Talk from 14th September

Colossians chapter 1 verses 3 – 7

Please turn to p 1182 in the pew bibles. Last week we started a new series on Sundays on Paul’s letter to the Colossians and we have now come to verse 3 – 8, Paul’s prayer for the Colossians.

Firstly see what Paul thanks God for in the Church at Colossae: v 3 – 5: ‘We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven’.

Paul starts most of his letters with things to thank God for in those he is writing to. And in 6 places in the different letters when he writes, he thanks God for the faith, hope and love of the Christians he addresses, as he does here. For instance in his next book in the Bible, Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he writes: 1. 2 ‘We always thank God for you all, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus.’

You might think this is obvious and natural. Most people would say that they are, after all, surely the defining marks of every Christian. But there are 2 things which make this significant, because, if you think about it, actually everybody, Christian or not, exercises faith, hope and love. Children put faith in their mother as they trust she will keep them safe as she leads them across the road. Since the 1700s hope has been a defining characteristic of the Western World. The Enlightenment has relied on hope, with its trust in scientific progress to give us a future. One would hope that most people are loving in a civilised society. As Jesus said, even the pagans love their family and friends.

But in the first place see the distinctive way that faith, love and hope are put here. What is distinctive about Christian faith is that we put it in Christ Jesus, in v 4. We believe He is the Christ, God made man. Jesus is part of the Godhead. So much of this letter is encouraging the Colossians to see the full implications of the fact that He is God’s Son. Look at ch 1 v 15 – 20. So the Jesus who came is not a mere good person, not a mere miracle worker, not a prophet. We believe that He is part of God Himself, with all the implications there are hidden behind that fact. And that is a mark of Christian faith.

And what is distinctive about Christian love is who we love. Christians are marked out because of their love for all the saints in v 4, their love for other Christians. We actually love meeting each other, we look out for each other, we enjoy going to Cell groups, because it means we will meet up with other Christians. That is why, when Christians go on holiday or start off in a new area, they look out especially for other Christians, even when they do not speak the same language or when they are socially completely different from us. We love people who love Jesus in the same way we do. We have a common spiritual link. That is why, in verse 8, Paul says it is love ‘in the Spirit’: only God’s Spirit could give us such a love, because outsiders often despise Christians. At school Christians are often considered those most to be despised.

And what is distinctive about Christian hope is that it is so different from how people in the world think of hope. Most people associate hope with something vague and a bit pathetic: ‘Oh, I hope so.’ It is a weak word. Not so Christian hope. In verse 5 it is a ‘hope that is stored up for you in heaven’. It is rock-solid. It is sure and certain. Look how the writer to the Hebrews puts it in Hebrews ch 11 v 1 (p 1209) ‘Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.’ Look how it is put in Colossians chapter 1verse 23, the next mention of hope: Paul asks them to ‘continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.’ Our faith rests on the foundation of what Christ has assured us about our future through what He did for us on the cross. And it is what we have as Christians. This whole way of thinking is RADICALLY DIFFERENT from a weak and pathetic ‘I hope so’ faith.

So you can understand the story of the 18th century vicar. When his doctor told him that he was going to die, it lifted him up into such transports of delights that the doctor afterwards said it added another fortnight to his life. As the Straws put it in one of their songs, ‘Death holds no fear for those who see clear. Is it today, Lord, that I’ll reach You?’

These 3 qualities are the hallmarks and proper evidences of a work of God in our souls.

Secondly see the distinctive way Paul puts these 3 things. In verse 5, ‘faith and love spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven.’ The same point is made clear in Paul’s letter to Titus ch 1 v 2 (p 1812 of the Bibles in the pews). ‘our faith and knowledge rest on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised...’ What is distinctive and unexpected here is that Paul’s language forbids us from thinking that our hope is a consequence of faith and love. Rather the reverse. We are not to think of ourselves as largely enjoying the fruits of Christ’s victory now, with heaven as some kind of finishing touch to what we now experience. That makes us feel as though we are continually on a catch-up mission with others to appear happier than them. Yes, we are deeply blessed knowing Christ and because of our secure future in Him. But ask a Christian in a Muslim country being victimised for his faith whether he is outwardly happy: he may not be. Rather heaven holds most of the great things won for us by Christ and our present experience is no more than a precious foretaste of what is to come. Faith, love, the Christian life, rests on the rock-solid assurance that we as Christians know, of our hope in heaven.’ One of the surprising things about this letter is that Paul discourages his Colossian friends from concentrating on subjective experience in their search for Christian fullness of life. Rather he gets them to concentrate on the amazing objective facts of what Christ has done, who He is, and that Christian experience is simply ‘living IN Him.’

(Yet how many people who call themselves Christians today seem to have a ‘I hope so...’ sort of faith. Perhaps it is because they have some of the problems that we will see later in the letter that the Colossians have. Indeed the reason Paul highlights this especially to the Colossians is because there are false teachers coming into their church who appear to be stopping them from trusting in this rock-solid future they had in Christ, making them think that they had to do extra things to be acceptable to God. We will see how this shows itself more in chapter 2.)

My second heading, LEARN THE CHARACTISTICS WE NEED TO CAUSE FRUIT IN OUR LIVES AS CHRISTIANS

Don’t we sometimes wonder how can I bear fruit in my life as a Christian? Simply copy Epaphras. See verses 7, 8, ‘You learned the gospel from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.’

HOW THE CHURCH CAME TO EXIST. SEE SLIDES FOR WHERE COLOSSE IS. In verse7 Paul says you (Colossians) learnt the faith from Epaphras. Acts 19 v 10 (p 1115 don’t look up), records Paul spending several years, probably AD 52 – 55, in Ephesus. Epaphras probably came to faith through Paul’s ministry then. Then he went back home to Colosse and built churches there and in Laodicea and Hierapolis.

So what are the qualities in a person like that whom God uses to build a church? What are Epaphras’ key characteristics? See how he is described in chapter 1 verse 7 (p 1182) and chapter 4 verse 10 (page 1185). In 1. 7 ‘you learnt the gospel from him...’: so he taught it: understanding it is important. We must teach it. In ch 4 verse 12, he is ‘always wrestling in prayer for you’, and with a specific plea in his prayer, ‘that you stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.’ So he prayed directionally, on a level that probably challenges many of us. Then also in verse 13, he is a hard worker for you. ‘THE WINNING OF THE MIND (teaching), FOCUS (that they stand firm, mature and fully assured), HARD WORK AND WRESTLING IN PRAYER.’

But the result? It bred success: churches built up in Colosse, Laodicea and Hierapolis. Epaphras’s life bore fruit: He was leading people to Christ and seeing them grow into maturity.

I hope you get inspired by Epaphras! He was no-one special in human terms. He lived nowhere special: Colosse was a small market town that did not exist 200 years later. He is only mentioned, in passing, in 2 verses in the Bible (Col 1. 7 and Philemon 23). But he was a hard worker, mature in the faith, and he just loved seeing people won to faith in Christ, working on until it actually happens!

We can learn what can happen with just one person who serves as a faithful minister of Christ. I think of a chap, Roger Simpson, who came to faith through my home church in London whilst he was studying at London University. He came to faith – and he was off! One Sunday the vicar encouraged people to the Church Prayer Meeting as he did each month: Roger went around the church saying, ‘Are you coming? Are you coming?’ That Wednesday the numbers at the prayer meeting doubled! He would go around his hall of residence room by room just sharing Christ – and winning them to Christ, I might say. He was an Epaphras! That could be you.

Epaphras’s can come from the most unlikely places. Some see St Margaret’s as dead and buried? Actually 2 people are now in the ministry directly because of St Margaret’s: Ian Scott-Thomson in Guildford Diocese and Iris Spruce’s daughter is training for NSM in Banbury (she was brought up in the choir at St Margaret’s).

SEE THAT THE POWER FOR FRUIT COMES NOT FROM EPAPHRAS, BUT FROM WHAT HE LEARNT AND PREACHED AS THE GOSPEL. See CHAPTER 1 VERSE 6: ‘All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you’ (HOW?) ‘since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth.’ He learnt God’s grace. Then he shared it, like the woman at the well in John chapter 4. As Paul puts it in Romans chapter 1 verse 16, ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.’

It appears that in Colosse the false teachers had been purposely trying to drive a wedge between the apostolic teaching which Paul proclaimed, and what Epaphras was teaching. So Paul has to remind the Colossians that he, Paul, writes as an apostle (in verse 1), and that he can confirm that the Colossians had learnt the true gospel through Epaphras. Epaphras had been completely faithful in what he had delivered to them. So in verse 7, Paul says that Epaphras is a faithful minister of Christ. And in verse 2, Paul purposely addresses the Colossians as ‘the holy and faithful brothers in Christ’. He is glad about them because they are faithful to this Gospel that Epaphras preached.

And what is this Gospel? Paul will go into this more in the rest of the letter. But in these verses as in verse 2 he summarises it with one phrase: God’s grace, at the end of verse 6.

The story is told of Abraham Lincoln in America at the time of the slave trade, before he became President. He was in Boston at a market seeking off the new slaves brought over from Africa. He bought a slave – a girl. Then he immediately set her free. She couldn’t believe it and kept checking that he really meant what he had said. When she finally realised what he had done, she said she wanted to stay with him as a slave forever. That sort of master, she wanted. God’s grace is on a much more lavish scale than that... John Stott describes it as an ‘unmerited Divine initiative’.

Explain

TW Manson says, ‘we learn that to follow Christ is not to go in pursuit of some ideal but to share in the results of an achievement.’ That is the heart of what Paul wants the Colossians to understand. Complete forgiveness? Free grace? There is nothing for us to do to earn our way to heaven? Someone confronted Martin Luther, upon the Reformer’s rediscovery of the biblical doctrine of justification, with the remark, “If this is true, a person could simply live as he pleased!” “Indeed!” answered Luther. “Now, what pleases you?”

So it is no surprise that, where people preach this Gospel rather than any other around the world, it causes growth because it is absolutely astonishing. No wonder Paul describes it as a hope that is stored up for you in heaven’. Preaching it is bound to have a powerful effect. Many suggest that the Anglican Church is dead and buried. But where it is faithful to this good news, it is not. It is not the Lambeth Conference but the GAFCON Conference in Jerusalem which was noted for bringing together those who were faithful to this gospel. One of the main convenors of that Conference was Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, He has been vilified by much of the Church Press for this. But see what is happening in that country because of the emphasis on this Gospel. It has 9 million practising Anglicans. At their last equivalent of General Synod they created 18 new missionary Dioceses, electing 20 new Bishops to serve these. All of the resources to start these new Dioceses – a Cathedral for the people, a car, house and 1st year’s stipend for the Bishop and his family – are already in the bank. The 17 missionary Dioceses they created last year have already created more than 300 congregations.

CONCLUSION

See the hallmarks of the Christian faith in verses 3 – 5: ‘faith in Christ Jesus, love for all the saints hope that is stored up for you in heaven’.