As we come to this letter to the Colossians, by
way of laying a foundation we will read some verses from
the matchless first chapter.
"For this
cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to
pray and make request for you, that ye may be filled with
the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and
understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all
pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and
increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all
power, according to the might of his glory, unto all
patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks unto
the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the
saints in light; who delivered us out of the power of
darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son
of his love; in whom we have our redemption, the
forgiveness of our sins: who is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him
were all things created, in the heavens and upon the
earth, things visible and things invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all
things have been created through him, and unto him; and
he is before all things, and in him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the
beginning;, the firstborn from the dead; that in all
things he might have the preeminence. For it was the good
pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness
dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto
himself, having made peace through the blood of his
cross; through him, I say, whether things upon the earth,
or things in the heavens" (Col. 1:9-20).
Now, that forms quite a
good foundation for speaking about the gospel - and do
note that that is the gospel. All that is what Paul calls
the 'good news'. It is the thing that Paul preached -
"the gospel which I preach". In this letter,
that word occurs not so many times as in other letters,
but with a peculiar point. It occurs in this first
chapter, verse 5: "...because of the hope which
is laid up for you in the heavens, whereof ye heard
before in the word of the truth of the gospel";
and then in verse 23: "...if so be that ye
continue in the faith, grounded and stedfast, and not
moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard,
which was" - and here is the same word in the
verb form - "preached in all creation under
heaven" - "which was 'gospelled', '
good newsed', in all creation under heaven".
Good
Tidings in an Emergency Situation
Now, if anything is to
be good news, or good tidings, if it is to have a really
keen edge to it, there must be a situation for which it
brings relief, assurance, comfort or gratification. If it
does not matter, then it is not good news. For example,
supposing someone, with whom your life and heart are
closely bound up, lies in a very serious and critical
illness, and you call in medical help. You are under a
great burden of anxiety: it matters very much to you
which way it goes; and you wait for what seems an
eternity for the doctor to come down and give you a
report. When he comes down and says, 'It is all right,
you need not worry; things are going all right, they will
come through', that is good news indeed. It has an edge
on it, because your heart is bound up with this matter.
If there is a great decision in the balances, which is
going to affect in some way your future, your career,
your life, and a committee is sitting on it, and you are
waiting outside with your heart, as we say, in your
mouth, feeling most anxious as to how it is going: when
someone comes out and says, 'All right, you have got the
job, the appointment', that is good news. It brings to
you an immense sense of relief. If there is a battle on,
the issue of which will be serious for all concerned, and
someone comes back from the scene of the fighting, and
says 'It is going well, it is all right, we are going to
get through!' - why, it is a tremendous relief. That is
good tidings. It touches us, it means something to us.
There has to be something in the nature of an emergency
situation really to give point to good news.
The
Emergency Situation at Colossae
Now, in the case of
almost all Paul's letters, there was an emergency
situation. Something had arisen in the nature of a threat
to the Christian life of those with whom his heart was
closely bound up; something had arisen which was causing
many of those Christians real concern, worry and anxiety.
They were in real difficulty; the future seemed to be in
doubt. It was in order to meet such emergencies as these
that Paul wrote his letters, and in them all he uses this
word 'gospel', or 'good news' - good news for an
emergency, good tidings for this critical situation.
In this letter to the
Colossians it is peculiarly so. There was a real
emergency on amongst the believers at Colossae. But it
was the same emergency which takes different forms at
different times - it is present today in its own form.
What it amounted to was this: that there were certain
people, considering themselves to be very knowledgeable,
wise, intelligent, learned people, who had been dipping
into a lot of mysterious stuff, and they were bringing
their high-sounding ideas and theories to bear upon these
Christians. It all had to do with the great magnitudes of
life.
First of all, there was
no less a matter in view than the very meaning of the
created universe. Now that might be, of course, a realm
for philosophical speculation; but you know that, in
certain ways, that comes very near to the Christian
heart. Is there a design for everything, or is everything
either just taking a mechanical course, or being carried
on by some mysterious powers which are inimical to human
well-being? Is there any real design behind this created
universe? To push that one step further: Is there a
purpose in everything? Sooner or later, Christians come
up against these questions. Under duress, trial, pressure
and suffering, sometimes we do not know what to make of
things. This seems to be a topsy-turvy universe, full of
enigmas and contradictions and paradoxes, and we have a
bad time over it. Is there a plan in it - is there really
a Divine control of everything in this universe, in human
history and in all that is happening? Is there after all,
to use a word which I do not think we fully appreciate, a
Providence for everything and in everything? - that is to
say, is everything being made to work together according
to design and purpose, and to work out toward a great,
Divine, beneficent end?
Now, these people were
arguing about that, and the Christians at Colossae were
being greatly disturbed by it all.
And then it came nearer
to their own Christian existence. It touched upon their
very life as children of God. Now, if any people in the
world ought to be quite sure about these matters - that
there is a Divine purpose and Divine pattern and Divine
Providence - it is Christians, and the very life of the
Christian is affected by whether this is so or not. The
matter of our assurance, our confidence, our restfulness,
our power, our testimony, rests upon having an answer to
these questions. The meaning of this whole universe, the
order and the purpose in it, the design and the control
of it, the Providence over all events and happenings in
the course of human history - these are things that come
very near to the Christian. If we have any doubt about
them, our Christianity goes for nothing, the very
foundations are swept from under our feet, we do not know
where we are.
That was the emergency
at Colossae. The very life of the Christians, the very
life of the Church, was threatened. And if its life is
threatened, its growth is threatened. The whole matter of
the spiritual growth of the Church and of the Christians
is at stake in this - growth, development and maturity.
If that is threatened, then something else will be
threatened: the whole thing will disintegrate, will fall
apart; its unity and cohesion will collapse; the whole
thing will be scattered into fragments. And so the very
hope of the Church and of the Christian is struck at,
their hope and their destiny. These are neither small nor
unpractical matters. They may come very near at some time
or other, and they require an answer.
The
Answer to the Situation
Now, it was to meet
this whole situation, to answer all these serious
questions and issues, that Paul wrote this letter: to
confirm the Christians, to establish them, to sustain
them, to encourage them; and he calls it 'good tidings',
and it is. If you can give something to answer all that,
it is indeed good tidings, is it not? That is 'gospel'
indeed! You see, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
touches the uttermost bounds of this universe, and covers
everything within those bounds, including human history,
human happenings, world events, the course of things, the
design in things, the end of things. The gospel touches
it all at every point.
So Paul answers it, and
he answers the whole of it in one word. His answer is: Christ.
Christ is the answer. That answer is found
inclusively in those words in chapter 3, verse 11, the
last clause: "Christ is all, and in all."
And what an immense 'all' Christ is if He covers the
whole of that ground! If He reaches out and embraces all
those mighty issues, what a Christ He is! The
all-comprehending fact is emphatically and categorically
stated by the Apostle in this letter. He states it in
many sentences, but in this one statement he gathers it
all up. The answer to all this is Christ. Christ is the
explanation of all the happenings in human history.
Christ explains this universe, Christ gives character to
this universe, Christ stands behind all the course of the
events in this universe. Christ is the integrating Person
of everything, the One in whom all things hold together.
'Christ is the end, for
Christ was the beginning;
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.'
The
Evidence That the Answer is Satisfactory
But perhaps you may
say, 'It is all very well for Paul to make a categorical
statement like that, but what is the evidence?' Well, the
evidence is quite real. And it must be said that, if we
are asking for the evidence, something has gone wrong
with us! We ought to be the answer, we
ought to be the evidence: because the witness to this is
first of all the personal, spiritual experience of the
child of God. You can leave the vast universe for the
moment, if you like, and come to the little universe of
your own life - for, after all, what is true in the
microcosm is only a reflection of what is true in the
great cosmic realm. God brings down His evidence from the
circumferential to the very centre of the individual
Christian life, and the answer is there. What is the
experience of a truly born-again child of God?
Now you can test
whether you are born again by this, and, thank God, I
know that many of you will be able to say, 'Yes, that is
true to my experience'. But I ask you: What is your
experience as a truly born-again child of God? When you
really came to the Lord Jesus - however you may put it:
when you let Jesus come into your heart or into your
life, or when you handed over your life to Him; when
there was a transaction with Him, a new birth, by which
you became a child of God - not by any 'sacrament'
applied to you, but by the inward operation of His
Spirit: when you became a child of God in a living,
conscious way, what was the first consciousness that came
to you, and has remained with you ever since?
Was it not, and is it
not, this: 'There is now a purpose in life, of which I
never knew before; there is a purpose in things. Now I
have the sense - indeed I know - that I was not just born
into this world and grew up, but there was a purpose
behind it.' There is design in things; a sense - you may
not be able to explain it all, what it all means - but
you have the sense now that you have arrived at, or at
least begun to realise, the very purpose of your
existence. Is that true? When the Lord Jesus at last has
His place in our hearts, the big question of life is
answered - the big question as to the 'Why' of our
existence. Till then, you wander about, you do all sorts
of things, you fill up time, you employ heart and mind
and hand, but you do not know what it is all for. You may
have a very full life, a very full life indeed, outside
of Christ, and yet come to the end without being able to
answer the question, What is it all about?
One man, who had
enjoyed such a full life, who had become well-known in
the schools of learning, a great figure in the
intellectual realm, in his dying moment cried: 'I am
taking an awful leap into the dark'. He had no answer to
the question. But the simple child of God, immediately
they come to the Lord, has the answer in consciousness,
if not in explanation, in his or her heart, and that is
what is called 'rest'. "Come unto me", said
Jesus, "and I will give you rest" (Matt.
11:28). Rest is in this: 'Well, I have been a wanderer,
but now I have come home; I have been searching - I have
found; I have been in quest of something - I did not know
what it was - but now I have it'. There is
purpose in this universe, and when Jesus Christ comes
into His place, as this letter says, then you know there
is purpose in your universe, and there will be purpose in
the universe of everybody else, if only they will come
that way.
And not only purpose,
but more - control. The child of God very soon begins to
realise that he or she has been taken under control,
brought under a mastery; that there is a law of
government set up in the consciousness, which is
directive: which, on the one hand, says, 'Yes', the
glorious 'Yes' of many liberties; on the other hand, 'No
- careful, steady, watch!' We all know that. We do not
hear those words, but we know that that is what is being
said to us in our hearts. The Spirit of Christ within is
just saying, 'Look to your steps - be careful, be
watchful'. We have come under control. That is extended
in many ways over the whole life, but it is a great
reality. This universe is under control, it is under
government. The evidence of it is found within our own
experience when Christ comes to His place. And you can
extend that into the future ages, when the whole universe
will be like that, under Christ's control.
And then again:
"in whom all things hold together". The
wonderful thing about the Christian life is its
integration, or, if you prefer another word, its
unification. How scattered, how divided, we were before
Christ got His place! We were 'all over the place', as we
say - one thing after another, looking this way and
looking that; hearts divided, lives divided; we in
ourselves divided, a conflict within our own persons.
When the Lord Jesus really gets His place as Lord within,
the life is unified. We are just gathered up, poised,
concentrated upon one thing. We have only one thing in
view. What Paul said of himself becomes true: "but
one thing I do..." (Phil. 3:13). We are people of
"one thing". Christ unifies the life.
What about life itself,
the life of the child of God? When the Lord Jesus is in
His right place, the life of the child of God is secured,
is established, is confirmed, and grows; there is
spiritual growth and maturity. It is a wonderful thing.
If, in some Christian lives, it is not realised as a
fact, it is for very good reasons - or for bad reasons! -
but if the Lord Jesus really is "all, and in
all", in the life, if He 'in all things has the
pre-eminence', it is wonderful to see the spiritual
growth. Those who have much association with, or
experience in dealing with, young Christians, have found
this one of the most impressive things - how, where the
Lord Jesus just gets His way, they go ahead spiritually,
they grow. They come to understanding and knowledge which
so many of the scholars seem to have missed. They have
come to a real spiritual understanding. While other
people are trying to get on along other lines -
intellectually and so on - these young ones, who have
not, many of them, the background of intellectual or
scholastic training - they are just simple people - are
just leaping ahead spiritually.
This growth in
spiritual intelligence and understanding does not rest
upon anything natural. It is coming about because Jesus
has such a large place, and He is the source and centre
and sum of all spiritual knowledge. Over against that, it
is possible to have great acquisitions and qualifications
in the academic realm, to be doing big things in that
realm, and yet to find that the simple things of the Lord
Jesus Christ are to you as a foreign language. You do not
know what it is about - you cannot follow or join in at
all. This is sad, but true. There are Christians, yes,
true Christians, who just cannot talk about the things of
the Lord. If there is to be growth, it can only come
about through Jesus being given His place, fully and
without question.
And then, as to
destiny. The statement is that the destiny of this
universe is with the Lord Jesus, and that that destiny is
universal glory. But that is just a beautiful idea, an
enchanting vista, is it not? How are you going to prove
it? In your own heart! Is it not equally true with the
other matters that we have already been considering,
that, when the Lord Jesus really gets His place, you have
a foretaste of that glory? No one can understand the
Christian who has not the Christian's experience, but
there it is. It is not just that we are making out that
we are having a good time. It is something coming from
the inside; it is something of a foretaste of the glory
that is to be. We have got the answer to all these
immense questions right in our own spiritual experience.
The
Witness of the Church
But then the Apostle
moves to the Church, and speaks about the Church:
"And he is the head of... the church... the
firstborn from the dead" (Col. 1:18). How does the
Church bear witness to the fact, this great fact, that
Jesus is the answer to these immense questions? I think
the Church gives the answer both positively and
negatively.
It gives the answer
positively - though not as positively as it might have
done - but it does give the answer in this, that, after
all (and what an 'all' of these two thousand years!), the
Church is still in existence. Think of that inrush of the
forces of antagonism and hatred and murder upon the
Church in its infancy, with the determination of the
greatest empire that the world had ever known to wipe it
out. After all, it is that empire that has gone; the
Church continues. Think, too, of all that has set itself
during the centuries since to bring the Church to an end,
to destroy it, and still is set upon that. Oh, that men
were not so blind that they misread history! If only
those powers in the world today, great kingdoms, great
empires, would rightly read history, they would see they
are on an utterly vain mission, a fool's errand indeed,
to try to destroy the testimony of Jesus on this earth.
It is they who will be destroyed.
Yes, the very
continuance and persistence of the Church is evidence
that this is true - that Jesus Christ is the key to this
universe, that He is the answer to all these questions. I
say, the Church does not give the answer as clearly as it
might. If only it had gone on as it began, what an answer
it would be!
But it gives the answer
negatively, as well as positively. It answers it
negatively by the very fact that, whereas once it stood
up to the world victoriously, weathered the storms
triumphantly, it has now moved away from its centre, the
Lord Jesus Christ, and brought in substitutes for His
absolute headship and lordship. It has made other things
its governing interests. The result has been
disintegration, division, and all the rest. Yes, the
thing is answered in the negative, and it will always be
like that.
Let us be quite clear:
it is not that the truth has broken down. If these things
ever become a question with you, it will not be because
they are open to question, but because something has gone
wrong with you as it has gone wrong with the Church. It
is not in the truth, but in that which is supposed to
represent the truth, that the question lies. These
substitutes for the headship of Jesus Christ, whether
they be men or institutions or religious interests or
Christian activities, whatever they may be, if they get
in the place of the Lord Jesus Himself, lead to nothing
but disunity and division. To put that more positively,
if only men, leaders and all the rest, would say, 'Look
here, all our institutions, our missions, our
organizations, all our interests in Christianity, must be
subservient to the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ',
you would find a unity coming about, a oneness. We should
all flow together on that ground. It is the mighty tide
of His lordship that will cure it all.
Go down by the
sea-shore. The tide is right out, and all the breakwaters
are naked, dividing up the whole coastline as it were
into sections. But as the tide comes up, the breakwaters,
the dividing things, begin to disappear. You come back at
full flood-tide, and you see nothing whatever of those
dividing breakwaters. The rising tide has buried them
all. And when Christ is all, and in all, 'in all
things having the pre-eminence', all those things which
belong to the low tide of spiritual life, the ebb-tide of
spiritual life, will just disappear. The proof is in the
Church.
We had a little taste
of it during the recent visit to this country of Dr.
Graham. There was one consuming passion to bring Christ
into His place at the beginnings of life; all the
different sections were found concerned with that. Where
were the barriers, where were the 'breakwaters', where
were the departmental things? They had gone, buried under
this high tide of concern that Christ should have His
place in lives. Why should that be for three months only?
Why should it be experienced only in a convention lasting
a few days once a year? No, this position is God's
thought for always. The key to it is just this - Christ
all in all.
Perhaps we can see now
why mention of the gospel in this letter is confined to
one emphasis - "the hope of the gospel". Yes,
the only occurrences of 'gospel' or 'good news' are in
that connection - "the hope of the good
news". The hope of the gospel is in Jesus Christ
being all and in all. Hope is a Person, not an abstract
nature in us - 'being hopeful' - which does not amount to
much more than a periodical, variable optimism. Hope here
is a Person. The hope of the good news is: He in
all things having the pre-eminence. That is where the
hope lies for you, for me, for the Church, for the world,
for the universe. That is the hope of the gospel.