Colossians 1:9-14
9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Introduction
What is the hardest thing someone has told you to do? I know some of you have been told to do really hard things in the military, by a boss, by your doctor, and by a family member.
More to the point, have any of you been told to do something you didn’t think was even possible? If so, how did you respond? Did you even try? What made you think it was impossible?
Well, it’s important for you all to know that Christianity is filled with “impossible” commands. It’s a command to dead people to be born again and believe the gospel (John 3:3). It’s a command to be holy as God is holy (1 Peter 1:15-16). It’s a command to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). It’s a command to count all trials as joy (James 1:2). It’s a command to love your enemies (Matthew 5:44). It’s a command to lose your life so you can find it (Matthew 10:39). It’s a command to give everything you have to the poor (Matthew 19:21). It’s a command to love God with all you have (Matthew 22:37). It’s a command to hate your father and mother (Luke 14:26). It’s a command to eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood (John 6:54). It’s a command to fit through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). It’s a command to follow Jesus wherever He leads and whatever it costs (Luke 14:33). And, as we see in our passage for this morning, it’s a command to change kingdoms (Colossians 1:12-14) and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him (1:10).
The question is, of course: How is it possible to do the impossible? And the answer, as I mean to help you see, is that what is impossible for man is possible with God. Graciously, mercifully, miraculously, God provides for us what He requires of us. That’s the big idea of this passage: from the beginning to the end of the Christian life, God gives His people all we need to live lives worthy of and fully pleasing to Him. And the main takeaway is to work hard at all that God has commanded us to do in the faith and strength He provides.
Before I pray, I invite you to be humbled and amazed by that good news. You do not rightly understand what Jesus calls you to if it does not seem impossible. But you do not understand the grace of God if you do not recognize that He provides what He requires.
God Provides What He Requires to Live the Christian Life (9-12)
As we wrap up this section of Paul’s letter, I want to give you a brief recap of what we’ve already covered in it. As I do, I hope you’ll be able to clearly see that God truly does provide all that He requires to live as He intends no matter our circumstances. And I hope you’ll be able to see that it’s just as true for us today as it was for the Colossians then.
You may have noticed that Colossians 1:3-14 is all one big prayer. In the first half, in vs.3-8, Paul prays, thanking God for the work He’d already done in the Colossians. More specifically, he thanks God for the faith, hope, and love He’d established and preserved in them through their hope in the gospel and through significant trial. Paul continually thanked God that His grace was more than enough to allow the Colossian Christians to see that Jesus is a treasure worth far more than all the inevitable and remarkable difficulties they faced for trusting in Him.
Then, beginning in v.9, Paul moves from a prayer of thanksgiving to a prayer of supplication. He moves from thanking God for the grace He’d already given them, to asking God to grant the Colossians a new and fuller measure of grace. In that, we find one of the clearest explanations of how God means and empowers us to live lives worthy of and fully pleasing to Him. That is, a right reading of Paul’s prayer for the Colossians in 9-12 helps us make sense both of the rest of this letter and of our own lives in Christ in a profound way.
God Provides Knowledge of His Will for the Christian Life (9)
The gist of this portion of His prayer is: Living in a manner worthy of and pleasing to God in any circumstance (which is the very purpose of our existence) begins by knowing God’s will for our lives. We cannot live as God intends if we do not know what He intends. But we cannot know what God intends unless God graciously reveals it. So Paul asked God to fill the Colossians with the knowledge of His will.
If you don’t want to know God’s will and aren’t willing to seek it where it is found, you cannot live the Christian life. And so, pray that prayer, Grace. It is impossible for any of us to know what God wants from us apart from God revealing it to us, both in content and meaning. Ask God for both and He will grant both—He has granted them!
God Provides All Spiritual Wisdom and Understanding for the Christian Life (9)
More than merely knowing His will, though, Paul knew that the Colossians also needed to know how to apply it to their present circumstances. In other words, knowing that it’s God’s will that you love your enemy is not the same as knowing what exactly it looks like to love the actual people who are tempting you to believe heresy (as was the case for the Colossians). Knowing how to do so—knowing how to apply God’s will once you have it—is what Paul calls “spiritual wisdom and understanding”.
Paul knew that the Colossians needed this, that it was impossible for them to get on their own, and that God provides what He requires, and so he asked God for it on their behalf.
Pray that prayer, Grace. It is as impossible for any of us to translate knowledge of God’s will into knowledge of God-worthy, God-pleasing specific actions apart from God’s help as it was for the Colossians. Ask God, therefore, to provide what He requires of you—spiritual wisdom and understanding—and He will grant them.
God Provides All Power and His Glorious Might for the Christian Life (10)
Paul knew, of course, that all of this was impossible for the Colossians or anyone else. He knew it was impossible for them to even want any of it in their own strength. That is why this is a prayer before it is a set of instructions. And it’s also why He asks God to accomplish all of that in the Colossians by granting them His power and glorious might. Paul knew that God would empower them to understand, desire, and do what He’d called them to or they would never be able to do it.
Pray that prayer, Grace. Ask God to strengthen you for the specific aspects of His will that you must obey today.
God Provides Endurance for the Christian Life (11)
Even more, though, he also knew that this was not a one-time charge. It’d be impossible for the Colossians to live as God called them to even once, but the actual call was to keep doing it continually. They were to discern God’s will, apply it to their circumstances in a God-honoring way, even as their circumstances became more difficult and the cost to do so grew, over and over and over. Paul knew that God would provide what He requires or the Colossians would fail. And so, He prayed that God would grant them (not just some, but) “all endurance and patience”.
Pray that prayer, Grace. Ask God for the grace to faithfully live the Christian life continually, with all necessary endurance and patience, and He will grant it. He will sustain you through whatever He has for you.
God Provides Joy for the Christian Life (11)
That’s a lot, isn’t it? Any of that is impossible. All of that is even moreso. But Paul wasn’t done. He knew that God required even more from His people. If the Colossians were going to truly live in a manner worthy of God, they needed to know God’s will, how to apply His will, how to persevere in His will through every trial, and how to do so in joy!
It’s one thing to imagine summoning all your self-control and discipline to begrudgingly love your enemy—to seek what’s best for them even though they are actively working for your harm—but it’s something entirely different, something entirely more impossible, to do so “with joy”. How do you delight in doing good, continually to those who mean to do evil against you? It is impossible for man, but not for God. And so Paul prayed that God would grant the Colossians the joy He required of them.
Pray that prayer, Grace. Consider the one who causes you the most pain or tempts you to the most sin. Ask God to let you know His will for you in relation to them, ask Him for the wisdom you need to translate that into specific action, ask Him to grant you the ability to keep doing that good thing no matter how long it lasts, and ask Him to grant you the ability to do all of that, not in somber self-control, but in joyful obedience. Ask and He will grant it.
God Provides Thanksgiving for the Christian Life (12)
That has to be it, right? Living worthy and pleasing Christian lives can’t possibly call for anything more, can it? It’s already impossibly impossible. Paul asks God for one more thing on behalf of the Colossian Christians.
At the beginning of v.3 Paul thanked God for His work in the Colossians. At the beginning of v.12, Paul asked God, in light of everything else, to draw the Colossians into his thanksgiving.
The bookends of thanksgiving are the key feature of this section. Paul, as I hope you remember, prayed His prayers from prison, thanking God for the Colossians who were under a different kind of constant attack. Nevertheless, Paul’s primary disposition, and the primary disposition he invited them to adopt, was one of giving thanks to God for His amazing grace. This too, he knew was only possible in the strength God provides.
Pray that prayer, Grace. Ask God to fill you with non-stop thanksgiving, no matter your circumstances, no matter what living in light of the will of God costs you, in the certain knowledge that your every moment is already infinitely better than you deserve, and that as you do, you are proving that your every moment for eternity will be infinitely better still. Ask for what God requires and He will provide it.
All of that, once again, is where we’ve been—Paul’s prayer concerning the nature of the Christian life and the (gracious) means by which we are to live it.
And all of that sets us up for where we’re going. In vs.12b-14, we see that underneath everything we’ve seen is something even more impossible still. In those verses we see that we need God to provide what He requires not only to live the Christian life faithfully, but also to even begin it. That’s where we’ll turn now—to the impossibility of beginning the Christian life.
God Provides What He Requires to Begin the Christian Life (12-14)
What do I mean that the beginning of the Christian is impossible? Look again at vs.12-14 to see four essential, but “impossible” aspects of becoming a Christian.
12 … the Father… has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The heart of Paul’s message in those verses is that the beginning of the Christian life means being (1) delivered from the kingdom of darkness, (2) transferred into Christ’s kingdom of light, (3) redeemed, and (4) forgiven of our sins and each are impossible for us to do in our own strength. Let’s briefly consider each.
God Delivers from the Kingdom of Darkness (13)
Being clear on what constitutes the beginning of the Christian life begins with being clear on what the alternative is. The alternative, according to Paul, is to be under “the domain of darkness.” Before any of the Colossians were part of Christ’s Kingdom, they were (as were we) part of the kingdom of darkness.
Even though I (mistakenly) thought of myself as a Christian early on in my life, this was a totally foreign concept to me. For me (again, mistakenly), being a Christian was merely a matter of believing in “God” and being a good person. I certainly believed in something I’d learned to call “God” and I couldn’t even conceive of the idea that I wasn’t a good person, so obviously I was a Christian, I reasoned.
Had you told me then that I was actually under the dominion and within the domain of darkness, I really wouldn’t have understood what you meant, but I certainly wouldn’t have believed you. In fact, I would almost certainly have been insulted by the accusation. Sure, I wasn’t perfect, and sure I did some wrong things sometimes, but that’s a long way from “the domain of darkness”.
But what I was ignorant of is an essential, critical aspect of beginning the Christian life. Without understanding and accepting it, no one can begin the Christian life since the heart of the beginning of the Christian life is doing the impossible thing of escaping it.
Let’s back up just a bit. What does Paul mean when he speaks of being “the domain of darkness”? He is, as we’ll see at the end of v.14, categorically declaring that every man, woman, and child, since Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, have been born enslaved to sin and under the condemnation of God that comes from it.
Does that sound right to you? Is that how you understand the nature of mankind? Do you believe that we are truly born as slaves under the domain of darkness or do you, like I did for so many years, find that to be both false and offensive?
The idea is everywhere in the Bible, and especially in Paul’s writings (see also Psalm 51:5; 1 John 1:8).
Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Ecclesiastes 7:20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
Romans 3:23 …all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Ephesians 2:3 … we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
And throughout the Bible, and especially the NT, sin and darkness are inseparably linked. To be in sin is to be in darkness. To be in darkness is to be in sin (see also Ephesians 5:11).
John 3:19 … people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
2 Corinthians 6:14 …what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
1 John 1:5-6 …God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
Again, then, the Christian life begins with the understanding that we are born into the kingdom of sin and darkness—which, all by itself is impossible for us to do on our own.
What’s more, beginning the Christian life is not merely doing the impossible thing of recognizing our place in the kingdom of darkness, it is doing the even more impossible thing of escaping it. It’s not enough, of course, to simply acknowledge that we are enslaved to sin and enemies of God. We must free ourselves from its dominion. And that, again, is more impossible still.
The question then, of course, is who can begin the Christian life if even the very first step is impossible?
What is impossible for us, is possible for God. While we cannot affect our own escape from darkness’s domain, God can deliver us from it. Underneath the beginning and continuing of the Christian life is the reality that God alone can deliver us from darkness’s domain. And so He had for the Colossians, “13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness”.
And so He will for all who trust Him to provide what He requires. We require a deliverance from darkness that we are incapable of acknowledging or effecting and God provides it.
Pray that prayer, Grace; for yourself and everyone you love. Ask God to transfer you from the kingdom of darkness or ask Him to help you live more fully in light of the fact that He already has.
God Transfers into Christ’s Kingdom (12, 13)
If we are to be right with God, we need to be delivered from sin and darkness to be sure. But we need more than just that. We must also come under the domain of the beloved Son in light. And yet, of course, it’s just as impossible to enter the kingdom of light on our own as it is to leave the kingdom of darkness.
We can no more choose (or even want to choose) to make ourselves citizens of a righteous kingdom of light than we can choose to simply walk away from the enslavement of the tyrannical king of darkness.
Of this, in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, Paul wrote that the “… gospel is veiled…to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
But thanks be to God that, once again, He provides what He requires. We cannot accomplish it for ourselves, but we give perpetual “thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light… 13 …and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son…
What was impossible for us, Paul reminded the Colossians (and us) is possible for God. While we were powerless to qualify or transfer ourselves, He qualified and transferred us.
Consider two other passages that speak to this as well.
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Paul’s own life is a living picture of this in a very real way. Even without knowing it, He was under the domain of darkness before God shown a Great Light to him, delivering and transferring him. The story is in Acts 9.
Paul, a zealous Pharisee at the time (who was called Saul then), was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord [and] went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. [Believing himself to be in the light, he was in darkness.] 3 Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. 4 And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 5 And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do…”
At that time, God sent a man named Ananias to speak to Paul.
17 So Ananias … laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized…
Although Paul thought he was doing the Lord’s will, although he thought he was in the light, he was truly in darkness. In no small amount of irony, then, Jesus appeared to him in light, causing him to become blind that he might know his true condition, before giving him true sight for the first time in his life.
How amazing is that? In Paul’s conversion is a living picture of what he wrote of in our passage and of the impossible thing that must take place in every conversion.
Which is why it is so significant that God charged him with a ministry of light.
Acts 26:18 [God sent Paul to the gentiles with the message of the gospel] To open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.
The beginning of being right with God, the beginning of the Christian life, the beginning of salvation, is recognizing that we are under the domain of darkness instead of the domain of light. It is to recognize that we are in the kingdom of sin instead of Christ.
So how do we recognize that and move from one domain and kingdom to another? Again, it is truly impossible for us to do either on our own. We are powerless to escape darkness or come into the light. But what is impossible for man is possible for God. Just as it is God who delivers from darkness and sin, it is God who qualifies, transfers, gives, and calls us to light and Christ. God provides what He requires.
The final two points are the means by which He does the impossible work of impossibly delivering and transferring. We’ll examine both in greater detail as we make our way through Colossians. For now, though, hear Paul clearly as he asserts the fact that God provided the “impossible” requirements of our deliverance and transferal at a great cost.
Pray that prayer, Grace. Ask God to transfer you into Christ’s kingdom of light or ask Him to help you live more fully in light of the fact that He already has.
God Redeems (14)
Darkness would not simply release us. So how did God deliver us from it? We needed to be redeemed, ransomed from it. There was a cost, fixed by God Himself, that needed to be paid. The price was infinite and we were entirely impoverished. It was impossible for us to pay outside of hell.
Our only hope was that someone with unlimited love and power and grace, someone with the power over light and darkness, life and death, would redeem us.
Kids, you know the story. What was the only way Edmund was going to escape the witches rightful claim on his life? He couldn’t redeem himself. He needed someone else to pay his ransom. It had to be Aslan with a deeper magic. What was the only way Frodo could escape the ring’s power over him? Someone else had to carry the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. It had to be the sacrifice of Gollum. What was the only way Kalmar, and all who had sung the song of the Stone Keeper, could be redeemed from their fangdom or clovenness? Someone who hadn’t sung the song had to offer themselves as a ransom. It had to be Janner’s sacrifice.
Aslan, Gollum, and Janner all offered themselves as a ransom for others. Insodoing, they provided the redemption that Edmund, Frodo, and Kalmar needed, but were powerless to effect for themselves.
Those imaginary stories have so much power because they are tied to the One True Story of redemption. God delivered us from Darkness’s domain and transferred us into The Kingdom of Light by sending His beloved Son to pay our ransom, to redeem us.
Matthew 20:28 The Son of Man came…to give his life as a ransom for many.
1 Timothy 2:6 [Jesus Christ] gave himself as a ransom for all…
1 Peter 1:18-19 … you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
God lovingly provided what He required for our redemption in His one and only Son.
Pray that prayer, Grace. Ask God to fill you with joy and thanksgiving in light of His redeeming work in your life and the life of those you love.
God Forgives Sins (14)
And finally, the ransom was for the eternal hold that sin and darkness—that our sin—had on us. And the result was the forgiveness of our sins.
14 in [Jesus] we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Indeed, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:7 In [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our [sins], according to the riches of his grace…
Sin killed and enslaved us in darkness. Jesus offered His own blood to set us free and bring about the forgiveness of God.
God provided for us what He required from us.
Pray this prayer, Grace. Ask God to grant you faith in Jesus’ sacrificial death for the forgiveness of your sins.
Consider one more time, Grace, who is it that brought all of the about? Who provided the knowledge, wisdom, understanding, strength, endurance, joy, and thanksgiving we need to live the Christian life? God provided what we needed. And who was it that provided the deliverance, transferal, redemption, and forgiveness we need to begin the Christian life? God provided, yet again, all we needed.
Conclusion
I conclude, then, with one more question. If God provides all that He requires, what do we do?
We trust in God’s provision and we give ourselves entirely, in faith, and in the strength God provides, to do all that God has revealed. The great mystery of our relationship to God, in all His awesome, sovereign providence, is that we really do make real choices that have real effects and often require hard work and significant sacrifice.
The mystery is profound, but it’s important for us to recognize that God’s providential and revealed wills are often presented side-by-side in the Bible without any hesitation. That is, God’s sovereignty and our responsibility are often right next to each other with no hint of contradiction.
Consider Paul’s charge in Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling [Obey, work at God’s revealed will. Do it. Don’t forsake it. It’s essential. Why?], 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” [Obey and work hard at God’s revealed will because you know for certain that God’s providential will guarantees that it will never be in vain.]”.
That’s the big idea of this passage: from the beginning to the end of the Christian life, God gives His people all we need to live lives worthy of and fully pleasing to Him. And the main takeaway is to work hard at all that God has commanded us to do in the faith and strength He provides. That was Paul’s message to the Colossians in light of all they faced. And it is God’s message for us today. May it be so. Amen.