1:1-8
Paul mentioned his co-worker in Christ. Epaphras was a minister at the church in Colossae. He brought Paul word about the church. He described the fruit of the Spirit in Colossians. Paul was encouraged to hear the good news about the Colossians. I'm not sure if Paul had a part in starting the Colossian church but he prayed for them. He thanked God for them.
Thanksgiving for God's people is a continual exercise for us. We should give thanks for God's people and pray for their edification, encouragement, and comfort. Paul thanked God for them.
Notice the emphasis Paul put on the hope of heaven. It is sadly a characteristic of the American church that men put emphasis on the here and now. We don't hear about heaven anymore. The apostles and the Lord Jesus focused completely on what is eternal. Their message was always about preparing for eternity. Jesus taught us to live now in preparation for eternity.
Jesus taught us to store our treasures in heaven. Why then do churches preach about storing up treasure on earth? It is because we are in a time of apostasy. Most of what is proclaimed from American churches is a false gospel. Jesus warned us not to be deceived by false prophets and false Christs. Paul warned us in the last days there would be men preaching another Jesus, another gospel, and another Spirit.
The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ has been preached in all the world. Jesus said it would, and so it happened. Everywhere the message of Jesus Christ is preached there is spiritual fruit. People turn from living for self and the world and they turn to living for God and his kingdom. There is spiritual fruit when the gospel is preached to people.
Be diligent to keep the gospel in your heart every day. Read 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and remember that Christ died for our sins, he was buried, and he rose again on the third day, according to the scriptures.
1:9-11
In 1 Thessalonians 5:17 Paul commanded the believers to pray without ceasing. In this letter we see Paul followed this exhortation and prayed without ceasing for the Colossians.
Unceasing prayer is not necessarily 24 hours a day, but an ongoing, daily habit of prayer. I can see where we should maintain an attitude of prayer and be ready anytime to lift up a prayer to God like Nehemiah.
He prayed for them to be filled with the knowledge of God's will. He prayed for them to have all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
There is more to being a Christian than the moment you bowed your head and prayed a sinner's prayer. We must continue in this relationship with the Lord to understand his will.
James exhorted us to pray for wisdom. If we do not understand then we can ask God for wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Why do we need to know more of God's will and have God's wisdom and spiritual understanding? There is a process of being renewed in the mind. When we are first saved our mind is still controlled by everything we grew up with in this world system. Our minds are programmed by the world system. Now we must allow our thinking to be corrected. We must allow the Lord to change the way we see life.
God's priorities are vastly different than our priorities. We cannot understand how God sees things unless God teaches us. This is what Paul was praying for. He was praying they would open their heart to learn from God and have their thinking changed. They had to put off the old way of thinking and learn to think in spiritual truth.
It takes time. It takes suffering. There is no way around it.
Learning to think according to the framework of the Bible takes more than casual reading of the Bible. It will take a willing heart to be corrected and chastised. It will require humbling ourselves. It will require us to allow the Holy Spirit to search every thought we think, and be willing to allow the Lord to cast down our vain imaginations and thoughts.
We must aggressively cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this process. We must search the scriptures, meditate on the truth, ask questions, record the answers, and then, and here it is - Don't forget what you learn! Remind yourself of the truth. Repeat it daily. Hold fast the form of sound words. Hold on to what God gives you. Don't let it go.
The purpose of having the mind transformed is so our lives will honor God. We learn to live in a way that is pleasing to God. We learn to honor God with our words, attitudes, and actions. We learn how to obey the Holy Spirit.
As we do this our lives will bear fruit. Our lives will produce a fragrance that comes from another world. People will feel God's kingdom when they get around us.
The Holy Spirit gives his strength to our spirit. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to endure. We are called to do more than endure. We are called to patiently endure. We are called to patiently endure with joyfulness. This is not possible in human strength or determination. This is only possible by being filled everyday with the Holy Spirit.
1:12-14
There is a lot the Holy Spirit revealed in these verses. The Holy Spirit showed us what the Lord Jesus did for us through his crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection. The Lord made us partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. What does this mean?
It means the Lord has plans for us in eternity. There is an inheritance. For me, the Lord himself is my inheritance. I want to be with the Lord. If you read the history of the Levites the priests it is written that the Lord was their inheritance in contrast to the land inheritance which the other tribes received. The Lord himself became the inheritance of the Levites and the priests.
An inheritance is important for us to think about. The Lord exhorted in Revelation 3:11 to hold fast what we have so that "no man may take your crown". That crown represents some kind of inheritance. We are to be careful about this and "hold fast". We see there is a distinction made between salvation and "inheritance". We must hold fast to what God gave us in order to receive inheritance.
This is not a works-based salvation theology. This has to do with the judgment seat of Christ when believers receive a reward for the things done in the body, whether good or bad. This is a matter of receiving rewards or losing rewards. The Lord wants us to receive the reward he has for us. He exhorts us to "hold fast".
The Lord Jesus delivered us from the powers of darkness. Demons, devils, evil spirits, and Satan are real enemies. The Lord delivered us from their kingdom and power. When he did this he translated us into his kingdom. These two kingdoms are opposed to one another. There is no truce and there is never negotiation. There is never a ceasefire. This is a battle that has been going on for a long time but it will not last forever. There will be a decisive end to this battle in the future. The enemy of God will lose the battle and all those who follow him will lose.
The Lord redeemed us from sin and the enemy through his blood shed at Calvary. The Lord Jesus gave himself to redeem us. Redemption means buying something back. We were redeemed through the shed blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Jesus paid the price for our sins. We now belong completely to him and no longer owe anything to the enemy. The accusations of the devil no longer have power over those who believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved.
Christ died for our sins, he was buried, and he rose again on the third day, according to the scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. (Romans 10:13).