mystery

colossians 1:24-29

24 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, 25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. 27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

God is a mystery to most people. They don't know much about Him, and what they do know they either made up, or learned from someone else who didn't know much about Him. As Christians, we have had this mystery revealed to us. This should result with us talking to people about Jesus, telling them and showing them what He's like, being missionaries in our culture, trying to shed some light on the mystery of who God is and what He has done for people. You are a missionary in your family, your workplace, your circle of friends. Paul was toiling to do that, struggling with all the energy that God gave Him. How seriously do we take the task of moving people closer to Jesus?

the image of the invisible god

Colossians 1:15-23

¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶For 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. ¹⁷And hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by the blood of his cross. he is before all things, and in him all things making peace

 ²¹ And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, ²³ if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

A lot of people say they believe in God, but for most, the "god" they believe in is a vague higher power. This passage shows us that, if we want to see what God is like, we need to look at Jesus, He is the image of the invisible God, and the fullness of God dwells in Him. We do not worship an invisible force, we worship a person. Jesus. Paul goes onto to describe Jesus, telling us that everything was created by Him and for Him. You were created by Him and you were created for Him. He is above/before/in charge of all things - things we can see and things we can't, angels and demons, kings, governments and your boss at work. The solar system, the earth and your body are held together by Him. He is the head of the church, it doesn't belong to the church members or the minister, it belongs to Him.

We were enemies of God, alienated towards Him, but through His death on the cross, we can be reconciled to Him, restored to the relationship with Him that we were designed to have. Our evil deeds have been forgiven and we are holy and blameless before Him, not because of anything we've done but because of what He's done. We don't worship a distant, unknown God who may or may not be able to help us. We worship Jesus who has saved us.

prayer

colossians 1:9-14

 ⁹For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. ¹⁰And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. ¹³For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

My prayer life for others tends to focus on practical needs - a friend's illness, a colleague's financial situation, a family member's driving test. There's nothing wrong with praying about these things, in fact, we should be praying about these things. But if that's all we pray for, then the illness, recession and driving test will come and go and the person may be no closer to Jesus as a result. As well as the practical stuff, we need to be praying for others that they grow in knowledge, wisdom and understanding of God.

Paul prays for the Christians in Colossae that they would have more wisdom, understanding and knowledge of God, so that will affect the way they live their lives, which will increase their knowledge of God! This may seem like a circle, but it might be more helpful to think of it as a spiral of growth. The more we see and understand of God, the more we live like Him, and as we live more like Him, we see and understand more of who He is and what He's done. Our understanding of God and the way we live our lives are inseperable. There is no such thing as theoretical theology - it's all practical.

What exactly do we need to know about God? As v13-14 say, we need to understand that we were living in darkness, but He has brought us out of it, He has forgiven our sins, He has redeemed us. We were lost and we needed someone to find us. We were dying and we needed a Saviour. That's what He has done

Colossians 1 - growing

colossians 1:3-6:

3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world 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,

It's useful (and hard!) to think about whetther the gospel is growing and bearing fruit in our lives. Am I growing and maturing as a Christian? Can I see more of the fruit of the spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - in my life? The natural conclusion is to want to try harder - "I just need to try to be more patient" etc. But that is not how any sort of fruit is produced. An apple tree doesn't have to try to produce apples. As long as it's in the right conditions (soil, light, water), it will produce apples naturally.

It's the same idea for us. As long as we are in the right conditions, the fruit will appear naturally and, according to Paul in this passage, it's all about hearing and understanding the gospel. A lack of growth and fruit in our lives might indicate that we have forgotten, are not applying, or have never fully understood the gospel. We need to be reading about who God is and what He's done in the Bible,talking about it with other people, praying and asking God to reveal more of Himself to us. The gospel isn't something that we hear and understand when we become a Christian and then move on from as we mature in our faith, understanding the gospel is how we mature in our faith.

X Factor, karma... and Jesus!

The situation with Simon Cowell and "jedward" on the X Factor has been a bit of a talking point this weekend to say the least! Loads of people are outraged and I think the reason why they feel that way is because they perceive injustice - the better singers should progress in the singing competition, which obviously didn't happen. Our natural instinct tends think that good things should happen to good people, success should go to the most talented, or the most commited or the hardest workers. That is the idea of karma - what goes around comes around.

The thing is, that's not how the world works, and we see it every day, in far more serious ways than the X Factor. Bad things happen to seemingly good people. Solomon recognised it in Ecclesiastes 7:15 when he wrote, "In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness."

We think we want justice, we think we want karma, but if we got it, we'd all be in trouble. We can't even live up to the standards we think other people should follow. We are selfish and make decisions based on what is best for us. We turn our backs on God and go our own way, only looking back occasionally to complain that He hasn't done something we wanted Him to. Fortunately for us, Jesus lived the perfect life and died in our place, taking the judgement we deserve on himself , so that we can be shown God's mercy.