Paul,
Apostle of Grace. Colossians 1:1
Today
there is little left of Colosse and though they once
had glorious days they are gone. That should be a reminder to us that no matter
what we invest ourselves into in terms of the temporal world—in terms of
our businesses, our education, our finances—sooner or later it all goes
back to dust and ashes. The only thing that counts is that which had eternal
value, the production in our own spiritual life. That is a major emphasis in
the epistle to the Colossians. Paul emphasizes fruitfulness in the opening
prayer, vv. 3-8, 10. So fruitfulness, which is simply production in the
spiritual life, is a major theme in the epistle. It is a great epistle for
studying the spiritual life. But, like everything else that we study from Paul,
the implications flow out of an understanding of who God is and what His plan
is—specifically in this epistle, who Jesus
Christ is. If we don’t understand who Jesus Christ is and what He did then we
can’t really have a spiritual life that is grounded solidly on the teaching of
God’s Word.
The
foundation for all sound doctrine is really understanding
grace. Understanding grace means we have an understanding of God’s character
because grace unmerited or undeserved favour from God and it is based on who
God is, on His character, and what Jesus Christ did on the cross. We have to
understand God’s righteousness, His justice, His love, and we have to
understand what Jesus Christ did on the cross in terms of paying the sin penalty
for every single human being; that this was done not on the basis of what we
do, any works that we do, but according to Titus 3:5, it is not on the basis of
works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved
us, by the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. So on the
writing of Scripture Paul is uniquely the apostle of grace. It’s not that the
other apostles didn’t emphasize grace but Paul more than any other explained
grace to us so that we might have a better understanding of it.
As
we hone in on the epistle to the Colossians we need to remember that it is in
the first two chapters that Paul focuses on the fact that the worship of the true
Christ means that He is supreme, sovereign and sufficient. “Supreme” means that
just like God the Father He is sovereign, He is ruler over all. We see that in
Colossians 1:16, 17 specifically in terms of the fact that is it by Him, the
Lord Jesus Christ, all things were created and it is by Him that all things
hang together. He is the one who holds the universe together and so the
survival of the human race, the survival of planet earth, is not dependent upon
human effort but is dependent solely upon the Lord Jesus Christ. As the one who
is omnipotent He is the one who has that ability to preserve and maintain the
creation.
Colossians
1:1 NASB “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and
Timothy our brother, [2] To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ {who
are} at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”
Paul
identifies himself as an apostle. That is, he recognizes that he is one of a
group of apostles and that he is an apostle not by his own will (as he states
in other epistles: not through men), but he was appointed an apostle directly
by the Lord Jesus Christ. He includes those who are with him in the salutation
because those in Colosse were familiar with Timothy.
We know that Timothy was of those who were associated with Paul the closest.
Timothy was very different from Paul in his personality. Paul was very strong
and had tremendous confidence and was one of the most brilliant men in all of
human history. He had one of the greatest educations of his time, or of any
time.
Paul
addresses the believers in Colosse as both saints and
faithful brethren in Christ, and that relates to their position in Christ, that
they are saints as every person who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is.
We are all saints. It means sanctified ones. The word means to be set apart to
the service of something, set apart for a purpose. It has no ethical
connotation. These believers are saints but that are also “faithful.” That
means they are practically applying the word, so they are growing in terms of
their experiential sanctification.
In
the first verse the emphasis is on the apostle Paul. His name, Paul or paulos—paulos apostolos means
“Paul an apostle.” There is no article with the word “apostle” and this
indicates that he sees himself as part of a group, a group that involves those
who have been personally appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ for a particular
task.
Summary
of the life of the apostle Paul: Before he was saved Paul had been educated,
possibly in Tarsus, but specifically we know that he was educated in Jerusalem.
He was born to a Jewish family. His father was probably a fairly wealthy
merchant in Tarsus, probably owned his own business which
manufactured tents. We know that Paul was trained as a tent maker. That doesn’t
mean necessarily that he was the one who sat down with a needle and thread
sewed tents together, but he very likely could do that because he would have
learned the business from the ground up. He was also trained to be a rabbi.
Regarding his time before salvation he says in Acts 22:3 NASB “I am
a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers,
being zealous for God just as you all are today.” Gamaliel
was the foremost rabbi at the time. The words “brought up” is
an unfortunate translation because the word there in the Greek is anatrepho which has the idea of being
educated. So he is speaking here of his religious education as a Pharisee in
Jerusalem. That education emphasized the strictness of the Pharisaical
code within Judaism at the time.
So
Paul was brought up a Pharisee and he speaks of this in Philippians 3:4-6 NASB
“although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has
a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day,
of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to
the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the
righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.” In Judaism the
righteousness came by obeying these various commandments that were added by the
Pharisees—traditions of men. Also before salvation, Paul states in
Galatians 1:13, 14 NASB “For you have heard of my former manner of
life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and
tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my
contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my
ancestral traditions.”
But
Paul realized in a significant event that nothing he did would ever give him
points with God. What was it that Paul did; how much of a sinner was he? We
learn in Acts 7 that he was a witness and participated (though somewhat
passively) to the stoning of Stephen. Acts 7:58 NASB “When they had
driven him out of the city, they {began} stoning {him;} and the witnesses laid
aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul.” In Acts 8:1 we see a
comment of Saul who was witnessing this. NASB “Saul was in hearty
agreement with putting him to death. And on that day a great persecution began
against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the
regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” Saul was one of those who was actively persecuting the Christians. Acts 9:1, 2 NASB
“Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the
Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues
at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women,
he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” So he was not just focusing on
Jerusalem but he wanted to go outside Israel to Damascus where there was a
large Jewish community and begin to arrest and execute Christians there. The
Sanhedrin had no authority outside Jerusalem and Judea but here they are giving
him letters, so they are clearly violating the law and violating Roman law in
giving him permission to do this. Acts 26:10 NASB “And this is just
what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons,
having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being
put to death I cast my vote against them. [11] And as I punished them often in
all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously
enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.”
Then
on his way to Damascus he was confronted by the Lord Jesus
Christ. Acts 9:3-5 NASB “As he was traveling,
it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven
flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him,
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And
He {said,} ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.’” In vv. 7-9 we learn that
those who were with him heard the sound of the voice but they couldn’t make out
the specific words that were being said. They, too, saw the bright light. This
is the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ appearing to Saul and fronting him with
his sin against Jesus—not just against the Christians but they are viewed
as the body of Christ.
Acts
9:6 NASB “but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you
what you must do.” Describing this, because it is at this time he is receiving
his appointment as an apostle, he writes in Galatians 1:12 NASB “For
I neither received it [The gospel] from man, nor was I taught it, but {I
received it} through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” So he received his
understanding of the gospel directly from the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.
Also regarding this the apostle states in Philippians 3:7-9 NASB
“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for
the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of
the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,
and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from
{the} Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which
{comes} from God on the basis of faith.” The focus is on knowing who Jesus
Christ is. If we don’t know who He is or what He did, and if we can’t explain
terms like “redemption, propitiation, reconciliation or atonement” then we
can’t really articulate what Jesus did, except in somewhat of a primary or
elementary sense. We need to be able to think in terms of biblical vocabulary
so that we are not forced to function and communicate at the level of the
Children’s Bible.
“…
not having a righteousness of my own.” He recognizes
that all that we do to impress God just depresses God. God is not impressed
with anything that we do, He is only impressed with
what Christ did. He is only impressed with Christ’s righteousness and if we
don’t have Christ’s righteousness then God is not impressed at all and we are
not saved. In this the apostle Paul understood grace: that is
wasn’t what he did, it was what Christ did and he simply trusted in Him
alone. His understanding of grace is evident in 1 Corinthians 15:9, 10 NASB
“For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am,
and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored
even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
Then
came his early Christian life. We are told in Galatians 1:17 that immediately
after his salvation he left Damascus and went into Arabia. That is a rather
loose geographical term of that time, it could include
anything south of Syria. He just goes out into the desert for about three years
just to study and reflect. He has to rethink his whole framework of thought
that was so embedded in him by his study of the Pharisaical
interpretation of the Law. He had to rethink his whole Old Testament
understanding and re-evaluate everything. He came back to Damascus where he
continued to argue and debate with those who were still promoting Judaism, then
made his first trip down to Jerusalem and did the same thing there, challenging
and debating his former allies, the Jewish leaders and Pharisees. He became
extremely obnoxious—and that happens often with young believers. When he
left Jerusalem and went back to Tarsus there was peace in the church in
Jerusalem. He was there for eleven years where he labored
in obscurity. It was not that he was doing nothing, it was that he needed that
time of privacy out of the limelight to grow and mature as a believer and to
implement what he had learned about grace in terms of his own life and humility,
waiting on the Lord to call for him to use him.
This
occurred, because when the church at Antioch needed some leadership there was
one of those who was associated with the apostles by the name of Barnabas who
said he knew just the man needed who was in Tarsus. He called on Paul to come
and visit him. By this time Paul was going by his Latin name, Paulus,
rather than his Hebrew name Saulus. He was given two names
because when he was born he was Jewish but his father had Roman citizenship and
that was passed on to Paul. His early Christian life was mostly in obscurity.
After
he came out of obscurity he made four different journeys that we know of. The
first three are referred to as his first three missionary journeys where he
took the gospel first to Cyprus and to the south-eastern
part of Turkey. On his second journey he revisited some of those churches, and
then the Lord directed him to cross over into Europe—Thrace, Macedonia
and areas of Greece—where he took the gospel. He came back to Ephesus for
a while. At the end of his third missionary journey he decided he would go to
Jerusalem. When he arrived he was recognized by the Jews
there and this created quite a tumult. The Roman soldiers were called in, the Jews tried to blame Paul for stirring up the masses.
Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship and they brought him out of Jerusalem
for his own safety and took him to Caesarea where he was kept for two years.
Then he appealed to Rome and was transported there. When he arrived in Rome he
had various meetings with the leaders in the Roman church there and he spent
two years in Rome under house arrest. Acts 28:30, 31 we are told he stayed two
full years in his own rented quarters. During this time he was preaching the kingdom
of God, always the message in Acts, related to the Old Testament prediction
that the Messiah would come to offer the kingdom of God but that this message
would also include the fact that because Jesus was crucified the kingdom was
postponed. That is where the book of Acts closes, but what we know of him is
that he was released. He travelled some more in Greece but he also probably
also went to Spain, possibly he made it as far as Britain, and then as he came
back to Rome he was arrested again, put on trial and executed.
His
entire life was an expression of grace. That is why he penned Ephesians 2:8, 9 NASB
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves,
{it is} the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”