Colossians 1:12 - Reasons for Giving Thanks

INTRODUCTION

Please open your Bibles with me to the first chapter of Colossians.

We will be looking at verse 12 in this first chapter, but I will read verses 9-14 to remind us all of the context.

[READ COLOSSIANS 1:9-14]

If you look back to the beginning of this letter, you will find this is the second mention of giving thanks, and we aren’t even out of the first chapter.

Verse 3 says:

Colossians 1:3 “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,”

That was, if you remember, the prayer of Paul and Timothy (and Epaphras) on behalf of the Colossian believers in the church there.

In verse 12, our text today, we find a different purpose:

This giving of thanks is being done BY the church to God.

It is the third of the three things that characterize

“walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him”

The first one was bearing fruit in every good work.

The second was being strengthened by God to endure temptation and trials with joy.

And the third this morning is giving thanks to the Father.

There is never such a remedy for unbelief as gratitude.

True faith is thankful faith.

It is a faith that acknowledges the provision and good providence of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That is the great message here in this verse:

Pleasing God, walking in a worthy manner before Him, means having a thankful spirit.

Most believers have periods of time where they feel like their faith is thin.

You feel like you are filled with doubts or fears or other poisonous thoughts that make you feel like living the Christian life is a slog through hip-deep mud.

In those moments, when you recognize this new weakness,

Consider how grateful you have been to God of late.

Have your prayers overflowed with gratitude,

Or have they been exclusively prayers about the difficulties of life?

Have you applied your heart to thank God, recognizing His good works,

Or have you held bitterness that these latest trials have come upon you?

This is very much connected with verse 11, where Paul and Timothy prayed that the church, the believers in it,

Would be strengthened for all endurance and longsuffering with joy.

Joy is not the gift being asked for in this prayer:

Strength and power are the request.

The result is joy.

And it comes from a strong and grateful faith.

That is why so many of the Psalms bring us to thankfulness first:

Psalm 105:1 “Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples!”

Psalm 106:1 “Praise the Lord! Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!”

Psalm 107:1 “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!”

Psalm 75:1 “We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks, for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds.”

Do you find that it takes real effort to be really grateful?

We may say good things in our prayers like:

“We thank you for this day.”

“I thank you for my family.”

or “Thank you, God, for our food.”

And those are all good things.

But are we PRAYING them or just SAYING them?

Are you REALLY, actively grateful for these gracious gifts of God,

Or are you saying those things in that moment because you ought to?

Do you allow your heart to meditate on the gifts of grace God has given to you?

Do you sit for extended periods of uninterrupted time recalling the blessings God has given you?

And offering individual thanks for them?

Do you keep a list of things to be thankful for that is just as long (or longer) than the things you ask God for?

We teach our kids to be thankful by asking them, “What do you say?” when someone gives them a gift.

But do we realize as adults that this habit is simply the first step in living a life of gratitude?

Have we grown from the reflex of saying “Thank You” to the discipline of real, heartfelt gratitude?

Do your feelings well up when you consider the things you have been given?

Do you REALLY feel unworthy of the gift,

Or do you feel in some way entitled to those good gifts?

I think a lot of us have trouble with gratitude to God because deep in our heart we feel like it’s about time He blessed us.

We have been praying for so long;

Needing this for so long.

And He FINALLY provides.

Like a child receiving a belated birthday present and saying, “It’s about time!”

Have you ever had that feeling with God?

Or do the good gifts He has given you bring you constant amazement,

That He would lavish such good things on you, who is entirely undeserving?

We are His by GRACE, not our inherent goodness or worth.

That’s what Paul and Timothy are saying in our verse today:

giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you...

Qualified - made you acceptable, made you adequate, made you sufficient

What does that mean?

You and I were NOT acceptable, not adequate, and not sufficient in ourselves to come to Him.

We weren’t qualified in ourselves to be His;

He MADE us qualified to come to Him.

Like the priests in the temple:

Not every Jew was qualified to come into the holy of holies.

They had to be Levite.

Not every Levite was qualified to come into the holy of holies.

They had to be descendents of Aaron.

Not every descendent of Aaron was qualified to come into the holy of holies.

They had to be prepared, clothed in the holy garments of the priesthood.

Not everyone who wore the garments was qualified to come into the holy of holies.

Only the high priest was allowed to enter.

But the high priest wasn’t qualified to enter all the time.

He could enter only one day a year, bringing a blood offering for his sins first and a second one for the sins of the people.

But for those in Christ, not only Jews but Gentiles as well, every one of them has been qualified by God to enter His presence.

You, Christian, have been MADE worthy by God.

Not because He saw your great potential or your great effort;

But because of His abounding love and amazing grace.

If you don’t feel grateful for THAT, it may be because you feel like you in some way deserved His love.

That you had something special in you that caused God to look your way.

Beware that thought:

That is the steep slope that leads to the destruction that is ingratitude.

That is the cliff that leads you to feel entitled to His mercy.

And it makes for proud and petulant children,

Obnoxious to the world and odious to God.

You stand in as great a need for God’s grace and salvation as Adam and Eve after the Fall;

And you need to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ as surely as they were clothed in the skins of the first blood sacrifice.

Genesis 3:21 “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.”

They felt their complete nakedness before God;

And God clothed them.

In your sin, you stand just as exposed, naked, unprotected from His holy judgment;

Unless God has clothed you with the righteousness of Christ and caused you to believe Him.

You, who were incapable of believing and following the Lord Jesus Christ,

Have been made alive in Him.

So that rather than feeling yourself entitled to salvation,

You recognize the great gift God has given, and respond with obedient gratitude.

That is one of the concerns I have with our brothers and sisters in the faith who practice paedo-baptism;

That is, baptism of the children of believers who are too young to exercise and express faith in Jesus Christ.

And who have not done so.

They are baptized simply because of their fleshly relationship to a believer,

And they are baptized prior to the church being able to determine if they have faith in Christ or not.

You can see, I think, that a young person, having undergone as an infant a rite that was called baptism,

Might feel an entitlement toward salvation rather than a gratitude for it.

Now, that’s not the ONLY problem I have with infant baptism, but it’s one of them.

And even those who are baptized after a profession of faith are not immune from feeling somewhat entitled if they allow themselves.

It’s common for believers to think in terms of “us” and “them”;

But not realize it is our calling for US to go to THEM to bring those God has chosen into US.

It’s a common temptation to say in our prayers,

“I thank you I’m not like those sinners out there.”

Or to treat them with disdain rather than with gospel compassion.

Perish the thought of our own worthiness,

Whether from what we have done in the past or what we have the potential to do.

And let us praise and thank God who Himself qualified us, made us sufficient, to come to Him.

Because He has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

God has apportioned His creation into shares:

One share is for those who continue to rebel against Him,

Unheeding of the gospel and unrepentant of their sinful offense to Him.

That share, that portion, is His infinite wrath.

What our Lord describes as “everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

We also know it as hell - a place of eternal, unremitting torment.

And that is the share that EVERYONE who dies without Jesus Christ will inherit.

It is where the holiness and justice of God is poured out on those who lived in the rebellion they inherited from our first parents.

That is one share.

The other is the share He has prepared for His saints, His “Holy Ones”:

This is the share that receives the unremitting LOVE and mercy of God for all eternity.

A love that is just as fierce as His justice is terrible.

We call that inheritance “heaven”,

And it is glorious because our beloved Lord Jesus Christ is there.

So the apostles here say that God has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

How did He do that?

Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

These two shares above are not earned because one group is better than the other:

ALL have sinned and ALL fall short of the glory of God.

There is NONE who is righteous, none who does good.

The ones who are among the saints aren’t there because they had lesser sins,

Or fewer sins.

He didn’t look at this blessed group and declare:

“For you, sin isn’t so bad.”

He didn’t say, “I’ll put up with more from you than the others.”

Or “I like you more than them...”

The difference between the blessed group (those that are saved) and everyone else is that God took the sins of those people,

Placed them and the entirety of their guilt onto Jesus Christ,

And unleashed His infinite wrath onto that sin.

And when it was done, the price of that sin was paid in full.

No more wrath left in God toward those who are in Christ.

Those who are in this blessed group, those who are being saved,

Are those who have taken hold of that gift by faith,

Repenting of their sin and trusting in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation.

Those are the holy ones - the saints of God.

They are the ones who can cry out with cries of thanksgiving to God,

Realizing they have been saved in spite of their sin.

They have been called in spite of their unworthiness.

They have been cleansed in spite of their utterly ruined state before God.

They have been sought out by the Son of God.

They have been made alive by the Spirit of the Living God.

They have been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ.

They have been QUALIFIED by the Father to live in communion with Him forever

Because they are in Christ, and will remain in Christ for all eternity.

Does your heart rejoice at these things?

Consider in these next few minutes what God has done to bring you to Himself.

He didn’t NEED you.

He doesn’t NEED you now.

You NEED Him.

And before you came to Him in faith, you were among those who are perishing.

Try as you might, there was nothing you could do to save yourself.

It is only the abundant grace of God that brought you out of darkness into the light of His love.

It’s only the mercy of God that bought you out of slavery to sin into the freedom of His kingdom.

If you haven’t followed Jesus Christ in faith, consider where you are today.

What good will anything you have do you before the holy God who will judge you one day?

How will you stand when you are judged according to your offence toward His perfect standard?

If you have not followed Jesus Christ in faith, you do well to tremble in fear:

His judgment is terrible and His wrath knows no limit.

Your sins have offended the infinite, perfect God of all creation.

Not “the Man upstairs”

Not “the Big Guy”

The God who reigns over everything with righteousness and justice.

The God who demands perfection, and judges any shortcoming with terrifying wrath.

Your only hope is to come to Him trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ,

And the Father will give you His righteousness as He removes your sin and guilt and places it onto Christ.

Leave behind your sin;

Leave behind your live trapped in evil and selfish pursuits;

And come to Jesus Christ in faith.

If you are a believer, a follower of Jesus Christ, consider where you are today.

You, who were no better than any sinner you could find, have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

You have been saved from God’s wrath forever,

Every sin past, present, and future covered by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

You have been brought from darkness into the light of his glory.

You have been plucked from destruction and adopted into eternal life.

Find and apply a heart of gratitude for this astounding gift,

And let that thankfulness overflow for all the good things and perfect gifts the Father lavishes on you.