Colossians 1:9-12
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 goal of Bible study? Or, when you study the Bible, what are you after? Maybe even more to the point, what biblical passages inform your understanding of the goal of knowing God’s Word?
The first time I was explicitly confronted with those kinds of questions was about ten years ago. I was going to be teaching hermeneutics (a fancy word for Bible study methods) on a TLI trip. Within the first few pages of the curriculum, I came across the heading: “The Goal of the Bible: ___”. As soon as I saw it, I knew that I’d never consciously filled in the blank, but I should have. The fact that I hadn’t was both surprising and a bit disorienting.
I began running possible answers through my mind, but I never got passed high level answers like “Glorifying God” or “Learning what God has told us” or “Finding God’s will or God’s plan”.
As caught off guard as I was with the initial question, I was even more caught off guard by the curriculum’s answer. As I mentioned, I wasn’t sure what the answer should be, but I was sure the answer I found in the teacher’s manual wasn’t on my radar. The answer it gave was: Practical wisdom (knowing how to live).
For reasons I still don’t fully grasp, that answer just didn’t sit right with me for a long time. I think, maybe, it just seemed too simple, too ordinary, too practical, too under the sun. I’d drunk a lot of big God theology Kool-Aid by that point and it felt like anything other than “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” or “to delight in the sovereignty of God over all things” was too man-centered, too down to earth.
Of course, it is true that all things ultimately exist for the glory of God (including the Bible and its study), and I knew, of course, that God calls us to live in certain ways, but I’d never quite fit those two puzzle pieces together before then. The Spirit was kind to do so that day. Glorifying God must begin with right doctrine, but it must always end with right practice. I learned then that God theology is the most practical theology of all.
Our passage for this morning shines a bright light on that. In it, Paul helps us to see in simple, explicit, biblical terms that the goal of Bible study is to enable God’s people “to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” (aka, practical wisdom).
As we consider our passage for this morning, I want to help you see the big idea in it: Living lives that are worthy of the Lord and fully pleasing to Him requires right thinking, right living, and the grace of God. The main takeaway, then, is to give ourselves to prayerfully studying all of God’s Word and prayerfully applying it to all of our lives.
Walking in a Manner Worthy of the Lord
The heart of this passage is, once again, Paul’s prayer that the Colossian Christians would live lives worthy of the Lord. We find that within his recounting to them, his prayers for them; and with that, we find amazing help in understanding what it means to live a life that is fully pleasing to God and how to go about it.
We Cannot Walk Worthily Apart from the Grace of God – Paul’s Prayer of Supplication (9)
To back up just a bit, in v.3, Paul mentions that every time he prays for the Colossians, it includes a time of giving thanks to God for the blessings He’d already given them (namely, their faith in Jesus). In our passage, Paul continued to describe his prayers for the Colossians, mentioning that he also asked God for things they still needed. There are two things I want you to see in that regard.
First, Paul is a model of the kind of consistency these kinds of prayers of supplication ought to have. He recognized a significant need in the church at Colossae and committed himself to taking that need before God until God answered his prayer.
We see this right away in v.9, “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you…”. We’ll come to the content of the prayers Paul never ceased to pray in a few minutes, but the first point here is that there were prayers he never stopped praying.
To be clear, Paul was not saying (as it kind of sounds like) that he had been praying without stopping (every minute of every day) for months. Instead, simply, he’s saying that he’s taken certain needs of the Colossians to God consistently since he first became aware of the needs.
Think back to our member meeting last Sunday. As elders, we asked you all to prayerfully consider four options for addressing the space issues we have here on Sundays. Our hope is that you would have begun praying that day and that you’d continue praying until the Lord brings some resolution to our situation. We’re asking, in Paul’s 1:9 language, that you’d not cease praying for this until God moves in it.
Praying like that requires love, intentionality, discipline, and trust. It requires love in that you won’t pray for it once, much less all the way through to resolution, if you don’t treasure Christ and long for that which is best for our church. It requires intentionality in that it won’t just happen if you don’t write it down and make a plan to keep it in front of you. It requires discipline in that, as we all know, it’s far easier to begin a good thing than it is to finish it. And it requires trust, because who would keep praying if they didn’t believe God beckons, hears, cares, and will be faithful to His promise to work for our good?
Paul prayed like this and I commend this kind of prayer-life to you all as well. Get a prayer journal. Have certain times of day (or days of the week) that you set aside to praying for the things you write down. And don’t stop praying until God’s answer is clear.
We can’t pray like this for every single request we take before God. But a right understanding of prayer, the world we live in, and the God who hears our prayers, means that we must do so sometimes—that there are some needs that are worth pleading with God for, as did the persistent widow in Luke 18.
The second thing I want you to see here is that Paul prayed like this because he knew that the things the Colossian Christians needed most were not possible apart from God’s grace.
Therefore, he prayed for God’s illuminating grace. The Colossians needed God to open their eyes if they were to see what is true of God and His will; and so Paul asked God for this grace for the Colossians.
Paul also prayed for God’s sanctifying grace. The very heart of Paul’s prayers were for God to grant the Colossians new minds and new affections. They not only needed to see what was true, but they needed to learn to love it above all. And, therefore, Paul prayed for God’s sanctifying grace.
And Paul prayed for God to grant strengthening grace to the Colossians. He knew that the Colossians’ only hope of living as God intended them to through this trial was through God’s power. And so he asked God to grant it.
Everything the Colossians needed comes only by God’s grace. Paul knew that faith-driven prayer is the most significant means of God’s grace for Christians…and so he never ceased praying for the Colossians.
Grace, as a pastoral aside, I would commend three things to you regarding your prayer life. I’m simply going to name them, but I’d encourage you all to press into them in your DG this week. First, your prayer life is probably the best indicator of your spiritual health and maturity. Second, it is usually best to pray the Bible. And third, a robust prayer life consists of a balance between prayers of adoration (God, I praise you for being / that you are ___ ), prayers of confession (God, Your Word calls me to ___, but I have failed to honor that. I am sorry for my sin. Help me remember the gospel and walk in light of it), prayers of thanksgiving (God, thank you for being kind to me in that ___ ), and prayers of supplication (God, please fulfill this need in my life).
So far, the body of this letter has been a masterclass on that kind of prayer life. That is, in vs.3-12, we’re seeing a lengthening description of Paul’s exemplary prayer life on behalf of the Colossian Christians.
What, then, did Paul specifically ask God for on the Colossians behalf?
We Cannot Walk Worthily Apart from Knowledge of God’s Will (9, 10)
The beginning of Paul’s without-ceasing prayer was that God would fill the Colossians with the knowledge of Him and His will. We see that at the end of v.9.
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…
He echoes that prayer at the end of v.10, again letting the Colossians know that he continually asked God to cause them to be continually “increasing in the knowledge of God…”.
Knowledge of God, knowledge of God’s will, spiritual wisdom, and spiritual understanding. Those are the things Paul first prayed for the Colossians. Paul’s prayer was, at its heart, a plea for God to fill them with an accurate understanding of, the truth concerning, who God is and what He wanted from them.
Grace, again, I want you to consider two specific things regarding this prayer.
First, I hope it’s obvious, but God is who He is, He demands what He demands, and everyone on earth will be held accountable to whether or not we conform to those things—whether we know them or like them or not. It should be clear, then, that our current culture’s belief (and our own belief at times) that God and His will are ours to define and then take and leave as we see fit, is a lie from hell that only leads to hell.
Paul’s prayer was a recognition that sin keeps us blinded to and repulsed by the things of God and the will of God unless God, by His (illuminating) grace, opens our eyes, minds, and hearts to them.
The second thing I want you to consider is how God reveals Himself and His will. Paul was asking God to fill them with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, but how does God do so?
For the Colossians, God did so primarily through the OT, Paul’s writings, and the Holy Spirit. Today, in much the same, but in an even fuller way, God has given us all He requires us to know of Him and His will in the Bible. And we have the same indwelling Spirit to grant us wisdom and understanding as we hear and read and study it.
And so, Grace, the monumental questions this idea forces upon us are these: Do you long to know God and His will for you, for your family, for our church? Do you want to know who He is in truth no matter what it means for your life? Do you want to know what it means to live as He intends in every aspect of your life even if it causes changes and disruptions to your plans? And are you willing to do what it takes to find those things?
If so, if your answer is yes, then pray the same prayer for yourself as Paul prayed for the Colossians, “My Father in heaven, may I be filled with the knowledge of Your will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding?” Pray it in the same way: Without ceasing. And then give yourself to the Word of God, where God has revealed everything we need concerning His nature and will.
Practically, prepare well for sitting under the preached Word. Read the text in advance. Pray for our preaching and for understanding and conviction for yourself, your family, and our whole church. Ask the Spirit to open your eyes to these things, convict you of where you fall short, and to fill you with an eagerness to have your mind renewed. And go to DG each week to be reminded of, discuss, and work together to apply the sermon.
Practically, come to Berea. Do your best to read the book of the Bible that we’re covering before you come. Prepare you’re yourself and your family with things to look out for and questions to consider. Go over your Sunday school kids’ homework assignments with them and prepare them to engage the biblical stories.
And practically, have daily quiet time. Slow down to meditate on Scripture and study it to the best of your ability. You don’t have to read fast, but you do need to read systematically, taking in the whole counsel of God over time. Consider picking up one of the reading plans in the back if you don’t have one and just start reading through one of the columns. Use this time to hide the Word in your mind and heart (memorize it). Pray slowly over whatever passage you’re reading for that day. Come up with at least one question to ask someone else, one glory to share with someone else, and one command to obey with someone every time you get into the text.
I’m so thankful that so many of you are already doing these things in faith. Thank God!
The fundamental principles here are that (1) Every aspect of the Christian life begins with true, spiritual knowledge and understanding of God and His will, (2) We gain that, by God’s design, through the reading of His Word and the ministry of His Spirit and Church, and (3) It is God’s grace alone that illuminates and draws us to it all.
Paul knew those things and longed for them for the Colossians, and so He didn’t stop asking God for them on their behalf.
Let me say one more thing before we move on to the meat of the text. Did you notice that Paul didn’t just pray for some measure of knowledge of the things of God? He prayed that the Colossians would “be filled with the knowledge of His will” and “in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” and that they would be ever “increasing in the knowledge of God.”
This is chief among our aims for the rest of our lives on earth and among our chief occupations in heaven: To have our minds truly and entirely renewed and perpetually filled by God. To fully, truly, entirely know who God really is, what He really wants, what it really means, and how to really go about it for His glory and our good.
The Essence of a Worthy Life (10-12)
As remarkable as all that is, as necessary as all that is, that’s not the end. We need to be filled with the knowledge of God and His will, but as a means to an even greater end.
In other words, we must always be cautious of thinking that understanding the things of God is enough. I need to be careful about how I say this, but there are some who have made an idol out of the Bible and Bible study. They love reading it as fascinating literature. They love the poetry, the history, and the riveting stories. It fills them with spiritual feelings. They understand it in a way that makes them feel special. It is their ticket into a certain kind of friendship or club or esteem. They’re fascinated with the things of God, but it stops there. They think many right thoughts about God and believe that to be sufficient.
O, but the demons have many of those things, and stop there. Jesus spent a good deal of His ministry on earth condemning those with exceptional levels of knowledge of God and His Word, but stopped there. Grace, everyone who stops there, who stops with knowledge of God alone, does not truly know God.
That’s why Paul’s prayer didn’t stop there. He continued on, asking God that the church in Colossae “may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” and here’s the key (v.10), “so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord”.
What’s the goal of Bible study? What’s the goal of gaining knowledge of God and His will? What’s the goal of our preaching, teaching, and personal devotions? It is to enable us to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord; to live the life God designed us to live; to act in ways that are consistent with who God is and who we are; to allow us to do all that God requires of us.
In other words, Paul didn’t merely want the Colossian Christians to know who God is and what He wanted. He wanted them to fully know who God is and what He wanted so that they would live fully in light of it. Knowledge of God’s will is critical, we cannot honor Him or live as He intends without it, and the more we have, the more we can honor Him and live as He intends, but we need those things, SO AS to walk in manner worthy of the Lord.
Paul then names six elements of walking in a manner worthy of the Lord: (1) It is fully pleasing to God, (2) It bears fruit in every good work, (3) It is continually growing in knowledge of God, (4) It is empowered by God, (5) It is enduring, patient, and joyful, and (6) It is marked by thankfulness to God for granting such grace.
Let’s take a brief look at each of those as a means of growing in them ourselves.
- It is fully pleasing to God (10)
I invite you, indeed I urge you, to slow down for a moment here. Paul’s prayer was that the Colossian believers would know God and His will, so that they might live lives worthy of God. And the first aspect of a worthy life is that it is “fully pleasing to [God]”.
You don’t need to know a lot about the Bible or the Christian gospel to recognize the astounding statement that is. Live lives worthy of God? Fully pleasing to Him in every way? Most of the time I can’t even imagine living for a single day in a way that is worthy of and fully pleasing to my wife or kids or you all, much less living my entire life in a manner that is worthy of and fully pleasing to God.
But Paul asks God to grant exactly that to the Colossians. As the letter unfolds, we’ll see this reality with ever-growing clarity, but the point is that Paul could pray this prayer and God could answer it, because, and only because, the Colossian Christians were in Christ. They were already fully pleasing to God because they were already fully united to Jesus, who is the righteousness and pleasure of God. And so it is for us.
At the same time, as Paul will also make increasingly clear throughout this letter, it brings God a different kind of pleasure when we, filled with the knowledge of God and His will, think right thoughts, feel right feelings, and do right things in faith (which leads the next point). - It bears fruit in every good work (10)
A second aspect of a life that is worthy of God—that is ordered in a manner consistent with who God is, and that is part of living in a way that is fully pleasing to Him—is one that bears fruit in every good work (v.10).
Bearing good fruit, as we saw last week in v.6, is something the grace of God alone does in us. There is a very real way in which we cannot bear good fruit. In that way, we give ourselves to faithfulness and God causes fruit to be produced through that. And in that way, Paul’s point is that our role is to do good works, trusting that God will bear the right fruit, in the right amounts, among the right people, at the right time, through them.
So do good works, Grace, not bad works. Care for the poor. Clean up the kitchen for your parents if you see it needs it. Struggle with all God’s energy (1:29) to walk alongside a single mom. Pray for someone and let them know you did. Sit with and listen to someone who is going through a hard time. Remind them of the gospel. Forgive someone who has sinned against you. Apologize to someone you’ve sinned against. Visit an elderly person who is shut in. Read the Bible to them, sing with them, and pray for them. Advocate for justice for someone who needs a voice. Do good works and ask God to bear gospel fruit through it.
In order to live in a manner worthy of God, we need to know God and His will, from His Word, to know what good works are. We need to choose to give ourselves (with the Spirit’s help) to do them. And we need God’s Spirit to cause our good works to bear good fruit when we do. All of that is what Paul longed and prayed for. - It is continually growing in knowledge of God (10)
I love that Paul begins with knowledge of God and then circles back to it. This is how God’s sanctifying grace works in us. By His grace, through His Word, Spirit, and Church, we come to know certain true, glorious, awesome aspects of who He is. That causes us to know what it means to live for Him and to want to do so in a manner fully pleasing to Him. From there, His Spirit causes us to begin to bear fruit, to see His hand working miracles through us—sinners saved as we share the gospel, the poor made glad as we serve in Jesus’ name, the lonely befriended as we love as we’ve been loved, our own lives changed in ever-increasing ways into the likeness of Jesus. And (here’s the key) through all of that, through seeing God’s faithfulness and power at work, we’re driven back to God’s Word for more spiritual wisdom and understanding and God causes us to increase allthemore “10 … in the knowledge of God…”. And further up and further in we go.
We’re about to see that this upward thrust is empowered and persevered by God as well.
But it’s important to recognize that, as with so many aspects of life under the sun, the opposite is true as well. All the upward pressure God designed us to experience as sanctifying power, can also push us down if we neglect God’s design. If we believe wrong things about God, we will live lives that are unworthy of God, we will live lives that displease Him, we will bear bad fruit, and all of that will make us believe more and greater lies about God. And further down and further out we’ll go. This is true in our marriages, in our parenting, our friendships, in our ministries, at our jobs…and every other aspect of our lives that are rooted in lies about God.
There is always pressure on our lives, either toward God’s pleasure when we live in faithful obedience, according to true knowledge of His will, or away from it when we don’t, living in lies. - It is empowered by God (11)
All of this is a lot. It’s overwhelming for anyone first considering it and even more so for everyone who has truly sought to live in light of these things. Indeed, the strongest man alive couldn’t possibly do what Paul was praying for and commending to the Colossians. Who, but God alone is sufficient for such a life?
The answer, of course, is God alone. But thanks be to God, Paul knew God’s power in him and so he prayed for that same power to fill the Colossian Christians. He prayed that they would be thoroughly transformed in their living by the total renewing of their minds “according to the glorious might” of God. He knew that it was only in God’s power that they could even begin to live as God intended and so he prayed that they would be “strengthened with all [God’s] power.”
Grace, may we repent of every ounce of practical atheism! May we seek the Lord’s forgiveness for pridefully attempting to do His will in our own strength. May we grieve every time our first thought is to scheme better or try harder or plan further, instead of pray humbler and trust faithfuller.
It is a truly miserable place to be, to know God’s will and to attempt to live in light of it in our own strength. Paul knew that, that’s what he did for the first half of his life, and so he prayed that the Colossians would live out their faith in God’s power, not their own. - It is enduring, patient, and joyful (11)
Under the best circumstances, this would be a steep climb. But as you know, the Colossians were a long way from the best circumstances. The main point of the letter was to warn the small, out-of-the-way, in-the-minority, persecuted Colossian church, of a serious and deadly heresy and call them to stand up against it in the knowledge and power of God.
In light of what we know of the Colossian believers, there’s little doubt that they would heed Paul’s admonition in this regard. They would most certainly fix their eyes on Jesus and step out of the boat onto the water in the storm. But even those who are faithful enough to rely on God’s strength to do God’s will, are often soon tempted to look at the storm instead of the Lord of it.
More than knowledge of God, more than knowledge and fruitfulness, more even than God’s knowledge and fruitfulness in His power, Paul prayed for all those things and the kind of patience and endurance they’d need to persist in them over time and through opposition (v.11).
What’s more, perhaps most powerfully of all, he also prayed that they’d be able to do all of this “with joy” (v.11). It’s one thing to be able to stoically endure that which is good, but hard and discouraging. It’s another thing altogether to be able to do so “with joy” and for the joy set before you.
The example I’ve given several times, I’m sure, happened again this past Tuesday. Michigan State played Rutgers in basketball. It was supposed to be an easy win, but MSU ended up having to fight and claw to get Rutgers’ lead down to 9 at halftime. That’s where I had to turn the game off (because DG was starting). An hour and a half later, I checked the score and saw that MSU ended up winning in overtime. When I got home and watched the game, it was a very different experience than had I watched it live. I knew the outcome and so, while it was still painful to watch all the turnovers and missed shots from MSU and the crazy, out-of-character, beyond-the-NBA-three-point-line shots Rutgers was hitting all over the place, there was a transcending joy that overrode the pain.
It is a silly example, of course, but one that I think is helpful to make sense of what Paul was praying. He wasn’t asking God to make painful things unpainful. We’re not meant to pretend that hurtful things don’t hurt or that hard things aren’t hard. He was praying, though, that God would cause the Colossians to believe His promises concerning a greater glory and good that He was working through their trials, and therein give them a kind of joy that transcended all of it, filling them with all the patience and endurance they’d need. - It is marked by thankfulness to God for granting such grace in Jesus (12)
Finally, in the way of providing a bridge between this Sunday’s sermon and next, I want to quickly and simply point out the final aspect of a life worthy of the Lord that Paul prayed. It was that all their right thinking and all the right actions that flowed from it would be wrapped entirely in thanksgiving to God. Paul started the body of this letter by acknowledging that he gave continual thanks to the Father for His work in the Colossians. Here Paul lets them know that he was praying that they too would know the kindness of God, “who had qualified them to share in the inheritance of the saints in light,” such that their lives would be ones of unwavering thankfulness; that they, like him, would always be “giving thanks to the Father.”
Once again, let me say one more thing before I close. Just as Paul didn’t pray for some measure of knowledge of God and His will (but for the fullness thereof), neither did he pray for some measure of transformation within them. He prayed that they would be “fully pleasing” to God, that they would bear “fruit in every good work,” and that they would be “strengthened with all power” “for all endurance.”
Conclusion
Living lives that are worthy of the Lord and fully pleasing to Him requires right thinking, right living, and the grace of God. The main takeaway, then, is to give ourselves to prayerfully studying all of God’s Word and prayerfully applying it to all of our lives.
As we turn now to the Lord’s Table, let it remind us afresh that Christ alone is our hope in life and death. It is His work that our faith is in, even as we work out our faith in all of life for His glory.