Thanks to God for Grace to You
Colossians 1:3–8
© Mike Riccardi
Introduction
Well, it is a joy for me to be with you again this evening as we return to our study in the Book of Colossians, which we began just last week. One of the most important topics in the Christian life is the issue of the believer’s assurance of his salvation. It is a glorious truth that everyone who genuinely trusts in Jesus alone for the forgiveness of their sins and their righteousness before a holy God “has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24). Every believer rests absolutely secure in the saving grip of their Good Shepherd, who says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:27–28). The Apostle Paul says, in that great climax of Romans 8, that nothing will be able to separate the believer from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is a glorious thing to be saved, and to know that every believer will be brought safely home to heaven.
But it is exceptionally sweet to know you’re saved, to be persuaded that, in spite of your sins, you yourself are one of those believers who will be brought safely home to heaven. You see, there is a difference between being in Christ, beingforgiven, being justified, and knowing that you’re in Christ, being certain that you’re forgiven, being convinced that you are justified. Now, when we first believe, we are certain! Faith is the conviction of things not seen! “Jesus is God! He is my Savior! He is capable to undertake for me, and bear all the weight of my sins! He freely welcomes me to Himself through faith alone, apart from any of my doings! His work is sufficient to bring me all the way home to heaven!” Rock-solid, assured conviction!
But as time progresses, what happens? You fail to keep up with the means of grace. Your sight of His sanctifying glory starts to get cloudy, and the false glories of sin begin to become more attractive. We set our minds on things below. We mind the things of the flesh. And then what? We become what we behold. The sin we’re reflecting on begins to reflect in us. And then we begin to take stock of our lives—we examine ourselves, as the Scriptures command us—and we say, “Man, the Bible says that believers don’t act this way. And yet here I am persisting in these habits of sin. Am I really a Christian? Has Christ really made me His?” And our assurance begins to wane.
And in one sense, it should! High levels of assurance are not compatible with low levels of obedience. But in another sense, it shouldn’t, because we actually are saved. We’re just not acting like it, and we’ve sinned our assurance away. Assurance of salvation is the birthright of every single believer in Jesus. And yet not every believer remains conscious of this assurance in every season of their Christian lives.
And it’s when the true believer doubts his salvation—when you’re in a season in which you’ve lost your assurance—that you become very susceptible to the attacks of false teaching. “Oh, friend, you’re struggling so much because you haven’t really been saved! You say you’re trusting Christ, but you’re trusting the wrong Christ!” Or, “You’re believing a deficient gospel! Sure, you have to believe in Jesus, but you also have to keep these holy days, or keep the Sabbath, or abstain from these foods. Sure, you have to believe in Jesus, but you also need to be initiated into the mysteries. You have to have this ecstatic, mystical experience. Then you’ll make progress in holiness.”
You see? When you’re in that kind of state of spiritual vulnerability, you’re vulnerable to false doctrine. “Maybe I haven’t believed the real Gospel, and that’s why I’m struggling so much!”
And what is the answer to believers struggling with assurance? Well, first, we must once again act faith upon the objective promises of the Gospel. Assurance comes from looking upon a bleeding and dying and rising Savior, who welcomes you to Himself, and trusting that He saves those who come to Him. “Come to Me, and I will give you rest.” “Everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, I will raise him up on the last day.” “The one who comes to Me I will in no wise cast out.” Christ saves all who believe! And I look upon Him in the Gospel, and I believe!
But second, assurance is helped by identifying evidences of God’s grace at work within you. You examine your life and you ask, “Is there any evidence of grace in my heart? Is there anything in my life that couldn’t be there natively? that would have to be worked in me by the grace of God? Do I see the fingerprints of the Holy Spirit in my life? Joy in fellowship with the people of God? Pleasure in reading the Scriptures? Eagerness to pray? Would I have ever have put off that sinful habit if the Holy Spirit wasn’t working in me?” In other words, if X is characteristic of being a Christian, and if, by God’s grace, X is true of me, I can conclude that I am a true Christian, sinful though I may be. Praise God: the Savior has come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance! And though my spiritual eyes are clouded with sin, I can see the evidence of His grace in my life. And if grace is at work in me at all, then grace will be at work in me for all, until I am safely home with Jesus.
Now, this is precisely the situation that the Apostle Paul found himself in as he began his letter to the Colossians. As we learned last week, Epaphras has made the 1100-mile journey from Colossae to visit Paul, who was under house arrest in Rome. And he’s come to tell Paul that false teachers had begun assaulting the believers in the church of Colossae. They were trying to woo the Colossians away from the purity of the Gospel that they had received from Epaphras, trying to seduce them to a deceptive, manmade system that was contrary to Christ—a mix of Jewish ceremonialism and pagan mysticism, whose central burden was that Christ was not enough. The Gospel that Paul preached in Ephesus—the Gospel that Epaphras preached to the Colossians when he first evangelized them—that wasn’t the whole message. Sabbath days, dietary laws, mystical visions—these were all necessary supplements to faith in Christ that would be the secret to their real spiritual progress.
And so, part of what Paul has to do in this letter is he has to convince the Colossians that they should be assured of their salvation—that the Gospel that Epaphras heard from Paul and preached to them was the true Gospel, and that the truth of that Gospel is evident from the fruit that it has borne in their own lives. Paul has heard testimony from Epaphras, verse 4, that God’s grace has worked in the lives of the Colossian believers. And so he begins his letter to them by identifying evidences of God’s grace in their lives, accomplished through the Gospel that they had believed, to stir up their assurance of their own salvation, to assure them that the Gospel Epaphras preached to them—of Christ’s supremacy and sufficiency—is the true message from God, and not this new teaching that the false teachers are bringing.
In other words, “Brothers, after you received the message that Epaphras preached to you, your lives have been totally transformed. God’s grace has been at work within you since that very day. And so you can know that it’s our message of ‘Christ alone’—not their message of ‘Christ-plus’—that is the word of truth. There’s no reason to turn aside to these strange, esoteric, convoluted doctrines! Just press on in “the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” He is supreme, and He is sufficient!”
So what we have in chapter 1, verses 3 to 8, is Paul’s thanks to God for the evidences of His grace to the Colossians. That’s where my title comes from: “Thanks to God for Grace to You.” I do thank God for the ministry of Grace to You. But that’s really the point of this text: Thanks to God for God’s grace to His people, which grace assures us of our salvation, and—to use the language of chapter 2 verse 2—brings us to “all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding.” Let’s read our text. Colossians 1, starting in verse 3. “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints; 5because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel 6which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth; 7just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bond-servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, 8and he also informed us of your love in the Spirit.”
One commentator observed from this passage that a godly minister rejoices not so much because he receives temporal fruit from his flock, but because the flock receives spiritual benefit from his ministry. “This is a mark of true love and pastoral affection,” he says, “that [the godly pastor] rejoices in their good as much as his own” (Davenant, 54). And we definitely see that here, in the Apostle Paul’s thanksgiving. And we’ll work through this passage along three lines of thought. We have (1) the object of thanksgiving; (2) the cause for thanksgiving; and (3) the instruments of thanksgiving.
I. The Object of Thanksgiving (v. 3)
In the first place, consider the object of thanksgiving. Paul says, “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you.”
This is a common theme in Paul’s letters. Before he comes right to his main subject, he almost always spends time thanking God for His grace in the lives of the believers he’s writing to. We see it in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. And we see it several times in this epistle. Down in verse 12, Paul will speak of “joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.” And then in chapter 3 verse 17, he says, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” The Apostle Paul was a man who was characterized by gratitude.
Too often, I am a man who is characterized by complaining. And I expect I’m not alone in that. And of course, complaining is simply the vocal form of ingratitude. Paul’s example here admonishes us that it is our duty to reflectupon the blessings that the Lord has graciously bestowed upon us, and return those blessings to Him in the form of praise and thanksgiving. He is the Giver of all good things. James 1:17: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” And so our posture ought to be that of the psalmist in Psalm 116 verse 12: “What shall I render to Yahweh for all His benefits toward me?” Well, it’s not that we could ever pay Him back. It’s not that we could give God something that He lacks. No, we requite God for His blessings by acknowledging our emptiness and our need for Him to provide for us, and thanking Him for His gifts in grateful prayer.
And notice, that’s the context of Paul’s thanksgiving. “We give thanks to God…praying always for you.” Here is another example to imitate. Paul is faithful to be in regular, if not constant prayer for the people of God—even those believers whom he had never met. Are we able to say the same—about anyone—that we are continually coming before the throne of grace to intercede for our brothers and sisters in Christ? those in our fellowship groups? in our Bible studies?
Well, whenever Paul did pray for the Colossians, he thanked God for them. And that shows us that gratitude thrives and flourishes most when it grows out of the soil of prayer. Paul was praying for the Colossians as was his custom, and his reflection on God’s goodness and grace to them moved him to gratitude. Paul counsels us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing.” His next words, verse 18, are “in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” The surest way to give thanks in everything is to pray without ceasing, because as you’re praying, it won’t be long before the Lord brings something to mind that you should thank Him for.
But the point, once again, is that the object of thanksgiving is God Himself. In other words, even though Paul is reflecting on the progress that the Colossians have made in the Christian life—we’ll hear soon of their faith in Christ, their love of the saints, and their hope of heaven—Paul does not congratulate the Colossians for these things! You see, Christians don’t produce faith, love, and hope in our own lives, out of our own resources and efforts. Faith, love, and hope are the fruit of the Gospel at work in our hearts. They are graces given freely to us by God, who is, as we said a moment ago, the Giver of all good gifts to His children. That means that to whatever extent you believe in Jesus, or lovefellow-believers, or experience the rock-solid hope of eternal life, that faith, love, and hope are gifts of God to you. They are the fruit of His unconditional, unmerited favor. And so He alone is to be thanked for those grace-gifts.
And before we move on, notice how Paul speaks of God, here. “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the only time Paul puts it precisely that way. He often speaks of “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (e.g., Eph 1:2), often of “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (e.g., Eph 1:3). And there is rich theology to be mined out even of those titles. Insofar as Christ is truly man, the First Person of the Trinity is, Ephesians 1:17, “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And insofar as Christ is truly God, the First Person of the Trinity is, as Paul says here, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That is to say, Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity! God the Son, eternally begotten of the Father! The hypostatic union and the eternal generation of the Son are wrapped up in this title. And though I’d love to go to theology class at this point, it’s not quite Paul’s point here, so I mention it, and move on.
What is Paul’s point here? Why does he refer to the Father in this unique way? The answer is in verse 2. He has just wished the Colossians, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father.” In verse 3, he gives thanks to “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is our Father and Christ’s Father, even as the Lord Jesus Himself spoke to Mary of “My Father and your Father,” “My God and your God.” Because all believers are in Christ by faith, we may relate to God the way Jesus relates to God: as Father. He is the natural Son of the Father, being God the Son from all eternity, but we are the adopted sons and daughters of the Father. We may call Him “Abba,” Romans 8:15, just as Jesus called Him “Abba,” in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark 14:36.
And that means: if the God who is our Father is the God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, that makes Christ our Brother. Hebrews 2:11: “For both He who sanctifies [Jesus] and those who are sanctified [believers] are all from one Father; for which reason He [Jesus] is not ashamed to call them brethren.” Oh, how ashamed Jesus ought to be of me! “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” But because we have the same Father, He is not ashamed to call me brother. That is glorious. Dear Christian, you have the best Big Brother there is. And He ever lives to make intercession for you, before our Father’s throne. Whatever we ask of the Father in His name, John 15:16, He will give to us. O how we ought to “give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”!
II. The Cause for Thanksgiving (vv. 4–5a)
Well, having considered the object of thanksgiving, let us come, in the second place, to the cause for thanksgiving. And we see that in verses 4 and 5: “We give thanks to God…for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints; because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”
Paul gives thanks to God for the Colossians, because hears report that they are exhibiting that famous triad of the cardinal Christian virtues: faith, love, and hope (cf. Moo, 84)—which Paul speaks about often in his letters. In 1 Thessalonians 1:3, he thanks God for those believers, remembering their “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” The climax of that classic chapter on Christian love in 1 Corinthians 13 is that “faith, hope, love, abide these three.” The great Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, calls these “the three principal graces in the Christian life.” Another commentator calls them “the true marks of Christian existence” (Beale, 35). Still another calls them “a sort of compendium of the Christian life” (O’Brien, 11).
And he mentions their “faith in Christ Jesus” first. Paul thanks God that they have believed in Christ. And that’s because saving faith itself is a gift of God. Ephesians 2:8: “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Philippians 1:29: “To you it has been granted…to believe in Him.” And this divine gift of saving faith comes as a result of the divine miracle of regeneration. The new birth banishes the blindness of spiritual death. It recreates the heart, so that the eyes of the heart look upon the glory of Jesus and find in Him an utterly sufficient Savior—perfectly suited to cleanse from sin, to provide perfect righteousness, and to satisfy the soul. Beholding the glory of God shining in the face of Christ, the sinner embraces Jesus with all his heart, entrusting and committing himself to all that Christ is.
Saving faith, then, is a commitment of the whole person to the whole Christ. It is a relying upon Him for all that He is with all that we are. The mind apprehends the truth of our sin, of our deserved punishment, of our total inability to do anything to escape that punishment, and of Christ’s perfect sufficiency to pay for our sin and accomplish our righteousness by His life, death, and resurrection. The heart, then, gladly embraces those truths that the mind understands. And then the will responds with trust—a personal commitment to, reliance upon, and appropriation of Christ as the only hope for salvation. It is a receiving and resting upon Christ for all my righteousness before God.
And it makes sense that Paul mentions faith first, because faith is the mother of all the Christian graces. Faith unites us to Christ. It attaches us to Him. It grafts us wild olive branches into Him who is our vine, and all spiritual vitality and blessing flow our union with Him.
Now, at conversion, saving faith does nothing but passively receive Christ. But true saving faith never remains passive. It immediately goes to work. Not as a means of earning divine favor, but as a consequence of having received the grace of God that works mightily within us, saving faith necessarily expresses itself in works of love. In fact, Paul says in Galatians 5:5 that the only thing that matters is “faith working through love.” And so Paul mentions that next in Colossians 1:4: “Having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints.” These Christians in Colossae didn’t only profess to believe in Christ. They also demonstrated their faith in Christ by walking in the necessary fruit of love for their fellow-believers. They loved one another.
And this wasn’t just a sentimental affection for each other. Like true, biblical love is, it was an affection that welled up into action: speaking the truth to one another, encouraging one another in the daily battle against sin, praying with and for one another, rejoicing with another and weeping with one another, and providing for one another when anyone had a need, even if it meant a sacrifice. Oh, doesn’t that sound like a wonderful community to be a part of? Grace Church, you are a part of it! This church is that community for you! The people in this room, and in your fellowship groups, and in your Bible studies—they are the ones you live this Christian life with. They are the “all the saints” whom you are to love this way.
First John 3:14 says, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” Verse 16: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” That’s just what believers do. That’s just how true and saving faith works. We lay down our lives in service for the ones for whom Jesus laid down His life to save.
And notice: “the love which you have for all the saints.” There were no Christian cliques in the Lycus River Valley. Whether they were people in their own church, from Laodicea or Hierapolis, or a believer passing through on their travels, the Colossians had a reputation for loving every Christian whom God had set apart unto Himself! I’m sure they didn’t agree on every last point of doctrine. I’m sure they didn’t enjoy each one’s personality equally. But Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, slave or freeman, mature or immature—genuine believers are not selective in the display of their love. They are at the service of each one who, like them, calls God Father and is united to Christ by faith. And may God Almighty grant that it would be said of Grace Church as well—that we would have a reputation for love for all the saints.
And then Paul tells us what the ground of that love is. Verse 5: “because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” The reason the Colossians could love all the saints even unto their own sacrifice and loss is because that life of faithful obedience promises a hope of something so much more amazing than anything they could sacrifice! First Thessalonians 5:8 calls this “the hope of salvation.” The divine deliverance and rescue from the penalty of our sins from the deservedpunishment of eternal torment. Galatians 5:5 calls it “the hope of righteousness.” Declared right with God, having the pure white robe of Christ’s own obedience draped across our shoulders, so that the God of perfect holiness can look upon us with delight!
Titus 1:2 calls it “the hope of eternal life.” One glorious day with no night! Everlasting, abundant life in the presence of the God who is our greatest treasure! And Romans 5:2 calls it “the hope of the glory of God.” We will finally see Him, the One whom our soul loves, the One fairer than the fairest of ten thousand, the One whose face we have longed to look into every day of this life! We will finally see Him in His glory with eyes unclouded by sin, and so we will reflect His glory, because to see Him is to be like Him, 1 John 3:2; to behold His glory is to be transformed into the image of His glory, 2 Corinthians 3:18.
Dear brothers and sisters: that is your hope. You will receive it in its fullness in the future, but, look at verse 5, that hope is presently “laid up for you in heaven.” It is “a living hope” “to obtain an inheritance,” 1 Peter 1:4, “which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.” This hope is secure, untouchable, laid away for safe keeping, in a place where moth and rust cannot destroy and where thieves cannot break in and steal! It is a hope that cannot disappoint. Hebrews 6:19 calls it “a hope both sure and steadfast,” that we have as “an anchor of the soul”!
Now Christian: if that is your sure and steadfast hope, what can’t you sacrifice for love to all the saints as you live a life of faith in Christ Jesus? What trial can you not endure? What inconvenience can you not bear for the sake of love to your brothers and sisters in this church? It will cost you something to love well. But with a hope like that, you can bear the cost! Hebrews 11:25 tells us that Moses chose to endure ill-treatment with the people of God rather than enjoy the passing pleasures of sin! that he considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; “for,” the text says, “he was looking to the reward.”
Which means: heavenly-mindedness is the key to being earthly good! Sacrificial love for all the saints doesn’t come from reading your Bibles for a few minutes a day while remaining in love with this world. True Christian love comes, Colossians 3, from setting your mind on the things above, where Christ is! where your life is! where your hope is! It comes from recognizing that there is no satisfaction in worldly comforts—that money, and fame, and success, and toys don’t quench your spiritual thirst, but that all satisfaction comes from the surpassing value of knowing Christ, for whom we may suffer the loss of all things and call it gain, as we lay our lives down to love our brethren.
Oh, this is the cause for Paul’s thanksgiving: that God has granted the Colossians a faith in Christ that was working itself out in love to all the saints, because the hope they had in their reward in the world to come loosened their grip on their present treasures, unto the service and benefit of their fellow believers. And may God be gracious to work that same faith and love and hope in the saints at Grace Community Church!
III. The Instrument of Thanksgiving (vv. 5b–8)
Well, we’ve seen the object of thanksgiving and the cause for thanksgiving. Now let’s look, in the third place, to the instruments of thanksgiving. And really, what I mean by that is the instruments of God’s grace for which Paul thanks God. We see it in the second half of verse 5, all the way through verse 8. “Of which [hope] you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth.” And we’ll stop there for now.
The first instrument Paul highlights by which God communicated His grace to the Colossians is the message of the Gospel. And you can begin to hear more of Paul’s polemical purpose in these verses. He’s saying, “The Gospel is what has produced these graces in you, not the teaching of these false teachers! The Gospel which has already come to you—that is the message that is constantly bearing fruit in all the world, and that is the message that has been bearing fruit inyou since the day you heard of it!”
He calls it “the word of truth.” It is absolutely dependable (BDAG, 42a). You can stake your life on it, because the word of truth is spoken by the God of truth, breathed forth by the Spirit of truth, and it is the message concerning Christ who is the Truth (cf. Gill).
And note: he calls this Gospel—this true message of Good News—“the gospel which has come to you.” And I love that way of expressing it. The Gospel had come to the Colossians; the Colossians had not come to the Gospel. They weren’t conscious of their sinfulness before the God of Israel and seeking out a remedy that could pay the penalty of their sin and furnish them with a perfect righteousness. No, in the sovereign grace and magnificent providence of God, the Gospel had come to them! In Isaiah 65:1, God says, “I am found of them that sought me not.” And in Luke 19:10, Jesus Himself says, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Our God is so kind, not only to accomplish our salvation entirely apart from our doings, but then to bring news of it to us, even while we were wallowing in the filth of our sin, and running in the opposite direction away from Him. Praise God for being a Savior who seeks!
And this Gospel “is constantly bearing fruit and increasing.” Which is to say, when this message is believed, it changes people’s lives. It takes men and women who were slaves to sin and makes them love holiness. The second-century apologist Justin Martyr commented on this reality. He is quoted as saying, “We who formerly rejoiced in licentiousness, now embrace discretion and chastity… we who set our affections upon wealth and possessions, now bring to the common stock all our property and share it with the indigent; we, who, owing to a diversity of customs, would not partake of the same [table] with those of a different race, now, since the appearance of Christ, live together and pray for our enemies” (as in Davenant, 96).
Such radical change of life is the fruit of the Gospel Epaphras preached to the Colossians. And not only did it change their lives; Paul says: this kind of life-change is happening “in all the world.” Everywhere this Gospel is received, it bears this fruit. “Now, you Colossians may be suspicious of yourselves. Your own perceived lack of progress in grace might cause you to wonder if the message you’ve believed is really the message that saves. But there are believers in Jerusalem, in Corinth, in Athens, in Ephesus, in Thessalonica, in Rome! And their lives have changed too! This message that the false teachers are bringing you—that’s just a parochial folk belief from the region of Phrygia. If that message is true, then you’ve got a whole world of fruit-bearing to explain away. No, no, my dear Colossians. Don’t turn aside to that. You have,” verse 6 again, “understood the grace of God in truth.”
Well then, as we come to verse 7, Paul switches from message to messenger (Moo, 89)—from the message of the Gospel to the second instrument by which God communicated His grace to the Colossians—namely, the ministry of Epaphras. Verse 7: “…just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow slave, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, and he also informed us of your love in the Spirit. You see, the Colossians should be able to discern that the Gospel is true not only because of the fruit it’s produced, but also because they know the man who preached it to them. They know Epaphras’s character, that he is not a deceiver but that he is a “a faithful minister of Christ” right alongside the Apostle Paul—one whom Paul commends as his fellow-slave of Christ Jesus.
He’s saying, “You know that Epaphras wouldn’t deceive you! If these teachers are preaching the truth, then your beloved Epaphras has been preaching lies, and you know that’s not the case. In fact, he has been not only my faithful messenger to you; he’s been your faithful messenger to me, because he has informed me of your Spirit-wrought love for me, even in this trial of my imprisonment. The message you’ve believed is fruitful. And the messenger from whom you’ve believed it is faithful.”
And a point of observation for us, here, is that the grace and blessings of the Gospel are mediated through human instruments like Epaphras, who faithfully preach the message of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone to sinners who need the Savior. And that is an admonition to us to follow Epaphras’s example—to be faithful ministers of Christ by speaking the Gospel to a lost world. Oh, if there was ever a time that our world needed the Good News of salvation from sin through Christ, it is now, in our day of senseless violence and murderous hatred. You and I, Grace Church, can be instruments of the grace of God, by which the lives of those enslaved to sin may be transformed into lives of faith in Christ Jesus, and of love to God’s people, and of eternal hope. If only we open our mouths and proclaim that word of truth, which saves and sanctifies!
Conclusion
And woe be unto me if I don’t heed my own counsel this evening. If you are here with us this evening at Grace Church, and you don’t yet believe in Christ for all your righteousness; if you are still clinging to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; if you are still trusting even partly in yourself and your own goodness to take you to heaven: let today be the day that you lay down your arms; that you release your grip on the false pleasures of sin; that you turn away from sin and trust in Christ alone for your righteousness. He has borne the penalty of the wrath of God against sinners just like you. And He stands yet willing to receive you, if only you’ll come to Him in faith.
This week, more clearly than most weeks, we’ve seen: this world has nothing that can satisfy the longings of your heart, because your heart was designed by its Creator to be satisfied in Him. Jesus says very thing in John 4:13–14: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” Is your soul parched after crawling through the barren desert of this world? Jesus says, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
And to my fellow believers—you who have tasted of the living water, and know the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus alone—be assured of your salvation in Him. I don’t know every one of you, but I do know many of you. And I believe I can say to you, as a church, what Paul said to the believers in Colossae: as I pray for you, I give thanks to God, because I hear report after report of your faith in Christ and the love that you have for the saints, because of the hope you have laid up for you in heaven! That is the fruit of the Gospel at work in your life: the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, unto the glory of God alone.
And that grace at work in you is reason enough to not be moved away from the truth of that Gospel—to not turn aside to myths and foolish speculations, to any one of the thousands of bankrupt philosophies and manmade religions that are peddled on the internet. This Gospel has produced that fruit in you! This Gospel has nurtured your faith! You do have the hope of eternal life! You may taste the sweetness of the full assurance of faith!
O, I give thanks to God for His grace to you. Go on persevering in faith. Excel still more in loving the brethren with a Christlike, sacrificial love. And draw strength from the rock-solid hope of eternal pleasures in the presence of our Savior.