Colossians (3) The Fruit of the Gospel (Col. 1:6-8)

“In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world - just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.” 

​Review
Last Sunday, we talked about the faith, love, and hope that the Colossian Christians had. Paul said that he always thanked God because he had heard about “your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people - the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven…” (Col 1:4-5)
 
Here, faith, love, and hope are presented as the three essential elements that show the genuineness of one’s faith in Jesus because they are proof of God working in the lives of believers.
 
All people have faith, love, and hope but Christians’ faith, love, and hope are much different from others’ because the source of the three elements is God, not ourselves.
 
We can have faith in Jesus not because we made a decision to believe in Him, but because God chose to save us even before we came to exist in the world. The faith we have is the consequence of both God’s preexisting grace and our willingness to accept it. Needless to say, the former is much more important than the latter, and the former enables the latter to exist.
 
The love we have in God is also unique in its range and depth. God’s love doesn’t discriminate because His love is toward all people on earth without exception. That’s the limitless range of love that God has and that we are to have as well.
 
James 2:1 says,
“Believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.” (Jms 2:1)
 
Christian love is also exceptional in its depth because the love we’re commanded to have is not our own love but Christ’s love, which was clearly shown on the cross.
 
Christian hope is exceptional because all hope for worldly things is temporary, while Christian hope is about the eternal blessings God has prepared for us. Paul said that Christians’ faith and love spring from their hope.
 
For us to have hope implies that there remains better things to come. The New Testament is filled with good news that Jesus achieved and gave to us. But, it also talks about things that He’s preparing and will give us on the last day.
 
The really good things are yet to come. They are ‘stored up’ in heaven now and will surely be given to us as promised in the Bible. That’s the source of the things we hope in Christ. And that’s what makes us passionate about following Christ with sincere faith and love.
 
So, it’s essential to keep reminding ourselves of the kind of hope we have in Christ Jesus. That will allow us to turn our eyes from worldly things to eternal things and fix our eyes on Jesus.
 
The Gospel, the True Message of God
Now, I want us to move on to the next paragraph. In Colossians 1:5, Paul said,
 
“The faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel” (Col 1:5)
 
Now, Paul explains the relationship between Christian faith, love, and hope and the true message of the gospel. What generates Christian faith and love is hope. But the foundation of all three elements is the gospel.
 
When describing the gospel, Paul used the adjective ‘true.’ The gospel is the true message. It is the truth of God that can be applied to all people through all generations.
 
That the gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth means that it couldn’t be made by human beings. Because the One who achieved the gospel is God, we can call the gospel, ‘the truth.’ It’s important for us to remember that the gospel is the true message of God. It is so true that nothing can be added to it.
 
So, if someone says that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not enough and we need to add something more to be saved, it is not the gospel at all. What we must believe is that the gospel revealed in the Bible is perfect as it is.
 
That the gospel is truth means that it is unchangeable and can be applied to everyone on earth. It is not one of many truths. It is the only truth, which denies the possibility of other ways to be saved.
 
So, it’s actually quite dangerous to proclaim that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth because it denies other religious beliefs. Whenever the true gospel has been preached, there has always been conflicts. The bold assertion that the gospel is the truth always results in public criticism.
 
That’s why Christianity is the most exclusive religion. Even though it is open to everyone on earth without discrimination, it opposes all other religious beliefs about salvation by its nature.
 
So, if you proclaim the real gospel, criticism and condemnation will naturally follow. But still, we’re to hold on to the truth that only the gospel of Jesus Christ is the absolute and universal truth for everyone on earth.
 
In the next verse, Paul said,
“In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world - just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.” (Col 1:6)
 
Here, Paul said that the range of application of the gospel is ‘the whole world.’ The gospel of Jesus Christ was universal from the beginning. Even though it appeared in Israel, the power of the gospel has borne a lot of fruits throughout the whole world. We are among them. That’s the truth of the gospel that we must keep holding on to.
 
I feel like it’s getting harder to insist that there’s an absolute truth. It’s often said that the era we’re living in now is post-modernism. The most important value of post-modernism is relativity. So, acknowledging and respecting others’ opinions, even though they are so different from or even against ours, becomes the most important value.
 
It’s actually beautiful to accept differences and try to find a way to live together. However, the danger of relativity is that it rejects every idea of absolute truth.
 
So, it’s getting harder to use the word ‘truth.’ If we say that the gospel is the only truth regarding our salvation, that there’s no other way to be saved, and that only Christianity has the way of salvation, people will turn against you right away.
 
Nowadays, people are not interested in ‘the truth’ anymore. So, it’s getting much harder to talk about the truth. Even many Christians fall into the temptation of embracing other beliefs as ways of salvation.
 
That may look cool to non-believers and they may think ‘that’s what religions should look like!,’ but we must resist those opinions and be able to keep proclaiming that only the gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth that gives us salvation. That’s because only the gospel is God’s power to save us.
 
The Gospel and the Fruit
Now, there’s one more thing to think about regarding the gospel. How can we know that we’ve really received the gospel?
 
One of the greatest blessings we can have as Christians is to have parents who believe in Jesus, because it allows us to be Christians much easier. However, I’ve seen some Christians who have difficulty believing in Jesus because they were born to a Christian family.
 
One of the great lies we have to watch out for is that we think we believe in Jesus because we’ve ‘heard’ about the gospel. Knowing what the gospel of Jesus Christ is is important but it doesn’t guarantee that we really accept it.
 
To know the gospel and to truly accept the gospel are clearly different. The latter requires the former, but the former doesn’t guarantee the latter.
 
But it seems that there are many Christians who think they believe in Jesus simply because they ‘know’ about the gospel without deeply experiencing its power. However, the Bible clearly testifies that all those who accept the gospel of Jesus Christ experience a great change.
 
The gospel of Jesus Christ that Paul had taught in Ephesus for more than 2 years, and that Epaphras had delivered to Colossae, came from Jesus. But, it didn’t just come with ‘words’ but with power.
 
The believers really accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ, and their acceptance was clearly shown through specific fruits in their lives, which basically refers to the faith, love, and hope Paul mentioned above. So, the sincerity of the gospel must always be recognized by its power to bear fruit in the lives of believers who accept it.
 
It's natural to produce crops when a seed is sown. The Bible describes the gospel as the true seed that contains power and life. Then how can there be Christians who say they’ve accepted the gospel but don’t produce any of its fruit?
 
The Gospel, The Grace of God
In verse 6, Paul introduces another important phrase related to the nature of the gospel—God’s grace. The gospel of Jesus Christ came to the Colossians. They heard it and received it. Then what did they come to understand from the message that enabled them to bear fruit? Paul says, “You truly understood God’s grace.” (Col 1:6)
 
There can be many ways to define what the gospel is, but there’s no word that does a better job of defining its essence than grace.
 
God’s grace is at the center of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that God forgives sinners freely without having them pay anything. To achieve the good news, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood” (Rom 3:25).
 
The reason we can be forgiven and saved from sin without standing before God’s judgment seat is because the price of our sin has already been paid. And what Jesus sacrificed to pay the ransom for our lives was His precious blood and life.
 
In the Bible, grace refers to what God gives to those who don’t deserve it. We didn’t deserve salvation because we ourselves were sinners. But the essence of the gospel is that God gave Himself to sinners so that they could be saved. That’s the grace of God that the Colossians experienced when they heard about the gospel.
 
And that experience naturally resulted in specific fruits in their lives. That’s how Paul knew that they really believed in Jesus. And, that must be the standard we use when we check our own faith.
 
So, today, we talked about three important aspects of the gospel of Christ. First, the gospel is the universal truth that applies to everyone on earth without any exception through all generations. Second, the essence of the gospel contains God’s grace which was shown in His giving His life to save us.
 
Lastly, the genuineness of our faith must be verified not by what we’ve heard or known as the gospel but by the fruit that we naturally bear in our lives.
 
We’re living in a world where it’s getting harder to listen to the true message of the gospel. It’s getting harder to find true Christians who have heard the gospel and live it out by bearing its fruits of faith, love, and hope.
 
But what I believe is that the gospel is the same forever. Its power hasn’t been weakened at all because it contains God’s grace and His power at its center. That’s the hope we have as Christians.
 
So rather than being frustrated, we should continue to be devoted to knowing, accepting, believing in, living out, and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ until He returns.
 
Let’s pray.
 
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for giving us this great opportunity to think about the gospel of Jesus Christ and Your grace.
 
We profess that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only universal truth that brings salvation to everyone on earth. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel, but help us and strengthen us to keep proclaiming it with confidence.
 
We want to find Your grace in Your gospel. Please open our hearts and souls and allow us to see what amazing grace You’ve given us through the gospel of Jesus Christ, Your Son, so that we can stand firmly on its foundation and bear fruits of genuine faith, love, and hope in our lives.
 
We thank You Lord. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
 
Sharing Questions
Today we talked about some important aspects of the gospel. Here are the questions I want us to discuss. 
 
1) What do you think makes the gospel of Jesus Christ unique and applicable to all people? How can we deliver it thoughtfully to people of different religions? How should we treat others who have different beliefs as Christians?
 
2) The gospel of Jesus Christ is God’s grace and power that allow those who accept it to bear fruit. What fruits do you think you have borne because of the gospel? Or what kinds of fruit do you want to bear through the power of God?