Paul’s letter to the Colossians began with Paul acknowledging their salvation. This daily devotional looks at how salvation and regeneration leads to growth and wisdom.
Nuggets
- Our Sanctification Road must be filled with knowledge that leads to wisdom and spiritual understanding.
- Growth on the Sanctification Road produces the results of a life pleasing to God.
Devotions in the Joy in the Gospel series
Paul was pleased with the growth the Colossians experienced after salvation. He used this opportunity to show them how to live their lives with God at the forefront.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
Let's Put It into Context #2
“You learned this from Epaphras, our dearly loved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has told us about your love in the Spirit” (Col. 1: 7-8 CSB)
Daille indicated that Epaphras was the Colossians’ pastor. He felt Paul was trying to reassure them that Epaphras was teaching the same doctrine Paul taught.
Resource
We all are fellow servants with Paul. He indicated his love for another minister. This minister remained faithful and did his job.
Epaphras passed on to Paul the progress the Colossians were making on the Sanctification Road. He could tell this because of their love of the Holy Spirit.
Another indication of their progress was their regeneration.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal requickening in us that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
Davenant indicated that the product of this was Christian love. He wrote, “But Christian love arises from the Holy Spirit, and is altogether full of holiness and purity.”
Resource
We have to profess a genuine salvation to God. Then we have to grow closer to have His character.
Prayer for Spiritual Growth
“For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col. 1: 9 CSB)
Our Sanctification Road must be filled with knowledge that leads to wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Paul always celebrated the salvation of others. Here, he indicated that celebration included praying for them.
Paul told the Colossians that, when he prays for them, he asks that they grow in knowledge. This is a specific knowledge, though. It can only be obtained through spiritual understanding and wisdom.
Pope said Paul has already heard about their faith and love. He asks for their sanctification.
- Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration, gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- The perfected state indicates the combination of the spiritual graces which, when all are present, form spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
Glossary
Pope expanded onto what Paul was really asking. He wrote, “As a matter of request it is the Holy Spirit’s operation on our faculties making the knowledge experimental, rewriting the moral law on the heart, and making it there supreme.”
Resource
The knowledge without the understanding is useless. The understanding without making a change to our character is just as useless.
Pope said that the combination of both knowledge, understanding, and action is what kicks it up to wisdom.
- Wisdom is an enlightened acceptance of God’s principles that leads to knowledge, discernment, and good sense that is put into practice through salvation, increasing our goodness and virtue.
- Discernment means we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
- Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- God’s goodness is His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.
- Holy means to be set apart, perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
We have to remember we aren’t studying just moral laws here. We have to kick it up to spiritual graces.
Pope explained what that means, too. He wrote, “The unregenerate understanding may make the moral law an object of study, and arrange the whole into a system of rules for the wisdom of human ethics. But in the regenerate the precepts are studied in the light of the new nature, and the whole wisdom of holiness is the result of a teaching that is “from above” (James 1:17).”
Resource
Paul prayed for others that they would grow spiritually. This would mean they gain wisdom.
Results of Spiritual Growth
“so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1: 10 CSB)
Growth on the Sanctification Road produces the results of a life pleasing to God.
Walking is the term used to describe how we live our lives. This walk has to be “… worthy of the Lord …”
That makes it pleasing to God. We are walking in his will to honor Him.
Ooo, baby. I have to process this one. Pope wrote,” Such an aim to secure His approval as should win His complacency always and in all things. There is a daring completeness in this sentence. There is no reservation for human infirmity, no undertone of deprecation of the Divine severity, no hint of a tolerant construction of our conduct.”
Resource
If we are trying to win God’s approval, we are not to be self-satisfied – aware or unaware of it. We are to depend on God alone.
We demonstrate our godliness by producing spiritual fruit through the performance of good works. This doesn’t equate to secular charity. It is about our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Our motive behind doing the good works has to be for the purpose of expanding God’s kingdom. This means winning people to Christ.
Our thoughts, words, and deeds lead to holiness because they come from God. They are just being played out in our physical world.
I don’t know about you, but I always equate the “… growing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1: 9-10 CSB) with growing our relationship. Pope out a different spin on it.
When we hook the “… growing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1: 10 CSB) with the “… bearing fruit in every good work …” (Col. 1: 10 CSB), it blows open the concept of fruit. Pope said it makes fruitfulness unlimited.
Pope said that the foundation here is obedience. Obedience means to hear, conform to, and carry out the instructions that God gives us.
So, we’ve gone full circle back to knowledge, understanding, and action. As this grows, we become more in tune with God’s Will.
That opens up unlimited possibilities in serving God. Pope said that this brings us further along the Sanctification Road to perfection.
Pope expanded on what we were talking in the last devotion. Endurance is a passive form of patience, while long-suffering is an active form.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
I have to get this down to its elemental form. So, bear with me.
Pope wrote, “While the Divine knowledge is the instrument or energy of the holy life, it is the Divine power which is connected with the patience of that holiness.
Knowledge = power + patience.
I get that. We are only going to truly learn about Who God is as He reveals Himself to us after salvation. Therefore, we will only learn it through His power.
Scriptures are only an introduction to Who God is. We cannot go to His Word and do it ourselves. God isn’t into self-help.
The Holy Spirit teaches us. “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you” (Jn. 14: 26 CSB).
But we don’t get a download of that knowledge. It is a continual learning process on the Sanctification Road. We need patience to keep at it.
Making the Connections
Pope said we have to endure the trials and resist the temptation. When we do that, we gain wisdom.
How Do We Apply This?
We should be willing to do our duties to the best of our abilities.
Resource
Salvation is important. It is equally important that we navigate the Sanctification Road to become more like God.
Father God. We pray that, if Paul were here today, that he would be as excited about our progress on the Sanctification Road as he was with the Colossians. Help us to grow in Your wisdom and understanding. Amen.
What do you think?
Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
If you don’t understand something and would like further clarification, please contact me.
If you have not signed up for the email daily or weekly providing the link to the devotions and the newsletter, do so below.
If God has used this devotion to speak with you, consider sharing it on social media.