The Book of Colossians
Complete in Him “Complete through salvation�
BibleClass.com.au Teaching Series Series: Complete in Him: Study of the Book of Colossians Part: #1 of 4 Main Scripture: Colossians 1:1-14 Teacher: Mr Bill Forward Date: 2007
Inline, direct scripture quotes are italicised. Block quotes are indented. The New King James Version is used unless otherwise stated. This transcript has undergone minor editing to ensure readability.
The MP3 audio of the study upon which this transcript is based and a learning guide are available from http://bibleclass.com.au/
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Introduction Theme
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he theme through Colossians is this: that you are complete in Him. Paul is very clear throughout that He wants Christians to know that they are complete in Christ. We will go through the reasons why.
Historical Setting
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olosse was just a little town. It had lost its significance. The Lycus River on which it was situated was quite navigable for smaller river boats which used to come up to the many kinds of factories that were in Colosse. But the Lycus river silted up. There was no longer any transport access, so the factories began to close. Furthermore, the Roman road which passed right through Colosse had provided for the existence of motels, inns and facilities for the soldiers, merchants and travellers who were journeying between the East and the West Roman Empire. But the government built a bypass road. The situation is the same today when small towns get bypassed. It is difficult for them to survive unless they can find a new way of getting revenue. Colosse had lost both its main revenue streams and, as a result, lost its significance. By this time it was just a tiny little town in Asia (now Turkey). Paul had never been to Colosse Himself. The gospel had made its way there through a man called Epaphras who had heard it in Ephesus during Paul’s two year stay there. Epaphras had come from Colosse, so upon believing the gospel he returned to his hometown and established a church.
Four Cornerstones of the Gospel
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he people of the Colossian church revelled in the fact that the gospel had come to them. It’d changed their lives; it’d made them believers in the Lord Jesus. It’d brought them into fellowship with God and into fellowship with Christians in many other areas.
(1) Christ crucified, (2) risen from the dead, (3) the Son of God Sometimes I like to call the gospel a four square gospel as a reference to the four key foundation stones of the gospel that Paul said we preach in the Corinthian letters. 1 Corinthians 1 23 ...we preach Christ crucified...
1 Corinthians 15 12 ...Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead...
2 Corinthians 1 19 ...the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us...
Wherever you go in the world where there are Christian people, there are so many who will acknowledge at least those three things. But those three things are not sufficient as a foundation
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for a church to be established. It’s a fact of history that Christ was crucified. You can confirm that from Roman history in writers such as Josephus as well as the Bible. The Jews questioned the fact that he rose again, but the evidence was clearly there that He rose again also, so that is another fact of history. What about the fact that He is the Son of God? He demonstrated that by what He did. Miracles, for example and the extraordinary power He had over all things. The demons recognised Him and acknowledged Him as the Son of God, and others did too. Therefore there was no question about His deity in that sense. We know that He was born of a virgin and the angels said, “That Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.”1 So, the question of the deity of Jesus was not the issue. Those three corner stones are acknowledged by people right around the world who claim to be Christian.
(4) Christ as Lord But to become a true follower - a Christian with true salvation - requires acknowledgement of this final cornerstone: that we preach Christ as Lord. Paul said it so clearly: Romans 10 9 That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
The Lordship of Christ is the key to salvation.
The root of this issue takes us back to the very beginning: When God created Adam and Eve, they were in perfect harmony with Him until Adam, in his independence, decided to go his own way. That was an act of disobedience. It was a statement or a declaration of independence from God. And just as he went his own way, unfortunately we too have gone our own way. We too, because of Adam’s action have within us that seed of rebellion and disobedience. Each and every human being is born with that rebellious, independent streak. For us to become back to fellowship with God requires a reversal of Adam’s decision. Adam’s decision was to disobey God. We now need to make a decision to obey God – to submit to God – and in a sentence that is to acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord and master; our king; our boss. To say that Jesus Christ is our Lord in this way is not merely to give Him a title, as in “Lord So-andso” from England. It is much more than that. It means surrender, it means submission, it means repentance, it means a refusal or a rejection of our independent way of living as we turn and surrender to God. This very issue was relevant at Colosse. We read about it in Colossians 2:6, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.”
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Luke 1:35.
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False Teachers Bringing Doubts
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hat they had received Jesus Christ and His gospel is indicated in chapter 1: ...which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth; 7 as you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf...
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But some false teachers came knocking on the door of this church at Colosse, saying things that made the Christians there think that they had missed something. They said things like, “Is that all you do? Is that all you know? Don’t you have this or that experience? Well that’s insufficient! If you come and join us for a Bible study at our house, then we’ll be able to impart some extra secret knowledge to you.”
In essence what they were saying was, “You are not complete. You are not fulfilled. You haven’t reached the pinnacle of spirituality.” Now no eager Christian wants to think that they are missing out on the fullness of their salvation, so these people were causing problems.
The Nature of the False Teaching The false teachers were people called Gnostics who went around the churches and taught their own doctrine. If you have a look at the word, “Gnosticism” and swap the G for a K, you can see something that resembles “Knowledge,” and the two words are related. Claim: God is Unknowable Gnosticism is the basis of Hinduism, Buddhism and much of the New Age beliefs. They say that God is unknowable and impersonal. They meditate by uttering long, meaningless sounds because they believe that you can only describe God with a sound, not words. They tried to bring this teaching into Christianity, claiming that Christians need to understand this – particularly that God is an unknowable God. But that is not what the Bible says! Claim: God Cannot Become a Man They also said that, because God is a spirit, only that which is spirit is pure and holy. Anything that is physical is in contrast to that; it is evil. But Jesus had a physical body! The Bible says that He was truly a man. The conclusion according to the Gnostics was that, if He was a god at all, then He was only a tiny little god: the bottom of the hierarchy of what they called emanations from God. Therefore they denied the deity of Christ. This was serious stuff! Judaism and Legalism These false teachers also mixed in a lot of Judaism. They demanded circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, adherence to Jewish dietary rules and so on. They looked at the believers and said, “You eat pork! You don’t do this! You don’t keep that! You’re not complete! You’re not doing what God wants you to do!”
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Mysticism They also had mysticism. That means they were people that said, “I had a dream… I had a vision… I had a revelation. I had this experience and it was super-spiritual, and I am so good because I’ve got new insights and knowledge through this experience. Oh, by the way, when did you have one?” And of course, as a result, these people were claiming spiritual superiority. The Christians in Colosse were distressed by this. Asceticism They had yet another string to their bow: asceticism. Because they claimed that the body was evil, they used to punish their own body. They’d whip it, they’d fast, and they’d have no sexual relations even though they were married – they’d adopt children instead. They said that they could not produce more evil in the world by producing a human baby.
The Key Issue
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ll these things created real problems for the Colossian Christians because they didn’t do any of them, so they turned to Epaphras and asked him what was true: What he taught them? Or what these false teachers were telling them? Epaphras went to Paul, who was in prison in Rome and Paul didn’t even hesitate. The moment he heard of this doctrine, he recognised that this was a satanic attack upon two great truths of the Christian faith: 1. Who Jesus is; and 2. What Jesus has done.
Is He a perfect Saviour and has He provided perfect salvation or not? The false teachers were saying no: He is not truly God and He has not provided true salvation. Paul wrote Colossians to expose this false teaching. He sent Tychicus to them with the letter along with instructions to have it read in Colosse, in Laodicea and all the other churches around the region. There is a theme as you read through this book – and please do so – that Christ is a perfect Saviour: He has provided us with an absolutely perfect salvation, and you and I can stand with absolute confidence saying, “We are complete in Him.” The key verses are Colossians 2:9-10, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.”
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Exposition
Complete through our experience of salvation
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Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colosse: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints; 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, 6 which has come to you… 3
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his is the first thing that I want you to notice: Our experience of salvation is what makes us complete in Him. True salvation is based on the three things that we saw in verses 1-6: • You heard the gospel; • You understood the gospel; and • You believed the gospel.
When you experience salvation, the truth of it is written in your heart by the Holy Spirit. Paul is able to say concerning the Colossians that they had faith in Jesus Christ, love for other Christians and hope for the return of the Lord Jesus. Those were three evidences of their true experience of salvation. The challenge also comes to us as readers: have we had the experience of salvation? Many people claim to belong to Christianity, but lack this true experience of yielding to Christ as Lord of their lives. It is that yielding which brings us into a relationship whereby we can have absolute confidence that we are complete in Him.
Complete through our growth to spiritual maturity For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 9
5 steps of spiritual growth
In these verses, Paul makes a second major point: it’s your growth to maturity that makes you complete in Christ. These verses contain 5 steps to spiritual development and growth. We begin with faith at the bottom. Paul says that he has not ceased praying for them since he heard of their faith, but he is praying that they might go through these 5 steps. Similarly, in your Christian life and experience, as in mine, we need to be progressively taking these steps, but it’s not that we reach the top and that’s the end of the story. This is an ongoing, daily experience of growing more and more in the knowledge of God and ultimately to be like Jesus. Verse 9: Know God’s will
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Firstly Paul prays that they might know God’s will. I have been saying again and again - especially to young people - that you find out God’s will as you read the Bible. In your Bible study, God’s will is revealed in 98% of our life experience. It’s the remaining 2% that we seem to be more interested in: “Who should I marry? What kind of a job will I get?” That’s the last thing you start to think about. The first thing is to study the word of God because God’s will is already revealed to us there. Verse 9: Get spiritual wisdom and understanding Having followed God’s will through Bible study, we get spiritual wisdom and understanding. I am calling this the prayerful application of what you studied. It’s the process of asking, “What does this mean to me? How can I apply this thing that I’ve read to my life experience?” Verse 10: Live worthy and pleasing of the Lord Having applied it, we live worthy and pleasing of the Lord. I can summarise that in one word: obedience. Obedience is the mark of the Christian. The Lord Jesus looked at some of His so-called disciples and said, “Why do you call me Lord and yet you don’t do what i tell you?” It’s a contradiction in terms to call Him Lord and not to obey Him. Jesus said He is like a foundation. There is a wise man who builds his house upon a rock, but there’s a foolish man who builds his house upon the sand. Most of us think that the foundation is Jesus, but that’s not what Jesus said. Jesus said that the rock is hearing God’s word and obeying it. That’s the foundation. This is the area in our Christian life where many of us stumble. We do study the Bible, we do prayerfully apply it or bring it to our understanding, but then when it comes to obedience then sometimes we may hesitate. Verse 10: Bear fruit in every good work Obedience is a progressive step that leads us on to the next level of bearing fruit in every good work. This means serving God. In God’s church we all need to be doing what God has asked us to do. Having gifts that differ, we must use them and each one participate as God expects us to. The whole body grows as each one does his own work or as each part of the body fulfills its own function, says Ephesians 4. Verse 10: Increase in the knowledge of God The end result of this maturity is that we increase in the knowledge of God; we know God better. Knowing God makes us strong and allows us to do great things for Him. Paul thanks God for the faith of the Colossians, but he is praying that they will grow to spiritual maturity through these steps. Can I ask you a question? It’s a bit rude of me I suppose, but have you stumbled on one of those steps? Are you stumbling now on one of those steps? Because if you are stumbling on one of
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those steps, then I have to suggest that you can’t go further in your spiritual growth. Is it Bible study that’s the problem? Or prayerfully applying it? Or obedience? Or serving God? Or this business of getting to know God better?
Complete through God’s provision strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. 11
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ook at those lovely words, “The Father who has qualified us.” The false teachers were disqualifying the believers. They were saying, “you are not complete,” but Paul is very clear about it. It is the Father who has qualified you; He has said that you are worthy and fit to be there and to share in the inheritence of the saints of light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. 13
This is the third main issue. The first was that our faith in Christ makes us complete. The second one was this: our growth to maturity makes us complete. Now here is the third reason: God’s provision makes us complete. It is God who does it. It’s not we who do it. Verse 11: God’s provision of power
The first thing He provides is this strength and his powerful might - the Greek word is like dynamite - “dunamis” - the power of God. It’s available to us and it’s available no matter what the circumstances are. Verse 12: God’s provision of acceptance God has also accepted us. He has qualified us to share with the saints in heaven so that we don’t have to climb the rule list that these people were creating. We don’t have to fulfill their expectations of what we should or should not do. It is God who has accepted us in Christ because of who He is and what He has done. Verse 13: God’s provision of deliverance Thirdly, God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness - that’s where Satan reigns. But He doesn’t put us in no mans land and say, “Go and be a good boy now.” Rather, He has transferred us into the kingdom of His own beloved Son, so that we have security. We are in Christ’s kingdom and Christ is our King and Christ is our Lord and Christ provides all of our completeness. What blessed people we are! Verse 14: God’s provision of redemption In Him we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins. That is an amazing statement. Paul will go on to talk about it later. He talks about the forgiveness of all of our sins and how that it is all about what the Lord Jesus has done on the cross. The Bible tells us that we are forgiven through the cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ.
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The first 14 verses of the Colossians leave us with three main things to grasp: 1. Our faith in the Lord Jesus makes us complete in Him. 2. Our progressive spiritual growth makes us complete in Him. 3. God’s great provision makes us complete in Him. So the big question is this: you are complete in Him... Or are you? If He is truly your Lord and Saviour, then you are complete. But if you do not know Him, you cannot lay claim to these things. See you in the next study.
Continues in part #2, available from http://bibleclass.com.au/
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