Colossians chapter 1, verses 17. I'll read to the end of the chapter. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence. for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. And having made peace through the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, by Him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, Yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. if ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a minister, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the church. whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. Even the mystery, which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints, to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. A reminder of the context into which this letter is written. This letter is written by the Apostle Paul as he is in prison. And he is in prison for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he's writing to the church at Colossae. And the letter that he's writing is designed to be a benefit to them, but also to the other believers in the region to which he's writing, because at the end of this letter, he'll instruct them to read this letter to the other or send this letter to the other churches and have them read it and also read the letters that he's sending to those churches. So what he's instructing is to establish and build up the believers in the faith that they have received and also to protect them and preserve them from the errors that tend to creep in any time when the word of God plants itself and begins to take root and bear fruit among a people. This was the glorious good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ that was now being proclaimed throughout all the nations of the world. This was an incredible thing at the time. And because we are the downstream recipients of the benefits of it, it's easy, I think, sometimes for us to take for granted the incredible thing that had taken place in that generation. that Jesus Christ had come into the world, God had taken on flesh and dwelt among us, and He had provided an atonement sacrifice for sin, and now He had done that in the context of the nation of Israel, the people that God had set apart from all the nations of the world, and given them His law, and given them His ordinances, and given them the ordinances of worship and the covenant that pointed forward to its fulfillment in the coming of his son Jesus Christ. But now that message of salvation through Jesus and the promise of eternal life and the benefits of the forgiveness of sins was being preached in all nations of the world. It was being preached everywhere that anyone, any place, from any tribe, tongue, nation of the world, was able to be a partaker of the blessings and the salvation that God had ordained and purposed in the world. that they were being included into something glorious, the kingdom of God, a new kingdom, a new era that God was establishing in the world. And they were participants in that by what Jesus Christ had accomplished with His coming. And so this glorious message had been proclaimed, they had received it, and it had begun to bear fruit among them as the Word of God took root. But when that happened, there also began to creep in those that would bring various philosophies, or doctrines that were at odd with the simple and glorious message of Jesus Christ. And so this letter warns them against those things. In this passage that we just read, let us make several observations of what he's writing. We left off last time I was here looking at the preeminence of Jesus Christ. Just like we sang in that last song, one there is above all others. This letter and this chapter, it speaks about his preeminence, that he has been ordained to in all things have the place of highest glory and honor and power, and our focus and our desires and our worship all ought to be directed at Him, for He has created all things and they have been created for Him. And He's the head of the church. He is the head of the church. He is the firstborn from the dead that in all things He might have the preeminence. And then in verse 19 it says, For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. We see this fulfilled in the miracle of the incarnation. That is what the New Testament speaks about when it speaks about the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. It came through the miraculous birth of the baby Jesus to a virgin mother, Mary, through the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon her so that he was born and he would be called the Son of God. And it came by the eternal Word of God, which was in the beginning with God, in the beginning was God, all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made, and that Word took on flesh and dwelt among us. So when it speaks about in Him all fullness should dwell, it speaks about the person, the man, Jesus Christ. The very man that walked upon this earth, that came down to this very ground, the very ground that we walk on. the dirt and the soil of this earth He put His foot upon, but in Him, in Him in bodily form, all the fullness of God dwells in Him. And so all the fullness, the person, the glory, and the majesty of God came and made His abode with us. It pleased the Father that in Him, that is in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the man that walked upon this earth, all fullness should dwell. And so, as we go about our worship of God, our service of God in this world, we ought to never lose the center, the focus of everything that we do is directed at and comes from Him. He is the source of all of it and He is the focus of all of it. So we are warned against getting turned aside with various philosophies or ideas that depart from anything that keeps Jesus Christ at the center of everything. And then what he's writing here goes on to speak about the reconciliation to God that we have because of what Jesus Christ has done. Verse 20, And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. So this is a beautiful and glorious truth that is proclaimed here in this verse. It's something that ought to make our hearts shout with joy when we are reminded of these things. Because what it encompasses is of such grand scope, but it also is something that includes us, that we as believers in Jesus Christ participate in by the grace and by the power of God. We, in the previous verses, read this back in verse 13. It says, who, speaking of the father, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son." So this here speaks about the power and the grace of God at work to translate us, to transfer us from a kingdom, a power of darkness, into the kingdom of His Son. We have been changed. Our whole existence, our citizenship has been changed. from a power of darkness to the kingdom of his dear son. This is the incredible grace of God. And it came because of the reconciliation that was accomplished by Jesus Christ. We cannot overestimate the significance of what happened in this era of history. In those decades, and particularly during the life of Jesus Christ, and in the decades that followed, that there was a complete transformation. It was the dawning of a new era. It was the beginning of a new age. And our calendars to this day mark it that way as we speak about in the year of our Lord, A.D. And we mark our years because history recognized that there was a transition, there was a transformation, the dawning of a new era that came with the coming, marked by the coming of Jesus into the world. But we participate in that heavenly kingdom, we participate in it only because of a reconciliation that has taken place. That is that there was a situation, there was a There was a situation in which we and our forefathers were separated from God and were in a state of being enemies with God. We were not at peace with God. We were not at peace with the Lord and with His angels. but we were in a state of alienation, which we'll see more in the next verse, but it required reconciliation for us to be brought into a state of peace with God once again. In the Hebrew language, and in their traditions, and in the scriptures, there is this concept of peace, or shalom. And it's spoken of often, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that peace, it's such a loaded concept. It speaks about, as we think of the word peace, it speaks about a state of harmonious existence that can be contrasted with a situation of enmity or warfare or strife, and it speaks about that peace. It also conveys this idea of health and wholeness, of completeness. And that completeness has been achieved and accomplished by and through the blood of Christ. That's one of the things that is being spoken of here in this verse. There's so much meaning packed into this, and I think it is only fully understood because we have the Scriptures, the Word of God, that have prepared us to understand these ideas. They're kind of foreign to our thinking in many ways that the blood of Christ would be a means of accomplishing the reconciliation of the whole creation, heaven and earth. that we could somehow be reconciled to God and the angels in heaven, and the spirits of those believers who have died in times past, that we could be brought into a state of harmonious and whole and healthful existence with them through the blood of Christ. But the Old Testament sacrificial system helped to prepare the way that we would understand these things. In the sacrificial system, there was the concept of the atonement sacrifice. And in the atonement sacrifice, the blood of a lamb without blemish, the blood of a lamb without blemish, that lamb was slain. and its blood was sprinkled. It was sprinkled on the covering of the Ark of the Covenant inside of the Holy of Holies, inside of the tabernacle, or later, the temple of God, where they worshipped. And the blood was sprinkled, and it was sprinkled on the covering of the Ark, which was called the Mercy Seat. It was sprinkled there. for the cleansing of the filth of the people of Israel. It was offered there as a way to make reconciliation with God, to make what became called a propitiation, a blood shed in order to appease the wrath and judgment of God against the sins of the people and to be providing a means of cleansing. And this is what pointed forward to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, when He shed His blood upon the cross. And He shed His blood, and we often speak about the blood of Christ, and when we speak about the blood of Christ, that conveys the idea of the giving of His entire life. In the law, it said the life is in the blood. And when he shed his blood upon the cross, he gave his life. And his life was given as an atonement sacrifice for the people, for the nation of Israel, but not just for the nation of Israel, but part of the mystery that's being revealed in this time is that that sacrifice was offered to God to make atonement for all the nations of the world. not just for one people, not just for one select nation, not just for the natural-born descendants of Abraham who were the heirs of those promises and covenants, but for a sacrifice that was sufficient for accomplishing salvation for the sins of the world. And so John the Baptist could say, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And so his sacrifice takes away sins. And the way that it accomplishes this is that he suffered the just penalty for the sins so that judgment and righteousness of righteous judgment was satisfied by Jesus Christ on the cross. Because God is a just and a holy God. And sin requires a just punishment for that sin. But Jesus suffered the punishment of that sin for the sake of His people. And because of that, we who believe on Him can be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God. having made peace through the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven." And so this encompasses earth and heaven. It encompasses God and his angels and us as sinners in need of that reconciliation being reconciled back to a harmonious relationship with God, with the angels, and with other believers who have gone before us. And so this all encompassing reconciliation, then in verse 21, we see how we too, or in the case, in the initial context of this letter, the believers. the Colossians, but also the Ephesians and the Laodiceans and the believers everywhere who had received the Word of God, you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight." is very revealing and very vivid about the state of our alienation from God, apart from His grace coming and rescuing us from that. This alienation, this separation from God is one that speaks about us being enemies in our mind by wicked works. In the Old Testament Scriptures, it also speaks about how the heart is deceitful and wicked above all things, and who can know it? And in our sinful state, in our sinful nature that we exist, our heart is deceitful, our mind is opposed to God, and our works are wicked and evil, deserving of God's judgment. And so we see that the sinfulness from which we needed to be delivered was one that was all-encompassing of our being. Consider that for a moment. Consider the magnitude of our, in our natural state, our alienation from God. Or the state of one who has not yet, today, been reconciled to God. It is not a mere, it is not like a mere fit of anger. There are people at whom you love and are at peace with. And something can happen where you could get very angry with that person. And that's a certain kind of enmity, but it's an enmity of a passion that has risen up in you. But the enmity we have against God is not a mere temporary passion. It's not a passing fit or temper. It is one that is in our very mind itself. It is that in our intellectual capacities we do not desire to be at peace with God or to live in a way that is in obedience to the ways of God. We do not desire them on an intellectual level. We do not desire God on a heart and passions level. And our works themselves are evil before God and wicked. And so the Apostle John writes, he says, light has come into the world. Speaking about the coming of Jesus into the world. Light has come into the world. but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." This is the sinful state of mankind, and that includes all of us in our natural state, apart from the grace of God rescuing us from that. That is, when it speaks of us being delivered from the power of darkness, We cannot miss the point that apart from the grace of God transforming our hearts, we were not only under the power of darkness, but we loved and liked that darkness. We preferred that darkness to the ways of God. The mind of man prefers darkness rather than the light of God to shine. And And so when God works His grace in our hearts, God brings about a transformation in us which is accomplished by the reconciliation of Christ, and brought into our lives through the preaching of the message of the good news of the gospel, and the working of the Holy Spirit in the hearts, of those to make the heart ready to receive those things, then it is nothing less than a miracle of God to bring about that reconciliation. So that a heart and a mind that apart from that grace would have been an enemy with God yet is made desirous to serve and obey and follow the Lord." That is the miracle and the grace of the reconciliation that Jesus Christ has accomplished by the cross. And as that message is proclaimed or spoken or read, And the working of God's Spirit in the heart of the person who hears it causes it to be fruitful and effectual in their lives. Hearts are transformed and the whole makeup of our being is translated so that we are at peace with God and reconciled to Him through the blood of Christ. In the body of His flesh through death, verse 22, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight. Imagine for a moment the scene of standing before the judgment seat of God. This is a reality of what the Scriptures speak about in several places. In Hebrews it says, it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment. And We know that we will all one day stand before the judgment seat of God. Now imagine yourself, imagine yourself standing before the judgment seat of God. Imagine yourself standing before the judgment seat of God and now you are being judged, you are being confronted with one who is able to know all things and look into the very heart and mind of a man and perceive everything that is there. You cannot fool Him. You cannot deceive Him. You cannot put on a good display or a mask that will hide what is inside. And now imagine yourself standing before the judgment seat of God and think about, is there anyone? Is there anyone who could come? Imagine if anyone in heaven or earth, alive or dead today, was able to come. and present their accusations before the judgment seat of God? Would they have anything to accuse you of? Would they have any cause to bring of which would make you deserving of punishment at the hand of God? But what this says of the believer in Jesus Christ is that when you are presented before a holy and a righteous God, you will be holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. There will be no one in heaven or earth or in the underworld below that will be able to come and appear before God and bring a charge against you if you have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. There will be no one. In Romans it says, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is He that condemns? If God Himself has made you and declared you righteous, then who's going to condemn you? And I'm reminded of the scene in John's gospel where the woman caught in adultery is taken to Jesus to be condemned, and all of her accusers go away. And Jesus asks her, He says, where are your accusers? And she says, there's none left, Lord. There's none left to condemn me. And He says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. Now, if anyone had a right, if anyone had the knowledge, if anyone had the ability to condemn a human, a fallen human woman of her sin, it would have been Jesus Himself who, it says, knew the hearts of men. And yet He did not condemn her. But he said, go, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. This is the miracle, again, of the reconciliation that has been accomplished by the blood of Christ, that we who believe in Him will be presented before God holy and unreprovable and unblameable. Verse 23, if ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a minister. And so, in this verse, we see the importance, the necessity even, of continuing in the faith that we have received and of abiding in the hope that we have in the Gospel. That is the nature of faith in Jesus Christ. It is not merely, say, a one-time act. I put my faith in Jesus, but nothing changed in my life. It is something that is a continuation through the entirety of the life of the believer. We are called to continue in the faith. And in fact, we are called to continue and we are aided by the power of God itself to continue in the faith and the hope that we have received. And we are warned against departing from the faith. And we are exhorted to hold fast to the faith. And it says we are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last times. So the Word of God, it exhorts us to continue and abide in the faith, grounded and settled. You have this illustration, this image that is being given of imagine a tree planted in the ground, its roots going deep down into the soil so that it cannot be moved, it cannot fall over, it cannot be shaken. The wind can blow and the rains can fall, but that tree will stay steadfast and stable and centered in the soil in which it has been planted because it has root. and it's abiding there. And that is what we are called to do, to not be moved away from the hope of the gospel. He says, "...whereof I, Paul, am made a minister, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church." Now Paul here speaks about his own suffering. But I believe this is also an example to every disciple of Jesus Christ that we are called to be a participant in the afflictions and sufferings of Jesus Christ in our own lives. And so the message of the gospel is a different kind of message than some teachings that are out there. It is a paradoxical message in a way because it calls the follower of that good news and that glorious gospel to be a participant in suffering. It sets before us a savior whose path of life on earth was one that endured great hardship and affliction and suffering and even one who laid down his very life for the for the sake of others and that is an example to us an example to us to follow and and the disciples of Jesus have ever followed in that path and so what is promised to us here below in this earth is not a promise to us a life of ease and glory and and prosperity and wealth here below If we are blessed to enjoy those things for a season, then may we use them to the glory of God. But what is promised to us in the Gospel is a heavenly kingdom and a path in which we are called to be our participant in the sufferings and afflictions of Jesus Christ. And the Apostle Paul, writing here, he uses himself as an example of that. Because he's saying, I'm suffering affliction. Well, in this case, this is very tangible. This is not an abstract idea or concept. His afflictions, his suffering was very tangible. It was very real for him. First of all, we know he was in prison at the time he's writing these very things. As he ends the letter later, he says, remember my bonds. He always puts them in mind to know that he was suffering great things for the sake of the gospel. He wasn't in prison for his own benefit. He was in prison because he proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he did so even when it was to his own hurt. His afflictions also included at times various suffering. He was flogged. He was stoned nearly and left for dead. He often suffered hunger because of his circumstances. He suffered of heart because of the care and concern that he had for the churches, and the strife that he saw them go through, and so he later speaks about that very thing. The great conflict of heart he had for the Colossians and other believers, that they be not turned aside from the faith. He was forsaken by friends and companions. Some of the very people that are mentioned in one letter that Paul writes as being there with him and his companions and his fellow laborers, in other letters he writes about how they abandoned him in his time of trouble, because they preferred the ease of this world rather than suffering the afflictions of following Christ. So he suffered many things, but why did he suffer them? He suffered them for the benefit of the people of God. And it is likewise with the afflictions that we are blessed by God to participate in in our lives. If we suffer affliction, we suffer affliction, and our affliction that we suffer is for the benefit and the good of the people of God. And in doing so, we are filling up the measure in our own lives of what is lacking in our own suffering of the sufferings of Christ. I believe we could see this as something that will never be fully achieved in our own lives. He talks about filling up the measure. Imagine a cup of affliction, and you see the afflictions of Christ, the suffering of Christ that he suffered in his life. And Paul recognized what he had suffered in his life, the afflictions that he was enduring, they did not yet attained to the amount of suffering that Christ experienced, but He desired to fill up that which was lacking." That's the word there, that which is behind, that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the church. Now, the sufferings and the afflictions of Christ accomplished the reconciliation and atonement of His people, of the whole creation, but we are blessed in some small way to participate in that. Not that our afflictions accomplish reconciliation the way His atonement sacrifice did, but our afflictions can be a means in the hand of God for building up the people of God, just as the Apostle Paul, as he suffered, he suffered for the sake of the Gospel, that it would go to more ears, that it would come with more effect, and that it would bear more fruit as he established them in the faith. And so for that cause, he was willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the body of Jesus Christ. Verse 25, Where have I made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God? He ever had in mind, he understood, and this also is an example to us. Why has God given us the knowledge that He's given us? He's given it to us to use for the good of His people. Yes, we serve God. We serve God in a sense, but we always ought to keep in mind God does not need our service. God does not need our help. God does not need us to serve Him as the pagan nations serve the idols that they served. If he was hungry, he wouldn't tell us. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. So when we think of our service to God, yes, we ought to please God. We ought to live our lives in a way that is pleasing in His sight. But He doesn't call us to serve Him because He needs our help or He needs us. That is obvious to us. But He calls us to serve Him because it is our privilege to participate in serving Him and it is for the good of and the help to one another. That is why we are called, that is the purpose for which the church is gathered, to bring glory to God, yes, but ultimately we are called to edify and build up one another, and that is why God gave the dispensation of the gospel to Paul. He's an apostle by the will of God, by the purpose of God, by the giving and calling of God. It wasn't something of his own will and purpose. God gave it to him and gifted him as a gift to the church. And so he does, as he works in each of our lives, that we might be a benefit to one another and to the people of God. to build up His body, the church. Even the mystery, he says, to fulfill the Word of God, even the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints. So we have here this idea of the mystery. The mystery. When it speaks of mystery here, it's speaking of something that has been hidden for a long time and now is being revealed. It is something that is hid from ages and generations, but now is made manifest, now is made known. The gospel, in that sense, was a mystery. Now God had foreshadowed and pointed towards it through the prophets in the scriptures, but those things were often veiled from the understanding of man so that they were not fully understood or grasped until Christ revealed them in this age. And when He revealed them, He revealed the glorious truth that the Gentiles, that is the nations of this world, were to be included in the blessings and promises of God as full heirs and full participants and citizens in those things. and were to be united together in one body, Jews and Gentiles together made one people, one body through the blessings of the gospel going out to all the nations. And that God himself through His Spirit would come and make His dwelling place in His people here on the earth, that is that the people of God would be built up together, would be the new temple, the new dwelling place of God, a habitation of God through the Spirit, so that God's dwelling place would be with man as His presence would be among us. And this was the mystery. This is the mystery which is now being revealed. And I think this language is used on purpose by Paul as well to contrast with other doctrines that would come along in this time and in the ages to come, where people like, for example, the Gnostics and the Gnostic heresies would come and they would preach about this mysterious knowledge that very few could come to understand. And if they did come to understand it, they attained a higher spiritual level in their lives, this hidden knowledge this mysterious knowledge. But the mystery of the gospel is a different kind of mystery. It's a mystery that was hid, but is now revealed. It's not now hidden under some rock somewhere or to be searched out in some hidden place, but it is proclaimed by the words of the apostles and those that would follow after them. And it is written down and recorded in the pages of the scriptures so that it is accessible to all who will read and receive the words that God has fully revealed. This is the mystery, and the mystery that has been revealed. To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, whereunto I also labor, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily." And so let us learn from this, from these words, and from this message, the beauty and the glory of the Gospel that we have received. And let us abide in it and hold fast to the hope and lay hold of those promises, the promises that God has given and what He's done in our lives, to forgive us of our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and reconcile us unto God and to one another by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.