(To watch the video teaching on Colossians 1:1-8 click here!)
What happens when someone puts their faith in Christ?
What are the outward signs of a changed heart?
How should believers look different from unbelievers?
How does a believer grow in Christ-like maturity?
Welcome to the epistles of the New Testament. Where questions like this (and more) are answered. The apostles knew that after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the new body of believers, the church, would need some instructions on what this new life in Christ should look like. So they wrote these instructions (and admonitions) down in letter form to churches and other believers. 2,000 years later, these letters still instruct us today.
Paul wrote his letter to the new church in Colossae while he was imprisoned in Rome. The church in Colossae was not one that Paul himself had started or even visited. What he know of this church he learned from Epaphras, a fellow worker who planted the church in Colossae.
Paul’s letter to this church reminds them of the firm foundation on which they have been built, which is Christ. He also instructs them on how they might grow up as a church in Christ-like maturity. The implications for how we might also grow in maturity are innumerable.
Today, we’re going to take a look at Colossians 1:1-8. We will look at what happens when a person’s life is made new and just exactly how that happens.
Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus
In order to begin understanding this letter, we need to first know something about it’s author. And the author of Colossians is revealed in the very first word: Paul.
To know Paul is to know what it means to persevere through suffering in order to proclaim the gospel with every fiber of our beings (to read about Paul’s dramatic conversion, see Acts 9:1-22). Paul is considered an apostle because he was commissioned by Christ himself on the road to Damascus to spend the rest of this life preaching the good news of Christ to the Gentiles (anyone who was non-Jew). His status of apostle gives him the special kind of authority in which he writes. These truly are words we ought to pay attention to.
Paul continues the customary greeting of a first century letter by mentioning his inclusion of Timothy (on whose behalf he writes) and establishing who it is he is writing to.
The saints and faithful brothers (and sisters – another way that word can be translated, and Paul almost certainly meant to include the sisters) in Christ at Colossae were simply the new believers that formed the church in that city. If you have a Catholic background the word saint might conjure up images of “extra holy” people set apart to do miraculous things. But this is not the way the Bible uses the word saint. Saints in the Bible simply refer to all of those who have put their faith in Jesus. No special holiness required.
Paul ends his greeting by expressing his desire that they may have grace and peace from God our Father. What more could an apostle want for a church under his discipleship?
Signs of New Life
My Reformation Study Bible notes that it was customary in first century letters to express a wish for the good health of the recipients of the letter. Paul adheres to the customs of his time but expands on them in a much more meaningful way.
Paul, of course, is far more concerned with the spiritual health of the believers in Colossae than he is with their physical health. Therefore his “customary wish of good health” includes gratitude for the health that is already being displayed in the church and a prayer for the church to thrive as believers in Christ. Today we’re looking at verses 3-8 which express Paul’s gratitude to God for the spiritual health of the church in Colossae.
Paul, although having never visited the believers in Colossae himself, has heard about them. And the things he has heard are encouraging to him (and should be encouraging to us too!). Starting in verse 4, Paul points out three signs that indicate the good spiritual health of the church in Colossae.
But before we jump into what those three signs are, we need to think about what it is that actually takes place when an unbeliever becomes a believer. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17). Later on in the first chapter of Colossians Paul talks about how believers in Christ are delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col. 1:13). In Colossians chapter 2, Paul even goes so far as to say you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, (Col. 2:13).
The Scriptures are clear. When we put our faith in Jesus we are no longer who we once were. We have crossed over from death to life, darkness to light. We are made completely new. The old has passed away and behold we are a new creation.
But what are the defining characteristics of a person who has been made new? A person who is indeed a new creation?
Paul mentions three in verses 4 and 5. We can know someone has been made new because of their faith in Christ and their love for others which springs from the hope laid up for them in heaven. New creations are faithful, loving, hopeful people. And Paul is grateful to God because he has heard that the believers in Colossae are displaying these very characteristics, these signs of new life.
What’s interesting is that Paul says that these believers display faith and love because of the hope they have in heaven. Their hope in what is to come is spurring their faith and love. Thinking heavenward helps their belief and their call to live out that belief in love toward others.
The Gospel Bearing Fruit
But how is it that these believers in Colossae were transformed? What caused them to cross over from death to life?
At the end of verse 5 we see it is because they heard the word of the truth the gospel, which like a healthy living tree is bearing fruit throughout the whole world. The gospel is not a string of dead and dormant words. It is the good, living and active, fruit-bearing news of what Christ has done on behalf of the people he loves. The gospel, when applied to a Spirit-filled heart, has the power to transform people into new creations.
But as we see in verse 6, the gospel does not start to bear fruit in the life of a person until it has first been heard and understood. It was Epaphras who first spoke the words of life to the Colossians. And once they heard the good news and understood it, their lives were forever transformed.
Application – Go and Tell
So what are the implications for us? In order for the gospel to bear fruit and transform people into believers who are characterized by their faith, hope, and love, the gospel must first be heard and understood.
How can people hear the gospel unless we speak it to them?
The believers in Colossae are not who they once were, they are new creations. They display within themselves the kind of transformation we long to see in the lives of the people we love who don’t know Christ.
But just like the Colossians, they must first hear and understand the gospel. And they won’t hear the gospel if we aren’t telling it to them.
It is a high and dangerous calling to speak the gospel to people who don’t know it. But in order for the gospel to bear fruit in all the world, it must go out to all the world. And we have been commissioned to take it out.
In order to speak the gospel so that others might understand we need to possess a boldness within ourselves to speak the truth when others might not want to hear it. That boldness does not come from us. We must pray for this type of boldness.
Epaphras must have possessed this boldness. And the church in Colossae was the result.
And once we have spoken the words of life to those who don’t know them, we need to pray for their understanding of those words. They must know the truth with their minds before they can love it with their hearts. We have been called to help them understand.
So the question is: who is God calling you to speak the gospel to so that they might hear and understand it and become new creations? Because he is calling you to do so.
The question is: Will you be bold enough to speak it?
Questions for Discussion and Personal Reflection
1.How does the hope laid up for you in heaven strengthen your faith in Christ and your love for others?
2. How well are you displaying the signs of a new creation: faith, love, and hope especially during the time of this worldwide pandemic?
3. To whom is God calling you to preach the good news of the gospel that they might hear it and understand it?