Daily Archives: January 6, 2015

Complete In Him

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COMPLETE IN HIM

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority (Col. 2: 8-10).

There is a vast chasm between what Paul called ‘the elemental spiritual forces of this world’ and the Lord Jesus Christ ‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col. 2: 3). While this may sound grand and hifalutin, in actual fact it’s very simple.

Satan has filled the minds of people with lies about God so that they are afraid of Him, suspicious of Him or they just downright hate Him because they do not know who He is and what He is like and are enslaved to the philosophies and traditions of the demonic realm.

God sent Jesus into the world to be His representative and to show the world what He is like. He was born as a human baby, grew up as a human child in a human family and for three years He lived in a fishbowl for all the world to see what God thinks and how He behaves towards people. Jesus loved them, healed them, taught them, fed them, set them free from demonic oppression, and then died for them to forgive their sin and rose again to set them free from the fear of death. What more could He have done to show them what God thought and felt about them?

What are the elemental spiritual forces in the world? There are many and varied false ideas and teachings about God, the world, mankind, who we are and why we are here and where we are going but, in the end, they all come from one source, the god of this world, the devil. Why? Because he hates God, is opposed to Him and will do everything in his power to keep people from believing in Him.

Jesus, on the other hand, is the embodiment of truth because He is God in the flesh. Through Jesus, the Son, God the Father made it possible for us to see Him.

Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered, ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?’ (John 14:8-10a).

Philosophies spawned by the demonic forces that influence the way people think and what they believe tend to drag people towards self-destruction, conflict and alienation from one another, and destruction and depletion of the resources which God placed in the world to sustain us. We make our own rules instead of following God’s ways, and the result is chaos and ruin. We only need to look at nature and society to see the result of our ‘wisdom’.

God’s wisdom is embodied in Jesus. Wherever He went, He left behind a trail of happy, healed and reconnected people. He brought joy to those who believed what He taught and followed His way. He claimed to be the embodiment of truth. When people are generous, loving and caring instead of selfish, greedy and heartless, they are at peace within themselves and at peace with one another. In other words, Jesus’s way works!

‘Wisdom and knowledge’ – what are these? Knowledge is knowing how a new gadget works and wisdom is putting it into practice. When we read the maker’s manual, we find out how the gadget works, and when we do what the manual tells us to do, the thing will work. It’s as simple as that! Jesus is God’s ‘manual’. Through His life here on earth as a human being, He showed us how God intended us to live to be safe, happy and free. Then He invited us: ‘Follow me.’

When Jesus spoke again to the people, He said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’ (John 8: 12).

The most amazing thing of all is that those who follow Jesus are ‘in Him’, and we have the potential to be everything that He was because He is ‘in us’. Everything that God the Father is, is in Him. Everything that He is, is in us. Paul urges us, then, to become who we are, sons and daughters of the living God!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

 

Just As . . . Continue

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JUST AS . . . CONTINUE

I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, – rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness  (Col. 2:4-7).

There is no doubt that Paul was a hard worker! But how could he be a hard worker in prison, for example? He may not have worked hard manually, but his mind and his spirit were always busy – he had many churches and many fellow believers for whom to contend.

His one goal for which he ceaselessly strived, was to present everyone mature in Christ. He bent all his energies towards this one purpose – thinking, praying, writing and teaching – whether he knew them or not and whether he was with them or not. How many pastors and spiritual leaders have a goal like that for their people today?

Maturity was not about how successful they were or how well they coped in life as individuals, but how they functioned together in the body of Christ. They were to be one in heart and mind as they did life together in union with Jesus as their head.  They were to draw their life from Him, and live in submission to Him and in mutual submission to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Sounds like a tall order, doesn’t it? It is if it were not for the Holy Spirit in them whose role was to lead them into all truth and to reveal Christ to them as their model. The Holy Spirit provided the energy to do what was impossible for them to do without Him. He was the ‘umbilical cord’ which joined them to Jesus, and the source of power to obey Jesus as their Master and Lord.

The world around them was alienated from Christ and full of wickedness, trying to lure them back, through deception, into their old lives of rebellion against God. There was also an enemy within, their old nature, against whom they had to contend to remain faithful to Jesus in spite of its pull. And, on top of that, the devil was in league with their old nature, always there to dangle the pleasure of sin before them and never to remind them of the small print!

Paul’s answer to these powerful enemies who were always there to put stumbling blocks in their way, to trip them up or to lure them off course, was to continue as they had begun. How had they begun their new lives in Christ? By faith in Him! They trusted His word that He had forgiven their sin, and reconnected them with Him as their life source. They were no longer out of touch with God and left to navigate their own way through life.

Their way had not worked. Their own rules had landed them in fear, guilt and shame but in Christ they had been set free. They were a new creation, on a new path back to the Father, full of joy, and really living instead of existing. Now, said Paul, remain in Him, rooted, built up and strengthened in the faith.

This is where so many new believers in Christ, and even many who have been on the way for years, go wrong. Having been joined to Jesus by faith, they try to carry on on their own. They do what they think Jesus wants them to do or they ‘work’ for the Lord in order to ‘pay His back’ for His grace, instead of simply ‘remaining’ in Him.

Before Jesus left His disciples to go to the cross, He spent His final hours teaching them about the Holy Spirit. He wanted them to know, above everything else, that the Holy Spirit whom the Father would send after His passion and resurrection, would be His personal representative. He would live within them and would be the link between Him and them, providing everything they needed to live their new lives.

‘I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.’ (John 15: 5).

Paul’s work was to partner with the Holy Spirit in prayer and instruction so that his beloved fellow-believers would learn to rest in Jesus. Sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? Paul rested, but he also worked at resting in God as He worked in the lives of others in response to his teaching and his prayers. This is the paradox of Christian ministry – labouring to rest.

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God, for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his work, just as God did from His. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience (Heb. 4: 9-11).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Christ, The Mystery of God

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CHRIST, THE MYSTERY OF GOD

I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not known me personally. My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:1-3).

Paul was presenting deep truths to relatively young believers, using truths that many of us today do not understand. One wonders how much of what Paul wrote about made sense to them!

These were people who had not heard the message of the gospel from Paul. They had been taught by Epaphras who was probably Paul’s convert and possibly a Gentile who may have had no background in the Jewish Scriptures. Paul recognised that, although he was not a part of their conversion experience, nevertheless he had a responsibility to instruct them thoroughly in the faith. They had no New Testament to which to turn. They relied on what they had been taught and what they could remember.

What did Paul emphasise as the criteria for understanding the mystery of Christ? Not book knowledge, as we might think, but their being encouraged in heart and united in love. These are not qualities of the mind, but rather aspects of their experience as they learned to do life together. It was important for them to know the truth about Jesus and to be sure of what they believed. It was equally important that they live it out in their everyday lives.

It was in the experience of their daily lives ‘in Christ’ that they learned to know Him. They needed to be confident in Him and to draw their life from Him in a hostile environment where they could be betrayed, arrested and executed for their faith at any time. Head knowledge was not enough. They had to experience the sufficiency of Christ for everything they needed. Most of all, being believers in Jesus was about doing life together.

Those of us who are part of the culture of the western world need to learn from cultures that place emphasis on family groups above individuals. There are dangers in that, of course, especially when it comes to conversion from a traditional religion to faith in Christ. Since family takes precedence over the individual, to make a personal choice against the family is viewed in a serious light.

However, it is the family togetherness in Christ that helps believers to remain faithful and strong through the support they receive from one another. When one falls, the others are there to pick him up. When one strays, the others bring him back. Strife and conflict are handled within the family of believers to maintain harmony and promote love.

Imagine if our church groups functioned like that. It’s no wonder that the church in Paul’s day spread like wildfire in spite of persecution. Jesus said that it is by our love that people will know that we are His disciples and by our unity that the world will know that the Father sent Him.

It is this kind of life that will take us deeper into ‘the full riches of understanding’ of the mystery of Christ. The Israelites had a constitution which was intended to teach them how to live in harmony with one another. They lacked one thing – Jesus Christ. He is the full revelation of everything that the Mosaic Law was intended to teach them. They had the method, but not the means.

The Law of Moses was meant to teach them how impossible it was to live God’s way without Jesus. God wanted them to know how powerless they were to make it on their own. Even if they were able to obey God’s Law to the letter outwardly, they could do nothing to change their wayward hearts. Their sad history is proof that they did not understand the heart of God. Only a few of them got it, people like David who moved beyond keeping rules and offering sacrifices.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise (Psalm 51: 16-17).

Knowledge is important. Without it we have nothing upon which to base our faith. But knowledge that does not issue in obedience and a changed life has no value. We need to be encouraged in heart – urged on to become who we are – and united in love – taking care of one another and meeting one another’s needs at our own expense, in order to come to a true understanding of who Jesus really is. He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and the source of everything we are and everything we need.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.