This One’s For You

by Dave Wilkinson

Colossians 1:1-2

January 12, 2003

I think I was about twelve when I attended my one and only Wilkinson family reunion. It isn’t that we weren’t welcome. I didn’t do something that caused us not to be invited back. But we just lived in California while the rest of the family was in Indiana and Michigan. We didn’t make it back there very often. But this one year we did -- just at the time when all the Wilkinsons gathered at a lake in southern Michigan.

I didn’t know most of the people there. If I passed them on the street today, I still wouldn’t recognize them -- since they would all be at least 40. But for that one afternoon we ate together, swam together and slid down a huge slide into the lake.

Occasionally an older relative would say something like “My how you’ve grown” or “you look like your dad.” But that was a small enough price to pay for the fun I was having. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know them. We were all (by birth or by blood) Wilkinsons. The swimming lake and the table full of food told me, “this family knows how to have a good time.”

Well speaking of good times, this morning we begin a series of sermons from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Like me, at the reunion, Paul is dealing with people he has never met. But it is also clear that he knows them, values them and loves them.

I encourage you to take some time this afternoon and read the entire letter. It won’t take too long. It’s only four chapters. As you read, you may note that in many ways Colossians doesn’t really read like a letter. Sometimes it reads like a sermon. Other times it reads like a prayer or a mighty hymn. It is centered on the greatest possible theme — the identity and work of Jesus Christ.

Why was it written?

Colossae, itself, wasn’t much of a town. In the old days it had served as a stop on the main road that led east from Ephesus. Travelers to Sardis and Pergamum used to lodge in Colossae before taking the road that ran north. I suppose Colossae functioned like one of those old towns in Arizona or New Mexico that used to attract tourist to motor-courts built like Indian Villages and feed them in colorful diners. I loved those places as a kid -- and the rattle snake towns and prairie dog villages too. But then the efficient, straight- road-building Romans came. The Romans bypassed the twisty old Route 66 where Colossae lay and built the Roman version of an interstate. Colossae was left to shrivel into economic insignificance. The young people left town as soon as they got out of high school. There was no future for them where they were.

Today the closest modern town of any size is Denzli, Turkey which is nearly ten miles away. A massive earthquake in 60 A.D. leveled the entire Colossae-Laodicea area. The people of Laodicea did a magnificent job of rebuilding and restoring their city. But Colossae wasn’t rebuilt. Nobody bothers.

But Paul bothers. He bothers because there are people living in Colossae who belong to Jesus Christ. And these people are in trouble.

Paul hears about what is happening from his friend and co-worker Epaphras. Epaphras was a man from Colossae who probably heard Paul preach and teach during his three years in Ephesus. Epaphras has become a believer and has founded a ministry for Jesus in his home town. People come into the new church. But they bring a lot of old problems with them. Then they think up some brand new ones.

Epaphras knew that he was over his head and beyond his authority. So he turns to Paul for help.

What were the problems? It was a grab bag.

Some people are buying into strange doctrines. Other people are holding on to their pre-Christian practices. The culture of the day placed great trust in astrology and horoscopes. Some new believers are dragging these practices into their faith in Christ. In addition, sharp lines are being drawn in the church between people who follow strict personal conduct rules and regulations and those they call the “less-spiritual.” The rule keepers, of course, see themselves as “super-Christians” and look down on the others. But their judgementalism results in division and disunity.

Paul hears about what is happening. And although

the little town of Colossae had no significance to the great cities or places of the time -- although Colossae was the ultimate in fly-over country -- Paul pours out his energy on their behalf and wrote one of his finest letters. It’s interesting that in his early letters Paul addresses the letter to “the Church.” But his later letters, beginning with Romans, are not addressed to the church as an institution but to God’s people. As Paul grew older, he came more and more to see what matters is individual people. The Church is not a kind of abstract institution. It is individual men and women and children.

This is why the letter to the Colossians starts and ends with relationships. Yes, there’s some strong medicine in this letter. There has to be if the Colossians are going to get well. But everything is written in the context of valued relationships.

The Greeks always began a letter with the name of the author so the reader would know immediately who wrote the letter. We sign our letters at the end, and if the handwriting or the envelope doesn’t tell us who wrote it, we must flip to the last page.

Now what a letter says to us depends very much on who writes it. Some of the most personal sounding letters I receive are written by a computer. But the knowledge I have of the process and the millions of other people receiving the same “personal” letter take away any appreciation I might have of the computer’s concern for my personal well being -- like the Church of Christ that received a letter that started out, “Mr. Christ, are you tired of being stuck in a dead-end, low-paying job?” In the same way, I respond very differently to an envelope with a return address from the IRS or the Justice Court, than from a loved one.

What do the Christians of Colossae think when they see that this letter is from Paul?

Of course they know him by reputation. They’ve heard the stories about travels and shipwrecks and miracles. Most of them have never met him. They soon learn that that doesn’t matter.

Like the Wilkinsons at the lake, they are connected.

They are connected not by the blood of some long-ago Viking raider but by the blood of Christ. In this two-verse introduction, Paul tells them that both he and they are “in Christ.” Christ is their unity. They are brothers and sisters. They are brothers and sisters because they share the same Father who is God, Himself.

In verse 1, Paul identifies himself as an apostle. Paul’s apostolic authority is key to this letter so we need to understand what that means.

The word apostle comes from the Greek word for “one who is sent.” It was used of ambassadors who represented their country or their king in foreign places and who had the authority to speak for the country or the king. That ambassadorial authority was very important in a day before hot lines and rapid communication.

Now in a real sense, all Christians are sent by God. But the title “apostle” was used in a narrow sense. It referred only to those people who received their commission from the hand of Jesus without any human go-between. This group was limited to the original members of the twelve and to Paul who received his call from the mouth of Christ on the Damascus road. These apostles carried a special authority that no believer carries today. They were authorized to speak directly for Jesus Himself. Their written words — the words of people like Paul, Peter and John — are the words of much of the New Testament.

So as we read this letter, and as we study it together, we need to remember that we are reading the Word of God Himself — transmitted through one that He authorized to speak on His behalf. As we grapple with the crucial questions raised for us in this letter, let us remember that we are not reading just the word of Paul, but the Word of God to us. Paul’s authority is as good as that of the King he serves.

In Henry Adams story of the closing years of World War II, “Years to Victory,” is the account of the liberation of an allied prisoner of war camp near Tokyo. Commander Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota and a member of Admiral Halsey’s staff, marched up to the gate at the head of a unit of the fourth Marine division.

The Japanese commandant stopped him. “I have no authority to turn these men over to you,” he said. Stassen walked right by him. “You have no authority, period,” he declared. The prisoners were released.

Stassen’s words are based on the nature of any derived authority. Derived authority is only as good as the power of the one who delegates it. And when the Japanese government dissolved, so did the commandant’s power.

Paul, however, is where he is and who he is by the power of God. So his authority is secure. He is an apostle, as he writes in the very first verse of this letter. “by the will of God.”

I read about a young man who asked his girlfriend. “Do you love me?” She replied, “Well, I once admired a man for his great intellect. I was drawn to another man by the gentle way he used his great size. I enjoyed being with another because of his sense of humor. But in your case, what else could it be but love.”

Well in Paul’s case, there is nothing that can account for his position in the Church than the will of God. Paul recognizes this very clearly. In another place he writes: “Unto me, who am less that the least of all the saints, was this grace given — to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” Paul had no other glory except the fact that God had met him as a bitter, intense, nationalistic persecutor of the Church, had arrested him from his self-destructive and other-destructive course, had changed him, and then sent him out to be the apostle to the Gentiles. To another church he writes: “I was the persecutor of the Church. But by the grace of God I am now what I am.”

Paul is not arrogant about being an apostle. He is stunned. And that should also be the reaction of anyone who is called to full-time ministry. As Tom Gillespie, President of Princeton Theological Seminary observed a few years ago: “I do not believe that women have a right to be ministers. Neither do I believe that men have a right to be ministers. Ministry is not a matter of human rights but of divine decisions.”

That’s what Paul also knows.

He also knows the people who are going to receive this letter. So he calls them by their special title. He calls them saints -- “To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ who are at Colossae.” Saints, agioi in Greek, is their title for that is who they are.

Now I know that this may be shocking to the people here from a Catholic background. But at least its biblically shocking. Saints are all those set apart by God to belong to Him. You and I are saints. Saints are not a spiritual elite whom we venerate, make statues of, and name churches after. The saints are all of us. You are a saint.

Now as Ray Stedman of the Peninsula Bible Church points out, “We don’t like to be called saints because we have such an unrealistic concept of what a saint is. We think of them as being holier-than-thou — so unlike ordinary human beings. But the saints of the New Testament are not like that. They are people like us. Saints are people who are faced with struggles and difficulties at home and problems at work and troubles everywhere. They’re normal people. But one thing is remarkable about them: They are different. That is what the word saint means. It is the Latin form of the Greek word “holy.” Holy refers to something that is different because it has been set apart by God.

You are a saint just as the Colossian Christians were saints because you have been set apart by God. He has called you and you have responded to His call. That is the mark of a saint. A saint is not immune to problems or temptations, but approaches them differently because of the Lord he or she serves.

In the first chapter of “Roots, “ Alex Haley describes the naming of his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Kunta Kinte, according to the custom of his tribe.

“Omoro (the father) then walked out before all the assembled people of the village. Moving to his wife’s side, he lifted up the infant and as all watched, whispered three times into his son’s ear, the name he had chosen for him. It was the first time the name had ever been spoken as the child’s name, for Omoro’s people felt that each human being should be the first to know who he is.”

Then we find Omoro taking his infant son out into the night, lifting him face up to the heavens and proclaiming: “Behold...the only thing greater than yourself.”

Omoro gave two gifts to his son. He gave him the gift of knowledge of himself, and he gave the gift of perspective on himself. This is what Paul gives us in addressing us as saints. He tells us who we are and he also tells us whose we are. We are God’s people. We belong to God and because we belong to God, we belong to each other.

For Paul never uses the word “saint” in its singular form. Never. It is always plural-- “saints.” Christians are saints because they are members of the holy community. You can’t be a saint in solo.

Then, in the second verse of this introduction, Paul describes the source of our belonging. The word is one that will recur again and again through this letter -- the word is “grace.” Grace has in it all of the love of God, the unlimited, unmeasurable, unmerited, self-giving love of God.

And Paul’s desire for the Colossians and for us is that we will experience grace and peace. That’s verse 2. Grace is what God is like, and peace is what happens to you when you experience it.

The Hebrew word for peace, Shalom, literally means to “bind together” or to be whole. In Christ, the civil war of divergent drives which makes us feel like rubber bands stretched in all directions, can come to an end. Peace is the result of grace. Grace shows that we are accepted from the center of creation. The Lord is in control. He has forgiven the past, He is in charge of the now and He points and leads the way to the future He has prepared.

And finally the source of this grace and peace is set forth very plainly -- God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the connecting link in this whole two verse introduction. Paul writes because he is an “apostle of Jesus Christ.” The people receive because they are “faithful in Christ Jesus.” The goal is peace through grace which can come only from “God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

God’s gift is His own self.

Our gift to each other is to allow the character of God to work itself out in our own lives.

The saints who received this letter — and the saints who receive the letter today — live in two places. We live in Colossae or in Moorpark or Simi Valley or wherever. But we also live “in Christ Jesus.” We are citizens of the world and at the same time, we are citizens of the kingdom of God. Our goal through this letter, will be to learn how to live responsibly and maturely, both in Southern California and in Christ.