Only Jesus: Following Him wherever, however, forever | Colossians 1:1-8
How is your New Year’s resolution going? Did you know that the second Friday of January (January 17th) is known as national “quitters” day? It is the day by which around 80% of people break their New Year’s resolutions. (You have 10 days left!) A recent study found that only about 8% of those who make resolutions actually hit most or all of their goals. Why are we so prone to abandon or give up on those goals? For most people, white-knuckling and pain of change is too hard so we give up. We have this ideal that if we “do” something or not “do” something that we can “be” someone we have always wanted to be, but then it gets too hard, and we can’t hang on. Unfortunately, this reality is something we find even find in the church. A lot of people make a resolution to change, they want to “be” a better person, so they think if I can just read the Bible, prayer more, go to church more and be nice to other people, that I will be loved and accepted by God and I will finally “be” the person I’ve always wanted to be. The problem is that the pressure of “doing” falls all of me. But what if being the person that is loved and accepted by God, isn’t all on you, but is all on Jesus? Would that change how you view the Christian life? There is a tendency in all of us to believe that we be “do” to “be.” But the gospel of Jesus is not about what we “do” but what HE has DONE for us. We all tend to drift away from Jesus and what He has done.
Paul is writing from prison to a group of believers that he had never met and to a church that he did not start. The church was planted Epaphras, who was a friend and disciple, who was now in prison with him. Epaphras has told Paul everything about this young, growing church and Paul is writing them to address some of the cultural pressures that they faced to drift away from Jesus. They were being tempted to add to Jesus or to leave Jesus all together. Paul’s primary objective is to show the supremacy of Christ overall and above all. Jesus is all you need. Only Jesus. What you think and believe about Jesus is the most important thing about you. We do not graduate from Jesus or the gospel, but we are to grow deeper and deeper in Jesus and the gospel. We tend to skip the introduction to letters, but the introduction provides us the basic framework for the Christian life. Paul begins his letter by teaching that it is only Jesus. He points believers to the basic truths that our identity in Christ is the grounds for our activity for Christ and our eternity with Christ.