Seeds for 1/4/2023 - Colossians 1:6b
Scripture: “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.”
Observation: The virtues of faith and love “spring from” the hope we have through the gospel (v5). Paul is setting the Colossians’ fruitful experience of the gospel’s power in the context of the wider world. In doing so, he connects them to others through a shared experience of God’s work in Jesus.
Here’s the key to the powerful hope, faith, and love they experience: truly understanding God’s grace. Grace is the key to it all. Grace is easy to define— “unmerited favor” — but hard to “truly” understand. One explanation goes like this: The gospel of grace is the difference between “do” and “done.” In Christianity, a person is not made right with God by what they do, but by trusting in what Christ has done. We understand this in a basic way. But have we “truly understood” God’s grace, soul deep? That is the key and that seems to me a good reason to keep hearing and re-hearing it regularly. After decades of being a Christian, coming back to square one of grace doesn’t keep me in faith preschool, but mysteriously is the thing that presses me further and further along.
Application: How can I stay grounded in the basics of grace today?
Prayer: Lord, help me truly understand your grace, whether for the first or the thousandth time. Produce hope, faith, love, and every other good thing you desire in my life. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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