Colossians 1:3-5
by Dr. Grant C. Richison
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Colossians 1:3
"We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
praying always for you"
Verses 3-8 comprise one sentence. This sentence sets forth a three fold
thanksgiving. Verses 3-5 give reason for thanksgiving -- the linking of
a trio of graces in the Colossians: faith, love, hope. Verses 6-8 present
the source for thanksgiving.
Paul gave thanks for the Colossian faith, v3-4a; love; 4b; hope,v5; fruit,
v6.
Throughout this passage the impact of the gospel upon them is central. Wherever
the gospel is preached, it will do the same thing. Life is in the seed,
not in the sower. It is the gospel that saves, not the messenger of the
gospel. Always the seed is good but sometimes the ground may be poor. That
will affect the harvest.
The first of the three fold thanksgiving is the Colossians faith, v4
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"We give thanks"
As is his custom, Paul gives thanks for those to whom he writes, 1:3-8.
Paul did not give thanks for the Galatians or the Corinthians (II Corinthians).
If he can honestly thank God for the people to whom he writes, he always
does so. As soon as the salutation is complete he introduces what he thanks
God about them (compare Rom. 1:8). He could not honestly thank God for the
Galatians. It is amazing that he could thank God for the Corinthians (I
Cor 2:1).
This is a prayer for people Paul never saw. Paul had met two of their members,
Epaphras and Philemon. Both may have been converts of Paul in other areas
such as Ephesus. He never saw their face (2:1) yet he thanked God for them.
"Everything we heard about you we heard second handed." We thank
God for those who are born again because they are a miracle of God's grace.
PRINCIPLE: Thanksgiving ought to be a part of every prayer. Whatever the
matter of our rejoicing ought to be the matter of our thanksgiving.
APPLICATION: How much time do you spend giving thanks for other Christians?
Are you thankful for the people who are a blessing to your Christian life?
Do you thank God for the person who led you to Christ or the person who
took an interest in you and helped you through the hard places even though
they may be miles away?
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"to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"
Paul's prayer is directed to God as Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving must first eye God as the source. The Father is the source
of everything that comes our way.
God the Father is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father is the
source, the Lord Jesus is the means of blessing.
Make sure you send your requests to the correct Heavenly Department. We
pray more effectively when we address our prayers properly. Invariably in
the Bible when thanks is expressed it is expressed to God the Father.
Paul acknowledges that God the Father through the Lord Jesus is the cause
of what transpired in Colosse. Each thanksgiving in his epistles is an occasion
for praise for what God has done. Here he gives thanks for calling the church
together in faith and their growth in that faith.
PRINCIPLE: We should direct our prayer to the Father.
APPLICATION: Are you sending your prayers to right Heavenly Department?
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"praying always for you"
Paul does not pray for them once and then forget it. Productive prayer is
continuous. Sporadic prayer is not in God's design for the believer. It
must go on and on. Prayer takes work. Paul "always" prayed for
the Colossians.
I Thessalonians 1: 2 "We give thanks to God always for you all, making
mention of you in our prayers, 3 remembering without ceasing your work of
faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the
sight of our God and Father."
I Thessalonians 2: 3 "For this reason we also thank God without ceasing,
because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed
it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which
also effectively works in you who believe."
I Thessalonians 5: 17 "Pray without ceasing." This means to pray
with the frequency of a hacking cough.
PRINCIPLE: God expects us to pray continuously.
APPLICATION: Do you pray regularly for others?
Colossians 1:4
"since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love
for all the saints"
Paul gives thanks (v.3) for the Colossians because they operate on fundamental
methodologies of the Christian faith.
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"since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus"
Note the subject for which Paul gives thanks -- for the work of God in them.
God worked three principal graces in their lives: faith, love and hope.
First, God worked faith in their lives. The Colossians were willing to risk
their future by their faith in Christ. Faith here is not an act of faith
but an attitude of faith. It denotes the idea of firm persuasion and therefore
trust. Faith is past oriented. It rests upon facts; it is based on the past.
Faith is no leap in the dark.
The emphasis in this context is upon believing in Christ instead of false
heresies and philosophies about to be denounced. This is faith anchored
in Christ, resting in him. It is the soul's reliance upon him. Our faith
should sink into him as the anchor sinks into the floor of the sea.
Of the trio of graces, faith always comes first. Faith must come first.
We should never discredit faith in favor of love. Faith is the foundation
of virtue. It is no mere feeling. Faith is a fact of experience that has
a worthy object of truth. Christ the object of faith gives faith its value.
If we deposit money in a bank, our money is not safe in relation to the
dimension of our faith in the bank. It is safe in relation to the size of
the bank's solvency. We are not a Christian because we exercise faith; we
are a Christian because we exercise faith in Christ. Faith is not the key;
the key is the object of faith (Jesus Christ, Col. 2:5; Acts 20:21;24:24;
Gal 2:16; 3:22,26; Phil 3:7-9; II Ti 3:15).
Paul thanked God for two things: one vertical and one horizontal; one horizontal
and visible and the other perpendicular and invisible. "Faith in Christ"
-- that is perpendicular and invisible. "Love for all the saints"
is horizontal and visible. We prove we have faith in Christ when we love
the saints. We demonstrate faith when we love the brethren. Faith is for
the sake of love. We do not love for the sake of faith.
PRINCIPLE: The value of our faith lies in the object of our faith.
APPLICATION: We may have faith in ourselves, faith in humanity, faith in
our physician, wife, husband and the structure of government but none of
these faiths are the proper object of a relation with God. We are not right
with God until we exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the true object
of our faith.
The second area about which Paul gives thanks for the Colossians is their
love.
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"and of your love for all the saints"
Second, God worked love in them for each other. In spite of differences
and weakness, they loved each other.
Love is a corollary truth to faith (v. 4a). True faith produces love. It
is easy to love the saints in heaven. They do not have a sin capacity. The
difficult part of loving saints on earth is that they sin. We must love
them, sin capacity and all. We do not have the spiritual skill to dissect
the old capacity from new one. We must love the entire person and take them
for what they are. This is the ear-mark, trade mark and hall mark that we
belong to Jesus (Jn 13:34,35).
"Love" is in the present tense. Love is the out outworking of
faith (1:4a; Gal. 5:6). Love is not self-centered or self-surrounded. Love
purges us of our selfishness and gives us perspective in our relationships
with others.
Love is the greatest characteristic of the Christian faith (I Cor 12:13);
the greatest commandment in the Christian faith (John 13:34,35); the greatest
constraint in Christian faith (II Cor 5:14); the greatest covering in the
Christian faith (I Pet 4:8).
PRINCIPLE: God expects us to love all the saints, not just the popular or
pleasant ones.
APPLICATION: We will do well to search our hearts to see if we love God's
people. The outstanding, tangible, visible, external evidence that we have
faith in Christ is that we love all the saints on earth that we know. That
means the ornery ones and the nice ones too. Some of us are right ornery.
We can blame our parents or whoever we please, but some of us are just hard
to please. We are hard to get along with. We are not as polite as we should
be. We are not as thoughtful as we should be. Some non-christians have better
manners than we do.
Colossians 1:5
"because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which
you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel"
The third area for which Paul gives thanks for the Colossians is their hope.
He thanks God that the Colossian faith was not secret, their love was not
partial and their hope was not misplaced.
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"because of the hope"
Paul links together the Colossian faith and love with their hope.
"Because of" -- because of the glorious anticipation of their
future together. Their hope is not the ground of either faith or love but
it is the occasion of both faith and love. It is a grand occasion to develop
them and call them out to action. Paul gives thanks "because of"
their hope in the wonderful prospect of Christ's coming. Because they have
such hope, they act more boldly and lovingly.
Hope is no fancied feeling of future bliss but a present experience that
gives complexion and composure to every day of life. Hope is the motive
behind faith and love. Hope reaches into the future and brings it back into
the present. Hope reaches into heaven and brings it back down to earth.
The third grace God worked in them was hope. The Christian has a future.
We look for the blessed hope (Tit. 2:13). The hope of heaven impacts how
we live on earth. The more we fix our hope on eternal values the more liberal
we will be on earth.
The Greek word for hope has no relation to our English word "I hope
so." That is a desire with no assurance of fulfillment in fact, "I
hope it will not rain today." I have no guarantee of that. There are
clouds on the horizon so I take my umbrella with me. The New Testament word
for hope is something that is certain because it does not depend on us.
It depends on the word and work of Christ.
PRINCIPLE: Hope anticipates, faith appropriates. Faith accepts what hope
expects.
APPLICATION: If you are not a Christian you have a horrible future. Your
future is the lake of fire. If all the hope you have is social insurance,
God help you. If you are born again you have a wonderful future: the hope
laid up in heaven.
Hope for the Christian is also the anchor of the soul. It settles our attitude
and gives us tenacity for the tough times. The future is as bright as the
promises of God.
Hope is the present object of faith. It is already in existence laid up
in heaven.
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"which is laid up for you in heaven"
"Which is laid up for you in heaven" -- The word "heaven"
is in the plural, "heavens." This is a reference to the invisible
spiritual kingdom that surrounds us on all sides right now. There is hope
for us right now because it comes from an invisible spiritual kingdom surrounding
us presently. This is the good news that right now, as we face trouble,
Jesus' presence is available to us. He imparts his strength and enables
us to stand against adversity. This is the hope of the gospel that awakens
faith.
"Laid up" means to be preserved. Hope is stored up for us like
a treasure. God guarantees our salvation in eternity. We can blow it down
here but we will not lose eternity there. We can never lose our salvation
because we never did anything to gain it.
The Christian life revolves around our choice. In time we can choose to
live on the basis of the divine operating assets or not. In eternity everything
depends on God. Jesus is there praying for us to guarantee our salvation
(Heb. 7:25). He also prays that we will succeed in our work in time.
"For you" -- No matter what happens in this life, we will live
forever. God could take us to heaven the moment we accept Christ but he
has a plan for us in time. We are his personal representatives down here.
We are ambassadors for Christ. What we do as an ambassador in time will
determine our reward in eternity.
Our hope will be revealed in sight at the rapture. Hope produces faith.
Faith in turn grows into love. Hope is the foundation.
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"of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel"
Hope is awakened by the gospel (I Thes 1:3; 5:8; I Cor 13:13).
Our hope rests in the truth of the gospel. The test of reality is not whether
it pleases us or is comfortable but whether it is true.
"Heard" -- Light houses have horns as well as lights. Ship captains
cannot see the light in dense fog so they use the fog horn. There are two
things involved in the Christian life: walk and talk, life and lip, and
they must go together. When people come to Christ the word will get out.
Your family will hear about it first thing. God converts our tongue when
we receive Christ.
PRINCIPLE: Our hope rests in the truth of the gospel.
APPLICATION: Have both your life and lip been converted?
Copyright © 1995, Dr. Grant Richison. All rights reserved.
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