We are going to be continuing our series in the book of Colossians. We're going to start again in chapter 2. Our series titled "The Hope of Glory." We're now entering into the second chapter. If you don't have your Bibles with us, we'll project the text on the screen. If you do have your Bibles, bury those noses deep into that familiar text. Turn with me to Colossians 2. We're going to look specifically this morning at verses 6 and 7 of Colossians. But to set the context, I'm going to go back and read from the beginning of the chapter. So we'll, we'll recover the ground we touched on last week.
Hear God's holy and authoritative word. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face. That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ— Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Therefore, as ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him: rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as ye were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. The word of the Lord. May He write its truth upon our hearts.
Would you bow your heads with me? Lord, we echo Paul's words here this morning. We want to have our hearts knit together. We want to have our hearts encouraged. We want to know all the riches of full assurance of understanding the knowledge of God's mystery. Specifically, we want to know Christ Jesus. And so we come before you and call you Father because of Jesus. And so we come before you and call out to You, Father, asking for the great blessing of Your Spirit to be active and working in the preaching of Your Word. Grant us the full assurance of understanding and knowledge, the wisdom of the riches and treasure of Christ. Do that now for our joy. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, Colossians 2:6-7 is the key transitional hinge of the entire letter. It's been a long section building up to this. We've gone through an entire chapter plus the first 5 verses of chapter 2, but really, that's merely the opening of the epistle. Most commentators would regard that— that's actually the opening section of the letter. So it's a long opening. It's over a chapter long. But beginning in verse 6 now, The letter begins to turn to the actual body. And the opening words of verse 6 signal this for us. It says, "Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord." That's a crucial clause. It marks a shift of focus. Not that Paul's leaving behind what he said, but he's now focusing on something new standing on what he's previously said, if that makes sense. We're hearing that the summary of the opening chapter, that opening chapter's focus on Christ and His glorious Lordship over all of creation and Christ's glorious Lordship over all of redemption, the revelation of the mystery of God's culmination of human history in His Son, Jesus Christ. In verse 6, however, we sense immediately Paul is now calling us. To a response. He wants us to respond to the great and glorious truths he's detailed in the opening chapter. He calls his audience, he calls the Colossians and us this morning to a point of action. As you first believed in Christ, now you must continue to live in light of Christ. Amazingly, verse 6 is the first time we see an imperative verb in the letter. It's the first time Paul gives a direct command to his readers. He's gone through all those verses and it's the first time there's a call to directly respond to something. But we see the turn because now from this point on, there will be 29 other imperatives in the letter. So not a single command up to this point, and now starting in verse 6, 30 commands as we work our way towards the end. From 2:6 to 4:18, he'll lay out command after command detailing specifically how do we live in light of the gospel we first received and believed. Douglas Moo, a New Testament scholar, in his commentary on Colossians notes, "This is probably the clearest example of the way in the New Testament The indicative, what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, that's the indicative. What God does for us gives the foundation for the imperative, what God calls us to do.
This is a great— the New Testament does it time and again. New Testament gives us commands, right? But those commands are always tied to and rooted in the indicative. Do this. Why? Because of what God has already done for you. And we see that explicitly here in Colossians 2:6-7. The call to walk in Christ, to live a holy life worthy of the gospel, that's only possible through the benefits and the power of our union with Christ. But this also implies that those who have been united with Christ will now fight and claw and struggle and toil and work and strive with God's own power working in them to grow, to reflect Christ.
As the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs says it, "From Christ as from a fountain, sanctification flows into the souls of the saints. Their sanctification comes not so much from their struggling and endeavors and vows and resolutions as it comes flowing to them from their union with Him, with Jesus. That's what Paul wants us to see. The reality of Christ's Lordship, the reality that we have received Him. You've been united to Him and in light of that union, the power that comes from that union, now pursue obedience to these commands. Here's what I think we see this morning. If we had to boil it down to one phrase, Anyone authentically united to Christ will continue to live, to walk in Christ. Anyone who's an authentic believer who's been truly united to Jesus Christ our Lord will also continue to walk in Christ.
6 · Oswald identifies verses 6-7 as the thematic summary of the entire letter and begins exposition of the first imperative: walking in Christ
That's really the heart of the letter. Verses 6 and 7 summarizes the heart of the letter for us. We'll see how those who surrender their hearts to Christ will walk that commitment out in their lives. That's what Paul details for us in these two verses. The first thing he shows us is that we're called to walk in Christ. That's, that's Paul's first point. A decision for Christ apart from devotion to Christ is not authentic Christianity. That's totally foreign to the New Testament, this idea you could make a decision for Christ and not remain devoted to Christ. A decision divorced from ongoing devotion is more about fleeting feelings than a lifelong commitment.
7 · Oswald traces the historical development of the altar call from Charles Finney's Second Great Awakening methods, critiquing its pragmatism and reductionistic focus on a single decision
It's probably the greatest weakness of the altar call. In the Second Great Awakening, you have Charles Finney. So the First Great Awakening, a little history lesson going off the notes here. The First Great Awakening, you have those famous characters, Jonathan Edwards, right? George Whitefield, this revival that sweeps through New England. There's this Great Awakening that happens in the land, a rising up of religious devotion and fervor for the Lord. Well, there's a Second Great Awakening that happens later, and this one is led by Charles Finney, and he introduced methods in this Great Awakening. These methods the evangelists would use to bring about a response to the evangelist preaching. So it's not just that the evangelist preaches, he's also doing things pragmatically throughout the service to try and elicit a response from the audience. One of the lasting methods that's still common today in churches is the concept of the altar call. I don't doubt that God does good through the altar call, but this coming down the aisle to the front of the church, this idea that originated with Finney, This happens because they want to have you make a decision for Christ. It's the language of praying a certain prayer. While the motives might be right, the preacher is trying for real conversion, right? The method is steeped in pragmatism. Manipulate emotions, play the right songs, pull on the heartstrings in the right way because the end goal is a decision. It's a prayer. If you get that decision, if you get that prayer, then the person's signed, sealed, and delivered. But that's not what Paul imagines here. He imagines authentic Christianity going far beyond just a decision, just a prayer, just, just a couple of minutes at the altar.
8 · Oswald cites sociological data breaking down American self-identification as Christian into three categories: cultural Christians (25%), congregational Christians (25%), and convictional Christians (25%)
There's a recent article that highlighted how this whole phenomenon skews even polling data on how many Americans are Christians. They're constantly asking those sorts of questions, people calling them up and taking sample sizes. Well, being a Christian, when it gets reduced, that definition of being a Christian, to the lowest possible definition, then the numbers who count themselves as a Christian go up, right? This article noted 75% of Americans would self-identify as Christians. 75%. But in breaking it into categories, the author, the sociologist, perceptively, in my opinion, recognized 25% of those who call themselves Christians are merely cultural Christians. When they're asked or polled, they identify as a Christian rather than someone who's Jewish or Mormon or an atheist. They're Christians because at some point maybe they prayed a vague prayer, or in their minds that's just who an American is. Another 25% are what he would label congregationalist Christians, congregational Christians. These are folks that really don't have any real strong commitment But they call themselves Christians because they have some sort of loose affiliation to a church. Maybe they have a family member who attends this church, and so they have some sort of familial relationship to that church. Or they've had a baby who was baptized in a church, or as an adult, they were baptized at that church, so they feel a loose connection to that body. Maybe it's the place they go to on holidays for Christmas. Easter. Congregational Christians. These two categories taken together are what I call unconverted believers. They're people who would call themselves, they identify in the polls, "I'm a Christian," right? But they've never truly been born again. In Paul's language of Colossians 2, they've never truly received Christ. How do we know that? Because they're not walking in Him. They're not doing the things that we'll see Him describe in verses 6 and 7 and throughout the rest of the letter. We know this because they are distinguishable from the final category. The sociologist calls these convictional Christians, the final 25% of that 75% self-identifying as Christians. These are the ones who actually orient their lives around their professed faith in Christ. Their confession isn't mere words. It's tangibly seen in the way they go about living, breathing, doing, interacting with neighbors and coworkers and family members.
9 · Oswald unpacks the verbal significance of "received Christ Jesus the Lord," noting its unique grammatical construction in the Greek New Testament and its connection to the early Christian confession
That 25%, the convictional Christians, that's who Paul has in the crosshairs. This congregation in Colossae who received Christ Jesus the Lord, that's how Paul refers to it. Received has the sense that they've received a tradition. It signifies that they embrace not only the person of Jesus, not only the authoritative teaching about Jesus, but they've also embraced the significance of Jesus. They don't just give a sense, oh, yep, we believe Jesus. Was real. They don't just give a sense that, yep, what the Bible says about Jesus is true. No, they believe He was real, they believe what the Bible says is true, they agree with the apostolic teaching, and they see the significance of it, and it's borne out in their lives. They know the dual truths of Colossians 1: that Jesus Christ is Lord and that they have now entered into His Lordship. They have entered into the realm of His reign. The phrase that Paul uses here, that Jesus Christ is Lord, is really strikingly unique. It's a unique combination we don't see anywhere else in the New Testament. There's 74 times, I looked it up, 74 times that those 3 words, Jesus, Christ, and Lord in some combination together are mentioned in the New Testament. 74 times in all sorts of different combinations. This is the only time it appears in the Greek in the way that we see it here. Paul is saying something unique and intentional. It highlights that early confession. The Messiah, the Anointed One, is Jesus, and He is Lord. The closest parallel we have to it is Philippians 2:11. It's that famous passage Paul writes, there's going to come a day every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. But then listen to what he says in verse 12. Therefore, my beloved, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Jesus Christ is Lord. In Colossians, therefore walk in Him. In Philippians, therefore work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Therefore you who have received Christ Jesus, live in light of your confession. There is no separating of orthodoxy from orthopraxy. You can't separate doctrine from behavior. You can't separate right theology from right ethics. They go hand in hand in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. And now Paul spends the rest of the chapters of this book detailing what the ethics of that kingdom looks like. In the rest of our passage this morning, he gives us a bird's-eye sketch of where he's going. How faith and practice are wedded together in the Lordship of Christ.
10 · Oswald begins exposition of verse 7's four participles, focusing first on the horticultural metaphor of being rooted
First, he tells us those authentic believers who've been united to Christ walk this out by being rooted and built up. We see their union in their walk by the way they are rooted and built up. Paul uses 4 participles to paint a picture of the maturity he's calling them to. There's 4 verbal nouns that he uses to paint this picture. The first 2 are metaphors that refer to our past and our present respectively, and they both have the same object. So let's take a look at them together. First, he gives us an illustration from horticulture, from the organic world. That maturity involves being rooted. It's meant to give us the image of a tree. But trees aren't always what they seem at first glance. We can be tempted to think that because a tree is tall, or because a tree has a thick trunk, or because it's filled with green leaves and has a wide canopy when it spreads its branches, we can think that when we see those things, the tree itself is healthy. That it's flourishing. As Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast," with the pencil. Some football fans in here. No idea why I went there. We found out the hard way not every tree looks— is as healthy as it looks.
11 · Oswald recounts a personal story of a tree falling on his house while he was away, illustrating that outward health can mask internal disease and that true strength is tested in adversity
A few weeks back, we had a tree that blew down on our roof. A tree comes down and blows down on the roof of our house. I was down in Bolivia. Hannah said actually 5 minutes before it happened, Case and Sadie were playing on the patio right below the tree. They came inside by God's grace, and then the tree— wasn't even a strong wind— blew over. So lo and behold, a tree that's standing and it's upright inside is diseased and lacking in health.
12 · Oswald develops the rooted metaphor by emphasizing that root quality depends on soil quality and that testing reveals true strength
You find out really quickly in times of testing what kind of roots a tree has, don't you? The quality of the roots is especially linked to the quality of the soil. You plant a tree in sand, it can't grow very tall. You plant a tree in rocky soil, it will have a hard time pushing those roots down. There's a little creek back here behind the church. There's a tree that's like leaning over the creek and half of its roots just extend out into the air because the ground has fallen away into the creek. That's not a sturdy tree. You see it because of the nature of the roots and what they're rooted in. But a tree in good soil with strong roots can withstand storms and difficulties of great magnitude. The tense Paul uses here is meant to be encouraging. The New American Standard Bible literally and accurately translates verse 7 as saying, "You have been rooted." Part of maturity is recognizing you've already been incorporated into Christ Himself. In light of the context, Paul wants us to remember you've been incorporated into Christ corporately. The verb is plural, not singular. We are commanded to be rooted together in Christ. Spiritual maturity and discipleship in the New Testament is a corporate endeavor.
13 · Oswald cross-references Colossians 2:1-2 to reinforce the corporate nature of being rooted, noting Paul's language of hearts knit together in love as evidence that discipleship is communal
Here again how Paul says it. There's a reason I read the preceding context this morning. Colossians 2:1, he says, "For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, for all of you, that you, your hearts," plural, "may be encouraged, being knit together in love." Paul, at the beginning of chapter 2, agonizes in prayer that the Colossians would know their need to remain rooted in Christ, especially through their ongoing connection to the body of Christ.
14 · Oswald uses the giant sequoias as an extended analogy for corporate rootedness in Christ
A great picture of this are the giant sequoias. You familiar with the giant sequoias? These mass— it's a specific species of redwood. These massive trees that grow, they're only found in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Here are some statistics about the giant sequoias. They live for thousands of years. There's one that they think is 3,500 years old. The largest of them stand 250 to 300 feet high. That's like a football field put up on end. Enormous. They weigh over 2 million pounds. They're gigantic. Their branches are thicker than most trees you've ever seen in your entire life. You think of the biggest oak tree you can think of, their branches are thicker. The stats just go on and on and on. Their trunks are so wide, the biggest ones, you could line up 4 tractor trailers side by side and they could drive through it simultaneously. Get your mind wrapped around the width of these trees. Their volume could contain 13 blue whales. These trees are enormous. They're a marvel to behold. But you will never find an old or giant sequoia growing by itself. Their secret is that they only thrive and reach maturity in groves. A single tree has roots that stretch over 2 to 3 acres. A single tree's roots stretch 2 to 3 acres. It sinks and grips into tons of soil through all this root system. At the same time, because they grow in groves, it's 2 to 3 acres of their roots sinking into rich soil and interlocking with the roots of the trees around it. They're stabilized in the richness of the soil together. They flourish rooted in the soil, intertwined with each other, so they can stand through storms and wind. Even forest fires don't kill them. They are a metaphor for how Paul envisions us to thrive and grow towards maturity. Rooted in Christ, intertwined with each other. It's why we practice and celebrate membership here. It's why it's exciting to see people up here in front of us this morning. People saying, "I want to be rooted in Christ. I want to be rooted in Christ with all of you." The greatest purpose of membership is that we would achieve just that: sink deep into the soil of Christ and grow together towards maturity.
15 · Oswald shifts to the second metaphor, the construction image of being built up
Paul then uses a construction metaphor. So he uses the horticulture metaphor, trees, then he turns to a metaphor from construction and he switches into the present tense. Again, the New American Standard gives the Greek a well translation. He says in verse 7, having been firmly rooted You are now being built up, the construction metaphor, in Him, in Christ. Now that's really encouraging. Those who are rooted in Christ, knit together in love, are now commanded to be built up into Christ as well. And it's encouraging because it's in the passive voice. We are commanded to pursue it, we are commanded to work towards it, and at the same time Paul recognizes God is the one who empowers it. I call you to this. Strive for this. Be diligent in pursuing it. Fight for it. And that which God calls you to, he promises to empower. You call that grace. Now, if you're like me, sometimes you have a hard time discerning growth. You take a snapshot of your life and you look at that snapshot and it doesn't seem like you're being built up. It's hard to perceive the progress. Am I growing? I'm not sure. I can't seem to find the evidence. But Paul is sure that this will take place, that if you are rooted in Christ, You are now being built up.
16 · Oswald offers the analogy of construction time-lapse videos to address the difficulty of perceiving spiritual growth in day-to-day life
The perspective we need isn't of a snapshot of a building being built. It's of one of those time-lapse videos. It's really popular with big construction projects that they mount a time-lapse video so all the donors to the new building on campus can see their money working and growing up. If you just send a snapshot, it's hard to see what's happening. If you go to a worksite of a building that's being built or a home that's being built, you're building your home, you go one day and you go to the next, it might be hard to see any progress they've made. What did they do yesterday to today? Am I just paying them to eat lunch and are they just sleeping in the basement? It's hard to notice what's happening, but you mount one of those time-lapse videos and you start to see all this activity going on and all of a sudden there's a foundation dug out and there's footings laid and it starts to grow and there's a frame that comes up. And the doors and the windows come, the roof gets put on, the siding gets put on, the landscaping is done, and all of a sudden there's a building. Because the time-lapse video allows you to, allows you to see the progress being made, how it's being built up. That's exactly how we should view our being built up into Christ Jesus.
17 · Oswald synthesizes the two metaphors as the means of exhibiting Christ's Lordship — remaining rooted and being built up are not optional but imperative
When we take these two commands together, we get Paul's emphasis on how to exhibit Christ's Lordship in our lives. This is how you exhibit Christ's Lordship. First, you remain rooted, connected to the vine, even as you're connected with the body of Christ. Second, that we would continue to pursue being built up, allowing God to integrate us like stones into a beautiful temple that is nothing less than Christ Himself. You are being built up, he says, into a temple of the living God. It's a goal for us. These are commands. They're imperatives. It's not, if you want to, having received Christ, it might be good to stay rooted in Him. If you got nothing better going on, it might be a good idea to try and be built up into Him. You know, of several options, this is one you could choose. No, these are imperatives. Paul's calling us, because you've received Him, pursue these things. I love how A.W. Pink puts it. It brings no glory to God that His children should be dwarfs. No offense to dwarfs. God wants us big, tall, bold, and mature. He wants us rooted in Christ, roots intertwined with the body, being built up into Him into a holy temple.
18 · Oswald exposits the third participle, being established in the faith, defining "the faith" as the apostolic teaching received through Epaphras
The next thing He shows us what it looks like to walk in Christ is that He wants us to be established in the faith. That's the next command, that we would be established in the faith. The idea is that we must be firmly and solidly grounded in the apostolic teaching. That's what "the faith" refers to. Paul isn't referring to just any faith, it's "the faith." It's the apostolic teaching that they've received. It's the fact that Epaphras— remember Epaphras? He's the guy who planted the church in Colossae. Epaphras is one of Paul's coworkers, and Epaphras came sent out by Paul and he saw that church planted, so he promises them Through Epaphras, you've received the authentic apostolic teaching. You've received the faith. Now remain established in it. Again, it's in the passive voice, suggesting God is the one empowering our ability to comply. So as we strive to remain steadfast, He's at work to ensure that it's successful. There's a strong sense again that this is an ongoing process. Present tense. You don't get established on a single day. You don't get established because you made a single decision at the altar call and now live your life completely however else you want. You don't get established in only year 1, or it's 4 years of work and now you're just done, or 10 years of work. You get established as you continue to walk in Christ throughout your life.
19 · Oswald links being established in the faith to defense against false teaching, cross-referencing 2 Peter 3:17 where Peter warns against being carried away by error
And this being established in the faith is an important defense against false teaching. The same idea gets communicated by Peter in his closing words in the letter to— this general letter he writes to the churches in 2 Peter. 2 Peter 3:17, he writes this: You therefore, beloved— you got to love Peter's pastoral heart. "You, beloved." Why does he talk like that? Do you love me, Peter? Feed my sheep. Do you love me, Peter? Feed my sheep. "You, therefore, beloved." He feels the pastoral burden given to him by the Lord Jesus Christ. Knowing this beforehand, Take care, beloved, that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people, losing your own stability. Take care, beloved, that you fail and cease to be established in the faith, that you lose your stability. Knowing that false teachers are a threat, both Peter And Paul exhort us to remain stable in the truth, established in the faith, committed to what we've been taught. It's a call not to seek out the newest and most novel ideas about God, but to stand firm in what is true about God. It's a call, as the psalmist talked about, to walk the old paths, to stay in the ancient righteous ruts of God's truth, to walk those old paths even as in Paul's day and in ours, in the midst of a culture obsessed with shiny new yellow brick roads. That lay claim to lead to Emerald Cities. The new paths may lead to Emerald Cities, but only the old paths of the apostles and the scriptures lead to the Celestial City.
20 · Oswald synthesizes the three participles as sequential consequences — being rooted and built up naturally produces being established
The idea is that this being established is the natural consequence, it's the natural result of what happens when the first two metaphors are working. When you remain rooted, when you are being built up, you will end up established, firmly planted in the message of the gospel. You take all of that together, Paul stresses for us that we don't ever move on from Jesus. That's the point of these two verses. That's the point of these verses serving as a hinge in the letter. You don't ever mature beyond your need for the Gospel. You don't ever move any deeper into this whole thing called Christianity where you've left the basics of Christ behind. You don't mature beyond Christ. Maturity, rather, is about being rooted and built up and established in Christ. Paul says. Christian maturity is a picture of growth. To walk out what we've received. That's something that's never stagnant. The giant sequoia that stops growing, that's the giant sequoia that's dead, even though it still looks okay from the outside. Growth in Christ is evidence that there is authentic life in Christ.
21 · Oswald exposits the fourth and final participle, abounding in thanksgiving, emphasizing it is not perfunctory gratitude but boundless, overflowing thanksgiving commensurate with receiving Christ
And then Paul finishes one more exhortation, one more command, one more imperative. He calls us to be boundless in gratitude. We'll read the whole passage again. Therefore, as you all received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. Rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Abounding in thanksgiving. When we consider what we've received in Christ, when we appreciate the privilege of walking in Him, there's really only one appropriate response. When you think of all that, what it means to be in Christ, in this Man who's been described in all of those ways as he was in chapter 1, there's one response: boundless gratitude, overflowing thanksgiving. Now, this isn't an image of, like, momentary passing thankfulness. This isn't like you've received the graduation gift and now you write the requisite thank-you note. And we know all of your tricks, graduates. We know that you're writing in really big letters because you've got a lot of these notes to write, and you're trying to take up lots of space on the paper. We know that you're writing really general things because you've got lots of notes to write, and you're not going to write totally specific detailed things to all of us. And so that's the way you write those things. I remember the wedding thank you notes after we got married. It's just like, I'm signing my name bigger than I've ever signed it before because then it takes up like a third of the note. I'm just sick of the hand cramps. That's not what Paul envisions here. That's not all that's required of you. Dear God, thanks so much for the great gift of Jesus. Hope you have a great summer. Matthew. Matthew! No! Paul calls us to so much more. To be overflowing with gratitude. Not satisfied with a simple note, but hounding God with proclamations and prayers of thanksgiving. Hey God, it's me again. I know I just talked to you about this last night. I just woke up and I was reminded of Jesus and Christ and being rooted in him. I've received him. I'm reminded of all that I received because I have the God-man. Thank you, Lord.
22 · Oswald identifies the flesh's tendency to make the remarkable mundane, leading to apathy or discontentment
Sadly, it's not natural to do this. Our flesh is a master at taking remarkable things and making them seem ordinary, mundane. When that happens, we're not filled with gratitude. We're either apathetic, or we're discontent. It happens in all sorts of contexts, right? Here's an illustration, quick example. Just talked about wedding notes, right? A man proposes to a woman and she says yes. She says yes! That night of the proposal, he's bouncing off the walls with excitement and gratitude. He can hardly fathom that she's agreed to marry him. He's beside himself that she loves him and she wants to spend her life with him. But if he's not careful, what seems amazing and the height of joy on their wedding day can become dry, normal, even taken for granted 15 years later. At its worst, the man becomes discontent with the wife God has given him, and his heart begins to wander. It's a dangerous thing to get careless and flippant with gratitude.
23 · Oswald establishes that abounding thanksgiving is the prescription for contentment, arguing that contentment flows not from acquiring new things but from remembering what believers have already received in Christ
But the opposite is also true. And that's what Paul highlights here. When we take up the posture of abounding with thanksgiving, it becomes a prescription for contentment. You want to go to the doctor and get a script written for contentment? Paul shows you, you don't need to go to Doc to get that script. You go to God and you come to Him with a heart of thanksgiving and it will sow contentment into your heart. The power to battle discontent needs a potent foundation. The whole nature of discontentment is that no matter what you currently possess, there's still something else that you need to have happiness and satisfaction, right? That's what it means to be discontent. You lose sight of, you forget, you ignore, you aren't satisfied with everything else you have. You want that one next thing or these 10 next things. Ultimately, though, the solution isn't adding something new to our lives that fills in the margins, something that's going to finally tip the scales of fulfillment. No, Paul refers to what believers have already received. Contentment doesn't come from receiving something new. It comes from remembering. You've received Christ Jesus the Lord. Now live in the good of this. Paul seems to measure contentment according to the level of our thanksgiving. It's a common theme, not just in Paul's letters, but all of Scripture. It's a heart posture that bubbles over with expressions of gratitude to God in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds. Discontentment. Discontentment can roar and discontentment can whisper. Discontentment can come and just punch your joy in the face, and it can come and ever so subtly chip away at it. It roars when you lose the job. It roars when you face another decade of singleness. It whispers in the subtle ways 100 little wants leave us dissatisfied with and blind to the blessing we've received in Christ. Boundless gratitude. Overwhelming thanksgiving. It's a powerful weapon.
24 · Oswald argues that boundless thanksgiving serves as a joyful guardian against false teaching
In fact, Paul imagines that it serves as a joyful guardian against false belief. That's what he's saying in the context. To have boundless gratitude, to be overwhelmed with thanksgiving, it's a joyful guardian against false belief. We're in a letter In this context, Paul is concerned about false teaching creeping into this church in Colossae. We live in a culture where there are constant threats to believe false things about God. There are divergent theologies that assault us from outside and even inside the church. We need to combat this. Part of my job as a pastor is to protect you from it and to feed you truth and to keep falsehood at bay. But if we're not careful, we can make this a completely reactive, negative, and defensive posture. That's not a compelling picture of the Christian life. Paul, however, is convinced that authentic gratitude for God's grace in Christ is an offensive weapon against false teaching. When we're amazed at grace, when we overflow with thanksgiving, our hearts remain satisfied in Christ. We don't need a lot of novel beliefs and extra trinkets. After all, we've received Christ Jesus the Lord! In this way, cultivating gratitude not only helps to protect the church from falsehood, It protects us from that negative, constantly defensive posture. We shouldn't be dour people. We shouldn't be grumpy people. No, Paul shows us we should be celebratory, boundlessly grateful, overwhelming with thanksgiving. That's what it is to walk with Jesus. And thanksgiving is essential to vibrant Christianity. No one who has come under the Lordship of Christ should lack for gratitude. Our lives should be an ongoing testimony to the satisfaction we find in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
25 · Oswald applies the call to thanksgiving by reading Lamentations 3:22-23, exhorting the congregation to let the steadfast love and daily mercies of the Lord stir gratitude in their hearts as they leave
I'm gonna go to one of those old paths. Lamentations 3:22-23. Let this stir up gratitude in your heart as you leave this morning. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, Lord. Great is your faithfulness in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
26 · Oswald closes with a pastoral prayer that recapitulates the sermon's imperatives — gratitude, walking in Christ, being rooted, built up, and established
Father, we want to be grateful. We want to obey this command to be filled and overflowing with joyful thanks that in Christ Jesus, You don't treat us as our sins deserve. Lord, we want to walk in Christ. We want to be rooted and built up in Him. We want to be established in the faith. We want to be protected from falsehood. But Lord, we never want to lose sight that we ask for all of these things because we are asking for your Son. We are asking to know and taste the glorious reality of Christ in us, our only hope of glory, that in Jesus you make us partakers of your glory. And so Lord, I pray now that you would help us through your Word here in Colossians 1 and 2 to live and walk in light of the awesome grace and amazing glory of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray this in His name. Amen.