Captivated BY Christ- Part 1
Notes
Transcript
The Gospel of Christ
The Gospel of Christ
Have you ever Received mail and you didn’t quite know where is had come from? Most of time it is a flyer for a chance to win a car by matching tree of the same symbols, or it is an advertisement for cheaper car insurance, or maybe even a deal that a local pizza joint is doing.
This is what has happened to the Colossian Church, except this wasn’t just another form of Junk Mail. This letter that they have received was important. It was so important that it was to read aloud for all to hear, and to be deeply looked at and poured over. it was to be study, and this letter begins with:
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
One-thing we know is that Paul had never met any of these Colossian Christians. Paul had never preached to these Christians. the only way that Paul knew of they and their new found faith, was through others, like a guy named Epaphras, who had actually preached the Gospel to them.
When we look at Paul the author of this letter there are a few things that stand out. First Paul was an Apostle, which simply means “sent one”- of Jesus Christ, and whom Jesus had chosen to be His ambassador.
Second Paul wasn’t like the other 12 Apostles, who were sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel message to the Jews. Paul was chosen to be God’s ambassador to the Gentiles. This meant Paul was called to go tot he nations and proclaim the gospel. He was chosen to bring this momentous new of Jesus to “the ends of the earth.”
We also know that the risen savior Jesus, sent Paul out as the suffering apostles to the nations. Paul identifies this in this very book when he writes,
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,
Paul was sent to suffer and “struggle” for all of God’s people even those he had never met face to face.
So here we have Paul one sent out as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, here personally writing to this Colossian Church and He begins by addressing them:
To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
This word “saint” is an important word when it come to the spreading of the gospel. It was this very word that was generally reserved for the Jewish Christians such as in other New testament letters like 1 Peter, and Ephesians, and it sometimes broadened out to include Gentile Christians.
Lionel Windsor wrote capturing a key nuance: “The Saints” in Ephesians doesn’t just mean “Jewish Christians”, and it doesn’t mean “all Christians.” That is too static. The phrase “the saints” is used to make a point about the dynamic movement of holiness from Israel to the nations through the gospel of Christ. So “the saints” are firstly the early Jewish apostolic community, and then all those who believe in Christ- and this dynamic movement matters
This “dynamic movement of Holiness” captures the meaning here in Paul’s greeting. “The Saints” include those Jewish believers and the Gentile. Both of these groups of people are united in this holy status.
The Key idea: is their holy status before God
Gospel-shaped lives: Faith, love and hope
We are left with the question of why Paul is writing to these people that he had never met? Well Paul goes on in his letter to express his gratitude for the Colossians gospel-shaped lives:
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,
Paul had heard of their Gospel Shaped lives: Faith, Love and hope.
When see here these three words together at least my mind thinks of the love chapter in 1 Cor.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
These three things cause Paul to be thankful and express this thankfulness to people he had never met.
The Colossian believers had faith in jesus, which means that they trusted Jesus as Christ, the King of all Kings. These believers depended on Jesus as the “Pulsating centre of their lives”- Richard Chin writes.
What does this mean? It means Paul was rejoicing because they had trusted Jesus, Not caesar, as their ultimate King. In doing this the Colossian believers had derived their identity, their value and their status not from any worldly authority, but from Jesus Christ.
A question for us for think about is “
What ‘authority’ do we look to or trust for our identity? Where do we place our faith in our government to identify as citizens or in our employment as to identify as employees, or in our friendship circle to identify as