Colossians 3:15-17
First Sunday of Christmas, 2012
Shiloh Lutheran Church
Whenever we come to a passage of Scripture, it’s important to take note of the context. Paul didn’t write this letter in chapters, and the people who received it didn’t read it in sections as we’re doing. They read straight through it, as we do when we receive a letter. So as we come to a brief passage like this, we need to notice what Paul has been saying up to this point; otherwise we’re in danger of misreading Scripture. And we’ll certainly miss out on much of what is being said.
At the beginning of this chapter, Paul reminds the Colossians of their citizenship in heaven. Because they belong to Jesus Christ, they are no longer citizens of this world. They’ve been crucified with Christ, they’ve died to this world; and they’ve become citizens of heaven. They continue to live in this world, but their relationship with the world can never be what it once was. This is not just theological material for them to discuss over coffee. It’s not just something to agree with in a catechism class. God’s intention is that we live lives consistent with our citizenship, so in verses 5-14, Paul explains how this should affect their conduct.
The point, in these verses, is not just that individual Christians are to model the life of the kingdom. That’s part of it, but he’s saying more than that. All the pronouns throughout this passage are in the plural. Paul is addressing the church. The church, as a body of people called together in Jesus’ name, is to model the life of God’s kingdom, especially in the way we act toward one another: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (vv. 12-14).
This is what the church is to look like, according to God’s Word. But, of course, the church often doesn’t look like this. The author of the hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation,” recognized this: “Though with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed. By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” The church is often plagued with disunity, backbiting, gossip, an unforgiving spirit. In many churches, people live double lives because they’re afraid to admit the truth. They pretend that all is well, and that the Lord is doing wonderful things among them, when in reality their lives are so filled with inconsistency that they wonder whether the whole thing is really true at all. There’s no visible evidence in their lives, or in the life of their church, of the reality of God’s grace.
The church is a body of people called together because of our common bond in Jesus Christ. But this common bond that we have in Christ doesn’t automatically lead us to act in loving ways toward one another. These verses we’re looking at today, verses 15-17, emphasize that the church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual health of the church are closely tied together and have a profound effect on each other.
The first thing to notice here, in verse 15, is that when the peace of Christ is ruling in our hearts, we are enabled to live at peace with each other. What does it mean to “let the peace of Christ rule” in our hearts? Paul says, in Romans 5:1: “therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Before we were justified we were not at peace with God. We saw Him as our enemy, and we consistently refused to acknowledge His Lordship over our lives. Sin put a barrier between ourselves and God, and this also ended up separating us from one another, and even from ourselves. Sin isolates us.
C.S. Lewis has an interesting illustration of this in his book, The Great Divorce. It’s about a busload of people who travel from Hell to Heaven (and then back again). He describes Hell as a sprawling, dingy town, where people are constantly squabbling. Here’s a conversation he has with one of the people on the bus: “‘It seems the deuce of a town,’ I volunteered, ‘and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?’ ‘Not at all,’ said my neighbour. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move....’ ‘And what about the earlier arrivals? I mean – there must be people who came from earth to your town even longer ago.’ ‘That’s right. There are. They’ve been moving on and on. Getting further apart. They’re so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all. Astronomical distances. There’s a bit of rising ground near where I live and a chap has a telescope. You can see the lights of the inhabited houses, where those olds ones live, millions of miles away. Millions of miles from us and from one another. Every now and then they move further still. That’s one of the disappointments. I thought you’d meet interesting historical characters. But you don’t: they’re too far away’” (pp. 18-20). Sin isolates us, it drives us apart from one another.
In Christ those barriers are broken down. We have peace with God; we’re no longer in a state of war with Him. This is the “peace of Christ.” It’s easy to get sidetracked and argue about whether Paul is speaking here about an objective reality or a subjective feeling of peace. But I think he has both in mind. Because we’ve been justified freely by faith, because God has declared us “not guilty,” we are at peace with God. That’s an objective reality; it doesn’t depend on how we feel at the moment. But when we clearly grasp this reality it leads naturally to a sense of peace in our hearts. We’re at rest. We’re able, as Paul goes on to say in Romans 5, to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We’re not anxiously trying to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight. So, the “peace of Christ” is both an objective reality and the subjective feeling that results from it.
The word translated “rule” is an interesting one. Originally it described the work of an umpire in the games, then it later came to mean “to order,” or “to control.” The New Century Version translates this verse: “Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking.” The peace that Christ gives is based on the objective reality that God has declared us “not guilty,” purely by grace and not because of any good in ourselves. Paul’s point here is that this is to control the way we act toward one another. Notice how he finishes out the verse: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.” Peterson, in The Message, brings this out well: “Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other.” We’re to act, with one another, as people who’ve been pardoned by grace, who are at peace with God, and who are living in the certainty of a glorious future which is the exact opposite of what we deserve. When we’re tempted to erect barriers between ourselves, we need to remember the truth. We’re citizens of God’s kingdom, and all the old barriers have been broken down in Christ. The peace of Christ is to control the way we interact with each other. Because God has been gracious to us, we show grace to one another.
The second thing here, in verse 16, is that when the word of Christ is dwelling in us richly, we’re enabled to minister to one another. The Biblical view of life in the church is that we are all called to minister to one another; the function of pastors and teachers is to equip God’s people for this work of ministry. But, in ourselves, we have nothing to give. We don’t know what to do, and when we act out of a sense of guilt, thinking “I need to do more, I need to be ministering to others,” it usually doesn’t go well. We often do more harm than good.
Our inadequacy is especially clear when we try to minister to people in crisis. In the early 1980's, some workers from Operation Mobilization, the mission group we served with, were in a serious car accident, and Jonathan McRostie, the leader of the work in Europe, became a paraplegic. While he was still in the hospital, a young member of one of the OM teams visited and informed him that there were only two possible reasons for his condition: unconfessed sin, or lack of faith. Why did he do that? Yes, he was seriously wrong theologically; and yes, he was being incredibly insensitive. But he wasn’t seeking to do harm. He was seeking to minister; he thought he had a word from the Lord, and he was seeking to deliver it.
One of my professors at Messiah College shared that when his wife died of a brain tumor, his pastor called that day and asked if he could come over. George said no, he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. But his pastor said he didn’t want to talk; he just wanted to come over and sit with him. And that’s what he did. He just came over and sat. He didn’t try to give any answers (George knew all of them anyway). He didn’t try to give any advice at that time. George was in the initial shock of grief, and he really didn’t need any advice right then. But he needed the support and presence of another person, and that’s what his pastor gave.
How can we learn to minister to one another? How do we know when to speak and when not to speak? And when it’s time to speak, how do we know what to say to one another? In our culture, which is so obsessed with technique, we tend to think the problem is a lack of expertise. So the natural solution is to make up for this lack by taking a few courses. Then we’ll know more about the Bible and we’ll have a clearer idea of how to minister to others. And this can be helpful. But it’s not the primary thing. The primary thing is to be filled with the word of Christ, to “let the word of Christ” dwell in us richly. It’s not that we fill our heads with God’s word so that we’ll have something to talk about when it’s time to minister. It’s that we need to have our hearts full of God’s transforming Word, so that we’ll be people who are fit to minister to one another.
We “teach and admonish one another” as people whose hearts are full of God’s Word, who are being transformed by the power of the Word. When I was in graduate school, in the Religion Department at Temple University, I often found comfort and encouragement from these words in Psalm 119: “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts” (Psalm 119:97-100). God’s Word is powerful. The environment I was in at the time was hostile to faith, but I found God’s Word sustaining me and nourishing me and enabling me to stand firm. Paul is calling us, in verse 16, to be people who meditate on God’s Word. As we lovingly meditate on the Word, we’ll find ourselves ministering to one another naturally.
Singing is the other thing that results from having hearts filled with the word of Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” We don’t know the precise distinction between these three terms. It seems likely that “psalms” refers to the Old Testament book of Psalms. Right from the beginning, the early church followed the Jewish practice of praying and singing the Psalms. “Hymns” may refer to written compositions; Philippians 2:6-11 seems to be an example of a very early hymn. And “spiritual songs” could refer to more spontaneous outbursts of praise with music. In any case, God’s people, from the beginning, have been singing people, and they have drawn from a wide variety of styles in their worship. We may not be certain of the precise definitions here, but it is surely significant that Paul finds it necessary to use three terms to describe the singing of the church. We don’t need to argue about which are more appropriate or which are superior for worship. Looking around at creation, we can see clearly that God loves variety. So why shouldn’t our worship reflect something of this? “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” It takes all three to fully express our praise and thanksgiving to God. We impoverish the church when we divide up into factions and think there’s only one acceptable form of worship.
The third thing to notice, in verse 17, is that when we’re living with an awareness of Christ’s lordship, we’re aware that everything we do and say reflects our relationship with Him: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” It’s easy to lose sight of this in our society, which has such a strong emphasis on personal autonomy, but in everything we do we are acting as members of Christ’s body. We have no idea how far-reaching our actions are. It’s not possible to act on our own without influencing and affecting others. The year I graduated from Messiah College I spent a year working nights as a janitor in one of the buildings there. For awhile, there was a work-study student who worked with me for a few hours each night. He was a very serious Christian, and yet it seemed like he lived constantly under a cloud. He seemed weighted down and burdened. And the first time we had a serious conversation he told me that when he was only 18 months old his father had committed suicide. Nearly 20 years had passed, and he couldn’t even remember his father, but that man’s suicide had cast a shadow over his son’s life.
Our actions have consequences far beyond anything we can imagine. And this is true also in the spiritual realm. In everything we do, we are acting as members of the church, and our actions are either strengthening or weakening the spiritual condition of the body. We need to meditate on this and allow this realization to influence our daily choices. William Barclay has some wise counsel on this point: “One of the best tests of any action is: ‘Can we do it, calling upon the name of Jesus? Can we do it, asking for his help?’ One of the bests tests of any word is: ‘Can we speak it and in the same breath name the name of Jesus? Can we speak it, remembering that he will hear?’” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, p. 160).
The church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. And individual members can only learn to live with Christ at the center of their lives by entering into the life of the church. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual life of the church are closely tied together, and they affect each other far more than we realize. We want the peace of Christ and the Word of Christ to fill our corporate life in the church, and we also want these things to fill our hearts as we live out our lives in the world. And we want to invite Christ’s presence into every area of our lives.
But that’s not where we are, much of the time. And it doesn’t always help to know how far we are from where we should be. Often it just discourages us. So how can we get from where we are to where God calls us to be? First, notice Paul’s emphasis on thanksgiving in these verses. He refers to thanksgiving and gratitude three times in this passage, once in each verse. What would happen to our conflicts in the church if we were intentional in singing “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in [our] hearts to God?” How would it affect our daily lives in the world if we were diligent in giving thanks throughout the day? Verse 15 is translated, in the New American Bible: “Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.” Or, here’s The Message: “And cultivate thankfulness.” A spirit of thankfulness won’t just happen. We need to cultivate it. We need to take ourselves in hand, remind ourselves of the truth about ourselves and about God. And we need to say, as the Psalmist says: “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High” (Psalm 7:17). We won’t always feel like it. But as we intentionally give thanks over a lifetime, we’ll find ourselves cultivating a spirit of gratitude.
The second thing we can do is be attentive to the condition of our hearts. When we act in an unkind way toward someone, it will affect us. Pay attention to the condition of your heart when you’re at odds with someone, when you’re disturbed that things aren’t going your way, when you feel outraged because your rights are being violated. When we’re in that condition, the peace of Christ is not ruling in our hearts, and we need to turn to the Lord in repentance. Maybe the other person is wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is this: is the condition of your heart right at that moment pleasing to Jesus, who laid aside His rights to redeem us? Put aside for a moment the question of who is in the right, and attend to the condition of your heart before God. Then you’ll be in a better condition to confront any wrong the other person may have done.
The third thing is that we need to give time to God’s Word. We need to give enough attention to God’s Word to allow it to permeate our lives. A friend of ours spent some time at L’Abri in Switzerland when Francis Schaeffer was still living. She told once of being in a Friday night discussion when someone asked Dr. Schaeffer if he watched movies. He responded “yes, I do, but I wouldn’t if I didn’t read four chapters a day in the Bible.” What was his point? Was he being legalistic? No, he was conscious of how much we’re affected by the things that occupy our minds, and he wanted God’s Word to be the primary influence over his thinking. We need to be intentional in reading and meditating on God’s Word.
And the last thing is that we need to remind ourselves daily that we are not part of this world. We live in this world as citizens of God’s kingdom; we interact with people in this world as ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven. We need to be creative in reminding ourselves of this. And over a lifetime, as we repeatedly draw ourselves back to this fact, we’ll find that more and more this awareness will fill our conscious minds.
In 1978, I was working with a team in India and we spent two weeks with a missionary named A.R. Fromman. He was 92 years old at the time, and he’d been in India for 65 years. He’d been walking with God over a very long lifetime, and he exemplified these qualities more than anyone I’ve ever met. He lived with a constant awareness of the reality of Christ’s presence, and he was overflowing with joyful assurance. But he wasn’t that way at the beginning of his Christian life. He became that way by walking with God, by spending time in His Word, and seeking to apply it to his life. And the interesting thing is that being around him didn’t lead me to put him on a pedestal; it made me want to know God better. He didn’t draw attention to himself; he pointed us to Jesus. There are no shortcuts to the things Paul describes in these verses. These are qualities that become a reality as we cultivate Christ’s presence day by day for a lifetime. That’s what we’re celebrating in this Christmas season: the Word became flesh and lived among us so that we could become citizens of heaven. May God increasingly enable us to seek Jesus with all our hearts and all our strength, to praise and exalt Him above all others, and to invite Him into every area of our lives. And may He enable us to persevere in doing this until that day when we see Him face to face.
Singing is the other thing that results from having hearts filled with the word of Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” We don’t know the precise distinction between these three terms. It seems likely that “psalms” refers to the Old Testament book of Psalms. Right from the beginning, the early church followed the Jewish practice of praying and singing the Psalms. “Hymns” may refer to written compositions; Philippians 2:6-11 seems to be an example of a very early hymn. And “spiritual songs” could refer to more spontaneous outbursts of praise with music. In any case, God’s people, from the beginning, have been singing people, and they have drawn from a wide variety of styles in their worship. We may not be certain of the precise definitions here, but it is surely significant that Paul finds it necessary to use three terms to describe the singing of the church. We don’t need to argue about which are more appropriate or which are superior for worship. Looking around at creation, we can see clearly that God loves variety. So why shouldn’t our worship reflect something of this? “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” It takes all three to fully express our praise and thanksgiving to God. We impoverish the church when we divide up into factions and think there’s only one acceptable form of worship.
The third thing to notice, in verse 17, is that when we’re living with an awareness of Christ’s lordship, we’re aware that everything we do and say reflects our relationship with Him: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” It’s easy to lose sight of this in our society, which has such a strong emphasis on personal autonomy, but in everything we do we are acting as members of Christ’s body. We have no idea how far-reaching our actions are. It’s not possible to act on our own without influencing and affecting others. The year I graduated from Messiah College I spent a year working nights as a janitor in one of the buildings there. For awhile, there was a work-study student who worked with me for a few hours each night. He was a very serious Christian, and yet it seemed like he lived constantly under a cloud. He seemed weighted down and burdened. And the first time we had a serious conversation he told me that when he was only 18 months old his father had committed suicide. Nearly 20 years had passed, and he couldn’t even remember his father, but that man’s suicide had cast a shadow over his son’s life.
Our actions have consequences far beyond anything we can imagine. And this is true also in the spiritual realm. In everything we do, we are acting as members of the church, and our actions are either strengthening or weakening the spiritual condition of the body. We need to meditate on this and allow this realization to influence our daily choices. William Barclay has some wise counsel on this point: “One of the best tests of any action is: ‘Can we do it, calling upon the name of Jesus? Can we do it, asking for his help?’ One of the bests tests of any word is: ‘Can we speak it and in the same breath name the name of Jesus? Can we speak it, remembering that he will hear?’” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, p. 160).
The church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. And individual members can only learn to live with Christ at the center of their lives by entering into the life of the church. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual life of the church are closely tied together, and they affect each other far more than we realize. We want the peace of Christ and the Word of Christ to fill our corporate life in the church, and we also want these things to fill our hearts as we live out our lives in the world. And we want to invite Christ’s presence into every area of our lives.
But that’s not where we are, much of the time. And it doesn’t always help to know how far we are from where we should be. Often it just discourages us. So how can we get from where we are to where God calls us to be? First, notice Paul’s emphasis on thanksgiving in these verses. He refers to thanksgiving and gratitude three times in this passage, once in each verse. What would happen to our conflicts in the church if we were intentional in singing “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in [our] hearts to God?” How would it affect our daily lives in the world if we were diligent in giving thanks throughout the day? Verse 15 is translated, in the New American Bible: “Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.” Or, here’s The Message: “And cultivate thankfulness.” A spirit of thankfulness won’t just happen. We need to cultivate it. We need to take ourselves in hand, remind ourselves of the truth about ourselves and about God. And we need to say, as the Psalmist says: “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High” (Psalm 7:17). We won’t always feel like it. But as we intentionally give thanks over a lifetime, we’ll find ourselves cultivating a spirit of gratitude.
The second thing we can do is be attentive to the condition of our hearts. When we act in an unkind way toward someone, it will affect us. Pay attention to the condition of your heart when you’re at odds with someone, when you’re disturbed that things aren’t going your way, when you feel outraged because your rights are being violated. When we’re in that condition, the peace of Christ is not ruling in our hearts, and we need to turn to the Lord in repentance. Maybe the other person is wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is this: is the condition of your heart right at that moment pleasing to Jesus, who laid aside His rights to redeem us? Put aside for a moment the question of who is in the right, and attend to the condition of your heart before God. Then you’ll be in a better condition to confront any wrong the other person may have done.
The third thing is that we need to give time to God’s Word. We need to give enough attention to God’s Word to allow it to permeate our lives. A friend of ours spent some time at L’Abri in Switzerland when Francis Schaeffer was still living. She told once of being in a Friday night discussion when someone asked Dr. Schaeffer if he watched movies. He responded “yes, I do, but I wouldn’t if I didn’t read four chapters a day in the Bible.” What was his point? Was he being legalistic? No, he was conscious of how much we’re affected by the things that occupy our minds, and he wanted God’s Word to be the primary influence over his thinking. We need to be intentional in reading and meditating on God’s Word.
And the last thing is that we need to remind ourselves daily that we are not part of this world. We live in this world as citizens of God’s kingdom; we interact with people in this world as ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven. We need to be creative in reminding ourselves of this. And over a lifetime, as we repeatedly draw ourselves back to this fact, we’ll find that more and more this awareness will fill our conscious minds.
In 1978, I was working with a team in India and we spent two weeks with a missionary named A.R. Fromman. He was 92 years old at the time, and he’d been in India for 65 years. He’d been walking with God over a very long lifetime, and he exemplified these qualities more than anyone I’ve ever met. He lived with a constant awareness of the reality of Christ’s presence, and he was overflowing with joyful assurance. But he wasn’t that way at the beginning of his Christian life. He became that way by walking with God, by spending time in His Word, and seeking to apply it to his life. And the interesting thing is that being around him didn’t lead me to put him on a pedestal; it made me want to know God better. He didn’t draw attention to himself; he pointed us to Jesus. There are no shortcuts to the things Paul describes in these verses. These are qualities that become a reality as we cultivate Christ’s presence day by day for a lifetime. That’s what we’re celebrating in this Christmas season: the Word became flesh and lived among us so that we could become citizens of heaven. May God increasingly enable us to seek Jesus with all our hearts and all our strength, to praise and exalt Him above all others, and to invite Him into every area of our lives. And may He enable us to persevere in doing this until that day when we see Him face to face.
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