Background - Part One

My head hurts.  That is all I have to say.  My head hurts. 

Over the last few days I have been reading through our resource material working on our background information.  Oy!  The guys that write these commentaries are deep and I mean deep thinkers.  All of you, who have ever criticized me for being “too deep”, take that back right now!  I have nothing in depth compared to these guys.  They make my most profound thoughts and insights seem like kindergarten prose.  Smart beyond what I thought was considered smart. 

I am way out of my league folks but I am determined to grow in the Lord and that only comes through challenge.  I refuse to live in apathy and mediocrity when there is so much more to know and learn. That generally goes against my natural bent.  My regular impulse is to select whatever is easiest.  No worries though.  Jesus talked about the narrow road and the wide road.  The narrow one is that which leads to life.  I pick that one.

Today we are going to focus on whom this letter is being written to then in the next post we will examine why.

So who?  Colossae is the who.  Colossae was located in the Roman province of Asia, which is now modern day Turkey.  It was basically small and insignificant and according to J.B. Lightfoot “without a doubt Colossae was the least important church to which any epistle of St. Paul was addressed.” 

Pause right there.  I am smitten.  I have just fallen profoundly in love with Paul. Why, because the great apostle was compelled to write to this rather small and insignificant church.  Can you imagine how they must have felt receiving a letter from HIM?  I imagine their self-esteem issues as a collective body of believers skyrocketed that day. 

Significance.  We all just want to be important and have value.  Don’t we?

We want to leave our mark after we are gone.  We want to achieve something that is lasting.  We want to be acknowledged and accepted.  We want to know we are significant and we matter.  Paul writes to the insignificant and thus they become significant.  They are important. 

Jesus does that too.  He comes to the insignificant.  He resides with them and spends time with them.  They too become important.  They now matter.  We love this perspective, don’t we?  There is a ton of truth here.  Jesus comes to the least and gives them value because of who He is. 

But I have some thoughts and issues regarding this significance thing.  I think there is an underlying problem if you lean to heavy on the “I am significant because Jesus loves me” thinking.  It still fuels the whole “need for significance” desire.  It doesn’t kill it but resurrects it.  If we are in Christ, than our old nature has died with him and so should that compelling obsession we have for notoriety and pursuit of value in ourselves.  If we are holding onto the “I am significant because Jesus has come for me” way of thinking than the ultimate goal and focus of our faith is our significance and us rather Jesus and how he delivers us from that need for the same.

I don’t think Jesus came to fulfill our need for significance but to remove it.  Jesus loves you even in your insignificance.  Wrap your mind around that.  You have value just because Jesus deems you to have value.  You don’t ever have to do anything that will substantiate that fact.  Jesus comes to you out of His love and mercy.  Compared to His greatness, you will always be insignificant.  Yet He comes anyway.  We no longer need to fuel the insatiable desire for significance.  We are free to be ordinary.

Perhaps there is a whole lot more freedom in the ordinary and the insignificant life.  Perhaps the making a difference thing is just a trap to keep the focus on our selves rather than on Christ.  We are not the objects of our significance.  Jesus is.  Because Jesus lived a significant life, we are set free from constantly striving for value, worth and spiritual fame.  It is because of what Christ has done that we have value.  It is a finished work and we can rest. 

Our lives are now marked as people who are free from the continuous struggle for notoriety that surrounds us and the intense desire for infamy that is imbedded deep within our souls.  We now get to live in the peace and security of knowing that the value and longing for approval is finished and accomplished on our behalf.  Our serving the Lord springs from that knowledge rather than a tool to obtain it.  We are free. 

Rather than raising the banner declaring “I am significant because Jesus loves me”, we might want to wave one that reads more like this.  “I am insignificant, yet Jesus loved me enough to die for me and set me free from the need for significance so I can serve him more fully even in the ordinary”. 

Paul cared enough about the Colossian church to write and encourage them in the things of faith.  They were important to Paul but their importance to Paul isn’t what gave them value.  It was who they belonged to that did.  Paul knew that.  We need to know it too.

Revel in your insignificance.  Revel in your lack of importance.  Revel in your Jesus.  For He has come for you.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.” 

                                                                        John 15:16