Faith, Love, and Hope Laid Up

When I wrote to the saints at Colossae — a church I had not seen with my own eyes — I could not stop giving thanks. "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" (Colossians 1:3-4). See how these two travel together: faith takes hold of Christ, and love spills out toward his people. You cannot have the one and hide from the other. And beneath them both lies a third thing, holding them up — the hope "laid up for you in heaven" (Colossians 1:5). Your hope is not a mood you must work up on a grey morning; it is a treasure already stored, kept safe where thieves and time cannot reach it. Because it is secure there, you can be steady here.

Notice, too, what I said this hope came by — the word of truth, the gospel, which "in the whole world is bearing fruit and increasing" (Colossians 1:6). The same seed that took root in them is at work still, in you. It does not merely inform; it grows. So I prayed — and I do not pray small things — that they would be "filled with the knowledge of his will," and I told them why: not to win arguments, but "to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work" (Colossians 1:9-10). Knowing God is not an end that stops in the head. It moves the feet.

And I asked that they be "strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy" (Colossians 1:11). Weigh those words. Where do you think God's mighty power is spent in his children? Not chiefly in signs to dazzle you, but in endurance — in the strength to keep standing, patiently, with joy, on the day when everything in you wants to sit down and quit. If that is your day today, this is the power I prayed you would have.

Then hear how it ends, for this is the ground of all the rest. Give thanks to the Father, "who 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" (Colossians 1:13-14). You did not climb out of the darkness; you were carried out. You were not put on probation; you were transferred — moved, resettled, made a citizen of another kingdom under another King. And the whole of it rests on this: your sins are forgiven, bought back at a price. Whatever else weighs on you this morning, begin here. You are not your own; you are his, delivered and forgiven. Now walk worthy of the King who carried you home.