The
Gospel of Truth; Colossians 1:5-8
Whenever
Paul is praying for the Colossians church or any of the other churches he has sent
epistles to he frequently makes this statement that he gives thanks for them.
In this we see something of the spiritual priority of our lives; we understand
something of what should be important to us in our own spiritual growth. So he
focuses on these three spiritual virtues we have seen: their ongoing faith in
Jesus Christ as they are growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ, learning
to trust Him more consistently; their love for all the saints, i.e. as they are
growing spiritually God the Holy Spirit is producing in them the fruit of the
Spirit, the first of which is mentioned in Galatians 5:22 to be love; then the
statement in the fifth verse, “because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”
This hope is related to their love for all the saints. It is motivated by the
hope, that something in the future that is laid up for them in heaven.
As
we are increasing in grace orientation and doctrinal orientation then our walk
by the Spirit becomes more consistent and in all of this we are trusting in the
truth of God’s Word. So we see that something that under girds our spiritual
growth is our concept of truth, which is what the apostle brings in in two verses, Colossians 1:5, 7. We have our foundational skills which relate to faith, growing in faith and
increasing the consistency of our walk by faith and not by sight, and then the
more mature aspects relate to love. It is not easy to love people who are
unlovable. It is not easy to love because we are all so mired in our own
arrogance and self-absorption that to focus on other people and what is going
on in the lives of other people demands a certain divorce from that standard
self-absorption. So it takes a certain amount of doctrinal understanding, trust
in the Lord and growth before love really begins to mature. But what motivates
us is hope, our confident expectation for what is laid up for us in heaven.
Colossians
1:5 NASB “because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which
you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel.” This hope is not just
an abstract hope, not just a hope in a general future in heaven, not just a
confidence that when I die I know where my destiny is. It is more than that.
Only Christianity gives real hope because real hope is based on real knowledge,
and real knowledge is based on absolute truth, a sense of truth that is more
than just what is true for you and true for me. Today we reduce truth to
something that is nothing more than simply people’s opinion and you can’t have
very much confidence in something that is opinion based. Faith, hope and love
are all based on truth, and this hope that Paul is talking about is a certainty
that is laid up in heaven. If there is no heaven then this is just meaningless
babble and we may as well just tear up the New Testament and go home. The only
other option is that this is speaking about genuine truth.
Peter
uses this same phraseology in 1 Peter 1:3 NASB “Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has
caused us to be born again [regenerated] to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” It is a living hope because Peter
is talking about resurrection from the dead. [4] “to {obtain} an inheritance {which is} imperishable and
undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.” The word
“reserved” is related to the word “laid up” in Colossians 1:5, apokeimai which means to store something
up, to lay it up, to reserve it to an appointed end. It is not the same word
but they are synonyms. It has the idea that something has been set aside for us in heaven. It has to do with inheritance, something future that is reserved for us, that
belongs to us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul
refers to this in Ephesians 1:18 NASB “{I pray that} the eyes of
your heart may be enlightened [perception of our soul for understanding God’s
Word], so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the
riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” There is not an
uncertainty there. The Bible represents the fact that there is a truth, a truth
that is knowable, understandable; it is not guesswork,
it is something that is grounded in the language and revelation of Scripture.
And we can know this with certainty. But we can only say that if we believe
that there is such a thing as absolute truth. Today no longer do people ask,
what is truth? Today the question is: is there truth? The answer that modern
man gives is, no, there is not. Modern man has landed in an unsettled sea of
chaos in terms of knowledge; he has rejected completely the possibility of
knowing truth.
Paul
uses apokeimai in 2 Timothy 4:8 NASB
“in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness…” So again we
come back to this idea of inheritance, and it is related to rewards. There are
four different crowns that are listed in Scripture, one of which is the crown
of righteousness that Paul refers to here. “…which the
Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me,
but also to all who have loved His appearing.” The day is a reference to the
bema seat, the judgment seat of Christ.
But
there are actually two different categories of inheritance that we see in the
Scripture. These are seen in Romans 8:16, 17 NASB “The Spirit
Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children,
heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with
{Him} so that we may also be glorified with {Him.}” This is always an important
couple of verses to illustrate that what we have in our Bible has already, no
matter how good the translation, been washed a little bit through somebody’s
interpretive grid. In our translations, e.g. NASB, the
punctuation—a comma after the word “Christ,” and the two terms “heirs of
God” and “fellow heirs with Christ”—makes it seem to refer to the same
thing; that heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ apply equally to anyone
who is a child of God. Then we have the clause: “if indeed we suffer with {Him}
so that we may also be glorified with {Him.}” The problem with this punctuation
is that it makes heirship conditional upon suffering with Jesus.
A
better way to understand this is found in the location of the commas. In verse
17: “and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ if
indeed we suffer with Him.” In this view there are two categories of
inheritance. The first category belongs to all believers (heirs of God); the second category (joint heirs with Christ). The
condition applies only to the second category; we become joint heirs with
Christ on the condition that we suffer with Him. Christ learned obedience,
Hebrews tells us, by the things He suffered. Even in His sinless humanity Jesus
still had to grow in sanctification; He had to learn obedience to the Father as
He grew up. That doesn’t mean He was disobedient but He had to learn to submit
to the Father’s authority. If we go through that same process then we are
experientially sanctified, and so this becomes a second category of inheritance.
There
are some things that every believer gets at the moment of glorification. We get
a resurrection body, we are free from the presence of the sin nature, we are
going to have life everlasting in heaven, etc. But there are differences,
distinctions, and those are described at the judgment seat of Christ in 1
Corinthians 3:10ff where it talks about one category of works are wood, hay and
straw, and another category which is gold, silver and precious stones. And
everybody is going to have a different amount depending upon their
walk with the Holy Spirit. So there are differences in rewards and some are not
going to have any because they didn’t grow and were disobedient—saved,
yet with nothing. It is understanding this that
motivates us to love one another because we recognize that there is
accountability in the future at the judgment seat of Christ.
Colossians 1:5 NASB “because
of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the
word of truth, the gospel.” There are three important nouns in the second half
of that verse: word, truth, and gospel. The word “word” translated the Greek
word logos, often translated
“word” but it has about eighteen different meanings. It can mean thought,
reason, even message. It is a little easier to understand the thrust of this
passage if we translate it as “message”— of which you previously heard in
the message of the truth of the gospel. It is not just the message of truth, it
is not just the message of the gospel; it is the message of the truth of the
gospel. Paul emphasizes that there is something in the gospel that is true, and
because it is true with a capital T it gives is certain confident knowledge and
information about the future.
There
is a truth. Even the very language that we use to communicate to anybody about
anything implies universal truth. If you are talking to somebody and say it is
raining outside you expect the other person to understand that you are not
saying it is snowing or that it is clear, but that you are saying there is
liquid precipitation outside. Even the writers of multiculturalism and
postmodernism today expect their readers to understand what they write in the
same sense that they intend it to be understood. But what they are telling you
in their writings is that there is no universal truth and you can assign
whatever meaning you want to whatever it is that you read. So it may mean one
thing to one person but another thing to another person—with the
exception of this book that I’m writing! Of course if you fill out your income
tax and follow the instructions in your tax bulletin in the same way that some
of these people want to interpret Scripture or literature or politics and the
Constitution…! But they find there are immediate consequences to not literally
interpreting their tax instructions, etc.
Paul
says the gospel is truth; there is one truth. In Galatians 1:6 he castigates
the Galatians because they had gotten away from this; they had brought in
something else—a different gospel, a works-based gospel. This verse uses
the word “gospel” in a narrow sense. The word “gospel” has a narrow and a broad
sense. Normally when we hear the word we think of the message that a person
must believe in order to avoid eternity in the lake of fire. That is the narrow
sense. There are very few places, other than maybe Galatians 1:6, 7, that use
gospel in that narrow sense. Most places use it as Paul uses it in Romans 1:16
where it is not only the message of deliverance from eternity in the lake of
fire but it is all of the implications of that, the whole body of doctrine that
comes with that belief. So it is in a true sense the full gospel (not in a
Charismatic, Pentecostal sense), the full gospel of everything that God has
given us in Christ. Romans 1:16 NASB “For I am not ashamed of the
gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…”
Paul never uses that word for just justification in Romans; it always refers to
the end game of complete deliverance. It implies a certain view of truth: that
if you are a Christian and you believe in the Bible you have a certain view of
truth that philosophers call a coherence view of truth. That is their way of
saying that truth conforms to the way things are.
As
Christians we believe that absolute reality is defined by the thinking of God.
So Jesus was able to say: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one can
come to the Father, except through me.” The only option we have is that Jesus
was telling the truth. Jesus also said: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” He presupposes an absolute truth, an
absolute body of doctrine, that is the basis for our spiritual growth and
spiritual life; and that is embedded within God’s Word, God’s revelation.
Colossians
1:6 NASB “[this gospel] which has come to you, just as in all the
world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as {it has been
doing} in you also since the day you heard {of it} and understood the grace of
God in truth [by means of truth]…” The only way we know the grace of God is by
means of the truth. And the truth is where? It’s in God’s Word. [7] “just as you learned {it} from Epaphras,
our beloved fellow bond-servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our
behalf, [8] and he also informed us of your love in the Spirit.” It is not
required for a pastor to build a big church. In fact, Jesus said: “I will build
the church; you keep my sheep.” What is required of pastors is only one thing,
the Scripture says: to be faithful; to be faithful in their teaching of God’s
Word, faithful to the responsibilities of the spiritual gift that God has given
them and in serving God. Epaphras meets the test. He
is a faithful minister of Christ on their behalf, and he is the one who also
declared for Paul their love in the Spirit. So he ties it back to their
spiritual growth, spiritual maturity, and this is exemplified by their love for
all the saints; but it is produced by the Holy Spirit.