Encounter the Truth

Host: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. Jonathan, those are some really big, some really important questions that you've just thrown out there. How can we know if we're a true disciple of Christ?

Jonathan Griffiths: One of the things that Paul really draws out here at the opening of Colossians is that true and genuine faith that is rooted in Christ will bear fruit over time. He anticipates that in believers who are being transformed by the Spirit of God, there will be life change. He certainly sees it in the Colossian Christians, and he's rejoicing in that truth.

Host: You know, that is such an important thing for us to recognize that if faith is genuine, fruit is going to be the result. But what does fruit look like?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, that's something that we'll explore a little bit over this series in Colossians to be sure, but fruit will look like service of Christ and of his people. It will look like a growing godliness of life.

Host: Well, if you can, open your Bible to the book of Colossians. We're going to start right at the beginning. Chapter 1 and verses 1 through 8, as we begin a message called, Faith That Bears Fruit. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: I wonder if you have ever had the experience of suffering from the imposter syndrome. That sense that although you occupy a particular role at work or in a society or a community of some kind, you are not actually the real deal. You don't really belong. Others around you, they are genuine. They fit in, but actually, you're just faking it, and soon enough, everyone is going to know it.

The feeling is common enough. Imposter syndrome is a real thing. Maya Angelou, a noted author, poet, and activist, confessed to a strong sense of this herself. She says, "Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written 11 books, but each time I think, 'Uh-oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out.'"

Now, this sense, which can overwhelm in professional contexts, can be experienced in spiritual contexts too. Perhaps you know something of this. You hear other Christians talking about their spiritual walk, their experiences as believers. You listen to a Bible teacher from elsewhere talk about what it means to know the Lord, and you start to wonder, "Am I actually the real deal? Is my experience genuine, like their experience is? Have I really understood? Have I really believed, really come to a personal knowledge of the Lord, to a true Christian experience?"

We embark today on a study of Paul's letter written to the Colossian Christians. Colossae was a city in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey. It was east and inland from Ephesus. It was a significant center in its own right. It seems that Paul had never actually personally visited this church. It had been evangelized by a ministry associate of his, a man by the name of Epaphras.

Now, we may surmise that Epaphras learned the gospel from Paul himself, possibly at Ephesus, not so far away and perhaps not so long before. Maybe during that time, if you remember, spoken of in Acts chapter 19, when Paul spoke daily in the hall of Tyrannus. We read in Acts that the whole of Asia, the residents of Asia, heard the word of the Lord at that time when Paul spoke daily for two years.

In any case, Epaphras had heard the gospel and brought it back to his hometown of Colossae. Whatever the details, the gospel reached that place. A church was established. Now Epaphras has brought updated news to Paul, who is in prison at this point. He brought news to Paul that the Colossian Christians have been unsettled by some false teaching. There is a crisis at Colossae, and the believers need help. The believers need reassurance.

Now, it's quite clear from what Paul says that the recipients of this letter are true believers. They've received the gospel. They've responded to the message of Jesus and his salvation in repentance and faith. They were seeking to live the Christian life. As we see in our passage today, Paul is filled with thanksgiving as he hears of what God is doing through them.

But evidently, they needed comfort. They needed reassurance. They needed encouragement. Evidently, there were those in their midst, in their community, passing through their region. There were those who were challenging and questioning their understanding of the faith. We're going to see hints of this throughout the letter, indications that pseudo-believers and false teachers were questioning whether these Colossian Christians actually had the complete gospel, the authentic gospel, whether they really possessed all that they needed for spiritual fullness.

As Paul opens his letter to them, he sets out to reassure them that they are indeed the real deal who have received the real gospel. Now, as we find whenever we open up the Bible and dig into a new book, when we begin to discover what is the historical issue which is at the center of that book, when we begin to see what the believers in that day were facing and working through, when we begin to unpack the issues that Paul needed to address in them and for them, in their situation, and in their lives, here's what we discover, and it's always the way with the Bible.

We quickly discover that the issues that the ancient people of God were facing were not so unlike the issues that you and I are facing and grappling with today. The world has changed a great deal over the last 2,000 years. Society has been transformed almost unrecognizably, but here's one thing that has not changed: the human heart has not changed, not at all. The human heart, it hasn't changed one jot since Paul set out to write this ancient letter. Our needs, we are going to discover, are so much like the needs of the Colossian Christians.

The truth is, of course, that you and I can suffer from this sense of a spiritual imposter syndrome so easily ourselves. You and I can wonder when we hear different strands of spiritual teaching from elsewhere, when we read books or hear podcasts from different sources, when we encounter people who have different kinds of spiritual experience from ours, who claim perhaps to have a deeper or more profound understanding of the things of God, we can wonder, "Have you and I received the full gospel?" Have you ever wondered?

Have we seen and felt the complete Christian experience? Is my Christianity the real deal, the complete package? Am I a true disciple of Jesus Christ with true spiritual life within me? Now, these are important questions, aren't they? Many of us will grapple with them at different times and in different ways. Because we grapple with them, we need to hear together what it is that Paul has to say to us, and what he would teach us about the nature of the authentic gospel, its delivery, and its reception, and the authentic Christian experience that goes along with it.

Two principles underly the encouragement that Paul has for the Christian believers at Colossae. He wants them to understand that the authentic gospel is delivered in faithfulness, and it results in fruitfulness.

Host: Stay with us because we're going to come back, and we're going to look at that authentic gospel in just a few moments. You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths, and our message called, "Faith That Bears Fruit," part of a series called, "Walking Worthy." Today looking at Colossians chapter 1, verses 1 to 8. We'll get back to the message again in just a moment. If you ever miss a broadcast, join late, or want to go back and listen again, you can do that when you visit our website, encounterthetruth.org. There you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at our website, encounterthetruth.org. Let's get back to the message. Once again, here's Jonathan looking at the authentic gospel.

Jonathan Griffiths: First, the authentic gospel is delivered in faithfulness. "Have I received the real deal? Is what I received and took hold of actually the authentic article?" I received a text message on my phone just yesterday, purporting to be an alert from my bank. It said the following, I'll read it to you: "Purchase $897.56 at Apple Store. Reply 'Y' if this was you, and 'N' if it wasn't you, and immediate attention required." I had to think, "Had I just spent $900 at the Apple Store?" No.

Clearly, the next step was going to be a request for my login information. Fortunately, I can never remember my bank login information, so I'm not terribly vulnerable to this kind of fraud. They don't know, and I don't know, so we're okay. But we're used to this kind of thing, aren't we? It's not a message from my bank; it's a fake, a fraud, it's an imposter trying to reel me in. We have a constant battle, don't we, in discerning true from false, authentic from fake. You know, you're looking for a replacement for some part or something in the house. A piece broke off a toy or some equipment, and you go online and you start looking for a replacement, and there are tons of options.

But how do you discern if this one, which looks nice and cheap, if it is the real deal, an authentic part from the manufacturer? I was buying some airline tickets the other day, and I did a number of searches online for the same route. Different agencies and different websites offered different pricing. One travel website was markedly cheaper than all the rest, much cheaper than buying straight from the airline itself, and I thought, "Oh, this is interesting, that looks great." But I read the reviews and they all said, "Buy with caution from this site. This site can't be trusted to give you what you think you're going to get. Be prepared for a nasty surprise if you buy from them." How can we be sure we're getting the real deal?

This was a question that the Colossian Christians were grappling with when it came to the gospel that they had received and the gospel they had believed. Some troublers had evidently come into their midst. We don't know where from. We don't know if they were total outsiders or members of the community. We don't know to what extent these people were influenced by outright paganism or elements of Judaism. We've got pretty limited information to go on, and we shouldn't speculate too much, but they were clearly causing some trouble. They were clearly upsetting and unsettling the believers.

We see some hints of this over in chapter 2. I'd invite you just to look there to notice with me. Paul implores the believers. This just sets out the crisis, and it's good for us to have this in our mind's eye. Chapter 2 and verse 6. He implores them to keep going with Christ as they began, verse 6: "Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding with thanksgiving."

Having implored them, he goes on to warn them, verse 8. Notice it there: "See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ." The warning there then continues, verse 16: "Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath." Verse 18: "Let no one disqualify you."

We just imagine the kind of thing that's going on. Some folk come along, meet these Christians, hear their testimony of faith, look at their way of life, their devotion to Christ, and say, "You know, it's wonderful that you've got some faith. Wonderful that you're God worshipers, but you know, you're only kind of halfway there from what we're sensing, from what we can see." Sounds like the teaching you received, you know, it was fine as a kind of start, so far as it goes, but, "You know, you're missing some pretty important elements here. You see, true spirituality, true spiritual fullness, it's going to require just a little bit more, and we can share that with you."

"A bit more understanding, a bit more depth of spirituality, a bit more discipline, a bit more devotion. You know, once you understand this, or see this, or do this, or experience this, then you're going to enter into real spiritual fullness." Ever heard anything like that? Paul opens the letter with this strong reassurance that the message they have received is the genuine message. It has come to them in faithfulness. Notice how Paul opens verse 1: "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God."

If we have any familiarity with Paul's letters, if we've read them before or heard teaching on them, we're accustomed to hearing Paul introduce himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ. In a sense, it might just sound like a sort of formality. This is just the way Paul begins; it's the thing he likes to say, a throwaway, a filler just to get things going. But you know, Paul is never one to waste words. That's something it's worth knowing about him. Everything is intentional, each word bears weight, and mention of his apostleship is absolutely meaningful and significant here. It is calculated to communicate an important truth.

The word "apostle" literally means one who is sent. The apostles, the 12 of them, were sent into the world by the Lord Jesus Christ to be his official messengers. They were commissioned to bring his authoritative message of salvation, his reliable word, to a needy world. The apostles were responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the writing of the New Testament books, and their word is to be taken as Jesus' own word.

Notice what Paul goes on to say of his apostleship, it is "of Jesus Christ" or "of Christ Jesus." Paul was sent by Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed king from heaven, and he was sent by the will of God. He mentions that he works alongside Timothy, his brother in the Lord. Timothy is a well-known, of course, associate of the Apostle Paul. He probably did the actual scribing of the letter as Paul dictated it. The point here: this is a genuine letter of a genuine apostle. The opening line is a stamp of authenticity.

Okay, but what does all that add up to and what does it mean for us? Why does it matter? It means that what Paul has to say in his letter comes from God himself. Paul's word is God's word, and the Colossians can take to the spiritual bank as hard currency every single syllable that flows from the apostolic pen. It is the real deal. It is the genuine article.

Now, Paul was a pretty famous guy in the early church. He was well-known, widely, and highly respected among the believers, and probably the message from Paul himself carries some considerable weight among the Colossians. Probably his word will bring great reassurance in the face of the troublers and the unsettling claims that they are hearing. But Paul is very mindful of one key fact, a fact that may have been added to the disquiet of these believers. You see, they didn't actually originally receive the gospel from the Apostle Paul. That's not how they received it.

No, they received it from Epaphras. That's the story. That's what Paul acknowledges later. Notice how Paul speaks of the way in which the gospel came to these Colossian Christians. They heard and understood the grace of God in truth, verse 6. It was true. "Just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant," verse 7, "he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf," or as you're going to see in the ESV footnote, if you look at the bottom of your page, "he is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf," on Paul's behalf. That probably actually makes better sense here in the context. "Epaphras is a faithful minister of Christ on Paul's behalf." He is faithfully ministering the word of Jesus as Paul's representative among them, as the representative of the apostle.

Epaphras is only mentioned once in the New Testament outside Colossians, at Philemon in verse 23. He's not well-known. That may have added to the sense of uncertainty around him. The troublers, you know, they might have said, "Well, you know, who just remind who was it from whom you received the gospel you've believed? Epaph who? Who now? Not sure we've heard of him." "Wonder if that guy ever met Paul in the flesh. Sounds questionable to us. Might want to double-check whatever this Epaph fellow said to you. Plenty of slippery salespeople on the spiritual marketplace these days, never be too careful."

But Paul says, "No. This man is a beloved fellow servant, dear to Paul, faithful minister of Christ." A minister means a servant. He faithfully serves Jesus by speaking his word, and he does so on Paul's behalf. Now, all this, it's possible that to us all this sounds just a little bit arcane, a bit irrelevant, possibly, to our situation today. I mean, why does it matter?

Well, I'd like to suggest that Paul is touching on an issue that's vitally important for each one of us, and relevant hugely to our situation today. Just think for a moment about the way in which you and I access the message of Jesus Christ. Think about the way in which you and I receive the gospel, in which we place our eternal hope. Do we have the privilege of hearing directly from the Lord Jesus Christ in person? Well, no, his earthly ministry concluded 2,000 years ago. Do we have the privilege of hearing directly from the lips of one of the apostles standing before us in our midst? Well, no. They died and went to heaven a long time ago.

In that sense, you know, we might feel vulnerable to just the same kinds of unsettling suggestions that the Colossians faced. "How do you know your Christianity is the real deal? How do you know that your Christianity is the real deal? How do you know that your faith is set on a firm foundation? How do you know that?" It's a good question. I wonder what your answer is. We stake our eternity actually on the answer that we give to that question. We build our lives on the foundation of our Christian hope. It's our everything, isn't it? Every decision is made around that. How do we know that we have the message right?

Well, what is the God-ordained, God-given, reliable, trustworthy mechanism for the delivery of the message of Jesus Christ? Well, it is the same today as it was then. Jesus sent his apostles to proclaim his word and to write it down. Other faithful messengers went out with the apostolic word and communicated that word beyond the reach of the apostles themselves. The litmus test then, as now, was fidelity to the apostolic word, the written word of the New Testament scriptures.

In that sense, the Colossian Christians until they received this letter, they were in a place of deficit. Epaphras had come, and Epaphras had preached, and his message was true. They trusted that he was an authentic representative of Paul, a faithful communicator of the gospel, yet until his letter arrived, they did not have documentary proof, in all likelihood. But with the arrival of this letter, the letter which we have in our hands, they now have the added benefit of a written confirmation of Paul himself. This was his letter, the Colossian letter, that gave them written confirmation of the authenticity of the gospel that they had received. And wonderfully, we hold in our hands the very same confirmation and authentication. Is the message true? Is the message complete? Is it the authentic gospel? Here is the test: Is it faithful to the apostolic word, the written word of the New Testament scriptures?

Host: That is a great test right there. Jonathan Griffiths here on Encounter the Truth and a message called, "Faith That Bears Fruit," part of our larger series, "Walking Worthy." If you ever miss a broadcast in the series, come and listen online at encounterthetruth.org or listen through the Encounter the Truth app, which you'll find for free at your app store. Encounter the Truth is listener supported. It is your generosity that keeps Jonathan's teaching on this station, so thank you for giving to and supporting this ministry. As you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a book Jonathan has picked out. It's called, "Worthy, Living in Light of the Gospel." Jonathan, how is reading this book going to benefit us?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I hope it's going to impact your heart and your life. I hope it's going to feed your soul. The purpose of this book is simply to encourage us who know Jesus to live faithfully as his people, to allow the gospel to transform our way of life. I just find I need those encouragements. I need those helps. I find it especially helpful if the book is readable and not too long. This book, which is rich in content and thoughtful, it's written by seasoned theologian Sinclair Ferguson, who's always full of rich insight. But he's made it accessible, and it's designed to feed the mind, but to nourish the soul. I believe it'll do that for you if you read it, and we'd love to get it to you.

Host: Well, a gift of any amount, and we're going to say thank you by sending you a copy of "Worthy, Living in Light of the Gospel." You can call, give your gift, and request a copy. Our number is 833-99-TRUTH, or give online at encounterthetruth.org. That's 833-998-7884 or encounterthetruth.org. You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, PO Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3M1. Or in the US, at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Bruta, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.