A message on what the good news of Jesus does
“6 All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.”
Madison is nineteen years old. She’s about to start her second year of college. When she’s home for the summer, Christianity seems plausible to her. Her parents and friends are Christians. It makes sense to her. When she’s at school, though, Christianity seems less plausible. A few of the girls on her floor are Christians, but not many. She likes those girls, but she also likes the girls who make no pretense about being Christians. The girls who say they are Christians are by no means uniformly kind to her and those who make no pretense about being Christians are by no means uniformly unkind to her. Madison has questions, “What if Christianity is just the way I happened to grow up and nothing more? What if it is not the truth but has just been, to this point, my truth?” She’s rubbing shoulders with people with all sorts of beliefs, and she wonders why she should think that her beliefs are right. She is starting to think it might be more than a little naïve to believe that Jesus is enough. Again, when she’s home, these questions don’t seem all that important, but when she’s back at school, they nag at her.
Madison wants to know if Christianity is true or if it’s just tradition. She wants to know if Jesus really is enough of if that’s just naivety. Madison has lots of questions. She is wondering if Christianity really works for people who grew up differently from her—like the girls on her hall. She is wondering if she hasn’t been naïve to put all her trust in Jesus. It’s a big world and maybe Christianity is just the way, truth, and life she happened to grow up in.
This passage doesn’t answer all these questions, but it helps. It talks about the power of the gospel in the lives of people who are radically different from Madison and from each other. It talks about what the gospel is and isn’t. It tells us that only the true gospel bears fruit in hearts that truly receive it. That’s the claim of this sermon: only the true gospel bears fruit in hearts that truly receive it.
We will study this in two points. First: the universality of the gospel. Second: sharing the gospel. We see the universality of the gospel in verse 6 and Epaphras sharing the gospel in verses 7-8.
First: the universality of the gospel. The Colossians were in a somewhat similar situation to Madison. They lived in the midst of all sorts of different belief systems. They were wondering whether Jesus was enough. Their response was to borrow from other belief systems to, as they might put it, “improve their Christianity.” You can tell that Paul has this situation in mind because why he uses the word “truth” here in verse 6, “God’s grace in all its truth,” and back in verse 5, “the true message of the gospel.”
Paul wrote the Colossians to tell them that they needed to stop mixing and mingling beliefs because all they were doing was diminishing the power of God at work in their lives. Their attempts to improve Christianity were only diminishing their faith, hope, and love. You can’t add to the gospel. You can only subtract from it.
Paul wanted them to see that this gospel they had first believed was changing them and all sorts of different people; verse 6, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing.” The gospel didn’t just birth faith, hope, and love in them when they first heard it; it was doing it to people who were radically different from them. It was proving its power in small towns. It was proving its power in the capitol of the empire. It was giving faith, hope, and love to people from different ethnic backgrounds, the rich and the poor, the young and the old. It was changing people in ways nothing else could; “all over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing.”
Madison needs to realize that too. She needs to see that the gospel doesn’t just change middle class Americans like her and her parents. It bears that same fruit in the lives of single mothers in Mexico City who work three jobs to barely make ends meet. It does the same for Christians worshipping in secret in North Korea. There is something universal about it— the universality of the gospel, as this point is called.
The gospel is the answer to the deepest needs of humanity across the gender, generations, classes, races, temperaments, Myers-Briggs Personality Types, forms of personal baggage, and besetting sins. That’s a testament to its truth. You know that if you’ve been on a foreign mission trip. You know that you’ve got more in common with born again bearers of faith, hope, and love in Guatemala than you do with Americans who don’t believe the gospel. Madison needs to see that.
Now before we proceed any further, we need to be clear about what this good news is. Madison might not be clear about what the gospel is. Many people who grow up in church aren’t, which is one of the reasons they have all sorts of questions about its uniqueness when they encountered other beliefs.
The gospel is the news about what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do. It is a historical statement: Jesus died for sinners. It is a personal appropriation of that history: Jesus died for sinners among who I am the worst. It is a historical statement: God raised Jesus from the dead. It is a personal appropriation: my hope lies in the fact that God will resurrect Jesus’ followers just like He resurrected Jesus. It is a historical statement: Jesus’ teachings have been recorded and their relation to the Old Testament is clear. It is a personal appropriation: I seek to live by that teaching.
There is only one gospel, and it is the same for everyone, and it can do what it promises in anyone. That’s what Paul reminded these Colossians of. That’s what Madison needs to recognize. That’s Christianity. It isn’t conservative—some sort of attempt to preserve 1950’s America. It isn’t progressive—some sort of attempt to build a utopia here on earth. When it becomes anything less than the good news of Jesus Christ, it becomes impotent, meaning it is powerless and unable to reproduce. The real gospel gives life. It bears fruit. It multiplies. The gospel is the power of God until salvation. Anything else is fruitless—even anything else that calls itself Christianity. Plenty of people have left what they considered to be Christianity but was nothing of the kind. It is possible that what Madison considers Christianity is just what she grew up with and not the gospel.
The gospel is the power of God at work in human lives. Paul said in verse 6 that it was, “bearing fruit and growing.” This language likely comes from Genesis 1:28 in which God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. That was creation. The gospel is all about new creation; the new humanity is the first part of the new creation. The gospel was being fruitful and multiplying. That’s the power Madison needs. That’s what we all need. As GK Beale put it, “the Colossian Christians have begun to participate in the new creation and thus have commenced to carry out the commission to Adam and Eve in a more effective way that it had ever been done in the Old Testament era.” They would be foolish to pollute that by combining it with even the best ideas of man, and the lies they were believing, then as today, are certainly not the best ideas of man.
Paul reminded the Colossians of how this gospel began its in them, which is the same way it begins to work in people today; verse 6, “since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace.” Faith comes by hearing and what is heard is the word of God. Faith has a cognitive element to it; it includes an understanding God’s grace. This is why we give children’s storybook Bibles at baptisms. This is why we give study Bibles at professions of faith. This is why we are reading through the Old Testament. This is why we prioritize the preaching of God’s word in worship. We don’t do it because of tradition or because it seems right. We do it because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We do it because God told us and God tells Madison who it is that He looks on with favor, “those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word,” as God put it in Isaiah. That’s the heart that Jesus would consider to be good soil. That’s the heart that will yield a hundredfold harvest of faith, hope, and love. That’s the fruit being borne all over the world.
To yield that harvest, you need to hear that gospel: that’s our second point: sharing the gospel. Paul wanted the Colossians to consider that they had already encountered the only good news. He wanted them to consider that it was already bearing faith, hope, and love among them and that to give up on that for something less would be foolish. He wanted them to consider from whom they heard this gospel in the first place; verse 7, “You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf.”
Epaphras was a rather common name at that time. This is like saying, “you learned it from Bob.” We tend to think that there was something special about Epaphras because, to us, this name is unusual, and he is in the Bible. To Paul and to the Colossians, he was just Bob—a guy in whom faith, hope, and love were blossoming because he believed the gospel and a guy who had shared this same gospel with these Colossians.
Keep that in mind when you are teaching Sunday School in the Daniel room or the Abraham room. You are doing with those children exactly what Epaphras was doing in Colossae. That’s what’s happening in the Bible studies in GEMS and Cadets. It might not seem that glorious to us when we’re doing it because we don’t see the story told from God’s point of view as we see it here in Colossians.
Charles Spurgeon was, without a doubt, the greatest preacher of the nineteenth century. One Sunday his grandfather, who was also a preacher, came to hear him, but when he arrived Charles wasn’t there. His train had been delayed and so Charles’ grandfather stepped up and started the service. When Charles walked into the sanctuary, his grandfather said, “You have all come to hear my dear grandson, and therefore I will stop that you may hear him. He may preach the gospel better than I can, but he cannot preach a better gospel.” You might not be able to present the good news of what Jesus has done as well as Spurgeon, but when you do it in the Daniel room or at a GEMS Bible study you are presenting news that is just as good as what Spurgeon presented. You are presenting news which is just as good as what Epaphras presented in Colossae.
Since there is no better gospel, we must be sure to present the gospel and nothing less. Remember the claim of this sermon is that, only the true gospel bears fruit in hearts that truly receive it. Paul highlighted his connection with Epaphras to remind the Colossians that they had heard the true gospel. “Paul draws attention to his reliable associate who guarantees to the church at Colossae that they received the true apostolic gospel,” as commentator Peter O’Brien put it. Remember, it is only the good news of Jesus as presented in the gospels has the power to bear faith, hope, and love.
Paul also linked the message back to Epaphras to remind these Colossians about his character. He wanted them to consider the impact of the gospel on Epaphras. “Take the faith, hope, and love you see within him as evidence of the reliability of his message.” “Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith,” as Hebrews 13 puts it. What the Colossians saw in Epaphras wasn’t reproducible by the false teachings they found so attractive. The lessons your youth group leaders gave when you were a teenager weren’t as impressive as a movie that cost a hundred million dollars to make but unlike that movie, that lesson’s message had the power to grow faith, hope, and love within you if you would accept it. No movie could do that. Nothing Madison will encounter other than the gospel can do that.
Never underestimate the power of God to work through His faithful word faithfully delivered. It was the gospel spoken by fishermen, tax collectors, ex-Pharisees, and whatever it was that Epaphras did for a job that turned the Roman Empire upside down, put a stop to infanticide, led to the development of hospitals and orphanages, outlawed slavery, and produced a hundred other benefits that we in our culture are now boasting in as if we produced them.
That power came through the gospel, which Epaphras faithfully delivered and these Colossians genuinely received. Paul knew that they had genuinely received it because just as Epaphras faithfully spoke the gospel to the Colossians so Epaphras faithfully reported what was going on in Colossae to Paul; verse 8, “who also told us of your love in the Spirit.”
Paul was again pointing to fruit. He was pointing to, as we will see throughout this letter, the new creation breaking into this creation. The new creation is a place of continual reliance on God, continual confidence in God’s plan, and behavior that is continually like God’s, in other words faith, hope, and love. That’s the new creation breaking into this one. The greatest of these inbreakings, as Paul makes clear elsewhere, is love. That’s why it is such a powerful testimony to the power of the gospel today. We studied that for fourteen weeks in 1 Corinthians 13 two years ago. We saw repeatedly that such love extended beyond the self and family can’t be manufactured by the flesh; it is a gift of the Spirit. That Spirit was at work in these Colossians. Epaphras had told Paul about these new believers’ “love in the Spirit,” as verse 8 puts it.
This new creation is breaking into this creation all over the world. It has changed and is changing and will change people with vastly different backgrounds many of whom live in contexts far different from anything we or Madison will ever experience. Look at this chart.
What you’ve got here is the geographic distribution of religions. What do you notice? Almost all Hindus and Buddhists live in Asia. Almost all Muslims live in Muslim countries. Almost all Jewish live where the ethnically Jewish people are. Which religion is evenly distributed across the world and ethnicities? Second from the bottom—Christianity; “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth,” and it was spread by people like Epaphras and is being as little children sit on their mother’s lap and hear what God had done.
What’s going to matter in the end for Madison is not whether she hangs on to her Northwest Iowa values or West Michigan values or hometown values, but whether she has believed the good news that Jesus came to save sinners among whom she is the foremost—something that has been and is being believed by people all around the world. The question is whether what’s bearing fruit all over the world is bearing fruit in Madison. If it is, it is because she’s heard about Jesus from someone like Epaphras or from someone like you. Amen.