we give thanks, we recognize that we
are creatures.
He is the creator, that we owe everything
we have to him, and that helps to
produce a perspective on our faith in, again,
the situation of testing and tempting from other
religious and philosophical options.
That's the only explanation I can think of
as to why Paul, interestingly, focuses on this
theme of thanksgiving so often in the letter
to the Colossians.
Finally, as he concludes the prayer, you can
see Paul's kind of getting further away from
the original prayer up here, which is this
typical pattern.
Having begun a sentence, Paul has difficulty bringing
them to an end, for which we should
be very grateful, by the way, because there's
some great stuff in those long sentences.
But pray you might have knowledge that you
might live the right kind of life, knowledge
that will translate into behavior pleasing to God,
that behavior looks like this, and that behavior,
as it looks like this, comes from God
in Christ.
So now the transition, the father, and in
verses 12b to 14, we have Paul talking
about what the father in Christ has done
to bring us into this new stage of
existence.
Here, qualified you, a share in the inheritance
of his people.
Paul here is picking up Old Testament language,
as he so often does, of course.
The idea of share and inheritance, these words
are used consistently in the Old Testament to
talk about the allotted plots of land for
the tribes of Israel.
As they come into their inheritance of the
land, each tribe is given a share in
that land.
And that's where the language is consistently used,
if you look back at the Greek Old
Testament here.
So Paul picks up that language, of course,
and in his typical fashion, transfers up to
the experience that we enjoy as Christians.
We have an inheritance too, that hope stored
up in heaven.
And we each have a share in that
inheritance.
And you remember how poignant this point would
be when we remember that Paul is writing
to Gentile Christians here.
Those who, as Paul describes them in Ephesians
two, were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,
estranged from God.
They didn't have any place in Israel as
constituted in the Old Testament, or only with
difficulty or in an unusual way did they
have a place.
Now, in God's new covenant administration, that door
has been opened to the Gentiles like the
Colossians that they can have a share in
the inheritance.
It's no longer confined to Israel.
And no longer, of course, does it focus
on a land.
Now it focuses on a people and a
relationship.
The inheritance of the people in the kingdom
of light, hard to know how that light
language fits in there.
I'm gonna skip that for a moment.
Then again, verse 13, this transfer imagery, which
I think is so fundamental in scripture.
I'm just teaching a New Testament theology class
right now at Wheaton.
And I've outlined the whole class in terms
of old realm, new realm concepts that I
think get at a lot of what's going
on in the teaching of the New Testament,
the contrast of old realm and new realm.
But the New Testament is filled with the
kind of language we have here about the
reality of human beings outside of Christ living
in a realm of darkness, the realm of
Satan, the realm of sin, the realm of
death, the realm of despair.
That's what I added in this New Testament
never uses that exact word, but comes close
a number of times.
There's this dominion that exists, this realm that
people are in because of Adam, who is
the inaugurator in a sense of that realm.
We all belong to Adam and we find
ourselves in that realm.
In God's grace, he transfers us from that
realm, dominated by sin and death, inaugurated by
Adam, into the realm inaugurated by Christ, dominated
by life and righteousness and grace.
And this imagery of the transfer of one
realm to another, again, is a fundamental New
Testament conceptions that Paul, you can see, ties
into here.
From the dominion of darkness into the kingdom
of the son he loves, in whom we
have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Now, the language of redemption, as many of
you will know, is a word that's picked
up from the Greco-Roman world, applied to
the slave who had gained his or her
freedom by the pain of a price.
And this is an imagery for the work
of Christ, of course, that occurs in a
number of key places in the New Testament.
But as is so often the case, when
we begin looking at these things, while the
language of redeem and redemption and ransom certainly
would convey that picture, slave paid a price
to be released in the ancient world, the
language also would have communicated some connections with
the Old Testament again.
Two particular episodes in the Old Testament would
immediately come to mind.
The Exodus, because this language is quite frequently
used to describe what God did for Israel
when he brought them out of Egypt.
I have redeemed you, I have brought you
out with power, and I have redeemed you.
Indeed, I think there's one verse in Exodus
6, 6 or 10, something, it's there somewhere
in Exodus, trust me.
Uses this language of rescue and redemption right
next to each other to talk about the
Exodus.
So likely there is some tie-in here
to that experience, but this language also very
significantly gets used an awful lot to talk
about what God is going to do for
Israel in bringing her out of exile.
If you look at the latter chapters of
Isaiah, Isaiah 40 to 66 that were so
formative for Paul.
This is, you're not supposed to have favorite
books, right?
Okay, well, that was Paul's favorite Old Testament
book because he obviously derives a lot of
his key ideas and language from Isaiah 40
to 66.
But you remember the situation, Israel is in
exile.
Darkness is the word used again and again
to describe the situation of Israel in exile.
And God is going to rescue Israel, bringing
her out of darkness into light in an
act of redemption.
God in Christ has brought his people out
of the ultimate exile, the darkness of sin.
And he has redeemed us through a new
act of power through Christ his son to
bring us into the new promised land and
given us a share in that land.
And this again, we have to see how
that would resonate so strongly with these Gentile
Christians who as Gentiles had not had that
kind of place in the people of God
before.
Well, thank you for paying attention.
I got further than I thought, but not
as far as I hoped, which is a
parable for our lives pretty much, isn't it?
All right, Fred, you have instructions for us.