Faith that Endures: Past, Present, and Future Aspects of the Gospel in Colossians 1

[I’ve been reading Paul’s letter to the Colossians a lot lately. Not the whole letter, mind you. Just the first chapter, over and over. I keep reading and rereading it, with a fascination that borders on the absurd. So I guess it was inevitable that I post something here about it. Please excuse the inordinate length of this post. If you actually read it and find it helpful . . . well I'll be darned!]

Very often, the first chapters of Paul’s letters tell you much about the recipients of the epistles. In the letter to the Colossians, for example, we learn that the Colossian believers are known especially for their faith in Christ Jesus and also for their love for all the saints (v4). I might pause to note that one may be a Christian and yet weak in faith (I speak out of a personal knowledge), failing to consistently apply one’s faith in Christ Jesus in all situations. In other words, what Paul says here about the Colossians may be quite unique. They are a church full of newborn Christians who are remarkable for their faith and love.

Paul had heard about it from Epaphras, who had first preached the gospel to the Colossians, and who Paul calls “a faithful minister of Christ” on behalf of the Colossians (v7). “The gospel” comes up a lot in this first chapter. Paul calls it “the word of the truth” (v5) and “the grace of God in truth” (v6). Three times he associates the gospel with a great hope for the future: he refers to “the hope laid up for you in heaven” at verse 5, “[sharing] in the inheritance of the saints in light” at verse 12, and at verse 23 he urges the Colossians not to stray from “the hope of the gospel that you heard.”

The gospel, then, is not only the good news about something that has taken place in the past, although that aspect of it is certainly of crucial importance. In fact, Paul does not neglect this past-aspect of the gospel. At verse 19 he says, “For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross.” But this past-aspect, as I call it, has a regenerative impact on the present, and a magnificent fulfillment in the future. All three temporal aspects of the gospel–past, present, and future–are on display in Colossians 1.

Let’s sort out Paul’s references to things past, things present, and things future.

In the past the Colossians had been alienated from God and “hostile in mind” toward him. Later, in this same letter Paul will describe them as a people who once walked in “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness” (3:5-7). I don’t suppose the Colossians were especially immoral people, far worse than the people in, say, Ephesus or Corinth. They were simply members of a fallen and sinful race, sliding toward death. Just like the rest of us.

But something happened. A fellow named Epaphras came along, and shared with the Colossians a message about Jesus (he ministered Christ to them, v7). The message included, no doubt, the story of Christ's finished work (see verses 13-14 and 19-21), but it also featured prominently the future hope that Christ’s finished work had made available to them. In other words, what Christ had done in the past secured for them, if they would only accept it, a bright future. And they did accept it. They heard it, understood it, and believed it (v6), and that was the beginning of their new lives.

But life is lived, of course, in the present. What does Paul have to say about the present-aspect of the gospel? Is their new life in Christ a matter only of the hereafter, of a pie-in-the-sky in the great by-and-by?

Not hardly. The gospel, Paul says, is–in the present–bearing fruit and growing. It is doing so among the Colossians, as well as “in the whole world,” wherever the gospel has been preached (v6). What does he mean by this? What sort of fruit does the gospel produce in people? The answer, at least in part, is love. Just look at verse 4, where Paul commends the Colossians first for their faith, then for their love “for all the saints,” which they possess “because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”

Now, the hope laid up in heaven is a reference to the future-aspect of the gospel message. They heard the gospel, understood it, were born again or regenerated, and the fruit of their trust in the gospel guarantees of a future inheritance was an abiding “love for all the saints.” [Note: the gospel makes us lovers.] Epaphras later told Paul about this love. That’s how noteworthy it was. It was the kind of love that people told their friends about it. The Colossians had such love for the saints that it was something far more than natural. It was “love in the Spirit” (v8).

So here we have a vibrant assembly of believers, full of faith and love. What more do they need? In answer, Paul says they will need to increase in the knowledge of God and of his will, and so that is the burden of his prayer for them. Why so? Paul quickly answers, “so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (v10).

So, between the new birth and the inheritance “in light,” there is a worthy walking. Back before their new birth they had done “evil deeds” (v22), but now they will bear fruit in the form of “every good work.” And yet it is not something that comes with ease. We know this because Paul adds to his prayer for knowledge a prayer for the power of God to work in their lives for the purpose of providing them with “all endurance and patience with joy” (v11).

All endurance! The words are laden with ominous implications. The question I ask myself is, what is the cost of not enduring? What is lost when we don’t endure? Or to put it another way, what exactly are we to endure in? One might say, good works, and not be far wrong. But the real answer comes clear a few verses later. Let’s follow Paul’s reasoning.

After praying for power to endure for the Colossians, Paul then composes one of the mightiest hymns to Jesus Christ as God the any man has ever penned. This comes in verses 15 to 20. It is a brief but awesome perspective on the “preeminence” of Jesus in “all things.” Then, returning our focus from the Godhead to the Colossians, Paul says this:

And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has reconciled in his body of flesh by his death [past-aspect], in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him [future-aspect], if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast [present-aspect].

So what is at stake where “endurance” is concerned? Our faith. We need to endure in our faith, continue in it, “stable and steadfast,” because there are things that will seek to undermine it, or perhaps to wear it away by slow and imperceptible degrees. The endurance that Paul prays for is not primarily physical endurance, but endurance in faith.

Paul knows their faith will come under attack. There will come people who will try to delude the Colossians “with plausible arguments” (2:4). People who will try to capture their minds with “philosophy and empty deceit” (2:8). Or recall what Paul described in a similar passage in his letter to the Ephesians: he says that God gives us teachers in order to help us grow to maturity in Christ, “so that we may longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes” (Eph. 4:14).

So, a key descriptor of the present-aspect of the faithful life is endurance in faith. And one of the lessons of Colossians is that our faith is strengthened when we set our minds on the future-aspect of the gospel. On "the hope laid up in heaven" for us. On "the inheritance of the saints in light." If that future hope falters, so does their present walk. Their present walk, in other words, depends on their clinging to (“not shifting from”) the gospel, but not only the glorious past-aspect of the gospel, but the wondrous inheritance that it guarantees to our future. The critical nature of this future-aspect of the gospel is captured in a nutshell when Paul describes the wondrous riches of God's grace as, "Christ in you, the hope [sure expectation] of glory." Let not this hope be eroded, downplayed, or shuffled aside in favor or lesser things. In chapter 3 Paul will put it this way:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

The single imperative we can draw from all this is: guard the trust you’ve been given, a faith by which you were born anew, by which you are able now to love in the Spirit, able walk in a manner worthy of the very one who died for you, so that you might one day be presented before him “holy and blameless and above reproach” (v22). That day is coming, and itwill be glorious. In the meantime, stand firm in your faith.