The Grace of God in Truth | Part 1
Download MP3The reading tonight is from Colossians 1:1 through 20. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossi. Grace to you and peace from God our father. We always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, Of this, you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world.
Speaker 1:It is bearing fruit and growing. As it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your your love in the spirit. And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might.
Speaker 1:For all endurance and patience with joy. Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.
Speaker 1:Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together and he is the head of all the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile himself to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. This is the word of the Lord.
Collin Hansen:Let's pray. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you that, we can come together and hear from you tonight. That in hearing from your word, that you confront us with who you are. You don't leave us just to our own imaginations, our own affections, our own desires, but that you give us your spirit and your word to lead us to truth and not error.
Collin Hansen:That we might hope in Christ and delight in him. And so in this time, Lord, I ask that you would confront us with your truth. That you would challenge and change us to be more like your son, our savior. And we pray all these things in his name and for his name. Amen.
Collin Hansen:So if I asked you to, think of a chair, first you'd probably think of the one that you're sitting in right now, which is a very nice chair. But, if I asked you to think of a chair, you might think of the chair that you sit in at work or your favorite recliner at home. You can think of a chair somewhere somehow, and and you would probably be thinking of lots of different chairs. Okay. Now this is what Plato would call chair ness.
Collin Hansen:Alright? So you're thinking of a chair, and he would say that that chair is but a shadow. There is the ultimate chair, the form up there somewhere. There is the chair, like capital c chair, and you can just conceive of the shadow that is chairness, chair like. It is a weak shadow of a chair.
Collin Hansen:Okay. Now, if I asked you to imagine Jesus. Now you might go back to Sunday school class and, like, you know, felt bored Jesus, and he's, you know, standing there and with his awesome hair and his righteous beard and and all those things. And or maybe you think of oil painting Jesus, and, and and so he's, like, nice and proper, and he somehow found a really good comb out out there. And and so he looks, you know, nice and put together, or maybe business Jesus, like, with a with a casual polo.
Collin Hansen:But but you can imagine, like, some some Jesus in your mind. Right? Or maybe, you know, you just go for, maybe it's baby Jesus that you think of or Jesus singing, lead for Leonard Lynyrd Skynyrd with angel wings in front of his angel band. No? You don't go that?
Collin Hansen:Okay. So you can conceive this image of Jesus. Now moving away from just what he might look like, what do you think about him? Is he loving? Is he kind?
Collin Hansen:Is he angry? Is he out to get you? Is he a moral man that's just worthy of emulation? Is he a good figure for your kids to learn about? Because maybe he will help them stay in some bounds of morality.
Collin Hansen:Who is this Jesus that you think of? You see, there is an ultimate Jesus. Like, there is Jesus, capital j, Jesus. And we can all con we can conceive and we can imagine these personal Jesus, Jesus ish, Jesus like, But there is an ultimate Jesus that we don't get to just kind of put together based upon our affections or ideas of what we would like Jesus to be like. There's a fixed Jesus.
Collin Hansen:And so really something that that is worthy of our consideration is if this Jesus that we can conceive of in our minds matches up with this real Jesus. And the way that we do that, the where we go to even think like that is God's word. You see, when we when we hold up this Jesus that we can conceive of in our minds with the Jesus of the scriptures, then then we're no longer just hoping in or thinking of an imaginary Jesus, but the true Christ of the scriptures. Now in Colossae, which is about 10 miles or so from Laodicea and a 100 miles from Ephesus, Colossae used to be a really bustling town, like, a lot of money there. And and in some history where it mentions Colossae, they were talked about as being pretty wealthy.
Collin Hansen:But then things changed. Really, more specifically, the roads changed. And often, you know, if if if you were talking about a city that was on a on a river, a river city, you know, back, you know, in in the early days of America. If you were a river city, a lot of commerce happening. So city just boom town.
Collin Hansen:Or where the railroad was, and then where the highway was, and then where the airport so they keep it keeps changing similar to that with Colossae. Things change. The roads change, and so it kind of becomes a small town, the small city. And it's not really something at that time that they would have thought of as a city that is going to have a letter written to it that's going to be read for centuries and centuries by millions and millions and millions of people. They wouldn't think of that.
Collin Hansen:But a letter was written to them by Paul. The gospel had gone out to this area and it had been fruitful. Believers had heard about it, and then they took the gospel to this city and a church was started. And after some time, some confusion set in. There were people there.
Collin Hansen:It might have been 1 individual or a couple of people, came in and they were false teachers. They had a false gospel. It was Jesus plus something. Jesus nuanced a bit. An imaginary Jesus is talked about, And so there was confusion, and Paul writes concerning this confusion.
Collin Hansen:Now that wasn't the the only reason that he wrote this letter. He wrote to encourage them, to encourage them in the faith, but he also addresses at different points the problem of these false teachers. People were starting to turn away from the true gospel, the Jesus of the scriptures, to a false imaginary Jesus. And one of the ways that that you we can kind of understand maybe what some of the controversy was, some of the fiction that was being put out there, is the is this introduction where where he he starts to address these people by saying that he thanks God for their faith. Ever ever since he's heard about them and heard that there were believers in Colossae, he has been praying with thanksgiving to the lord that there are believers there.
Collin Hansen:And so he goes through all of this, and he begins with this thanksgiving and thanking God for them. And he says in verse 6, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. He's delighting that the gospel went out, that the gospel was fruitful, that the spirit was moving and illuminating and revealing truth to these people, that they believed it, that they were being transformed. But there is this problem, this nagging problem. And so really, what we're going to focus in, in this in this large introduction here in chapter 1, we're going to look at 15 through 20, because in that point, Paul digresses as he always does.
Collin Hansen:I mean, one one of the, thorn in the side, pardon the pun, but a thorn in the side of a lot of people that read Paul is that he, he would always digress. And I I have a particular affection for this because I do that. Like, my notes are are ridiculous tonight, because I I get a thought, and then I go over here. And then I get a thought, and I end up over here. And Paul does that, and I imagine him pacing as they're doing their best to keep up with everything that he's saying and writing it all out.
Collin Hansen:And one place that Paul does this really often is when he talks about Jesus. When he gets to what Jesus has done, what Jesus accomplished on the cross, he goes off, and when he has heard that this gospel has gone out, these people have believed, and then people are leading them astray, Paul gets fired up, especially when it comes to muddling the view of Jesus. See, a part of this false teaching was probably that, they were saying that there are a lot of different beings, angels, and whatever that that could mediate between God and man, and that Jesus was just one of the many mediators. So you could, you could put your hope in Jesus or you could have another mediator, some other angel that you could hope in. And when Paul hears about this, he gets fired up, but he does this.
Collin Hansen:His re he responds to this in a really unique way. He doesn't say, I've heard people have been teaching this, and so let me show you all the ways that that does not work out. He does he does something really interesting, and I think that it's really important for us to pick up on this principle of how he fights the fiction. Because in today's church, there's fiction out there. Books are released.
Collin Hansen:Videos are released, and fiction goes out. Confusion goes out. And we can learn a lot from how Paul handles it here. He digresses. Look at verse 11.
Collin Hansen:You can kind of see how it leads into this digression. May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might. For all endurance and patience, with joy, giving thanks to the father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He, the father, has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom the son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And this is where Paul takes off.
Collin Hansen:I mean, you get him started talking about the forgiveness of sins and the work of Christ to actually accomplish that to happen. He goes off. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him.
Collin Hansen:Rulers and authorities. Paul is probably in prison at the writing of this letter, and here he acknowledges that all of these rulers, all of these authorities, all of these things seen and unseen, everything in heaven, everything on earth was created through him and by him and for him. In these 5 verses, 5 through 20, Paul uses the word all 7 times. Essentially, he's saying the same thing over and over and over again. All things in creation, all things by him, through him, for him.
Collin Hansen:He's before all things. In him, all things hold together. Verse 15, the sun is the image of the invisible God. Later, he repeats this idea in verse 19. For in him, all the fullness of god was pleased to dwell.
Collin Hansen:This echoes, the writer of Hebrews, at the beginning of chapter 1 verse 3. He is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. John writes in his gospel, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory as the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. The son is the glory of God.
Collin Hansen:The glory of God in Christ Jesus. We talked about this during Advent. When we looked at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 5 says this, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. The glory of God, the manifestation of his holiness. He is the image of the invisible God.
Collin Hansen:See, this this was the kind of talk that really got Jesus in trouble. You know, when he would identify himself with the father, when he would say things like, if you have seen me, you have seen the father. See, this is an issue of divinity. This is an issue of the relationship within the triune God, father, son, and spirit. And Paul starts off in going after this false teaching by lifting up the name of Christ.
Collin Hansen:Not just getting into petty arguments or blog posts back and forth or he's not just going to tweet something frivolous. He's going to go after it and say, if you're going to go after Jesus, I'm going to lift him up. And in doing so, in focusing upon Christ himself, these other things come into focus. In him, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. He is the image of the invisible father.
Collin Hansen:Not only did he exist though before all things, all creation, which means no angels, no animals, no man, no earth, nor what's in the earth, no nothing in heaven. None of these things existed before him. He's the firstborn of all creation. And as we, you know, study throughout Genesis, being firstborn has a lot of meaning to it. He is the firstborn of all creation.
Collin Hansen:But not only did he exist before all of those things, but all things were created in heaven and earth by him. Let that soak in. All things in all of creation, created by Jesus. Through him and for him. The pastor and theologian, Martin Lloyd Jones, when he was asked about this question of, what does it mean that everything was created by Jesus and through Jesus and for Jesus?
Collin Hansen:Like, what is that ultimately, what does that mean? He said this. Don't ask me to explain it. All I know is that when the father came to create, he did it through his son. When there was nothing and when the father decided to create, he said to the son, I'm going to do all of this through you.
Collin Hansen:I confess that I don't know exactly. I have read everybody. I can read on it, and they don't know either. But this this is what it means to yield to the truth of the scriptures. Not just to go with our affections, and try to to fill in the blanks, and and make something up that's more more acceptable in our culture or in our church or in our hearts and our own minds, for a personal Jesus, ultimately a fictional Jesus.
Collin Hansen:No, we we go to God's word And in doing so, we marvel. We strive to conceive of such an idea that God the father would create all of these things by, through, and for the sun. It's hard to conceive such an idea. But Lloyd Jones said this, that is the trouble with all of us who are Christians. We do not realize the things we ought.
Collin Hansen:The things are so stupendous, so majestic, so immense that we cannot rise to it. Our minds boggle. Our imaginations are utterly defeated. But we must try. Try.
Collin Hansen:We try to wonder, to delight, to get lost in the greatness of God. And we were when we are lost in his greatness, his majesty, lost in the wonder of his glory, that is worship. All things created by him, through him, and for him. For him. All things exist for the purpose of him.
Collin Hansen:All creation was created and is held together now in this moment for him. This echoes Paul in his letter to the Romans, when he said this in chapter 11 verse 36, for from him and through him and to him are all things. These words in in their original Greek and also in English are so simple. These little small words. Essentially, the verse just says from him, through him, to him, all.
Collin Hansen:I mean, do do you pick up on how profound that is? I mean, how huge that is that that all of these things around us from the giant corporations to your children, to your job, to to your spouse, to your home, that all these things have existence for him? Not you? These are hard truths to to to even begin to imagine, To begin to understand, but we must try. And that these things are held together in him.
Collin Hansen:I started reading, because quantum physics, like, fascinates me, but it fascinates me, like, you know, when I see someone that's that's, very muscular, I look at it and say, like, I bet that's hard. And that's kind of it. Like, that's that's as deep as I'm willing to go. Like, I don't really I don't really need to know how you you work out or, like, what your routine is or what your diet I really don't care about your diet, Any of those things. I don't care.
Collin Hansen:But but I'll be like, hey. Like, way to go. Way to go on that whole exercise thing. But the same thing with quantum physics. Like, it's it's fascinating.
Collin Hansen:It's wild. It's crazy. Like, the the non locality like where you can take these particles, these quantum particles, and and you can create distance between them and through entanglement and these other big words, like, you can do something to a particle in one place and it makes a difference in the particle somewhere else. After I read that, I blacked out for a while, and when I woke up, I really didn't care that much anymore. But it's, I mean, just fascinating things, like, on these small tiny levels that that the way things are held together, like, the the most that we can zoom in and look in to how the very particles of our being are held together, and ultimately the answer to that is Christ.
Collin Hansen:That changes things, and it should change you. He is before all things. He is above all things. Above all things or towering over is actually kind of a classical definition of preeminent, that Jesus towers above everything. Usually, when the word preeminent is used, it's like with a scholar, you know, preeminent in some field, Paul qualifies it by saying everything.
Collin Hansen:Preeminent in everything, all. He is before all things. One of the things that's particularly mentioned here is that he is over the church. Paul is saying that your little church in the little city that you live in, Jesus is head over that. Now he's head over all of the church, but but don't forget that even though there might be these false teachers causing a stir, getting some attention, taking up your time, tossing you to and fro in false doctrine.
Collin Hansen:Christ is head of that church. Christ is over you. He is over you because he is over all things. He is preeminent in everything. This means that the existence and the being of all is rooted in the purpose of God's greatness.
Collin Hansen:In all, he is preeminent. These are very packed verses, if you if you haven't noticed. I mean, we we went through where we were trucking through like 30 verses of Genesis, And here we are with with 5 verses so complex, so profound, like, that we could spend this entire 4 week study in Colossians over just a few words. And then he gets into one more point in his digression. Look at verse 20.
Collin Hansen:It says, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. This assumes something that we need peace. See, he's saying that that Christ is reconciling all things to himself in heaven and on earth. He is making peace by the blood. Peace by the blood of his cross.
Collin Hansen:But do we need peace? And if so, why? You see, we don't just move past these things and think of this gift of peace being like, you know, a gift from a relative at Christmas. You know, like the distant relative. You didn't ask for it.
Collin Hansen:You don't really want it, but you're just gonna say thanks for it. I got one of those, like, mock turtleneck things as a kid, you know, like the where's the rest of my turtleneck turtlenecks? Yeah. I got that from a relative. Thank you.
Collin Hansen:It's the thing that you don't need, don't want, didn't ask for, but thanks. That's not what this peace is. This peace is necessary. This reconciliation is necessary, and it's a reconciliation between us and the father. That is the need for peace.
Collin Hansen:Back in Romans, Paul writes of this need for reconciliation and peace. Chapter 5 verse 104, if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, Much more, now that we are reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Enemies. You know, the the peace, we can assume that there is conflict and that conflict has to be resolved. In lifting high the name of Christ, in Paul going after this false teaching by proclaiming the preeminence of Jesus, he gets after what's at the heart of this.
Collin Hansen:That we stand reconciled to god because of the blood of the cross, the atonement purchased for us, that we might have peace with God. We cannot go on with our personally defined Jesus, our preferred ideas of Jesus. We have to see Jesus as he is in his word. It's appealing, I know, to design our own way, what works for us. A Jesus that we can kind of fine tune a couple of things, but that's not what we have in the scripture.
Collin Hansen:And you can even here's a here's a caution. You can have a sense of peace about your imaginary Jesus. I've talked to a lot of people that have been at peace when they are in the midst in the thick of outright sin. You know, but I I just I have a peace about it. Right.
Collin Hansen:That's part of the deception. That that's part of the deceit of sin is that you feel a peace about it. You feel okay. And we can do that with our imaginary Jesus. This is why we must yield to the spirit and the word.
Collin Hansen:The son who gives all things existence gave us peace by his blood, that in all things he might be preeminent. Now we do not make Jesus preeminent. We recognize that he is preeminent. Faith in Christ is not just a game of doctrinal Jenga, where we just stack up over time and just hope that nothing comes in and knocks it all down. No.
Collin Hansen:The truth of scripture is a reality that we are awakening to through revelation. This is a reality that we can neglect, and we will get tossed around. As Paul says in a letter to a church that's just a 100 miles away, he says this to the Ephesians, we grow that we might no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. We can neglect the truth, and we can suffer the consequences of not living in light of the truth, but our neglect does not change the truth. He is preeminent.
Collin Hansen:He is towering above all things and he is reconciling all things. This is what Martin Lloyd Jones called, the great remaking is coming. And so we don't have to hold on to these imaginary images, these imaginary thoughts of Jesus. We can come to the truth. We can see him in all of his greatness, and we can worship our triune God, father, son, and spirit, In light of the truth, and not just to the delight of our intellect or our affections.
Collin Hansen:We can lift high the name of Christ. The truth of God doesn't exist simply to be agreed upon. The truth of God exists to remake us. You are a part of the all things created by Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus. You are a part of the all things that Jesus has reconciled and is remaking.
Collin Hansen:Delight in this truth. Declare this truth. Hope in this truth, and believe in the grace of God in truth. This is the gospel, and this is why Paul was so eager to digress. Let's pray.
Collin Hansen:Lord, again, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you that through the spirit we can know truth, and that in that truth we wouldn't just gain intellect, we wouldn't just gain knowledge, but that we would know you. Lord, protect us from trying to just grow in our intellect. But teach us what it means to know you as father, son, and spirit. Teach us what it means That all that is around us is for you.
Collin Hansen:That we would live lives that would call to the truth that Christ towers above everything. That he would be preeminent in our priorities. In the way that we spend our time, our resources, our attention, our affections, our intellect. That in all things, we would live in the truth that he is preeminent. And that when confusion comes, we would fight fiction by lifting high the name of Christ.
Collin Hansen:For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
