Contending for our fellow contenders
Love and Wisdom, God and you
Colossians 1:24 – 2:5
The Bible is full of mystery. At different times, through different servants, God illuminated the mystery so that it could be better understood as the need arose. Paul sees himself as one of these servants. He says he is called to "complete the Word of God" as regards the mystery that has been revealed to him. In other words, he feels specifically called to shine a light on something that has been hidden. In shining that light, he is given the responsibility to write God’s clarification to His people. His words will stand alongside Moses, Isaiah, and David as God’s word.
Paul does not take this responsibility lightly. In this passage he speaks of it in three important regards, answering three questions:
• What is the mystery?
• How may we access the illumination of the mystery he is revealing?
• What is he doing to see his own responsibility fulfilled?
What is the mystery?
Paul unpacks the mystery for us. This is important, because we can see from Paul’s words that he sees it as the central seed to his entire ministry:
• When you become a believer, even as a Gentile, the Messiah lives in you and that life is the hope of glory.
• When He lives in you, all the wisdom and understanding of the Messiah is placed within your grasp.
All through the Scriptures it was clear that God cared about the whole world.
• Israel was to be an example to the surrounding nations
• The prophets spoke, at times directly to the nations
• God made provision for the foreigners living in Israel so that they would benefit from a close association with Him
• God promised that the Messiah would bring restoration and hope not only to His chosen, but also to the other nations
These ideas were out there for everyone to read and value. They were clear enough to serve as guides for God’s will concerning attitudes and policies toward other peoples. They were not irrelevant to God. They did, in fact, have an important part in His grand plan.
However, it was not so clear how their association with God would take firm shape. He had chosen Israel and given them the covenant, so that they had His law and His temple among them. What about the nations? How would He make direct provision for them?
This is not a new concept in Scriptural thinking. All kinds of prophecy had an element of mystery. Balaam the prophet spoke of a king that would come and defeat Moab. This was during the days of Moses, over 300 years before Israel had a king. When David came along and defeated the Moabites, the details of how he would do it and the reasons why were clearer than they were in light of the prophet.
In the same way, the Messiah would come, but the details of His identity and specific power were kept hidden until they were revealed in the person of the Messiah. We understand the prophecies because in Jesus, we see how they were fulfilled.
Here Paul expands for the casual observer the role of the Messiah. Since Jesus came as Messiah, and since, as he says earlier in the letter, Jesus is God’s Son and God’s own Self, His power is much more profound than might have been understood from simply reading the prophets. The prophets knew the Messiah would be
• The son of David
• A light to the Gentiles
• A suffering servant
• A mighty warrior
• Even in some way, not fully explained, the presence of God
But the capacity and full significance of these roles was not understood until Jesus came and unfolded it for us. He was not an anointed one like any other prophet, priest or king. He was God’s own Son, His own Self. This introduced dynamics and facets of his role as Messiah that could not have been understood before He came.
Paul is now explaining the mystery for us. By explaining Jesus’ unique ability to not only inspire, but to indwell His followers, everything changes. Suddenly, Jesus’ believers are not just followers of another rabbi, they are not just adherents to a cause, they are vehicles by which God enters the world. The power of the Messiah to bring hope was not limited to His own lifetime and place of ministry. It was expanded to include the work of everyone who believed in Him from that time forward.
When Peter and Paul expanded the ministry of the Messiah beyond the social borders of Judah, they were saying the Messiah was not just bringing light to the Jews like Paul, Peter and John; He was expanding His kingdom to directly include non-Jewish people like Titus, Timothy and Clement.
This had been undefined before, and Paul was the person God chose to clarify it for all of us. So he knew his ministry was not limited to church planting and serving as a liaison between the Gentile churches and the Jewish leaders of the church back in Jerusalem. His ministry included writing it down for all time as God’s Word.
What a frightening responsibility.
The responsibility is so great that Paul knows he may not simply say it and be done. So he addresses a second question to this primarily Gentile audience:
How may we access the illumination of the mystery being revealed?
Paul knew that this was a difficult thing. He knew that simply hearing about it was not enough. The ideas he was delivering had to be integrated into an intentional life practice. It would take people who were mature in their faith and he made it his goal to produce that maturity in them. That maturity would be evident to him when he saw in their church:
• hearts knit together in love
• encouragement
• the riches of assurance (through knowledge and wisdom)
• undeceived hearts
Love and encouragement are sister virtues Paul said they were already exhibiting. It was obvious. If we love someone, we will encourage them.
Young people routinely grow up to love their childhood coaches. These leaders routinely criticize and push the envelopes of the same young people who claim later to love them like a parent. Why?
Because they did not just love them enough to encourage them. They cared enough to tell them the truth when they were messing up so they could improve. As a result, the students came away from the situation better people than they entered it. They are not the same kid with reasonable talent that they were when they went into the relationship. Now they are athletes with developed talent and skills they would not have without careful correction and guidance.
So, in their later years they appreciate the coach’s work and care. They feel close to him or her, because the coach knew their weaknesses and believed in them anyway. They encouraged them when the winning results they were striving for needed skills they did not yet have, but the coach helped them to achieve.
Paul also was reiterating his desire for them to become smart about God’s will. He wanted them to know the truth and to be able to distinguish it from lies. He wanted them to live in confidence of their faith in Christ.
So what was Paul doing about it?
He is investing himself.
It appears, at first glance that Paul is saying the suffering of Christ is insufficient for the body of Christ. That, somehow, His suffering was not enough, so Paul must augment it with his own suffering. This is not what Paul means. Jesus’ suffering is all that is necessary for our salvation. But it is not the only suffering that will take place.
Jesus warned us that we would suffer. If the world hated Him, it will hate us too. If the head of the body suffers, the whole body suffers.
What was lacking was the fulfillment of the word of Christ, "you will suffer". Thus, Paul takes great pride in personally fulfilling this dynamic of the walk of The Way. He takes pride in it, because he caused some of that suffering and now it is his opportunity to wear the badge of identification and honor: A person who suffered like Jesus. So he uses this language:
• Suffering
• Serving
• Laboring
• Struggling
Paul suffered on many levels,
• His travel was not as easy as travel today
• His work was in good weather and bad
• He spoke of the personal, emotional burden of caring for all the churches
• He was harassed by Jews who thought he was a traitor and Gentiles who thought he was a heretic
• He was beaten, imprisoned, and stoned
• He suffered through shipwreck, and deprivation
But he saw all this as necessary steps for him to take in order to reach his goals.
Paul had important truths to teach them: the identity of Christ, their own identity in Him. They had questions he needed to answer and they had spiritual dilemmas they needed him to help them resolve.
At the same time, he needed to model for them what it takes for hearts to continue to be knit together.
It takes sacrifice and struggle.
We all have a church that we must struggle for
As you look around the congregation, you are seeing a group of people who need the same spiritual maturity, wisdom and encouragement the Colossians needed. They too must understand what it means to have Christ living in them. They too need encouragement. They too must have their hearts knit together in love.
What does that mean? You know what knitting is. It is a weave. It is a process by which many strands of thread are brought together in a network. It takes work to do this knitting, this weaving. It takes time and energy.
A knit or a weave speaks of a unity that cannot be easily accomplished and cannot be easily separated. It speaks of threads of different color being brought together for a single purpose, to create cloth.
Are you knit together? Have you invested the work that knitting or weaving takes into relationships with those who are around you?
• Paul’s suffering and struggling
• The complexity and revelation of the mystery
• All the instruction
is to reach a goal, the goal of bringing among the people he serves a unity that though not easy to accomplish is also not easy to break.
The people sitting around this room, all the people from the oldest to the youngest, need heroes. They need someone to see their need and struggle for them. And if everyone in the room needs that, then everyone in the room needs to be that.
• You are not only your brother’s keeper
• You must be your sister’s or brother’s hero
• You must struggle for him or her
Nobody is expecting you to go through a shipwreck or endure a stoning for anyone else in this room. We are not subject to Paul’s hardship, but we should be subject to some hardship.
Being a member of a church is not about coming to services on Sunday. It is about investing your energy into the kingdom of God on a local level. We like to think of the Church as a family, but it is just as much an army. Satan is attacking your fellow soldiers every day, and they are being assaulted by the world all the time. Are you struggling for them?
Paul uses a powerful word in this passage that is a vehicle for the knitting of hearts together and that brings about wisdom when it comes to our faith in the Christ who lives within us. That word is:
Encouragement
Encouragement is that thing that gives another person heart, it gives them courage. It makes their heart big enough for the job in front of them. Many things can discourage a person, or make their heart too small for the task.
• The feeling of being weak
• The feeling of being disregarded or devalued
• Being tired
• Being overwhelmed
The task at hand is not to do it for them, though that may be called for at times, but to help them feel up to that which they can do for themselves.
Most of the time, we see encouragement as a rather shallow thing. We see it as being a cheerleader along the side insisting, without real knowledge, that "you can do it!" with a big smile. There is more to actual encouragement than that.
Contending is working and struggling - investing
How well do you know each other?
There are a number of people who have been attending here for less than five years. That means some of our longer standing members may know each other very well, but have not had the time to know the newer folks as well. If you are newer, you have an even bigger task, because there are even more people you don’t know well.
It is impossible to help a person with their struggles if you don’t know what those struggles are. It is rude to offer to help with their struggles if they don’t know you well enough to trust you. You cannot gain their trust without sharing your own life and struggles.
Translation, in order to help another person with their struggles, it is best to share your own.
This takes time. I have often told people, and this is true, that I do not know what it is to have life long friends. Many of you go to class reunions or have periodic get togethers with people you have known all your life. I don’t know anybody that well. We moved too often when we were
How to be more encouraging
Look around the room. You know some people in here very well, and others you don’t. Identify a few people you don’t know so well. These are people Christ came to redeem and make a part of His kingdom along with you.
Determine in your heart, I will take some time to get to know this person this week. I will have a conversation with them with the purpose of becoming closer friends and knitting our hearts together.
In this conversation I will be a good listener to hear what this person wants to tell me. I will not pry, but will relax and try to hear what is important to them. I will reveal something of myself, not the deepest part of myself or embarrassing details, but enough to express what is important to me. In future conversations we will begin exploring what we have in common and what we may do to bring ourselves closer together. As we get to know each other better we will know better how to encourage each other.
Conversation is something of a lost art in our society. If we are to weave ourselves together it will have to be rediscovered. There is risk. Somebody may not like you. You may find someone difficult to get along with. Those problems do not let us off the hook. Nobody said it would be easy. Friendships are work. These difficulties merely demonstrate for us the struggle we must engage if we are to bring to fulfillment the whole mystery of the Messiah among us.
It is in this knitting, in this weave that we can know better how to encourage each other. At that point powerful encouragement can be given in confidence and without presumption.
It will take work. But revealing the mystery to each other and to the world never has been easy.
