Thanking God for the hope of the gospel

Colossians 1:3-8

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 increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7 just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf 8 and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

(ESV)

[Follow this link for the Order of Worship with embedded videos of the recommended songs that accompany this study.]

[Pray for God’s help as we read, discuss, and meditate on Scripture today. Read Colossians 1:3-8 out loud to each other, perhaps several times, taking turns.]

Observation and Exposition

In most of Paul’s New Testament letters he begins with a prayer, or rather he tells his readers what he is praying for. These prayers can be very helpful to us in learning how to pray and what we should be praying for.

If you were to take a few minutes and page through Paul’s letters, doing a quick survey of his prayers, you’d see that in nearly every opening prayer he is thanking God for something, and that something is usually related to his readers. Paul’s prayer here in his letter to the Colossians is a perfect example of this.

1. Whom does Paul thank?
2. How often is he thankful?
3. What is he thankful for?
4. Why is he thankful to God for the Colossians’ faith in Christ and their love for all the saints?

If you’ve been reading or memorizing Colossians over the past weeks or months you’ve probably noticed that thankfulness is a major theme of this short letter. Variations of the word occur in these passages: 1:3, 12; 2:6-7; 3:15-17; and 4:2. Take a few moments to read those passages and see what Paul is thanking God for, or what he is instructing his readers to be thankful for.

Something I’ve been hearing a lot lately is the idea of being grateful, or of having gratitude. But in most of those cases there is no mention of who the person is grateful to, and sometimes they do not even say what they are grateful for. Rather, a feeling of general gratitude is the end goal. An example of this is a documentary that Amy and I watched this weekend about backcountry snowboarding. One of the featured snowboarders said towards the end of the film: “I feel so much gratitude that this place exists.”

It seems to me that cultivating a feeling of gratitude, or being grateful, without consciously directing that gratitude to or acknowledging someone, and specifically the God of the Bible, is an example of practical atheism. I first heard that term from John Piper when he described watching a man from a distance who was walking along a road, drinking a beverage. When the man was finished with his drink, he looked around in several directions to see if anyone was watching, then threw the container in the ditch. What the man failed to do was look up and see or wonder if God was watching, which of course he was and is. Piper’s point was that we so often forget about God and his involvement in our everyday lives.

So let’s apply this to the snowboarder I mentioned earlier. For him to feel gratitude that the place where he was visiting exists without expressing that gratitude to God for creating and sustaining that place, and without thanking God for allowing the snowboarder to have the means to see and experience that place, he was being a practical atheist. If this person was not a Christian, and I don’t think that he was, then he was acting or thinking in character with who he is. But how often do we as followers of Christ do the very same thing? How about the weather? Ever complain about that? How about COVID-19 and what it’s doing to our world? Or rather what our world is doing to itself because of COVID-19?

What do you think? Am I right or wrong with what I’ve said about general feelings of gratitude and practical atheism?

Back to Colossians. Paul is thankful to God that the Colossian believers have faith, love, and hope.

1. Faith by itself? Or faith in a person? I had a conversation once with a woman who kept saying that we just needed to have faith. I tried to help her understand that faith by itself wasn’t enough; she needed to put her faith specifically in Jesus. I’m not sure if she ever agreed.
2. A general feeling of love? Or love for someone specifically? And here’s a thought: when Paul says, “love for all the saints” is he thinking of just the overall group of believers? Or of the individual people who make up that group? There is a difference.
3. And a general feeling of hope? Or hope in something that has been specifically promised?
4. Paul doesn’t say in this sentence what that promise is, but he does begin to unpack it here and through the rest of chapter one. Based on this verse (1:5) and 1:23, where did the Colossians hear about this hope?
5. In 1:27, Paul tells them what that hope is. What is it?
6. Back to our passage for today, look at the relationship of these three virtues – faith, love, and hope – to each other. Is one of them the basis or foundation for the other two?

In 1:5 Paul tells the Colossians that they have heard about the hope that they have in the gospel, and the gospel then becomes the focus of the rest of the paragraph.

1. In verse five how does Paul describe the gospel?
2. The word translated “word” can also be understood as “message,” as something that is communicated from one person to another. In this case, what is being communicated?
3. Ponder that for a few moments (at least). The gospel is a message about the truth – God’s truth. Think back to when we were meeting at the Young Center and our sermon series in Titus. In fact, turn there now, to Titus 1:2. What does Paul say motivates him in his apostolic ministry? That’s right, hope, and not merely hope but “hope of eternal life,” which I understand as what he means at least partially by “hope of glory” in Colossians 1:27. But back to my point: what does Paul say in Titus 1:2 about God? Yeah, God never lies, and he makes promises. And if God never lies then he will undoubtedly keep those promises, and we can fully hope in those promises. The gospel, the good news, is a message from God that is true, and in that true message we can hope without doubt, knowing that someday our hope will be fulfilled.
4. What does Paul say about the spread or expansion of the gospel? It has come to the believers in Colossae, which is how they became believers in the first place, but then he says that it is “in the whole world.” What does he mean by “the whole world?” Has everyone in the world heard the gospel by this point?
5. What is the gospel doing in Colossae and everywhere else in the world that it is being proclaimed? What does Paul mean by “bearing fruit and increasing?” Is he referring to more and more unbelievers hearing the gospel and then placing their faith in Christ Jesus? Probably, but is there more to it than that? Paul says that the gospel is still bearing fruit and increasing among the Colossians, “since the day” they heard the gospel. This is important: hearing and believing the gospel is not merely how someone is saved. What Paul is saying here is that the gospel continues to bear fruit and increase in people who are already saved. Christians need to keep hearing, reading, preaching, teaching, pondering, learning, and understanding the gospel. We never grow beyond the gospel. This will become more clear, I think, as we move through Colossians. Paul doesn’t merely tell his readers how to live. He tells them how to live because of who they are in Christ, because of what God has done and is doing for them in Christ. He wants them to know, understand, and believe the truth of the gospel so that their lives will change and so that they will make progress in sanctification, in becoming more holy and more like Christ. To put it simply, he wants his readers to become who they already are. But the converse is also true. Paul doesn’t merely communicate biblical truth, theology, and doctrine for the sake of knowledge. That knowledge should result in changed lives. Our behavior is based on our beliefs. Want to know what someone believes? Watch how they live.
6. What about you? Is the way you are living, acting, behaving, speaking, thinking, and interacting with other people reflecting your belief in Christ? Or is it showing something else? Stressful times and seasons such as what we are currently going through with the coronavirus pandemic can expose what our theology, what we believe about God, really looks like. Does your theology need a recalibration? Are you spending enough time reading, pondering, and praying through the Bible? Are you making an effort to feed your soul?
7. Look again at how Paul describes their reception of the gospel. They heard it, and in this case we know that they heard it from Epaphras. But more than hearing it, they understood it. It was communicated in such a way that they could understand it, and they used their brains to think through what was being communicated so that they did understand it, with the help of the Holy Spirit. And they learned it, as it was taught to them by Epaphras.
8. Paul then tells them and us about Epaphras. How does he describe Epaphras? “Fellow servant” in the ESV is one word in the Greek, and it is literally “fellow-slave.” Modern English versions of the Bible tend to not like the word “slave” so they usually render it as “servant.” But that makes the next phrase a little tricky, since it literally reads: “He is a faithful servant of Christ on your behalf.” But if the translator has already used the word “servant” what do they do with the Greek word “servant?” They use the word “minister.” At some point in our past, “minister” became a title in our culture, and it was a title that came with social respect, though this is changing as our culture becomes more and more post-Christian, or even anti-Christian. That’s probably a good thing, as it may restore the word “minister” to what it really means: “a servant,” and in this case a servant of Christ, who works on behalf of others.
9. Finally, what had Epaphras done? He told Paul, and Timothy, about the love that the Colossian believers had, for all the saints, in or through or because of the Holy Spirit. A love based on the hope laid up for them in heaven, the hope of glory and eternal life, because Christ was in them and they were in Christ, and promised to them by God the Father, who never lies and always keeps his promises.

Closing thoughts

To close, follow Paul’s example in Colossians, and thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for your faith in Christ Jesus, your love for all the saints, and for the hope that you have stored up in heaven. Then expand on that, thanking God that he is doing all these things in our church, and in all Christian churches throughout the world.

And yes, you could even thank him for the coronavirus and what he is doing in the world and in you through this challenging time. The coronavirus is not the end of the world, but even if it is, you, Christian, have a hope safely kept in heaven, where neither moth, rust, nor viruses will ever destroy.