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Paul's Letter to the Colossians - 2
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Colossians 1:15-28 (New International Version) The Supremacy of Christ
15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of[a] your evil behavior. 22But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Paul's Labor for the Church
24Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
28We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
Paul's Letter to the Colossians
I must confess my surprise that the politically correct “police” have not mandated a change in the motto of McMaster University. I suppose it could be it has been concluded that few people know the motto and even fewer pay any attention to it. Some of you—I suppose this would be particularly true of those in the Glenview congregation today—are likely wondering how it is I got from our text in Colossians to musings about a motto.
The McMaster motto is something of a unique creation. Most university mottos are Latin phrases. University of Toronto’s is “velut arbor aevo”: May it grow as a tree through the ages. Wilfrid Laurier’s is “veritas omnia vincit”: truth conquers all. Then, of course, there are city mottos, Toronto’s for example—”Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat”: It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. McMaster’s founding benefactors were Baptists and they wanted to create a Christian place of higher learning. The motto comes from Colossians 1:17—Ta panta en Christoi synesteken: in Christ all things hold together.
What I would like to do today is use that concept as a unifying theme for all that we see in our text. Specifically I want to suggest
our search for God holds together in Christ,
our salvation holds together in Christ, and
our mission as a church holds together in Christ.
I know that according to that popular book women are from Venus and men are from Mars, but I don’t know if that has anything to do with passwords and secret handshakes. I have a sense that little girls were far too sensible or just too busy with other things to be bothered with passwords in order to gain access to the tree fort; which I suspect also means that it was exclusively men who were responsible for wrong thinking that was threatening the faith of the Colossian church and which Paul wrote against.
As I said last Sunday, the ideas that some were trying to popularize among these Christians are known under the heading of gnosticism. It was more of a philosophy than a faith and it was elitist; only those with particular secrets of knowledge could find salvation. In other words you had to know the password.
William Barclay, whose Daily Study Bible is always helpful, explains the thought process of gnosticism. They began with this one basic assumption, matter is altogether evil and spirit is altogether good. The next step from this assumption is that god, who is good, cannot be the agent of creation because it is evil. Therefore, god put forth a series of emanations, until finally one of these was far enough away from the true god that it could handle and shape matter and that’s how creation came into being.
Gnostics believed the ultimate task of any human was to find their way to god, but Jesus was not that way. Jesus was simply one of the many emanations that God had put out. At best he was a partial revelation of God. In order to get to god one had to get past all these lesser spiritual beings, these emanations of god. Guess what—in order to do that one had to have special knowledge and passwords. To put it in the vernacular, the gospel was too simple for them. “If you believe what Paul is preaching,” they might have said, “then there’s no status in achieving salvation; it is a gift given to anyone who will receive it.”
Paul tells the Colossians this is exactly what the creator God offers us in Jesus. Again I owe this wonderful explanation to Barclay. Paul says Jesus is the image of the invisible God. The word used there is icon. A letter sent from a soldier named Apion to his father Epimachus mentions that he has included a little portrait drawn by a friend. The word is icon.
There is one more example. Have you picked up a parcel at the post office lately? The drill used to be that you would get one of the notices hung from the door handle that you had been out when they tried to deliver and your parcel will be available tomorrow after 1 p.m. at such and such postal outlet. There’s been a change. Now you need to present the notice and photo ID.
In the ancient world, when a legal document was drawn up it always included a description of the chief characteristics and distinguishing marks of the people involved. That description was called an icon. As Barclay puts it, “Jesus is the portrait of God. In Jesus Christ you see nothing less than the personal characteristics and distinguishing marks of God.” Our search for God then holds together in Christ.
Our salvation holds together in him also. In verse 21 Paul describes the Colossians as you who were once estranged and hostile in mind. Language is a living thing and I suppose it is possible that such a way of thinking will offend our modern ways of thinking, but I think Paul has chosen his words both carefully and well.
The word translated estranged in the NRSV is alienated in the NIV, far away in the NLT and backs turned to God in The Message paraphrase. The word literally means “transferred to another owner.”
I did something foolish a few years ago. I traded in one car on another and decided I would get a new set of license plates. I made two foolish assumptions—one that the car was likely headed for the scrap heap and two that if it was going to stay on the road the dealer would take the plates off it.
About three months later I received a letter from the By-law enforcement office of the city of Oshawa informing me that the parking ticket I had been issued was past due. It took not a little convincing on my part, but after a few telephone calls and a letter I was able to prove that I was no longer responsible for that car because I was no longer the owner.
Here’s the thing: God, who is altogether righteous and holy and loving and without sin or blemish cannot include us in the family. Our sin has transferred us to another owner. The one who is holy and blameless and beyond reproach requires the same characteristics in those whom he welcomes into the family. The only way that is possible is if someone else can do that for us. That someone else is Jesus. “There has never been, nor will there ever be, a Christian life that is without blemish in actual conduct. But Christians’ identification with Christ is such that his righteousness and his standing before God are theirs” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, v. 11, p. 187).
Back in June I read Made for Goodness, co-authored by Bishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter, Mpho. Those who know me well know that despite being a Baptist and holding those distinctive convictions closely, there is a bit of Anglican blood in me on my mother’s side and I am reluctant to disagree with someone who has risen to the rank of bishop. I agree with Tutu, father and daughter when they say we were made for goodness. I am reluctant to say that human beings are basically good. I am inclined in the direction of G. K. Chesterton who saw original sin as the one Christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable and validated by 3500 years of human history. I think Paul’s description of human beings without Christ is deadly accurate—estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. “But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence” (Colossians 1:23, The Message).
If our search for God and our salvation holds together in Christ, then our mission as a church also holds together in him. Part of our text is a much-disputed verse. I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. Most of us, when we hear or read this verse, either skip over it, assume we either don’t or can’t understand it, or think Paul is saying something with which we cannot possibly agree. That is because as soon as we hear the word afflictions we think of Christ’s suffering and death. What could be lacking in his death?
The answer is nothing is lacking in the suffering Christ endured for our salvation. But the word translated afflictions never refers in the rest of the New Testament to the sufferings of Christ on the cross. One scholar of the 19th century, J. B. Lightfoot put it this way. “It is a simple matter of fact that the afflictions of every saint and martyr do supplement the afflictions of Christ. The Church is built up by repeated acts of self-denial in successive individuals and successive generations. They continue the work which Christ began.”
Perhaps the name Phillips Brooks will be familiar to you. In our day he is most famous for writing the words to the Christmas carol, O little town of Bethlehem. During his lifetime, Brooks was known as one of the finest preachers in the United States and his statue can be seen outside the church he served, Trinity Church, Boston.
During a question and answer session which followed a lecture he once gave, Brooks was asked what he would recommend be done if a member of a congregation fell asleep during a sermon. His reply was that he would instruct one of the sides men (ushers) to find a long pointed stick and with it prod …the preacher.
Brooks believed the gospel was the most exciting news ever, and I agree. But to those churches that say it is a sin to bore anyone in worship, I would suggest it is a greater sin to do nothing more than entertain those who come to church seeking spiritual encouragement and direction.
The ministry of Christ’s church is shaped by the life of Christ. The saving work of Christ is complete in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The kingdom-building work of Christ is not complete and is being done today by those who follow the example of Christ, losing the self-centred pursuits to which the world calls us and instead taking up the unselfish pursuits of compassion, grace, justice and witness.
What is it that we are up to in North Toronto at Blythwood Road Church and Glenview Church? I believe it is not much more complicated than this: we are discovering for ourselves that everything in life that is worth the bother is held together in Christ—Christ who died, Christ who was raised, Christ who will come again at the culmination of history, and inviting others to share that discovery with us.
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