Scripture Daily

Context No. 1793 of 4322 · Colossians

Context · Reflection

Colossians 1:1-8: in context

1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have toward all the saints, 5because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the Good News 6which has come to you, even as it is in all the world and is bearing fruit and growing, as it does in you also, since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth, 7even as you learned from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on your behalf, 8who also declared to us your love in the Spirit.

Paul opens his letter to the Colossians with thanksgiving. He has heard of their faith in Christ and their love for all God's people, and he traces both to a third thing: because of the hope laid up for you in the heavens, of which you heard in the gospel. The good news, he says, is bearing fruit and growing among them as in all the world. And he commends Epaphras, from whom they learned it, a faithful servant who told Paul of their love in the Spirit.

Notice how Paul connects three things: faith, love, and hope. He gives thanks for their faith in Christ and their love for all the saints, and then he names the root from which these grow: the hope laid up for them in heaven. Their faith and love spring, Paul says, from the hope, the settled, secure future stored up for them with God. This ordering is worth pondering. We might think of hope as the least practical of the three, a vague optimism about the future; but Paul makes it the root that feeds present faith and love. Because they have a sure hope, an inheritance reserved in heaven that cannot be lost, they are freed to believe and to love now. There is a deep truth here about how a secure future shapes the present. When our hope is settled, when we know that our ultimate future is safe in God's hands, held in heaven beyond the reach of loss, we are freed from the anxious grasping and self-protection that a fearful, hopeless view of the future breeds. We can love others generously, hold our possessions loosely, and trust God steadily, because we are not clinging to this life as if it were all we have; our real treasure and future are laid up in heaven. Hope, in this sense, is intensely practical; it is the ground on which present faith and love can flourish. A people sure of their heavenly hope can afford to love without holding back, to trust without fear, because their future is secure. So Paul's thanksgiving points us to tend our hope, to fix it on the inheritance laid up in heaven, knowing that a settled hope is the root that feeds a life of faith and love.

Is my hope settled on the inheritance laid up for me in heaven, secure beyond loss, and do I see how such a hope frees me to love generously and trust steadily now, or does a fearful, uncertain view of my future breed the anxious grasping that chokes faith and love?

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