Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians

Hey, welcome back to the Pastor Podcast.
Thanks for listening.
And as we continue through
the New Testament, we begin today with some of the shorter letters of Paul, Galatians, Ephesians,
Philippians, and Colossians.
These letters tend to be more single-focused than
the longer letters that we’ve been through,
maybe in some cases more pointed.
A lot in here will try to do justice to your time and not get bogged down,
but there are some interesting
things to see here along the way.
Yeah, welcome.
We’re glad to have you join us here as we jump right into the book of
Galatians.
And I think you’ll find as you jump into this book,
a very clearly written
letter from Paul and a really deep source of our own Reformed theology and understanding
of who God is.
I think, Michael, that Galatians is one of Paul’s sharpest letters,
really pretty single-focused.
There are a group of people in Galatia that are telling the church that they have to go
back to following Jewish customs,
and Paul is just running headlong into it.
I think for Paul, this is some of Paul’s harshest language.
Not really toward the church,
though he says some hard things to the church,
but he says some really pretty pointed things
about these people and their ideas.
And I think for Paul,
that’s a reflection that he
sees this as a going backwards.
When they’re advocating circumcision and legal codes,
Paul understands that they want to take the grace that we’ve been given in Christ and throw
it out the window and go back to following the law.
And in some ways,
this is a very
theologically developed letter.
And in other ways,
it’s a little bit of a fistfight.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think for Paul,
the idea of putting our trust in the law as a defining
mark of who we are as Christians is for him not doing justice to the reality that God
has called us as we are.
So if God has called us as Gentiles,
then God intends to save us as Gentiles.
And there’s really no hierarchical kind of meaning.
And you get a sense that
maybe the conversation that was happening suggested that there may be some merit to
going back to some of those legal codes of old and that the Christians who did that were
closer to God than Christians who didn’t.
And Paul has absolutely no time or place for
that.
And he not only condemns those who preach that,
but he even says to the Gentiles that they
are childish to even attempt to think that they should go in that direction.
Yeah, he tells them they’re going backwards.
And I think the idea for Paul here is that
though the law is good,
when we put our trust in anything other than the grace of Christ, we’re misguided.
And I think Paul here sees a congregation in danger of being misled and
taken astray by these traveling preachers who seem to be Christians,
but who advocate a Jewish lifestyle, who require circumcision and legal codes and obedience to the law.
And I think for Paul,
that looks like abandoning Christ,
or at least abandoning the idea of grace.
Absolutely.
In fact, he uses the strong language of slavery.
He says over in chapter 4, verse 9,
“Do you wish to be enslaved by them all again?
Do you wish to be slaves to nature?”
And the reality is that Paul wants to make it clear that the work that God does in us
is supernatural work.
And so therefore,
physical circumcision is not necessary for God to work
salvation within us.
And so the reverse of that seems to be true,
that those teaching in these churches in this church are suggesting that the only way to salvation is through
those physical acts that bring one’s body in alignment with the law.
And Paul wants to make the argument that salvation is spiritual.
And so therefore, the seal and the appearance
of that salvation can only be measured by grace,
by trust, by faith,
not by what we
do to our bodies.
And I think, Michael,
and you and I have talked,
a letter like Galatians is a little bit difficult
for modern Christians to track with,
because Paul here is so passionate about these arguments,
but in our day and age,
they’re just not issues that come to the surface at all.
Nobody’s arguing about circumcision.
Nobody’s arguing about what foods we eat or what day we do
things on.
We just don’t track with these problems.
And so we read a book like Galatians
and we see angry Paul.
It doesn’t really dawn on us why he’s so invested in this.
I do think, though, that there are some places where in the context of this argument,
we do get some wonderful stuff.
You know, at the end of chapter 3,
there’s this beautiful verse.
There’s no longer Jew or Greek.
There’s no longer slave or free.
No longer male or
female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
I think as Paul argues,
unity,
we maybe get our best chance to listen in on this letter in a meaningful way.
Absolutely.
And I think another thing that I would point out is that Paul,
in making this argument, is once again displaying this desire to remain somewhere firmly rooted in
the middle.
In other words, he doesn’t want to say that faith doesn’t have resulting works.
If you look in chapter 3, verse 21,
it says, “Is the law therefore opposed to the promises
of God?” Absolutely not, Paul says.
For if a law had been given that could impart life,
then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.
But scripture has locked up everything
under the control of sin so that what was promised being given through faith in Jesus
Christ might be given to those who believe.
So here Paul is going to be saying two things
almost in opposition, that one,
we are saved by grace.
We’re saved by the inward work of the Spirit,
God working within us, Gentile or Jew.
But Paul is also not going to outright
condemn the law.
He is not going to say that the law is in total bad.
He’s just going to
say that the law,
as he did in Romans,
he’s going to say the law points out where our sinfulness controls us.
And the law does that through its physical outworking and physical
display.
So if you are uncircumcised,
as many of these in the Galatian community would be,
then the proper response to salvation isn’t to change your body,
but it’s rather for your
heart to be circumcised.
It’s that the work of God is real,
but instead of that work looking
like the work of the law,
the work looks like the work of the Spirit and that is something
internal that is transformational.
I think that for Paul the simple fact is that the law can convince us we need saved,
but it cannot save us because we are unable to keep it.
And I do think that leads him into
what is for us a helpful conversation.
And I think maybe we best encounter Galatians
as modern Christians in probably Chapter 5,
this idea of freedom,
that as we are set free,
what does it mean to be free in Christ?
Does it mean free to do whatever we want?
No, Paul clearly says it doesn’t.
Does it mean that we no longer have restrictions,
that we no longer have things that are right and wrong,
that we have to do,
that we are expected to
do?
And Paul, I think, walks us through this idea that as Christians,
we have a responsibility
in Christ to seek the right choices in the way that our faith manifests itself in our life.
So, we get here this wonderful passage,
“The works of the flesh and in contrast the
fruits of the Spirit.” In other words,
we are to do works.
We do live under a law,
but it’s not a law that condemns us.
It’s a law that we receive in Christ that guides us.
It is a way that we are called to live as people who follow Jesus.
And it sounds like a subtle
difference, but I think for Paul,
it’s just monumentally important as to which comes first.
The law doesn’t lead us to be saved.
Being saved gives us a way to live and an expectation of what we do.
Yeah, absolutely.
And in these final words here in Galatians,
you really see that for Paul,
there’s really not even hardly a transition.
It’s this seamless flow from what we believe
to what we do.
And he just names,
here are the acts of the flesh,
the sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred.
And he flows right into these fruits of the Spirit,
love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.
And as he transitions into these,
we see that the reality of God’s inner working in our hearts flows out of us freely,
that we are transformed as people into a body.
That’s what he talks about,
especially in those letters
to the Corinthians about how it fashions us into one.
But here,
the oneness is really kind of in
the back seat a little bit.
There’s no slave,
no free,
there’s no Greek, or there’s no Jew.
There’s unity in that sense.
But really what Paul’s saying is that the unity is found because God’s
salvific work needs no law to make it happen.
It doesn’t need any marks on our bodies.
God can work from within us.
And that transformation then works through us to change the world in which we live.
And that is, I think, to some great extent,
a place where we as Reformed Christians have
drawn a lot of our theological understanding of God,
that it’s not what we do that garner salvation,
but it’s what God does in us.
And therefore, how we respond to that work is how we measure
those who are faithful.
I think as Paul moves to the end of the book,
we have this wonderful verse,
verse 10 of chapter 6.
“So then whenever we have an opportunity,
let us work for the good of all.”
And again, I’m struck with how deeply Paul cares about the big picture,
that in the midst of these
individual arguments and fighting with these people or those people or trying to get these
people to get the right idea or do the right thing,
in the background is always Paul’s vision
for the church as a place of unity,
of mutual love and care and service,
and how wonderfully he
connects our individual life to our communal life in the church.
That seems for Paul just to always be there.
Yeah, and very difficult circumstances in which he tries to speak that.
He tries to talk
about how we’re bound together and the nature of our fellowship should look like in places
that are fraught with angry discussions and disagreements and even what Paul identifies as contrary teachings.
And yet, in those places, the work of God is real and present.
And when you say that, it kind of makes me think,
you know, if we look at it from that vantage,
it may be fair to
say that Galatians is not just about the inner working of God the Spirit in us,
but what God in
that individual work is capable of producing in us,
plural in all of us,
because these fruits of
the Spirit can only be lived out with others.
You can only have forbearance for another person
if there’s another person.
And so, the truth of what that community looks like is not just
individual, it’s always has something to say about our life together.
Yeah, I think as a mark of
mastering, you have to say that Paul balances well the difference between our personal faith
and our church life so that for Paul,
our own individual life in the Spirit is always connected
to the life of the bigger picture of the church.
And the church is the place in which we practice
living in the Spirit with those who follow Jesus with us.
Yeah, a strong letter.
I think a strong ending.
I would encourage readers to read chapter five, particularly slowly,
carefully.
There’s a lot in there for us, I think.
Moving on in your reading,
you’re going to come to the book of Ephesians.
And I think what is maybe a helpful way to begin this book is just with the knowledge
that Ephesus is actually a religious capital of the world at this time.
It hosts one of the
largest temples in the ancient world of the temple to Diana.
And you can just sort of imagine in the
middle of this very cosmopolitan city is an entire industry of people who are selling religious wares.
And this is a letter where Paul is going to talk about in his own words, spiritual warfare.
And so context of who this letter was sent to,
compared to the kinds of issues that Paul is going
to raise in the letter,
I think all of that comes together in a really interesting way here.
It does.
The letter to the Ephesians is interesting in several ways.
It is an unusual
letter for Paul and that’s led Bible scholars to argue about whether he actually writes it or not.
It claims that it’s of Paul and it says that it was written while he’s in prison.
We don’t know which imprisonment,
but there are a few of these prison letters and Ephesus is thought to be one
of them.
However, you might notice some of the things that scholars argue about as you read this book, different language,
a little different structure.
It sounds not like some of what we’ve
heard Paul say before and all of that has contributed to this argument.
Also, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit of a messy letter.
For instance,
verses 3 through 14 of chapter 1
are one sentence in the Greek.
So when you read that in English,
try to imagine that those 11
verses are crammed together in one sentence.
There’s not a high school English teacher in
the country that would let you get away with that and Paul doesn’t do that other places.
Now, whether that means anything or not,
I don’t know, but you may notice some of that as you read this.
The truth is, as you go on to this letter and as you make your way into it,
you’re also going to
find that there are some real gems sparkled throughout here.
There’s lots of different things
that I’m certain you’ve heard before at the end of chapter 3.
Now, to him who is able to do
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that has worked in us,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.
There’s some beautiful, almost prayer aspects written throughout this letter and you get the
sense that the writer is trying to make a case once again for unity in the midst of some possibly significant disagreement.
Michael, I think I’ve probably done more highlighting per page in
Ephesians than anything we’ve read so far.
This letter is full of beautiful verses of wonderful devotional material.
We should mention from a Reformed perspective,
there’s probably not a
better summary of the Reformed understanding of the faith than Ephesians 2,
8 through 10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.
This is not your own doing.
It is the gift of God,
not the result of work,
so that no one may boast.
We are what God has made us,
created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” That’s a wonderful summary
of the faith.
We are saved by grace that we access through our belief and it’s not by works,
but in Christ we are created to do good works.
That’s a pretty clear calling and I think a wonderful
summary of our Presbyterian thinking.
It seems to me that Ephesians does translate better in the
“modern world” because while the issue still here is Gentile and Jewish relationships,
the language here is more open-ended.
I think Ephesians could more readily be applied to some of the divisions
in our world, black and white, male and female, racial or ethnic.
I think that some of the
language of Ephesians allows us to better able overlay our own situations and our own struggles
into it.
It’s less dated it feels to me.
You know, some of that might be,
I’ve done some reading,
some scholars have suggested that instead of this being a letter written to one church,
it was possibly an encyclical written to lots of churches.
And if that’s true,
then that would be a real
connection point there Clint,
because in some ways this was possibly not intended for just one small
group of people and you know,
once again Cephas is getting after it again,
we got to call Cephas
out for that wrong teaching.
It may be even in its intention a little bit wider scoped and that
may help us to sort of see ourselves in it a little bit easier as well.
Yeah, there’s again, just some wonderful devotional material,
speaking the truth in love,
we grow in every way.
I think especially the last part of chapter 4,
as Paul again returns to the idea of our old life and our new life.
And as we move from verse 25 on,
you know, put away falsehood,
be angry but do not sin.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.
I think it’s interesting to think about who might
be in this church.
Thieves should give up stealing so that they have something to share with the
needy.
Let no evil talk come out of your mouth,
but only what’s useful for building up.
Again, this wonderful balance of our individual repentance and our individual journeys and the way in which
it overlaps the community.
I mean, it’s a very interesting thing to tell someone that they need
to stop stealing so that they can contribute to the needs of others.
Paul has a wonderful way of
seeing possibility for people.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that possibility is deeply rooted in his
understanding of who God is.
And I think you see that in chapter 5 verse 1,
“Follow God’s example, therefore as dearly loved children.” And that is an audacious thing to call a group of people,
but follow God’s example.
Live as Jesus lived.
I mean,
even in Paul’s letter to the Romans,
you heard that language of,
“I do what I don’t want to do and I have this struggle within me.” But here he says,
“Follow God’s example and therefore live this way.” And what follows are certainly some encouraging words.
But if we’re going to read closely,
also some incredibly challenging words.
Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Here we’re going to have some language
about wives and husbands.
We’re going to have some very difficult language for children.
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.
Fathers, don’t exasperate your children.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters.
Masters, treat your slaves in the right way.” All of these are extensions for Paul,
not just of the right way to live,
but for him, they’re extensions of living as God lives.
To live in the example of the one who submitted his life for others,
who lived for something more than the continuance of his own life,
and the sort of social teaching that follows
all flows out of that initial assumption.
Yeah, and I think we could be disappointed with Paul that he doesn’t go far enough.
It would be nice to hear him say,
“Get rid of slavery.” It would be nice to hear him say,
“Husbands and wives, treat each other as equal partners.” It would be nice to hear some of those social issues framed
where we are in this day and age and maybe reflecting the ways in which we have grown.
But I think what we have to understand here, first,
two things probably, Michael.
First, Paul is out front of his culture.
In saying some of these things,
Paul is himself showing a progress
beyond the average for his day.
And secondly,
Paul’s focus on the church seems to lead him to
a place where he wants the church not to be at odds with the world.
In other words, I think Paul wants when people look at the church for them to see unity,
respect,
order,
and not broken relationships, not conflict, not tension.
And so, some of what I think Paul says here reflects that
idea that the church should be,
for the most part, peaceful waters.
Yeah, and you mentioned it before,
Clint, but it’s worth saying,
think about the broad swath of people
he’s talking to here.
The church and maybe even churches that he’s writing to clearly span a lot
of just straight up diversity,
right?
If you’ve got slaves and you’ve got masters and you’ve got
husbands and wives and children and you have those who are tempted by stealing and you have
those who are tempted to hoard to themselves.
I mean,
you’re speaking of a large group of
people here, and the fact that Paul frames the letter in the way that he does,
that we are all
partakers in the unity of Christ because of Christ’s willingness to stand in our place,
this is a beautiful source of good news with a capital G for the whole world,
for us today, as well as to the original people who received this letter.
Absolutely.
I think as we end this letter again,
just some great stuff in here.
Read carefully, listen to some of these verses.
I would commend to you the last couple verses of chapter four,
“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with any
malice and be kind to each other.
Be tender hearted, forgive one another as God and Christ has
forgiven you.” That for me could be life verses.
I could read those every day,
not get them right,
but they would be a wonderful path if we could follow them.
Final note here for Ephesians,
you’ll note at the end of chapter six,
probably something that you
heard at some point in your Sunday school time about the armor of God,
the idea of all of the
different breastplate and the shield and all of the helmet of salvation,
all of these different
elements of that.
And I think what you see in this is that for Paul,
these outward realities always have a spiritual counterpart and it is that spiritual counterpart that Paul wants to
always be translating out in front for the church so that they see that unity together and being
transformed as the people of God is not just about looking to the world in a certain way,
but it’s about contending with the spiritual forces that surround us faithfully.
And those for Paul are not dualistic.
In other words, I mean that they’re not in some ways like different aspects.
They’re actually both true and he spins between the two of them seamlessly.
Michael, I think you’re 100% right and I think the language agrees with you.
People read this passage and they envision a soldier and we naturally think that Paul’s telling us to go
out and attack evil.
But everything listed here with the exception of the word of God as a sword is defensive.
And five or six times Paul says in this passage,
“Stand firm.” And I think what we
see in that is that this isn’t some call to go out and fight evil.
We have enough to do standing
our ground and not letting evil come into our midst.
We don’t have to go looking for it.
We are not the tip of the spear.
We’re standing there with shield and with word and with righteousness
and with truth trying to keep evil from coming in and disrupting our fellowship.
And I think when
you read this carefully,
it’s really a masterful sermon illustration.
And you know, there’s lots of communities,
Clint, that are struggling with that,
right?
And Paul’s writing to them.
Corinthians,
certainly,
Galatians, he’s writing to these people who are really
struggling to stand firm.
And I think that’s one of the things that I love about Philippians.
Because if I was going to sort of put out there,
not that this series is about what we do or don’t
like, but Philippians is very high up my list of the pastoral letters.
And I think the reason for
that is, Clint, this letter just exudes a kind of warmth.
It has a tone and a tenor that for me,
you read some of Paul’s comments to the Corinthians and I kind of curl up and I kind of feel bad inside.
I come to the Philippians and I just feel encouraged and I feel a kind of pastoral
connection here that I think is beautiful and so much good teaching in this letter.
I’m looking forward to everyone getting to read this together because it’s just a great passage.
I think it’s one of Paul’s warmest letters.
I think you’re right in that.
It’s really kind of
a friendship letter.
There’s not a lot of criticism in it.
There’s a lot of praise in it.
Again, Paul is writing this letter from prison,
but he’s doing so in such a way that he’s trying
to use his situation to encourage the Philippians in their own situation.
I don’t know.
This would be impossible to know.
This reads like the church in Philippi may have been Paul’s favorite.
I don’t know if that’s fair,
but he’s certainly not unhappy with them.
Absolutely. At least for the letters
that we have, they seem to be in a great relationship.
Anyone who has spent some time
in the New Testament is going to be,
at least maybe you wouldn’t know it by name,
but you’re going to be aware of what we call the Christ hymn in chapter two.
Some Bible scholars point this out.
If you have it in your Bible,
once you get to chapter two,
you’re going to see that sort of offset there,
almost like poetry.
That is a visual note to point out to you that this might
actually be a hymn.
Paul might be quoting as a source,
an ancient part of the Christian
church’s worship.
There’s been lots of studies and works written about this,
and there’s no way
we’re going to really get to the depth of it,
but just the beauty of how we see Christ going from
the very height of his place with God.
Then he descends,
and in all of its senses,
the spiritual sense and the physical sense,
even unto death on the cross.
Then you have this reverse movement in verse nine.
God exalts him to the highest place again.
That movement from high to low to high
is in some ways the movement to this letter,
because Paul’s going to remind the Philippians
that we shouldn’t have confidence in our flesh.
We shouldn’t put stake in ourselves.
We shouldn’t put our faith in the stuff of the below,
because even in our death we’ll be raised again with
Christ, and that is the ever enduring confidence that we have as those who are bound up with Christ.
Yeah, there’s a wonderful verse in chapter one where Paul says, “For me,
living is Christ and
dying is gain.” Saying that in prison is for Paul a real possibility.
Lots of scholars suggest that
Paul doesn’t know whether he will be released,
whether he will maybe die in his own circumstances,
and so he begins,
I think, by reminding the Philippians that whether or not they see him
again, he is in the hands of Christ.
They are in the hands of Christ.
Then chapter two, this wonderful, beautiful moment where he shines a light on what it means that they’re in the hands
of Christ and who Christ is.
Who is it that has their life in his hands?
In some ways,
you might be able to read Philippians as a scriptural antidote to the belief
that being Christian means life is always easy,
because in truth our faith doesn’t make the
circumstances significantly lighter.
It’s not as if the Christian will never experience suffering.
Paul writes this letter from a position of suffering to a people who he says suffering
is a reality of life,
but yet we don’t gain our strength from the circumstances that surround us,
but rather, like he says in chapter three verse 12,
“Not having already obtained this,
or having already arrived at the goal,
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took
hold of me.” Friends,
there’s so much pastoral wisdom in that.
We don’t live for the ease of this day,
but we live to press on,
to press on to the work of Christ,
to what we’ve been called to,
and he says if you’re mature,
you’ll take on this point of view that we should live up to what we
have been called and what we’ve obtained,
and that we should,
even in the midst of tears and
difficulty, we should press on.
And then we get to a verse which certainly you all have heard at
some point, Philippians 4.13, he says, “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.” Then he says,
reminding them that in our weakness,
we need each other.
He says in verse 14 of that chapter,
“Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles.” And so here comes full circle.
I think in this letter,
Paul points out Jesus Christ comes from on high.
He joins us in our suffering.
He rises again, and that is a reminder to us that we will be risen with him.
And then here we’re reminded
that even as we suffer now,
we do not do so alone,
but as we press on towards the goal,
we are bound together with those who are also pressing on,
and together we will experience the grace of Christ for today.
It’s interesting, Michael, not a very long letter,
but Paul really hits both sides of
the Christian life.
In chapter 3, he points out that whatever good he had in his life,
whatever he had attained, whatever awards he had earned,
whatever he had achieved compared to Christ,
they mean nothing.
And then on the other hand,
he encourages the church if they’re at their lowest
point to look beyond their life and find joy in Christ.
So, we find here these two bookends
not to trust our own accomplishments,
but also to persevere in the midst of struggle,
and that both of those things guide us as we follow Christ,
that our life is not about pursuing
our own achievements, nor is our struggle somehow a negation of God’s goodness.
And this letter is sometimes called the epistle or the letter of joy, because Paul,
especially late in the letter,
fourth chapter on, uses the word rejoice frequently.
You know, Clint, I wonder if you agree with this.
I think one of the interesting facets of reading
the Bible in the way that we’re doing it is it really shines a light on how many of these
letters that are written do share significant similarities.
It also shines a light on how
different they are in tone and in purpose,
and I think we see that once again as we come to the
fourth letter that we are discussing,
Colossians, because in here we almost have what are some
sections that are almost verbatim of what we saw in Galatians,
but yet it has its own tone.
Yeah, again, a letter that’s considered one of Paul’s prison letters,
and I think Colossians
is interesting because Paul doesn’t exactly explain what it is,
but it seems like the Christians in
the Colossian church are chasing some heresy.
The idea is maybe it has to do with angels or stars or
spirits of the universe or something.
Again,
Bible scholars try to figure this stuff out,
but it’s amazing that Paul isn’t too interested with naming it.
He is instead interested in giving
the antidote, and so he does what he always does.
He just tries to focus these Christians’
eyes back upon Jesus.
It is interesting how often Paul says the same thing but in different ways depending on
who he’s writing to.
Yeah, very much.
I think you see in the beginning of this letter,
maybe a little unique and close relationships with this congregation.
He talks about, “Since the day that we’ve heard about you,
we’ve not stopped praying for you.” There’s this kind of feeling
here that Paul’s maybe sort of shooting an arrow into a little bit of darkness.
He’s heard about this thing that needs a dress,
and yet as he speaks to it,
he very much wants to hit right
to the heart of the fact that this community shouldn’t be in Paul’s own words here.
I’m taking captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies.
Their minds shouldn’t be caught and trapped on
things that are heady and that distract them from Christ,
but like you said,
Clint, they need to be
drawn back to Christ because they died with Christ,
and so therefore all of these forces that they’re
thinking about, these things that are so real in their conversations,
really fall away as they are
those made to live with Christ.
Yeah, and maybe part of that difference,
Michael, is that Paul hasn’t been to this church.
This isn’t one that he starts.
A co-worker founds this church,
and Paul’s writing to them as Paul,
but not as the one who has been with them.
He hasn’t been their pastor,
so to speak.
He’s writing as an advisor.
I would want to point out that in verse 15 of chapter 1,
we get another one of these sections sometimes referred to as a Christ hymn or a Christ poem,
different than Philippians, but to the same end that the focus would be on the person of Christ,
on the nature of Christ.
This time, I think, really highlighting Christ’s divinity, his spirituality,
his role in creation.
Perhaps Paul’s way of saying don’t look to anything else out there
for spiritual truth.
You need only look to Jesus to find all of that.
Maybe in a world that is
in our own world,
that is really defined by sort of consumerist choices.
We may really have an
advantage to look at this letter and to draw a great amount of meaning,
because literally, you go to the store and you’re surrounded with choices of what you’re going to buy,
what you’re going to consume,
what you’re going to,
in some cases,
wear and allow
to become, in some meaningful ways,
your own personal brand.
All of this vying for your attention and for your
dollar is in some ways connected here,
because in reality, Christ should be first.
He should be supreme, as it says in that first chapter,
and we should recognize that if we died with Christ and
then we’ve been made alive with him,
our mind should be on his things, not our things.
We should be committed to those things that are beyond our current experience of the world to
the thing that is even more true and that is Jesus Christ risen,
calling us to be with him.
Michael, I don’t know what the number would be,
but it would be well into the hundreds.
The number of times during our day that someone or something tries to sell us something, in email,
in commercial,
in print,
in radio, on the computer,
we are assaulted daily with the idea
of stuff for us.
How do you put that in conversation with Paul’s words?
Set your minds on things above,
not on things of the earth.
That’s a challenging line of thinking
in our day and age.
We are comfortable.
We are first world Christians.
We are Americans.
Most of us have some level of financial security,
some level of freedom,
and Paul says, “Don’t let yourself become earthly minded.” That’s a good word to 21st century Presbyterians
who live in America.
And you know that temptation of hierarchy that lives amidst the churches where they’re trying to
figure out where the higher spiritual gifts are,
kind of like the Corinthians.
Paul once again returns to something that we’ve heard before in chapter 3 verse 11.
“There’s no Gentile or Jew,
circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slaver free.
But Christ is all and in all.”
He’s going to go on to talk about the unity in Christ.
That’s a theme we’ve heard before.
And then he’s going to go back to words,
almost the exact words,
a little condensed about submission.
Again, wives,
husbands,
children,
fathers,
slaves,
slave masters.
I mean, here we have once again, this just natural
connectedness.
What Christ has done changes something in the world.
And so therefore, as we set our minds on the higher
things, we’re united together and we’re united around this mutual submission to find ways that
we can humble ourselves so that we might advance the body of Christ.
And I think,
and once again, in these words,
we’re encouraged to be the church we’re called to be.
Yeah, I would suggest that anybody reading this letter pay particular attention.
In chapter 3 verses 11 through 17,
you could read that every day and find something in it instructive and challenging.
Colossians has these wonderful verses.
You know, in chapter 4,
“Devote yourself to prayer,
conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders,
let your speech always be gracious
so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.” I think this is one of those letters
that just along the way you find these wonderful nuggets that are challenging,
that are affirming, that are devotional,
spiritual.
And I think we could aspire to live to much of this letter
and be better off for it.
At our best, but more so at our worst,
we’re doing what the church has always done.
The church has never been made up of super saints
who get it right,
but regular people trying to follow Jesus together and working through
the bumps and bruises as they do it.
And it is amazing in those respects,
though some of the
words can sound as we try to be the church.
Friends, we’re grateful that you have taken
time to join us for these conversations and hope that you find in these letters,
not only God’s word to these churches and to those Christians,
but God’s words to you.
As we continue on in this journey together,
we want to thank you for listening to these podcasts
and want to continue to encourage you to give us feedback,
give us a call or email or go to
Facebook group.
Let us know what you’re thinking and how we might in these discussions be able to
engage with your own thoughts and your own explorations of scripture.
That being said, we look forward to continuing to read with you this week and look forward to speaking
with you again on the next podcast.