Today we begin a spiritual journey through a wonderful New Testament book. Just a few weeks ago we completed our study of the book of Acts and found that that book concludes with the Apostle Paul being confined for two years in Rome while waiting for his appeal before the Roman emperor. While he was waiting for his case to be heard, he was very busy. The Holy Spirit inspired him to write a series of letters known to us as Paul’s prison epistles. They include Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.
In 2005, soon after the Lord called me to serve as the pastor of High Prairie Church, I led our congregation through a study of the book of Ephesians. Two years later, in 2007, together we studied the book of Philippians. Now after nearly twenty years of ministry, we complete our study of the Prison Epistles. During my time here at High Prairie Church, I have led in studies of the entire New Testament, except for Colossians and Philemon, (which I will finish on Sunday mornings) and the epistles of Peter, and the epistle of Jude (which I will complete on Sunday evenings). Thus, in twenty years, we will have studied all twenty-seven books of the New Testament.
We have also studied much of the Old Testament. We have studied the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Esther, Job, First and Second Samuel, many of the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, parts of Ezekiel, Daniel and all twelve Minor Prophets. We are currently studying the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations on Monday evening. It has been the most profound blessing to experience the richness of God’s Word and I do not cease to marvel at the indescribable beauty of His truth. What an amazing treasure to have the incomparable wisdom of our omniscient God given to us to serve as a guide through all the various journeys of our lives.
Now, before us, is the sparkling jewel of the book of Colossians. The Holy Spirit’s inspired theme of this book is the Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. As He most certainly should, the Lord Jesus takes the center stage throughout this short epistle. Dr. D. A. Carson wrote, “The combination of the greatness of Christ and of His saving work for believers runs through the epistle. Paul declares Christ has reconciled believers and that He is in them the hope of glory. In looking at the atonement, Paul says that God forgave our sins, “having canceled the certificate of death consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us and He had taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” In Christ are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, all the fullness of deity lives in Him in bodily form and believers have been given the fullness of Christ. When they were dead in sins, God made them alive with Christ. They died in Christ to the elementary principles of the world and they have been raised with Him. Christ is all and in all and they are God’s chosen people. They give thanks to the Father through Christ and Christ is supreme over all the supernatural forces.” The core message of the book of Colossians is that as the Lord Jesus Christ is absolutely essential to our salvation, that only through faith in Him can any man or woman be saved, so also, is He essential and necessary for every believer’s daily walk before a gracious God. We need Jesus every moment of every day of our lives.
The first eight verses of Colossians serve as the greeting and opening comments of the book and explains Paul’s prayerful concern for the Christians of Colossae. Three basic points can be derived from them. Paul greeted the saints and invoked God’s grace and peace upon them. He then explained how the gospel of Jesus Christ transformed their lives and their world view. Then he showed how the message of the gospel, which they had believed, was spreading throughout the world, a process that continues even in our world today. We begin with Paul’s greeting.
PAUL’S GREETING TO THE COLOSSIANS. Colossians 1:1-2
Paul an Apostle. As a church we know who Paul is. After studying the book of Acts, we know he was born in Tarsus and was educated in Jerusalem. We know he was saved in an amazing way on his way to Damascus in Syria. We know God called him to be an apostle, and he became a pastor of the church in Antioch and while there, the Holy Spirit called him to be a missionary. Paul took the gospel to Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Achaia. We followed him back to Jerusalem and on a difficult journey to Rome that ended with being shipwrecked in Malta. And we followed him to Rome, where he wrote these words. He was a man who deeply loved his Lord, Jesus Christ and who was fully committed to following Him, regardless of the cost.
Notice, he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. “Apostle of Jesus Christ” is a title given to only a few select men of the first century. There were and are no others. As an apostle, Paul was an authorized spokesman for Jesus Christ, commissioned and empowered to act as His representative. Paul was, therefore, a commissioned ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently, what he wrote in this epistle is not merely his opinion, but God’s authoritative word.
Please notice that Paul was an apostle because of God’s will. He tells us this so that we will not think he applied for this job, or that he was given it because of his training or experience. He did not assign himself to this office neither did he ask for it. He lived a life of obedience to God’s perfect will. I wonder how many of us can say we are following God’s will for our lives? Paul met Timothy during one of his missionary journeys and God called Timothy to join his missionary team. So, Timothy was with Paul in Rome as he wrote this epistle and sent along his greetings.
The Saints and Faithful Brethren. The saints were at Colossae. A quick look at the maps in the back of your Bibles will show you that Colossae was in Asia Minor and about eighty miles east of Ephesus and about the same distance west of Iconium. In more ancient times, it had been a larger and wealthier city, but about a century before Paul’s time, the Romans had diverted the road and Colossae’s influence declined. It was near Laodicea and Hierapolis. It was an agricultural town, most noted for its manufacture and export of purple wool. Most of the people were Gentiles and had been pagan idol worshipers until they received the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.
They are called saints (NASB, KJV, NKJV), or holy (NIV). This spiritual designation shows that they had received Christ as Savior and at the moment they did, they were imputed with the full and complete righteousness of Christ and were by virtue of that fact immediately made saints or holy ones. They were saints because of their faith, not because somebody or some group voted them to be saints. All true believers in Christ are saints from God’s point of view. They were faithful as well, which means they were faithful, steadfast, and unswerving. Our Lord desires us to be known as faithful saints.
There is a very small word that often goes unnoticed. It is the Greek word en which is translated by the English word in. Both in Greek and English, the word is a preposition. As a part of speech, prepositions have several functions, one of which is to form a prepositional phrase that indicates where something is located. Look carefully at verse two. Paul tells us that the Colossian Christians are actually in two locations. They were at Colossae and they were also, and at the same time, in Christ. On one hand they were citizens of a small town in Asia Minor and knew its streets, buildings, market places, and fields. They knew its daily life. They knew the idolatry of their pagan neighbors and knew its politics. On the other hand, they were also located in Christ. He was their supernatural secret for life, peace, power, purity, love, cheerfulness, and hope. Their constant spiritual location was the Lord. Through faith they had come to Him and were eternally joined to Him. As they went about their lives in Colossae, they were in Christ, whether it was at work, at school, kept the house, conducted business, or talked with family or neighbors. When they entered their sorrows and joys, walked in wisdom, suffered abuse or insults–they were always in Christ. As Christians, you and I share the same transcendent location–as we are presently here in this building, we are also entirely and completely in Christ.
Grace and Peace. Paul called them brothers showing that they had, through faith in Jesus, been adopted into God’s forever family. Despite the differences of culture, social status, and racial background, the Colossian believers were bound together by a common bond of love and therefore constituted one spiritual family. Are you a Christian? If you are, you are part of this family. Grace expresses the essence of God’s saving, sanctifying, and glorifying activity in Christ that is freely given to any who come to embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Peace denotes wholeness or soundness and includes such ideas as spiritual prosperity and contentedness. It is a result of the believer’s walking faithfully with Christ. God’s peace transcends circumstances and rests seated with Christ in the heavenlies.
THE RESULTS OF THE GOSPEL. Colossians 1:3-5
Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer. The first words of Paul’s introduction were prayer. First, he acknowledged God’s sovereign rule over the people of the local church. Paul spoke of gratitude or thanksgiving in every chapter of this book. Paul addresses his prayer to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this way, he reminds us that our eternal relationship to God the infinite Creator is through the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have the privilege of addressing God as Father only because we are saved through the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus. Paul had maintained a continuous prayer to the Lord for the Christians of this church in Colossae because he had heard about their reputation as a faithful church. Paul was grateful for what God was doing in the lives of people he likely had never met. How much more should we pray for the believers we know?
Faith, Love, and Hope. Paul presents a series of gospel truths bundled in threes. This is typical of Paul’s method of teaching God’s truth. Putting things in these “threes,” “trilogies” or “triads” helps Christians to remember them. The first set is faith, love, and hope, and points to these three priorities of Christianity. Paul has heard that the Colossians had displayed these three spiritual graces in their relationships with each other. Faith is mentioned first in this triad and Paul states their faith was “in Christ Jesus.” This points to the past and encompasses all that Jesus accomplished through His death, burial, and resurrection to secure everlasting salvation for believers. Faith also looks up to God.
Love follows faith, is the fruit of faith and the proof of faith’s genuineness. Love looks outward to others and leads to a servant’s heart. This love is produced in the heart of a yielded saint by the Holy Spirit and empowers Christians to sacrifice for the needs of their brothers and sisters in Christ. Hope refers to the glorious reward; the future blessedness of God’s people. Hope enables the believer to look forward to his or her future blessing regardless of present circumstances. This triad is found in several places in the New Testament, but is most familiar in First Corinthians 13:13, “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
The Hearing of the Gospel. The gospel message was not native to Colossae. It had to be brought to them; and in their case, Epaphras was the messenger. He was himself a citizen of this city, but he had come in contact with Paul and had been converted to Jesus Christ. This was probably during Paul’s three-year ministry in Ephesus. Epaphras returned to Colossae and helped to establish this church. The gospel centers in a Person: Jesus Christ. The theme of this epistle is the supremacy of Jesus Christ, and He is certainly supreme in the gospel. It is Jesus who died for us, and who rose again. The Gospel message does not center in a philosophy, a doctrine, or a religious system. It centers in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. God has determined that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). These believers heard the gospel, believed in Jesus, and were saved.
THE SPREADING OF THE GOSPEL. Colossians 1:6-8
The Power of the Gospel. In these verses Paul presents a second bundle of three ideas or a triad. First, we discover that the word of truth is the gospel. The message of redemption is rooted in the Word of God. The world is full of messages and we are constantly bombarded with the noise of all of them. But only one message can bring eternal life. Only one empowers a person to come to God’s throne of grace, and be granted the complete forgiveness of sin. Only God’s Word can be called truth. The true Christian believer has faith in Jesus Christ and that faith is based on the Word of truth. Only that faith can be saving faith.
The second of the three is found in the words, “just as it is in all the world.” The gospel is the universal remedy for humankind’s sinful condition. Sin is universal because, according to the Bible, all have sinned. But as wide and broad as our world is, there is only one remedy for sin, and that is the gospel message that declares that Jesus bore our sins on the cross and grants eternal life for those who trust in Him. The gospel transcends ethnic, geographical, cultural, and political boundaries, saves the believing sinner and places him or her forever into God’s family.
The third part of this triad is that the gospel, under the continuous power of the Holy Spirit, is always bearing fruit and increasing. In ways human eyes cannot see, the Holy Spirit is causing the gospel to bear fruit. Through the unseen work of God’s Spirit, the hearing of God’s Word causes souls to be saved and believers to grow. This had been happening in these Colossians and it has also been happening here among us.
The Messenger of the Gospel. It is God’s design that the gospel be spread by messengers that He raises up. In this case, God used Epaphras to bring the gospel to the town of Colossae. We find two important things about Epaphras. First, he was a beloved bond-servant. Paul described himself as a bond-servant and Epaphras must have learned to serve by being trained by Paul. We do not know much else about this godly man. We don’t know when he was born or anything about his family. But we do know that the Apostle Paul called him a “fellow bond-servant.” For a Christian, there is no higher praise. Second, he was a faithful servant of Christ. He not only won people to Christ, he also taught them God’s Word and helped them to grow. He served for the purpose of helping them to become mature believers in Christ.
Love in the Spirit. Epaphras not only help to establish the church in Colossae, but he also traveled to Rome to tell the imprisoned apostle the good news about the Colossians love in the Spirit for Jesus Christ. Nothing could have brought Paul greater joy. True Christians are in the Holy Spirit and the Spirit is in them. Thus their “love for all the saints” flowed from the indwelling Holy Spirit. The love in the Spirit can only be the characteristic of people who are filled by the Holy Spirit and who are walking in the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22 tells us that love is a fruit of the Spirit. This reveals the spiritual growth of these Christians and their obedience to God’s Word.
As Epaphras illustrates, God uses Christians as channels of grace. In the same way, God will use us to channel His grace to those who need Him. Will you allow God to use you to bring God’s grace into the lives of those around you? I am sure there is someone you know who needs to hear the gospel. Right now, as we finish our study of God’s Word, will you pray for the salvation of that lost soul?
If you have heard this message, and you have never received Christ, it might surprise you to learn that God loves you and sent His one and only Son to save you. That is God’s truth. Of all the billions of people who are living or have lived on this planet, God sent His Son to save you. Jesus carried His cross to Golgotha, and died on that cross. He was buried in a tomb nearby, and rose from the dead on the third day. All this so that you could be given eternal life through His grace. Will you believe in Him? Will you trust Him, repent, and turn to Him?
