Knowing and Walking

6 · Oswald clarifies the content of Paul's prayer: 'knowledge of God's will' is not trivial information or daily guidance, but a macro understanding of how God is working through Christ for His glory

So what exactly does he pray? Well, he prays that the Colossians 'might be filled with the knowledge of God's will.' He's already expressed thanksgiving to God that this church grasped the truth of God's grace. Remember, Epaphras comes to them and the Gospel takes root in their hearts. Now he calls upon God. He prays to God to fill them with knowledge. This isn't so they can dominate the Trivial Pursuit nights. It's not that kind of knowledge. It's not the Wikipedia kind of knowledge, but that they would know the will of the Father. But Paul isn't asking for what we might first think. The knowledge of God's will here is not a reference to knowing God's will in the minutiae of life. It's not about knowing God's will or getting special direction for what to do on Monday. God desires our everyday decisions to reflect His will. Don't get me wrong, He desires that. But this is a prayer that we would be filled with the knowledge of the Father's will, namely that we would have a strong, steadfast understanding of how God is working through His Son for the glory of His name.

7 · Oswald expands the definition of 'knowledge of God's will' by cross-referencing Ephesians: it is the grand vision that all history is directed by God to culminate in the glory of Christ, a wisdom given by the Spirit

Knowledge, that is, verse 9 concludes, involves receiving all spiritual wisdom and understanding. What Paul is giving us in Colossians 1 is a macro, big picture vision. Paul's prayer for the Colossians is massive. It's not a prayer that they would know what movie to watch tonight. It's much grander. It's a prayer that they would be filled through the indwelling power of the Spirit to grasp the glorious way that God is directing all of history to the praise and glory of Jesus Christ. He wants them to grasp the way the entire story of the world is unfolding to glorify the name of Jesus because that is the knowledge of God's will. That is God's will. That all of history comes and points to and culminates in Christ. His name receiving glory and honor. Paul prays that this church would grasp the fullness of the revelation of Jesus. That they would grasp the significance that has for all of creation. As well as the significance it has for them personally as a local church and individual people. To see the connection between this wisdom and God's revelation of redemption in Christ, listen to how Paul puts it in his sister letter of Ephesians. In Ephesians, he says this kind of as a buildup: In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us. And now listen to the language: in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, in Christ—things in heaven and things on earth. And he says in verse 16, The clarifying statement: I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. Wait, are we in Ephesians or are we in Colossians? Right? I do not cease to give thanks to you, remembering you in my prayers, so that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I want you to know the will of the Father. I want you to know how God is working to culminate his glory in the person of Jesus Christ.

8 · Oswald makes a doctrinal claim about the means of acquiring this knowledge: it is not gained by human effort but imparted by the Spirit through divine action

And this isn't something any believer can get on their own. The verb is a divine passive. It means God is the active agent in bringing this to completion. You don't study up for the test on this. It's something that's imparted to you by the Spirit. It's a spiritual wisdom. We ask for the revelation of knowledge and God through His Spirit provides it. And Paul prays that the Spirit would fill the church with a Christ-centered vision of all of God's purposes in all the universe and for that local people.

9 · Oswald turns Paul's prayer into a concrete prayer for the congregation this morning: that they would see how all things—world, city, and church—point to Christ

And that's our prayer this morning. That we would have a huge vision. As we look out over the entire world, as we look out over all of Kansas City, and as we look at each other, we would see how it's all pointing to Christ.

10 · Oswald surfaces an anticipated objection—that this macro knowledge seems impractical—and pivots to show that Paul sees this knowledge as inherently practical for daily life

And this knowledge, in Paul's estimation, that's like a big picture thing, right? It's kind of lofty stuff. It's sort of way out. You kind of think of it and you think, wow, it's not real practical, is it? I mean, it's really big and it's philosophical and it's really theological. You're saying Paul wants that to affect how we consider each other? Yes, he does. In fact, Paul thinks that knowledge is actually inherently practical.

11 · Oswald transitions from the content of Paul's prayer (knowledge of God's will) to its effect: knowledge manifests in a worthy walk, a lifestyle pleasing to God in the mundane details of life

This massive idea of all that God is doing in Christ Jesus is intended to instruct us in the mundane of life, to help us to make our actual lifestyles powerfully God-honoring. Paul prays for just that. He prays that believers may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And then verse 10, here's why: so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to God. In other words, if we've received that knowledge, Paul expects that it will manifest itself in a lifestyle that God approves of. So we've seen what Paul prayed for, right? Now he shows us the effect of this answered prayer on our lives. Here's that really big picture, he says, that you would know the knowledge of God's will, how He's bringing all things to consummation in Christ Jesus. And now I want you to understand, Paul says, how that affects you in the nitty-gritty. How it becomes personally applicable.

12 · Oswald unpacks the biblical idiom of 'walking' as lifestyle, contrasting empty profession (Victorian aristocracy) with genuine transformation

This is the effect of Paul's prayer. Second point: a lifestyle that is pleasing to God. The goal isn't just to know what God is doing in Christ. In fact, Paul would say if all you do is know and it doesn't affect how you live, you don't really know. That's not what Gospel knowledge does. It's not an impotent knowledge. It's knowledge filled with power that stirs us and changes us and transforms us. So now Paul goes on to connect the dots between what the Spirit has revealed and how it affects our lives. To make the point, he uses a really common biblical idiom. The little phrase, 'the image of walking.' What does he mean by walking in a manner worthy? He's not like saying there's a certain way you walk as a Christian. So when you're walking around Colossae, they should know in the market, man, he's got the strut. That's a believer. It's not like you're really pious and puritanical and nose in the air. That's not what he's saying. Right? It's an image of walking. It's an image of living a lifestyle. When we walk in step with the knowledge of God's will, Paul says we live in a way that's worthy of the Lord. That's fully pleasing to God. You want to put that in kind of modern parlance, it would be sort of saying, don't just talk the talk, walk the walk. That's what Paul is saying here. I'm reading a Churchill biography right now. It's actually a 3-volume biography. So the first volume just deals with Churchill kind of up to his political career. So as a child, when he's in the army. And the first section, the author actually spends about 100 pages in the biography just describing the world Churchill grows up in. And so it's this world of Victorian England, right? Now, when you think of Victorian England, what comes to mind? Probably Queen Victoria, right? Some of the ladies are thinking of some of those romantic movies they've seen of Queen Victoria lately. But the Victorian era sort of has this idea of very prim and proper and very strict morality, right? That was Victorian England. What's fascinating in a tragic way about this book is that the author points out, for as much as the Victorians like to present the picture of morality, that wasn't how they actually lived, especially among the aristocracy. So the dukes, the earls, the ruling class, and this is a stratus, this is a very stratified culture. There was an expectation if you were lower class, you were made and meant to be lower class and you served to hold up the upper class. And that was good. That was the way it was supposed to be. And so there's this whole image of Victorian England as this moral culture. But in reality, the aristocracy was just filled with promiscuity and adultery. And it's really sad when you think about they're all related to each other. They're like 5th and 6th cousins. But the whole idea was it didn't matter what you did in your bedroom as long as no one knew about what you did. As long as you presented the Victorian picture of God, Queen, and Country. Paul knows the dangers of an empty profession. What he thanks God for in the Colossians is that their conversion has already produced the genuine fruit of repentance. So there's a love for the saints. And now he's exhorting them to continue on the path. Don't let it be empty words. Don't be like the aristocracy in Victorian England, talking a good game, and when you get into your palaces, living a totally contrary life. Compare that with the mentality we see in Proverbs 2. Listen to how Proverbs 2 combines this idea of wisdom and walking. These two themes we see in Colossians. It says this in v. 12, 'Wisdom will deliver you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech who forsake the paths of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of their evil, men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. Wisdom will deliver you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words who forsakes a companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house sinks down to earth and her paths to the departed. None who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. Verse 20: So you will walk in the way of the good and keep the paths of the righteous.' That's what Paul is saying. To have this knowledge is to walk in the way of the good, to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, as he says in Ephesians 4:1, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. And the calling is a call towards a person.

13 · Oswald identifies 'the Lord' as Jesus Christ and warns against the 'soundbite Jesus' of contemporary culture—a truncated, domesticated version

Paul makes it explicitly clear in Colossians that we would walk in a manner how? Worthy of the Lord. Now in the New Testament, when you see references to 'the Lord,' it's actually references to Jesus Christ. So he's saying walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Walk in a manner worthy of Jesus Christ. Christ is the standard of our worthy walking. Remember we said Colossians has more about Christ than any other letter in the New Testament. Colossians just drips with Christology. It reminds us of everything Christ has accomplished in redemption, and then it points us again to Christ. And in looking at Christ, it shows us how to live in light of redemption. This is a robust view of Christ. There's nothing in this letter that gives us a truncated Jesus, a downsized version. Paul's Jesus is not the soundbite Jesus that's very popular today. Here's what I mean. You probably are aware of what I'm referring to. It's very in vogue today to kind of grab random quotes of Jesus, rip them completely out of context, and then sort of twist it to apply it to make a point. The soundbite version of Jesus. You grab Jesus and you kind of twist him to make your argument. And in doing so, you construct a smaller, more palatable, less demanding Jesus that is no longer the image of the invisible God, but is the image of the autonomous enlightened individual.

14 · Oswald makes a Christological claim: Colossians presents the cosmic Christ, not a domesticated Jesus

In Colossians, Paul gives us an astounding view of Christ. He shows us the cosmic Christ crucified, raised, and reigning. We're going to see that as we continue in chapter 1. There is nothing about this Jesus in Colossians that is domesticated. There is nothing normal or ordinary or small about the way He has rescued people from their sins. In the next breath, Paul labors then to connect the dots, to show us how Jesus, enthroned in the heavens, still models for us how to live our lives today. He wants us to be filled with the knowledge of Christ. To what end? So that we'll walk like Christ.

15 · Oswald applies the doctrine: to walk like Christ, believers must immerse themselves in the biblical Christ found in the Gospels and epistles, where His character—tenderness, patience, compassion, toughness, resolve, faith—is revealed

To do that, We have to know Christ. We can't remain content with the soundbite Jesus. We can't satisfy our appetites with the flannelgraph depictions of Jesus in Sunday school. We have to rejoice over the provision of Christ's grace and then walk in the pattern of his life, and to do that, we have to immerse ourselves in the Christ not of our culture, but the Christ of the Bible as God describes Him. So we go to the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and we see these portraits they paint of the Savior. We go to the epistles of the New Testament and we see how these men who knew Jesus and walked with Jesus and experienced the resurrected Christ describe the life lived in light of Him. And it's there that we see Christ's tenderness. To the downtrodden. We see his patience with the knuckleheaded disciples. We see his compassion to the spiritually and physically sick. We see the toughness that Christ has when he encounters legalism and false teaching. We see his resolve Whenever He's enticed with mission drift, what's He say to Peter? 'Get behind me, Satan.' Don't distract me from the mission the Father has given me. We see His rock-solid faith in the authority of the Scripture and His total trust in the Father's plan and provision of salvation. We see how to walk like Jesus.

16 · Oswald signals a shift to Paul's concrete descriptions: a worthy lifestyle will bear fruit and increase

And in Colossians, Paul now goes on to give us some concrete descriptions. This is what a lifestyle worthy of Christ and pleasing to him looks like. Gives us a few examples how our lifestyles should match the revelation of God's purpose in Christ. A worthy lifestyle, he says, will involve first bearing fruit. It's going to bear fruit and it's going to grow. It's going to increase.

17 · Oswald connects the fruit-bearing language of verse 10 to verse 6, showing that the Gospel bears fruit both globally (across the Roman world) and personally (in individual hearts and lives)

And that sounds a lot like verse 6. If you remember back when we preached on verse 6, there Paul rejoices at the Gospel. Remember he tells the Colossians, the Gospel, the truth of God's Word, the grace of God, it's bearing fruit and it's increasing throughout the entire world. And that's what it's doing with you. In verse 6, Paul's referring to the fact that here's this little tiny movement that's just like growing and growing in city after city. It's taking hold. Here he's talking about the fact that that same gospel that's growing and bearing fruit across the Roman world, this organic imagery, that same gospel is growing and bearing fruit. It's increasing. In their hearts and in their lives.

18 · Oswald expounds on the fruit-bearing: true knowledge of Christ always produces transformation

In Paul's equation, there's no such thing as knowledge that fails to bear fruit. When we know the revelation of Jesus Christ as the will of God, it transforms us. We walk the walk. Paul says we bear the fruit of good works. We grow and increase in our knowledge of God. I love the way one translation puts this. There's one translation that paraphrases this and says, 'You will learn to know God better and better.' It's just this relational sense. You're going to know Him. You're going to understand Him. And as you do, you're going to walk more like Him. The filling Paul prays for results in holiness, and holiness leads to a specific end. It's not sanctimonious self-righteousness. It's not a holier-than-thou attitude. It's a deeper knowledge of God. A stronger sense of our relationship with the Father. A worthy lifestyle bears fruit and increases. The Gospel is active in it. It's the first thing it does.