Title Letter - Colossians 1:3-14
Contents
September 24, 2006 (Sun) 11:00 am Cheonan Salim Church
Title: letter
Text: Colossians 1:3-14
I want to write a letter in the fall. Is there a song that starts like this? It must be an expression of longing for someone. The act of speaking to each other with all your heart and sincerity, that is, writing a letter. It is an act of conveying one's heart in such a way that the other person has expectations and believes as much as they expect.
It is difficult to taste the feeling of writing a letter because communication and transportation are so developed today that it is so easy to meet and be contacted so easily. It's hard to feel that desperate feeling today, except in exceptional circumstances where you can't communicate except through letters. In just one day, we make countless phone calls and send and receive countless emails. In such a situation, it is difficult to realize the meaning of a letter as the only communication channel.
Talking about the letter today doesn't mean anything else. Much of the New Testament we read is letters. In terms of volume, almost half of the books are letters. In terms of the number of books, except for the previous 4 Gospels and 1 Acts, the rest are all letters. The purpose of the letter is to think about the meaning of the letter together in the sense of trying to understand the minds of the person who wrote it and the people who read it when there was no other way than the letter.
Today, we do not associate well with the person who writes the letter, nor do we associate with the person who receives the letter, so we just follow the logical context to understand the meaning. However, if you can understand the situation of the person who wrote the letter and the person who received the letter at that time, you will be able to understand the meaning of the written words much more deeply.
Today we read part of the first part of Colossians. This is the opening part of the letter Paul and his co-worker Timothy sent to the members of the Colossian Church. The words we read today may be stories that have already become common sense to us Christians. If we look at the contents of the core exhortation in the passage we read today, wouldn't it probably be verses 9-12? “We ask God to fill you with the knowledge of the will of God with all spiritual wisdom and understanding. May you live worthy of the Lord, pleasing Him in all things, bearing fruit in every good work, knowing God more and more, and being strengthened with all the power that comes from His glory and power, enduring with joy to the end. . So may you give thanks to the Father, who has given you the right to receive your share of the inheritance of the saints in the light.”
Above all, today's message hopes that the members of the Colossae Church will be filled with the knowledge of God through spiritual wisdom and understanding. This verse suggests that the members of the Colossian Church are lacking in the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is, in fact, the most fundamental of our faith. We say we have faith, but in fact, it is a story that can be applied to anyone. Even if we want to know about cancer, we do not fully know God. In this regard, we too have no choice but to constantly seek the knowledge of God.
However, this message delivered to the members of the Colossae Church has a very specific context. The problem with the Colossian church members was that they were too bound to legalism. They were too preoccupied with keeping religious customs and ordinances. They were engrossed in the issue of circumcision, and wasted their energies on distinguishing between eating and drinking and keeping festivals. I misunderstood that it was like living a godly life to discern and keep such things well. Paul affirms this. “They follow the traditions of men and the childish principles of the world, and not after Christ” (2:8).
Through his death and resurrection, Christ broke the powers of enslavement and violence, and set people free with the power of the resurrection. Paul emphasizes that truth in this letter. The knowledge of God is what we are talking about. Belief in God's power to free man from enslavement is the knowledge of God. It is not any pedantic knowledge, but the belief that in Christ we can be restored to the image of God. It is the belief that we are saved not by following the laws or ordinances, but by living according to Christ. Paul hopes that his faith and life will bear fruit. In this way, Paul presented the Christian as a new subject and the church's faith and ethics of life as a new community.
Today, these words are not new to us, but have become common sense. If we know the meaning of those words, we should reaffirm that belief in ourselves and check whether we are living according to that belief. We must make sure that we are free from all the bonds that bind us and that we are living a fruitful life with true freedom in Christ. We need to step out of any status or identity guaranteed by today's world and take on our true identity as Christians. We must have an identity as a Christian, not an identity conferred by political power, economic wealth, and religious fantasies. Christians are those who have been born again after Christ. At the same time, our community should not be just a church that has been reduced to a religious organization. It must be a community that is renewed in the faith that truly follows Christ and bears fruit in life.
Today's message that gives us that insight is a letter the Apostle Paul sent from prison to the members of the Colossian Church. A letter was written from the beginning to the end with one's own heart, drawing the recipient of the letter. It expresses deep affection for the other person and at the same time expresses deep trust. I didn't send it out with the mindset that it's good to hear it or not.
I don't know how the Colossian church members responded, but Paul is proud of them. “When we pray for you, we always give thanks to the Heavenly Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all the saints” (1:3-4). Now, Paul wants to correct what is wrong in the Colossian church, but he does not doubt the fundamental motive of the faith of the members of the church to follow Jesus Christ, and values the love they have.
Somehow, it became like a word for myself. When dealing with letters in the Bible, it is natural to think about the situation of the person who delivers them before the content of the message. Today's words seem to have the power to make you look back on yourself like that.
I really appreciate and appreciate each and every one of you here. Even though there are many people and many churches, it is wonderful and grateful to think about how we came to be such a community. I hope that you, me, and all of us can continue to have deep affection and trust in each other. I hope that we can treat each other with the feeling of writing each letter of the letter to each other.
The most fundamental basis of that love and trust relationship is, of course, faith in God and passion for pursuing knowledge of God. May we fulfill our duty as members of Christ in that faith and in that zeal.*