Monthly Archives: July 2013

Bible Study, Uncategorized

Colossians 2:6-15. His victory, our conquering power.

Colossians 2:6. “As you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord – so walk in him.” The daily life of the Christian is to be lived out, experienced “in Christ.” The experience of salvation is the opening of faith and trust in God through Jesus Christ. Faith in him is primary and essential. It is that faith that is alluded to by “receiving Christ” and it is absolutely critical to continue to exercise faith in Christ throughout all our life from that point forward.

There are three considerations here in reply to the question, “How, then, did we receive Christ Jesus, the Lord?”

1.)    Faith, trust in Jesus, in his redeeming work (life, death, resurrection), and in his Person. The content of faith in Jesus Christ and his work for us.

2.)    Receiving Jesus Christ, “the Lord” may be pointing to the submission of the Christian to the Lordship of Christ, not merely receiving him as the Savior. Much has been made of this distinction (Lord or Savior) but is it not abundantly clear that he is both? But receiving Christ Jesus the Lord and living with him as Christ Jesus the Lord is instructive to our faith in the way we should live every day. He is Lord of our lives the day we were saved. He is Lord every day we
“walk” with him.

3.)    Calvin sees in this call “so walk in him,” a hearkening back to Isaiah 30:21, “This is the way, walk in it.”

We have three metaphors given in the text to explain what it would mean to have steadfastness of faith (a result of “walking in him”).

1.)    The first is to “walk.” The metaphor is representative (as noted above) of living one’s life. It is a continuous exercise, not a starting and stopping, a beginning and ending over and over, but an unending journey. This is not the life of a sluggard, but it is being intentional, directed toward a goal, and being purposeful in walking with Christ every day. The emphasis is doing the same sort of activities repeatedly (praying, studying, loving God, serving people, etc), and approaching these tasks with a view of doing them for the rest of our lives, step by step, day after day. It may be good to remember that “walking” was the chief form of transportation in that day and that virtually all travel was done in this manner. Walking was the way you got anywhere and it was a difficult way to travel. This is the metaphor for the Christian life that appears throughout the New Testament (Romans 6:4; 8:4; 13:13; 2 Corinthians 5:7; 10:3; Galatians 5:16; 6:16; Ephesians 2:10; 4:1, 17; 5:2, 8, 15; Philippians 4:17, 18; Colossians 1:10; 2:6; 4:5.; 1 Thessalonians 2:12; 4:1; 4:12; 2 Thessalonians 3:11; 1 John 1:6, 7; 2:6; 2 John 1:6; Revelation 3:4; 21:24).

2.)    The second is to be Rooted. An agricultural term referring primarily to the roots of a tree, but other plants as well (compare Psalm 1, tree planted by rivers of water …). The root is set in Christ. The tree is not merely stable because of the root-system, but all its nourishment comes from the root-system. There is a living connection, a dependency upon Christ, through whom your life, your strength, your sustenance, and your purpose and direction flow.

3.)    The third is to be built up. An architectural term referring to the foundation that is lain for a house (see Calvin, 178, on Colossians 2:7).

The walk, the root, the foundation lead to the firmness, the steadfastness of the faith that the true believer has. This has come into their lives through Epaphras, “just as you were taught.” He was a faithful teacher and he gave them everything they needed to grow into maturity of faith in Christ.

“Abounding in thanksgiving.” This was the result of that walk, that good root, and that firm foundation.

A warning follows.

2:8 “See that no one takes you captive by deceitful philosophy (see next paragraph on the translation) according to human tradition.”

The phrase, “philosophy and empty deceit” is to be considering one idea, “deceitful philosophy.” The Greek has a definite article before “philosophy” and no article before “deceit” with those words liked with the connective “and” (kai), modifying “philosophy” with the idea of deceit, or making it “deceitful.” The NIV catches this (other translations, as well), deceitful philosphy.”

Human traditions spring from within the minds of men. They are rules and practices that men invent (perhaps with noble motives) to help men relate to God more effectively, more closely, or to qualify men to stand before God and to be accepted by him. The problem is that God has forbidden any approach to him that he does not authorize. It doesn’t please God for us to invent our own religion. He alone opens the way to him. And he warns people over and over again with the most terrifying language to only approach him in the ways that he has established, namely, through Christ and those signs and seals of worship that point to him and his work, and in no other way.

The human traditions are related to the “elements of this world.” This phrase is a phrase from the philosophers of that era and it seems to represent a notion in ancient — developing  and very early– Gnostic thought that the world was evil and that God was good. (Some scholars don’t write “Gnostic” for this seems to give the notion that this was ripe and finished, so they write it “gnostic” implying that this was just beginning to gain some traction in the ancient world.)

In this gnostic (or Gnostic) scheme, God had to create many steps or intermediaries to make it possible for us (evil) to relation to (good) God. Paul picks this up as representative of the attempts of men to work their way to God. The elements of the world, the strategies of this world, whether it be through circumcision (as a universal rite to earn favor with God) or lack of work on the Sabbath (somehow distinguishing people as worthy of God’s favor) but all the while missing the true nature of God and the work of Christ in redemption. Christ comes to this sinful world, he comes in the likeness of sinful man and for sin, and the philosophers completely miss the miracle. They try to redefine Christ’s incarnation as a philosophical leap, not God becoming a human being and being born in a manger in Bethlehem. The miracle is missed, and the elements of this world seek to silence the work of Christ, his incarnation, his redemption, and his God-hood.

2:9, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Paul takes on the Gnostics in hand-to-hand combat. Christ as the fullness of God would be impossible for the Gnostic because God and the material world were completely alienated from one another. But Christ comes to the Earth, is born of a woman, dies a sinner’s death, is raised by the power of God, and now reigns in Heaven with the Father and the Spirit. The Christian message is not what men think up. It is what God has done.

2:11–12 “In him you also were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands  …” The rite of entry into the Jewish family was circumcision (for every Jewish male). But now there is a “circumcision” a rite of entry for everyone, for male and for female, and for Jew and for Gentile. The circumcision was not about physical cutting, it was now about baptism. God has changed the rules for inclusion in his nation, his people, his covenant. It is now by faith in Christ and the sign and seal of that inclusion is no longer circumcision, it is water baptism.

The incorporation into Christ is seen in our dying with him and being raised with him in baptism. This through “faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.” So it is faith, not rite, nor parentage that brings us to a relationship with God. It is faith in him who raised the dead, Jesus Christ the Lord.

Redemption applied.

2:13–15 This listing of God’s work in redemption from this section is thrilling to any believing heart:

God made you alive together with Christ (through baptism)

God has forgiven all our trespasses

God has cancelled “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands … setting them all aside, nailing them to the cross.” The Cross of Christ is where our debt to God was cancelled.

He conquered all the powers of this world (“the rulers and authorities” meaning the demonic and all forces who stand against God and his Christ) and demonstrated their defeat by shouting their true, evil, nature and illuminating their shame for all to see. He did this by triumphing over them in the Cross of Christ Jesus. Sin, death, and hell, are defeated foes. Christ is the Conqueror.

(more to follow on Sunday)

 

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Bible Study

Colossians 1:21-2:5. Christ brings his people to maturity.

Colossians 1:21-2:5 Christ in them.

1:21 – Their former condition and their current life in Christ. There are three sets of triplets in this section of Colossians.

Before coming to Christ.

1.)    Alienated (1:21)

2.)    Hostile

3.)    Evil deeds

Now their standing in Christ by redemption in his blood.

1.)    Holy (1:22)

2.)    Blameless

3.)    Above reproach

The quality of the life of the believer in Christ.

1.)    Stable (1:23)

2.)    Steadfast

3.)    Not shifting from the hope of the gospel

The recipients are described before their faith; after they believed;  and the hope for their completion (“perfection”) as they live the Christian life until death.

1:22, “but now” (in the ESV, “and he now”) describes the break-point between what they were before their believed and what they are now.

The change came about through the work of Christ in which “he has reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (1:22).

To these triplets is added the condition or test of the validity of their faith, “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel …” (1:23).

Afflictions of their behalf. 2:1-5.

There is a shift in 2:1-5. Paul is concerned about the way the church was facing this disruptions and doctrinal challenges of their day (see below a discussion about Gnosticism). Notice the aspirations Paul lists for his friends at Colossae:

(2:2) Discouragement  — he wants their “hearts to be encouraged.”

(2:2) Being pulled apart — he wants them to be “knit together in love.”

(2:2) At risk of missing the whole of the Gospel — he wanted them “to reach all the riches of full assurance.”

(2:3) Threatened with Gnostic faith changing the meaning of the gospel — “in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (gnosis).”

(2:4) Risk of being “deluded” — “be fully taught, to know the truth of Christ.”

Paul shared the difficulty of his current life, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake …” His imprisonment was part of his sufferings. But it could be his strivings on their behalf in prayer and the concern he had for them to finish well and not be “deluded” or that they may not finish unto the end (teleion), to maturity.

The purpose for which Paul “struggled” so for these people was so that their hearts would be “encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance.” His struggle would result in their assurance and love.

2:3 – All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

The Gnostic or (“insipient Gnostic”) religion was growing in this area. They held that matter was evil and that spirit was good. If God (spirit) was to communicate with matter (bad), he had to create many stages and steps between spirit and world by which he would communicate. The goal would be to gain, even in earth, the knowledge of the spirit (God). This was a philosophical religion that worked against the claim that God became flesh, that God would come to this planet and that God would die for sinful people and love them with all his heart.

Gnosticism stood against many claims of the gospel of Christ. Paul was not dealing with Gnosticism as a threat to the Christian gospel, he saw the gospel as vastly superior to any form of Gnosticism, so much as he was using the motifs and language of the Gnostics arguments to present the Person and Work of Christ to these people in terms that were important at that time. He also seemed to be laying out some strategies by which the Colossians could present the claims of Christ to those who were familiar with the Gnostic ideas (and other competing notions about God there would come up from competing religions and philosophies that came into conflict with the claims of Christ in the Christian Gospel).

2:4 – “So no one may delude you with plausible arguments.”  The Greek culture was filled with arguments. The Socratic method of questions and answers was in every corner of the culture. In schools, in pagan worship, in philosophers who traveled around (“itinerant philosophers” they were called), so it would be expected that the new faith of Christianity would be subject to many objections, questions, and queries. Some in the new church were led astray and turned after other religions; or they sought to wrap the claims of Christ around some other religion or philosophy. Much like today, people take what they have and they often blend Christianity into it.

In Haiti it is common for many Fetishites try to use some of the elements of Christian worship (particularly from the Roman Catholic mass) and attempt to incorporate their symbolism and worship. In mainline Christianity, a dominate political party may influence official policies on abortion or gay marriage more than Christian tradition or the creeds of the church. In both cases, there is a break from the message and the understanding of the Christian message because it is incorporated into an alien system. Christianity, may have many denominations and church government systems, but there is always a connection about the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, from Greek Orthodox, to American Charismatic. The faith in Christ and the cross is the same. The Gnostics (or “proto Gnostics” or “insipient Gnostics” – scholars don’t know what to call the group) were active in the area and they tried to define Christ in Gnostic terms. Paul was addressing some of these assertions in Colossians, using some of their language and pouring Biblical truth and Christology into those concepts to establish the glory and identity of Christ and to explain in common terms the meaning of redemption and salvation. Just like we should do today with our modern culture and vocabulary.

Paul is confident. 2:5, “to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.” These nouns, “good order” and “firmness” are borrowed from the Roman legion. They are terms that describe the order of the army and their fitness for duty. Paul’s imprisonment in Roman and his daily interaction with the Roman guard gave him new words to describe what the church is like when people in it move toward maturity (“perfection”).

Summary.

When you have faith, you have faith in Christ.

It begins a process of spiritual growth, unto maturity, or “perfection.”

It establishes new relationship with others who are also “in Christ.”

It gives you wisdom and understanding of yourself, God, and the universe.

It places a burden on you to tell others about Christ.

It directs your life toward order and stability.

It focuses more and more of Christ.

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Uncategorized

Notes on Colossians 1:9-20. The work of God in people. The Christ who works in people.

Notes on Colossians 1:9-20

Colossians 1:9-20 lays out the work of God in the lives of those who believe. This may be the reason Paul was so quick to give thanks to God for these who believed. They were sharing in the work of God in their lives, and this work is astonishingly wonderful and praise-worthy to the extreme. Paul’s praise for Christ is sublime.

Just listing the work of Christ in the lives of those who believe is benefitial.

He begins with the prayer that God’s people would have a fuller knowledge of God’s will:

1:9 — that they may be filled “with the knowledge of his will.”

But there is the practical exhortation that they might not merely affirm something to be true, but that the truth of the Gospel would be transformative in their lives.

1:10 — so they may “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” and to be “fully pleasing to him.”

The petition that they would be “fully pleasing to him” is a high and extrordinary request and a life-long ambition of every true believer.

Paul goes further requesting that they would be fruitful and that they would not only know God’s will but that they might increase in the knowledge of God — something that is very different from knowing the will of God.

1:10 — the result of that would be that they would be “bearing fruit in every good work” and “increasing in the knowledge of God.”

1:11 — they would be “strengthened with all power” according to “his glorious might”

They were to receive the power and might of God. Paul ties this power to the resurrection of Christ from the dead and he includes believers as those who would share in that same power working in them, see the prayer of Ephesians 1.

1:11 — that they would display “all endurance and patience” and that these qualities would be manifested “with joy.”

Paul is always grace-centered in everything he writes and in all he teaches. The qualification to inherit the blessings of glory, is something that God does for and to them, it is not based on anything out of the lives of these Christians who are the heirs of the kingdom of God. God qualfied them. He did this through the cross of his Son. God alone qualifies those who are heirs.

1:12 — he turns to thanks to God the Father “who has qualified [them] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”

Paul joins with his recipients in the description of their former lives: “he delivered US.” He, too, had lived in terrible darkness, as we know. Paul adds his voice to their’s in the declaration and confession about their past lives.

The use of “light” may point to the very presence of God, in the Shekinah of the Old Testament, and at the Transfiguration, in the New.

1:13-14 — he begins to conclude his prayer by restating how “he delivered us from the domain of darkness (in which we used to live)and “transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

The section that follows (1:15-20) is all in praise to “his beloved Son.” Here Paul drives out a sequence of praise and an offering of glory to Jesus Christ. He presents the majesty of the Beloved Son of God who has delivered us from darkness.

1:15-16– He is the image of the invisible God. The Firstborn of all Creation. He created all things. “All things were created through him and for him.”

The eternal connection with the Father and the preexistence of the Son before anything else was created is made clear.

1:17 — Christ “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

This is his eternality. Before anything was made, he was alive. Uncreated, Creator.

1:18 — He is “the Head of the Body, the Church.” “He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”

The position of Christ as the head of the church is established. This would imply that Christ is the Head of the church in Colossae, as much as the Church in Jerusalem or anywhere he is worshiped and loved.

1:19 — In Him “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

God’s fulness dwells. He is now part of God, but he is the fullness of God. The Trinity breaks language apart, but the principle is held forth that Christ is the fullness of God.

1:20 — through Him “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

The work of Christ on the Cross is the supreme action of the beloved Son, and it is his most glorious work for God the Father, and it is redemption for us who believe. Making peace was unimaginably costly to God.

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Bible Study

Colossians 1:1-5. Faith, love, and hope.

Colossians is about the supremacy, the all-superior nature of Christ, and his impact and influence in the lives of those who know him.

1:1 — Paul’s greeting identifies him as laboring “by the will of God.” It is easy to throw that line around, but for Paul’s apostleship and the validity of all he wrote in the New Testament, it is a matter that must either be affirmed or denied.

If he was the Lord’s apostle to the Gentiles, if Jesus Christ appeared to him and commissioned him to take the Gospel to non-Jewish people across the known world, then his words and life must be given a more serious consideration than a man who was self-deceived or insanely impersonating a man on a mission for God.

Perhaps the most definitive defense of Paul (from a human perspective) is from those who heard him and who knew him, and who believed because of his life and the brilliance of his presentation of Jesus Christ. Perhaps his ability to teach and to direct them to Christ and then to take his place as their brother, and “faithful brother” with those who believed, is most revealing about the nature of Paul’s religion. He was just one of many who knelt in worship before Jesus Christ as the Beloved Son of God. “Grace to you and peace ….,” he said.

1:3 — It is odd to our minds that Paul would thank God as he remember these friends in Colossae. It would be more to our liking that he would thank God for people, rather than while remembering them to be moved to thank God — as though it were God who was first and most importantly involved in what Paul observed in those people — God was working and moving within them. We thank God for people, he thanked God for God. His prayers for them resulted in him worshiping. We do it very differently today, spending our time lauding people rather than in praising and thanking God. When we thank God for people,  we are really (are we not?) thanking people. Certainly there are times to be very grateful and to express thanks to people and there are occasions in the Bible when that happens, but the kind of thankfulness to the God of salvation, who is working in peoples’ lives, seems more rare today and it ought to be recovered as a more focused way to pray to the God who is working decisively in peoples’ lives.

Paul remembers their faith in Christ Jesus (1:4), and for the “love you have for all the ‘saints’.”

Paul’s love for them seems focused on what God had done in them. It was God who gave them faith (see Ephesians 2:4-6). It was God who made them alive. It was God who sent the Savior. It was God who drew them into his love. It was Christ who dwelled in their hearts. It was overwhelmingly God’s work that Paul saw in them, and it was God who was to be thanked.

“And because of the hope laid up for you in Heaven (1:5). Hope is a promise about the future. A secure hope is a promise made by someone who tells the truth and who has the capacity to keep his/her word. The hope of the believer is basedon the truthfulness of God and the power of God to do what he has promised, therefore, it is a secure and reliable hope. The Christian hope is a secure as the nature and Person of God, as reliable as his nature, and as sure as the promises of his Word.

Hope is important because of the death and disease, the tragedies and effects of sin, that come into all our lives. Without hope, all of these trials (which are normal and to be expected in every life) would lead us to despair. A superficial hope based merely on ungrounded optimism or a happy outlook, cannot sustain us when grave difficulties come.

Hope comes from God — hope is “laid up for you in Heaven” 1:5. The Protector of our hope is Jesus Christ. He holds our hope. He makes our hope secure. He places our hope in Heaven and he guards our hope with his irresitable and supreme power. We have no substantial hope in ourselves, at all. Christ gives us his life, his victory, his resurrection, his God-sized perfections, and his Word that we may have hope in him.

Faith, love, and hope.

In Colossians 1:3-4 the trinity of character traits: faith, love, and hope appear. These three traits show up most famously in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (ESV). Here in Colossians 1, they are mentioned once more, not aspirationally, as in 1 Corinthians 13, but as a report on the lives of these first century believers’ lives.

Faith is central to our life with God. Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (ESV) Ephesians 2:8 reminds us that “by grace you have been saved through faith….” Faith begins our relationship, our connection with God.

Love.

The second quality in the trinity of traits is love. We notice that the order in 1 Corinthians is different. But the order may not matter as much as the content of the concepts. There is a progress from faith to love to hope, considered chronologically. Faith comes, then the love for God and the love of people follow, then the hope of Heaven is realized by promise and then experienced through death.

The love of Christ for his people in redemption is without comparision. It is the grandest, the most glorious love that could be known. Yet, the love of the Father for the Son is promised to be shared with those who are the disciples of Jesus Christ (see John 17:24-26). God’s very love within himself he deems to share with those for whom he would lay down his life.

The necessity of love for eternity.

If Heaven were to exist without love, re;ationships, long, long, relationships between those who were there  would be exhausting and disappointing. It would be more like Hell than Heaven. Love is necessary for eternity because only when love has been made perfect can people live with God and with one another for ever.

With the love of God and the love within God’s peple being perfected in glory, the experience is too great for our imaginations — we have never known perfect love on this Earth. The only taste we have is found in the descriptions in the Word of God about Heaven and the world to come, We have never been perfectly loved by another human being, except Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God. But in this broken and sin-assaulted world, we have trouble even remembering the love of God in our hours of trial and through our disappointments in other people.

All the more, we see that the love of God’s people, even the love we experience while living here on earth, and without the vantage place of glory, this love in God’s people is an incredible love and a love that has solidity, constancy, true motives, and astonishing beauty. The love “for all the saints” is a worthy and wonderful love that should be experienced in every faithful church, and in the lives of every faithful believer.

We are to love like God loved because “God has poured out his love into our hearts” by the Spirit who lives within us (see Romans 5:5).

Hope.

Biblical hope is expectation of a future. It is a gift yet to be received, but faithfully and securely promised. It is a portion that we are fully assured that we will receive. Hope rests in  promises that are absolutely certain to be kept.

The hope laid up in Heaven refers to the promises Christ himself has made by his own words – and he cannot lie, seeTitus 1:2, “in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began” (ESV)

The hope in Heaven is protected by the resurrection power that raised Christ from the dead. It is assured by his Kingly power, from the One who is seated at the Right Hand of God on the Throne of Heaven. He is the Ruler over All. His promises are kept as no other promises. They are more sure than any other promises that have ever been made.

Paul concludes this introduction: “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the Gospel.” (1:5b).

Faith, love, and hope. The centerpieces of the Gospel of God.Image

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