Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: Every person here is in either one category or another, either in the category of needing to receive Christ or in the category of having received Christ, needing to live in Christ.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled All About Jesus. Let's listen in as JP gives us part three of The Reconciler.

JP Jones: Colossians chapter one, starting at verse 27, says this: "To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

"And I want you to know how much I’m struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

"And I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness."

In this passage, Paul exhorts us to grow up spiritually. He talks about what spiritual growth looks like, and he even tells us what the goal of spiritual growth is. Every person here is in either one category or another, either in the category of needing to receive Christ or in the category of having received Christ, needing to live in Christ. Paul in a sense addresses both groups.

This is a message that speaks to us today just as much as it did to the audience that Paul wrote to in Colossae. They were a group of people who were torn by a secular mindset, just living life to be successful and to get things and to pursue their own personal dreams and goals. They were also a group of people influenced by the religious worldview that they came out of.

We've talked a little bit about that in the past several weeks. It's a view known as Gnosticism. It was a New Age philosophy that incorporated a lot of different ideas and was incorporating Christianity into its conglomerate of ideas. Paul is writing to correct a false spiritual perspective. In doing so, what he says is the truth is found in Jesus Christ, so everything has to come back to Christ.

He's the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through Christ. In this passage, in effect, he's saying the truth about spiritual growth also comes back to Jesus. I want to touch on three observations that I'm making from this passage: the call to spiritual growth, the goal of spiritual growth, and the steps to spiritual growth.

With respect to the call to spiritual growth, Paul says in verse 28 of chapter one, "We proclaim him"—he's talking about Jesus—"we proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ." Paul's mission as an apostle was to see people not only become Christ followers but to grow to maturity in Christ.

He phrases it here that they might become perfect in Christ. It's the Greek word teleios, which can mean perfect or complete or mature. Paul's end game of discipleship was to lead people to Jesus and then equip them, teach them, and admonish them so that they would grow up to maturity in Jesus. That ought to be the end game for us.

We ought to want to press onto maturity in Jesus. It's an ongoing pursuit. This side of heaven, we never fully attain to it, but we either are engaged in the pursuit of it or we're not. We ought to be engaged in the pursuit of spiritual maturity. We ought to be seeking to become more and more grown up in Christ.

Paul says in chapter two, verse two, "My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart, united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ." Paul says that his ministry goal, the purpose for which he was seeking to talk about Jesus and teach God's word and grow people up in Jesus, is that people would be encouraged in heart, united in love, and complete in their understanding.

Even all of that was so that they could know God's mystery, who was Christ. Paul saw a pursuit, an end game, a goal in his teaching and in his preaching and in his serving of helping people embrace Christ, grow up in Christ, and become complete and mature in Christ. Then in chapter two, verse six, he gives this command: "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him."

The command to live in him is the Greek word peripateo, which I am illustrating for you right now. What am I doing? Walking. It's the command to walk. Some of your Bible translations have it described as walk. Some Bible translations have it as conduct your life. Some Bible translations have it as live, because it's a comprehensive term that describes a lifestyle, a conduct, a walk, a way we live.

Paul says, "As you've received Christ, live in him, conduct your life in him, walk in him." There's a call to spiritual growth on every follower of Jesus Christ. You begin your Christian life by receiving Christ, but that's just a beginning. You keep on walking, you keep on living, you keep on growing. There's a call of spiritual growth on our lives.

The reason that that is not just simplistically obvious is that not everybody's doing it. There are people who are not pressing onto maturity. There are people who are not growing spiritually. There are people who are not engaged in walking the walk. That's why so many times in the New Testament, we're exhorted to do what seems to be fairly obvious that we should do.

In Hebrews chapter five, the writer of the Hebrews says this: "Therefore, we'd like to say more, but it's difficult to explain since you are spiritually dull and don't seem to listen. You have been believers so long that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God's word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn't know how to do what's right. Solid food is for those who are mature and, through training, have the skills to recognize the difference between right and wrong."

Here, the writer of the Hebrews compares spiritual growth to human development and talks about being a baby versus moving on to being a mature adult, and what a baby can process by way of food versus what an adult should be processing by way of food. The reality of the New Testament church is the same reality for us today.

There are some people who, having been born, remain babies when they should be growing up to adulthood. There is a call to grow up spiritually. It's okay to be a baby when you're a baby. I remember when Taylor, my son, who's 22, was a baby. We were thrilled. He's the first child and we just were such proud parents.

His sisters like to say he was the perfect child and they can't compete with who he is and what he's done. But when Taylor was little, I remember when he moved from milk to starting to eat baby food. He loved baby food. He loved green beans. He couldn't have enough green beans. We were living in Santa Barbara at the time, and Dawn and I were at a restaurant, and Taylor was there.

He was in his high chair, and he was just devouring green beans. Dawn and I are talking. I'm just feeding him green beans. Open one jar, finish that, open another jar. He's just eating them, champing down. He's had three jars of green beans. I look at him, and green beans are all over his face. He's smiling.

If John Madden would have seen him, he'd say, "That's a baby. Look, he's got green beans all over his face. That's a baby." Green beans were all over his bib, and there were green beans on the ground. I thought, "How could he eat all those green beans and they be all over his mouth, all over his bib, and all over the ground?"

I went down to look at the green beans on the ground. As I bent down closer to him, the smell assaulted my nostrils. I realized with the keen mind that I have, those aren't green beans. He had a blowout that would rival Mount Saint Helens. He's just asking for more green beans. I look at Dawn. She looks at me.

It's one of those "who's going to do it" things. She was tougher than I was, so I unstrapped his seat there on the high chair and I picked him up. As I picked him up, plop. I'm holding him out in front of me in the restaurant and I'm walking to the men's room. Literally, plop, plop, plop, just popping out of his diapers.

I get to the men's room and a guy's walking out of the restaurant and I'm holding him like this so it's right up in his face. He's like, "Whoa!" Then he moves and I get inside. You don't take a class in this. What do you do? How do you do it? I just set him right in the sink and then just turned the water on and just tried to get everything off him and get him as cleaned up as possible.

Do you think I spanked him for pooping his diaper? No. Babies poop their diapers. Babies have blowouts, sometimes in the most awkward places. That's what babies do. It's okay to act like a baby when you're a baby. But if you grow into adulthood and you keep having blowouts every time you go to a restaurant, you need to get better Depends or something's maybe wrong.

It's not okay to have received Christ and not to grow up in Christ. That's not okay. The fact that it happens doesn't mean it's okay. In fact, every time it's described in the Bible, it's a rebuke. Stop being a baby. Paul uses the same phrasing in First Corinthians chapter three in writing to the church at Corinth.

We know that when Paul first planted the church at Corinth and then the interchange that he had such that he wrote the letter of First Corinthians, it was about three years. If we took that as a paradigm, three years after they became Christians, Paul is rebuking them for still being babies. Think about that.

In other words, if you have been a believer in Jesus Christ for three years or more, you should not be a baby anymore. You should be pressing on to maturity and adulthood spiritually. If you are a baby, God bless you. It's okay to be babies. We love babies. Everybody loves babies. We love babies in the body of Christ because we get to love them and encourage them and teach them and help them grow up spiritually.

But that's the idea, isn't it? To help them grow up spiritually. If you're not growing up spiritually, something's wrong. You need to grow up. Just grow up. Grow up. It's a call of Scripture on every Christian to grow up spiritually. Secondly, from this passage is the goal of spiritual growth.

In verse 27, Paul says that he's writing about the mystery, the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. This word mystery, we've looked at a little bit in the past couple of weeks. It's the Greek word mysterion. It literally is a mystery, but it's talking about something that would remain hidden unless God revealed it to us.

So it's no longer a mystery because God has revealed the truth. Paul says here in Colossians one that the mystery is Christ. We wouldn't really know who Jesus Christ is apart from God revealing it to us. If you don't believe that, just go to the spectrum after church and walk up to people and ask them what they think about Jesus.

Everybody will have an opinion, but it won't necessarily be the truth. The truth that Jesus is the unique God-man, the very creator that holds everything together, the way, the truth, and the life, the resurrected one, the head of the church—that's a mystery that's revealed to us by God.

He says in here that he's the hope of glory. Any hope that we have of experiencing glory, of knowing glory, of being glorified, is in Jesus Christ. He is the hope of glory. Jesus is the goal of the Christian life. We receive Christ, we grow up in Christ. The goal of spiritual growth is Christ—growing into Christ, experiencing Christ, knowing Christ, being transformed by Christ.

That's why Paul amplifies this in verse 28. He says, "So we proclaim Christ, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ." We're mature in Christ, we're complete in Christ, we're perfect in Christ. Jesus is the ultimate goal of our spiritual growth.

It's not to become busier in the church. It's not to have more theological knowledge. Those may be wonderful pursuits and what God calls you to engage in, but they're not the goal. The goal is Jesus Christ. In chapter two, Paul clarifies this a little bit more for us. He says, "My purpose is so that they may be encouraged in heart, united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

Paul says in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So if you want to get wiser and more knowledgeable, you need to experience more of your union in Christ, because in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If your wisdom and knowledge in your spiritual pursuit, in your growth in Christ—if the wisdom that you're gaining and the knowledge that you're gaining isn't from Christ and doesn't come back to Christ and doesn't glorify Christ—then it's not really true spiritual wisdom and knowledge.

It's like I've said to my wife on many occasions: there are a lot of smart people who are really stupid. Wisdom and knowledge are found in Jesus Christ. When we understand our union with Christ, and when we understand that Christ is the hope of glory, and we commit our lives to pursuing after Christ and knowing Christ, that's when we experience his wisdom and his knowledge.

That's spiritual growth. The goal of spiritual growth is to focus on Christ, to pursue after Christ, to get to know Christ. Even the way Paul describes it here as being encouraged in heart and being united in love and being complete in our understanding—those are coordinate means towards an end.

He says we're united in our love and we're encouraged in our hearts and we're complete in our understanding so that, as Colossians two, verse three says, we may know God's mystery, namely, Christ. Knowing Christ, that's the goal of spiritual growth. Paul describes this in the most intimate, personal way.

He could have said knowing about Christ. That would have been the Greek word oida. But he uses the Greek verb ginosko, which is off of the noun gnosis, which is what the Gnostics prided themselves in having, this knowledge. Paul actually takes their word and says, "Let me tell you what this word really means and how it ought to really be applied."

Then he even intensifies it because he adds the Greek preposition epi. The whole goal of all of this, of being encouraged and being united and being complete, is so that we might have an epiginosko kind of knowledge of Jesus. Deep, intimate, personal knowledge of Christ.

It's what Paul describes over in Philippians three in his own personal biography. In Philippians 3:7, when he says, "Whatever things were gained to me, those things I've counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things. I count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God and is by faith.

"I want to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, that I too may attain to the resurrection from the dead." He says, "Not that I've already obtained it yet, but forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward what lies ahead, I press on towards the mark of the goal of God's calling on my life in Christ Jesus."

Paul says, "I'm consumed with knowing Christ." Intimate, deep, personal knowledge of Christ. When you learn to drive, they do it different now with kids. You have to pay for it through some kind of outside agency. It's not just provided by school when I was in school. It was part of our curriculum. So you took a course, Driver Education, and then you took a course, Driver Training.

In Driver Education, you learned about driving. You learned the rules of driving. In my high school, I had a little driving simulator where you sit behind this wheel and you watch these movies. Then they had these safe driving movies. I remember there was this Disney movie with Goofy: "Okay, keep your eyes moving. Make sure they see you. Leave yourself an out. Be a safe driver."

Then they showed you those movies with all the accidents, kids who weren't safe drivers. Wheels of Tragedy. Red Asphalt. I don't want to do that. You learned about driving. Driver Training, you got in a car, the guy sitting next to you says, "Okay, start it up and take it out of the parking lot."

You're actually driving. At first, you're so conscious of everything that you're doing. You're conscious of how you're sitting, the feel of the seat, your hands on the wheel. You're thinking of all the checklists of all the things you have to do to drive. But once you learn to drive, you don't just know about driving. You just drive.

In the seeking process of being a follower of Jesus, there's a legitimacy of learning about Jesus. But at some point, what we talk around here with respect to crossing the line, you move from just learning about Jesus, from knowing about Jesus, that you actually step into actually knowing Jesus.

You ask Jesus to come into your life, you receive Jesus. Now you just begin to know him, but now you continue to grow in really knowing him. That's spiritual growth. That's what Paul's talking about here. It's about Christ and really knowing Christ.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653.

Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, Facing Goliath. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653.

Or check us out on the web at CrosslineChurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a minute, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We're in this series called It's All About Jesus, and we're looking at the book of Colossians and seeing what Colossians says about Jesus Christ and our relationship with Jesus and our call to live in Jesus and proclaim Jesus. In fact, there's two questions every one of us need to ask ourselves.

The first one is: Have I received Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord? And the second question is: Am I living my life in Christ? If our answer to the first question is yes, then we've come into a new relationship with God. We've passed out of death and into life. We've come out of darkness into the light and we're on our way to heaven. We're new people in Christ.

And so then the second question is: Am I living in Christ? Am I following Christ? Am I growing in Christ? Am I getting to know Christ more? Am I being transformed into the image of Christ? On the other hand, if our answer to the first question is no, we have never received Christ, then that's where we need to stop and say the most important thing in my life is to come into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through him. If you've never received Christ, you are outside of God. You are outside of heaven. You are outside of new life. And the Bible says you are dead in trespasses and sins. But the good news of the gospel is that through Jesus Christ, you can be saved.

You can call on the name of the Lord and be saved. You can receive Jesus Christ into your life. In fact, you can receive Jesus Christ into your life right now. It's as simple as from your heart saying, "Lord Jesus, I believe in you. I believe you died and rose again from the dead, and I want to receive you into my life."

Would you like to do that? Would you like to give your life to Jesus Christ right now? If that's your desire, I invite you to pray with me wherever you are in your own heart and use my words as the attitude of your prayer to God. Lord Jesus, I believe in you. I believe you died on the cross and rose again from the dead.

I believe that you are the Savior. I receive you into my life. I receive your forgiveness. I receive your gift of eternal life. Thank you, Jesus, that you'll never leave me and that you'll never forget me. And thank you that you're the Lord of my life. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at CrosslineChurch.com.

We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to CrosslineChurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.