Socially and
morally, there's perhaps not a lot of difference between the Romans' world of
the 1st Century and the Western world of the 21st Century. And so Paul's letter to the Colossians is
possibly the most timely and culturally relevant of all his epistles, for it
speaks directly to the spiritual dangers believers face from the contemporary
spirit of the age in which we now live, and especially when we adopt that
spirit into the life, teaching and practice of the church.
Paul had not been to
Colossae, nor was he personally familiar with the Christians there in that
thriving young church. However, from the enthusiastic, first-hand reports from
Epaphras (1:7; 4:12-13) of the Colossians' faith, love and hope (1:4-5), he knows
and thanks God (v3) that the Gospel is growing among them and bearing its
life-changing fruit in their lives (v6).
They are the genuine Christian article because they have believed the
genuine Christian Gospel (v6,13-14,23). Paul's follow-up prayer for these young
believers is a challenge to us. Do we pray for young Christians with the
clarity, conviction and boldness of Paul? Praying that God would fill them with the knowledge of His will through all
spiritual wisdom and understanding… that they may live lives worthy of the
Lord, pleasing Him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in
their knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power for endurance and
patience…? Do we even pray for
ourselves like this?
And having reminded
these Christians what the Gospel of Jesus Christ had accomplished in their
lives (v3-14), Paul now turns their attention to the Jesus of the Gospel
(v15-23). In this section Paul ‘pulls
out all the stops’ to help the Colossians grasp the supremacy of Jesus over all
things, in order that they might trust the sufficiency of Jesus in all things.
And here's why …
In a society or
world in which Christians are marginalised and ignored - as in Colossae and in
our own culture - it is all too easy to believe that Jesus is a ‘lame-duck’
Saviour and the Church to be an insignificant group. There then arises the temptation to think
that ‘something more than Jesus’ is required to boost up our spiritual
credibility among neighbours and even to improve one’s standing with God. Under
the influence of (even more) false teachers, the Colossian Christians were
being encouraged to look to ideas common in that culture (a heady mix of old
Jewish practices and what we might recognise today as ‘New Age’ type teachings)
to gain special insight into how the world really works, and how to live in
this world with ‘the edge’ of having authority over unseen spiritual powers and
personal weaknesses.
Paul is concerned
that these young believers, while not deliberately abandoning their new
Gospel-given faith, may lack the discernment required to see the danger of what
appeared to be attractive and helpful, but which was in reality, false and
menacing (2:2-5). He writes to encourage
them to keep on believing in the true and original Gospel (1:23-25, 28-29), and
to keep on worshipping the real, majestic, glorious and unsurpassed Jesus of
that Gospel (v27). Paul draws our attention to Christ and His relation to grace
(v14), to God (v15), to the Creation (v16-17), to the new Creation (the Church)
(v18) and to our Redemption (v19-20).
In all this, Paul's
pastoral strategy is to encourage his readers to persevere in believing the
Gospel message they have already heard by helping them to look at the world
differently. In a society where the
common people were constantly reminded that they were ruled and ennobled by the
might and majesty of the imperial forces of Rome, and where the ever-present
image of the Emperor, stamped or painted everywhere, on coins, furniture,
architecture was a less-than-subtle message to help people remember with whom
the loyalties ought to lie , Paul wants the Colossians to see things
differently. The Roman Emperor is not in
absolute charge of everything. Jesus
is. Caesar only reigns, because Jesus,
the supreme authority, lets him rule.
Jesus is over everything. In fact
everything that can be seen, and all that cannot be seen, owes its existence to
Jesus, the same Jesus who is the image of the invisible God, and who has
brought peace and reconciliation to all things by his death upon “an old rugged
cross”. Catch a vision of this, says
Paul, and it will change your life; you
won’t go chasing after those who are telling you that your faith in God needs
more than just Jesus. Not only is Jesus
supreme over all things, He is sufficient for all things. If you have Christ, you don’t need anything
else. If you don’t have Christ, you have
nothing. This is why this letter speaks so powerfully to us and our world
today.
The hinge verse and
the key exhortation of the letter is 2:6-7:
So then, just as you received Christ
Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him,
strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with
thankfulness.
This wholehearted
commitment to Christ alone, contrasts with the false teachers who were
saying: It’s
alright to begin the Christian life with Jesus, but to make sure and steady
progress, and to ensure the blessing of God is always with you, you have to …’. In adding to the Gospel, they were in fact
subtracting from it and therefore leading their listeners astray (2:8-23).
And while the
Apostle Paul was scathing against those who promoted strict rules and
regulations as the primary means to modify behaviour and encourage spiritual
growth, the danger for us as we read
Paul’s practical exhortations (3: 5 – 4:1) is that we read this passage as
another list of ethical requirements that we have to obey. In other words, we are tempted to adopt the
very approach of the false teachers that Paul was so keen that we avoid. So, in this section Paul does not offer a
detailed code of what constitutes ‘proper or improper Christian
behaviour’. We will not become
Christlike simply by doing what is expected of those who follow Christ. Instead, Paul wants his readers -us- to
actively live out what is now true of them/us because of their/our new
relationship with, and status in, Jesus Christ.
Real transformation takes place when we ‘put on Christ’. Those who are being renewed in the image of
Christ will produce the fruit of Christlike character because that is now their
new nature. In effect Paul is
saying: “By God’s grace, you are saved,
you are no longer the same person as you once were for you now have a new
nature; now live out that Christian life in accordance with the new nature you
have been given. You are Christians, now be Christians!” Amen?
No comments:
Post a Comment