Aleethia!

In today’s passage, Paul moves toward the conclusion of his letter to the church at Colossae and begins his conclusion with an encouragement to continue praying.

What is steadfast prayer?

First, let’s define prayer. John Piper tells this story about the definition of prayer.

There is a story about D. L. Moody making a visit to Scotland in the 1800’s and opening one of his talks at a local grade school with the rhetorical question, What is prayer? To his amazement, hundreds of children’s hands went up. So he decided to call on a lad near the front, who promptly stood up and said, “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.” This is the answer to question #78 in the Westminster Catechism. To this Moody responded by saying, “Be thankful, son, that you were born in Scotland.”

…the essence of prayer is the expression of our dependence on God through requests.¹

Now, Paul says to continue in prayer. In other letters he tells believers to pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17), pray at all times (Eph 6:18), pray about everything (Phil 4:6), etc. What he means is that our lifestyle should be typified by prayer. Prayer is the most important conversation that can come out of our mouths as believers. This is part of the “new man” we are supposed to put on, an attitude of prayer.

We are to have this attitude of prayer, steadfastly. That means we must be resolved in our spirits to do so. Our prayer life must be unwavering. This means praying even when you don’t feel like it, praying even when you’re running out of time. It means to make it a regular part of who you are. It means to persevere. Even when it seems there is no hope, continue in prayer. › Continue reading

Let’s look at what Paul has to say here in Colossians concerning the working of Christian households.

You will notice that each member of the household has a responsibility for how they should behave toward the others. These are not conditional. A wife is to submit even if her husband doesn’t love her or is harsh with her. A husband is to gently love his wife, even if she does not submit to his authority.

Here are the behaviors Paul lays out for us all.

Wives: submit = Husbands: love gently
Children: obey = Fathers (parents): do not provoke
Slaves: obey = Masters: treat justly and fairly

Let’s look at each of these in turn. Realize that these instructions are given because these are things we naturally, in our sin nature, have difficulty doing. If these actions were natural to us, God would have no need to command us to behave this way, we would do so on our own. God gives these instructions because they are good and are part of his will, but go against our sin nature. › Continue reading

Last week we looked at a list of seven behaviors we should be cultivating in our lives as believers. We said these things represented the new, clean clothes we are to put on since we have been elected, made holy, and loved by God.

This week we’re going to look at the rest of the paragraph. In these verses, Paul gives us three principles and one overarching attitude, that if followed will increase our likelihood of living out the kind of life we looked at last week.

The three principles are:

• The Peace of Christ
• The Word of Christ
• The Name of Christ

The attitude is: Thankfulness.

Let’s look at each in turn, and see how we can apply these things in our lives today.

The Peace of Christ

Paul says in verse 15 that we should let the peace of Christ “rule” in our hearts. There are three things that need defining here. We need to know what the peace of Christ is. We need to know what Paul means by “rule” and “heart”.

We’ve talked about the heart before and what the Bible means by heart. It simply means your inner man, who you are as a person apart from your physical being. The heart is the seat of your mind, will and emotions. It is your soul.

Next let’s look at the idea of peace. › Continue reading

In the last passage, Paul told us to kill our old nature, to stop living the way non-Christians live. Here he begins to lay out the type of lifestyle a Christians should model. This is the result of the philosophy he taught in verses 1-4. This is what the Christians life should look like.

When he tells us to “Put on” this new lifestyle, we see that it is intentional. It is something we have to purpose to do. Living as Christ isn’t an accident.

Paul tells us we should live this way for three reasons; we have been chosen by God, set apart for his purposes, and loved by him.

To be “chosen by God” is to be one of the elect. I know this can be a contentious doctrine for some of you. But here it is, right at the foundation of Paul’s reasoning for living the Christian life. This is the same word translated “elect” in other places. It is used of Christ (being the Messiah), angles (the holy angles in opposition to fallen angles), and people (as the church). What does the Bible mean when it refers to people as elect, or chosen? Wayne Grudem defines it this way.

Election is an act of God before creation in which he chooses some people to be saved, not on account of any foreseen merit in them, but only because of his sovereign good pleasure. ¹

Paul goes on to say that God’s elect are holy. To be holy means to sacred, pure, morally blameless. When applied to anything other than God himself, it means to be set aside for his service. This is what it means to be a ‘saint’. All Christians are saints. We are made pure by Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, and set apart for God’s service. Our living differently from the world is not to be an effort at holiness, it is the result of the holiness imparted to us by Christ. Important difference!

And finally, Paul says we are “beloved”. Which means simply › Continue reading

As we’ve studied through Colossians and other New Testament passages, we’ve been told to “walk by faith” or “in the Spirit” and to kill our old sin-nature. But what does that look like?

This morning we’ll turn to David for some help in understanding Paul. David is a guy I can relate with. He had humble origins. He became King, but was troubled by enemies and even the rebellion of his own children, most of his life. At many times in his early career, he was troubled by the fact that wicked people seemed to be prospering and doing well, while he, and others like him who were God fearing folk, seemed to be struggling to get by.

In Psalm 37 he addresses this issue, but he also touches on some of the same ideas that Paul has been teaching in Colossians, and David helped me grasp the concepts a little more readily.

Now David doesn’t build a theological frame work before giving practical advice, the way Paul does. He just jumps right to the practical, and the theology is just part of it. So he starts the Psalm with by telling us not to ‘fret’ because of evil doers, and not to be envious of them.

If you ‘fret’ over something you are worried, anxious, distressed, upset. The dictionary says it means to

upset oneself, concern oneself; agonize, sigh, pine, brood, eat one’s heart out.

The Hebrew word means “to grow warm, or burn.” It’s a burning in the heart. An agitation that can even lead to anger, stemming from worry.

What causes us to worry? › Continue reading

I apologize that these notes are very much “notes” and are not written out an usual. My schedule was very busy and I didn’t have time this week to write them out long form.

Last week we looked at the philosophy of the Christian life, as opposed to the gnostic philosophy Paul has been teaching against. This week we’re looking at the outworking of this new philosophy. This is the application part of the letter.

There are three things we’re told to do in this passage.

• Put to death
• Put them all away
• Do not lie

We’re going to see that this amounts to a total change in lifestyle. A change from worldliness to holiness.

Scripture tells us here to “put to death” our old nature. Now our old nature has already been put to death at our conversion, so what is Paul talking about? Positionally we are joined with Christ and seated in heavenly places, but practically speaking, we’re still walking around wearing flesh. Our flesh has some bad habits from our former life, and God is telling us to kill those habits.

When it says to “put to death” it means it. This isn’t regulating sin, this is digging the roots out and destroying it. The word literally means to “slay utterly” or “make a corpse of”. Now that’s serious. John MacArthur calls this “spiritual suicide”. › Continue reading

This lesson was taught on Wednesday evening, 08-27-2008.

In the opening verses of Colossians 3, Paul gives a general outline of the philosophy of Christian life. He has already refuted the false teaching of the Gnostic philosophers, so now in contrast to that false philosophy, he presents the philosophy which should permeate the Christian life.

Remember that a philosophy is simply the lens through which you view the world. It is your fundamental understanding of reality and existence. Your philosophy acts as a guiding principle for your behavior.

This philosophy that Paul explains is the practical outworking of the teaching he has just presented of our being “in” Christ. This union of the believer with Christ is the root principle of the Christian life.

Paul begins verse 1 of chapter 3 with the statement

If then

This is a conditional statement. He is stating that “if” this holds true, “then” it should have this effect in our lives.

The “if” is our salvation, › Continue reading

This lesson was taught on Wednesday evening, 08-13-2008.

In this passage Paul is truly dealing with the problem of legalistic asceticism. Asceticism can be defined in this way.

Asceticism = the practice of severe self-discipline and abstinence from all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons

The false teaching he’s dealing with now is this extreme version of self-denial.

In verse 20 Paul seems to turn this teaching on its head. Remember that this teaching is an outworking of the underlying Gnostic philosophy that matter is evil and the spiritual is good. It makes sense then, that these people would teach extreme self-denial. Deny yourself pleasure, food, any number of things, and you are becoming less materialistic and more spiritual.

Paul agrees that we have died to the world, and the powers that rule the world. He then asks why, considering our death to the world, would we submit ourselves to asceticism.  This turns the Gnostic thinking upside down. They thought that by denying themselves they were becoming more spiritual. Paul says, you’ve already become spiritually alive and dead to the world, so why would you submit to the world by denying yourself.

The Greek word translated as submit is a form of the word we get our english words dogma and dogmatic from. It means to voluntarily submit to a system of rules laid down by an authority. Paul is arguing that we are no longer under the authority of the world and the Devil and should therefore not submit to their legalistic system of rules.

In verse 21 Paul gives us examples of the type of regulation they are being given. He seems to almost be mocking their regulations by saying, “Don’t handle this. Don’t taste that. Don’t touch anything!”

This is legalism remixed. › Continue reading

This post is part of a teaching series on the book of Colossians. All of the lessons in this series can be found here. In the first lesson we outlined the book. In each subsequent lesson we look at one small section of the outline and seek to answer five questions concerning the text.

In this section of Scripture we’re looking at the Colossian error of mysticism or spiritual elitism. In our last lesson Paul spoke out against legalism that had sprung up as a result of the gnostic teaching taking place at Colossae. In these two verses he’s battling against an attitude of superior spirituality based on mysticism or visions and revelations.

In verse 18 he tells the Colossian believers not to let anyone “disqualify” them. This is the only place in the New Testament this Greek word is used. It literally means to act as a judge or umpire, to decide against, to declare unworthy of the prize. The idea of judging builds on verse 16, but here it is more serious. Here it is judging a person’s fitness for eternity. Think of sporting event, “let no one make a bad call against you, that results in you loosing the event.”

Part of this judgement involved “insisting on asceticism.”

When you insist on something, you demand to have it, not accepting anything else. The word translated as “asceticism” literally means humility or lowliness of mind. Someone who insists on humility is someone who is proud of their humility. If you think you have humility, especially if you tell others you are humble, you are not. Humility is so difficult to achieve. Pride is so easy to possess.

The second thing they insisted on was the worship of angels. › Continue reading

This post is part of a teaching series on the book of Colossians. All of the lessons in this series can be found here. In the first lesson we outlined the book. In each subsequent lesson we look at one small section of the outline and seek to answer five questions concerning the text.

In the last lesson we say Paul dealing with the underlying philosophy of gnosticism that was held by the false teachers at Colossae. Now Paul begins to deal with specific teachings and practices that had grown out of that philosophy. In these two verses, the issue is legalism.

What is legalism? The word literally means “excessive adherence to law or formula.”

I see two courses of action that I would define as legalism for Christians.

Regarding salvation - thinking that our adherence to, or keeping of, the Law is what merits our salvation. This is self-righteousness, self-earned righteousness. This is what the Pharisees did that Jesus called them out for. They made sure to keep strict outward laws, but their hearts were wicked and unregenerate. They thought they were better than others because of their works. John Piper says that legalism occurs when people turn the commandments into a job description whose payment (wages) is salvation. ¹

Adding man-made laws to God’s Law and insisting on the keeping of them, for either salvation or church membership. This would include churches that will only allow you to be a member if you promise not to drink, or dance, or play cards, or that (if you are a girl) you will not wear pants (at least not to church). Or even if these things are not formally part of the church membership, they look down on, condemn, or withdraw fellowship, from those who do these things.

Aside from man-made regulations, we know that our salvation is not dependent on our keeping the law, it is dependent on Jesus having kept the law for us. Once we are saved, by grace not works, what is our relationship with God’s Law supposed to look like? › Continue reading