Paul's Burden for the Church

Colossians 2:2-7

Tonight for our study we come again to our second chapter of Colossians and it's been a real exciting time for me, I know, to studytogether in this tremendous book. It brings back great memories of our study together in the Book of Ephesians. It's kind of like going over the same ground in many ways, and I'm reminded as I study each week of things that I have learned in the past that the Spirit of God brings to a fresh commitment in my heart as I go over some of those things that we have seen are really in many ways sister thoughts to the ones that Paul gave to the Ephesian believers. And if you find a great deal of similarity in Paul's letters realize that Christians in all cities had basically the same problem, and basically the same solutions, and therein lies the similarity of these truths.

But we're looking at Chapter 2, verses 1‑7, and discussing Paul's burden for the Church. We didn't get too far last time; we'll endeavor to get a little further this time and cover this Section 1‑7 and see just exactly what it was that the apostle Paul desired for the Church at Colossae and what the Spirit of God desires for every Church and for every Christian.

I told you last time that Jesus loved the Church and gave Himself for it, according to Ephesians 5:25. And so did Paul, although Paul's death in the behalf of the Church was not efficacious, it was not atoning, it was not substitutionary, but nevertheless the apostle Paul gave his life because he loved the Church. And we mentioned at the beginning last time that probably the basic ingredient necessary for a successful ministry is the love of the Church. But a man of God must have that basic commitment that he really loves the Church. That he first loves the Lord and then that he loves the Lord's people.

You know, the ministry is a very self, I shouldn't say self, it's a Holy Spirit motivated thing, but it's a very dependent thing upon a man's own motivation. There's nobody sort of sitting over you like in some situations of employment, saying you have to do this and you have to do that and you have to do the other thing. It's very tempting sometimes to go along the lines of least resistance and do what comes naturally. If you happen to be kind of a loudmouth anyway and be able to stand up and shoot off your mouth with some alacrity and some sense of logic you can usually get away with it, and it becomes easy in the ministry sometimes to just substitute your own natural ability for the thing that you know God wants you to do. But I think the thing that finally resolves the issue in your mind is do you really love yourself and are you interested in proclaiming yourself so that people are rather in love with you and rather enamored by your ability or do you love the Church enough to give them what God wants them to have no matter what it costs you to do it? That's really the difference, and the man of God somewhere along the line if he's going to have a ministry blessed by God must come to the place where he says, look, it isn't important that they get me, it isn't important that I come off looking good, it's important that they get what God wants them to have, and that was the case with the apostle Paul. And I think it's been the case with every true man of God since.

When Jesus said in John 10:11: "The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep," he really set down a standard, didn't he? And any shepherd, any undershepherd, which is what the word "pastor'' really means,is going to be at that point, bound, as it were, to the obligation of giving his life for his sheep. So the love of the Church has to be the most basic feature in the successful ministry in the way that God measures success. Paul had it, even as Jesus did, Paul loved the Church. And I think as I pointed out last time the reason Paul loved the Church so much is because he loved Christ and in I John 5:1 it says, "Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone that loves Him that begot Him loves also him that is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God." And so John said, the people who love God are going to love the Son, and the people who love the Son are going to love the people begotten by the Son, even the children of God. So tied up with your love for God and your love for the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, will be a love for the Church. And this is evident in the life of Paul.

Now because of his great love for the saints he says, in verse 1 of chapter 2, "I would that you knew what great 'agone' (agony) I have for you, and for them at Laodicea and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.' Not just you but anybody else. It's obvious I love the people I've been with, but I love even the people who have never even seen me, those people who make up the Church, and because of that, when I see the difficulty that you're in, when I see the attack that you're under in terms of false teaching, when I know the anxieties of living the Christian life and walking the walk, I have a sense of agony and struggle and striving on your behalf, and that comes because he loved them.

Now his love had built into it certain goals for the believers. It's not unlike a parent has for his children certain goals. I can remember my Dad always telling me I would never amount to anything. He told me that all the time. Look, he said, "I want you to amount to something. You come home with all those (in those days they used to give an "N"; an "N" meant not cutting it, basically (laughter). Actually I think it was "not satisfactory", but it was not cutting it, and I used to get a lot of "N's" and they used to frustrate my father to no end (laughter). Sorry about that, but anyway. They would always write the same note on the bottom. "Johnnie has potential (ha, ha) unrealized." And my father used to say to me, I have this desire that you amount to something, and I would say, well, what does it matter to you whether I do or don't? Because I love you. Well, I never really understood what that had to do with it. But then I understood that when you love somebody you have certain goals for them. I love my children and I have the same exact thing. When one of our kids brings home a paper that's got an "F" on it or a "D" on it and they do ‑‑ believe me they do. You didn't know that; you thought they were all perfect, right? (Laughter). Yeah, they do. Well, we have a little discussion about it. Sometimes it amounts to even more than a discussion. (Laughter). And the gist of the thing is look, kid, I expect more out of you, because I care about youand I want you to amount to something, and it means a little bit of effort on your part. And usually we can encourage that kind of effort.

Now the reason that the apostle Paul is saying what he's saying here is because his love has certain goals. He cares about these people, and built into that care is a certain anticipation that they will amount to a certain thing. I can relate to that as a pastor. The thing that gets me so fervent, that works me up, that makes me desire so much to communicate to you these things is because I care about you and it matters to me that you amount to something. Nothing is more heart‑breaking than to see your own spiritual children flunking the exams on a day-to‑day basis, and bringing home spiritual "F" papers. And the reason you say what do you care, I care because I care about them, and in caring about them there are certain goals and objectives that are built into that kind of care, that kind of love. And so as the apostle Paul, in view of the Colossians, is pouring out love to them, it takes the form of certain goals for their lives. Certain manifestations in their behavior. And we have seen in the passage at least in an introductory sense, the first of what amounts to five basic things that he really wants for the Colossians to experience. Now these items become a checklist for every church and a checklist really for every Christian.

Now to begin with, Paul agonizes that the Church be number one, strong in heart, verse 2. "That their hearts might be strengthened." Now we translated that term strengthened rather than comforted because we think that is the more particular emphasis that the apostle is making here, the word means to comfort, to console, or to strengthen, it embodies all of that idea. It even means to grant endurance, so it's a lot of things. But it seems to me that the sum of it all, and what Paul is really working on is that their hearts would be strengthened. We saw last time that the term "heart" basically in the Bible has reference to the intellect and the will, to the mind. The Hebrew didn't talk about the brain, he talked about the heart, and the heart was the area of intellect and will, learning information and acting on that information, or the will to act, came out of the mind. So heart means mind. And what he's saying is I want your mind to be strengthened. I want strong minds. Why? Because the mind is the first thing that Satan assails. You understand that? Satan assails the mind with lies. He is the father of (what?) lies. He brings around false truth and false information and assaults the mind with it, and that directs the behavior that responds. And so it is necessary to have a strong mind.

Now the term in the Bible, heart, generally is used to refer to the mind or the intellect. That's its technical meaning. I would add, though, that there are times when heart is used in a general non‑technical sense to refer to the totality of man's inner being. But when it is used in its technical sense, it has reference to the mind, or the seat of knowledge, which is basically the beginner of action. So, it is necessary to have a powerful, fruitful Christian life to have a strong mind. The way your mind is strengthened is by filling it with divine truth that can trigger a positive behavior pattern in your will. And then your emotions will be responding, and we saw that the Hebrews just designated emotions as bowels and my wife made me promise I wouldn't discuss that any further, so we'll go on from there. (laughter).

Now the Colossian Christians can protect themselves, Paul says, from the assaults of false teachers, and you and I can also, when our hearts are strengthened. Now last time we said there are several things to understand about this. How is your heart strengthened by the Strengthener. Remember that? And we can take the word comforter as it appears "paracletas" in John 14, 15, and 16, and is well translated, strengthener. So it is the Holy Spirit that strengthens us. We saw in Ephesians, chapter 3, that we need to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man.

So the Spirit of God does the strengthening. He does it as we feed on the Word of God. He does it through trials and difficulties that come our way. He does it through other teachers, Christians, who minister to us in the spirit and strengthen us, like in 1 Thess. 3:2 "And send Timothy our brother and minister of God and our fellow worker in the Gospel of Christ to establish you and strengthen you." So Paul says, I'm sending Timothy, because the Spirit may do it directly in your life, He may do it through the Word, He may do it through some other believersin your life. The idea is to have strong hearts, and as you yield to the Spirit, as He works in you, as you yield to the Spirit, as you read the Word and discipline yourself to study it, as you yield to the Spirit by submitting yourself to the ministry of other believers, you find your inner man strengthened. Your mind and your will become strong, and you can have positive action as a result of that and not fall into misinformation and untruth as Satan would want you to.

Now that brings us to a second thing The second thing that the apostle wishes for the Colossian Christians and the second thing we should wish for ourselves is that we be united in love. Strong in heart, united in love. And this of course is the beautiful balance to number one. We don't want to get carried away with the intellect; we don't want to turn Christianity into something that is coldly academic, because that isn't it. There is a great beating pulsing heart of Christianity, and that is love. "And though I speak with the tongues of angels and have not love," as Paul says as we shall soon see in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians, "I am nothing." He says, though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and have all knowledge and have all faith, so that I could remove mountains and have not love (what?) I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it has no benefit to me." So all of that theology and all of that knowledge and all of that brain power is balanced off by love. And so hastily Paul says, "I pray that their hearts might be comforted (now watch the next line) being knit together in love." Being knit together in love. He wants, a one‑mindedness of hearts, that are knit together in love, And as I said, this is the balancer to doctrine.

The word knit, or knit together, simply means to unite. Your body is a combination of billions of cells, all knit together. You can't pickany one of them apart because they blend indiscriminately together and that's the thing that the apostle Paul is after as of the cells of a body are indistinguishable because they're lost in the mass, so should you be indistinguishable as you're lost in the mass, so should you be indistinguishable as you're lost in the unity of love that exists among the brethren. The sense of the word here as it appears and alsoitappears later on in Chapter 2 verse 19, you'll see it knit together again, they're talking about the body again being joined together and knit together, is the idea of all the parts being put together in a way that leaves them almost without any personal identity. And they're held together, like atoms are held together in your body by what we called a few weeks ago nuclear glue, which is nothing more than a funny name for God; God holds it all together, so in the spiritual sense we are to be united, and the nuclear glue, if you will, that holds us together, is being knit together in (what?) love. Love is the thing that ties believers together.

Now all Christians are connected by a common life. We are like in one sense a whole bunch of beads strung on a string, and the string that runs through every one of us is the common eternal life. We all possess it. We're like people who live, if you will, on a planet somewhere in the middle of space and we all havethe apparatus to breathe whatever the atmosphere is. We all have the unique capacity to live in a single kind of atmosphere, and that atmosphere is the atmosphere of eternal life, that's been bestowed upon us at the point of salvation. That's why I Cor. 6:17says, "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." That's why I Cor. 12 says, "We've all been made to drink of one spirit, we've all received one spirit, we've all been baptized into one body by one spirit." There's a basic positional unity. We've all come to Christ in the same way, we are all saved by the same method, by the same God. We were' placed into one body by the same spirit in the same way and indwelt by the same divine life in the same fullness as every other Christian. So there's a basic positional unity that ties us all together, common eternal life. We are knit together. We are knit together by this fact of life, as if we were all people who existed in a special place only able to breath a special air and all able to do that and thus having commonness we are Christians in the same sense. There are absolutely no differences in the basic identity of our common life.

Now in I Corinthians it tells us in chapter 3 verse 21: 'All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollus or Cephus or the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all are yours and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." Now that statement just sums up every Christian into one big bag. No difference. We all possess the same things, we all share in the same spiritual truths, the same verities, if you will. The distinctions are gone when you come to Christ. In Gal. 3:28 we've studied that reference in connection with some other things, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, you are all one in Christ Jesus. Verse 26: "You are all the sons of God by faith. For as many of you have been baptized unto Christ have put on Christ." So there you see the positional unity. There is a oneness that is a part of every Christian's identity. In Romans, I'm thinking of another passage, chapter 10 verse 12: "There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." You'll be saved, and you'll receive the same benefits, and the same riches and the same Spirit and the same life and the same everything.

So, he says, "I pray that you be knit together." And we all say, "But we are knit together. John just proved it to us. We are already knit together." Yes, we are knit together, positionally. Positionally. And I think this in a primary sense answers the prayer of Jesus in John 17. Jesus prayed, "Father, I pray that they may be one," and I believe primarily that prayer has been answered in the identity of the Church as the Body of Christ. I believe that Jesus was basically talking about a positional thing, and it was answered. The prayer was answered in the unity of the Spirit.

But, there is still a part of it that is still unanswered, and that's the part that Paul is dealing with here, because if you'll notice carefully, Colossians Chapter 2 he says, "Being united or being knit together (not in common life, but in what?) in love, and that's practical. Paul says, I want you to be practically united, experientially united, experimentally united as you are posit