Jesus Christ Is All Sufficient: Hope. Colossians
1:21-23
The focal point of verse 23 is hope.
To understand what Paul is getting at here we must understand this word “hope.”
It is a word that is often misunderstood, often misapplied in day-to-day
language, and yet in the Word of God it is a word that has a tremendous
significance.
Colossians 1:21-23 NASB
“And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, {engaged} in
evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in
order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—if
indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not
moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was
proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a
minister.”
As we look at verse 23 it looks at
the surface as if this is not talking about a grace salvation but a works
salvation. It looks as if the apostle is saying: Yes you can be saved if you
continue in the faith, if you are grounded and steadfast, if you don’t move away from the hope of
the gospel. But that isn’t really what he is saying. To understand it we have
to understand some things that are going on in the Greek text and also how
certain words are used throughout Scripture, and especially within the context
of what we have here in this epistle to the Colossians.
Expanded
translation:
“You all though, at one time were in a state of alienation and hostile in your thinking,
producing evil works, yet now He has reconciled in [or, by] the body of His
flesh [emphasizing His physical death], to present you as set apart to God,
blameless and above reproach [not talking about position but about experiential
sanctification]—if indeed you abide [fellowship] in the faith [not faith
for justification but faith for spiritual growth] because you have already been
grounded and steadfast, and are not distracted from the confident expectation
[focus on our destiny] derived from the gospel which you heard, which was
proclaimed to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a
minister.”
We need to remember that
reconciliation has two aspects. There is the objective aspect that took place at
the cross when Jesus died. There was something that happened there that changed
the orientation of the fallen creature, mankind, to a righteous and just God.
Part of what happened was directed toward God and His righteousness and
justice. His righteous standard had to be satisfied so that His justice would
be free to bless. That is referred to in the New Testament as propitiation, or
satisfaction. The righteousness of God had to be satisfied so that His justice
would be free to bless. But there is another word that is used in the New
Testament—not used in the Old Testament because it could not be used
until the sins had actually been paid for—and that is the word
“reconciliation.” It is reconciliation applied to man; it is man who is reconciled
to God. It is man who originally moved; it is the human race that is sinful;
and it is that sinful legal status—referred to as hostility alienation or
enmity in the Scripture—that gets changed in some way when Jesus died on
the cross, not when we believed. Its application to an individual in terms of
their own orientation to God is the subjective side, the personal side of
reconciliation. Paul said that God reconciled the world [all of humanity] to
Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19), not imputing their trespasses to them. The “them”
refers to the world. The sin is actually paid for by Christ on the cross and
that refers to those universal aspects of Christ’s atonement, that God is
propitiated not only for us but the whole world (1 John
2:2)—reconciliation, redemption for all mankind. What we see in this
verse is that God performs the action and the world receives that action, and
the issue is the fact that sin is not imputed, meaning that sins are actually
paid for. People are not sent to the lake of fire because of sin; that is paid
for at the cross. What we have rather is that people are sent to the lake of
fire because they are still spiritually dead and they have refused to accept
Christ’s righteousness. Because they don’t have the kind of righteousness that
can get them into heaven and because they are still spiritually dead then they
are under condemnation and the eternal penalty is the lake of fire.
The Scripture teaches that it is in
the state of hostility or enmity that Christ died for us. Romans 5:6, 8 NASB
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the
ungodly….But God demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Ephesians 2:15 gives us another look at this. NASB “by
abolishing in His flesh the enmity, {which is} the Law of commandments
{contained} in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one
new man, {thus} establishing peace.” When did this take place? It took place at
the time of His death on the cross. We also know from Ephesians 2:12 where Paul
was speaking to the Gentile Ephesians, says NASB “{remember} that
you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of
Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without
God in the world.” There are two aspects of alienation there, one is in the
relationship between Jew and Gentile and the other is in the relationship
between all mankind, Jew or Gentile, and God the Father. They had no hope and
were without God in the world. Reconciliation, the objective aspect, is
something that took place in AD 33 when Christ died for our sins.
There is a legal change in that relationship between the human race and God.
Colossians 1:22 reinforces this.
That can’t be when we believed, is has to be when He died. So sin is no longer
the barrier between man and God, the sin penalty is paid for and man has been
reconciled to God by virtue of that payment. That doesn’t mean all are saved,
it just means the status has changed and makes it possible for those who are
under condemnation to believe the message of reconciliation which is “be
reconciled to God.” So there are two aspects: God was in Christ reconciling the
world to Himself, and the message “be reconciled to God.”
One purpose of the cross is to
provide a basis where we can grow to spiritual maturity. The focal point is on
not just continuing or abiding in the faith, i.e. spiritual growth, but not
being distracted, not being moved away from the hope of the gospel. It is clear
in Paul’s mind that those to whom he is writing have been justified, that they
are all saved. When he says “if indeed” in Colossians 1:23
he is not thinking maybe they were not saved, he has made it very clear that
they are. He calls them saints and faithful brethren in 1:2, they had a
reputation for faith and love in 1:4, their faith was bearing fruit in 1:6,
they have heard and understood the gospel of grace in 1:6, they were redeemed
and forgiven in 1:14, reconciled in 1:21, 22, and then it becomes very clear
that they have been saved when we look for ward to Colossians 2:5, 6 where Paul
says, NASB “For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am
with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of
your faith in Christ. Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord,
{so} walk in Him.” In just a few verses he praises them because they are “steadfast”
[stability]. So 1:23, then, is not trying to get them saved but encouraging
them not to be distracted in their pursuit of spiritual maturity because there
is an end game, a future reality that we all have, and it is easy to let the
details of this life distract us from the objective which is our preparation
for ministry in the future millennial kingdom.
This brings us to a very important
doctrine in the Scriptures, the doctrine of hope. We have to remember what the
context is here. There is this group of believers who are in this church at
Colosse who come under the same kind of pressure that every one of us comes
under, and every Christian has faced down through the centuries, and that is
the pressure to think like the world around them thinks; to think in terms of
the norms and standards and the lifestyle of the culture around them. Yet God
has called us to be distinct and unique and not to be like the world around us.
This is the same kind of thing that God did in the Old Testament when he called
out Abraham. He had a specific plan for Abraham and his descendants and they
were to live in a way that was set apart and distinct from all of the nations
around them. God gave them the Torah, the Law, so that on the basis of their observance of the Law God would bless them richly and
this would be a testimony, a witness to the entire world—see Deuteronomy
chapter four. The church age believer is called out the same way. We are to
live a life that is set apart and distinct—that is the idea in the word
“holiness.” Today we face the same kind of problems they faced at Colosse. We
have a world around us that is shaped by the materialist philosophy, the nihilist
philosophy that has been prevalent throughout the last 150 years, emphasis on
Darwinism, evolution, and that the basic problems of man are defined by
psychoanalysis and not by the Word of God. All of these kinds of things have
shaped the thinking of western culture and it bears different fruit in
different generations.
As we look at Colossians we see that
hope is foundational to the whole message. In 1:4 what motivated love for the
saints? 1:6, “because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” So what does this
means, that we have hope?
1.
Definition: If we look the idea up
in any English dictionary it has the idea of just a wishful optimism. It has
the idea of a desire with the expectation of obtaining something, or to expect
something with confidence. Webster’s Dictionary also lists an archaic meaning
of trust and reliance. In contrast to the ambiguous way in which English uses
the word “hope” the Greek text uses hope with a precise meaning: the idea of a
confident expectation, an assurance of a future reality. Hope in the Bible is
never this idea of wishful optimism; it is always the expression of a
certainty, a future certainty/ reality, a confident expectation or assurance
that something will take place. At its broadest sense, when we read the word
“hope” it is a reminder that we can be certain and confident and we can be
assured of our salvation and our eternal destiny. In a narrower sense the word
“hope” focuses on the quality of our future eternal life as we are serving the
Lord in the millennial kingdom.
2.
Hope is very closely related to
faith in the Scriptures. In some passages there is almost an overlap of
meaning. For example, when the apostle Paul was giving his testimony explaining
what had happened when he was arrested in Jerusalem to Felix he
said: “I have hope in God.” There it is very close to saying: I believe in God.
The hope is the result of belief. It is close to the idea of faith and it also
focuses on something in the future: “… which they themselves also accept that
there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.
Later when Paul is addressing Herod and Festus he said, “Now I stand and am
judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers.” Hope is often
related to promise. When we claim a promise there is a hope or confidence that
God will fulfill that which He has promised. That is looking forward to
something. Another passage which focuses on the future is Titus 1:2 NASB
“in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages
ago.” It is certain in the confident expectation of eternal life. In Romans
4:18 in reference to Abraham’s confidence in God, Paul writes: “In hope against
hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to
that which had been spoken, “SO SHALL YOUR DESCENDANTS BE.” It
should be translated “From hope [from previous expectations and the realization
of the promise of God] and on the basis of that hope he believed…” The point
that has been made is that God had demonstrated faithfulness to His promises to
Abraham in the past, and on the basis of that hope and hope realized Abraham
continued to have hope and confident expectation that God would fulfill the
promise that He had made to him. You don’t have hope in faith, you have hope on
the basis of faith; it is the faith that precedes the hope.
The hope of our calling focuses on
our destiny; we were called for a purpose. The calling has to do with God’s
saving us, and that saving us isn’t just so we can end up going to heaven rather
than the lake of fire but that we would have a destiny of service to God in the
future kingdom and on into the eternal state. So that one hope of our calling
summarizes all that God has for us in the future. It
is because we understand where we are headed that it impacts the decisions we
make and the lives we have now. We are living today in light of the future and
in light of eternity. The fact that this is the problem that the Colossian
believers are facing and the distraction that Paul is warning them about is
seen in the next chapter where Paul says again: “Let no one cheat you of your
reward.” The focal point that Paul has here is that if the believer gets
distracted in his pursuit of spiritual maturity, which will have fruit for
eternity then he will be cheated of his reward at the judgment seat of Christ.
The point is to encourage the Colossian believers and us to move forward, to
understand the hope that comes from the gospel.