Colossians 2:1-3 - Paul's Compassion and Concern for Unseen Believers (Session 9)

 This episode is a verse-by-verse Bible study of Colossians 2:1–3, exploring the historical context, theological meaning, and faithful application of the passage within the Christian faith. 

Ever wondered about the compassion Apostle Paul had for believers he'd never met? Join us as we travel back in time and place ourselves in the shoes of Paul, exploring the conflict and struggle he felt for the church in Colossae. We'll be delving deep into Paul's letter, asking how his concern for all Christians, even those he hadn't met, can spur us to connect with fellow believers, despite physical distances. Together, we'll attempt to better understand how he used his resources to aid struggling Christians, serving as an example for all of us.

We'll journey through the spiritual landscape of Paul's teachings, unearthing the spiritual wealth and assurance found in the depths of understanding Jesus. We'll discuss how growing in Christ can lead to unshakeable faith, and the intriguing mystery of Jesus. And who could forget the fascinating episode of Jesus confounding Jewish scholars at the age of 12? We'll revisit this story, reflecting on its connection to the wisdom of young Jesus. Prepare for an episode filled to the brim with compelling discussions and deep Biblical insights.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:16

Today in the book of Colossians we learn about the apostle Paul, who has a deep care and compassion for people that he's never even met. And, steve, I find that very interesting that he can have compassion, deep compassion, to the point of an internal struggle, for people that he's never even met. Can we ever have that today?

Speaker 2 0:38

Well, he makes it clear that those people are fellow believers and a question should be for us Do we have the same sort of deep care and compassion for other fellow believers who we've never met?

Speaker 1 0:49

We should, and to our audience. If you have your Bibles, you might want to turn to the book of Colossians, chapter two. We're starting at verse one and we're in this wonderful book where Paul is explaining some ideas to a church that he had never visited to. We learned that here in chapter two and he also has, as we're going to see, this struggle, this internal conflict that's going on him because of these people, and he knows their Christians, but he's never met them. That is a good lesson for us.

Speaker 2 1:23

So, steve, if you could read the first five verses of Colossians, chapter two, where I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument, for even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.

Speaker 1 2:15

Because Paul's typical in this book, it's very, very dense and there's a lot here. He's writing as an academic, as a church leader that's writing to this church in Colossia, and he has packed an incredible amount of things. It makes me wonder, Steve, what happened if you were in Paul's class. Remember he taught at a school for a year and a half or so and I always wonder what happened on the people that were in Paul's theology class. But it must have been very difficult because he's writing here as an academic to a group of Christians.

Speaker 2 2:51

It should give us encouragement that if we can understand this, then we can understand academic things, and there's nothing wrong with having an academic approach or an academic mindset towards the scriptures.

Speaker 1 3:04

We have this example from Paul so if we look at verse one and we'll go through this first by verse, for I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf or some of the other translations use the word conflict there he's had this turmoil. It's a great struggle, he says because of these people. Again, it says they haven't seen my face. At the end of verse one, all who have not personally seen my face. He had not visited this church before it was founded, as we saw in chapter one, by another man. Paul has heard about some false teachers that were there. Now he is writing to them to correct this. He has this great internal struggle, this conflict, this turmoil because of this other church, so one that is encouraging to me because he does have a love for these people or he wouldn't have the concern. Can we have a concern about this other people and other Christians? Do we have a connection with other Christians, even though they might not be in our immediate church?

Speaker 2 4:07

We should. And sometimes that connection comes out from missionary or mission trips that people take and they go and meet other believers in other countries or other areas and then they have that connection to them and they have this struggle to want to go back and visit them again. But, paul, here I harken back to our introductory session, glenn, whenever you were bringing out and you said you know, paul was a goer and a doer, he was wanting to go everywhere and yet here he finds himself in prison. So I get this picture in my mind of here he is, he's in prison. He says he's in chains and he's conflicted, he's in struggle because he wants to go, he wants to go meet them and he wants to go see them, but yet he knows he can't because he's being restrained.

Speaker 1 4:57

And I think the reason he did this is because Paul had concern for all the churches. He had concern for all Christians. His mission in life was to grow all these churches and some of them had been founded by him and some have been founded by others, but he had a concern for all these people. I think we can take that great example. He had this again turmoil, this conflict, this struggle for people. I think we should have a taste of that. We should love all Christians everywhere and whenever there's an issue or problem or other Christians around the world that are struggling, we should take some of that burden at the very minimum in prayer and, if nothing else, maybe use some of our resources to help out. Paul was a teacher and those were his resources and that's what he was using to help.

Speaker 1 5:47

Now, in verse 2 if we look at verse 2, it's really dense. There's a big double handful of concepts here, so we'll almost have to take these sort of phrase by phrase. But it says those who have not personally seen my face then, verse 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love. Knit together in love. So in that verse, steve, who does the knitting if our hearts are knit together in love. It says it's passive voice verb, so who's doing the action?

Speaker 2 6:18

Well, I think God is doing the action and Christ is doing the action. They're all believers and that's what is the common Thread between all of them that does the knitting is that they're all believers. He says here he's being that to knit together in love. How come he doesn't say that they're knit together in conflict? You know that's we brought that up in another session that some people they just kind of seem like they want to bring Term oil within the congregation where they're at. No, we should be knit together in love for each other.

Speaker 1 6:49

And he also says that their hearts may be encouraged. So he's trying to encourage these other Christians. Does the church today need encouragement? Do our churches need encouragement in the world today?

Speaker 2 7:02

I think that they do and there are some churches, you know, there are some churches that are Are large, they have a lot of people and some of the people, even people they don't even meet each other, they don't even know each other, never have them. There are other or small churches where everybody knows everybody else and sometimes those Attendance to those churches get down to maybe five or six people and I have known personally Under certain circumstances that some of those faithful members in those very small churches they get a little bit discouraged because it gets down to two or three people and they have a worry that maybe their Congregational end up going away or they can't keep a pastor. I think of those type of churches that need encouragement that they're not alone, that they are out there and they're serving a purpose, striving to build up the body of Christ, and a word of encouragement goes a long way with those type of churches.

Speaker 1 7:58

The world is full of discouragement. There's a lot of reasons in the world to be discouraged about and if we just read the news On a daily basis, you're gonna be discouraged. And then, if you add to that, what happens in some of the churches are in turmoil. I think of for the book of first Corinthians, first nine chapters, was Paul writing a series of answers of questions they had about conflicts and questions and issues that had come up in the Corinthian Church. If you had the Church turmoil on top of all the things in the world to be discouraged about, and an individual Christian that's just trying to live a righteous life and live the the best we can for the Lord, it can be very discouraging.

Speaker 1 8:44

And I think, steve, that even in the midst of all of that, we as individual people, even if no one around us is giving us any reason for encouragement, we have a reason for encouragement Because we have this wonderful word of God and we know that he's, we know that he's gonna work everything out and we know that good times are ahead and we know that he uses all these things. Paul, and just at the end of the last chapter, talked about taking joy and suffering. Well, we can, even though there's a lot of reason around us for discouragement. We can then take joy because the Lord will come back. He's in control. None of these things are surprising him. He knows the end from the beginning.

Speaker 2 9:30

And we can take joy and comfort in knowing that if I, if I'm just faithful, then ultimately good things will come and the encouragement can be nothing more than just that simple thing that you just said hey, don't despair, jesus is coming back and we just need to continue on, so be encouraged.

Speaker 1 9:49

So, again in verse 2, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love and attaining To all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding. So the knit together part again love Knits us together, love knits us together. If we have a place where there's love, then that's the glue that holds people together through hard times. If there's difficult times, then love is the glue that keeps together. And when there's good times, love Is what lifts us up so that we can attain to the, the, the heights and have success during good times. So families need love, all relationships need love, the, the church needs love. The church is built on love. I mean, it's primarily a love relationship with God. So we need love in the sense that, again, when there's good times, we can help each other to succeed. When there's hard times, we can help each other get through it. That's what he's talking about here.

Speaker 1 10:50

Again, look at verse two, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love. Where there's love, there's unity, and if there's no unity, there's no love. Well, here's a question, steve. Is it we can sit here and say, oh yeah, we need love? Is that easier said than done? Is it harder to actually have unity and love than to say it. I mean, I'm talking about real world. You know personal relationships here. It's sometimes some people are hard to love.

Speaker 2 11:19

Yeah, they are, and we talked about genuine love before and the people that have genuine love, they just do it and it just oozes out of them. It just comes out of them and they move on with their life. They just do things. They don't think about what they're doing, whereas sometimes, maybe people love each other, it's kind of a forced love and they think about it too hard. But if it's just a natural love, you know, again, we're told to be treat our fellow Christian believers as family. We're a body, we're all together and you just treat family differently. And I believe that if we look at it that way, that this is a fellow believer and we're family I know it's easy to do that with a church congregation because you kind of have that unity around that church. So this is a fellow church member, so therefore he's a family, family member. But it needs to also expand out to other believers, whether or not they're a member of a local congregation or not.

Speaker 1 12:21

Steve, you know I've been in churches where there's been turmoil and it's really hard when there's turmoil, and we've been in family relationships where there's turmoil. I think of some of those really difficult, real world, hard relationships, and I think of passages like this where he talks about being knit together and love. And when you're in the midst of some of these bad relationships it's really hard to see your way out. So let's talk real world here, no kidding hard relationship. Is unity and love really still possible? And I submit, yes, simply because the Bible tells us so. Quote I can do all things through him who strengthens me. It says in Philippians 413. Jesus said quote all things are possible to him who believes. In Mark 9.23. God is in the business of reconciliation and I've seen it. I've seen relationships that people throw up their hands and say, well, there's no way this is ever going to come together. And God does. Sometimes we just get blind because we're in the midst of it. But I submit if we're just faithful ourselves, then God will work these things out.

Speaker 2 13:35

You mentioned that we've been in churches, you know, I've been in churches that have had splits and it's because a certain faction decided to go a different way or they want to take the church a different way, and those things get ugly.

Speaker 2 13:49

Those things get ugly and it's something that it makes you scratch your head. If we're all believers, why things like that happen? But then I've also seen other areas where people, certain members, they get disgruntled for whatever reason and they just leave and go, start and form their own church. And they've done that. Specifically, they said we do not want to cause a split because they still recognize that the other fellow believers and they still love them. In that way, they just have a disagreement, but rather than cause that to be a split in the church and make it become factions and make people say things that they wish that they hadn't said, they just said that's OK, we'll just go over here and start our own church. Yes, I think that that's an example of how things could be done. We're all, in the end, we're all believers and we shouldn't have these different factions and different groups. I know that there's reasons that there are there, but we're all believers and we need to harken back to that many times and think about that.

Speaker 1 14:58

In the middle of verse two he goes on to say that these Colossian believers can attain to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in the true knowledge of God's mystery. So all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding. So help us out, steve. What's he talking about there? And it says wealth. I understand that part. How can I get this wealth? What and what is it?

Speaker 2 15:25

Well, it comes to the understanding. If we're looking here, it's comes from the full assurance of understanding that result in true knowledge of God's mystery. I mean, we're another one of these sections where all of these verses are together, all of these thoughts are together, and while we are breaking them up, it sometimes makes it a little bit difficult by taking them a little bit at a time.

Speaker 1 15:50

The way I think of it, steve, is it's a tapestry and it's woven together and if you look at any, if you look at a tapestry, any one individual thread it meanders through. Where is it going? I lose it. But if you take a step back and look at the whole tapestry is a wonderful picture.

Speaker 2 16:07

Yeah, and if you also take that tapestry and turn to the back of it, you see all these threads that are crossed together and you scratch your head and you're going what in the world is going on? And it's not until you turn it around and take it back from that perspective of being further back to see what it is. So, yes, it's something here that's related to attaining wealth through the full assurance of understanding that brings about true knowledge of Christ and who he is.

Speaker 1 16:37

When I take this and try to just summarize it, then here's what I come up with. God is saying here that when Christians understand and know more about Jesus, they're going to get an assurance, and that assurance is spiritual richness. So when we understand and know more about Jesus, since he has all the wisdom, then we're going to get this wisdom, and having that wisdom is a spiritual richness, and I think that's what he's talking about. The wealth that comes from understanding. It's the wealth that comes from knowing Jesus, and since he has understanding, then that makes us more spiritually mature. If you look at someone and say, wow, that person is just a very mature spiritual person. Well, I submit it's because they probably know a lot about Jesus and his ways, and so, therefore, if we just but learn of Jesus and his ways, then we will increase in spiritual maturity and spiritual richness and we'll have this wealth too. Wouldn't you agree?

Speaker 2 17:45

Yeah, absolutely, and we just need to stay in Christ. And by staying in Christ we continue to learn different things that we get, different things that we can achieve, and it all comes back to being in Christ.

Speaker 1 18:01

What this verse is saying is that if we just but learn more about Christ, then we're going to have an assurance of faith. So that's another question, Steve, we run into people periodically that have doubts about their faith. This is talking about an assurance. Some people go through life and they're believers and they never have any doubts, and other people have a series of doubts. I mean, if I'm honest, there's times where I've had some, some questions that come up and you start wondering things. But this verse is saying is that our hearts can be knit together in love and we can have an assurance of our faith. And it's because of knowing more about Christ. That's what I think it's saying. So how do I get more assurance? Stay in the Word of God, stay in the Gospels, read about Jesus, learn about what the apostles taught about Jesus, and that'll build our faith.

Speaker 1 18:58

That's what I see him saying here when he says again start in the middle of verse two attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery. That is Christ himself. Very, very rich passage here. So the end of that. It tells us back to the biblical mystery. Again, it's saying here that Jesus is God's mystery. Remember that a biblical mystery is something that was not known previously but has now been revealed. So Jesus, at least in the full sense, is a mystery because, yes, the Old Testament knew that Messiah would come, but what they didn't know was all the details about Jesus' life. Wouldn't you agree? And that what he's talking about here, in this mystery in verse?

Speaker 2 19:43

two. I think part of the mystery is in Christ and having Christ in us. The Jewish people looked at the Messiah as coming, which was connected with the throne of David, and that they were going to have a restoration of their kingdom, which that's all still going to happen. That's all still future, but we have this interim part here and the ability to have Christ in us. I think that's part of the mystery, something that wasn't necessarily known in all the details from the Old Testament.

Speaker 1 20:15

Still more about this tapestry, this mix of ideas here. In verse two he's saying here attaining to all the wealth that comes from full assurance of understanding. He's talking about full assurance and he's talking about true knowledge of God's mystery that is Jesus. So those two ideas there give us a very strong clue as to exactly what was going on with these false teachers. Remember we said this whole letter, this whole epistle, was because of some false teachers that had come into the Colossian church. Most probably this was a form of Gnosticism. Gnosis is the Greek word of knowledge, and what some sects of Gnosticism taught was that, oh, we've got some secret knowledge and if you just come up with us and join our group and do our little things, then we can reveal this knowledge to you, or God will reveal knowledge to you if you jump through a few hoops over here.

Speaker 1 21:17

What Paul is doing here is directly confronting that, and he's doing it by speaking the truth. He is directly hitting the false teachers right between the eyes when he says where does the true knowledge come from? Jesus Christ? What do you do when you have this true knowledge, full assurance of faith, because these false teachers were sowing seeds of doubt? They're saying oh, you guys, you need to be worried about your faith because you don't have this. You're not in our group with the secret knowledge what Paul is saying? No, no, christ has all the secrets of wisdom and knowledge and if you'll just get in him then you'll have full assurance of faith.

Speaker 1 22:01

What Paul is doing here and again in our day, steve, people get into philosophical debates about how do we deal with false teaching. Do we deal with it directly? Do we just speak the truth and never even talk about the nonbelievers? Well, think what Paul is doing here. He is systematically, methodically, moving down through these false teachers' teachings by telling the truth. So he is refuting the false teachers. He's not just ignoring them, but he's also not bringing them up by name and he's not talking more about them than he is about Christ. No, no, he's talking all about Christ and all about the truth, but he's methodically refuting their teachings as he's doing so, and I find this to just be a masterclass in how to deal with false teachers in our day.

Speaker 2 22:50

He's also not just preaching the gospel. Yes, we talked about before that. The gospel is good, it's great news. But if that's all that you teach and all that you preach, then you're not getting to these type of theological areas or doctrinal areas that the congregation also needs to know about. And, as you pointed out, it is a way he's doing it without bringing up specific names. But the people need to know this so that they won't be deluded, which Paul mentions here in a couple of verses. He encourages them not to be deluded.

Speaker 1 23:26

You know, somebody ought to start a reasoning through the Bible program where they go down through the false teachers without mentioning their names. And lo and behold, somebody's done that. So in verse two, jesus is God's mystery. Remember that a biblical mystery is something that was not known but has now been revealed, and again, paul is dealing with these things. Then in verse three, it says in verse three, christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Do you realize, steve, that Jesus demonstrated tremendous wisdom, tremendous wisdom. And somebody might ask okay, what are some examples? The most intelligent look through the gospel, the most intelligent lawyers, philosophers and theologians of the day methodically went to him and tried to trap him in his words, but he always turned the question around to trap them every single time. The most intelligent people of the day tried to come in and trap them in his words and he spun it around on them every single time.

Speaker 1 24:36

Pilate was the military leader that had the Roman government authority behind him, had the military behind him, had the Roman army at his disposal. Yet Jesus got Pilate to do something that Pilate didn't want to do, namely crucify Jesus, because, if you read the gospels, pilate was trying to get out of crucifixion this guy. He was a little scared of this guy. I don't want a riot happening. He knew this guy was innocent. He was feeling guilty. His wife came to him and said I have nothing to do with that guy. Pilate wanted out of that. And here was the military leader of the region that was doing something against his will because Jesus wanted him to.

Speaker 1 25:19

And yet Jesus had no sword, didn't have an army. Jesus had all this power. Jesus had the insight to know the most interpersonal motivations of everyone he met. He was enough of a psychologist to know every single person, their innermost secrets as soon as he met them. Jesus was tempted in all ways that we are yet, even tempted by the devil. He was strong enough to avoid that temptation and not fall into it. Jesus had memorized the entire Old Testament and understood every bit of it, more so than the scholars of his day that went to school and spent their lives studying it. Jesus had all the strength in the universe and all the wisdom not to use it when it would have benefited him physically and personally and not to use it. The end of verse two. It says Jesus is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and I submit that's literally true.

Speaker 2 26:22

It started at a young age. Remember when they went to him and his family went to Jerusalem for one of the feasts and they leave and after a while they discovered that hey, wait a minute, jesus isn't with them. They go back and where is he? He had the age of 12 years old. He's sitting there teaching some of these other men and that's like they couldn't believe it, that, how this young boy could be able to teach and to say some of the things he said. It's also in other parts of the gospels where it talks about that he spoke with authority and that the people were amazed because of the way that he spoke. And then one thing that in verse three it says in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? Well, how do you find out something that's hidden? What do you have to do to unhide something?

Speaker 1 27:15

See, can you so find? Ask, and it shall be given to you.

Speaker 2 27:19

You have to go and actually look. So it comes back again knowing the scriptures. And you can't just put the Bible under your head pillow at nighttime and understand the scriptures. You need to look into them, you need to understand them and reason through them and actively go and look for something that's hidden.

Speaker 1 27:40

You talked about that story in the Gospel Steve of Jesus when he was 12, he confounded the scholars of the day. The age of 12 was significant because the Jewish boys would go to Hebrew school at the age of 13. And at the end of that would have the Bar Mitzvah ceremony they still have today. At age of 13 is where they go, learn how to read Hebrew and start learning these things. So even before he'd been to Hebrew school, he made a point of respectfully showing he knew more than the scholars of the day, and I just find that to be profound. So, right, there is probably a good spot to stop for today, just because of time. There's so much here. We'll have plenty to do next time, so we trust that you'll be back here with us again as we continue to reason through the Bible.

Speaker 2 28:31

Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.