Colossians Overview

OK. First things first, we've had twenty five people sign up. You'll notice on the sign up sheet that there was a provision for your email. Now, being the on top of thing guy like I am, I thought that maybe. Thank you, Courtney. I thought that maybe what we could do.

Here's here's here's how the here's how my class goes. You will get questions today that you don't need to spend more than 8 or 12 hours on. Next week's class will go through the questions. And they're designed for one purpose, and that is to get you engaged in the class.

It doesn't do you any good if I stand up here and talk. You need to be involved, and the way to be involved is to is to maybe go through the questions and not be able to answer them all. You have to raise your hand and actually use your voice. Be cool.

If you were in my last class, it was one of the best classes we've ever had because it was engaged every week. People had questions and we went around and that's what I'm hoping is going to happen because that's how we learn. So you take the questions home. You answer them the best you can. And there's no such thing as a perfect score. So and designed to stimulate conversation so that we when we do have when we meet every Sunday, we've got a track to run on and we can discuss things. OK. And we can't discuss.

You'll find that my teaching method is that I'm going to ask you a lot of questions. And sometimes, although very rarely, and it depends on how smart you are, they could be trick questions. All right. The second thing is old school people like myself.

If you want a notebook to keep all your stuff in, you're welcome to one. If you want me to email or Courtney or JD to email the questions to you so that you have them electronically after class, just tell me so on this list. I'll put your name on the back if you're not on the front. So that way, if you would rather have it communicated to you that way because that's the way you study, then I'm happy to do it that way.

Boy, that brought me into the 21st century, didn't it? What else have I got? I know a lot of you have been in our classes before, but I'm really serious about interaction. I want you engaged because that's how you learn. Courtney and myself and JD don't prepare the class because we want to be smart. We want you to get it. We want you to be informed. Because someday you're going to have to teach somebody something.

Not from this platform, but from someplace else. And you should know your stuff. You really should. Or you should have a reservoir someplace where you can go get the stuff. And you can get an answer. Like I had some questions put to me over the last few days. And I went and dug up some old notebooks and found the answers that I needed. I mean that's a rarity to me. Any questions you have?

So we'll do kind of an opening survey of the Book of Colossians today. We won't work on the questions. We will start in on the questions next week. So that's sufficiently clear. Who wrote the Book of Colossians? You sure? Yes. It says right here. Paul. It says right there. Okay. And do you know the circumstances that Paul was in when he wrote it? Prison. He was in prison in Rome. Okay. Probably not a very cool place. If it was a Mamertine prison, it was always cold. It was down, there was a hole in the ground.

And he wrote three epistles from there. Colossians, Ephesians, and what's the third one? Philemon. What was that? Philemon. They were sent out to the different towns by the same messenger. And as you look at the book of Ephesians and Philemon, you'll see it is the same messenger.

Now, Colossi, let's talk about the town. It's in what we call present-day Turkey. It was a town not like Ephesus and not like other cities that were sort of growing and expanding. Colossi was sort of on the downward side, sort of like Detroit. Those of you who have been watching the news know what I mean.

It was kind of an insignificant city, not mentioned very much in the New Testament. It was not founded by Paul. Paul never went to Colossae, yet he writes a letter. Lots of the cities that Paul went to, obviously, their churches were growing, but Colossae had a growing church too.

The city's located on the Lycus River. I don't even know if they still call it the Lycus River in Turkey, in the Lycus River Valley. And there were other cities around very close to it. Hierapolis and Laodicea were very close to it, but they were on the other side of the river. And I guess it mattered what side of the river you were on as to whether you had a prosperous city or not. So Colossae wasn't very prosperous. Paul had never been there, and we'll see in chapter 1 verse 7, chapter 2 verse 13, and in Philemon 23, Paul had never been to Colossae, yet he writes him a letter.

Who do you think started the church there? Not a trick question, but I bet of the first five answers I don't get the right one. Who do you think started it? From the people that were present at Pentecost? have been there and then gone back home? Maybe, maybe. Was it a papyrus? Second person, God. You studied. She has her notes. In verse 7 of chapter 1 and then in chapter 2 verse 1, probably started by Epaphras.

The church met in a person's house and that person was Philemon who probably was a fairly wealthy guy because Philemon had, as you read in the book of Philemon, had this slave that took off. Remember his name? So he was a slave of Philemon's and he took off and then in the process of doing his wandering he gets saved and Paul says now you need to go back and you need to report in to Philemon and one of the great things about the book of Philemon is that Paul gives Philemon instructions on how to handle Onesimus, which is kind of cool. So we're told in Philemon 1 and 2 that the church was in his house. We find that the name of his missing slave was Onesimus. We then learn from Colossians 4, 8, and 9 that Onesimus was from Colossae, and so it puts the pieces together. Now, when was the last time you read Colossians? Did you spend any time in it? Not for a while, right? You have.

I'm going to make a statement about the book that I think probably sets it up. There's no passage in the New Testament that sets forth the eternal glory of the Lord Jesus, his pre-existence, his omnipotence, the fact that he is the exalted and eternal son of God in the book of Colossians. So when we start going into the first chapter, we are going to spend a lot of time talking about the glory of the Lord Jesus. Now, why do you study your Bible? Why do you do it? So that you can come to class and be smart? To grow closer to Christ? To know Him? To know Him. So, this may sound irreverent, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Jesus Christ is not a little Jewish guy about this high running around in Palestine. He's the Son of God, He's in the heavenlies right now, and He's a glorified man who has been blessed with every glory there is and he is knowable right now there. The book of Colossians does as good a job as any to lay out the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is past the cross, past the resurrection, past the ascension, past the glorification. He is knowable in the heavenlies.

So the book of Colossians especially chapter one will lay that out for us so that if you want to see a description of who the Lord Jesus is right this second, it's right there. The epistle to the Colossians occupies a position in the development of Christian doctrine. I don't know, do you realize that in Paul's epistles that there's a progression? There's the book of Romans, it's the book number one. How would you describe the book of Romans in terms of learning?

How many of you have ever gone to college or taken any college courses or even sent your kids to college? What's the first course they take? 101. And what's 101 usually tell them? It's usually the survey course that kind of goes over everything. Right. It kind of sets out, well, if you're going to study whatever, then we're going to start here and we're going to end here in four years. We'll get into the details after survey course 101. Romans is the survey course 101.

And people say, oh, it's profound. Yeah, it's profound, but it's basic. People say, well, gee, if you understand identification, you're some sort of spiritual giant. No, you're not. This is chapter 6 of the survey book. Come on, it's basic stuff. Every believer should understand their identification with Christ. Every believer. It's not super spiritual. Alright, let's go to the other end of the spectrum. What's the Ph.D. course? What book would be the Ph.D.? Revelation? No. Hebrews? No. Ephesians. Why? Ephesians is the Ph.D. book. Why? You know why? Is that where he starts? Telling us who we are and where we're seated. There you go. Not only tells us who we are, but it tells you where you are.

If you read the book of Romans, you know what's interesting about it? You never leave the earth. It's all about what God did coming here and saving your sorry button. God came to the earth in Romans to save you, to pay the penalty for sins. It's all about the earth. It's all about God coming here and taking care of you here. When you get to Ephesians, in the first three verses it says you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Denver in the heavenlies, right? No. In the heavenly places. It seats you in heaven. That's the PhD.

So where does Colossians fit in this mess? Huh? Where does Colossians fit? Oh, and by the way, Colossians is actually positioned in Paul's lineup after Ephesians. How come? Have I fooled you? Sure. Colossians pictures you on the earth but your mind and your thoughts and affections in heaven. So it's like, everybody in this room understand position and condition? How many don't understand position and condition? I have an angry question.

Sure. I was, we were raised on one saint, always saint. Is that the same thing exactly as being placed in Christ? Yeah. And that's our position. Sure. That's the same as one saint. How'd you get placed in Christ? How'd you get there? What are the mechanics? Romans 6 tells you. How'd you get in there?

Don't you realize that when you're baptized you were baptized into Christ's death, right? Once the spirit puts you in there, well first of all he's the one that puts you in there, you didn't put yourself in there, right? So now you're identified with Christ.

So whatever is going to happen to him from then on is going to happen to you. When you're raised to love. So you're buried and then you're raised and you're seated in the heavenlies. All of that is because of what somebody else did. You were along for the ride. So to wake up five years from now and think, well, I'm going to go back and deny Christ is too late. The train already left the station. It's just too late for you.

You can't lose your salvation because it wasn't you that saved you. See that? So if you're seated with Christ in the heavenlies, you may function all of your Christian life on the earth as though that wasn't true. But guess what? You can't change that. Because you had nothing to do with it in the first place.

You entered into salvation by faith in the person and work of Christ, which is a non-meritorious act, right? And the Spirit of God said, okay, Courtney, I'm putting you in Christ at the point at which he dies. And you're going to die too. and you're going to be buried, and you're going to be raised with Christ, you're going to go to the heavenlies when He goes, and you're now permanently in Him, and you can't ever get out of Him. Courtney says, oh, I'm going to change my mind. Too late!

I think, going back to Francis' point, I think it's a little different than just once saved and always saved. There's a lot of difference in that, in that that can mean to different people if they don't know the identification. It is, Christ is in me and I can't lose him. I go back to myself, John 10, 28, that was my anchor verse, that I can't get out of his hands. It's like I'm separate and in his hand and I can't get out.

So it's more than just once saved forever. You need to add more qualifiers onto that, which are all the identifications. I just want to make that clear. I'm saved forever. People can say that. a different concept than what we have in identification. Because as I said, once you understand the identification, then all the things you're saying are true.

You can't get back out. How do I get back out of death? I've been placed into him. I've been crucified, and now I'm placed into him. Ever since then, I've never had a doubt again. You just can't. Where before, it was kind of this cold... Yeah, it's a partnership between me and God. God's got me in his hand, and I can never get out of him. The doubts come. As long as I obey, things are going to be cool. So I just want that distinction. It is not as simple as that. You need to add all the identification.

So what we just talked about is pretty much what I would describe as positional truth. When you study the Word of God, especially Paul's epistles, he will lay out positions for you. You were crucified with Christ. Is that a position? Absolutely. It may or may not be part of your condition. You were buried, you were resurrected, you're seated with him in the heavenlies. That's the position you enjoy from God's perspective.

Can't change it. Your condition can be all over the lot. You can be acting as though everybody's fooled when they find out you're a Christian. But it doesn't change your position. So the issue with Colossians is, is it a positional book or a condition or is it both? I would say Ephesians, for the most part, is positional. I would say Romans, for a lot of the part of it, up until you get to chapter 8, well through chapter 8, is positional. There's some condition in there, but the rest of it is condition. So you say, well I've got a will, so I can decide. What's your will used for? What do you use your will for? Why did God give you your will?

Oh, by the way, it's not free. Because Romans 6 talks about slavery to sin. Okay, it's free. You decided you wanted to be a slave to sin. Okay. But you're a slave. And now you're a bond slave to Christ. You've agreed that you're going to be a slave to Christ. I forgot my question. What did I ask?

What do you use your will for? Do you use your will to implement the things of the Word of God? Oh, I see what this is and I'm going to do it. You only use your will for one thing. Yeah, well, that's interesting. We use our will to do what we want. which is usually sin, you use your will to believe. You don't use it to implement. Because when the Word of God says to you that you're to obey, which is that great word obey, what does obedience mean? It means to listen under. So here comes the Word of God, and what are you supposed to do with it? Believe it. That's it.

If you study Paul's epistles really close, he never tells you to do spiritual push-ups. Never. If you don't believe, you can't be saved, right? Oh, if you're talking about salvation, I was actually talking about spiritual growth. You know, he says, Romans 6, 11 and 12, he says, Reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God, so say you don't. Well, you're still saved. You see that? No. I mean, I thought, I have always thought, if you don't believe, You can't be saved, right?

So you have to make that choice. The choice to believe. Sure. And that's what the will is for. So here comes the gospel message. You're lost. And somebody presents you with the gospel. The Spirit of God illuminates you like, oh wow, this is really right. And now you have to make a decision. Either believe it or not. It's the only decision you have. So you exercise your will and your belief.

Now you're saved. If you believe in your mind, but yet you haven't really with your heart, you know, I think all my life I was taught to believe, but it didn't really hit me until one day when I felt like I was really saved. So I'm thinking in that interim, am I still saved even though I haven't Well, you're probably going to go to purgatory.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely you were. Absolutely you were. You know, because here's the thing. There's a lot of, there's a lot of positional truth that is told us in the word, especially in Paul's epistles. and you look at it and you recognize, you know, what God wants me to do about this truth is just believe him. Well, okay, I do.

Do I wait for some sort of an emotional confirmation to make sure it's real or not? No, no. Faith doesn't have one thing or another to do with how you feel about it. It's just simple, I trust you, Lord, because you said it. Now, that's not to say that you can believe the identification truths when they're first laid out to you, and at some point in the future the Spirit of God will work them into you so that not only do you believe them, but you're totally persuaded.

You see that? That's the work of the Spirit, like we talked about in the class downstairs. That's what He does. Here comes the truth, you believe it, He works it in and conforms it to that truth. Our whole job is to believe them. We have no other job. The book of Colossians now is going to lay out for us, at least the first two chapters, lots and lots and lots and lots of positional truth.

So don't go home and think, I need to experience it. No, you don't. Just believe it. Just believe and it's up to him. It's like Paul said, it was his job to plant and it was Paul's job to water, but it was God's job to give the increase. So he'll do it. He'll respond to your faith and persuade you and confirm you in what you believe. And even though you might be from Missouri and you've got to say, show me. He will. Give him enough time. He's more serious about your spiritual growth than you are. I happened to hear this on the radio last night and I should have turned it off. It's incomprehensible that we know God. That's nonsense. I thought that.

Paul in Philippians 3.10, what does he say? That I might know him. And the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering shall be conformed unto his death. And then he said, well, you know the scripture that says, my thoughts are not your thoughts. Old Testament. 1 Corinthians says that we have the very mind of Christ. Oh, really? Well, without the Holy Spirit, I mean, that's the Old Testament. Without the Holy Spirit, we don't know anything.

Yeah, that's right. It's his job to reveal, to illuminate and to implement in our lives the truths that we understand. And that doesn't mean that you're not going to listen to your radio on a Saturday night and have somebody tell you that it isn't true, because you're going to hear that stuff everywhere. I mean, Satan doesn't take a nap just because you woke up.

Book of Romans. In Romans, the great question of the responsibility of man to God is dealt with. Does man have a responsibility to God? Yes, he does, because he sinned. Whether he is regarded as a sinner without the law, which is all the Gentile guys, or as a sinner with added transgressions under the law. A transgressor is a person who violates the law.

So you can say, well, gee, Lord, I'm not a Jew. I don't have any laws. And he says back to you, well, do you have a code of ethics in this little black box in your head that you live by? And you say, yeah, I got that. He said, well, how about I judge you by that?

The righteousness of God in justifying and saving those who believe in Jesus, whether they were Jews or Gentiles, is declared together with the bearing of Christ's death, resurrection, and such, and setting them free according to the reckoning of faith. from their sinful position into a liberty and a relationship of which the Spirit of God is the power of the new life. All of that is covered in Romans.

And the hope of glory is spoken of and rejoiced in and the purpose of God is to have the saints in that glory conform to the image of his Son. Now, when you see that phrase, the hope of glory, and everybody in this room has a hope of glory. You know what it is? What does it mean to have hope of glory? Christ in us. Alright, let's go back at it. What's glory? What does glory mean? The radiant essence of God himself. Who's it manifested in and through? You can't see the glory of God in the Holy Spirit, can you? or the Father, but you can in Christ.

So is our hope that we get to see it someday? Will it happen before we get there? That's the final glorification. That's when we reach our final glory. That's right. So we sit here now and go, well I'm not going to know what glory is until I die and go to heaven. Well it says you go from glory to glory. Oh yeah, it does, doesn't it? 2 Corinthians 3, it says, beholding as in a mirror, beholding as in a mirror, this is the mirror, right here. the glory of the Lord Jesus with unveiled face.

So when you're reading your Bible and doing your homework this week, you're not there to do your homework. You're there to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus. You're there to know Him as the Spirit of God would illuminate you about Him. Beholding as in Him the glory of the Lord, what happens? you are transformed or transfigured into the same image from glory to glory. Not from being a bummy sinner to being a good really cool Christian from one state of glory to another state of glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. That's what the Christian life really is. Now you get to know Christ. The hope of glory is, like you're saying, When you leave this planet, the very next instant, you are face to face with the full-on glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because you have been placed in Him, you're glorified just like Him.

I say to people now, we all come to rule and reign with Christ in the Millennial Kingdom. Courtney is going to be down in Castle Rock. And he's going to be walking down the street, and these Gentiles are going to say, hey, there's one of those members of the body of Christ. How are they going to know?

Because the glory of Christ will shine out of him, and you, and me. Even way beyond all those really foxy Jews in Jerusalem who have the law written on their heart. So, since we are placing Christ at the time of belief, Don't we already have that glory?

Okay, that's the position condition question. You hear it? Placed in Christ is your position. May or may not be manifested. Now from God's perspective, he sees you in Christ. So there are two things going on there. One, Christ is in you. The other issue is that you're in Christ. Now do you see that? I've never seen myself in Christ. I don't care to, actually. I just want to see Him. It's a position that we both enjoy. The manifestation of that position, to whatever degree, is the condition of my life, orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. As I walk by faith, the manifestation of the glory of Christ. So guess what?

You don't get any credit. Sorry. Book of Romans. Now, one last thing about Romans. The doctrine of the epistle refers to man, whether guilty or lost or believing, and looked at upon the earth. You don't take off in Romans. You're in the airplane, but you never left the ground. Ephesians. The epistle of Ephesians opens out the counsels of God in connection with Christ in the heavenlies. where he is seated at the right hand of God.

It starts there. The mystery of God's will to head up everything in heaven and on earth in Christ. The man of his own purpose and counsel is made known to the saints. I think early on in our Christian life we think and hope that Christ is going to come and enter into my circumstances and he's going to fix them. And to a great degree as a brand new Christian he does do that.

But when you begin to grow spiritually, the Spirit of God really does take you to the heavenlies. So that you begin to recognize that I have been crucified not only from sin, but the earth and law and everything that has nothing to do with Christ. You see that? As you grow spiritually.

We've been sealed by the Holy Spirit and to have my inheritance in his counsels, of which he is the earnest, the Holy Spirit is the earnest. I'm a realtor. Anybody know what earnest money is? You put your five bucks down and you hope you close. In this case, the Holy Spirit himself is the five bucks. He's the guarantee that the deal is going to close.

And they have, besides being sons before the Father, and we could spend forever talking about what it means to be a son, a peculiar relationship to Christ in his body, the fullness of him fills all in all. Consequently, we do not find in as in Romans, the bearing of the death and resurrection of Christ. You don't find that in Ephesians. Upon the condition of the responsible man upon the earth. You don't see that in Ephesians.

But the power which produced in Christ in raising him from the dead. How much power did it take to raise Christ from the dead? Did it take as much as it did to create the universe? Take more than that? The greatest demonstration of the power of God was the resurrection of Christ. It took all three persons to do it. Isn't that something? Cool, I think.

And seating him in the heavenly places is shown to be towards believers as well as in them. But both for the accomplishment of these counsels and for their present enjoyment were to enjoy them in Ephesians. Christ being in the heavenly places, believers are seen as made to sit there in him. That's what the book of Ephesians is about. So, you can either consider a believer as on the earth and justified from his guilt or and in the liberty of his sinful state and self before God through the death and resurrection of Christ, and set upon a path through the wilderness. But Colossians shows a man, a believer, who is still here, feet firmly planted, But his heart, his mind, his affections are all in heaven because he knows, because he read Ephesians.

Because when you get to Colossians 3.1, who can quote it? Sin should be risen with Christ.

Is that true? What do you do with that? What are you supposed to do? Seek those things which are above, which would place you where? Still here, right? So if Colossians is a practical book from the standpoint of how you walk as a believer, you're positioned in the heavenlies, your feet are still here, what do you do with all of the information that you know? You seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.

Set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth and then it tells you why. Why? Because you died. Oh I did? I don't remember. I never had that experience. That shows you how important experience is. For you died in your life to seek with Christ. What was inherent in the death and resurrection of Christ that made that more difficult than anything else? Good question. Is it all the encompassing things of defeating sin? That's part of it. Yeah.

Christ was identified with the sinful ones, is the way to put it. He was counted among all men who were separated from God and he was truly dead to God. He was brought out of that and along with that comes a new creation. Now you can't see the new creation, but it began at the resurrection of Christ.

And are you part of that new creation? Right now? You are. We are. So he brought, not only did he recreate with a new creation, but he brought all believers from the time of Pentecost to the rapture with him. Christ is an entirely new kind of man. Resurrected. It wasn't here before. It's an entirely new kind of life. Old things have passed away. Behold, everything is brand new. That's life, I think. What about all the people before that? You said something about when second acts...

But does he go and rescue all those people that didn't know? Salvation is always by faith. Salvation is always by faith, even if you lived in Beijing. From the Old Testament saints, there's a lot of Old Testament saints, they're the souls of just men made perfect, and they are saved the same way you're saved, by faith, in what God had revealed to them. I think it's important to understand that when we're all at the great white throne of that judgment, and we'll be there judging, that not one single lost soul will come up before Christ and say, you know, I kind of got screwed in this deal.

You know, you didn't expend enough effort to save me. They're all going to look him in the eye and say, I didn't want you then and I don't want you now. Where's the door to hell? I mean, we can't imagine that, but that's the attitude and that's the way sin functions.

I think her question though is the difference between Old Testament saints and the body of Christ. Is that your question? I think what happened to everybody before who believed? Is that what your question is, Wanda? And where they are in eternity? But they didn't believe in Jesus.

Right, and so just an Old Testament saint, like Abraham. Right. That was the question. So it's not about non-believers past Pentecost. It's saints. And they're a different category in heaven. From Pentecost on it's different. We're placed into the body of Christ. as opposed to an Old Testament saint who is saved but not positioned in the body of Christ. So that's the two different positions.

It says that Abraham was accounted righteous because of his faith. Did he know the gospel? No. He didn't know who Jesus was or going to be or anything. But he believed God, what was revealed to him, and God accounted him righteous. That's exactly right. He paid the penalty all the time. Why did he do it that way? Because the sin issue is an issue between God and God. It's not about you. What contribution did you make to the transaction of the cross? Only one. You put them up there.

Because you were a sinner. But the transaction in resolving the sin issue was something God did totally on his own, the father and the son. The eternal covenant is that the father said, if you become a man and die for the sins of the world, I'll raise you up. Jesus said, I'll do it. And he did it. When he's done, when he's resurrected and he's standing there and it's over, he now owes us salvation, right? Does he? No, he doesn't. Because if he did, it wouldn't be by grace. He's under no obligation to save you and me.

But now that he's satisfied about the sin issue, like Craig said, the sins of the whole world, every sin that was ever committed, that will ever be committed, and oh by the way, your sins were future at the time of the cross, weren't they? That transaction was between God. And then His grace allowed us to be involved in it. That's kind of cool. And that's how the Christian life is. It's by grace only. It's by grace only. That's how it works. And pre-Cross, people's sins were only covered. Covered, that's right. By the Lamb. And not taken away. Yearly. It's always salvation by faith for the Old Testament.

Alright, you've just experienced how our class is going to go. I didn't finish. This class, even though you're going to have questions, and next week will come, we may finish them or we may not. So, we're not on a schedule. As best we know how, we let the Spirit of God run this class. Sometimes I wonder How he's doing it through some of you, but he does.

Next week I want to ask about predestination. Predestination is a very simple answer. Every discussion of predestination in the Word of God has to do with somebody who's already saved. There's never a discussion in the Word of God about anybody who's not saved being predestined to anything. Predestination has to do only with the saved.

See that? Important point. Alright, let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. How we thank you for the grace that we live under and how careful you were to put your word together so that we could understand it in a way that allows us to rest and behold the glory of your dear son. We thank you, we pray in his precious name. Amen.