Colossians Introduction, 1:1 - 1:5

Colossians — Steve Gregg

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Colossians Introduction, 1:1 - 1:5

ColossiansSteve Gregg

In this study of the book of Colossians, Steve Gregg provides insights into the historical context of the city of Colossae and its relation to the region of Proconsular Asia in the Roman Empire. He discusses the background of Epaphras, a faithful brother in Christ, who played a role in the writing of this letter. Gregg suggests that the letter was written in conjunction with another letter to Philemon, addressing issues such as the imposition of Jewish rituals and teachings of the Colossian heresy. By exploring key terms and concepts in Colossians, he emphasizes the supremacy of Christ over earthly authorities and pagan philosophies.

Transcript

Today we're going to begin studying the book of Colossians. Colossians is one of four epistles of Paul that are usually called the prison epistles. The fact is Paul wrote more than these four while in prison, but these four were written while he was in his, usually what's referred to as his first Roman imprisonment.

There was another during which he wrote the pastoral epistles, the books of Timothy and Titus, especially 2 Timothy. We know Paul was in prison when he wrote that. But there were two imprisonments of Paul, it would appear, because in 2 Timothy, chapter 4, he mentions having been released from his first time standing before Nero, that he was acquitted and released, and yet he was later captured again and spent his final days in prison until he was executed.

It was during the first of these Roman imprisonments that Paul wrote the four books, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. The last two of those, Colossians and Philemon, were both written to the same church, because Philemon was a man, a leader, in the church of Colossae, and of course the book of Colossians is addressed to that church as well. Colossae was a city in Asia Minor that was in what's called the Lycus Valley, the Lycus River ran through this region, and there were three cities in the same general vicinity.

They were across the river from one another, the cities of Hierapolis and Laodicea. These cities were about six miles apart from each other, they could see each other across the river, and to the north of there, about twelve miles, was the city of Colossae. These were the three cities of the Lycus Valley.

We know there were at least ten churches in Asia Minor about this time. We find, for example, in the book of Revelation, chapters two and three, that seven letters are addressed to seven churches in this very region. We've got Ephesus, and Thyatira, and Pergamum, and Sardis, and Smyrna, and Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

We know that when Revelation was written, there were seven churches at least that were addressed there, but there were three other churches not mentioned in Revelation, and two of them were right here in the Lycus Valley. One was Colossae, and the other was Hierapolis, although Laodicea, which was also in the Lycus Valley, was mentioned in Revelation, and as you know, it was the church that was said to be lukewarm. Colossae did not receive a letter from Jesus in the book of Revelation.

It's not clear exactly why the book was written to only seven of the ten known churches in Asia. Asia is what we would now call Turkey. When we say Asia in the Bible, we're talking about Proconsular Asia, which is a region that the Roman Empire had called Asia, and it was really roughly the same borders as we would have for the modern country of Turkey.

Today, none of these churches are there. Colossae in its time was the least important city in the Lycus Valley. Laodicea was a very wealthy city, Hierapolis was a politically important city, Colossae had nothing particularly interesting about it.

It was of the three cities the least important. In fact, some scholars have said it was the least important city to which Paul ever wrote a letter. And yet, what he wrote to the church there in that city is one of the letters of the highest caliber.

Many people have thought of Ephesus, or the book of Ephesians, I should say, as the loftiest of Paul's epistles. And if that is so, then Colossae would have to be very near the top of that continuum also. Colossians and Ephesians are quite obviously twin epistles.

Well, twin is not exactly right, they're not identical twins, but they certainly complement each other. They were written at the same time, they were both part of the prison epistles written during Paul's first imprisonment. There are so many subjects in common between the two epistles, Ephesians and Colossians, that some have said they can find as many as 78 verses that are shared between the two.

Not verbatim, but where the substance of the verses is essentially the same in Ephesians and in Colossians. As many as 78 verses have been identified as being essentially the same. The flow of thought is very similar after a certain point.

As we go through Colossians, we'll see many occasions to cross-reference back to Ephesians. But there is a signal difference between Ephesians and Colossians in these two letters, although they're both sent to the churches of Asia. By the way, Ephesus was not very close to Colossia, it was about 100 miles away.

But the Ephesian epistle emphasizes the church, the body of Christ, whereas the Colossian epistle emphasizes Christ, the head of the church. Obviously those are twin concepts. The church is the body of Christ, Christ is the head of the church.

Anyone can tell who reads carefully that Ephesians is all about the church and its role as the body of Christ. As you read Colossians, you'll find that it's not about the church, it's about Christ, who is emphatically said to be the head of the church. So we have both sides of this issue of who Christ is in relation to the church and who the church is in relation to Christ when we see these two epistles.

So they complement each other and they have much in common with each other. One thing about Colossians that would appear to be unusual is that it was a letter written to people that Paul had never met. He knew some of the people in the church, but he apparently had not met them in Colossae.

He knew Philemon, it would appear. He knew Onesimus, of course he had met Onesimus and led him to the Lord while Paul was in prison in Rome. There was a man named Epaphras, or Epaphras, the pronunciation of his name I'm not certain about.

We'll just call him Epaphras. Epaphras was a man of Colossae and he had somehow come into contact with Paul and been converted and had himself become apparently the agent of converting Christians in Colossae, because Paul speaks as if he has never been to this church. In Colossians 1.7, after he is mentioned, well, 1.7 and 8 we could say, he says, As you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, who also declared to us your love in the Spirit.

That is to say, Paul had heard about this church and its love from Epaphras. Likewise, in 2.1, it says, For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and as many as have not seen my face in the flesh. Most scholars understand this to mean that the church in Colossae and the church in Laodicea were among those who had never seen Paul in the flesh.

He had never been there. So it would appear that while Paul had never been to Colossae, he had been evangelized by one of Paul's converts, Epaphras. Now, how Paul and Epaphras came to meet, we are never told.

But we do read in the nineteenth chapter of Acts that when Paul came to Ephesus, initially he taught in the synagogue, but when trouble arose in the synagogue, as it often did when Paul preached there, he was driven from the synagogue and he removed himself and his followers to a place called the School of Tyrannus, and there he continued to teach for something like two years. Altogether, in retrospect, he spoke of his time in Ephesus as being three years long. He said that in Acts chapter 20 when he was recalling to the elders of Ephesus.

What we are told in Acts chapter 19 is that while Paul was in Ephesus, in verse 10, it indicates that all of Asia heard the gospel. Now, Asia again would be the whole territory that we would call Turkey today, and Ephesus was simply one of its cities. But apparently from his base of operation in Ephesus, Paul would send out friends, people that he assigned to go out to other cities, and they would evangelize the other cities of Asia, so that during the two or so years that Paul ministered in Ephesus, the rest of Asia heard through his messengers the gospel.

Epaphras was no doubt one of those messengers, and Epaphras may have come to Ephesus on business and encountered Paul quite coincidentally, or he may have actually come to Ephesus because of hearing that some new gospel or new message was being preached there. We don't know what circumstance brought Epaphras and Paul together, but we do know that Epaphras was converted and became a missionary himself to his own hometown which was Colossae, resulting in the planting of the church there, and Paul now writes to them. Among the people that we know of who lived in Colossae, besides Epaphras, was Philemon, to whom the letter of Philemon was written, and his slave Onesimus, who is not only mentioned in the letter of Philemon, but is also mentioned in this epistle, because Paul, when he sent this epistle, sent it by the hand of one of his associates named Tychicus, and also Onesimus with him.

It says so in Colossians 4.7, Tychicus, who is a beloved brother, a faithful minister, and a fellow servant in the Lord, will tell you all the news about me. He says, I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that he may know your circumstances and comfort your hearts with Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother who is one of you. Tychicus apparently was not one of them.

He was not a Colossian. He was one of Paul's associates, but Onesimus was one of them, and we know the story of Onesimus from the book of Philemon, that Onesimus had been a slave of Philemon. Philemon had been converted.

We do not know exactly how. Paul mentions to Philemon, in the letter to Philemon, You owe me your very life also, which has led many to believe that Paul himself evangelized and led Philemon to the Lord, and that he was appealing to this indebtedness that Philemon had to Paul in asking him really to release his slave Onesimus and to treat him kindly. I am not so sure that Paul led Philemon to the Lord.

It would be a remarkable providence if two men who lived so far apart from where Paul was, both in Colossae, a slave and his owner, on separate occasions ran into Paul, one of them in Ephesus and one when he was in prison in Rome. God could work out those kinds of divine appointments, and he may have, but it is also possible that Paul did not personally lead Philemon to the Lord. When he says, You owe me your life also, it could certainly be because a Paphras may have led Philemon to the Lord, and Paul had led a Paphras to the Lord.

Certainly Paul would therefore be the spiritual grandfather, and it could as easily be said by way of Paul's desired argument that you owe me your spiritual life too, whether Paul personally led him to the Lord or whether one of Paul's converts did. In any case, we know that Philemon was not only a slave owner in the church there, the owner of Onesimus, but he was also the host of the church in Colossae. We see that in Philemon 1, verses 1 and 2, Paul a prisoner of Christ Jesus and Timothy our brother to Philemon our beloved friend and fellow laborer, and to the beloved Athea, who was apparently Philemon's wife, Archippus our fellow soldier and the church in your house.

Now, since Philemon, Athea and Archippus all apparently are in the same house, and then there is a church in their house, it is thought that Philemon and Athea are a married couple and Archippus may well be their son, who is said to be a fellow soldier. Archippus is also mentioned later on in Colossians, where Paul says in Colossians 4.17, Paul says, Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it. So Archippus in Philemon is called fellow soldier in the faith, and in Colossians he is referred to as the one who needs to be exhorted to fulfill the ministry which he has received in the Lord.

So these names are the names of some of the Christians in Colossians. It is not clear whether the entire church met in Philemon's home. It is possible that the church was large enough to require more than one home, but we know that at least a portion of the church, if not the entire congregation, met in the home of Philemon.

Now, what was the occasion of Paul writing this letter? It is almost certain that it was written at the same time as the letter to Philemon, partly because we find that Onesimus, whom Paul sends the letter of Philemon to accompany to Colossae, that is when Onesimus is a runaway slave, he has to go back and turn himself in, as it were, to the authorities, to his master. Paul wrote the letter to Philemon to sort of lubricate his re-entry into the city and make it a smooth return to his master. But we see also that Colossians is carried by Tychicus and Onesimus, so it seems clear that both letters were carried at the same time when Onesimus was returning to Colossae.

And it may be that simply because Paul wanted to help ease Onesimus' return to his master, that he not only sent the letter to Philemon, but also felt, well, while I'm at it, I might as well write a letter to the whole church there. After all, I have a messenger here. Remember, in those days they didn't have postal service.

They didn't even have Pony Express. If you wanted to get your letter from one place to another, you had to find a traveler who happened to be on his way to that place and see if he'd deliver it for you. And all these letters of Paul were carried by somebody or another, usually a Christian who was traveling.

The letter to the Romans, for example, was carried, it would appear, by Phoebe. And there were other letters that were carried by other people. Tychicus probably made a special trip along with Onesimus.

Onesimus was on his way home anyway. Tychicus may have had to accompany him because Onesimus was ostensibly carrying a letter from Paul asking his owner to be kind to him. But some might question whether Paul had really written the letter or whether Onesimus had come up with this in order to cover his own tail, as it were.

And so Paul sending Tychicus along would be able to confirm that this was a genuine letter from Paul and so forth. I don't know if that's why Tychicus went along, but we could say that Paul may have just written Colossians as a general encouragement to the Church, an exhortation to the Church, that he took the occasion to write because he had a messenger going there anyway to carry the letter to Philemon. Most scholars believe, however, there is a more special reason for writing Colossians, and that is that there is concern for particular teachings that either had come or Paul felt were likely to come to the Church, which could undermine the gospel in which Paul hoped to inoculate the Christians from.

The nature of this teaching has been a matter of hot debate among scholars. We don't need to enter into all the details of that debate. I will simply acquaint you with it because almost anyone who writes an introduction, even in your study Bibles, to Colossians is likely to mention what is usually called the Colossian heresy, and all the commentators talk about the Colossian heresy.

We do not actually know for sure that there was a Colossian heresy, but based on certain things that Paul says to the Colossians of a corrective sort, it is deduced that certain teachings were in Colossians which Paul wanted to address and wanted to correct, and these teachings were of a variety of types, not like the book of Galatians, which was very clearly written against Jewish legalism, or not like 1 John, which seems to have been written directly against Gnosticism, or some of these other books that have a very specific and obvious false teaching that they are trying to write against. Colossians has exhortations against a variety of things, and either there were just a variety of wrong teachings around that Paul wanted to address, or else there was an established religious system, a heretical system that was trying to introduce itself, which had all these elements. No one really knows for sure, but the scholars all seem to follow the idea that there was a Colossian heresy.

Let me just point out to you what the elements were that Paul wanted to correct. First of all, there apparently was a tendency toward Jewish legalism, perhaps even like that which was found in Galatia, although the elements of it are different in what he mentions here somewhat, but it's the same two. In Colossians 2, in verse 11, Paul says, In him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands.

Now, Paul is talking about a spiritual circumcision, the circumcision of the heart, and while it is not necessary to assume this, it is thought that perhaps he says this because there were some Judaizing types who were trying to impose physical circumcision on these Gentiles. Even as we know was happening in Galatia, some feel like Colossians may have been experiencing the same kind of thing, and that Paul is alluding to the fact that we don't need to be physically circumcised. We have received a circumcision which is made without hands, the circumcision of the heart.

And by mention of the circumcision here in this way, it may be that he is trying to counter a local teaching that was trying to require these people to have physical circumcision. We see a similar reason for mentioning spiritual circumcision back in Philippians 3. In Philippians 3, verses 2 and 3, Paul said, Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilators, he is talking about circumcisers, people who are trying to enforce circumcision on the Christian Gentiles. He says, For we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

Now, he is writing to Gentiles there in Philippians, and he says, We, himself a Jewish Christian, and they, Gentile Christians, combined, we are all circumcised in the sense that it matters. We don't need mutilators to come and physically circumcise us, although Paul, of course, as a Jew, had been circumcised, but he did not want his followers to feel that they must be. And so, in the course of trying to warn them against those that would impose circumcision on them, in Philippians chapter 3, he mentions, We are the true circumcision.

We have received the circumcision that counts, the spiritual circumcision. We rejoice in Christ Jesus. We put no confidence in the flesh.

We worship God in the spirit. This is spiritual circumcision. Likewise, he says in Colossians 2.11, In him you also were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands.

Which would appear to be, although we could not be emphatic on this point, an attempt to diffuse any strength of argument that they needed to be physically circumcised. Now, if you look down in the same chapter, Colossians 2.16, Paul says, Therefore let no one judge you in food and drink, or regarding a festival, or a new moon, or sabbaths. Now, food and drink would almost certainly refer to the Jewish dietary restrictions.

The reference to festivals and new moons, there were many religions, including Judaism, that had festivals and observed new moons. The new moon was the first day of every month, which was a holy day to the Jews, but also to some pagan groups. But the reference to sabbaths seems to make it very clear that he is talking about Jewish festivals here.

The Jewish laws about food and drink. The Jewish festivals of new moons and sabbaths. So the combination of that verse with that in verse 11, the mention of circumcision, certainly indicates that there were some that either would or already were trying to impose Judaism or Jewish rituals upon the church, and Paul was telling them, don't let them.

Don't let them do that. So we can see elements of Jewish legalism that Paul was concerned about here in the church. Then, also in chapter 2, in verses 21 through 23, actually we should probably read verse 20 as well, Therefore if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why as though living in the world do you subject yourselves to regulations? Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which all concern things which perish with the using, according to the commandments and doctrines of men.

These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. Now, there is a sense in which this too could refer to Judaistic practices, but the idea of don't touch this and don't taste that certainly has its counterpart in Judaism. You couldn't touch a dead body, you couldn't touch a woman on her period, you couldn't touch a leper, you couldn't touch a number of things without being made unclean.

And you couldn't eat certain things, you couldn't taste certain unclean foods. So we could here still have a reference to Jewish ordinances. However, in verse 22 he refers to them as the commandments and doctrines of men.

Now, Judaism with its regulations certainly should not be called commandments and doctrines of men. Jesus did accuse the Pharisees of at times teaching for doctrine the commandments of men and teaching as orthodoxy Jewish traditions that were of human origin. And the Pharisees certainly did this.

However, the do not touch this and do not handle that and do not taste this, those were not ordinances made by man, those were not Jewish traditions, those were in the law of Moses itself. Therefore, since Paul refers to traditions of don't handle, don't eat, don't touch that, and he calls them the commandments and doctrines of men, he either must be saying that those Jewish ordinances, although they were commanded by God in the Old Testament, are not commanded by God now, and if someone commands you to do it now, that's a human teaching, not a divine teaching. Or else, as most scholars believe, he's not talking about the Jewish ordinances in this case at all, but rather to a form of asceticism, which the Greeks taught.

I'm sure you've been told in your studies of 1 John that the Gnostic heresy grew out of the Greek philosophy and taught that the physical matter is evil and spiritual things are good. And this is basically what Plato taught, this is just Greek philosophy, but it came into religion in the form of what was called Gnosticism. It was a belief system or a philosophy that attached itself like a parasite to certain other religious groups like Judaism and Christianity.

So you find Jewish Gnosticism in history and you find Christian Gnosticism. In Christianity, Gnosticism became a serious problem only in the second century. It became a full-blown system that many of the early church writers, Irenaeus and Tertullian, those guys had to write against Gnosticism as a system.

But we can see, for example, in 1 John, that there was what we might call incipient Gnosticism or emerging Gnosticism, even in the days of the apostles. Now, the Gnostics, coming from this Greek idea that matter is evil, had two different approaches to the physical body. Some Gnostics went one direction, some another.

Some Gnostics taught that since the body is itself evil, and because physical matter is by nature of being physical evil and can in no sense be changed and cannot be improved, then any attempt to make it good is a fool's errand. It's a waste of energy. It would be wiser and it would show better understanding of the spiritual nature of things to just let the body do whatever it wants and not care about trying to reform it since the body is unalterably evil being physical.

And therefore, Epicureanism and other forms of simply narcissistic self-indulgence and physical indulgence was one reaction to Gnostic philosophy. So that people thought, some of them, that if the body is evil, and that can never change because it's physical, and that will never change, and physical means evil, then what's the point of living under self-control? Why try to make the body any better? It can't be made better. Might as well just let it have free reign and show our enlightened view of things because by not trying to reform the body, by not trying to restrain it, we show that we understand clearly this philosophical truth that the body is evil and can't be made anything else.

This is what we might call, and has been called, and should be called antinomianism. It's the idea that no law should restrict us, that we should just do whatever we want to do physically. And this led to, of course, tremendous sensual sin, and it was one branch of Gnosticism.

Another branch of Gnosticism came at the whole issue of the evilness of the body a totally different way. They felt that since the body is evil, the body should be more or less punished. Because it is evil, and because it exerts some terrible influence over behavior and even over the spiritual life, the body should be subjected by severe asceticism.

Asceticism is where you actually deprive your senses of any pleasure for religious purposes. Now, there are many Christians throughout history who have been ascetics. Not necessarily Gnostics, but ascetics, because Christians have often thought that the body is evil, and it is difficult at times to arrive at a truly biblical view of the moral standing of the physical body, because on the one hand, the Bible does not teach that matter is evil.

In fact, when God created the material world in Genesis chapter 1, after he made everything and it was all matter, he said, it is very good. And before he made the physical body, he purposed himself to create a creature in his own likeness, in his own image, and therefore he formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the spirit of life. And God saw that he made everything very good.

There is certainly no teaching in the Bible that matter is evil. As a matter of fact, it was this Greek belief that matter is evil that caused some of the Greek Christians to question the doctrine of the resurrection, because the resurrection teaches that our physical bodies be resurrected physically. And many of the Greeks found that abhorrent.

And Paul had to write, for example, 1 Corinthians 15 to a Greek church in Corinth, where there were some apparently in the church who were doubting that the resurrection was a true doctrine of Christianity. And Paul wrote a whole chapter to refute that. But the idea that matter is evil is simply not taught in the Bible.

God intends for us to live forever in material bodies that he will raise from the dead, according to scripture. He made Adam and Eve in material bodies, and they were perfectly good, as far as he was concerned. But the Bible does teach that sin has corrupted our natural state so that our body and its appetites become spiritual enemies, in a sense, that we have to suppress at times some of the desires of the flesh in order to be obedient to God.

Now, that would mean, of course, that if I am poor and hungry, and my neighbor is baking bread, and I am tempted to steal that bread, then I have to put to death that appetite of my body. I am not allowed to steal. Stealing is wrong.

Therefore, I have to suppress that appetite, or at least deny it. I have to deny the appetite of my flesh. Another appetite of the flesh is in the area of sexual cravings.

And there are certainly many situations in which there are sexual cravings which would be unlawful to fulfill. In fact, there is only a very limited situation in the Bible where sexual cravings are legitimate to fulfill. And in all other situations, they need to be suppressed, they need to be denied.

You have to deny yourself. Now, that is just normal Christianity. Your body is not evil because of being physical, but we are fallen creatures, and we tend towards selfishness and self-indulgence by nature, and our body has its demands that it makes, its cravings, its hormones, its lusts.

Actually, the lusts are not in themselves evil, because it is not wrong to eat food which your body craves at times. It is not wrong to drink water which your body sometimes craves. It is not wrong to sleep which your body sometimes craves.

It is not wrong to be comfortable at times when your body craves it. And it is not wrong even to have sex in the right situation that God has created it for. These cravings are not in themselves evil, but to live by these cravings is an evil thing to do, because this body has to be brought under subjection.

As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, he buffets his body, he keeps it under subjection. And so the body is simply a rival to the spirit. It is a servant, and it is good, but it also has its own desires.

It is good insofar as its desires are kept within the perimeters of what God has ordained for them to be. The problem is the body does not know what those perimeters are. The spirit has to inform it and enforce it.

Anyway, the Gnostics were certainly wrong to believe that the body is evil and must be punished. Christians sometimes fall into that same trap. While it is true that we need to restrain the flesh from sinful behaviors, the Bible does not teach that we need to punish the flesh.

There have been monks and monastics of various kinds throughout history who were called flagellates, who took whips and whipped themselves. They whipped their bodies. There have been people in other religions as well, in Hinduism and so forth, that sleep on a bed of nails, or in Islam that will make long pilgrimages crawling on their knees until their knees bleed.

There are various religions, including some that have stemmed out of Christian roots, some forms of monasticism, that have believed in punishment of the body. That, apparently, is what Paul is speaking against, this kind of asceticism. It is one thing to say we must discipline our bodies and keep its behaviors within the range of permitted things that God has ordained for it to do.

That means we have to say no to our flesh on many occasions. But that does not translate into a further step of saying, and therefore we should necessarily deprive it, even of lawful enjoyments, because these enjoyments are evil. And the more we can deprive our body of those things, the more spiritual we will be.

This is a step that is very easy for people to take in their thinking, but it is a wrong one. When Paul talks about these self-made, human-made regulations, touch not, taste not, handle not, he says in verse 23 of chapter 2 of Colossians, these things have an appearance of wisdom and self-imposed religion, false humility, neglect of the body. So he is not just talking about eating kosher foods.

Jews could remain entirely kosher and never neglect their body. They could eat sumptuously and still not eat pork. But he is talking here about rules that are emphatically recommending the neglect of the body.

It is apparently like a Greek philosophy, perhaps even incipient Gnosticism here, that was recommending ascetic practices. So you have got Jewish legalism, we have got evidence of that here. We have also got evidence, apparently, of Greek philosophy, possibly in the form of Gnosticism.

Then also in chapter 2, in verse 18, there is a third strand to what is going on there. He says in Colossians 2.18, Let no one defraud you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and the worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind. By the way, I should point out that that line, things which he has not seen, the Alexandrian text leaves out the word not.

So it would have something to do with a man talking about those things which he has seen. Scholars believe, in most cases, that what Paul is referring to here is some of the mystical practices of what are sometimes called the Oriental mystery religions. In the Roman Empire, although Rome brought in its own set of gods and so forth, there were older Oriental religions, the worship of Mithras and some other religions that were there from the more ancient times.

They were not official religions, necessarily, like the Roman religion was, but they had their own little coteries of adherents who would go off and sort of like secret cults of sorts. They had their secret rituals. They were very mystical and they made claims to having visions and learning a great deal about the spiritual realm from really occult kind of experiences.

It is known that they worshipped angels. Therefore, when Paul talks here about being defrauded by those who would take delight in worshipping angels, depending on the reading of that next line, intruding into those things which he has not seen, some scholars translate that as parading, continually parading the things that he claims to have seen, really, his visions and so forth, what he has learned by mystical revelation. Paul is here seemingly addressing some of the elements known to be involved in Oriental mystery religions, which were separate from Greek philosophy and certainly separate from Judaism.

Now, with these different elements, scholars have decided, maybe wrongly but maybe rightly, that there was probably a single heresy that some group of people were trying to teach to the Christians in Colossae, and they usually refer to this as the Colossian heresy, and that this heresy was sort of a conglomerate, an amalgamation of elements of Jewish legalism, Greek or Gnostic philosophy, and Orientalism, and Christianity. And it's a very Oriental occult religion. You know, in a sense, if that is true, it would be very similar to what today is called what? We have a name for that today.

It's called the New Age Movement. It's got elements of Christianity, or Judaism, it's got certainly elements of Gnosticism, tremendously, it's almost a modern resurgence of Gnosticism in modern times, and it has its occult elements as well. And I'm not saying that what was taught in Colossae was identical to what is taught today in the New Age, but what appears to have been happening was a phenomenon called syncretism, which would be spelled S-Y-N-C-R-E-T-I-S-M, syncretism.

And that is when elements of two or more religions are merged. Certainly the New Age Movement today is an example of such syncretism. You've got elements of Christianity, and even more so, elements of Hinduism and of occultism.

I mean, just kind of an amalgam of elements of different religions. That's what syncretism is. Syncretism can also refer to the mixture of religion with, let's say, Christianity, with elements of your culture.

Not necessarily religious elements, but maybe the values and beliefs of your culture. If they're mixed with Christianity, that is also syncretism. And many of the epistles show a concern, and even the Old Testament shows a concern, that the people of God not fall into this syncretism of mixing what God has revealed with what man has dreamed up.

The Pharisees' biggest problem was that they were syncretists. They basically took the law of Moses, which God had given, and the traditions of the rabbis, which were merely human speculations, and merged them together into one religious system, which is what Phariseeism was. And in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, Moses warned the Jews when they go into Canaan not to inquire as to how these pagans worship their gods, and not to bring those practices into their worship of Jehovah.

God has given adequate instructions and has given full information for us in the word of God as to how he wants us to follow him and worship him. And he makes very clear he does not want us introducing foreign elements from the world or from other religions. And yet it would appear that the Colossians were perhaps being courted by some religious movement that had elements of Jewish legalism, Greek philosophy of a Gnostic sort, and Oriental occult mysticism.

Now, at least that's where the scholars stand. I have always wondered whether they're correct or not. There is certainly nothing here that says that all of these elements were in one group.

There is at least an alternative idea that the Colossians had. They lived among Greek philosophers. They lived in a Greek or Roman world.

And there were perhaps some Greek philosophers trying to influence them, trying to debate them on the matters of Christianity. And then over there, there were some Jews in the synagogue trying to Judaize them. And then over here, there were the mystery religions trying to evangelize them, too.

I mean, it's possible from the evidence of Scripture that there were just these different religious groups in Colossians. Paul is in one chapter mentioning all of them and saying, Don't fall into that and don't fall into that and don't fall into that. So, one theory is that, of course, all these elements were in one cult, in one heresy.

And scholars call it the Colossian heresy. But the scholars could be wrong. These elements might not have all belonged to one religious movement.

It might have been that there were several religious movements in town and Paul wanted to warn the believers against all of them. In any case, that's about all we need to say about the Colossian heresy. It is thought that because of this heresy intruding itself that Paul had to write this letter to protect the church.

And, of course, the other possibility is that it was just a friendly letter written because Onesimus was going there anyway. And that Paul, knowing that there were Jews who would try to Judaize them and Greeks who would try to influence them and mystery religions that would try to proselytize them, just decided that he would make reference to these things and tell them why not to do it. But the approach he takes, there are many things in the language he uses which we would not recognize in the English, but there are special words in the Greek in some places in Colossians that are known to have been key words, especially in Gnosticism and in some of the claims of Gnosticism.

And these key words are taken up by Paul and applied to Christ, not in order to enforce the Gnostic idea, but rather as the alternative to the Gnostic idea. In chapter 1 and verse 19 it says, It pleased the Father that in Christ all the fullness should dwell. And in chapter 2, verse 9, the same word, fullness, is found.

In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. That word fullness, pleroma, in the Greek, actually was used by the Gnostics to speak of the coming to the ultimate revelation of the Gnostis and coming to the highest level of spirituality that could be attained in the Gnostic way. And that's one example where Paul uses language and applies it to Christ, which the Gnostics would use and apply it in a different way.

So some have felt that by using this word, what Paul is doing is trying to counter the Gnostics who would say, well, to come into the fullness you have to go through these Gnostic levels of discipline and so forth. Whereas Paul is saying, no, all of that fullness dwells in Jesus. And if you have Jesus, you are indeed complete in him.

That's what he says in chapter 2, verse 10, you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power. Now, the reference to principality and power in Colossians 2.10 and also elsewhere, the principalities and powers are mentioned in Colossians 2.15 and even earlier in chapter 1, in verse 16, he mentions the principalities and powers. This expression, principalities and powers, is found quite a few times in Paul's writings, but especially in Colossians and Ephesians.

Not only there, but mostly there. And principalities and powers, that's an expression that can be, unfortunately, can be taken more than one way. It can simply mean of earthly rulers, like the kings and the governors and so forth.

In fact, Paul himself uses it that way without question. In Titus chapter 3, in verse 1, in Titus 3, 1, Paul says, remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities. In the Greek, it's the same two words, principalities and powers.

The New King James doesn't render it principalities and powers because they know that in English we use those terms more often to speak of something else. But in the Greek, Paul is using the same terms here, principalities and powers. Be subject to the principalities and powers.

Well, he's talking about the government officials, of course. He's not talking about anything spiritual. But elsewhere, in some places, Paul refers to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.

For example, in Ephesians 3.10, Paul says, to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. Likewise, in Ephesians 6.12, Paul says, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. So when Paul attaches the expression in the heavenly places, as he sometimes does in Ephesians, to the term principalities and powers, he's not talking about earthly authorities.

He's talking about some kind of authorities in the heavenly realm, either angels or demons or both. So this expression, principalities and powers, unfortunately is ambiguous. Sometimes it means earthly authorities, and it's not always clear which he has in mind.

Now, it will be pointed out that we've already seen that some of the people were being influenced toward the worship of angels, and if by principalities and powers Paul is referring to angels, as is very likely in some of these cases, then his mention of principalities and powers would be a direct slap against this mystical approach to the worship of angels, especially in a place like Colossians 1.16, where Paul says, By him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. Now, to say that Jesus made them all makes it very clear that they are not to be worshipped. Why would you worship them? They are part of the created realm.

Jesus is the creator. He stands infinitely above them as he is infinitely above us. The relationship between us and Christ is that of creature and creator, and there's a huge chasm between the creature and the creator.

But the same chasm exists between Christ and the principalities and powers. He is their creator, too, which would, of course, be a strong argument against worshipping angels, since they are part of the created realm, just like we are. We know that John, in the book of Revelation, was tempted twice to fall down and worship the angel that showed him around, and he was rebuked for it.

In Colossians 1, verse 10, when it says, You are complete in Christ, who is the head of all principality and power, once again Christ is said to be superior to the principalities and powers. In chapter 2, verse 15, it says he has disarmed principalities and powers. Here the principalities and powers must certainly be hostile powers, spiritual powers that are hostile to Christ and his purpose.

But it's very possible that what Paul is saying is that the angels that were worshipped by these occultists were not good angels in any sense at all. Even if they were, Christ is their superior and their creator. But they are not.

They are hostile forces that Christ conquered at the cross. They are demonic. There's also reference in this epistle, as in a few other places in Paul's writings, to a Greek term called stoicheia.

It's s-t-o-i-c-h-e-i-a. It's a Greek word for stoicheia. It's a Greek word for stoicheia.

In Colossians 2.8, this term is referred to as the basic principles. Colossians 2.8 says, Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles, the stoicheia, of the world. The word stoicheia originally in the Greek referred to any order of things that were set in order, like the letters of an alphabet, or like numbers in sequence, set in a line.

It came to mean, basically, especially the alphabet, the ABCs. And so many modern translators or paraphrasers, when they come to this word stoicheia, they translate it the ABCs, as if to say that what Paul meant when he said stoicheia, he was referring to the most juvenile, the most basic, the most unsophisticated of religious ideas, like the ABCs of religion. In other words, if the Gnostics, let us say, were saying that Christianity is fine, but there's much more beyond this.

You have to go through these various realms of revelation to reach higher levels of Gnosis in order to be perfected. Paul could be saying, well, these higher levels, as they call them, are nothing else but ABCs. They are simply the most basic things of human religion.

Worshipping angels and stuff goes back, I mean, the occult goes way back. That's something that's not exalted. That is not something advanced.

That is something that is inferior. Paul uses the word stoicheia in a number of places that raise some confusion as to what is meant by them. He also refers to them in Colossians 2.20, where he says, therefore, if you died with Christ from the stoicheia, the basic principles of the world, the stoicheia of the world, the ABCs of the world.

Some scholars feel that the stoicheia should be translated not so much as the ABCs, but as the elemental spirits. You will find some translations where this word stoicheia is translated as the elemental spirits, which may refer to, essentially, the animistic belief or the pantheistic belief that there were spirits in all the elements, that every tree and rock and blade of grass had a spirit in it. And this is referring to the pagan notion that the most basic elements were infused with spirituality, and these elemental spirits were something to be courted and worshipped in paganism.

And if that is true, then Paul is warning here against demons again. He is not simply referring to Gnosticism as a juvenile, elementary kind of a religious idea, but he could be referring to the spirits behind it, the occult nature of it. So that in verse 8 of chapter 2, when he says, don't let anyone spoil you by tradition of men according to the elemental spirits of the world, he would be saying that, essentially, these religious ideas come from people's association with evil spirits.

And likewise, in Colossians 2.20, when he says, therefore, if you died with Christ from the, let's say, elemental spirits of the world, then he would be talking about demonic and occult associations of their past. Now, it's not at all clear that that is the right translation, but scholars are divided about it, and it leaves it very difficult for us to make any kind of decision on it. So we will have to just be aware that there is more than one possibility here and not be very dogmatic when we come to these references.

By the way, the stoicheia are also mentioned in Galatians 4. Let me just turn you there so you see Paul associates them with Jewish legalism there. In Galatians 4, verse 3, Paul says, even so, we, when we were children, were in bondage under the stoicheia of the world, the elements of the world, it says Some translations would say the ABCs, some would say the elemental spirits of the world. The point here is that Paul says we.

He was a Jew with a Jewish background. His readers were Gentiles with a pagan background. But he indicates that both of them, before they were Christians, were subject to the elemental spirits or the elements, the ABCs, the stoicheia of the world, and in bondage under them.

And that Paul, in his legalistic background, or the Galatians in their pagan background, were equally subject to and in bondage to these stoicheia. And likewise, in Galatians 4.9, he says, but now, after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly stoicheia to which you desire again to be in bondage? Now, this is interesting because the Galatians were turning toward Judaism, but they had not been in Judaism before they were converted. They had been pagans.

Now, they were pagans, then they were Christians, then they were moving toward Jewish legalism. Only of those three things Christianity was safe. Both of the others were called in bondage to the stoicheia.

When they were pagans, they were in bondage to the stoicheia, according to Galatians 4.3. And as they turned to Jewish legalism, they were turning again to bondage to the stoicheia. Now, again, if the stoicheia simply means the ABCs or the elementary principles of religion, let us say, then he could be saying that Jewish legalism is in the same category as any other kind of pagan religion. It's just basic human reasoning that is not very enlightened.

It's the basic idea that you have to be good, have God favor you, and so forth. And that's the most basic assumption that even the pagans have, and the Jews themselves labored under. But Christianity is something altogether different than that.

But if stoicheia means the elemental spirits, meaning demons or whatever, then he's saying that turning to legalism is a return to bondage to demons. And that is entirely possible that Paul is saying that in Galatians, because he has already suggested in Galatians 3.1, in referring to their tendency to go back to legalism, or into Jewish legalism, Galatians 3.1, Paul says, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth. Now, in moving in the direction of Jewish legalism, they were being bewitched.

This is a term that has to do with occultism. And in chapter 4, he talks about them returning to the weak and beggarly stoicheia to become in bondage by legalism. It sounds as if Paul may be saying, whether he thinks of the stoicheia as elemental spirits or simply elementary principles like the ABCs, in any case, paganism is a bondage to the stoicheia, and so is legalism.

And between total paganism and total legalism, there is the reality which is Christ. And to move in the direction of paganism or in the direction of legalism from Christ is to move back into bondage to possibly elemental spirits, which would be demonic things, or simply into that which is inferior and less advanced than following Christ is. So, I wanted you to know about some of these terms that recur, because they are questionable as to their exact meaning.

And these terms did have meaning to some of the Greek and mystery religions. And the use of these terms has confirmed to some scholars that Paul was addressing a religious heresy that maybe ran along Gnostic lines with elements of Judaism and mysticism added. Whether this is true or not is not the most important thing for us to know if we are to understand how Colossians applies to us.

However, if it is true, then it speaks almost directly to modern issues like the New Age movement. Worship of angels is an incredibly current fad. There are whole stores in most major cities of angel stuff.

Angel pictures, angel statues, angel books, angel this, angel that. And they are not Christian stuff. It is how to contact your angel.

How to cultivate a relationship with your angel. I mean, I never thought I would see that in the western world. When I was a kid, I mean, worship of angels.

I mean, there was paganism and there was Christianity, but that was about it. And then there were various cults. But the New Age has come along and introduced some of these old Gnostic and mystical things from the past so that the epistles of the Colossians would be a very timely message to the modern Christian who is influenced by Gnosticism is the right word for it, but New Age movement as we would call it today.

Okay, so much for the background of Colossians. Let's turn now to the actual first chapter, and we will not take the whole first chapter in this session. We don't have time left for that, but we can take a piece out of it.

And let's just get directly into the epistle now. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this opening is typical of Paul's openings.

Only very seldom does Paul not mention that he is an apostle. For instance, when he writes to the Philippians, he does not mention his apostleship. He simply says, Paul and Timothy are servants of Jesus Christ.

And likewise, when he writes to the Thessalonians, he says, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the church, etc. He does not mention his apostleship to the Philippians or the Thessalonians because he is close to those people, and they know he is an apostle. And he does not appeal to them so much as an apostle, but as a friend and as someone they know and trust.

The Colossians have never met Paul. They know him by reputation because they were probably evangelized as a result of one of his converts. But when Paul writes to people who don't know him as well, he has to make reference to his apostleship, especially if he is writing to a controversial situation.

Because it is not as Paul the opinionated or Paul the pastor or Paul the teacher or Paul the philosopher that he writes. He is writing as Paul the apostle of Jesus Christ. And as an apostle, he is one who is sent with the authority of the one who sent him.

That is what an apostle means. And he addresses it to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossae. There are different ways that Paul addresses his audiences.

In the earlier epistles, he usually writes to the church. The church in Corinth, the church in Thessalonica, the churches of Galatia. The epistles are usually in the early days of his writing to the churches of Origen.

In some of his later epistles, he is writing to the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus. That is exactly how he addresses the Philippians also. I mean, excuse me, the Ephesians.

In Ephesians 1.1, he says, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. The saints and faithful. Now, are these two different groups? Everyone is a saint but not everyone is faithful? I don't think so.

I think that the saints do refer to all Christians. All Christians are faithful because if they aren't faithful, they are not Christians. If you depart from the faith, you are no longer a Christian.

So all saints are faithful. Although it is possible that while all saints are, that is, all Christians belong, the term saints belongs to all Christians, yet it may be that there were some in the church who had been saints longer, had endured more, and had shown their faithfulness to a greater degree. And that the faithful would perhaps be those in the church who were older, who had suffered more, who had shown their faithfulness more.

It is really impossible for us to decide this, whether Paul is just using these terms as two synonymous terms for Christians or two different groups within the church. In any case, notice he refers to them in verse 2 as brethren in Christ who are in Colossae. These people live in two spheres.

On the one hand they live, and most of them had always lived, in the city of Colossae. But having become Christians, they now live in another sphere, in Christ. The idea of living in two worlds at once, or two spheres at once, was introduced by Jesus himself in the 16th chapter of John when he was in the upper room with his disciples.

In John 16.33, Jesus said, These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. Now, he said, you are going to be in me, and you will also be in the world.

In me you have peace. In the world you have tribulation. And you can be in the world and in Christ at the same time, and therefore be in tribulation in the world, and at the same time be in peace in Christ.

And the Christian needs to be aware that his most important sphere of activity is in Christ. In the letters of Paul, and especially those of Colossians and Ephesians, Paul uses the term in Christ or in him far more times, far disproportionate to the number of verses that we have here, than anywhere else in his epistles. No doubt, since these were later epistles of his as he grew older, he came to appreciate more and more what it meant to be in Christ, and made more frequent reference to it.

But Christians every day wake up and know they are in wherever they are. You wake up in the morning and you know you are in McMinnville, you are in your dorm room, you are in the Great Commission School, you are in America, you are in the world. Perhaps you have tribulation, maybe you don't at the moment, but the point is, the circumstances of your physical environment, you are aware of from the moment you wake up.

The world is very much with us and presses its presence upon our consciousness in many ways, through our senses. And yet, it is equally true, though not equally obvious when we wake up, that we are also, not only in McMinnville, we are in Christ. And really of the two realms, it is this latter that is more defining of who we are and what we should do once our feet hit the ground, or even before they hit the ground.

When we wake up, we are in McMinnville. When we wake up, we are also in Christ. Now being in McMinnville is one thing.

In the Great Commission School, I wake up, it is early, I have devotions, I am tired. I went to bed late last night, also in McMinnville. All this has to do with my physical environment.

A lot of times the things that are physical circumstance are the things that define our approach to what do I do now. But what Paul emphasizes is that though you may be in Colossae, you are also, and more importantly, in Christ. And in Christ, you have a whole defined realm of activity that dictates really how you are to live every moment of every day.

And Paul has much to say about being in Christ in Colossians and also in Ephesians. And so he starts out by telling them that they are in Christ and in Colossae. In Colossae, they have certain influences that make their appeal to them, some of which we are talking about, some of these religious ideas that we are imposing on them.

But in Christ, they are above all that. Paul said in Ephesians chapter 2 and chapter 6 that in Christ we are seated in heavenly places. And in Christ, we have a totally different kind of awareness and existence and so forth.

And that is what is to be defining of what we are and what we do. There is a common fad in the religious world today called what would Jesus do? I am sure you are aware of it if you have seen any religious catalogs or been in any religious bookstores. I am sure that you see the WWJD everywhere.

They have got lunch boxes and pens and notebooks and everything. And someone is making a lot of money off this. And that is something Jesus would not do, by the way.

But this whole idea of what would Jesus do comes from a very old story, not ancient, but it has been around much longer than this fad has been, called In His Steps, which is a fiction story really. Someone wrote about what would happen in a town if the Christians began to make a commitment for a year before they did anything to say what would Jesus do and then obviously to try to do that. Well, that is a very good suggestion to tell you the truth.

I do not think there is anything wrong with saying what would Jesus do. But there is another sense in which there is a more relevant question to us. Not what would Jesus do, but what is Jesus doing? I am in Him and I ought to be doing what He is doing.

It is not so much that Jesus is not here, but if He was here, what would He do? I better try to do what He would do. It is rather that I am in Him. That is my whole sphere of activity, in Him.

And what is He doing now? And am I cooperating? Am I flowing with what He is doing? Is what I am doing the same thing that He is doing? Now, you might say, what is the difference in terms of practical life? I do not know. Maybe not at all. It is just a different idea.

One suggests Jesus is not here, but if He was, He would probably do something like this. I guess I should do the kind of thing He would probably do. But it is rather that we have more of the sense that He is here, He is doing something, He has a plan in the earth, He is carrying it out, and I am in Him.

And in Him I am a member of His body. In Him I am a stone in His building. I am a part of His program.

And everything I do is in His name. Everything I do should be defined as what I do perceiving what He is doing, and I am in Him seeking to cooperate and flow along with what He is doing, because I am supposed to be moving along with Him. And so, in Colossians, one realm of existence.

In Christ is another. And all Christians live in both, in the world and in Him. And so He gives His typical greeting of grace and peace.

We won't go into the detail. There is much in it, but if we dwelt on it, every time we ran into it in the epistles, we would never get around to talking about the distinctive elements of those epistles. So let's talk about verse 3. We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints, 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, which has come to you as it has 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.

As you also learn from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, who also declared for us your love in the Spirit. It is not unfamiliar to us that Paul, at the beginning of his letter, will thank God for those that he is writing to. There are rare exceptions to this, Galatians being an example.

Paul does not thank God for the Galatians. He does not thank God in 2 Corinthians for what is going on in the church there, either. That is interesting, too, because, for example, he did thank God when he wrote 1 Corinthians.

He thanked God for the Corinthians. The Corinthians Christians. What was going on there in Corinth? According to 1 Corinthians, there was a man living incestuously with his father's wife.

There was division in the church. I am saying I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas. There were Christians taking each other to court.

There were some in the church denying the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. There was apparently unrestrained and disorderly use of the gifts. There was even mayhem in the meetings where they would be at their love feasts.

Some people were getting drunk. This is what was going on in Corinth, and yet at the beginning of his testimony he says, I thank God for you. The church was not in good shape, but he still found something to be thankful about in them.

At least they had not abandoned the faith altogether. But the Galatians, he does not even bother to say, I thank God for you. He can't.

What was wrong there? Were the church living in immorality? No, not apparently. What were they doing? They were legalists. They were getting into Jewish legalism.

It is interesting that Paul was still able to find something to thank God for in the church where there was a great deal of carnality and disruption and even immorality happening. There were still some good things in the church he could thank God for, but the church that was getting into legalism, he could not even think of anything to thank God for about that church. It was too far and too bad.

The Colossians, however, do not seem to have any major problems. There may be the intrusion of this heresy, but Paul does not accuse them of that. Paul does not say that they have anyone accepting these doctrines.

He warns them against the doctrines, but that does not mean the church has actually partaken in it. He does give thanks to God when he hears about them, praying always for them. Now, here he prays all the time for a church that he has never met.

It is easy, I suppose, if you are one who prays, to pray for people that you see all the time or that you know intimately and their needs are on your heart. If you learn that one of your relatives has cancer or that one of your best friends has been in a terrible accident and is in the hospital, you pray quite naturally and fervently for such people. Or if there is a problem in your church and the church is facing a split or disruption, it is easy to remember to pray for those situations that are close at hand.

But here is a church that Paul had never visited, knew very few people there personally, and yet he prayed for them constantly. Of course, Paul spent apparently a lot more time in prayer than we do, because he told all the churches that he prays for them constantly. He must have had lengthy times of prayer.

In fact, he probably prayed without ceasing. But it is interesting that Paul's example is that he prays regularly, faithfully, constantly, for people for the most part he does not know. He may never meet them.

And really there is not any particular problem there. That is another thing. We tend to pray most for people, I think, when we feel like they are in crisis.

Perhaps we are not prayerful enough and we just want to not waste any of our prayers on things that do not need to be prayed for. If I am only going to spend so much energy praying, I want to pray for those things that are most desperate, those things that are in crisis. Once I have done that, I do not even think to pray for persons and churches and situations that seem to be doing well already.

This is to our shame, I suppose. Maybe I should speak for myself. Maybe it is not true of you.

But Paul does not find anything negative to say about this church. He says only good things about the church. He has heard, he says in verse 4, of their faith and of their love.

Those are good things. Those are the best things. And yet, he says nothing bad about them.

He says that the gospel is bringing forth fruit among them in verse 6. And yet in verse 9 he says, For this reason we also since the day we heard it do not cease to pray for you. For what reason? That we heard such a good report about you. Therefore we do not cease to pray for you.

Do you pray for people that you have only heard positive things about and you have never heard that they have any problems or any crises or anything like that? Well, maybe you should. Because when a church is doing well, when an individual is doing well spiritually, that person becomes a target for the enemy. And we often are surprised to hear of who most recently has divorced someone.

I mean, sometimes a Christian couple that seems to be just great end up, you know, we are shocked to hear that they are getting a divorce. Or that, you know, one of the ministers of the church ran off with one of the women in the church. And yet, he seemed to be so spiritual.

And, you know, there is a possibility that he was. Sometimes we wonder, well, I must have been wrong about that guy. I thought he was really a godly man.

And look, he just fell in such a horrible, scandalous way. Well, maybe he was a phony. But maybe he wasn't.

Maybe he was doing great in the Lord. And no one prayed for him because they thought, well, he is okay. I better pray for someone who is more feeble.

And because he was doing well, the enemy directed special attention to him to tempt him to give him a call. This often happens. There are special attacks on godly people.

And it should not be thought that just because this couple or this family or this church or this individual seems to be doing fine that we shouldn't pray for that person or that family or whatever. Because as a matter of fact, they may in fact be doing fine. And for that very reason, there may be special pressures brought against them by the enemy because he doesn't like people who are doing fine.

If people are already feeble and falling into sin half the time, the devil doesn't have to spend much of his energy on them. Remember, he is not like God. He doesn't have infinite energy.

God has infinite energy. He can give infinite energy to everyone at once, but the devil can't. He has a limited amount.

He is a created being. And therefore, he has got to economize his efforts. Do you think the devil spends all his time aiming his arrows at the drug addict and at the alcoholic and the wife beater and the homosexual? The devil probably hardly pays any attention to them.

What does he need to work on them for? They are already his slaves. He will expend his best energy against the one who seems the strongest it seems. Now, I am not saying he doesn't pick on the weak.

He looks for weakness in everybody and everyone has some. He is not a respecter of persons. I am sure the devil will attack everybody, but he doesn't have to use much energy against the weak.

He reserves, I think, his strongest attacks for those who are the strongest. They need to be conquered as far as he is concerned. So here is a church that was good and strong.

They had all the best things that could be said about a church going for them. And yet, he says, therefore, I heard about that, I did not cease to pray for you. I prayed for you constantly because of this.

But he doesn't say exactly what he is praying. Well, he does say what he is praying. He doesn't say the reason why he prayed, other than that they are doing well.

We have to deduce that he figured if they are doing that well, it would be a great crisis if they stopped doing so well. They have got a reputation for being godly. And there is much more scandal in the fall of someone who has a reputation for being godly than in the fall of someone who doesn't.

I mean, when you read of these scandal sheets, these tabloids over at any market at the checkout stand, and you read about who is getting divorced and who is having an affair with whom and so forth, it is kind of ho-hum, really. I mean, you figure, well, that is what we expect of movie stars. But when you hear that a television evangelist does the same thing, it becomes a worldwide scandal.

But the reason is because when a man is reputed for godliness in falls, it draws so much attention of a negative sort against Christianity and against what he allegedly stood for. When people who are living overtly in sin, and they don't make any pretense of godliness, when they do the same things, no one even pays any attention except to put it on a few newspapers. But I mean, it is not scandalous.

No one says, well, I am never going to watch a movie by that person again. Because they are in their fourth husband or tenth husband or whatever. No one ever holds it against them.

But when someone who is godly falls, that is a scandal. And when a church is doing well, it can be a person or a family or whatever. You can count on it.

The devil is going to try to attack them with a special ferocity. And if they do fall, he gets much more mileage out of the fall of a godly family or church or person than he does through causing some weak, carnal person to fall. So Paul, knowing these things, when he heard how well the church is doing, he saw the areas from which Satan could attack this church surrounding it.

The legalism, the occultism, the Greek philosophy. And he prays for them and writes to them to warn them against these dangers. Let me just comment on a few of these verses that we passed lightly over.

In verse 4, he says, Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints. Now, faith and love are the most important things. Faith has to do with believing God, which is the essence of being saved.

We are justified by faith. We pass from death into life when we have faith in God. And then we must live by faith.

The Christian life is characterized by a trusting in God. But the other major characteristic is love. All Christian ethics come from love.

Our Christian theology is our faith. Our Christian ethics is our love. Whenever you love your neighbors as yourself, you are fulfilling the Christian ethics that Jesus taught.

Jesus said, Whatever you would have men do to you, do the same to them. Likewise, this is all the law and the prophets. He said, All the ethics required in the law or the prophets are found in this one command.

Love your neighbors as you love yourself. Now, so we have these people have they have solid faith, so they're not heretics. They're not into false doctrine.

They believe the right things and they believe strongly and in a life changing manner. And they are ethically commendable. They have love for all the brethren.

That's the Christian ethic. He says, Because of the hope. Now you've got faith, hope and love mixed together here, which you know are combined by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, where he says, And now abide these three, faith, hope and love.

And the greatest of these is love. Here we have these three together in verses four and five. They have faith in Christ Jesus.

They have love for all the saints. And this is because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven. Now, he has other things to say about this hope later in the same chapter.

For example, in verse 23, he refers to it as the hope of the gospel. He says in verse 23, If indeed you continue in the faith grounded in steadfast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel, the gospel, meaning the good news, has associated with it an inherent hopefulness. The gospel gives us hope of something.

What is it? Well, he tells us what that hope is a few verses later in Colossians 127. It says, To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. The Christian's hope is the hope of glory.

We need to understand what is meant by glory in Scripture, because that is our hope. And if you don't know what it is you're hoping for, it's going to have a profound effect on what you do today. If your hope... Let's put it this way.

When a kid is in high school, his counselors usually try to counsel him to choose some career, to envisage some occupation that he will strive toward. Why? Because he's going to be going to college probably after high school. This is in the world.

Christians needn't assume this about themselves, but in the world, generally speaking, that when you go out of high school, you go to college. But what you choose to study in college is determined by what you hope to become, what your occupation is in the long term. Your long term goals dictate your present activities.

If you have a strong goal, if you have the hope to become a doctor, the hope to become a lawyer, the hope to become the President of the United States, then there are certain things you do today. If you hope to win the Olympic gold medal, there are things you will do today in order to work toward that. If it is a sincere hope, if it's just kind of casual, then it won't affect too much maybe.

A lot of people would like to win the gold medal, but they just don't want to discipline their bodies, and they don't want to get up early and run, and they don't want to not drink beer and stuff. They kind of would like to win a gold medal, but it's just not going to happen. Because it isn't their hope in life.

But if your hope in life is a certain thing, it will dictate what you do now, today. Even though the hope is off there in the future, you will work toward the thing that is your hope and your goal. What is our goal? Well, it's the hope of glory, it says in Colossians 127.

Paul also identified the hope that way. In Romans chapter 5 and verse 2, he says, Romans 5, 2, through whom we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Our hope is the glory of God, and we rejoice in that hope.

Now, you might not even know what the glory of God is. If not, then you're not going to have very clear hope, and that won't dictate very much of your behavior either. Here in Titus chapter 2 and verse 13, Paul says, Looking for the blessed hope, and in the Greek it reads this way, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The hope of the Christian is the appearing of the glory of God. Our hope is the hope of glory. A little later in Colossians chapter 3, verse 4, Colossians 3 and 4, Paul says, When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Now in Titus, Paul says, The blessed hope of the Christian is the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Paul said in Romans, We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. In Colossians 1.27, he says, Christ in you is the hope of glory.

Now why does that impact us? Why does that have any influence over us? Well, he says in Colossians 3.4, When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. What is glory? The word glory sometimes just means radiance, but that's not what it means here, I don't think. I mean, it might have that as an aspect of it, too.

We think of glory sometimes as fame or honor, like a person who is a glory hog, wants to get all the attention, all the honor to himself. There's a sense which glory has that as well. The term is used that way.

But there's a special sense in which it's used in Scripture, in that the glory of God is the image of God. Christ is said to be the express image of this person and the bright shining of his glory. Paul says, As we behold, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed from glory to glory into that same image.

The glory of God that we anticipate is to be made into the image of Christ, to be like him, to share in his likeness. Now, if that doesn't turn you on, then you probably need to be converted. Because if being like Jesus isn't an exciting prospect to you, then your heart still probably isn't converted yet.

Because that would be one of the things... I mean, when a child is born, he wants to be like his dad, he wants to grow up to be like an adult. If a child doesn't want to be like an adult, he probably isn't born yet, because that's natural. Or else there's something wrong with the adult role models in his life, they just want to be like them.

Likewise, if you don't want to be like Jesus, then either maybe you're not converted, or else if you are, you may not have a lofty enough view of Jesus. You may not see him accurately. Your view of Jesus may need to undergo some revision and some improvement.

But the point is that the Christian, the highest goal for the Christian is to be like Jesus, and that is the glory. That we will appear with him in glory, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And this is our hope.

And because of this hope, it says in Colossians 1 and verse 5, because of this hope, they have lived in faith and in love. This goal they have, this thing out there they're reaching toward, is that which dictates their present activity of faith and love. And if you're having struggles, you wonder why your life isn't characterized by faith and love, it could be poor instruction, but it could also simply be that you don't have that hope.

Maybe you've never understood that hope, or maybe that hope doesn't appeal to you. But it's a given that whatever your compelling desire is for the future, it will drag you and drag your present behavior behind it in a line. And to be in line with this hope of someday being like Jesus, and that being the glory which we seek, and that we anticipate, that will determine how you behave today, how you relate with the people you live with, how you make decisions about your life.

And it did with them. Now we're going to stop there, and we'll pick up chapter 1 again next time. For more information visit www.FEMA.gov