Heresy Among Colossians Like Adventism—Colossians 1, Part 1 | 66

Colleen and Nikki walk through the first part of chapter one of Colossians, noticing the similarities of the Colossian heresy with Seventh-day Adventism. Transcription by Gwen Billington.

 

Nikki:  Welcome to Former Adventist podcast.  I’m Nikki Stevenson.

Colleen:  And I’m Colleen Tinker.

Nikki:  We’re so glad you’re joining us for a new series.  Last week we just wrapped up our series on the covenants, which culminated in a walk through the Letter to the Hebrews.  It was such a wonderful study.  If you haven’t listened, go back and check it out.  Now, we decided, while we were finishing that, that we wanted to move on to the Letter to the Colossians.  This is such an incredible follow-up, I think, to Hebrews because it continues with the subject of who Christ is and what that means for the church.  I have to ask, Colleen, first of all, what is it that you love about Colossians, and second, what did you think about it as an Adventist?

Colleen:  What I love about Colossians is the unmistakable way it identifies Jesus as fully God.  Now, as an Adventist I would have said Jesus is fully God, but I would have thought that meant something like, if I had a whole apple pie and I cut the pie into three pieces, each of those three pieces was fully pie; right?

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And so I kind of thought of Jesus that way.  He was like a third of God.  He was part of the godhead, a group of people, persons, who shared a name, a purpose, and a will.  But I did not understand that Jesus shared all the attributes of God.  So using my pie metaphor, what I didn’t understand was that if I cut a pie into three pieces, there might be a seed, a random seed, in one of those three pieces.  There might be a little bit of peel in another one or a little speck of core in the third so that each of those three pieces might be slightly different in its composition, even though it came out of the whole pie.  What I didn’t understand was that Jesus had to have all the parts of the pie in Himself.  He had to have the same seed that the Father and the Spirit had, the same bit of core, and the same peel.  Or, in other words, He had to have all the attributes of God.  He had to be omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and all the other attributes of God just the same as the Father and the Spirit.  I did not understand that.  And Colossians just reveals that so clearly, and I love that about this book.  Adventism so closely resembles the heresy that Paul was addressing to the Colossians, and I’ve often said to you, Nikki, “It’s almost as if” – ha! – “God knew what the heresies would be that would come down the line, and He made sure they were all answered in the Bible.”  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  What about you, Nikki?  What do you love about Colossians, and what did you think of it as an Adventist?

Nikki:  Well, like you, I love the focus on who Christ is.  It has a high Christology, exposes Him as God.  I also really appreciate chapter 2, the “let no one disqualify you” section.  That was a big part of understanding the role of Sabbath in the Bible for me, coming out of Adventism.  I do love chapter 3.  I’ve come to really love how it pushes us on in the walk of faith and teaches us what sanctification is.  As an Adventist, I always say, I don’t remember reading this as an Adventist.  I know I do, and I know I read this.  I took a New Testament Studies course in college.  I know I read Colossians.  I really have no memory of it, and I don’t know why that is.  So –

Colleen:  It makes sense to me.

Nikki:  It baffles me.

Colleen:  How can we actually remember reading something that only caused us confusion?

Nikki:  That must have been it.

Colleen:  Yeah.  I would have no way to remember what I read because it was confusing to me.

Nikki:  Now, I do remember little pieces of it, like about putting on the new self.  So probably it would be safe to say I remember some proof texts out of it, but we didn’t spend a lot of time studying the letter.

Colleen:  Yeah.  Well, as we’ve been studying to start this series on Colossians, it seemed really important to us to continue this because it is the identity of Jesus that completely undoes heretical teaching.  More than anything else, it is who is Jesus that undoes false teaching, and the more I read the New Testament deeply – and I have to say, going through Hebrews with you, Nikki, has been a unique experience.  I have learned things and understood things I didn’t see before.  Understanding who Jesus actually is leaves no room for the false constructs of Adventism.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  So as we’ve been studying for this, I know that we’ve both been reading things from different commentators, such as J. Vernon McGee and John MacArthur and S. Lewis Johnson, and we’ve had some really interesting insights, but I just wondered, Nikki, if you could talk a little bit about why this book was written.  What have you learned about why this book was written, and what was the background to this book?

Nikki:  Well, first of all, if I can, I’d like to say that as an Adventist none of that stuff ever mattered to me.  I would just open the pages, read the words, and try to apply them to myself.  But I’ve been so blessed since leaving Adventism, and really, it started with our Bible study on Friday nights, where we walked through the Book of Acts.  It’s been such a blessing to learn where things fall in history, and this is what makes our faith verifiable and roots it in our history.  So it was really neat to learn, beginning with the geography, where Colossae is.  I don’t think I could have pointed that out on a map, but it gives us a bigger picture of what’s going on and why it was written.  Colossae was – it’s right there in Phrygia, and it is a part of a line of churches that run kind of north and southeast.  If you have your Bibles and you have maps in your Bible, I would encourage you to go and look at Paul’s missionary journey.  You’ll see it there.  It’s next to Philadelphia, Ephesus, Sardis, Thyatira.  You might recognize some of those names from the churches written to in the Book of Revelation.  This is area that was occupied by Rome at the time of Paul’s ministry.  It was mostly Gentiles; right?

Colleen:  Correct.

Nikki:  There was a large Jewish settlement that dated from the days of Antiochus the Great, so we do see that Jewish influence in the Letter to the Colossians.  And there is this man Epaphras who had gone to Ephesus and met Paul there when Paul was teaching for three years.  And he came to faith, and he brought that faith back to Colossae, and he established the church there.  And while he was there, he saw all of these heresies that were influencing his church, and he needed help.  So he traveled all the way back to Rome to get help from Paul, who was there in prison.  It was there that Paul actually wrote his prison epistles, and this was a part of that.

Colleen:  I had not understood how all of these prison epistles connected until studying for this book, and it’s interesting to me that Paul actually had not visited Colossae, apparently –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  —at the time he wrote this book.  Even though, in a big picture sense, he is credited with the foundation of the church at Colossae because it was his preaching that brought Epaphras to faith, but Epaphras was the one, like you said, who actually brought the gospel and evangelized Colossae, and I find it just kind of tender, actually, how Epaphras was so concerned when he saw the heresies that were threatening this new group of believers that he had worked so hard with that he traveled all the way to Rome to get Paul to help and to write a letter to help correct this heresy.  And you know, Epaphras was a fairly new believer himself.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  It hadn’t been that long since he’d heard the gospel and believed and taken it to Colossae.  So he went to his father in faith, Paul, and asked for help.  It’s just kind of a tender story to me.

Nikki:  It was interesting to me too that even though Paul was in prison there, he was in his own private quarters as a Roman citizen.  He was on house arrest.  So he was able to go and be with Paul, and I know there’s some dispute among teachers as to who brought that letter back to Colossae.  Some say it was Epaphras, but I think there’s good reason to believe that it wasn’t and that he remained with Paul and the letter was sent back with Tychicus when he returned Onesimus to Philemon back in Colossae.  But it’s just neat to kind of picture that, to picture where Paul is in Rome and how far Colossae is from Rome, to travel that distance because of his burden for his church, and then to think of Tychicus and Onesimus traveling back to bring this to Colossae, not just this letter of correction, but also, you know, to deal with Onesimus and Philemon.  It’s just neat how it all comes together.

Colleen:  Well, and there’s this personal element.  There are these personal stories.  This isn’t just long-distant apostles handing out dictums on doctrine.  These are people who loved each other in the Lord.  And Paul shared the burden for this church at Colossae because he loved Epaphras, and he loved the gospel, and he loved these people whom he had never met because they were his brothers and sisters in the Lord, and he wanted them to grow deeply in truth and not in a skewed version of doctrine.

Nikki:  It really does make those final greetings at the end of these epistles more tender, when you take the time to understand those relationships and the history and what’s going on, so that when he says, “Epaphras greets you” or “Give our love to the brothers,” you know there’s just something sweet there.

Colleen:  It was especially interesting to me to hear S. Lewis Johnson, who has been with the Lord now for over 20 years, but to hear him saying that the nature of the heresy at Colossae was a combination of gnostic Judaism and paganism, and then when we look at the Book of Colossians and see the kinds of things that Paul is admonishing them about, it just made me realize how much that description describes the Adventism we all came out of.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  Gnostic Judaism, the ceremonialism, the strict rules about food and drink and Sabbath and the asceticism of, for example, “don’t touch, don’t taste, don’t handle,” like it says in Colossians 2, these are not instructions from God to the Colossians, these are what the Colossians had heard from the false teachers, and I want to say, “Wait a minute!  I grew up hearing that!”

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  “Don’t touch, don’t taste, don’t handle!”  In fact, it reminds me of kind of a funny story.  Years ago our neighbors behind us, before we had a block wall built between our properties, had two dogs, and the dogs were always digging under the fence and coming into our yard, and one was black, and the dogs really annoyed us.  They had a big hole, and they’d just show up in our yard.  So one day I was out in the yard, and I was looking across over the fence and saw this black face, and I thought it was the dog, and I said, “Argh, you’re just a disgusting dog.  You look just like a pig!”  And I went back to the fence, and it was a pig!  It was a little potbellied pig!  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  So when Richard came home, I took him out to the fence, and I said, “Look!  Look at this pig!”  He was actually very friendly.  He wanted me to pet his ears, he would kind of sniffle.  And Richard had to think twice.  He said, “I was taught I was never to touch a pig.”

Nikki:  Wow.

Colleen:  And I hadn’t even realized that.  I had been taught I could never eat a pig, but the touching?  Even I had not learned that, but that just – this whole thing of Colossians reminds me of that.  We were taught these things are unclean.

Nikki:  Well, I love what J. Vernon McGee said.  He said, “The oldest heresy is always the newest heresy.”

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Leave it to him.  I love his commentary.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  Uh-huh.  [Laughter.]  I had heard one version of Gnosticism in Adventism and didn’t come to understand what Gnosticism really was until I left.  Surprising.  I had learned that the Gnostics believed we had spirits, and so to believe that Christians have spirits that go to be with the Lord is Gnostic.  That was the extent of what I understood about Gnosticism as an Adventist.  Can you talk a little bit about what particular version of Gnosticism was in Colossae, and what did they believe?

Colleen:  I don’t know if it’s completely clear what version of Gnosticism it was.  Commentators believe that the Gnosticism in Colossae was an early version of Gnosticism, that full-blown Gnosticism didn’t really come about until closer to the second century, but they believe that there was an early version of it, and Gnosticism simply means “special knowledge.”  It means having some understanding, secret insight, secret knowledge, secret facts that the general public doesn’t have.  The Gnosticism that was in Colossae was apparently connected to Judaism that had been brought in by Judaizers so that it included including the law and ceremonies as part of their salvation, so that they were to include the feasts and the strict food rules.  And it also apparently included perversions about the nature of Jesus.  While we’re not completely clear what the Gnosticism was comprised of, it was connected with Judaism and Judaistic teachings, and the paganism was apparently connected with the asceticism and the angel worship and the things that were harsh on the body, so that combining Judaism with pagan asceticism resulted in something that really did remind me a lot of the conservative Adventism I saw growing up.

Nikki:  Well, and isn’t it true that in Gnosticism there’s a view of Jesus that is less than God?  He was created out of a creation out of a creation out of a creation, like He wasn’t equal with God, which for me, that was very reminiscent of Adventism.  Now, I know they wouldn’t come right out and say it that way, but when you take their doctrines on Christ to their full conclusion, He is less than God.

Colleen:  Oh, absolutely.  And I want to reiterate, I think that’s such an important point, as we start this book, because the founding Adventists were antitrinitarian, and most of them were Arian or Semi-Arian.  They believed that Jesus had a beginning sometime in the distant past, and they did not believe in the Trinity, and I just this week had a letter from somebody who took us to task for having published some blogs about the Adventist version of the Trinity.  And I just want to say, I don’t care how carefully Adventism has worded its doctrines so that they sound like they’re affirming the Trinity, they don’t.  And Ellen White was never affirming of the classic Christian Trinity.  Scholars from Andrews Seminary have written books and papers about that fact.  Jerry Moon comes to mind, for example, who wrote a paper in 2006 affirming that Ellen White’s “heavenly trio” is not the classic Christian Trinity, but according to him, her “heavenly trio” is the correct version.  So Adventists do not believe in Jesus being the same substance as God the Father and God the Spirit.  They would stop short of declaring He is of the same substance, so that they would say that His attributes are somehow different or that He forfeited His omnipresence because He took a body or whatnot; He’s less than God.

Nikki:  I’d like to say that for those of us who’ve experienced Adventism in different ways, I would have said that Jesus was God.  I know I would have said that.  What I didn’t understand about myself or about Adventism is that I held dueling ideas about various doctrines at the same time, so I would have said He’s God, but I would have also said He could have sinned and He came to show us that even a sinner in sinful flesh, who doesn’t have any advantage, can keep the law perfectly and that that’s what we’re supposed to do, not understanding that that belief, taken to its full conclusion, is that Jesus is not God.

Colleen:  Yes, Nikki.  I would have said exactly the same things, and I grew up and went through Adventist schools probably 20 or more years before you did, and I had the same response internally.  I learned the same things.  I would have said He’s God, but I would have also said He came to show us how not to sin, never realizing that meant He wasn’t God.  And it’s worth mentioning that there is a resurgence today, over the last 20 years actually, but it seems to be actually growing in some quarters, of antitrinitarianism within Adventism.  The argument goes, this is the original Adventism.  As Rick Barker has stated so succinctly in one his blogs, all of Adventist doctrine was developed and formed during its active Arian antitrinitarian early phase, so every one of Adventist doctrines, Adventism’s doctrines, reflects that low view of Christ and that unscriptural view of the Trinity.  So even though they say they believe in the Trinity, their doctrines make it clear that they actually don’t.

Nikki:  Right.  There is such a difference between reforming and face-saving.  Adventism has never reformed.  They’ve shifted and mutated, but it was all face-saving stuff because even if they change a statement of belief in one area, which they do frequently, don’t they, with those fundamentals?

Colleen:  They do, um-hmm.

Nikki:  They reword things.  Even if they do that, there are so many other ways that reveal what they really believe.

Colleen:  Why don’t we look at these first few verses of Colossians 1?  Today we’re going to discuss the first 14 verses, and we’re just going to start looking at how Paul develops his argument and how he introduces himself, how he addresses the Colossians, and how he begins speaking about God’s will for believers and who Jesus is.  Do you mind just reading the introduction, the first two verses, and we’ll just talk a little bit about that.

Nikki:  “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:  Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”

Colleen:  What do we learn about Paul himself in that introduction?

Nikki:  Well, we learn that he’s an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.  He didn’t ask for this role.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  No, he didn’t, and one wants to think about that Damascus Road and think, no, he did not ask for this.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  It’s a pretty amazing thing.  And it’s interesting that throughout his ministry it appears that he had to defend his apostleship because, as he put it in 1 Corinthians 15, he was “last of all, as one abnormally born.”  He was not one of the 12 who went through Jesus’ life on earth with Jesus, although as a Jew in Jerusalem, he undoubtedly knew and saw what was going on.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  But his calling was later.

Nikki:  And we learn in other parts of Scripture that he was specifically an apostle to the Gentiles, which I love, because he was a “Jew among Jews,” and God sent him to the Gentiles.

Colleen:  I love that too.  In fact, as you know, I often say, “I love Paul.  He’s our apostle.”  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  He has made me love being a Gentile.  So who is with him as he writes this letter?

Nikki:  He has Timothy with him.  He refers to him as “our brother,” but we know that Timothy is also a dear spiritual son to Paul.  They were very close, and Timothy was much younger.

Colleen:  Yes, he was like a protégé to Paul.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And it’s interesting, in 1 Corinthians 5 he calls him “my beloved and faithful child in the Lord,” which is such a wonderful way to be remembered in the eternal word of God, isn’t it?  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  Yes.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  So what do we learn about the people he’s writing to?  Who are they?

Nikki:  They are saints, they are believers in Christ.

Colleen:  It’s interesting that he calls them faithful because even though this book is being written to counteract and correct a heresy that’s threatening this congregation, he calls them saints and faithful brethren.  These are not people who are unbelievers or on the margins.  He believes that they’re true believers, and he’s correcting them, which is kind of reassuring to me because we really can be swerved by false teaching after we are born again.  But the Bible is clear that we can have that corrected, and God knows how to send us people and to drive us to Scripture so that we can staycorrected and believing truth.  And then he has a blessing for them, and this is a very typical Paul blessing, “Grace to you and peace.”  And who does he say these things come from?

Nikki:  “From God our Father,” so he’s identifying their relationship to God.

Colleen:  And identifying them as being children of God in the same way he is, “God our Father.”  So we know that Paul is an apostle.  He’s writing this to the saints, to the faithful brethren, and they’re all children of our Father.  So why don’t you read now verses 3 through 8?

Nikki:  “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.  Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing – as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant.  He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.”

Colleen:  I think it’s so amazing how Paul is actually somewhat vulnerable when he writes to these people, and this is a church that he hasn’t personally met yet, but his love for them is clear.  It’s so interesting that I can hear his concern, his love, his commitment to this group of believers that he only knows through Epaphras, but because of Epaphras and because of the gospel, he loves these people.  What strikes you about 3 and 4, Nikki?

Nikki:  Well, here again we see who Christ is.

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  I mean, right at the beginning; right at the beginning Christ is made equal with God.  We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, so He’s one with God.  And then we also see Paul thanking God.  He’s thanking God for them.  That’s a pattern in Paul’s life.

Colleen:  Yeah, it is.

Nikki:  He thanks God in all things.  And he’s thanking Him for their faith in Christ Jesus and the love that they have for all the saints.  So he’s thanking Him for what they could have claimed for themselves, but it was from God.

Colleen:  It’s clear that their faith and their love are not things that they generated in response to something.  God gave them that faith.  God gave them that love.  He’s not thanking the Colossians for their faith and love.  He’s thanking God the Father of Jesus for the love He’s put in their hearts.  What do we learn in verses 5 and 6?  Five is really interesting because we learn a little bit more about what the faith and the love are connected to.  “Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth.”  What do we learn there about what the faith and the love are connected to?

Nikki:  Well, they’re connected to the gospel.  Right inherent with the gospel is the hope.  You can’t separate the two.  I had them separated in Adventism.  But you can’t separate the two.  The hope and the gospel are one.

Colleen:  That’s true.  And this hope is laid up for you where?

Nikki:  In heaven.

Colleen:  He’s saying that the hope of the believer is the eternal reality that is our inheritance as God’s children.  We haven’t seen it yet, but we’ve been told about it, we’ve been promised, and when we believed in the Lord Jesus and passed from death to life, as it says in John 5:24, that hope which is laid up in heaven became ours at that moment, and he’s saying that the faith and the love which God has put in their hearts is the consequence of that hope, instead of the other way around.  Now, in the natural sense of man on earth, we would think that we have faith in something or we have love for something and because of that we have the hope of a fulfillment, but that’s just backwards from what it is in reality with God.  The hope is the certainty, and because of the hope we have faith and love.

Nikki:  It reminds me of Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  I love the fact that Paul says here that they’ve heard about this hope in the word of truth, the gospel.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  In 1 Corinthians 15 in the first few verses we have a summary of the gospel, and it continues, the chapter continues and talks all the way through the resurrection of the saints.  This is the hope, and it’s all connected and tied to the gospel, and it makes me think as well of his letter to Ephesians, which he also wrote during this time in prison, where he says that they were sealed with the Holy Spirit when they heard the word of truth, the gospel, and believed.

Colleen:  Now, just for the sake of anybody who might be listening who would have trouble articulating the gospel, Nikki, do you want to articulate the gospel?  You mentioned the 1 Corinthians passage, and it’s just one of the mostsuccinct places.

Nikki:  That’s found in 1 Corinthians 15, and Paul is writing to the Corinthians, and he says, “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.  For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time.”  It’s a brief summary, but he says, “according to the Scriptures,” and so even in this summary, it’s all tied to what the full counsel of God actually says about those events and what they were for.

Colleen:  There’s nothing here about Sabbath.  There’s nothing here about vegetarianism or the health message.  There’s nothing here about an Investigative Judgment –

Nikki:  Or a secret sign of loyalty.

Colleen:  That’s true.  This gospel is that Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, He was buried, He truly and really died, and He was raised on the third day according to Scripture, and He was seen by witnesses.  So it’s a very simple definition, but as an Adventist I could not have defined the gospel.  In fact, I have not met one Adventist who could, and I’ve asked several people.  In fact, I’ve asked many former Adventists how they would have defined the gospel as Adventists, and they can’t, they can’t tell me.

Nikki:  I want to say, on behalf of the people who were influenced by non-Adventist Christians while I was an Adventist, I could have said that Jesus came and died for my sins, but it would not have been according to the Scriptures.  It would have been according to the great controversy worldview.  I would have had meaning behind that that didn’t align with the word of God.

Colleen:  That’s very important to say.  So back to Colossians, Paul is saying that when he heard of their faith and love, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel, he’s basically summarizing the fact that the gospel brings us to life, because of the gospel Jesus causes us to pass out of death into life, and all of this eternal reality of life with Him becomes ours, and our faith and love flow out of that real hope.  And as you said, this is the kind of faith that Hebrews 11:1 talks about.  As an Adventist, faith to me was something that I would generate in my head and I would choose to believe.  The Bible pictures faith as something God develops in us, gives us, and it’s based on something real, eternal, in the heavens, beyond this earth, that we can only perceive dimly, but we only understand it at all when we’re born again through faith in Jesus, through that gospel.  So then when we look at 6 and 7, what more does he say about what the gospel has done for the people in Colossae?

Nikki:  Well, he says that it came to them just as it’s going out to the entire world, and I love the fact that we have that history, that we know that Paul is in Rome, that he’s never met the Colossians, but he’s seeing the fruit of his ministry, his work, and how it’s spreading everywhere.  He’s now dealing with a church that he’s never even met.  He’s rejoicing in their faith, and he’s rejoicing in the fact that it’s spreading and that it’s reached them.  I love the fact that this gospel message transcends culture and race.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  And we see that right here –

Colleen:  That’s so true.

Nikki:  —in the letter to Colossians.

Colleen:  That’s such an important point.  And he’ll develop that point more in the second chapter, and he develops it in the Book of Ephesians too.  But it’s so important to realize that the gospel transcends culture, race, society, time.  It unites us in one reality, which is the Lord Jesus, and we’re connected by His Spirit.  Nothing that we grow up in changes who we are in Christ.  In Christ we are God’s children, and we’re connected by His Spirit, and that transcends everything that we are as natural man.  And in verse 7, he does give credit to the one who evangelized them.  He says, you learned this gospel from whom?

Nikki:  “From Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant.”

Colleen:  I just think that’s so wonderful, that Epaphras remains alive for us in the eternal word of God as somebody that Paul loved, called his fellow bond-servant, and called him a faithful servant of Christ.  And then what do we learn in verse 8, where he kind of draws his reasoning to a close here?

Nikki:  Well, he says that Epaphras made known to them their love in the Spirit, which is such an incredible thing.  When you’re getting this letter back correcting all of this false stuff that you have been believing, the primary message that Paul leads with is, hey, Epaphras told us about your love in the Spirit.

Colleen:  That is so cool.  And he believed Epaphras.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  You know how it is when we meet somebody who is struggling with Adventism, who is catching a glimpse of the gospel.  They may not have fully made their decision to come out or they might be just making it, but there’s a way of knowing that is beyond actual physical words when you can see that somebody’s responding to the Holy Spirit, isn’t there?

Nikki:  There really is.  And there’s a tenderness and a sweetness in being witness to that and being a part of that conversation with them as they grow.

Colleen:  There’s nothing in all of the world that matches that, in my opinion.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  I agree, yeah.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  It’s a gift and a blessing.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  That unity in the Spirit.  And that God lets us see Him at work in another person’s life and to help shepherd and disciple.  It’s just – it’s the greatest gift He gives us in this life, I think.  So then, in verses 9 through 12, we need to read it as a unit because it is one prayer.  But we’ll unpack it a little bit as we go.  Nikki, would you read this?  This is such an amazing prayer that Paul says he prays for the Colossians, whom he has never met.

Nikki:  “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, 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; being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”

Colleen:  You know, I remember years ago sitting in women’s Bible study at our previous church and hearing our women’s leader say, “If you don’t know what to pray for somebody, pray Scripture.”  I have taken that to heart, and years ago I began praying this very prayer for my husband.  I thought, you know, this kind of summarizes the life in the Spirit.  This summarizes what it is to grow as a Christian, and I still pray it for him.  I pray it for both of us.  What do we learn in verses – well, let’s just start with verse 9.  What strikes you about verse 9, Nikki?  “For this reason, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”  First of all, what’s the “it” that he’s heard of?  It’s referring back to the last verse.

Nikki:  Well, their love in the Spirit, which is rooted in their faith.

Colleen:  So what has he not ceased to pray for them?

Nikki:  That they would be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

Colleen:  How do you understand that?  What is the knowledge of His will?  You were talking to me a bit about what you understood about that from the study that you’ve done before we started recording.

Nikki:  Yeah.  Well, the word “knowledge” there is – you know, Greek is just so – it’s so much richer than English.  The word “knowledge” there isn’t just about knowing something.  The word is “epignosin.”  Epignosin?   I can’t pronounce Greek.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  You’re doing okay.

Nikki:  It has a preposition in front of the Greek word for “know.”  It’s “epi,” and it makes it a lot deeper.  Vine’s Expository describes it as “a greater participation by the knower in the object known.”

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  “Thus more powerfully influencing them.”  It denotes participation in what is known.  It’s more than just knowing something and storing it away.  It’s an active participation and experience of what’s being known.  And I love what John MacArthur said about this verse.  He said that wisdom and understanding is modified by the word “spiritual.”  This is from God.  This is not just basic information.  The prayer is that God would give them spiritual wisdom and understanding.  One of the things I appreciate about Paul’s prayers in many of his letters is that he prays that people would grow in their knowledge and that they would be filled with knowledge from God.  It makes me think about people who – and this isn’t just people who leave Adventism.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  But specifically among conversations with new formers, who are leaving, they’re trying to find a church or they’re trying to have conversation in various support groups online, they will often shut down conversation with, “I don’t want to hear about doctrine.  I don’t want to talk about doctrine.”  Or what we often hear, “Doctrine divides.”  But all doctrine is, is truth about God.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  It’s truth about God, and it’s extremely important.  And when we know what’s true, when we know what is precise and correct about God, that is what takes us now to verse 10.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  “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.”

Colleen:  That’s such a great point, Nikki.  I feel the same way about those people that say, “Oh, doctrine divides, don’t talk to me about doctrine.”  Well, if we’re talking manmade doctrine, I’ll agree.  But if we’re talking about what Scripture actually says, we have to wrestle with that or we’re just making up our own doctrine again.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  We can’t just leave a false religion and then invent what we like from Scripture as our new doctrine.  Scripture tells us what’s true, and we have to be willing to submit ourselves to all of it so that we can’t just take a little piece out of Colossians and another little piece out of Ephesians and put them together and say, “This is now my doctrine because I’ve read these words.”  We have to accept everything the Bible says, and if it appears to sometimes sound disparate or incongruent, we have to know that the fact that it’s in the Bible means it is from God, and we have to hold it, even if we have to hold it in tension.  And the longer we learn to trust the word of God, the more these things make sense together.  Doctrine is truth, and Paul’s prayer for the Colossians is that they will submit to the truth of God as revealed in the apostolic revelation, which he’s giving them to rescue them from false teaching.  All of us who leave a false religion are so vulnerable to new false doctrines.  We’ve been deceived once.  We haven’t yet become rooted in truth, and we have to pray that the Lord will teach us, and we have to learn to be willing to submit our heads to the word of God.

Nikki:  And as we do, that begins to change us.

Colleen:  It does.  We really do become rooted and grounded and confident, knowing who we are in Christ and knowing that God is our Father and knowing how He’s asking us to live.  So as we move into verse 11, he’s praying that they will bear fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God.  What are some other consequences of this growth in the knowledge of God?

Nikki:  Well, he’s praying that they would be strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.

Colleen:  That’s such an interesting thing to me.  He’s asking that God strengthen these Colossians, who are being threatened with false doctrine.  He’s asking that God strengthen them with the true knowledge of Himself, of His will, and it’s for the purpose of being strengthened with power according to the glorious might of God, God’s own power, for the attaining of – and this just sounds so antithetical to power – so that they will have what?

Nikki:  Endurance and patience, with joy.

Colleen:  That’s so interesting to me.  He’s asking for them to be strengthened so they will endure, so they will be steadfast, so they will be patient, with joy.  And I think sometimes, you know, the Christian life is sometimes very, very mundane.  We wake up in the morning, we have somewhat repetitive days, and I have to say, this summer has been especially that way, with all of the unknown and the restrictions of the COVID lockdowns.  Everything seems a little mundane, sometimes even a little gray, like where is this going to end and how is it going to look?  But he’s asking that God strengthen these believers so they can be steadfast and patient, with God’s own power.  And we have to do what God puts in front of us to do, steadfastly, patiently, whether we can see what tomorrow brings or not.  He only shows us enough for today, but His strength is enough for that.  And we walk forward in what He gives us because He is strong, and He is showing us His will.  It’s a matter of learning to submit to Him instead of thinking we can control our circumstances.

Nikki:  Well, and His prayer here is that in the middle of that that they would have joy.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  And that is so contrary to what you would expect from anybody going through what we’re going through this summer.

Colleen:  That’s true.

Nikki:  It makes me think of something I read in a blog about having joy in the Lord, and actually, it was a woman who was saying goodbye to her mother, who was being wheeled away for surgery, and there was a risk that she wouldn’t make it, and as it turned out, she did not make it through the surgery, but the last thing she said to her daughter is, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” and her daughter just kind of, “How am I supposed to rejoice?”  And her mother said, “Of course you can rejoice.  It just means returning to the source of your joy.  So you can rejoice in everything.”  And her Mom rolled away, and those were her last words to her.

Colleen:  Wow.

Nikki:  And I often think about that.  No matter what we face, we can always return to the source of our joy.  We rejoice in Christ and who He is and who He’s made us to be.

Colleen:  That is amazing, Nikki.  And it completely leads into the last bit of Paul’s prayer, “…with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”  So even as they’re struggling, even as they’re walking this mundane life, where they’re learning to submit and learning to trust, they’re giving thanks.  He’s praying that they will give thanks to the Father.  And it’s so interesting to me how often Paul reminds us of that.  It doesn’t matter what the circumstances, it doesn’t matter what he’s addressing, he always comes back and reminds us to give thanks, and it reminds me of Romans 1, where Paul identifies that those who have futile minds and depraved hearts are those who refuse to acknowledge God as God and refuse to give thanks.  We can always return, like you said, to the source of our joy and thank Him for what He’s doing, even the things that we can’t see, but He is at work, and we can thank Him for that.

Nikki:  Well, and this must have been such a wonderful thing to read from Paul for those believers there in Colossae because they’re being told that they have to keep Sabbath days, and they’re being bound by other people’s long-winded visions –

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  – and they’re being told how to eat, and they’re being told they have to be circumcised to be saved, and he’s saying – he’s telling them in the middle of that to be thankful to the Father “who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”  He’s telling them, “You’re good.”

Colleen:  Yeah, he is.  Uh-huh.

Nikki:  “He’s got you, and you can thank Him for that.”

Colleen:  Absolutely.  It’s so interesting to me too that in the New Testament, light symbolizes holiness, truth, glory, and life.  Paul often characterizes God, Christ, and Christians as being people and sources of light, so that the light is the opposite of the domain of darkness into which he will now say we’re born.  He’s saying, thank God for being called to be saints in light, saints who share in the holiness, truth, glory, and life of God.  So will you take us and read 13 and 14, Nikki, and see how he applies this concept of light and dark?

Nikki:  “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Colleen:  This passage is one of my favorite passages in the New Testament because it’s such a picture of what God does when we believe.  We have a friend, Steve Pitcher, who some of you may recognize from his articles in Proclamation! over the years, but he once said that this domain of darkness, he called it the communal grave into which we are born.  Every single person on earth is born into the domain of darkness.  And when we trust Jesus, God the Father Himself transfers us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.  Now, these aren’t physical places, but they’re very real places, they’re spiritual kingdoms.  We go from being in one kingdom into another.  We have a new residence and a new identity, and the beloved Son gives us our identity when we trust Him, and in Him we have redemption and forgiveness.  Nikki, would you say something about “delivered” and “forgiveness”?  I know you had done some study on that, and you had some interesting insights.

Nikki:  Yeah, I really like how Greek fills out the meaning, for me anyway, I don’t always perceive what these English words are trying to communicate.  The Greek word “delivered” means to draw to oneself and to rescue, so it has a tender picture in my head of the Father not only drawing us to Himself in love, but rescuing us from that domain of darkness.  I love the fact that he refers to this other kingdom as the kingdom of His beloved Son.  It’s the Son whom He loves, and John MacArthur says, “Every believer who has been rescued is a love gift from the Father to the Son.”

Colleen:  I love that.

Nikki:  It’s such a beautiful picture.  And then the word “redemption.”  Just this one small verse – I love it when this happens – this one small verse destroys the false teaching of moral influence theory and bloodless atonement, because the Greek word “redemption” means to deliver by payment of a ransom, and I know some translations actually say, “In whom we have redemption through His blood.”  My version I’m reading from doesn’t have that, but I know some of them do.  He says that we have the forgiveness of sins.  And forgiveness, the Greek word there, is a combination of two words.  One means to grant pardon, and the other means to grant remission of a penalty.  Now, in Adventism I understood forgiveness to grant pardon, kind of.  But I never understood that it meant to grant remission of a penalty.  I thought that was kind of still “wait and see.”

Colleen:  So did I.

Nikki:  You may still have to end up paying for all of this, depending on how you live while you’re here.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  So this verse makes very clear we have been delivered, we have been transferred, we have been given to the beloved Son, we have been redeemed with a price, and we’ve been forgiven and rescued from the penalty of our sin.

Colleen:  That is amazing, and there’s no middle ground.  We are either in the domain of darkness, unbelieving, unforgiven, condemned, or we are in the kingdom of the beloved Son, having trusted Jesus, having trusted His shed blood, which paid for our sin, having opened a door in the impenetrable wall of the domain of darkness so that through His blood we have a way of escape from our communal grave.  There’s no middle ground, there’s no fence sitting.  We’re in one place or the other.

Nikki:  And as Paul is writing this to believers, he says this in the past tense.  So once you believe, it has happened.

Colleen:  And if you haven’t believed, if you haven’t trusted Jesus and His shed blood, we ask you to just go back over the first verses of Colossians 1 and read the amazing legacy of those who trust Jesus, the new identity, the new residence in a new kingdom, and the fact that, having believed, we are true children of God, rescued by Him, given as a love gift to His Son, and we urge you to trust Him.

Nikki:  So if you have any questions or comments for us, write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com.  You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly blogs or to see back issues of the Proclamation! print magazine.  There is also a donation button there if you’d like to come alongside the ministry and support us.  We’d love it if you’d follow us and like us on Instagram and Facebook, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  And we will see you again next week.

Colleen:  See you then.