Day 16 Faith, Love, Hope
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 Colossians 1:6
Paul uses a gardening illustration to highlight the growth of the gospel. Planted by Epaphras as a seed in the soil of Colosse, the gospel has grown into a plant bearing good and healthy fruit. Paul notes that what happened in Colosse had been occurring ‘all over the world.’
God empowers the gospel. Jesus said His own spoken words were seed that, ‘when it fell on good soil … it came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even one hundred times’ (Mark 4:8).
What was the fruit Paul heard was growing in the lives of the new Christians – miraculous gifts, bold preaching, explosive growth?
Hopefully these all happened but Paul knew what he was looking for: faith, love and hope (1:5). He highlights the same three in the different churches he was involved in (1 Thessalonians 1:3; 1 Corinthians 13:13; Ephesians 4:2-5; Romans 5:1-5).
While each should be part of every stage of our lives, in a more specific sense, faith rests on the past; love works in the present; hope looks to the future. A strong, healthy, growing Christian will have all three in good portion.
Do you have a faith that puts you in touch with, and keeps you in touch with the living God, a faith that results in God-honouring works, a faith that continually challenges and changes you?
What about your love? Is it birthed by the Holy Spirit (Colossians 1:8)? Can you love the unlovely?
Is your hope New Testament hope – a confident, expectation of good, and centring in your expectation of Christ’s return?
When these three are growing in us, we find ourselves drawn upwards to God in faith, outwards to other people in love, and onward to the second coming of Christ in hope.
Are you a healthy Christian? Is there solid evidence in your life that the seed of the gospel is bearing the kind of fruit the apostle Paul would have looked for?
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