Colossians 1:9-14 — Worthy Walk

FRANK EDWARDS: "You have Christ. Good. That is a fine beginning. But you did not think that was all of it, did you? There are things beyond him... visions, the worship of angels, a discipline of the body most believers never attempt. Real fullness is for those willing to go further." That is the voice a small church in the Lycus Valley is listening to when Paul writes to them. And you would expect his answer to be an argument. It is a prayer. And the prayer does not ask God to keep them safe from it.

LINDA BROWN: A church under pressure, and the first thing he asks is that they would walk in a manner "worthy of the Lord." Not comfort, not protection... conduct. Which, I'll be honest, is not the prayer I want somebody praying over me when things are hard. Welcome to Dig Deeper, everybody. Colossians one, verses nine through fourteen, and I'm glad you're here for this one, because I need Frank to convince me that "worthy" is good news.

FRANK EDWARDS: The word is going to do more than you expect. Before we get there, hear the passage in one breath, and listen for one thing as I read: count how many of the verbs have God as the one doing them.

FRANK EDWARDS: "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have full endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

LINDA BROWN: Rescued, brought, qualified... fill. I did count. But I want to back up to that voice you quoted at the top, because I don't think we've actually said what was going on in that town. Who is this teacher, and why does Paul take it seriously enough to write a whole letter?

FRANK EDWARDS: The honest answer is that we do not have the teacher's name, and we do not have their pamphlet, we only have Paul's response to it in chapter two, which is a little like reconstructing one side of a phone call. But the shape is clear enough. Something had crept into Colossae that dressed itself up as advanced spirituality. It offered a fuller experience of God through visions, through the worship of angels, through harsh treatment of the body, through observing particular festivals and food rules. It was a blend, Jewish ritual mixed with the local mystical religion of that valley, and the air of that town was thick with it.

FRANK EDWARDS: And here is what made it dangerous. It did not deny Christ. Nobody stood up in that little congregation and said Jesus is a fraud. It flattered them instead. It said, simple faith in Christ is where you start, and the serious people, the initiated, know there is more. Secret knowledge, reserved for the few. So the pressure on that church was not to abandon Jesus. It was to treat him as a doorway you walk through on the way to somewhere better. That is the counterfeit. And Paul aims the very first petition of his prayer directly at it. What does he ask for first?

LINDA BROWN: Knowledge. Which is the part that bugs me, because that is exactly what the other side was selling. "Come get the deeper knowledge." And Paul goes, no, no... come get the deeper knowledge. Isn't he just offering the same product with a different label on it?

FRANK EDWARDS: The word is the difference, and Paul chose it on purpose. The ordinary Greek word for knowledge is gnōsis, and the false teachers loved that word. Paul writes epignōsis. The prefix turns it from information into recognition. It is the kind of knowing you have when you finally see a thing for what it is, personal, full, settled. And notice what it is knowledge of: "His will." Not hidden mechanics of the heavens. Not the ranks of angels. The revealed will of God, which they already had in the gospel Epaphras brought them.

FRANK EDWARDS: Then watch what the knowledge is for. Paul does not let it sit in the head for one clause. "So that you may walk." Fruit in good work, growth, strength, endurance, thanksgiving. The counterfeit knowledge climbed upward and left the body behind... literally, it despised the body. Paul's knowledge goes downward and outward, into the way you treat people and the way you wait and the way you get up on the fourth hard morning in a row. He prays the same prayer for Philippi, love abounding in knowledge and discernment so they are filled with fruit. Knowledge that never moves your feet is not, in Paul's vocabulary, knowledge.

LINDA BROWN: The knowledge they're being sold is a ladder, then. Every rung gets you further from ordinary people and ordinary life. The knowledge Paul prays for is more like... a set of eyes. You see what's true and it changes how you walk across the kitchen.

FRANK EDWARDS: Eyes is the right picture, and go one step past it: eyes that see what you already own. Because that is the pivot of the whole prayer. Here is where it turns. Verse twelve, "giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light." Everything before that is asking. Everything after it is describing what is already done. And the verb, hikanōsen, means to make someone sufficient. To render a person adequate for something they were not adequate for before.

FRANK EDWARDS: Then that word inheritance. For a reader steeped in the Scriptures it is not a heavenly abstraction, it is ground. When Israel entered the land under Joshua, it was divided by lot, and every family received its portion, its allotted field to plant, to build on, to hand down. To have no inheritance in Israel was to be nobody. A landless outsider with no claim on the promises. And who are the Colossians? Gentiles, mostly. The very people whose names were never on the allotment lists. And Paul tells them flatly that God has already qualified them for a share. The false teachers were charging admission to the deeper things. Paul says the deed is already in your name.

LINDA BROWN: "Qualified." That is the word I cannot get past, because in my life I qualify for things. I qualify for the loan by having the income. I qualify for the team by making the cut. Every use of that word I know has me doing something first.

FRANK EDWARDS: Every use of it you know puts you as the subject of the verb, and Paul puts you as the object. God qualified you. It was done to you. And then he stacks two more verbs on top of it so there is no mistaking it. "He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness," and "brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son." That second verb, methistēmi, is the word for transferring a whole population. When a conquering king uprooted a people and resettled them in another territory, that is the word. You did not migrate. You were moved, wholesale, borders and all, from one rule to another.

FRANK EDWARDS: Which is exactly the exodus. "I will redeem you with an outstretched arm... and I will take you as My own people." A slave nation did not vote its way out of Egypt. God brought them out and claimed them. And the kingdom Paul says you were moved into is the one Daniel saw on the horizon, the son of man given dominion and a kingdom that every nation would serve. Daniel glimpsed it. Paul says you are standing inside it. Then the last phrase tells you what the transfer cost. "In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Apolytrōsis. That word smells like a marketplace and a slave block. A captive did not walk free for good behaviour, or because enough time passed. Somebody laid down the ransom. On the night Israel left Egypt the deliverance turned on blood on a doorpost, and Peter finishes the thought: you were redeemed "not with perishable things such as silver or gold... but with the precious blood of Christ." And notice where all of it sits. "In whom." This is what the church calls union with Christ. The inheritance is his. The kingdom is his. You have it because you are in him, not because you climbed to him.

LINDA BROWN: Then I have the opposite problem from where I started. If the rescue is done, the transfer is done, the deed is signed... why does "worthy" matter at all? Why does Paul even bother praying I'd behave? Walk however you like, the paperwork's finished.

FRANK EDWARDS: The word is axiōs, and it means weight that matches. A scale with two pans that balance. To walk worthy of the Lord is to live in a way that matches what he has already made you, so that your Monday and your standing in Christ weigh the same. It is not the price of admission. It is the shape a rescued life takes. So, back to where we opened: Paul does not pray for their comfort, and now you can see why. The false teachers were promising an escape upward, out of ordinary life and its dull demands. Paul prays for strength, and look what he wants it for. "Full endurance and patience." Not for visions. For waiting. For staying. Glorious might, the power that raised Jesus, poured into a person so they can be patient with a slow line and a slow child and a slow answer. Matthew Henry put it this way: "All who are designed for heaven hereafter, are prepared for heaven now." The preparing is the walk. And the walk is downstream of the rescue, every time.

LINDA BROWN: "Please Him in every way." [short pause] In every way. That little phrase closes the exits, and I know which exit I'm standing in. There is one person, and I have decided that pleasing God in that relationship can wait until they go first. Walking worthy there does not look like anything heroic. It looks like four sentences instead of the silence I'm keeping. It costs me the right to be right, and I am holding that right like it belongs to me.

FRANK EDWARDS: Held like a possession, when it was never yours to keep, because the forgiver did it while you were still on the other side of the border. "Rescued us from the dominion of darkness." Not from a neutral place. From enemy territory. You were forgiven first, at a cost you cannot repay, and that forgiver is not standing at a distance insisting you copy him. He put his Spirit in you so that the thing you cannot manufacture can actually happen. If you cannot say "I forgive you" yet, "God, help me want to" is a worthy walk. It weighs the same.

LINDA BROWN: That voice from the top of the episode... "you have Christ, but surely there's more." I hear it now and it sounds like the voice in my own head on a bad day. You believe, sure, but you're not really there yet, not until you fix this, not until you feel more, not until you've earned your way in. And Paul's answer to that voice is a thank-you. He thanks the Father for a rescue that already happened.

FRANK EDWARDS: A thank-you is exactly the right weapon, because gratitude is what a person says when the thing is already in hand. Everything the false teachers dangled just out of reach, the fullness, the belonging, the place at the table, God handed to that little bypassed church in Christ, and to you. There is no higher tier. Let that be the thing you keep: the fullness they promised, you already possess.

LINDA BROWN: Then take that into today, and here is what I want to ask you rather than tell you. You have been transferred into a kingdom, deed signed, ransom paid. What is the one place in your life where you are still living like you're waiting to qualify? Name it before you get out of the car, and walk into it like someone who already belongs.

FRANK EDWARDS: This conversation is part of the Dig Deeper app, and if you don't have it yet, you can find Dig Deeper in your app store.