Things are just different in a small town. There is a certain anonymity to living in the city, and I’m not sure it is healthy. On Cheers, they talked about going where everybody knows your name. That is a marker of a small town. Of course, a small town can be just as unhealthy in its own ways. I enjoy listening to Garrison Keillor talks about his fictional hometown of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, out there on the edge of the prairie. He often called it “the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve” and almost always closed his story by saying that it is a “place where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
I love small towns. Even though you have to be careful what you say because everyone is connected by birth, business, marriage or possibly all three. Things just seem to slow down and while some people go on vacation to find peace and quiet, we have it right here. And you never have to worry about parking or traffic jams. You know you live in a small town when you don’t have to use your turn signal because everyone else already knows where you’re going. And when everyone already knows all the news, but they still read the paper just to make sure the publisher got it right.
I’m talking about small towns because not only do we live in one, and are surrounded by them, but because the letter where we are going to spend the next 12 weeks or so was written to a small town church full of small town people so I think we might have something to gain from a deeper dive. Let’s begin by reading the first two verses of the book of Colossians. I would also encourage you throughout the week, if you have an extra 5-10 minutes, read this letter. The whole thing all 4 chapters. If I read the whole thing out loud right now it would take about 7 minutes. It’s not big, but it is rich in its exaltation of Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:1-2
“Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother.
To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”
Another fun aspect of small-town life (I use the word fun sarcastically here) is the dirt roads. Driving down dirt roads swerving to miss the potholes. Sometimes the paved roads aren’t much better. What happens when you hit too many of those potholes? You might need to take your car in for an… alignment. Well, churches are kind of like cars. This particular church has hit some potholes and so they need the master mechanic to give them an alignment.
Paul has never even been to this church. It probably got planted by Epaphras during the time of Paul’s three years in Ephesus (Acts 19:10). But some issues have arisen that we will deal with in the coming weeks and Epaphras is not sure how to deal with them so he consults the master mechanic Paul as he is in prison.
You see, if a church starts veering too far to the right their goal will be conservative is good, really conservative is better and really really conservative is best. They run the risk of being to the right of God. And Paul sees that they are to the right of God he would encourage them to scoot over. You can tell these churches when they say God made rules and we like rules, more rules can only make things better right? But pretty soon they look at Jesus and see that he has long hair and looks like a hippie and hangs out with a rough crowd and they think he ought to clean up his act. If you want to see what Paul has to say to a church like this, you can look at Galatians. They were getting to be more conservative and legalistic than God and Paul rebukes them and gives them an alignment to get them back in line with God’s purposes.
There is another church in the New Testament in Corinth that does not have this issue. Their car instead is veering hard to the left. They are way too liberal. They are getting drunk at communion and one guy married his mom and they acted like it was normal. They were veering into oncoming traffic so Paul writes to them a couple of times to try to reset their alignment.
Similar to those letters, Paul is writing here to a church. However, in Colossae, there was no organized opposition with a leader seeking to undermine or destroy the church. This was also a newly planted church that needed some guidance from a seasoned professional like Paul. They were off to a good start and by all accounts, they were growing well and just needed some guidance and encouragement. You could see this as the driver’s manual. As a new church, I think we can use some guidance to help stay on the road and to understand the routine maintenance.
So, right here out of the gate, Paul is telling them what they need to know if they want to grow. I’m not talking about numerical growth here. Instead, Paul is talking about spiritual growth. Whether you have known Jesus for decades there is still plenty to drink from in the bottomless well of his glory, and if you are a newer Christian then the encouragement is to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. So here are four things you need to know if you want to grow.
Who You Will Learn From
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother.”
None of us come into the Christian life as experts. In fact, you didn’t come into the world with any understanding at all. Someone taught you how to walk and talk and read and write. Everything we know we learned from someone else. As a Christian, we get to pick who we are going to trust and learn from. The most mature of these small town people were probably no more than five years old in the Lord. Since they were mostly Gentile they weren’t coming from a biblical background. So they were bringing a lot of baggage to the table.
A controversial statement here right out of the gate: The most important thing about you is what you think about Jesus Christ. Jesus is the most significant person who has ever lived in the history of the world. More books are written about him, more songs are sung to him, more paintings are painted of him than anyone else who has ever lived, by a long shot. A few billion people from every corner of the globe claim to worship him as Savior, God, King, and Lord. Furthermore, we separate time itself based on his birthday BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domine) the year of our Lord. He towers above human history and what you think about him is the most important thing about you.
So, if what we think and believe about him is so important then who are we going to trust? Who do you consider a credible source about the most important person that ever lived? Paul begins by introducing himself (in the normal manner for a letter in those days) as an apostle of Jesus Christ. So who is this guy Paul and why should we trust what he has to say about Jesus?
I’m the type of person that is naturally skeptical. I’m always looking for what a person’s angle is. I want to learn from people that are smarter than and closer to Jesus than me. And I think Paul checks those boxes. Let’s see how.
Paul wasn’t always Paul, right? Saul was a guy who stood by and watched as Christians were stoned to death. He thought that he was doing God’s will. Saul was a Jew’s Jew trained by Rabbi Gamaliel. He saw Jesus as a heretic who was leading people away from the truth. He knew his Bible and he missed it. If you remember, he was on the way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there. But God had other plans.
A bright light knocked him to the ground and Jesus spoke as a voice from heaven to rebuke him for his persecution. He was blinded and went on into the city and one of the guys that he was going to imprison or kill preached the gospel to him and God gave him back his sight. He immediately began preaching to the Jews in Damascus telling them that he was wrong and Jesus really is who he says he is. He went from being a well-favored Jew that was training to be a Rabbi to an enemy of the state that they were plotting to kill and he barely even escaped Damascus alive. They let him down in a hole in the wall.
When he returned to Jerusalem he started showing up to prayer meetings and the disciples were skeptical. No one wanted to close their eyes during prayer time if you know what I mean. He kept preaching to the Jews since he was a Jew and argued with the Greeks since he spoke Greek. He was an enemy of everyone. When the disciples realized this, they sent him home to Tarsus to study the Scriptures to see that they all testify to Jesus.
He could not stop preaching about Jesus and it cost him a lot. Read 2 Corinthians 11:24-28. This is the guy that wrote half of the New Testament and was counted as a peer of the Apostles that walked with Jesus. We can trust Paul. He lived his life for Jesus and almost certainly went to glory with the name of Jesus on his lips. Oh yeah, and he’s in prison. Not some minimum security club fed. Roman prisons were no joke. And he was writing books of the Bible. How many of you think that if you were in prison you’d be writing a lot of theology? You’d probably be making a shank. Not Paul. He is trustworthy because he is the least likely person you could imagine loving and worshiping Jesus and he does it with such ferocity that it can’t be doubted. So you’ve got to know who you are going to follow and I say that Paul’s resume tops everyone except Jesus.
The Will of God
“Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother.”
A quick word about Timothy, we see Paul preaching in Lystra in Acts 14. The Jews show up and persuaded the crowds to stone Paul, and thinking that he is dead they drag him outside the city. But when the disciples found him, he got up and they went on to Derbe and preached. The thing that gets me is that Paul then goes back to Lystra (where they just stoned him) and his word to the believers there to encourage them is Acts 14:22 “Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God.” There was a kid in the crowd possibly when he was stoned but almost certainly when he came back who decided I’m going to follow that guy because that’s not something you see every day. Timothy becomes like a son to Paul and he trains him and sets him up as a leader of the church of Ephesus, but now, he is just hanging out with Paul in prison and could be helping him write because Paul had that pesky thorn in the flesh that he was dealing with.
So Paul says that he is an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. Did Paul put his resume out looking for an apostle Job? Is he on LinkedIn? No. This is not a job, it is a calling. The big difference between the two is that you can quit a job but with a calling, you are in until the end. You will do things for a calling that you would never do for a job. If my boss came in on Monday and said “Alright, Logan today we are going to flog you and throw rocks at you and then we’re going to drop you in the middle of the ocean and make you swim for it, I would say, “This is where I used to work, because I quit.” But Paul, because he knows the call of God and the will of God for his life became someone that could not be stopped because he wouldn’t quit because God kept calling him deeper into the relationship.
Oh, how I pray that you might know the will of God for your life. A handful of people get an amazing call like Paul. Most will be more natural. For me, this call came when I was 17 years old and I had ADD and only heard part of the calling. The calling was to study and to preach the word of God and to do ministry. And I did and I still feel like that is my calling. However, I think the other part that I missed because I was so amped to go try to do what I thought he wanted in my own strength was that he wanted me to do that in the context that my education and job placed me. Now God worked through my disobedience and gave me a helper who has helped me tap the brakes on my enthusiasm so I can be still and know that he is God.
God’s probably not going to show up in a burning bush to give you the plan for your life. He generally speaks in much less flashy ways. But the common factor between Paul’s calling and ours is still the word of God. I believe that it is impossible to know and discern the call of God on your life apart from a vital connection to his word. There are some things that God has called us to do that are obvious, but we need the indwelling of his word for the strength to do them. For instance, Teresa is my wife and she is called by God to love me and put up with me, and she does an amazing job. But it is a calling because I’m a handful right? We are a hot mess and I’m the mess part.
The other way we get the word of God is through prayer and I do believe that God speaks, but the most crucial matter of prayer is the posture. It places us in humble submission and reverence before our God. Prayer is the way that we chew on the meat of God’s Word. God gives us desires and talents and abilities and we are called to use those things to the praise of his glorious grace in humble submission to his word.
Who You Are
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother. To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.”
Saints and faithful in Christ. Paul says that this is who he is writing to and this is not a specialized group. There is no junior varsity vs. professional Christians. This is the way that he thinks of the church, Saints and faithful in Christ! Do we look at the church and see saints and faithful or do we see hypocrites and holy-rollers? This is your true identity along with all who love and worship Jesus.
We often talk about identity as self-worth, self-help, self-actualization, self-love, self-esteem, all of which holds self in common. In secular psychology, the beginning and end of identity is rooted in self and has nothing to do with God. It reminds me of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. It had a prayer labyrinth while we were in Louisville and I remember people going nuts over this prayer labyrinth where people could go and walk and pray and “find themselves.” There were certainly some people who just used it as a place to go to pray and meditate on Scripture and be in nature, but there were others who used it only to turn inward with hopes of finding themselves in the center. I would advise anyone that they should start in the center of the labyrinth and say “What am I doing here? The center is supposed to belong to Jesus, let me get out of here.”
If your search for identity centers around you and not Jesus then you are missing the truth. If you don’t have an identity rooted in a relationship with God then it can only be developed in reference to other people. So when you look around your job, or at school, or at a restaurant, or on Facebook, you see the smart one then that makes you the dumb one, they are the pretty one you are the ugly one, they are successful that makes you the loser. So you compare yourself with others and end up in one of two places either despair or pride, either way, is not rooted in the truth.
The truth is that all people are sinners by birth and by choice and that sin defines us without Jesus. However, that is not where the Bible begins. The Bible begins with perfection, not sin. It begins with God and not man. God created man with dignity, value, and worth. And then we sinned. But our identity as children of God was established before our rebellion. Without Jesus, you are dead in sin. That is your reality. But if you have received the grace of Christ and have been wrapped in his righteousness then your standing with God is restored and you have a new identity in Christ. Our only hope is being in Jesus. And the hope is that there is a coming day when we will finally be freed from sin and will be able to flourish in the identity that God intended for us. Sin may explain a portion of your existence but in Christ, it is not our eternal destiny!
So when we see Paul here talking to these believers in Colossae he calls them first saints. He understands that the most important aspect of their identity is their position in relation to Jesus. Sin may explain what they do, but “saint” defines who they are and who they are will enable them to eventually overcome what they do. When God is finished with us, we will be sinless, you will be perfected, like Jesus. In this life there is progress, but in eternity there is perfection. Are you a saint? How many of you put “saint” on your business card or Facebook page? It feels weird right? We have over hundreds of years elevated the word saint which simply means holy and set apart. But the Catholic church turned this into an office or official title.
To become a Saint in the Catholic church you have to die (and be dead for 5 years) then if your priest presents you to the bishop and you are accepted into consideration for sainthood then you gain the official title of Servant of God. Then your life will be considered by a committee and they will determine if you lived a life of heroic virtue. If that is determined then you are granted the title of Venerable. Once Venerable then if a miraculous healing is done in your name and the Pope himself thinks you are legit you can be upgraded to Blessed. One more miracle (or if your body doesn’t decay, or your grave smells like roses, or your dried blood turns to liquid on a holy day) and then the church will examine the claims further and then you can finally become a Saint, and then we’ll name a school after you, and put your face on a candle next to the tortillas at the grocery store.
Paul says to these ordinary believers in a small town church plant, you are saints. He also uses the phrase, faithful brothers. Since this church was likely an interesting mix of Jewish believers and Gentile converts, I think that he was probably using these two phrases to refer to those two groups. Saints were the Gentile believers who have been transformed by the grace of Christ and faithful brothers are those Jews that like Paul have understood that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Israel and they have remained faithful to God and trusted in Christ.
It can be very easy to look at the Bible and see all of these commands and rules and see them like bullets loaded into a religious barrel and they hit us like your a sinner, you’re a sinner, you’re a sinner, you’re a sinner and it leaves us bleeding out of our soul. I get it. I’m reaaaaaaally bad, and I feel reaaaaaaaally bad. But then in Christ God says, “You’re a saint.”
A what? No, I’m a sinner. – “Yeah I know, but I’m gonna call you a saint.”
Why would you call me a saint? That’s not what I do. – “Yeah, but it’s what you’re gonna do.”
But that’s not who I am – “No, but that’s who my son is.”
That’s not what I’ve achieved – “No, that’s what you’ve received”
That’s not what I deserve – “No, but that’s what I give.”
Really? How does that happen? How does one go from sinner to saint? It is all wrapped up in those two little words, “In Christ.”
Paul loved this phrase and this idea. He uses it 216 times in his writings. Our identity is in Christ. In Christ, we are citizens of Heaven and this life is just a journey, a passing through. If your citizenship is in heaven and your residence is here on earth, then your identity is not determined by your residence but by your citizenship. He’s writing to believers in Colossae. Is that a godly town? No, it was part of the Roman empire. It was perverted, it was drunk, It was religiously confused, it was America! It was America 1.0 and America is Rome 2.0. That is the path that our society has taken.
They had multiple gods and goddesses like the mother god who was the goddess of fertility. They had tons of other deities that were worshiped and they viewed gods like we view Instagram followers, the more the merrier. In this new church, these believers are trying to discern their identity. Am I a sinner, am I a Colossian, or am I a saint? The reality is that they are saints who wrestle with sin in Colossae. America, Florida, Williston is our residence, sin is our struggle and activity, but “saint” is my God-given identity. Your citizenship is in Christ! Our religion doesn’t focus around a place but around a person so wherever Jesus is that is heaven for us! What good news that is!
If you believe in and belong to Christ there is a great exchange. That Jesus has come and he has lived the sinless perfect life that you could have not lived, that he died the substitutionary death that you should die, and he gives the gift you cannot earn and Jesus takes your place and what makes it even more amazing is that Jesus puts you in his place.
Jesus takes all of your condemnation and gives you salvation. Jesus takes all your rebellion and gives you his obedience. He takes your damnation and gives you his revelation. He takes your disobedience and gives you his perfect obedience. It’s amazing! He takes your death and gives you his life. He takes your unrighteousness and gives you his righteousness, he takes your sin and calls you his saint! There is no one like Jesus! There is no one who takes enemies and calls them family. And if you are in Christ then he is your citizenship. You are his possession. And your allegiance from your new identity is to him and this changes everything.
It changes how we relate, and how we parent, and how we treat one another. What you said is not who you are in Christ and one day you won’t say it again. What you do is not who you are in Christ, that’s who you were before Christ. When you are with Christ forever you will never do it again. So let’s stir one another up towards living in the identity that Christ has given us. Since we didn’t earn it we can’t lose it and since we received it as a gift we can’t boast in it. That gives us a glorious humble confident hope. God wants you to know this, and believe this, and live in this.
The Fatherhood of God
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother. To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Grace and peace to you from God our Father.“
Because your identity is in Christ, God’s relationship to you is parental, not performance based. Most relationships here on earth are performance based. You do your job or you lose your job. In school, its performance based. If you get A’s, you move onward and upward, if you get F’s you repeat the 6th grade for the 3rd time. If you are an athlete it is performance-based, you keep score and someone wins and someone loses if you stop running faster or shooting accurately or your peak performance fades then you are replaced by a newer athlete than performs at a higher level.
But our relationship with God is not performance based, it is parental. What does a child do to earn the right to become your child? Nothing. What can they do to stop being your child? Nothing. What if they run away from home and become awful? Then your child is a runaway awful child who is still your child.
All religion apart from the Bible, all spirituality apart from the Bible, is performance based. You die and reincarnate and pay off your karmic debt. You earn it, you go to the sacred place to get down on the rug three times a day to say the right things and do the right things, You’ve got to have your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, and give a tithe off the top. You’ve got to make sure that you perform and that you produce and you’re never sure if God will love you. You’re never sure if you are going to trip and fall just before you cross the finish line at your death and your whole life race will be done and was it enough?
You live under the stress of this performance-based system and you are cruel to other people and criticizing other people and competing with other people and you’re anxious and worried and not sure how it’s going to go in the end. It’s just a big cosmic coin flip because he’s not very good, he’s not very nice, and we don’t know what he’s going to say, we don’t know what he’s going to do, I’m just hoping for the best and that he doesn’t set me on fire.
Take a deep breath. God loves you like a dad loves his kids. The love of our dad is not like any fatherly relationship here on earth. We have a heavenly father who is always patient, he is always kind, he’s never rude or selfish. God is a father who gives grace and peace. The Greeks would open their letters with this word for grace (Charis) and the Jews would greet one another with the peace (Shalom). Our Father’s heart is so big that he has room for both. Jews and Gentiles all find grace and peace in the love of our Father. He loves you, he endures with you, he is patient with you, there is grace for you when you fail. Let not your hearts be troubled. When you sin against him you can find grace and peace in his love instead of condemnation and despair in his wrath.
Paradox Church 