Colossians 1:10
“so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to
him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the
knowledge of God;” (ESV).
Paul’s prayer for the saints and faithful brothers and sisters
in Christ at Colossae is that their knowledge of God’s will may have a Christ-centred
impact on their conduct (v. 9). He is praying that the Holy Spirit may grant
them all wisdom and understanding to enable them live a life whose goal is to
fully please the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, simply put, a life lived in
all spiritual wisdom and understanding is a Christ-centred life. In this verse,
there are two questions we ought to grapple with as we seek to draw lessons for
our spiritual encouragement: -
1)
What is the MEANING of walking in a
manner worthy of the Lord?
Similar expressions occur in passages like Ephesians 4:1, 1
Thessalonians 2:12, and Philippians 1:27. The key phrase in this verse is “worthy
of the Lord” since it encapsulates the goal of being filled with the knowledge
of God’s will. The word “worthy” is the Greek word axios,
which is the root word for a weighing balance. A weighing scale/balance is
used to match the value of two items on either side of the pivot. In a similar
manner, the word “worthy” can be rendered to mean assigning a matching/corresponding/equal
value or worth. Therefore, when John the Baptist says concerning Christ Jesus that,
“he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie”,
he is saying in other terms that “I am not Jesus’ match” (John 1:27). In
Romans 16:1-2, the Apostle Paul commends Phoebe to the saints in Rome, urging
them to “welcome her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints.”
The Apostle is in other terms urging them to welcome her in the Lord in a manner
befitting or commensurate with her status amongst them as a saint. The emphasis
in all these occurrences of the word is the “correspondence.” Therefore,
with the same import, we can say that “walking in a manner worthy of the
Lord” means living a life that faithfully corresponds with or reflects
or mirrors the true value, worth, honour and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in
both His Person and Work. It is a life that faithfully reflects the sufficiency
& supremacy of Christ Jesus in your life. It is a life that reflects the
efficacy of His work of atonement in your life. It is a life that reflects the
pre-eminence and prevenience of Christ in all things. It is a life whose motto
is: “Christ is all and in all.” Such a life, the Apostle prays,
can only be demonstrated by the help of the Spirit who grants the saints all wisdom
and understanding (v. 9). Such a life is necessary since our conduct
both among the unbelievers and within the believing community is a reflection
of or witness to what we believe about Christ Jesus, who
He is to us, and what He has accomplished in us and for us. We are the mirror
of Christ in a sinful and unbelieving world. We are the mirror of Christ at
home, work, and in the church. We therefore, have a solemn duty reflect
Christ faithfully. We have a duty not to distort,
or dim, or blur the glory of the Person and Work of Christ in the world by the
way we conduct ourselves but to unleash its full glare among all people. That such
as life fully pleases him emphasises the fact that the Lord Jesus
is both the focus and motivation of the Christian life. It is a life that
redirects and deflects the glory to whom glory and honour and worth is due—the Lord
Jesus Christ.
2)
What are the practical MARKS that
you are walking in a manner worthy of the Lord?
a.
Bearing fruit in every good
work.
In verse 6, the Apostle acknowledges that the gospel that
came to Colossae through Epaphras’ ministry is already bearing fruit and
increasing among the Colossian saints. And one of the marks of this fruit is love
in the Spirit for all the saints (vv. 4,8). So, Paul is now praying for
increased productivity of the gospel among these saints on a wider scale. That is,
“in every good work”—both spiritual and material. In other
passages like Ephesians 2:10 and Titus 2:14, the Apostle draws the connection
between salvation and good works. His emphasis is that the effect
of the gospel in one’s life is practical Christian living. He contends in Ephesians
2:8-10 that we are saved, not as a result of our own works, but by God’s grace
through faith in Christ Jesus, and that this isn’t our own doing but rather, it
is the gift of God so that no one may boast. But then he goes on in verse 10 to
draw the connection between this “by grace alone” salvation and “good works” when
he says that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. A similar
connection is seen in Titus 2:11-14 when Paul says in verse 14 that “Christ
gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself
a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” The
point being made in these passages is that we are saved to walk in a specific path
carved out beforehand for us by God—a path leading to glory. What is entailed
in walking in this path is doing good works that God has prepared for us beforehand
to accomplish. When this happens, the Lord Christ Jesus who saved us is fully
pleased. The Apostle renders the phrase “bearing fruit” in continuous
tense to emphasise that we are to produce the fruit of the gospel throughout—in
and out of the season. This differentiates us from the natural trees like
mangoes and oranges that are seasonal in bearing fruit. The Lord Himself says
the same thing about the need to bear fruit in John 15:1-8. At least three things
are emphasised in this discourse (1) Increased productivity necessitates
pruning (v. 2); (2) Fruitfulness necessitates remaining/abiding
in Christ (vv. 4-6); and (3) Fruitfulness glorifies God the
Father who is the vinedresser/gardener (v. 8). We ought to remember that fruit-bearing to
which we are called is a direct result of being filled with the knowledge of
God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding (Colossians 1:9). The Colossian saints
are already manifesting the fruit that binds everything together in perfect
harmony—love for all the saints. The Apostle is now praying for them to manifest
the fruit in all its facets (see Galatians 5:22-23). One of the most fascinating
things about the fruit of the Spirit is their interdependence. For instance, patience
isn’t devoid of love and love isn’t devoid of kindness etc. The Apostle teaches
us to understand that we please the Lord when we are fruitful and
not when we are spiritually barren.
b.
Increasing in the
knowledge of God.
Another mark of walking in a manner worthy of the Lord is
growing in the knowledge of God. The phrase “increasing in”
implies that there is some knowledge of God that the Colossians already have
that led to their salvation, having been taught by Epaphras (v. 7). Our salvation
marks the beginning of a life-long journey of discipleship that never leads to
graduation. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, who was entrusted with great mysteries
of Christ (see for example Ephesians 3:1-6), says elsewhere that he wants to “know
him [Christ Jesus] and the power of his resurrection” (Phil. 3:10). He doesn’t want
to graduate from God’s school of theology although he is a graduate of the
infamous Gamalelian seminary. It is this very continuous growth in learning
that the Apostle Peter calls his readers' attention to when he tells them to “grow in
the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18).
The phrase “knowledge of God” lays emphasis on the course outline
of the study—God. It is this very understanding that shaped the minds of the
drafters of the Historic Confessions of Faith like the Westminster Confession
and the 1689 Baptist Confession when writing the early chapters of these documents.
They all begin with God and His Word at the prologue of these documents. They knew
exactly from where to begin—theology. The rest of the chapters explicate the application
of theology in all realms of life. All other doctrines—the doctrine of man,
salvation, creation, etc., all make sense only when we truly know who God is. For
instance, it is until the prophet Isaiah beholds the ineffable holiness of God
that he understands who he is, relative to God—a sinner whose sins must be atoned
for (Isaiah 6:1-7). This means that you should seek to attend a church where the
knowledge of God is the focus of preaching and teaching; a church where men’s and
women’s fellowships and small study groups are imbued with the knowledge of God;
a church where children are nurtured in the knowledge God; a church where
singing is God-centred. Motivational speaking on the other hand, works well in the
setup of “Summits” such as the one that was held by T.D. Jakes in Kenya last
year, 2019 where you were to part with KES 75,000 to attend. A church is a community
of believers seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand
of God; a community of saints who daily set their minds on things that are
above, not on things that are on earth (Col. 3:1-4). It also means that both at
an individual and family level, you should aim at growing in the knowledge of God
above everything else. Growth in the knowledge of God is organic rather than
static. It is like a freshwater lake with both inlets and outlets. The inlets
bring in wanted knowledge while the outlets remove the unwanted knowledge. We grow
in the knowledge of God both by learning and unlearning. This growth is both
quantitative and qualitative. It is a growth in both depth and breadth. For example,
at conversion, we learn the simple truth that we are saved because of the love
of God (John 3:16). But as we grow in our knowledge of God, we begin to comprehend
that this love also entails fatherly discipline (Hebrews 12:5-11). In this case,
the depth of our knowledge of God’s love has increased. At the same time, we
broaden our knowledge of God by studying His other attributes such as His
holiness. All these require diligence in appropriating the means of grace such
as God’s word and at the same time experiencing God’s power in our lives daily
as we allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God. Job, towards the end of the Book, exclaims,
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you”
(Job 42:5). This is the cry of someone whose knowledge of God’s sovereignty has tremendously grown—both in terms of what He knows about God and what he has experienced about God in his own personal life.
