We can have “confident hope” of what God has for us now and in heaven because we know that our salvation and future destination are sure. We are free to live for Christ and love others. If we find ourselves doubting or wavering in our faith or love, remember Christ, what He as done, how much He loves us, how He has changed us and our final destination—heaven.
Colossians has a distinctive message, one that is extremely relevant to people living today. It is primarily a letter of hope: the hope that comes by means of the gospel. At the time it was written, there was a serious threat to the faith of the Colossians. A garbled mixture of religious error, arising from both a Jewish and Greek background, was threatening the church.
When different religious ideas compete with one another, it leads to unrest in society. That condition is reflected in the letter to the Colossians and you will recognize it is what we face today. We are assaulted on every side by humanists, cultists and various philosophies, all of them claiming to be the truth. The letter to the Colossians is very important in the New Testament record.
In the opening verses the apostle emphasizes the word hope, in marked contrast to the hopelessness of the world of his day.
The Colossians too were once hopeless but they had found hope. And with it they found two other enormously valuable commodities, called faith and love. Look at the opening words of the letter:
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.” (Colossians 1:1)
These days it is necessary to point out that when the Scriptures talk about “brothers” and “brethren,” it always includes sisters as well—“sistern.” Lol. If we understand the biblical truth about mankind we would not get into the awkward situations we find ourselves in today, where we wonder whether we ought to call a woman a “chairperson” or “chairwoman,” or what. ‘ The Bible says. “In the beginning,” it says, ” God created man, male and female he created them, and he referred to them as “man” or “mankind.” Women have as much right to the word “man” as males do. They can properly call themselves the “sons of God” just as men do, and they can properly include themselves in the term “brethren” as much as men do. Both are “men” in that generic sense. If we understood that there would be no need, to republish the New Testament, eliminating all so-called chauvinist terms.
Paul continues,
“To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints—the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and which you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you…” (Colossians 1:2-6a)
Did you pick out the three words that are crucial there: faith, hope, and love? We could say these are favorite words of the apostle. He uses this triad in several of his letters. In 1 Thessalonians he writes about “your work of faith,” “your labor of love,” and “your patience of hope.” Many have already remembered that wonderful triad at the end of 1 Corinthians 13, “And now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.”
Yes, love is what is needed in our world. But according to this Colossian statement love comes from faith. And where does faith come from? The NIV puts it this way: “the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and which you have already heard about in the word of truth.” It is extremely important to recognize that these wonderfully warm words, faith, love and hope, are related. Notice that two of them are four-letter words (love, hope), so not all four-letter words are bad. These words mark what we could call qualities of authentic Christians. If you are really a Christian, if you are one of the “holy and faithful brothers,” the mark will be: you have faith and love which spring from hope, and that hope is found in the gospel.
Paul calls the Colossians “holy brothers.” Christians are holy because they belong to God. By faith the Colossians had believed what God said, therefore God claimed them for his own; they belonged to him.
Paul also calls them “faithful brethren.” Here is the first hint of the struggles going on in the church at Colossae. There were strange doctrinal ideas floating about in an effort to upset these people and turn them away from their faith. But Paul is encouraging them to remain “faithful brethren”—consistent, dependable, genuine believers, because of a constant supply of love and hope from the Spirit (verse 8).
Hope produces faith, and faith in turn grows into love. Hope is the root, faith is the plant, and love is the fruit. Hope is foundational. This gives rise to the question, what produces hope? We all desperately need hope. Without hope men lose the desire to live. We have all had hopeless moments when we felt like saying, “What is the use of going on?” What, then, produces hope? Here is Paul’s answer, “hope stored up for you in heaven and which you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come unto you.”
Hope is awakened by the gospel. That is the good news. The gospel addresses itself to losers. Not to the successful, but to the failures, the weak, the empty, the lost among us—and it gives them hope. When nothing else can give them hope, the gospel will. But how does hearing the story of Jesus: his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection and his coming by the Spirit, give hope that awakens faith and stimulates love for others? The answer is in this one phrase, “the hope stored up for you in heaven.”
To most, that immediately suggests life after death. After this life we will go to be with the Lord and all the glory of eternity will then be ours. That is a wonderful hope, but that is not what this phrase means. If we take it that way, it gives credence to Marx’s accusation that “Religion…is the opium of the people.” If all the gospel offers to Christians is that they will go to heaven when they die, this may well tend to make them content with their lot on earth and do nothing to correct or improve their conditions. That is the accusation of the Communists. They say we are putting people to sleep, turning them away from changes they should make if only they got stirred up about the problems and injustices of society. That charge is not without some merit if this is all the gospel offers.
But though it is a wonderful truth that there is hope of life after death, this translation obscures what is really being said. The singular word “heaven” is what misleads us. What the Greek text actually says is, “hope is available to you in the heavens”—plural. This term “the heavens” (or, as it appears in the letter to the Ephesians, “the heavenlies”), is a reference not to heaven after death, but to the invisible spiritual kingdom that surrounds us on all sides right now. Thus, what this is saying here is that the gospel reveals there is hope for us immediately coming from that invisible spiritual kingdom which surrounds us right at this very moment.
What is that hope? It is patent all through the New Testament. Jesus himself said, “Let not your hearts be troubled for I am with you.” That is the hope that is awakened by the gospel. It is the good news that right now, whatever you are facing, in your moment of weakness peril, or hopelessness, Jesus is available to you. His strength can be imparted to you, his wisdom granted to you to steady you, strengthen you and make you to stand. That is the hope of the gospel. That is what awakens faith.
Faith means to act upon that hope. Faith means you believe that Jesus is there. At once you feel your spirit steadied and strengthened and you are able to go on and take whatever is coming. We have all known what it means to have some dear friend come along in a time of trouble to stand by and steady and encourage us. If that friend is the Lord of Glory himself, what tremendous hope there is in that fact. That is what this means here: the hope that is in the gospel. Hebrews 11 says of Moses that “he endured because he saw him who was invisible.” That is what Paul writes to the Colossians about: an invisible reality that is available right now in Jesus. He is there, ready to help and encourage.
Paul also calls this gospel “the word of truth.” That is what marks its realism.
The great thing about the gospel is that it is true. It really works. It does deliver people. When you lack hope, feel defeated, cast down, or betrayed, Jesus stands there, available to you. That is the word of the gospel. He offers to go with you to face the drug pusher. He offers his love and his acceptance when loneliness or horniness tempt you to wrongful sexual activity. He offers to steady you in times of pressure and stress. And he offers forgiveness and restoration if there is any failure. That is what the apostle now affirms, saying to the Colossians in verse 6:
“All over the world this gospel is producing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.” (Colossians 1:6)
Wherever Paul went, he preached the Good News—to Gentile audiences, to hostile Jewish leaders, and even to his Roman guards. Whenever people believed in the message that Paul spoke, they were changed. It still happens today. People hear, believe and are changed by Jesus.
God’s Word is not just for our information, it is for our transformation! Becoming a Christian means beginning a whole new relationship with God, not just turning over a new leaf or determining to do right. New believers have a changed purpose, direction, attitude, and behavior. They are no longer seeking to serve themselves, but they are bearing fruit for God. How is the Good News reaching others through our lives?
“You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.” (Colossians 1:7-8)
Epaphras had founded the church at Colosse while Paul was living in Ephesus (Acts 19:10). Epaphras may have been converted in Ephesus, and then he returned to Colosse, his hometown. For some reason, he visited Rome and, while there, told Paul about the problem of the Colossian heresy. This prompted Paul to write this letter. Epaphras is also mentioned in Philemon 1:23 (the Colossian church met in Philemon’s house).
Epaphras was the man who started it all. We do not know much about him, he had probably been part of the group that Paul himself taught when he was resident in Ephesus for three years.
As Acts records, Paul rented a hall (the school of Tyrannus), and for five hours a day, six days a week for three solid years he taught the Scriptures. Many who were present went out through all the provinces spreading the truth, and among them was Epaphras. He probably started a home Bible class. He had friends also in Laodicea and started another class there and another one over in Hierapolis.
Epaphras simply told the people who came the truth about Jesus: the meaning of his death, the glory of his resurrection, his accessibility to them by means of the Spirit who came on the day of Pentecost. That began to excite them and awaken them in their hopeless condition. They found hope again, and faith and love came along with it. A healed community of beautiful people came into being and caught the attention of many in those pagan cities. That is God’s favorite way of evangelism.
As we hear the Scriptures expounded by pastors or teachers, we may wish that we knew the Bible like one of these pastors, then we could be of use to God. But don’t you see that you already are the important people, the true evangelists? You are out there, rubbing shoulders with people who have no hope, hearing their sad stories, meeting them in the streets and in the stores, having coffee with them. You are the ones who can spread the word of hope. That is how the gospel spread throughout the Roman province of Asia, and hundreds of churches came into being. The gospel has power to change, power to awaken, power to give hope, and out of hope springs faith and love. What a remarkable thing it is!
We too can see these very things happening here. What excitement will come into our lives when we reach out with the good news, the only source of hope in the world!
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Sources: Life Application Bible Notes (Tyndale, 2007), 2028.
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