Saturday, August 27, 2011

Rooted and Built Up in Jesus

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7)

Paul wants the Jesus believers as Colosse to continue living according to who Jesus is: both Messiah and Lord. They have begun in that faith and now he wants them to “walk it out.”

Verse 7 elaborates. Paul speaks of being “rooted and built up.” Mixing these metaphors is not new for Paul, and that should probably tell us something about how important they are for our understanding. In Ephesians 3:17, he speaks of believers being “rooted and grounded in love.” In 1 Corinthians 3:9, he says, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.”

“Rooted” is an agricultural metaphor; “built up” is an architectural one. Craig Keener, in The IVP Bible Background Commentary says of this verse, “The Old Testament prophets used this language for Israel (if they obeyed God, they would take root, be planted, built up, etc.), and early Christians probably took this language from their preaching of the Old Testament.” Use of this kind of language identifies the New Testament Church along with obedient Old Testament Israel as the people of God.

We should pay attention to the tenses of these words, though they are not readily apparent in most English translations. Wuest’s New Testament: An Expanded Translation, however, captures them well: “having been rooted with the result that your are firmly established, and constantly being built up in Him and constantly being established with reference to the Faith.”

In the Greek text, the word for “rooted” is a perfect, passive participle. The perfect tense means that it is something that has already been done, with results that continue. The passive voice means that is some that has happened to us. God is the one who roots us in Jesus.

The Old Testament often spoke of the people of the Lord as being “planted.” For example, those who delight in His instruction are like trees “planted by rivers of water, that brings forth fruit in its season” (Psalm 1:3). In another psalm, the writer sings about God’s relationship with Israel, “You have brought a vine out of Egypt; You have cast out the nations, and planted it” (Psalm 80:8-9). The prophet Isaiah speaks of Messiah, who will come to comfort all those who mourn in Zion, “that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified” (Isaiah 61:3). This is the work of God in our lives.

In Colossians 2:7, the word for “built up” is a present, passive participles. The present tense, in Greek, speaks of a continuing process. Paul shifts metaphors with “built up,” which gives us a picture of construction. We are God’s building, “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20) But we are a particular kind of building: “in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21-22). We are God’s temple, being built together (not just as individuals but as God’s people) to be a dwelling place for Himself. Peter picks up the same theme in his letter, teaching us that we, “as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house,” with Jesus as the chief cornerstone (1 Peter 2:-6). Again, this is the work of God in our lives.

The word for “established,” bebaioo, is also a present, passive participle, indicating a continuing process. It is a word about firmness and stability, and it is used here of being stabilized in the faith. Not just “in faith” but “in the faith.” The content of faith is as important as the act of believing it, and the content Paul has in mind is the Messiah, Jesus, the Lord. The NIV translates bebaioo as “strengthened.” In stability there is strength. As we continue to “walk” in Jesus, we will become stronger in the faith, being strengthened by God. We will not be confused or wavering in faith, nor susceptible to those who would try to charm us away from Jesus.

“As you have been taught.” The believers at Colosse had received the good news about the Lord Jesus from Epaphras (Colossians 1:7). This is the same faith Paul taught, and it stands in sharp contrast to the message being brought by the Gnostic teachers and Jewish mystics who worshipped angels instead of Messiah.

Paul adds a thought about thanksgiving: “abounding in it [the faith] with thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving is about being appreciative for what one has received: in this case, the good news of Jesus the Messiah. Thanksgiving is important to the stability and strength of our faith, for what we do not appreciate we will eventually become discontent with and let go.



The Focus of Our Faith
The Focus of Our Faith
Paul’s Letters to the Jesus Believers at Colosse
Bite-Size Studies Through Colossians
by Jeff Doles

Preview with Amazon’s “Look Inside.”

Available in paperback and Kindle (Amazon), epub (Google and iTunes) and PDF.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Walking It Out

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. (Colossians 2:6)

The Jesus believers at Colosse were holding steady together. Paul encourages them now to continue in the path on which they have begun. They had “received” Jesus the Messiah. The Greek word, paralambano, indicates that Jesus, that is, the message about Him, had been presented to them and that they had taken hold of Him by faith. They had learned the gospel, the “good news” about the Messiah from Epaphras, who most likely learned it from Paul.

Now they were to “walk” in it, or more accurately, in Him, Jesus. “Walk” is a metaphor for how one lives. It is a continuous process, one step after another in a consistent manner. It is progressive, not regressive. That is, it is moving forward, not turning back or straying from the path. It is active, not passive. That is, it is something we do, not something that happens to us. When we receive Jesus, we are in Him. That part is passive, part of who we are. But then, being in Him, we proceed in accordance with who He is and who we are in Him. We walk it out.

This particular construction, “Christ Jesus the Lord,” notes A. T. Robertson, in Word Pictures in the New Testament, is not used anywhere else by Paul. “Hence it is plain that Paul here meets the two forms of Gnostic heresy about the Person of Christ (the recognition of the historical Jesus in his actual humanity against the Docetic Gnostics, the identity of the Christ or Messiah with this historical Jesus against the Cerinthian Gnostics, and the acknowledgment of him as Lord).”

Docetism (from the Greek word dokeo, “to seem”) taught that Jesus was purely spirit and that his physical body merely “seemed” to be real. Cerinthianism made a distinction between Jesus and Christ, teaching that Jesus was merely human but that the Christ descended upon him at his baptism. Paul however, in calling Him “Christ Jesus the Lord,” identifies Him all in one — in His humanity, His divinity and His messianic identity.

It is in the fullness of this Jesus, who is man, messiah and Lord, that we now live. Having received Him by faith, we continue in the truth of who the Messiah, Jesus, the Lord, really it. Hold steady to that and do not allow yourself to be charmed away from Him.



The Focus of Our Faith
The Focus of Our Faith
Paul’s Letters to the Jesus Believers at Colosse
Bite-Size Studies Through Colossians
by Jeff Doles

Preview with Amazon’s “Look Inside.”

Available in paperback and Kindle (Amazon), epub (Google and iTunes) and PDF.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Holding Steady Together

Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. (Colossians 2:4-5)
The Greek word for “deceive” here is paralogizomai, which means to miscalculate, reason falsely or mislead. “Beguile” is how the King James Version puts it. The word for “persuasive words” is pithanologia, which appears only once in the New Testament. According to A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, by Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich, it speaks of the “art of persuasion” and is used here of “plausible (but false) arguments.”

False teachers can be very charming, feeding you and deceiving you with arguments that sound good on first hearing but fall apart on closer inspection. That is why Paul wanted the Jesus believers at Colosse to be woven together in love and have the confidence that comes from knowing and experiencing God in an intimate way through Jesus the Messiah.

Most of these believers Paul had probably never seen in person but he knew about them through Epaphras, who related to him their faith in Jesus and their love for all the believers everywhere. So, though he was not with them “in the flesh,” he was able to identify with them “in the spirit” and perceive their spiritual condition. And what he saw in them filled him with joy. He rejoiced to see their “good order” and the “steadfastness” of their faith in the Messiah.

The Greek word for “good order” is a military term, which Paul uses metaphorically. It means that they held the line without any breaches. The word for “steadfastness” is similar. They were holding steady in their faith against the attacks of the enemy, maintaining a solid formation like a Roman phalanx.

It is important to remember that a line is not a line of one nor can one man form a phalanx all by himself. Paul is not writing to a collection of individuals but to a community of faith. They were not each one left to fend for themselves but were all in this together. They were a tight band of believers with a common love for one another and a common faith in and love for the Lord Jesus. And there was great strength in that.



The Focus of Our Faith
The Focus of Our Faith
Paul’s Letters to the Jesus Believers at Colosse
Bite-Size Studies Through Colossians
by Jeff Doles

Preview with Amazon’s “Look Inside.”

Available in paperback and Kindle (Amazon), epub (Google and iTunes) and PDF.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Woven Together in Love

I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s Great mystery. (Colossians 2:2 The Message)

Paul had an intense desire — and concern — that the Jesus believers at Colosse be “woven together into a tapestry of love.” Because he wanted them to know and experience, in a very intimate way, the revelation of God in Jesus the Messiah. The one does not come without the other. Until we are bound to each other in love, we will not really know or understand God — because love is of God and God is love (1 John 4:7-8).

God Himself is “woven together” in love. The early Church Fathers have a special word to describe the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: perichoresis. It is a Greek word made up of two parts: peri, which means “around,” and choresis, from which we get the word “choreography.” It was used to describe the interaction, the interrelationship, the divine dance of the three persons of the Godhead. Love in love with love.

They mystery of God, which is not hidden away for a select few but is made available to all, is revealed to us in Jesus the Messiah by the Holy Spirit. Divine love throughout. God so loved the world that He gave His Son (John 3:16). “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” Jesus said, and then He did. And “the fruit of the Spirit is love” (Galatians 5:22).

If we would know and experience and enjoy and dwell in this mystery, we must enter into a life of love for each other. Understand, though, that this love is not something we must work up on our own. We cannot. But it comes to us as a gift from God, who is love, and who is the giver of all good gifts. Our part is to yield to it and let it work in us and through us. As we submit to divine love, God will weave us into a rich tapestry and we will experience that love which has existed from eternity.



The Focus of Our Faith
The Focus of Our Faith
Paul’s Letters to the Jesus Believers at Colosse
Bite-Size Studies Through Colossians
by Jeff Doles

Preview with Amazon’s “Look Inside.”

Available in paperback and Kindle (Amazon), epub (Google and iTunes) and PDF.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Hidden Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge

For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and* of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Colossians 2:1-3)

Paul had an intense concern for the Jesus believers at Colosse and Laodicea and the entire region. They had been targeted by Gnostic teachers who promoted a “secret” wisdom and knowledge to which only a few attained. Paul was determined to protect them from this error. Not that he did not want them to have wisdom and knowledge — he very much desired that they should experience the “mystery” of God it in all its fullness. But the Gnostics taught that God was a distant deity whose fullness was too pure for the material realm and was separated from us by a hierarchy of angelic beings.

“As many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” It almost seems like Paul says this as a dig against this false teaching. For the Gnostics, only the spiritual realm was good; the material world was not merely corrupt but was inherently evil. So Paul gets in their face, so to speak, with reference to material things: his face and his flesh. Ha!

Paul wanted the believers at Colosse to “know” (Greek, eido, to “see” or “perceive”) what “conflict” (Greek, agon, from which we get “agony”) he was going through on their behalf. This was a serious matter and he was engaged in a magnificent purpose. Let me share with you how various translations have put it:
In order that their hearts may be cheered, they themselves being welded together in love and enjoying all the advantages of a reasonable certainty, till at last they attain the full knowledge of God’s truth, which is Christ Himself. (Weymouth New Testament)

How I long that you may be encouraged, and find out more and more how strong are the bonds of Christian love. How I long for you to grow more certain in your knowledge and more sure in your grasp of God himself. May your spiritual experience become richer as you see more and more fully God’s great secret, Christ himself! (The New Testament in Modern English, J. B. Phillips)

Know that I’m on your side, right alongside you. You’re not in this alone. I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s Great mystery. (The Message)
There is one purpose here but with three facets:
  • That they may be encouraged, comforted, cheered.
  • That they may be knit together, woven together, bonded together, even welded together in love.
  • That they may have a full, rich “knowledge” (Greek, epignosis) of God, that is, to know Him not just in theory but in experience.
This full, rich, experiential knowledge of the Father comes to us in Jesus the Messiah. He is the “mystery” of God. For the Gnostics, divine mystery was a secret knowledge revealed only to a few, but for Paul, the mystery of God was something that was once hidden but is now revealed to everyone — it is the “good news” of the gospel.

Paul’s emphasis is ever and always on Jesus. It is in Him — not in the esoteric teachings and angelic hierarchies of the Gnostics, but in Jesus alone — that we find all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and come to experience, with confident assurance, the fullness of knowing God.

* The NKJV adds “both of the Father and,” but there is no basis for this in the earliest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.



The Focus of Our Faith
The Focus of Our Faith
Paul’s Letters to the Jesus Believers at Colosse
Bite-Size Studies Through Colossians
by Jeff Doles

Preview with Amazon’s “Look Inside.”

Available in paperback and Kindle (Amazon), epub (Google and iTunes) and PDF.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

The Last Things


Eschatology is a theological term that refers to the doctrine of “last things.” Some people think it is about the “end of the world.” And in one sense, it is. Not “end” as in destruction, but as in fulfillment; that is, the end or purpose for which the world was created.

New Life has come. Jesus, the Word who from the beginning was with God and is God, has come into the world (John 1:1). “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). In Him is life and the life is the light of humanity (John 1:4). This life is related to the kingdom of God. Jesus said that unless one is “born again” he cannot see or enter the kingdom (John 3:3, 6). The Greek words for “born again” literally mean “born from above.” It is not only new life, it is life that is higher in quality because it is higher in origin. It is life born of the Spirit of God, the life of heaven, the life of the kingdom of God breaking into the world. Jesus came to give us that life. “I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). This is eternal life and it has already begun for all who receive Jesus by faith.

The True Light has come. In Jesus is life and the life is the light of humanity. He is the “true light” who gives light to everyone who comes into the world (John 1:9). “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). “Therefore He says: ‘Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light’” (Ephesians 5:14). “You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). “The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8). There is no other light to come, the true light is already here.

The Kingdom of God has come. Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15). By “at hand,” Jesus was saying that the kingdom was now here, that it was being inaugurated. “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it” (Matthew 11:12 NIV). Though it has not yet arrived in all its fullness, it has already begun and all who receive new life in Jesus can see and enter in and experience its power and glory.

The New Covenant has come. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God foretold the days of the new covenant, for the old one had been broken because of unfaithfulness.
Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
Jesus instituted this new covenant between God and man, as He was perfectly suited to do, seeing that He is fully divine as well as fully human. This covenant is based on better promises and cut in His own blood (Hebrews 8:6; Luke 22:20). There is not another covenant to come; this one is eternal.

The Spirit of God has come. God spoke of the same end time event through the prophet Ezekiel as He did through Jeremiah. It would be a time when He would give His people a new heart and put His Spirit within them.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
Through the prophet Joel, He said, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days” (Joel 2:28-29).

This was fulfilled at Pentecost, when God poured out His Spirit on the Church. Filled with the Holy Spirit, all the disciples began speaking and praising God with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Peter stood and declared, “This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel,” then began quoting the passage from Joel 2, “And it shall come to pass in the last days …”

Paul spoke of being led by the Spirit and said that those who are, are not under the Law (Galatians 5:18). “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23). The Spirit leads us in the ways of God and produces in us things that the Law of Moses could never do.

New Creation has begun. Jesus is the “the Second Man” and “the Last Adam,” Lord over the new creation. Everyone who is in the Messiah (who receives Him by faith and is counted as His) is part of this new creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation” (Galatians 6:15). Jesus said, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

Resurrection has begun. The resurrection of the righteous has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep … For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.” (1 Corinthians 15:20, 22-23). “And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18). Just as the firstfruits assures the harvest, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the assurance that all those who belong to Him will also be raised bodily from the dead when He comes again.

The reign of King Jesus has begun. After the resurrection, Jesus came to the disciples and said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). Then He ascended to His throne at the right hand of the Father. God “raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:20-23). God has also “made us alive together with Christ … and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5-6). Not only has King Jesus begun His reign, but we also have been seated in the place of ruling and reigning with Him.

Biblically speaking, we are now in the “last days,” and have been ever since the coming of Jesus the Messiah into the world. The “last things” have begun. We are living in the days of the King, between the times of inauguration and final fulfillment, when He shall come again.