Letters
Col 1:13-23 - All God Has To Offer
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
The popular narrative around religion today is that all religions have something to offer and none is any better than the others. I say the popular narrative because the adherents to a number of religions including Christianity would strongly deny that final assertion. We can certainly learn some things from other religions but at the centre of Christianity is the understanding that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life and that no-one comes to God except through him. Muslims would disagree of course as would most Buddhists. But because we’re supposedly a Christian country we especially get criticised for that claim to uniqueness.
Well, you may not be surprised to know that nothing much has changed in this respect over the last 2000 years. As I mentioned last week, the church in Colossae was being infiltrated by a group of people who claimed that belief in Jesus was OK but he was neither the only way to God nor the most effective way. In fact it seems they had a three pronged approach to getting closer to God.
They claimed that they could show you a special form of spiritual knowledge and faith that would allow your spirit to be freed from the limitations of your physical body. This was important because in their view the material world was evil and therefore so too was the human body. Connected with this, they taught that Jesus didn’t really have a physical body otherwise he would have been tainted by sin. Rather he was a purely spiritual being with just the appearance of a human.
They promoted the observation of various forms of personal abstinence that would assist you in overcoming the shortcomings of your material body: for example prolonged fasting, which they thought would help you to achieve personal perfection; not bodily perfection but spiritual perfection.
They also suggested that you needed the assistance of angelic beings and other mediators to communicate most effectively with God.
The result of this teaching was twofold: on one hand it led to severe asceticism, denying the body through fasting, etc.; and on the other hand, because the physical body didn’t matter, any sort of physical sin was just fine.
So Paul sets out to demonstrate how wrong these false teachers are. His first corrective is what we saw at the end of the passage last week. They needed to remember that
Christ is the Saviour and Redeemer of Us All
Grace in Action
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
How are you at being thankful? Has it been harder over the past couple of years to give thanks as we’ve gone into one lockdown after another? It was hard to be thankful when holidays had to be cancelled and we weren’t allowed to travel more than 5km from home. It was even harder for those of you who had elderly parents locked away in nursing homes unable to be visited, or worse, who had loved ones die and they couldn’t have a proper funeral to farewell them with all their friends and extended family; or who had grandchildren born interstate or overseas and had to wait for months and in some cases years before they could meet them. If you were one of those who had to quarantine in one of our quarantine hotels you might have been thankful for the first couple of days but I imagine that was wearing off by the end of the second week.
I was coming home from the doctor’s a few weeks ago having been told I had another ailment that needed treatment and I have to say there wasn’t much gratitude in my mind for having been allowed to live to old age; and that’s speaking as an optimist! Imagine how pessimists must be feeling. If you’re one of them then I hope the rest of your life will be better than it probably will be!
More seriously though, when Paul wrote this letter to the Colossians he was in prison in Rome. Sort of like being in hotel quarantine but without the comfortable bed and regular food deliveries! In fact a very unpleasant experience, I imagine: guarded by soldiers who probably wished they were somewhere else; totally dependent on his friends for food and warm clothing; perhaps wondering whether he’d survive the judgment of Caesar. Yet what we find as we open up his letter is an outpouring of thankfulness and encouragement, not to mention commendation of these Christians that he’d never even met.
Colossae was a small town not far from Laodicea and Hierapolis, the two main towns in the region. It’s not mentioned in Acts because Paul never went there. The gospel was brought to them, we read, by Epaphras, probably around the time when Paul was in Ephesus.
2 Cor 5:14-21 - Ordination Sermon
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Ambassadors for Christ Audio
Well, it’s a big day for these five ordinands as they commit themselves to ordained ministry in the church as well as for George as he takes up a pivotal role as Archdeacon, but it’s also an opportunity for the rest of us to be reminded of what it means to be followers of Jesus Christ.
As I read through the passage from 2 Cor 5 that we’ve just listened to I was struck by three statements that are particularly appropriate to an occasion like this.
No longer for ourselves but for Him
The passage begins by reminding us that Jesus died for all and that his death draws us in, so we too have died with him. The first thing that struck me was the conclusion that’s drawn from this. It’s there in v15. Jesus died so we could live; but not just live. The gospel has much greater ramifications than us simply being saved to new life. The gospel is much more countercultural than that: “He died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.” As I used to say to the kids in the youth group at church: “It’s not just about you.”
1 John 2:3-27
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Fake or Real? Audio
How do you spot a fake? You see a post on social media telling you about some new discovery, some whizz bang way of making money, or sure fire way of getting fit, being healthy, living longer, but how do you know if it’s real. How many times have you had a friend request on Facebook and realised that that person was already your friend? Steve sent out a text message last week saying be careful because someone was pretending to be him on email. We live in a world of fakes and sometimes it can be hard to recognise them from reality.
Well, clearly, from today’s reading, you don’t need to have Facebook to be faced with fakes. John writes to his friends to warn them about fake Christians and to help them be sure that they themselves are the real thing.
I’ve met people over the years who were not quite sure if they were up to the mark as Christians. They weren’t sure that they believed enough or understood enough or were faithful enough. And no doubt the people John was writing to here had similar worries. So he gives them four tests to apply to their lives to reassure them, but also to warn them about certain people who wished to lead them astray.
1 Cor 7
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Marriage and Singleness - 2 gifts from God audio
“Dear Paul, life is so difficult here in Corinth. We’re trying to live a spirit filled life but Corinth is such a worldly city it’s hard to keep up the standards of life you seem to have set for us. In your last letter you warned us about those members who were living immoral lives, so we need some advice. Some of our leaders are saying that that means we should lead lives of total abstinence from sex. Did you really say: "It is well for a man not to touch a woman" or have they come up with that by themselves?”
It’s seems this is the sort of letter that Paul’s received and is now sitting down to answer.
He’s been through the introductory remarks about what he’s heard about them and now he comes to this and other questions they’ve put to him.
