When I graduated from high school, I was so grateful to be finished. I had plenty of friends, and my overall experience with schooling went fine, but I was so ready to be done. I didn't want to spend my days as a student in that school culture any longer. I still remember standing in the hallway outside our auditorium right after the graduation ceremony ended. I was standing with my parents and siblings, and they asked if I wanted to hang out for a little while to interact with people and say goodbye. I said, "No, let's go and grab dinner at Friendly's." So we left.
But the people I met during that season of life obviously made an impression on me, and I still remain in contact with many of them to this day. My classmates are people I will always be grateful to know. In ways they may not have realized, they were teaching me significant things about human nature and human interaction.
I still remember two people from that era that demonstrated a similar pattern in relationships. They were always with someone. One was a guy and one was a girl, but they never ended up together. During those years, it seemed to me that they never went a day without dating someone. As soon as they would break up with one person, they immediately began dating someone new. Decades later, I see that pattern in the lives of some of the adults I know as well. Why is that a decision many people choose to make?
I think it reveals a deep longing that we all have in our souls. We long to be loved. We long for unconditional acceptance. We can instinctively tell that something is missing deep within us, so we search for something or someone to fill that void. We may choose dating relationships, degrees, titles, power, knowledge, possessions, or money, but those options will all leave us disappointed. We will only find what our hearts are looking for, the deepest form of love, acceptance, contentment, and peace through Jesus.
That was something Paul was attempting to help the Colossians to understand. In their culture, there were people who were teaching that the human heart could be satisfied by obtaining secret knowledge, but in this passage, Paul makes it clear that true wisdom and knowledge are found through Jesus, and we should be pursuing Christ together as one united body.
I. We are knit together in love
““For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ,””
As this passage of Scripture begins, Paul stresses the ways in which he has been struggling for the believers in Colossae and Laodicea. He didn't plant their local churches, but he still cared for them as if he did. Paul made a point to struggle for them in prayer daily. He prayed for their encouragement. He prayed for their maturity and growth. He also prayed for their unity.
I like the way Paul describes unity in this passage. He described united believers as being "knit together in love." I have never tried knitting or crochet, but I see it done regularly. My oldest daughter recently taught herself to crochet, and now I see her doing it constantly. She made herself a really impressive sweater last month. She's also been making hats and gloves for people. The other night, she admitted to me that she took a week off from it because her wrists and hands were in pain from all the work she's been doing. But it's impressive to see the beautiful things she's able to make by purposely intertwining yarn together.
Well, it's a beautiful thing when the church remains connected and intertwined in love. There are often things that come our way that can easily threaten that sense of unity, but Paul rejoiced when he saw it demonstrated among the Colossian believers.
One major threat to the unity of the church is false doctrine. It threatens both unity and maturity. It leads well-meaning people astray into all kinds of error, and it is an issue that the church always needs to be aware of.
I find it interesting that in the midst of this discussion, Paul mentions the church in the city of Laodicea. That city was was just a few miles from Colossae, and it's believed by some that Epaphras may have planted both churches, or possibly some believers from Colossae may have traveled there to share the gospel.
Do you know anything about the church in Laodicea? It's mentioned in the book of Revelation as being a church that struggled with a lukewarm faith. What do you suppose might have contributed to that? I would suspect false teaching crept in and influenced the believers to stop valuing truth and stop prioritizing the kind of unity that can only come from fidelity to Christ and His gospel.
“ “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” ”
Are we living as brothers and sisters in Christ who are knit together in His love and faithful to the truth of His Word?
II. We look to Jesus as our source of wisdom and knowledge
““in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” ”
When I was growing up, there was a member of our extended family who would steal from us regularly. I suspected it was him that was doing the stealing, but for a long time, I wasn't sure. To be honest, I think part of what I was struggling with was the fact that I liked him so much that I didn't want to believe it. But then I caught him, confronted him, and did my best to prevent him from obtaining what belonged to me. I hid what I thought was most valuable. In fact, any cash I earned I would hide where I thought he was least likely to look. Inside a book.
Do you consider yourself a reader? I love reading, and I do it daily, but I will admit that it's easier for me to make a daily habit of reading when I'm the one choosing what's being read. Frequently, when I speak with young people, they tell me they've developed a distaste for reading because they primarily associate it with compulsory reading of dry textbooks.
"Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks." -Dr. Seuss
"I find television very educating. Every time someone turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." -Groucho Marx
"You are the same today as you'll be in five years except for two things: the books you read and the people you meet." -Charlie "Tremendous" Jones
I'm so grateful we have essentially unlimited access to the Word of God. I'm grateful we can pick it up, read it, and let it point our hearts to Jesus. The word of God is living and active. The Spirit of God will use it to reveal things to your heart and mind that you would have never developed a natural understanding of. Your faith and your wisdom will grow because you'll become more and more acquainted with Jesus who is the source of eternal wisdom and knowledge.
This was what Paul was trying to help these young believers grasp. Looking to Jesus will help us avoid error, immaturity, and heresy. At the time these verses were being written, it was quite common for false teachers to peddle their "secret" knowledge and attempt to dupe people into believing them. They claimed to have a secret, higher knowledge that a typical believer didn't possess, but that's not how Jesus has ordained His kingdom to operate.
Jesus makes His truth available to all believers. There aren't special classes of believers that have obtained a form of wisdom and knowledge that isn't available to us all. As a pastor, I don't have some sort of secret key to biblical understanding that isn't available to every Christian. I'm in the process of growing in my understanding of the Word of God just as I hope each of us is.
I'm just grateful that I know where wisdom and knowledge really come from. They come from Jesus, so that's where I plan to go to obtain them.
III. We don't need to be easily deceived
““I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.” ”
Paul wanted the young church in Colossae to be an orderly assembly that was loving toward one another, loving toward their community, and firm in sound doctrine. He knew that was going to be a challenge, and he knew that there were plenty of people in that city who had a reputation for deceiving people into believing falsehood through their persuasiveness. These false teachers were experts in partial truths. They followed the same pattern Satan used to deceive in the Garden of Eden.
But if we're rooted and anchored in Christ and the truth of His Word, we won't be easily deceived. That's why we spend so much time as a church digging into what the Word of God actually states. On occasion, during the course of my ministry, I have been pressured to deviate from preaching Scripture, and delve more into using the pulpit that has been entrusted to me to make social commentary. As you probably already know, I do my best to resist that pressure, but I am more than happy to point to cultural examples that are the direct result of people being deceived by falsehood because their hearts aren't anchored in the truth.
Just look at the confusion that exists today. We have all kinds of debates about things that are painfully obvious, yet we debate them like they're perplexing. Sadly, there's a whole generation of people being raised to believe things about gender and human sexuality that have no basis in truth and are a direct contradiction to the teaching of Jesus. And I don't know why I let this surprise me, but it often does. Scripture reveals that this is the direct result of humanism and cultural atheism. When the knowledge of God is squelched, confusion reigns.
And every generation seems to have a form of falsehood that prevails. During the late 1800's and early 1900's, there was a movement toward eugenics here in the United States and other places in the world with the goal to remove traits that were considered undesirable from the population. That was an era of forced sterilizations, laws against mixed-race marriages, and strange and secret things being done to those who had metal or development problems. It was those beliefs that directly contributed to the prevalence of abortion and the extermination of millions of people throughout this world in the 1930's and 1940's. We decry it now, but at the time, it was a mindset and a system of belief that took hold in the hearts of many. (Source: https://sites.uw.edu/twomn347/2019/12/12/early-american-eugenics-movement/)
But as believers in Christ, we don't need to be deceived by worldly ideas and ideals. The Holy Spirit is leading us in the direction of the truth and bringing the teaching of Christ back to our minds. And by His grace, He's reminding us daily, that in Jesus we will find all that our hearts are truly looking for.
© John Stange, 2022
