Colossians 2:5-7 - Our Walk In Christ Jesus

Colossians 2:1 and Paul’s Pastoral Burden for the Church

We're gonna be in Colossians chapter two, and I think we made our way down to verse five. We're going verse by verse through the book of Colossians. And I'm gonna go back and review just verse one, in case you hadn't been with us.

And then I'll jump from there to verse five, because that's really where we start. Father, thank you so much for the service already. Thank you for helping us through the different technology glitches we had today for whatever reason.

And Lord, we just thank you that our online group is with us now and they can see and hear everything and worship with us and Lord study with us. And we ask you to bless your word as you always do and keep us in it, keep us straight with it.

And may we not vary from it. And we ask it in Jesus name, amen. Colossians chapter two, verse one. Let's read that and then we'll jump to verse five where we really need to start this morning. Says, this is the apostle Paul, you know, talking to some of his converts, but probably most of them were like spiritual grandchildren that his converts led to the Lord, most likely, but some of them he led to the Lord.

And so he's speaking to the church at Colossae and he says, for I would that you knew what great conflict I have for you and for them at Laodicea and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.

So the apostle Paul had some people that he had led to the Lord and perhaps even ordained his elders who traveled to this city and a church started there and they were the ministers there so he had a couple, maybe a couple, maybe one spiritual child there and the rest were just people that that person.

Led to the Lord.

So he had a bunch of spiritual grandchildren if you wanna look at it that way because he had not personally been there and he's wishing that he had been there that got this conflict because I haven't seen you face to face.

Now it's interesting when you look up the word conflict because in the Greek, it's the little word agon and really what it means is like picture yourself sitting in the Roman Colosseum watching the gladiators fight because that's where this word comes from.

It's a place of assembly, but it has to do with sports and so he's trying to get them to feel the emotion that he's feeling because he hadn't been to meet him face to face and so he's saying it's like I'm watching this battle between gladiators and my adrenaline is up and I'm just like, I'm excited about it and I wish I could be there.

That's the feeling that this word means in Greek. So he really, really has been praying for these people or he wouldn't be having feelings like that for them,.

Would he?

So he's been praying for the ones he knows by name and the others he hasn't met yet and so that's what he means by he had this conflict and he's been, and of course, verses two through four were part of the prayer that he was praying for these people and the last three verses had to do with the triad because he talked about that in verses two, three, and four and how important it is to understand that or else you choose very easily.

Many of the Judaizers said, ah, that's not in the Bible and even today, they'll say, oh, well, the Roman Catholics made up the Trinity. They didn't. Early church fathers talked about it at least 150 years before Constantine, maybe 200 years before Constantine and that's when the Catholic Church started.

So that's a lie and it's all through, and so it talked about that right before verse five here. So that kind of sets up the context. So let's pick it up at verse five. For though I be absent in the flesh, in other words, I wish I could come be there with you in person, but I'm not, yet am I with you in spirit, joying and beholding your order and steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

Christ in You, the Holy Spirit, and the Church’s Spiritual Connection

All right, so think about, I want you to think about this a minute. What do you think he means when he said, I'm with you in spirit? Now, do you remember the first few verses in this chapter talked about a mystery and it really listed two, but like I said, it's really one mystery and the other one is a sort of a subset of that.

And do you remember what the first one was? Yeah, it meant that. It said Christ in us, the hope of glory. That was the mystery. And that says that's something the Old Testament saints looked into but couldn't understand it or see it.

And the Holy Spirit used the Apostle Paul to reveal it to the church. And without Paul, we wouldn't know about it. I mean, there are places where Jesus alluded to it and talked about it, but Paul laid it down and said, here's how that works.

And so we wouldn't know the detail of it without the Apostle Paul, God having chosen him to tell us a mystery that they didn't know about in the Old Testament times. Well, Christ in us, the hope of glory is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

But then it mentioned a second mystery, which was God, the Holy Spirit, or actually God, the Father and the Son. It mentioned that and called that a mystery. So that's the triune nature of God, which the Bible talks about it all through the Old Testament, but they didn't have a lot of light on it until the Apostle John and the Apostle Paul revealed a lot of things about it, and especially the Apostle John.

So these two mysteries, they're really sort of, if you think about it, you couldn't have Christ in me, the hope of glory, if you didn't have a triune God, because the Father is not in time. He's not in a place and he's not in time.

And Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. So you couldn't have Christ in me, the hope of glory, if you didn't have the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit comes and dwells and is sealed within our bodies at the moment of salvation.

And he is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of Christ, but he is also the Holy Spirit. And so we've been talking about that. So I'm not gonna go back over the importance of the triune nature at this point, because it'd be review, but that's what we've been talking about.

Now, so now Paul says that he is able to be with them in spirit, and it's all set up by this idea of the Holy Spirit and dwelling everybody. So think about that. The Holy Spirit is the connector. I mean, he's more than that, but one of his duties is that he connects, he connects Jesus and the Father, the Father being outside of time, pure spirit being which no man has seen at any time.

And he connects the Father and Jesus who now is in time and space in the third heaven. They're connected, they're one. He was connected with the Father when he was on the earth too, wasn't he? By the Holy Spirit.

And so then after Pentecost, we were indwelt by the Spirit of God, who then connected us to Jesus, who connected us to the Father and to each other. And so since we're connected to every person who's ever been born again, even the ones that are in heaven, that's the whole interesting discussion to think about.

I was able to comfort a friend of mine that I've known since high school, at least. I knew her husband since first grade, and the husband passed away about three Sundays ago. And I was able to comfort her by pointing out that she's actually still connected to her husband spiritually, because he's part of the church and she's part of the church and the Holy Spirit connects them.

And she said, that really helps. She never thought about that. But here he's talking about a connection that he has with this church that he's never been to physically. So it's more than just saying, oh, I'm thinking about you.

It's more than that. Now it is thinking about them and contemplating what they're doing and praying for them and all that, but he is actually connected with them, just like we're connected with each other.

So that's the first thing that I see in this little passage, but look what else he says. He says, yet am I with you in spirit, and he's having joy about some things, about these people. There's some things about them that make Paul happy.

The first one is he has beheld, and probably what this means is he has heard about this from his spiritual children, who may be the elders at this church, who reported back to Paul about how it's growing and how the people are in the word and so forth.

And the first thing he says, I am joying because of having beheld your order. Now, this is important, especially in this day and time. Some of you younger guys often send me a YouTube thing of like bad preachers, okay?

Or some of the megachurch preachers who do just remarkably ridiculous things, if not blasphemous things, in the churches in America today, and I watched some of that. I'm not saying they're all bad, but I mean, these that we saw, we see from time to time are really, really bad.

And one of the things that I get from some of those is like, they have no order in the church. And Ben was talking about it at Sunday school this morning. Like the elders, you should have some older men and women that are teaching the younger people, number one, here's mistakes you can make and you can avoid those by listening to me.

I'm gonna tell you some mistakes I made and how you don't have to make them. And all the way from that in everyday life, in the home and at work and at church and everywhere in the world, you can learn so much from your elder people in the church.

But the other thing is you have order in the church because God has established the office of the elder in the office of the deacon in the church. And then he's gifted all the people in the church with specific spiritual gifts to do things better than the other people can do.

And it's up to the elders and deacons to sort of organize the people. Sometimes you have to tell a person that they have a spiritual gift because they don't even realize it, but everyone else sees it.

Have y 'all experienced that before? It happens. And you just walk up to them and say, hey, by the way, do you know that you're really good at this and you really do this well and stuff? And then they go, really, I didn't know that.

And when you get everyone working in their gift, then a church has order. And this is the order he's talking about. And it brought joy to Paul to know that this was a church that had order. It was not out of order.

So many churches in America today have no order because like Ben pointed out so well in Sunday school, I wasn't even able to hear all of it, but I was in and out tracks some technical issues with our internet and stuff.

But the part that I heard was, about how we have so many churches where the older people either aren't, either they're trying to be young and trying to impress young people instead of just being who they are, or the young people just don't have any older people, or here's one, they have two services.

You got an early morning rock music service and a later pipe organ service. So you're splitting the old people away from the young people. The Bible says you're supposed to have one service and have three different kinds of music in that service.

And one of the types that it mentions is new songs, which is the young people. And the old people can put up with one song like that. And the young people can put up with one pipe organ. In fact, our young people probably would love to have our organ working.

We need to get that thing fixed. Look into that. I can't find the guy that used to fix it. Anyway, so here you split off the young people and the old people by having different services for them. That is really bad.

It really leads to confusion and lack of order in the church, but many things. So they didn't have that problem here. Paul says they have good order in the church. Now, the next thing he says, I'm also happy about this, the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

Now, when you read that in Greek, you get a little bit different thing than you get in English. I'll show you that in a minute. And it has to do with this little in, and we've seen that before in certain versions of different English Bibles.

Sometimes get it wrong if it's of or in or whatever. These little words are important. I'm gonna get back to that word just in a minute. But first let's talk about this word spirit that he's with them in spirit.

Everybody probably knows there's a couple of words, especially in the New Testament, used to talk about your spirit and your soul. And in the Old Testament, it would be Hebrew. And sometimes, especially in Old Testament, they're sort of almost synonymous.

They can be used interchangeably, which makes it not as clear as in the New Testament. The New Testament makes it clear that we have a body, a spirit, and a soul, and they're three different things. And the Old Testament sort of does, but especially in the English Bible is better maybe.

But in the Hebrew, the same word for spirit can be the same word for soul and so forth. But in English, I mean, in Greek that way. So this word for spirit, when you say it, is the word that's commonly translated into the word spirit in English, and it's pneuma.

And it actually means, the root meaning of it is just like a kind of a burst of air, like a wind blowing, kind of a wind you can feel, not just subtle, but you can feel it blowing against your skin, okay?

That's sort of the root meaning of the word. And it comes from a little Greek word, neo, which means to breathe hard, like a puff of wind, or breath, or breath. And it's not the same word as the word for soul in Greek, because that word is psuche.

And that word just literally means, it's kind of like it just means life, but it's distinguished from plant life. So it's like humans or animals that have to breathe air in and out to be alive. And so that's what the word soul is, and that's the root meaning of it.

And of course, over time, the biblical words for spirit and soul, this word for spirit comes to be everything that you see translated well in English, or the Holy Spirit, or unclean spirits, that's the same word, or I'm with you in spirit, same word, or I'm filled with the Holy Spirit, same word, or I'm indwelt and sealed with the Holy Spirit, same word.

But it comes from this idea of breath. And when you go back and you look at the ancient Greeks and how they used it, which is kind of interesting, I got one dictionary where you got like, this word has maybe 10 pages on this one word, 10 pages.

It's kind of incredible. And I read all 10, but I don't have it here. I'll prove it. See, you're okay.

You'll be all right.

But it's kind of interesting to read the history of words, especially in Greek, but it started out this idea of wind or breath. And the interesting thing about it is it's something you can sort of subtly feel on your skin, but it's invisible, but it's there.

And they considered it to be an element. Wind, fire, and what was the other one? Wind, fire, and water. You know, the Greeks thought those are the elements, but you couldn't really see it. So that's how it came to be the same word used for what we call spirit in English.

And I'm glad there's, that's one good thing about English. We don't like wind or breath. It's literally, we have a different word for it, spirit. Now we don't know what it is. You don't know what spirit is because it's not material, but we know about it, right?

So we can talk about it, but we don't know what it is. God knows what it is. We don't know how God made it, distributes it, or whatever, but we know it's there and we know it's real. And we can be with each other in spirit.

You've had it happen when you have a loved one in the hospital or something and you can't be with them, and you can just almost sense their pain and all of that. It says we weep together, we laugh together, you know, it's very real, but it's invisible, right?

You can almost see it when you look in each other's eyes of a saved person, and sometimes it seems that way in a lost person's eyes. Have you ever looked at a, if you got saved later in life like me, have you ever looked at a picture of yourself, a photo before you were saved, your eyes?

They look different than now. You can really see it in yourself, all right? But anyway, that's this, the background of this word. And I think the English Bible does a fantastic job, especially the King James has a fantastic job of getting it right on when to put the word spirit, when to put the word soul.

But Paul goes, I am with you in spirit, joying and beholding your order, your church that has proper order. There are proper roles for women in a church, proper roles for men, proper roles for elders, deacon, all of that was in order in that particular church, in the church at Colossae, not so much in the modern church.

And then he said, I also have joy because of your steadfastness of your faith in Christ. I wanna take a look at this word in for a second, because there's one Greek word for in that just means in, and if you, I'm not gonna give you the Greek lettering, but if you use English letters to spell it in Greek, it's ain, E-N, E-N is the same as I-N in English.

So in Greek, it's E-N, and that indicates a static position in something. Static means not moving, right? That's in. So when you talk, when you see passages where he talks about you're in Christ, a lot of times it's E-N, and it means you are like, you are in him.

And then it says, and he's in you. A lot of times it's ain, E-N. He literally is in me to stay because he's sealed within me until the day of redemption, right? He is in me to stay, and E-N would be the proper word to use for that.

You see that? Because it's the same as I-N in English. Now, what's interesting is this little word is not E-N. Joying and beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ is not the word ain, it's the word ice.

And ice, if you wanna get an approximate, a really good approximate translation of it, it may be in two, in two, not in, but in two. So what do you see the difference? I mean, it's very similar to in, right?

What do you think the difference is between those two words? There you go. Ain is static, ice denotes movement. So it's different. Now, how big a difference you wanna make, you gotta be careful not to make too big a difference between some of these words.

But it's there, the Holy Spirit put it there and he could have put ain there, couldn't he? But he didn't. So one of the things that Paul was having joy about was, and I think this is interesting. You think about this.

Do you think steadfastness sounds like movement or like you're positioned? Right, so you're not moving. You're static, but you're static in the right way. You're standing against the enemy, right? You're standing against the world and the flesh and the devil, not so much the flesh, but the world and the devil you're standing against.

Now, when it comes to the flesh, you need to turn around and run. You don't stand against it, you run from it. But the other two, you're supposed to stand. And this word steadfastness pictures that. But isn't it interesting that he said, I have joy because you're steadfast in your movement toward Christ.

Now, that's not talking about salvation there because you don't move into salvation over time. Well, in a sense you do, but it's God doing it, right? But from the moment of your regeneration, which happened on your spiritual birthday, the moment you were regenerated, and you've heard me say a million times, God did over, the Holy Spirit did over 33 things to you or gave you 33 things all at one moment when he saved you.

When he opened your eyes, he made you aware of Jesus. Said, there he is, you've never seen him before. I just opened your eyes. You're not dead now, you're alive. You can hear, what are you gonna do with him?

And you made the choice. You're not a puppet on strings, you made the choice. Now, I think God is a wise parent. How many of you ever got your children to do something and made them think it was their choice when it was really your choice, right?

You can do that. I've done it a million times. I love doing it with grandbabies. So like soon to be 14 of them, and I get them to do stuff and they think it's their choice. Think about that, Maddie, now she's gonna be thinking about that all day.

When did Papa do that to me? But anyway, I did it to your mom first. Then I did it to your dad after I met him.

He was an adult.

But people don't like that God can do that. People, oh, well, if God forced you to get saved, you're like a puppet on the string. You're just a robot. The Bible never teaches that anywhere. It does not teach that.

It teaches that God foreordained who would be saved, but it also teaches he foreordained how they would be saved and the means of it and every detail in between, before and after. And all of those things are equally important because the salvation doesn't happen without any of them.

So you got people on the one side that are hyper-Calvinist that are wrong because they don't think men do any, that your decisions make any difference. And then you got the Armenians on the other side.

The strong Armenians are wrong because they leave out or change all the verses that talk about predestination, election, and foreordination and all of that. The only one they like to keep is foreknowledge.

Unfortunately, you can't keep part of God. You gotta take him as he is. And if you don't love him that way, then you don't know God. You got an idol. You're worshiping somebody you made up. But in this case, he was happy that they were steadfast in their movement into Christ.

And that has to mean their growth, their movement to be more like him every day rather than to be static and do nothing. So, you know, the Bible talks about two kinds of righteousness. What's the most important one?

Positional righteousness. What does that mean? That's something God did to you that you can't do anything about. The moment you saw Christ because the Holy Spirit awakened you and you received him as your personal Lord and Savior, at that moment, he made you to be righteous.

He gave you the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's a matter of imputation, which means like an accounting figure. He took Jesus's righteousness, put it in you. Before he did that, he took your sins and placed them on Christ's body when he was on the tree.

And he took his righteousness and put it in you. That's position, you can't change that. But what's the other kind that's taught in the Bible? Experiential, some of the old writers call it experimental, which I kind of like that word.

Something you experiment with. Oh, this is interesting. I'm a fallen creature experimenting with being a good person. That doesn't save you, but I guess what though? After you are born again, you're supposed to experiment with that.

What is it like to actually be like Jesus for a while? I like experimental. But it's different because it's something you have to choose to do. It has nothing to do with your born againedness, other than the fact that you're now alive.

You're born into God's family. You're part of his family. Now God's saying, okay, live like it. Don't be a hypocrite, live like who you are. On the inside, you're a new man or woman, live like that. And we don't always do it.

And we confuse people when we don't. And we hurt people when we don't. And we hurt ourselves when we don't. But we are supposed to be having faith into Christ and growing in our faith all the time. And faith cometh by what?

And hearing by what?

Here it is.

So if you want to go into Christ more, get in this Bible more. On your own, by yourself, or with your loved ones too. Works good too. And spend more and more time in there. But he was proud of these people because they had order in their church and they were steadfastness in their growth, which is an interesting play on words, isn't it?

Because they're steadfast, but they're moving. They're moving more and more toward Christ. And the way that we really grow, if you think about it, is not by trying to do more good things and stopping the bad things.

Because the minute you try to stop the bad things, you'll just do them more. It's by holding Jesus' hand more often through the day and walking with him. Making a willful choice to be spirit-filled, which means just take his hand like Peter did and walk on the water with him for a while, but don't let go and don't look down.

Because as soon as you do, you're going into the flesh. And when you do, bad things will happen, or can happen, and usually do happen, eventually. So don't stay in that mode long. Don't get in it at all if you can help it, but we're human.

And God made us this way on purpose. He put the treasure in earthen vessels so that he would get the glory. So it's all on purpose. So don't get too mad at yourself when you fall back into the flesh, but at the same time, you should regret it.

And you will if you're saved. I don't even have to tell you that, because you will. And then you go to 1 John 1, 9, and then you read it. And then you ask yourself, do I believe it? Because he says, if you confess your sins, admit that it's a sin, I'm faithful and just to cleanse you from all of your sins, even the ones you forgot to confess.

And so now you're perfectly clean. Your conscience is perfectly clean. You were already positionally perfectly clean because his blood's already been applied to you and removed all the sin, even your future sin.

That's the positional righteousness. But what about the experiential? If you lack that for a moment or two or a day or two or a week or two, you start feeling guilty and Satan comes and accuses you and your mind said, maybe you're not even saved because look how you're living.

And that's when you need to go to 1 John 1, 9, confess your sins to the Lord, not to humans, but to the Lord. And he will restore that fellowship and keep and shoo Satan away and so forth. So that is the life.

It sounds tiring and it is, but God says in his wisdom, it was best for us to live this life this way.

So it's a battle.

You're in spiritual warfare all the time. You're always battling. You need to have not only your church in order, you should be going to a church that has proper order. You need to have your home in order.

And the man needs to be a spiritual leader, but he's not a dictator. He leads by example. And all of that needs to be in order. And when those two institutions get in order, the nation can get more in order or maybe be saved.

You never know. It's got a lot of catching up to do at this point. So this is what Paul was excited about. Now, when you get down to, it's interesting, by the way,.

This little word for order,.

It looks like the word for taxi, like a taxi cab in Greek, it's taxis. But that word is interesting because it means a fixed succession. Now think about that, Dave. Fixed succession means moving. So interesting.

A fixed succession of rank and character. And it also means official dignity. So how many churches do you think have elders that have dignity and the people see the dignity and they give dignity to the elders and it's a dignified matter?

It's not some guy telling off-color jokes to bring new people in or doing whirly stuff to get huge crowds or whatever. It's a person who has dignity or people. It can be multiple elders in a church, depending on how big it is.

And we have multiple elders already here. We're getting ready for growth, right?

Who cares?

I mean, I hope we can reach the people God wants us to. But that word for order comes from this interesting Greek word where you have proper rank and character and dignity among the officials and all of that.

And that's why the apostle Paul was so proud of this particular church. Now look at verse six. "'As you have therefore received Christ Jesus, the Lord, "'so walk ye in him.'". So Paul, he moves from a place of commending the church to giving them an order, right?

And of course the Holy Spirit's inspired him to write this. So this is the Holy Spirit giving an order to us, to every local church. And listen to it very carefully because there's a great dividing line, always has been for 2000 years, between Judaizers and genuine biblical Christians.

Judaizers are people that wanna bring law and rule from man into mix it with grace somehow, which the two don't mix. Paul made that very clear. You can't mix the two because if it's law, it's not grace.

And if it's grace, it's not law. So you can't mix them. But Judaizers always wanna mix them to make you feel that they can jump through more hoops than you can so they can be your teacher. And usually they'll say, well, I'm part Jewish.

Many times, it's happened to me quite a few times. Well, I'm part Jewish. Oh, so now I've gotta listen to you. I mean, I've been studying at 45 years, you've been studying at 10, but you're Jewish so I gotta listen to you, right?

That's how it works with these people. And this next verse leads us into the most marvelous parallel passage, which we won't have time for the whole thing today unless we take the time, but and it's in the book of Galatians that you can see to fix this problem and it needs to be fixed in America.

Charlotte and I have two lady friends that we know in Mahia where we live on a ranch near there, but they're spreading this ridiculous works, Judaism all over Mahia and they're online too. And they didn't used to believe that way.

So they have apostatized. Well, this would fix them if they would listen and if the Holy Spirit would open their ears. But so look what it says. As you therefore received Jesus Christ, the Lord, walk in him the same way.

So the same way that you received him as your Lord and Savior, walk in him that way. Now, you really do have to, I mean, verse seven tells us a little bit about it, but if you go into Galatians chapter three, it tells you everything about it.

But look at verse seven, rooted and built up in. Now that's the word ein. So that means you are in Christ and while you're in Christ, which is he's always in you, but you're in him when you choose to be spirit filled.

When you're in Christ, you are rooted. Now, who is the root of Jesse? Jesus, so you are connected to Jesus, rooted, and that builds you up, edifies you is the Greek word. It builds you up in Christ and you are established in the faith, that's ein.

You're established in the faith. That means the true biblical Christian faith as you have been taught by the apostles and your teachers all the way down till today and the Bible, especially the Bible.

If it doesn't match the Bible, go with the Bible. Abounding therein with thanksgiving. So this was his brief summary of what he would write to the church at Galatia. Now we got a little time, so let's look at that.

Turn with me to Galatians chapter three in verse one. And it's astounding how it starts because he exhorted the church at Colossae not to be like the church in Galatia because the church at Galatia had allowed some false teachers to come in unawares and begin to teach them, well, Jesus is great but you got to add Moses to that or you don't really have true Christianity.

You've got to add the laws of Moses and do all of it. And then you'll be right with God and go to heaven someday. Of course, if you were asked to ask one of them, if you died right this minute, where would you go?

They would have no idea because they have no eternal security if your salvation depends on stuff you're doing because you ain't going to do it right. And Paul tells them that in a little bit better language than my Texan.

So look at it.

He says, oh, foolish Galatians. Wow, that's how he starts. Anybody that goes backwards from grace and you go backwards to the law is foolish. Oh, foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? So they are not only foolish, they have been bewitched.

Now you look into that word, it's frightening because that word means that an unclean spirit has given you doctrines of demons and you bought into them. So you have been either indwelt by or influenced by an unclean spirit who is giving you the doctrine and making you think it's the Holy Spirit telling you stuff to teach people.