Colossians 1:9-10 GROW

Read 1:9-14

I’ve used this illustration before. At my old best friends house in AZ. I remember down his hallway were all the portraits of him from Kindergarten to 12th grade.

Then at the end was 13 wallet size pictures from all those different years to where you could really see the progression of his growth as the years past by.

Suppose that we took a spiritual picture of you over the last 12 years. And those photo’s were preserved.

Would we see a regular advance in the Christian life? Would some still be in the incubator?

This is a great place to reflect. Some grow for a while and fall back to babyhood. Some grow for a while and then dwarf!

When a person is growing in Christ he will elevate Christ’s lordship in his or her life.

They will talk less of what they are doing, they become smaller and smaller in their own esteem, until like the morning star, they just fade away before the rising sun.

In the Greek text, vv. 9–14 is a single complex sentence that may usefully be broken down into three main parts.

There is (1) Paul’s assertion of regular prayer on behalf of the Colossians along with the basic content of that prayer: knowledge of God’s will and the manifestation of that knowledge in a lifestyle pleasing to God (vv. 9–10a);

(2) a further description of what this lifestyle looks like, employing (in the Greek) four participles: “bearing fruit,” “growing,” “being empowered,” and “giving thanks” (vv. 10b–12a); and

(3) a rehearsal of the deliverance from sin provided to the readers by God the Father through the Son (vv. 12b–14).