Driving in a foreign country is what Bible study or worship is like for a new believer. You don’t really speak the language or know the customs. You try to decode signs and do what the other drivers do. For the most part, it works. But not always. Last May, Carol and I were on a toll road in France. We just didn’t know it was a toll road. It was posted. But we had no idea what the signs meant.
We finally figured it out as we approached the toll booth. Some of the lanes were for a card that we knew we didn’t have. So we chose a lane that had a pictorial sign of a man with his hand out. Our only other problem was that we didn’t have the right change. The smallest bill we had was a fifty for a toll of 2.70. I could only think of what would happen in the U.S. if I handed a toll taker a fifty. But this kind Frenchman simply smiled, said “Bon Jour,” took the bill, made change and handed it back politely. A man like that could ruin the image of the French.
I only hope that we can be as gracious with new believers. We can do this by following Paul’s example as he dealt with new believers in a new church. He says to the Colossians, “When I think of you, it’s with pleasure.”
Paul had never been in Colossae. But he rejoices in much of what he hears from his friend Epaphras about this young, struggling church. The Colossian believers have some problems. But they also have the three things that form the core of the Christian life. They have faith, they have hope and they have love.
Faith, hope and love. These are favorite words for Paul. In I Thessalonians he writes about “your work of faith,” “your labor of love,” and “your patience of hope.” Many of you have mentally connected to that wonderful trio at the end of I Corinthians 13, “And now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.”
Paul keeps using these words because faith, hope and love are the marks of authentic Christian community. When people experience these three in community, you can be sure you are in touch with an alive church.
First, the true believer has faith in Christ Jesus. Paul is very specific that the object of the Colossians faith is “Christ Jesus.”
Many people talk religion. But the crucial question is this: Who or what do you really trust? Be honest. Don’t take the first answer — look for the honest answer. Are you confident because you are talented? Decent? Competent? Well-respected? Are you trusting your financial ability or your determined spirit? Open your eyes. See if you are building your life on the sand. To have faith in Christ is to “bet your life on Him.” Having faith in Christ means believing that His death really was the payment for your sin — just as He said. It means believing that He loves you — even when you feel unlovable.
“Where does this faith come from?”
Now Paul says something very interesting is this text that’s gonna stretch our brains. He tells us that faith is not the means to salvation but is the result of salvation. Faith is not the means to salvation but is the result of salvation. Paul tells us that this faith “springs from the hope that is stored up for you in Heaven.” In other words, faith doesn’t produce hope. It comes from hope. We will deal with this some more a little later.
Paul wrote the Ephesians “It is by grace that you have been saved through faith and this — the faith — is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” That’s what Paul also says here in Colossians. Faith is something God creates in us.
This is important because many people become very introspective trying to will themselves to believe. They try to create faith. They need to understand that faith does not come from looking inward — it comes from looking at God. Faith is the fruit of seeking Him. So if you want to have more faith — don’t read more books on faith. Spend more time looking at God.
The second word in Paul’s trio is love -- the most misused word in our vocabulary.
Love in the New Testament is not a natural faculty that we exercise. It is a gift given to us by God for relationships. When Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5, he begins with love In Colossians 1:8, Paul indicates that their love is a gift of the Spirit.
Love is a feeling. But true love is action as well. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in marriage. The wife complains to her husband that he never tells her that he loves her. He replies, “I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! Will that hold for a week?” Words of love must be reflected in actions or they quickly lose meaning.
About a year ago I read in the Star the account of the only two Jews to live in Kabul, Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. There was once a flourishing synagogue in Kabul but now there are two survivors — and they hate each other. Nobody remembers how the feud started but in their feud they were each jailed by the Taliban after reporting each other for alleged offenses. They accused one another of wrongdoing ranging from running a brothel to misappropriating religious objects. Each denies the other’s claims. Both say they intend to live out their lives in Kabul -- steadfast in their refusal to seek one another’s company. As one of them declared, “I am alone with myself, and will be until I die.”
Now that’s not just an Afghan-Jewish thing. The same thing could happen in many churches. But what a contrast to what Paul sees in the Colossians. Paul observes that their love is a love “for all the saints.”
Now I want you to underline the word “all” and put an exclamation mark there. As Ian Pitt-Watson of Fuller Seminary points out: “There is a natural, logical kind of loving that loves lovely things and lovely people. But there is another kind of loving that doesn’t look for value in what it loves, but that “creates” value in what it loves -- like Rosemary’s rag doll.
He writes, “When Rosemary, my youngest child, was three, she was given a little rag doll, which quickly became an inseparable companion. She had other toys that were intrinsically far more valuable, but none that she loved like she loved the rag doll.
“Soon the rag doll became more and more rag and less and less doll. It also became more and more dirty. If you tried to clean the rag doll, it became more ragged still. And if you didn’t try to clean the rag doll, it became dirtier still.
“The sensible thing to do was to trash the rag doll. But that was unthinkable for anyone who loved my child. If you loved Rosemary, you loved the rag doll—it was part of the package.
In the same way, the Colossians loved the rag dolls in their midst. That’s part of the package of loving God. They also loved the saints they had not met. Even though they are part of a young, small church in a backwater town, they have love that is extensive and inclusive. This is the same love I see in you when you give of your resources to support the orphans in Makobe, Kenya. You haven’t met them. I hope you will. But you love them. And you are making a difference in their lives.
It is a beautiful thing when you see in a church love for all the saints — not just for the lovable ones. This is what made the early church so amazing and so enticing to the ancient world. Barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, male and female, Jew and Greek, learned and ignorant joined hands and sat down at one table. They knew that they were all one in Christ Jesus. There never had been anything like it. A new thing had come into the world — a community held together by love and not by geographical accidents or common language or by the iron chains of the conqueror. The world wondered, and many were drawn to Christ. Genuine love for all was cause for Paul’s joyous celebration of the Colossian Church, and it is cause for celebration today.
Third, Paul talks about hope. He tells us that Christian love is based on Christian hope. Paul makes this clear when he mentions “the love which you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”
Three Jewish psychiatrists lived in Vienna. Two were learned masters in the field. The third was the young apprentice.
The first master is Freud. He has spent years studying people. He’s reached the conclusion that the most basic drive in human beings is the drive for pleasure. It’s our need for pleasure that explains why we do what we do.
The second master is Alfred Adler. His studies have led him to disagree with Freud. Adler is convinced the bottom line explanation for human behavior is power. All of us grow up feeling inferior and powerless. Life is a drive to gain control -- to feel we are important.
The third man is a young up-and-coming psychiatrist by the name of Victor Frankl. He hopes to follow in the footsteps of his mentors. But before his career gains momentum the Nazis enter Austria. It’s dangerous for Jews. Freud and Adler are world renowned scholars and are able to leave. Frankl is not so lucky. He is arrested and thrown into a Nazi camp for 4 long years.
After the war Frankl is released from the camp and resumes his career. He reflects upon his time as a prisoner. He’s noticed something quite strange — the people who survived were not always the ones you’d expect. Many who were physically strong wasted away and died while others who were much more weak physically grew strong and survived. Why? What was it that enable them to hang on through a living hell?
Frankl reflected on the theories of his mentors. Freud’s pleasure principle couldn’t explain it. For four desperate and terrible years the people in that camp knew only pain, suffering, and degradation. Pleasure was not a word in their vocabulary. It wasn’t pleasure that kept them going.
What about Adler’s theory about power being the basic human need? That didn’t fare well either. Frankl and his fellow prisoners were completely powerless during their time in the camps. Each day they stared down the barrel of a loaded gun, were treated like animals, felt jackboots on their faces. They had no power and no prospect of power.
Victor Frankl came up with his own theory. The difference between those who survived and those who perished was hope. Those who survived never gave up their belief that their lives had meaning -- that despite everything going on around them it would one day end and they would live meaningful, purposeful lives. What is the basic human drive? Not pleasure. Not power. Hope.
To be without hope is to live in despair. The physician by the bedside reads the results of the tests, shakes his head, and whispers to the relatives, “No hope.” Sadly the loved ones resign themselves to watch life ebb away and pray that death will come quickly and without pain.
No hope. These are shocking, terrifying words. And yet Paul uses them to describe the very many people, perhaps some of you, who do not know Jesus Christ as Savior. He writes in Ephesians 2:12: “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ -- having no hope and without God in the world” “Separated from Christ”; “no hope”; “without God.”
Parade magazine published a story about dial-a-prayer phone service. It suggested that “to be fair, they should also have a phone number for the atheists. When they’re feeling bad, they should be able to dial a number and hear the phone ring—ring—ring—ring.”
“No hope -- without God.”
But in Christ, all of that changes. No matter how black the future may seem, in Christ there is a bright hope for that which is yet to come. This isn’t wishful thinking. It is a hope rooted and grounded in God’s love in Jesus Christ and based upon Christ’s victory over sin and death.
This is the reason Paul writes that hope grows into faith. Hope is the root. Faith is the plant. Love is the fruit. Hope is foundational for everything else.
It is like my love for Venezuelan crab cakes. I have been known to go to a party and stand in front of the hors de oeuvres popping those crab cakes into my mouth one after another. I am that greedy and they are that good. I have been know to arrive at a party early just to get first crack at those delectable Carribean creations.
But what if I arrive at a party only to have the host take me by the arm and lead me into the kitchen. He says, “I know you really love Venezuelan crab cakes. I want to show you something.” He opens the huge refrigerator to show me platter upon platter of crab cakes. He says, “I asked the caterer to make up some extras. All these are for you. When your ready to leave, we’ll load them in a pickup truck and take them over to your house.”
Do you see what he has done for me. He has freed me up to be loving and giving at the party. You see, I know I have a great treasure hidden away. That’s hope. I know that my needs have been met in abundance. The result is that I don’t have to block the table during the party to keep everyone else away from the cakes that are there. In fact, because my needs have been so abundantly met, I can actually take people by the arm and steer them to the table -- “These crab cakes are really good. Try one. Try several. Stick some in your pockets for later.” I can give in abundance because I’ve received in abundance.
Now there’s no such thing as Venezuelan crab cakes -- although there should be. I am saying that so you won’t spend the afternoon on the Internet looking for a recipe. It’s just an example to illustrate the way the Christian hope is the motive power behind faith and love. As Paul points out in I Corinthians 15, if the Christian life is in terms of this world only, then faith is a mockery and morality a waste of time. The only logical outcome of a life which is not dominated by the Christian hope is ‘let us eat and drink-- especially those crab cakes -- for tomorrow we die’. But in fact the Christian has a sure hope; and so does not live for himself or herself, but loves as one who has an eternal destiny, a source of strength from the outside and a meaning and purpose to life.
So, there you have it -- the simple definition of a genuine believer. It has nothing to do with the amount of water that is used in baptism or its timing. It is not about the frequency of the Lord’s Supper. It is not a matter of worship style, or the music we prefer, or the version of the Bible you read. The issue is really much more basic than that. A genuine believer is one who trusts Jesus and shows faith by the way they treat those around them. They do all this because of the hope that burns in their souls. It is a hope anchored in the promises of God. And when faith, hope and love are at work in a follower’s life -- the other things take care of themselves.
A note on the sermon: The illustration on “Venezuelan crab cakes” is adapted from Earl palmer of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle who has a personal addiction to “Siberian peach pie.”