“In Christ Are We Saved”

Colossians 1:1-14

When we look at the world around us, it is easy for us to feel lonely and discouraged about the practice of our Christian faith.  Nietzsche’s claim that “God is dead” seems to be the prevailing attitude today in our land.  The majority of our neighbors awakened this morning without even thinking about getting up to attend church.  People’s top concerns today are their physical health, their economic prosperity, and the happiness of their families.  A relationship with God or their eternal future doesn’t even make the short list of common concerns.  It’s hard not to feel irrelevant in a time and place like ours.  It’s tempting to fear for our future as Christians in our community, and anxiously look around us for some means of survival.

The Christians of Colossae lived in a time and place that made them feel out of step and inferior too.  This congregation located in a small city 100 miles east of Ephesus had been planted by a co-worker of Paul and Timothy’s named Epaphras.  He had left big city Ephesus to preach the message of Jesus to people in little Colossae.  Colossae had not always been a small place; a few centuries earlier it was a large city like Ephesus, but new highways were planned and built in the area that diverted traffic away from Colossae, and she began to shrink in size.  Like people in many small communities, the Colossians probably felt outclassed by the residents of big cities like Ephesus.  They may have lived in awe of the culture of their urban neighbors, admiring their sophistication.

I suspect that those feelings of inadequacy extended even to the members of the church in Colossae because in his letter, Paul writes to them to counter the influence of some philosophies that were in vogue at that time in the culture of the Roman Empire.  Secret society religions were popular at that time, offering people spiritual knowledge and experience through their complex initiation rituals.  People claimed to be guided by angels to receive great insight into life.  Others argued that this world was in spiritual darkness, and the only way to escape this was to live a life of self-denial, rejecting the pleasures and pain of the earthly life in order to seek out the invisible yet purer reality of the spirit world. 
Paul realized that exposure to these kinds of belief systems could erode the faith of the Colossians in Jesus.  All of them had one thing in common: they all tempted the Colossians to exchange  their faith in Jesus and His salvation for something that they could do draw closer to God.  None of these philosophies offered a complete understanding of the power of sin to enslave people and alienate them from God.  They all offered handy and “do-able” programs for self-improvement, appealing to the proud human desire for self-salvation.  But all they that they offered was a lie. 

The temptation of the Colossians warns us against allowing our fear and anxiety for our survival as the church to lead us in the wrong direction seeking help.  One of the popular philosophies of our present time holds that success and popularity are unquestionable signs of doing the right thing.  “You can’t argue with success”, right?  With that viewpoint in mind the solution to our problem would seem to be to find successful and popular people or churches to imitate.  But can’t success and popularity be gained in ways that aren’t pleasing to God?  Church growth strategies that aim to make churches successful and popular seem to reduce faith and good works to a series of action steps to be taken.  They emphasize our efforts and turn us away from God and His Word of Law and Gospel.

We can no more save ourselves as a church, than we can save ourselves as individual souls.  Attempts to make our congregation appear more attractive to others, will keep us busy trying to keep up with the ever changing desires of the public, but they will never help us to bring people nearer to God.  The ministry of the church is not to make and keep herself successful and popular.  We are called to participate in God’s work of hearing, believing, practicing and proclaiming the message of God’s Word that leads us and our neighbors to confess our sins and our trust in Jesus for eternal salvation. Everything else amounts to a hopeless attempt to save ourselves, and it was Jesus who warned, “Whoever wants to save his life [or the life of his church] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”  (Mark 8:35)

To save both the Christians of Colossae and us from worldly philosophies that ensnare us in cycle of self-salvation, Paul preached the gospel.  The gospel of Jesus points us back to God and His great and generous work for us in Jesus, His Son, that we may trust Him, listen to instruction and do His will faithfully even in our trying times. 

Paul begins the letter with a greeting: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…”   Who was Paul?  He was a man called by God, sent by God to proclaim God’s message.  He wasn’t writing to the Colossians just because he felt like or because he felt compelled to control the affairs of every congregation in the province of Asia.  He wasn’t writing to them as an expert on church life; his credentials were very simple.  Paul was called by the will of God to serve Him by preaching Christ.  The message he wrote to the Colossians, therefore was a message of divine importance, God’s Word, to those Christians and to us who read it today.

Paul continues by addressing his readers as “the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ.”  These two names drip with good news for us.  “Who, us, saints?”  Contrary to our world’s view that saints are only a chosen few endowed with such holy character that they do extraordinarily good things, yes, through baptism and faith in Jesus, we are united with Christ, and He shares his holiness or saintliness with us.  That is the grace that saves us: Christ gave His life for us on the cross to take away our sins, and through the Gospel and Sacraments, He continues to share His life with us.  Through Him we are saints, people set apart by God to share a life of fellowship with Him.  God is our Father who loves us and rescues us from sin and death through Jesus; we are God’s children united with God and with each other to worship and serve Him through faith in Jesus, our Lord.        

Finally Paul tells his readers that he prays for them: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.  Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing – as it also does among you, since the day you heard and understood the grace of God in truth…”  Paul had never visited Colossae himself, but he had heard from Epaphras, their pastor, that they were a church lively in faith, love and hope.  What made them so alive?  It was the word of truth, the message of the gospel spoken to them by Epaphras.  Epaphras had come to them and proclaimed the gospel of Jesus to them.  He had gathered those who believed to meet regularly as a congregation to listen to the gospel and learn with the Holy Spirit’s help how to worship God in faith and serve Him with deeds of love in the church, their families and their larger community.  All that they did was inspired by the hope of eternal life that was theirs’ because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.   All that they had and ever needed to thrive as a congregation was given to them through Jesus Christ. 

So, to help the Colossians remain united with Christ through faith, that they may remain faithful and not fall into false beliefs, he continues to pray: “We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.  May you be strengthened will all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.  He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” 

The false philosophies that tempted the Colossians and those that beset us today have something else in common: they cast doubt on Christ’s power to save and keep his church through His Word and Spirit.  Listening to sermons, reading the Scriptures, and receiving the Sacraments to receive God’s gifts of faith, hope and love isn’t nearly as impressive an experience as engaging in direct conversation with angels or following the teachings of those who claimed to have such conversations.  “The message of Jesus’ death and resurrection is fine, but if we’re going to get anywhere on the road to holiness, we need to spend a little of our own blood, sweat and tears in order to beat back our earthly desires and focus on spiritual things.”  “Of course our pastor preaches good sermons and our worship is reverent, but what people are really looking for in a church today is some excitement and relevance, something that will get them off their couches and into our pews.” 

Paul prays that we will continue in Christ’s Word because it alone can fill us with the knowledge of God’s will in a spiritual wisdom and understanding.  Jesus promised, “If you continue in my word, then you will really be my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31)  Paul prays this because he believed that God’s Word alone has the power to teach us “to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”   Only God’s Word can help us to trust and serve Him faithfully through times when it seems like the church is on down for the count.  God’s Word, not our best efforts, gives us the strength to carry in walking in the footsteps of Jesus because only it assures us that despite our problems in life, God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”   In Christ we are saved, and we know and believe this because His Word assures us of it. 

What we need to do to continue as a church in our community is to return to the Lord to hear and live by His Word.  We need to commit ourselves to gather for worship regularly to hear the Word and receive the Sacraments, and we need to read and prayerfully study the Scriptures together and privately.  Through that Word, our trust in God grows, enabling us to turn over our worries and fears for ourselves and our church to the Lord, and to ask Him to guide us to do His will.  He may lead us to repent of attitudes and actions that hinder our witness to the gospel.  He will forgive us those sins, and help us to live in the manner that honors Him as our Savior.  He will teach us to share our faith in Jesus with our children and grandchildren and with our neighbors around us.  And He will cause His church to grow among us according His will.  “Lord, keep us steadfast in Your Word.”  Amen.