Misc. Colossians sermons
Thankfulness anchors this opening section, and Paul’s habit is to intercede for others in Christ always. He never founded the Colossian church, and still a missionary report about it fills him with joy. In his prayers Paul consistently lifts others up.
The church’s real life is already in heaven, beyond merely aiming there someday. Paul sees his own ministry the same way, as 2 Corinthians 4:17 makes explicit. His ceaseless prayers for heavenly things show what it looks like to live from heaven.
Does Christ possess the fullness of Deity, or is he that fullness? The difference matters more than it first appears. Christ’s bodily resurrection secures believers’ real unity with him, and Paul makes the startling claim that God raises them in Christ to that same fullness.
Medieval mysticism abused the doctrine of union with Christ, and a Reformed focus on individual salvation has obscured its corporate scope. Justification rests on external events in Christ, apart from any internal experience. Two strands run through the whole Bible, God with us and God in us, and Colossians 3 holds both together.
Jesus is the Wisdom of God himself, far more than a wise teacher, and Psalm 119’s praise of God’s law stands behind that identification. God is the same in both Testaments, and so Jesus embodies wisdom, knowledge, and law at once. ‘Understanding’ in Colossians and ‘faith’ elsewhere in Paul name the same heavenly wisdom.
Colossians 2:16-19 takes up the Sabbath question, and Christianity is a thinking religion, far beyond a set of unreflective customs. Paul writes to a church already living in the New Testament age of Christ’s victory, for whom the Old Testament ceremonies have become obsolete. Getting this right matters for real cultural questions.