COLOSSIANS 1:3-8
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people—5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel6 that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant,[ who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf,8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
COLOSSIANS 1:3-7 WHAT DO WE DO WITH GOD’S GRACE?
Springford Baptist Church: July 3, 2022.
Our overall theme for this year is to explore “KNOWING GOD”. This is a crucial pursuit as we encounter the Living God and recognize that knowing God does not stop there. Our knowing God and Who God is and how He wants to be in relationship with us, has to affect our everyday lives. It is absolutely right to expect that knowing more and more of God will change us.
Throughout these summer months, we are going to study together the New Testament Book of Colossians. We will trust that God will guide us as we consider what we can learn about knowing God and having that impact our lives.
Our question that we pray God will help us to answer is, “HOW DOES KNOWING GOD CHANGE OUR LIVES”?
This letter of Paul to the church in Colosse is initiated because a man named Epaphras becomes a Christian during Paul’s 3 year ministry in Ephesus. Epaphras then carries the gospel, the good news of Jesus to Colosse. A church forms, but has some challenges because people do not hold tightly to the truth. Then Epaphras goes to visit Paul in Rome to express his concern about the straying from the truth of KNOWING GOD that is evident in Colosse. Paul writes this letter that we call Colossians to address this concern.
Paul writes to them in an attempt to restore Jesus, the Messiah to the center of their lives. We today will challenge ourselves to ensure that Jesus remains at the center of our lives.
How can anyone of us who hears the full story of Jesus as the One sent to reveal God to us, not be confronted with the compelling challenge to have every aspect of our lives reflect that we truly do know God?
Our examination of Colossians 1:3-7 draws us to wonder aloud, WHAT DO WE DO WITH GOD’S GRACE”? How will the truth of God’s grace at work impact our lives and the lives of those around us? How will people in our country of Canada be impacted by God’s grace expressed through us.
I was having a conversation with someone recently who was wanting to restore and rebuild relationship with his wife after some of his decisions had caused her hurt. I spoke with him about the need for both of them to extend grace to each other in order to move forward. Only God can supply that kind of grace.
When we have received God’s grace, we have responsibility to examine closely how as recipients of God’s grace, our lives will be transformed.
Paul writes in Colossians 1:3,4: 3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people—Do you think that people thank God for you when they pray? And if they do, what is the motivation for their thanks? Our receiving of God’s grace is meant to be apparent by what people will witness in our lives. If our faith in Jesus and the love we have for all God’s people is evident then we have been finding out what we are to do with God’s grace.
When someone has a remarkable gift, but no one else knows about it and it appears to have made no changes in that person’s life, what is the point?
God’s grace changed this man Epaphras. When he realized for himself Who is Jesus, God’s Son, he wanted others to encounter Jesus too.
He did not simply know God, he also made God known.
Of all the things that we share willingly, the most important is Jesus and our faith in Him.
What then will our experience of receiving God’s grace lead us to do?
In today’s Scripture we further read, “ 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel6 that has come to you.” (Colossians 1:5,6a)
I like this image of faith and love springing from their hope stored up in heaven. It reminds me of plants that spring up and grow to healthy maturity. There is a vigor to healthy plants and having God’s grace planted in our hearts should give us a healthy vigor as followers of Jesus. There are various ways that faith and love will spring from the hope we have stored up in heaven for us.
When we are ill or dealing with the illness of someone we love, we will have a perspective of hope that is only possible because we know God and have received His grace.
When we face challenges and cannot imagine what to do, we can hold on to our hope stored up in heaven for us.
Look at Colossians 1:6b,7 In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.
This verses are very appropriate for us to consider together on this Canada Day weekend. We live in a country and in a time and place where we have had opportunity to know God through the good news of His Son Jesus. This is a treasure not just to keep for ourselves. Among early Christians, the gospel was bearing fruit and it kept spreading and growing throughout the whole world.
When we have truly understood God’s grace because of our personal experience of knowing God and receiving God’s grace, then clearly the responsibility is ours to ensure that others are able to know Him too.
Faith in God and having opportunity to know God is not something to keep quiet about. Our true understanding of God’s grace compels us to make God known and to share generously the grace that we have received from Him.
We recall the Scripture from John 3:16 that “God so loved the world (not just Canada, the whole world) that He gave His Son
that whoever believes in Him can have everlasting life.”
We will remember this grace filled gift of God as we share together now in Communion.
God can renew our faith in Him as we gather for Communion and this can be a time to also reflect on God’s grace as we remember Jesus and what He has done for us.
We need God’s grace in all of our human relationships and as we seek to demonstrate “love in the Spirit” that is referred to in Colossians 1:8
When we pray and seek God, He can show us what to do with God’s grace. We can be sure that lives transformed by God’s grace will result in God working to transform our communities, our country of Canada, and our world!
May that be so!!