Salvation is a miracle that should fill every one of us who believes with overwhelming amazement! That miracle is rooted in the Gospel. Paul writes in Romans 1:16 (NIV) that he is “not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes….” How a person responds to the Gospel reveals the miracle—or not. It is not their first response to the Gospel that matters most, but their continued response to it. Do they reject it when they first hear it? That doesn’t mean they’ll never come to repentance and faith. Do they receive it with joy? That doesn’t mean they’ve truly understood God’s grace in the Gospel and are forever changed by it. So we need to make sure we’re clear on what the Gospel is and what we’re called to believe. That’s where much of the rest of this first chapter of Colossians leads us.
Notes
(Col 1:6, NIV) that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth.
- Gospel bears fruit and grows all over the world
- that’s the work and power of God
- Even today
- Bearing fruit among the Colossians
- Since they heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth
- Requires
- Hearing the Gospel
- Understanding God’s grace (favor, kindness, benefit, good will) revealed by Gospel
- Not bearing fruit in everyone, but among them, in some of the people—those who understand and believe the Gospel
- This Gospel is powerful
- We must understand what it is in order for it to do its work in us!
God made everything, including us
we Owe God our lives, obedience, honor, gratitude, everything
we Sinned, went our own way, set ourselves up as god, set our own standards of right/wrong, became slaves to Satan who lives in rebellion to God
we must rePent (believe Gospel, for kingdom near), return to God, receive Jesus as King/Judge of all nations (he will condemn all those who go their own way, rule their own lives, but welcome all those who submit to His rule), receive forgiveness through His death/blood
we receive Eternal Life – in Jesus’ resurrection, freed from condemnation and eternal death, promised life forever in God’s kingdom, made new to live in obedience, life forever with God, both qualified to live in His righteous kingdom and made new so we can walk in obedience and honor of God as He deserves
we must Live the holy and righteous life that comes from submission and honor of God, restored to what we were supposed to be and do from the beginning
- Stopping at Sin means you are on the path to eternal punishment
- Choosing to believe that Jesus died for your sins so you don’t have to fear eternal condemnation, even though you continue to live in sin—that’s not “understanding God’s grace in all its truth”
- If you say you believe in Jesus and His death as payment for your sins,
- If you consider yourself safe in Christ and think you don’t need to change your behavior, you think you’re free to live however you want and wish—you don’t try very hard to stop doing what God calls wrong
- If you identify as a “sinner saved by grace,” and use that to excuse your continued sinful behavior
- You don’t understand that God’s grace came to turn us away from ungodly behavior and toward godly living (Titus 2:11-14)
- you are not yet saved
- you’re still on the path to hell
- Deuteronomy 29:18-20
- Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.
- When such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, "I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way." This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.
- The LORD will never be willing to forgive him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written in this book will fall upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
- Read 1 John 3:1-10! Read the whole letter of 1 John!
- Repenting means we no longer trust in our own wisdom and understanding,
- but we admit that we are wrong, rebellious, enemies of God,
- It means we surrender to Him, submit to Him, as King and Lord
- accept that Jesus not only paid the penalty for our sins by His death,
- but that we too are made new by His resurrection—
- holy, righteous, people
- who live holy lives,
- walking in obedience to His righteous ways
- When we really believe the Gospel, the Holy Spirit changes us, makes us new, holy, people who are able and expected to walk in righteousness
- Sin becomes something we hate—especially sin in ourselves!
- Rebellion, disobedience, foul language, gossip, pride, lying, back talk, hatred, murder
- You haven’t understood the Gospel if you think any of these things is OK!
- You have not understood the Gospel if you’re not ashamed of yourself when you do any of these things
- God’s Spirit convicts those who belong to Him
- The true Christian pours all his energy into eliminating these things from his life! (2Cor 7:10-13; 1 Cor 15:9-10)
- Sin becomes something we get as far from us as possible
- We have power to walk in righteousness—and we are drawn to holy living
- So that we sin less and less
- Any time we discover sin in ourselves, we’re shocked and ashamed and do everything we can to drive it out of us—and we succeed! (2Corinthians 7:8-13)
- Sin becomes something we hate—especially sin in ourselves!
- Have you truly believed the real Gospel?
- Does the hope of eternal life in God’s presence fill you with such gratitude
- so that you gladly do anything and everything Jesus wants?
- So that you eagerly seek to do good to others who believe in Jesus?
- Perhaps the greatest thing that keeps us from appreciating what God has done for us in the Gospel
- We think we deserve God’s love, the sacrifice of His Son and His salvation
- We think we’re not that bad, so of course God would love us and save us
- We couldn’t be further from the truth
- We gladly confess now that we are sinners, because we think we’re safe from condemnation
- We’re NOT safe from condemnation if we don’t hate sin in ourselves and fight to remove it
- Apart from Christ
- We are enemies of God (Ro 5:10; Col 1:21)
- We are the focus of His wrath (Eph 2:1-3)
- We’re incapable of doing anything that pleases God (Heb 11:6; Rom 8:8)
- We’re incapable of submitting ourselves to God (Rom 8:6-7)
- We’re slaves to sin (Ro 6:17)
- We’re children of the devil (John 8:44)
- We’re evil people who know how to give good gifts to those we desire (Mt 7:11)
- Paul sums us up nicely in Romans 3:10-18 (NIV):
- As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one;
- there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
- All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
- "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit." "The poison of vipers is on their lips."
- "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
- "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
- ruin and misery mark their ways,
- and the way of peace they do not know."
- "There is no fear of God before their eyes."
- Before we truly believe the Gospel, that is who we are
- And if we saw ourselves correctly, as Paul does when he calls himself the worst of sinners (1Tim 1:15), then when the love of God is revealed to us in Christ through the Gospel, we would be overwhelmed with gratitude to God and gladly abandon our sinful ways to learn to walk in His holy ways
- Do you hate sin in yourself and fight against it every time it shows up?
- Or do you make excuses and think Jesus’ blood covers your sin so it’s not a problem if you do it over and over and over again?
- 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (NIV)
- Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
- Hebrews 10:24-29 (NIV)
- And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
- Does the hope of eternal life in God’s presence fill you with such gratitude
- Three kinds of people—which one are you?
- True Believers
- You hate your own sin
- You are so grateful to God that He did not reject you and leave you in your sin to suffer eternally
- You eagerly want to know Jesus and how He wants you to live
- You gladly make any change in your life that Jesus wants you to make
- Keep growing, keep learning of Him through His Word and the fellowship of other believers
- You have been changed and you are being changed
- Unbelievers
- Thank you for your honesty
- Doesn’t protect you from the judgment of God when He sends Jesus
- Stop resisting and rejecting and fighting Him; surrender to Him as your Lord, King who loved you enough to sacrifice Himself to cleanse you from sin and fit you for Heaven
- Today can be your day of salvation
- Lukewarm or False Believers
- You like Jesus for what you think He can do for you: give you a free ticket to Heaven
- You think the Gospel puts you on a pedestal: God loves you enough to die for you – it’s all about you – you’re so special!
- The Gospel is all about God and His holiness and His kindness to people who don’t deserve any mercy – He’s the special One and we should be totally shocked that He paid any attention to us!
- You don’t like Jesus because He wants you to change your life to be like His—become imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1)
- You are in fact as the Apostle Paul warned his beloved son, Timothy (2 Tim 3:2-5, NIV):
- People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power….
- Do not deceive yourselves and do not let anyone deceive you: If you do not repent, you too will perish—you too will die and be condemned to an eternity in Hell.
- Today can be your day of salvation too
- Turn away from your evil behavior. Stop making excuses for your sin. Believe in Jesus Christ, trust His power to make you a new, holy creation. By the power of His Spirit, stop pleasing your sinful nature and start walking in your holy nature
- Get to know God, read His Word, do what it says
- True Believers
And one last thing…
(Col 1:7-8, NIV) You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
- Epaphras,
- Likely encountered the Gospel through Paul and was changed by it
- Dedicated himself to study it and learn all he could from Paul
- Returned to his own people to share the gospel with them and Laodiceans and the people of Hieropolis
- Now with Paul in prison for the Gospel (Phm 1:23)
- His greatest concern is not his own safety or release
- But that those he led to Christ would not lose heart because of him
- Or lose their faith for any other reason
- Paul tells the Colossians and the rest that Epaphras is always wrestling in prayer for them, that they may stand firm in all the will of God and fully assured (Col 4:12)
- He truly believed the Gospel and set his hope fully on it
- And it made him more concerned about the salvation of others than his own personal comfort or cares
- This is what God wants for all of us
- The Gospel isn’t just for us, but for all people
- When we understand God’s grace in all it truth, it should change our lives.
- When we understand the hope/promise of the Gospel,
- We can give up our former hopes/ambitions to tell others about Jesus
- We gain a love for others that fills us with longing to tell them about Jesus
- We can even accept suffering in the process of telling others about Jesus
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