Turn in your New Testaments, the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians. We'll be studying the four chapters of Colossians, Lord willing, for the foreseeable few weeks. Today our text is the entirety of chapter one, and so it is to that that I want to draw your attention. As I mentioned in my prayer earlier, as we prayed The Lord should take preeminence over everything. And Christ has been given the name that is above all names. He is Lord. And so in all things Christ should be preeminent. We're going to talk about the fullness of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So it is Colossians chapter 1 that is our reading this afternoon. Please follow along in your Bibles as I read the entire chapter. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus, our brother. To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colossae, grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which he hath to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard in the word of the truth of the gospel. which is come unto you, as it is in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth. As ye also learned of Epaphras our dear fellow-servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ, who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit, For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood. even the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him. 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." We pray that the Lord will bless the reading and the hearing of his word. Again, the goal here is to exalt Christ as the sovereign, sufficient, supreme Lord over all creation and redemption. Our goal is to draw the congregation into a deeper worship and spiritual maturity and gospel assurance. This is a Christ-saturated chapter. This is what you would expect from the Apostle Paul. In Colossians 1, Paul magnifies the supremacy of Christ over all creation and his sufficiency in redemption. He calls on the Church to grow in the knowledge of God and to persevere in faith by abiding in the One who reconciled all things to Himself. This is the goal for all of us. This is how we glorify God and we enjoy Him forever. What Paul is saying is, look, Christ is supreme. He's head over all. He is sufficient with regards to the work of redemption. And it is our goal, God's command, that we grow in the knowledge of Him, and to persevere by abiding in Christ, by not straying this way or that, by not adding to the Gospel, by not adding to God's Word. So we're going to look at a few things. This is a relatively long chapter. The first 14 verses is Paul's prayer for the Colossians' spiritual growth. Paul's prayer for the Colossians. The next couple verses, verses 15-17, the supremacy of Christ. The supremacy of Christ. Verses 18-23, the preeminence of Christ in all creation, or in redemption in the Church, pardon me, in redemption in the Church. The preeminence of Christ in redemption and the Church. And then verses 24-29, Paul's ministry and mystery of Christ. So the first 14 verses, we're not going to read all of them for every portion, it's going to be a long reading. The first 14 verses, we're going to talk about Paul's prayer for the Colossian spiritual growth. Many times when we talk about the gospel, when we share the gospel with somebody, as we evangelize, We don't follow up. This isn't always the case, of course. I'm speaking generally. But a lot of times when we talk about evangelism, we pay lip service to the stuff that has to follow. We'll do a great job of discussing that God created all things, that man has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. We're great at those things. We're great at talking to people about their sin, getting them to acknowledge that they violated God's law. And if they violated one of God's laws, it's like David violated all of them. And so on Judgment Day, if they stand before the Lord and the Lord lays out the book of their lives, that's evidence against the person. And so in the cosmic courtroom of God, we all stand guilty. Guilty is charged with an overabundance of evidence, and that we rightly deserve the death penalty because of violating a holy God's law, but that God was merciful. He provided a way out. Someone was willing to take on the punishment and the penalty that we brought on ourselves because of our sin. We talk about that person being Jesus Christ, the God-man, God's only begotten Son, who came down in the fullness of time and lived the life that we should have lived. He died the death that we deserved, but he ascended into heaven like we just read in John chapter 20, and he's seated at the right hand of God, and if we would trust in His work, and not our own. If we would trust in His perfection and stop trying to be perfect. If we acknowledge that we never did anything good, and the good things we thought we did were actually prideful because of our sin, but Jesus took a penalty that we deserved, and He lived a sinless life, so He was completely innocent. But He was treated as though He was dead. If we believe those things, We trust in the one that God sent rather than ourselves, we would have eternal life. We do a great job at those things, and then we say, yeah, and then go find a church where the Bible is preached. Well, how do we do that? How do we know what we don't know? How do we just assume? Now, certainly we would say, well, the Holy Spirit's going to guide somebody to a church where the Bible is preached. But the overall issue is that to walk with the Lord is to walk with the Lord long beyond the time where we acknowledge Him as our Lord and Savior, before we repent of our sin. It's to walk a lifelong path. And so for Paul to acknowledge that he has a prayer in mind for the Colossians and their spiritual growth, It's not just enough for him to have swept through, shared the gospel, the church had sprung to life, and then he leaves and they're just kind of figuring it out from there. No, that's not how this works. This particular section lays out the apostolic foundation here. And it lays out the focus on thanksgiving and prayer for the Colossians' spiritual understanding. And that's what we should all be doing for churches around the world, for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should be praying for and yearning for their spiritual growth. We have your typical Pauline greetings. He's discussing how much of a blessing and a benefit it is to hear these positive things about the Colossians. He's talking about how we've prayed for you. You've learned of Epaphras, our fellow servant. He's for you a faithful ministry. You've got somebody there that's preaching the word. This is a good thing. And then we get to verse 9, he says, "...for this cause we also, since the day we heard of it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." To be filled with the knowledge. Let's look at that language. It's sort of a divine passive voice. If we are being filled with knowledge, that means somebody is doing the filling. We are merely the receptacle for all of that knowledge. And so we need to pay attention to that. God alone is the one who gives us wisdom and knowledge. Paul is saying, look, we don't cease to pray for you. We're not stopping our prayers. We have a strong desire that you would be filled with the knowledge, meaning that somebody would look to your needs and provide you with that knowledge. Now, we talked about Epaphras as a faithful minister of Christ, but it is God that provides wisdom and insight by the power of His Spirit. Now this is an interesting standard. We do not cease to pray for you. Recall, to pray without ceasing elsewhere in scripture, we see it here. How many times have we ceased to pray for someone? Many times we struggle when I say I'm gonna pray for you. But do we pray? Not just me when I say I. A lot of times that's what we say. Well, I'll pray for you, brother. I'll pray for you, sister. It would be better to do that right then, for starters. But one of the other blessings of being in the church is we have access to other people and their prayer lives. And how they choose to structure their prayers. Not necessarily an organized system. But the idea of not ceasing to pray for someone. I think of Augustine from church history, who as he hopscotched around the world, or around North Africa, getting into misadventures and degeneracy prior to his conversion, he had his faithful mother Monica not only praying without ceasing, but actually literally following him, moving from place to place, almost hounding him with prayer, just inundating his life with prayer. By God's providence we see that Augustine was converted and was used mightily by the church. We have Monica's prayer consistency. And many of us have examples in our own lives of people who seem to never forget to pray. And we talk to them and say, on this day I pray for this person, on this day I pray for these people. And it's just a way of thinking of prioritizing the spiritual growth of others. We talk a lot about our pride and the need to be humble. And one of the ways that we can generate that in a practical biblical level is by praying for others consistently. Because the more we pray for others, the less we are in our own heads with our own needs. A lot of times our prayers can be, Lord I need this, Lord I need that, Lord I sure could use this. Those aren't bad prayers. What Paul is demonstrating here is a template to not cease to pray for someone else's what? Their spiritual growth. Not that the Lord would give them stuff. He goes on in verse 10 to talk about how that might look. He says, "...my prayer ye, that ye, all the entire church, be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God." The idea of being fruitful in every good work. Bearing fruit continually, not just one time. being fruitful as a matter of course. Not being fruitful in being financially wealthy. The Lord sees fit to do that, then so be it. But He doesn't always bless His people financially. So what does it mean to bear fruit in every good work? Every good work that God prescribes and commands for us. And what might those things be? to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God, to think of others as more important than ourselves, to look to the needs of others, to not self-promote, to not try to exalt ourselves, but to abase ourselves so that God might exalt us. to not seek the most important seat at a table and presume that we're the most important person. And then someone else comes along and says, no, you need to get up because this more important person's here. And then we're ashamed and humiliated because of our pride. No. So that we can think of others and their needs. Every good work is loving and serving other people. Because we've been loved and served and cared for in ways that we can't possibly fathom. As God provides us the free gift of salvation in Christ. The good works are the works that glorify the Lord. And those works are the same sorts of works that He engaged in when He walked this earth. So, the prayer for the spiritual growth will have manifestations in the real world. But it is all wrapped in the knowledge of God. The application, the right application of that knowledge played out in the lives of the church in Colossae. In verse 13, as we take a look at that, We see what God has done. In verse 12 it says, "...which made us meet, or appropriate, or fitting, to be partakers in the inheritance of the saints in light." So those partakers are those godly Christians. And then he says in verse 13, "...who have delivered us from the power of darkness, and have translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." This idea... being delivered, we go right back to the Exodus narrative, we go back to being redeemed or removed from slavery, from bondage. But it's not just any sort of removal or any sort of rescue operation. This has in mind a divine kingship where God exercises authority over the whole process of rescuing us and putting us into His Son's kingdom. So we are citizens of a divine kingdom because of what God has done. He's delivered us and translated us. That's the active voice, and God is the active agent. So yet again, we are the passive recipients of what God sees fit to do in our lives. It's all God's action. It's just a different way of structuring how passive we are in all of this. We should be filled with the knowledge, meaning God should fill us with the knowledge. That's what Paul wants. And He delivers us and translates us. You could flip that in your head to understand it. We should be delivered and be translated. It's the same thing, it's just grammatically structured differently. It's still God as the active agent in all of this. So Paul's prayer for this Colossian spiritual growth, his prayer by extension for us and our prayer for other people, is that God would continue to equip His people with knowledge and the ability to put that knowledge into practice for the good of the kingdom of which they are now members because God has done the rescuing. And we see that in verse 14. So after we've been delivered from darkness, which is where we all are in our sin, and we've been translated into the kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. We have forgiveness. We have been released from bondage. We are hostages to sin. And God has entered in and released us from that. It is an act that is rooted and has its foundations in the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ that washes away the taint of our sin. Though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. We are washed clean by Christ's blood. This is what it means to be a part of the Kingdom of God, and to grow spiritually. We have more knowledge of that, more thankfulness. This is what we should all want for ourselves, but we should also want it that much more for our brothers, because we're supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves. That's the second great commandment that's likened to the first, of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Paul doesn't begin with problems. You know, the book of Galatians kind of starts right out. He's like, look, I've got problems with you people. What are you doing? So fast after I left, you went astray. That's not what we have here with the Colossians. He starts with prayer. And he highlights the priority of spiritual maturity. Through divine revelation, which is God's act of revealing Himself, we would not be able to discover that unless He revealed Himself to us. He's still the actor. We are the passive recipients. And dependence, our dependence on Him. We're children. He is our Father. We are dependent on Him as the head of our family. And this even works in the mindset of the Church. We'll see that later. Christ is the Head of the Church. We still are dependent on Him as our Head. As the Bridegroom. And we, collectively, as the Bride of Christ, we submit to our Husband as unto the Lord. This is why it's important to understand marriage rightly, and to understand submission rightly. Because the Church, acting the way many modern marriages act, where there's no submission, where there's chaos and rebellion, because the marriage mindset, the marriage template, it speaks to how Christ and the Church relates to one another. If the marriage is chaotic, that doesn't equate with how the Church functions. Although, these days, many times, elements of the body of Christ are in fact rebellious to their husband, to the head of the church, to the bridegroom. So we need to understand, look, the marriages in this world are a way for us to understand how Christ relates to his church. So we need to figure those things out. So the bride of Christ needs to function in submission to her husband. dependent not because of being inferior, but because that's the structure that God has provided us to understand. So the dependence we have spiritually is still us being the passive recipients of mercy and grace from our Lord. The believer isn't just forgiven. See, that's where sometimes we over-personalize our evangelism. Yes, you're saved by a personal relationship with Christ, but we're brought into a body of believers. We're brought into the kingdom of Christ with new identities as a result of the doctrine of adoption with inheritance responsibilities. I use this reference over and over again when it comes to adoption, the idea of Anne Shirley and the Anne of Green Gables knowledge. Novels as she's adopted into the Cuthbert family. She has the rights and responsibilities of that new identity She is now, functionally speaking from a legal standpoint, a Cuthbert with all the rights and responsibilities and privileges of being a member of the Cuthbert family. So it is with us in Christ. We are adopted brothers and sisters, we are adopted sons and daughters of the Most High God, and as a result we have rights and duties and obligations and privileges. Those are good things that we have. So Paul is going on and on about this. And he's uniting that spiritual growth to what Christ did and who he is. John Calvin said, Paul would have the Colossians seek all wisdom in Christ alone. Not by philosophy, but by heavenly illumination. A lot of times people talk about spiritual growth and they talk about just a mere rank, naked study of philosophy and then somehow they're going to make that connection to spirituality. And nothing could be further from Paul's mind. All of the spiritual growth that Paul has in mind for the Colossians and for us is tied up and linked to inexorably the person and work of Jesus Christ. And it has to happen because God has given us knowledge and wisdom and revelation. Once again, He's the active agent. We are the passive recipients. Matthew Henry said, "...the fountain of all good is in Christ. Therefore, those who are in Him should grow in every grace." Once again, Paul says to the Colossians, they should be fruitful in every good work. If there's no one good but God, and Jesus Christ is God, then what we have is our good works have to be rooted and grounded in God. and in Jesus Christ. And so that's what Paul reminds us in these first 14 verses. He does lay out, like I said, in his typical greeting, but even that greeting is saturated in acknowledging that Christ is in all. He's an apostle of Christ, Jesus Christ by the will of God. grace and peace from God and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We've heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which he have to all the saints. So there's both of the commandments, love God and love neighbor, right there in verse 4. They're encouraged, he's excited for the Colossians because of their faith and he's yearning for them for more spiritual growth in Christ. Not just to be better people, Not just to know a lot of things, but to have divine revelation given to them and then have them put that into practice amongst the saints. in the next few verses after the first 14, in verses 15, 16, and 17. And Paul is making that transition, really, in verse 14. He says in verse 14, "...in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." So we're talking about all of this spiritual growth being grounded in the person and work of Christ. How we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, by the power of Christ's blood. And then he transitions here. And he says that Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. So the idea that there was a time when Christ was not is heresy. that Christ is a created figure. This is Arianism, A-R-I-A-N-I-S-M. The Watchtower Society, whom we know as the Jehovah's Witnesses, hold a version of that, that somehow there was a time when Christ was not. He is of similar substance with the Father. He's not of the same substance with the Father. The Council of Nicaea dealt with this. Homoousius versus Homoiousius. One little letter in making the distinction between the same substance, Homoousius, and a similar substance, Homoiousius. One small letter makes all the difference between orthodoxy and heresy. But what Paul is saying is Christ is preeminent because it was all created by Him and for Him. So when Paul talks elsewhere about Christ being the firstborn of creation, he's talking about that resurrection. He's the firstborn in that status. So we have hope in the resurrection because Christ was resurrected from the dead. But right now, everything, by Him, all things were created that are in heaven and in the earth. So He can't be created and then create all things because who created Him? This is what the Watchtower Society and others cannot answer. It's the thing that flummoxes them. And it should, because their views are false. But for people who are following after the Scriptures, Christ made all things. He can't be created. Because if He was created, He would be one of those things. It's a self-refuting situation. Paul is saying that Christ existed prior to creation. And that Christ was present at creation. Genesis 1 makes a whole lot more sense. When God says, let us make man in our own image. When we recognize what Scripture says about Christ. The Trinity has always been around. Prior to there being a creation, the triune God existed. And so what Paul is saying here is Jesus is the Son of God, He is the visible revelation of God, and He is the sovereign agent in all of creation. To see Jesus is to see God the Father, and Jesus Himself said so. He is the image of the invisible God, the exact representation. He's not a reflection. He doesn't look kinda like God the Father. He is God. He's the firstborn of every creature. Not the first created, but the first in rank and preeminence. It's a title, it's a stature. It's not that He was the first that was created. By Him were all things created. Like I just said, if there was a time when Christ was not, then He was created. He cannot create all things if He Himself was created. But through Him and His agency were all things created. So Jesus knows. When Jesus says, before Abraham was, I am, that mattered. And of course it made the Jews want to kill Him. But it was a true statement. By Him all things consist that we see in verse 17. They are held together. By Him all things consist. They are held together. They are bonded and sustained in unity. So Jesus wasn't just a good moral teacher. He wasn't a political leader. He wasn't a social change agent like the modern progressive Protestants want us to believe. He was God in the flesh. He was fully God and fully man. He created all things, and they're made for Him, and He holds them together. It's one of the clearest, if not the clearest affirmations of Christ's deity. We've talked about, as we've gone through readings of the Gospel of John, we've mentioned elements and portions where Jesus either accepted worship, or He didn't correct people, or He mentioned things that made it clear that He knew what He was going to do, and why He was there. He wasn't just a random actor that someone deified later. But Paul just puts it right out there. Christ is Lord. And not only is Christ Lord, Christ is Creator. Christ isn't a part of creation. He isn't the first creation and then God the Father got out of the way and said, get after it boy. That's not who Jesus is. He's the Lord over all of it. All things find their meaning and coherence in Him. And that's why when we talk about non-Christian belief systems, they all fall flat. Because in Christ is all of the wisdom and knowledge. They're hidden in Him. So when we talk about all people knowing God exists, this is what we're talking about. We make these connections. We talk about people not holding on to the truth of God's existence righteously. This is what we mean. They suppress the reality. That's why every other non-Christian belief system is some truncated version of Christianity. Because they functionally see through a glass darkly. They don't have the whole picture. Because God has not renewed their mind. Because they're holding on to the truth wickedly. They don't want to submit to God's Word, the God that they know exists. So they'll pull portions out. And it's not just so on the nose like the Book of Mormon that just basically plagiarizes chunks of the Bible or writes in the same tone of voice or expression as the King James Version. It's all of the systems. Because all of the systems are some form of do, do, do. Christianity is a done religion. Christ did it all for creation. He did it all for redemption. It's that simple. But man doesn't want it that simple, because that simplicity brings with it a need for humility. And so what winds up happening is man tries to reinvent the wheel. It's what all the other non-Christian systems are. With respect to those well-intended folks, we can be well-intended, but we can still be well-intendedly wrong. Being sincere is not good enough. We have to be sincere and be right. Spurgeon has talked about that. You can take poison, and you can sincerely take poison, it will still kill you. You can sincerely cut your own throat, you will still die. Being sincere is not enough. We have to be correct. And the correct thing is to believe in the one that God sent. Because anything else is our mere preference. The reality of it is, Christ was around at creation, but He wasn't a passive agent. He wasn't just a spectator. He was involved directly in creation. John 1.3, all things were made by Him. Hebrews 1.3, upholding all things by the word of His power. This is another reference to Jesus Christ. We see references in the scripture to that. John Gill clarifies who Christ is. He says, Christ is not a creature, but the Creator. Firstborn denotes His sovereignty, not origin. So that's a lot of times what people will say. They'll say, well, He's the firstborn, meaning He was the first one created, and then after everything else. And that's not too dissimilar from the self-professed atheist who says, I just need one miracle, then everything else sorts itself out over time and death. Give me the one miracle. That's the big bang. That's when all the things exploded into existence, and then after that, the evolution process rolls out. No. The false teacher says, Jesus was the created one, and then Jesus created everything else. No. We talk about his preeminence, we're talking about his stature, his standing, his utter and complete sovereignty. Who did we see in Psalm 114, if not a typified version of who Christ is in the Gospels? The One that quiets the winds, tames the waters, feeds miraculously, heals miraculously, disappears and reappears, shows Himself to someone and they don't realize it's Him, is resurrected from the dead. has power over the waters and waves and earth. Same one from Psalm 114. He's utterly and completely sovereign. This is what Paul is talking about here. John Calvin said, "...nothing exists apart from the will and wisdom of Christ. In Him all creation coheres, is held together." And we do. We live and we move and we have our being through Christ. Who is that if not someone of the utmost preeminence? But it's not just preeminence in creation, generally speaking. It is that, but it's more than that. The next few verses, verses 18-23, it's a transition from Christ's dominion over all things to His lordship over the church. And this is where we want to pay attention to the preeminence of Christ in redemption and the church. Let's look at verse 18. In verse 18, Paul says, "...and He, Christ, 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." Christ is the head of the body. He is the source and the authority of spiritual life. He is our federal head. He is the second, the last Adam. The first Adam, Adam, was the federal head. He sinned, and death and sin, damnation came into the world. The second Adam obeys completely. He has all power and authority, and he gives that to us. His dominion extends not just generally, but particularly over the church. He is the head of the church. The Pope of Rome is not the head of the Church. The Pope of Rome, claiming to be head, reveals himself to be Antichrist, the son of perdition. He takes for himself all three names of God. He has no preeminence. It is Christ. And it is Christ alone that is the head of the Church. And Paul says that as much right here. He is the head of the body, the Church. The beginning, the firstborn of the dead. Christ is the firstborn from the dead. He is the first one. who, being raised from the dead, gives us hope in our own resurrection. And Paul said elsewhere, if Christ didn't rise from the dead, then we have no hope, and we're fools, we're still dead in our sins and trespasses. But because He did rise from the dead according to the Scriptures, He was risen from the dead, we have that hope as well. But because of that resurrection, He has the preeminence. There's where that preeminent link is for the church as well. Because He was risen from the dead according to the scriptures, the church, the body of Christ, has hope in their own resurrection to eternal life. And so Paul goes on to say in verse 19, "...it pleased the Father that in Him, in Jesus, should all fullness dwell." All of the essence of divinity, all of the grace, all of that, it pleased God to place that in Christ, for Christ to manifest that, to demonstrate that. His goal, again, was to reconcile all things to Himself. Because Paul goes on and says, "...and having made peace through the blood of His cross..." See, that's what we have. When David says, blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven, whose iniquity is covered, that's what that provides. It provides peace. When we know that our sins are forgiven, when we know that we've been washed clean by God, we don't have to worry about anything else. We do sometimes, and that's sinful worry. But in the end, when we are reminded from God's Word that what we have in Christ is peace, then we can settle. Maybe we're at ease. And then when we're not, we go back and ask for more of a reminder that we have peace because God reconciled us to our Father in Heaven. His wrath was poured out on Jesus and not us. But Paul says in verse 20, "...having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself." Now what is Paul saying there? It's a complete full, final reconciliation, to reconcile all things to Himself. See, it's all Christ's. It all belongs to Him. There's nothing that we have of our own. Everything that we have is a gift from God. And ultimately, Paul goes on Now let's pay attention to verse 21 before we get to 22. Paul, in verse 20, says he's reconciling all things unto himself. By him I say whether they be the things on earth or the things in heaven. So all of this stuff is Christ. But look at verse 21. And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled. Everything that we think we have in Christ, we have because He's reconciled us to our Father in Heaven. So when we talk about the ministry of reconciliation, this is what we have. We have reconciliation with God the Father because of the work of the Son, who is preeminent enough to be able to do that work. So any reconciliation that we can entertain in our own lives or encourage in the lives of others has to flow from Christ, who provides us with a stay to God's wrath. Because what does God's Word say? We are part of the all things being reconciled, but we have peace through the blood of His cross. So the most violent act perpetrated against the most innocent being is what brought us peace. The violence poured out on Christ is the sort of payment that we deserved, but He was able to take it and pay and satisfy divine wrath to give us peace, peace that we didn't deserve and that we still don't deserve. But He's merciful and He's gracious to give it to us anyway. And so Paul goes on, and he says in verse 22, he says, "...we are reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight." Because of the incarnation and atonement of Christ, we are reconciled. Incarnation because in the fullness of time God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law. So we talk about, in the body of His flesh, Christ came to be fully man, to reconcile men. And He had to be divine because only a divine being can satisfy divine wrath. He had to be fully God and fully man. This is the hypostatic union in practice. That's the bottom line here. It's the incarnational and the substitutionary atonement. It's all sound theology. We are, all of us, theologians. We have to understand. that the Incarnation and the Atonement is played out in such a way to reconcile us via a payment that only a divine being can make. So Jesus is the God-Man. When Anselm writes Cordeus Homo back in the 12th century, why the God-Man? It had to be the God-Man. So why shouldn't we consider Him preeminent? He's fully God and fully man. It makes perfect sense. All of these things are linked together. We're reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Paul said that to the Romans. Christ isn't only the Lord of creation here, He's the Lord of redemption. We've talked about that. He's the head of the church. And that redemption isn't partial, it's not vague, it's full, it's complete, it's total. And it's achieved by Christ's death. And the goal is to present us as holy. That's kind of amazing when we stop and think about it. He reconciles us to our Father in heaven. He washes us clean. And by washing us clean, He then presents us to our Father as His holy, spotless, sinless bride. Spurgeon said, The cross is the place where Christ gathers heaven and earth to Himself. William Swan Plummer said, Christ alone mediates reconciliation. Not angels. Not works. But the God-man crucified. And that's what it is. We don't need to go through a co-mediatrix. We don't need to go through angels. We don't have to pray to the saints. We don't have to give alms to try to earn God's favor. We don't have to do pilgrimages. We don't have to knock on doors. We don't have to think that we're saved by grace after all we can do. It's none of that. It's the work, the perfect work, of the God-man. He is the one that mediates reconciliation. Paul closes the chapter here, in the last four or five verses here, talking about his ministry and the mystery of Christ. Paul lays out his own apostolic calling as a servant of the Gospel. And he emphasizes, yet again, the revealed mystery of Christ in the Gentile. See, even as he's talking about himself and his own ministry, he's still talking about Christ. That should provide a template for anybody claiming to be a minister of the gospel lawfully ordained. How much are they talking about themselves versus Christ? It's one thing to use an occasional example every now and then. It's another thing to prop up your own ministry in your own strength. But that's not what Paul does here. Again, he's closing the chapter talking about Christ, even within the context of his own calling. Let's look at verse 24. In previous verse 23, Paul talks about being made a minister of the gospel. He says, "...who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind in the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church." So, the idea is... that even as he's talking about his own ministry, he's talking about bearing other burdens for the good of the church, to bear afflictions for the sake of the body, the body of Christ, Christ's church. It's not necessarily to bear up afflictions to save the church, but Paul suffered on behalf of the church inasmuch as he was doing the Lord's work. and doing his part to grow and expand the body of Christ to include the Gentiles in the fullness of God's redemptive plan, he did suffer. He talked about it elsewhere, being beaten and scourged and he had shipwrecks and all these things. And he did that for Christ and for Christ's people. And we should do the same thing. How much are we willing to suffer for Christ and his people? I don't know that there's a numerical standard, but it is something that we ought to consider as we're walking with the Lord. Are we walking understanding that it's possible that we might have to suffer? In a similar way to Paul, in the representative sense, as we deal with our own faithfulness and we're walking with the Lord, and the consequences of that could be suffering. Or if we're serving others and we pay a price for that, are we willing to do that? Paul was willing to do that. And we should be willing to do that as well. For the sake of the body. How much are we willing to suffer for the sake of the body? I mean, you know, we don't want to play the ultimate trump card and say, well, Jesus suffered for the sake of the body. We should be willing to suffer the same. In the extreme, yes. It's always easy to say, well, I'd die for the church. But are you willing to live for the church? Because this is what Paul is talking about here. The representative nature of the pain and suffering through which he went. was always to bring glory to God and to serve His people. And that's how we should function as well. Paul goes on and he references in verse 25 what he said in verse 23. He said, basically in verse 24, talking about the suffering that he had in his own life on behalf of the church and for the church's sake. whereof I made a minister." So he's a minister according to the dispensation of God, to fulfill the Word of God, and to present other people with the same offer of salvation that he's been given. He's saying, look, I suffered for that. for the sake of the body, to grow Christ's kingdom. Not to grow his own kingdom, but to grow Christ's kingdom. Many people think that their influence in the church provides them some sort of insight into how everything should be done, or some sort of status within the body of Christ. The status in the body of Christ is to be a son or daughter of God. As God raises up someone or gives somebody else influence, it's all to bring glory and honor to the Son. It's not to bring glory and honor to ourselves. But in verse 26 he says, "...even the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints." What is that mystery? It's the previously hidden divine truth. And this is what we talk about with regards to the Old Testament. What's made clear in Christ in the New Testament was shown with a veil in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is Jesus Christ concealed, the New is Jesus Christ revealed. And so all of these Old Testament things that we talk about, types and shadows, are made perfect in Christ, and they're fully revealed now. What was once a mystery is now made manifest for everyone to see. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. That these types and shadows with regards to worship and practice in the Old Testament were fulfilled perfectly in the Person of the God-Man. That is the mystery which was hid from ages past. and from generations. It's made manifest to His saints, to whom God would make known what is the riches of glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. The mystery among the Gentiles is that it is Christ, the hope of glory. The indwelling presence, based in Christ, applied by the Spirit, is the pledge of eternal glory. That's the mystery that was expanded out to the Gentiles. In the same way that there was a plan and a purpose for bringing sojourners in to the nation of Israel, we have the expansion of the Gospel to include the Gentiles, the non-Jewish state, as the Jews rejected Christ. The kingdom was taken from them, was given to someone else. Talk about the parable of the tenants, how those tenants ultimately killed the Son. Because they killed the son, the land was taken from them. We see that played out. It was given to someone else. Ultimately, what Paul is talking about is to be able to rejoice in the suffering that he went through for the sake of revealing the glory of Christ to the Gentile community here in Colossae. Because the elect come from every tribe, every tongue, and every nation. It's not our department. Paul is spreading the kingdom. He's not spreading Paul's kingdom, he's spreading the kingdom of Christ. The ministry that he has isn't just conversion. It's full maturity. That's what he's mentioned earlier in the first 14 verses here. The discussion here is maybe not perfect union with Christ, but certainly a fuller union with Christ than what you would see in the initial salvation. We're all raw. We don't know what we don't know when we're what we would call baby Christians. What Paul is talking about is to be able to grow in the grace and knowledge of God. To be able to put that into practice. To be able to suffer a little bit for the sake of revealing the glory of the Gospel. So how do we handle these things? Well, we need to remember that Jesus Christ didn't just pop on the scene after Alexander the Great died and the kingdom was split in four parts. But we have, you know, Pax Romana. We can talk about what the fullness of time actually means. But we need to remember that when Christ comes on the scene in the Incarnation, We have to remember He existed from creation past. He was the Creator and we should worship Him as such. We should acknowledge His Lordship over all of the things. Our bodies, our mind, how we spend our time, how we utilize or squander our gifts. It all comes under His purview. It's not a fragmented, segmented thing. It's all Christ's. Because of that, we can also trust Christ as our Redeemer. We can rest in His finished work of reconciliation. We don't have to add to it. We can't add to it. We shouldn't even think that we can. We should just trust in the fact that He did it all. And as a result of that, we should want to seek wisdom. Spiritual growth. A deeper fellowship with God through His Word. This is just growing in Christ. Growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ. I say just. I don't want to dismiss that. Because like I said earlier, it's what we oftentimes overlook. We'll do a whole lot to try to help people see their need for the Savior. And when they finally confess that, then we say, okay, we'll go find a church. Because my job was evangelism. Okay. But we can encourage more of that. What does it mean? What does it mean to grow in Christ? It means to seek out wisdom. It means to grow in maturity. It means to have a fellowship with God. And oftentimes that comes, yes, primarily through the preached Word, which means we have to love God's people. We need to find a church where the Bible is preached, where Christ's name is proclaimed, where the gospel is offered, where worship is consistent with what God says in His Word. All of those things will draw us closer to the Lord by His grace, which in turn encourages us to serve Christ with joy. Paul suffered. But he rejoiced in his sufferings, as we saw in verse 24. And he did that because he knew that by suffering for the sake of Christ, the kingdom was going to be advanced, as he was faithful to the Lord and did what the Lord commanded. The Lord was going to bless that, even though he may suffer. Paul's life is an example of a person who was called to suffer, but still handled that suffering without questioning God's goodness or His sovereignty. Paul would say, don't be like me, only be like me as I'm like Christ. But we should, in this way, be like Paul, because Paul is submissive the way Christ was submissive to His Father in Heaven. We can serve Christ with joy. The Gospel's going out, the Kingdom is advancing. We should rejoice. Rejoice in the work that Christ did, rejoice in who Christ is, and rejoice in how Christ equips us to be a party to His work. Let's stand as we call on Him in prayer. Father, thank you for the letter to the Colossians. Thank you that we see Christ proclaimed clearly here. We see his work discussed and his person hailed. Help us to be as Paul was in this book. Help us to rejoice in our sufferings for you and for your people, whether we have been made ministers or not. Help us to be rejoicing in Christ's role as the Creator and the Redeemer all the days of our lives. And I pray, Lord, that we would serve You with joy in our hearts, because we know we have peace with You through the work of reconciliation that Jesus did for us. And it's in His name that we pray. Amen.