Hebrews 12 says, "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." No one likes to be rebuked, especially in public, and especially by the Lord Jesus! But Jesus’ rebuke leads to life through repentance and faith in Him. Through the Scriptures, He exposes our sin so that we might grow in His grace.

In the beginning, God blessed us with ingenuity, insight, and creativity. However, the fall soon warped our hearts and minds, causing us to use our gifts in selfish and sinful ways. But Jesus unwarps and redeems us through the grace of the gospel, granting us shrewd and discerning hearts so that we might invest the resources He entrusts to us for His eternal glory.

Paul moves from analyzing the crisis in the church at Colossae to proposing the solution. Since the problem has been caused by the introduction of fine-sounding but deceptive arguments about Christ, the antidote is to re-focus on the genuine article: Jesus Christ the Lord. Paul realizes that this counterfeit picture of Christ jeopardizes both doctrine and practice, so he tells them to continue to walk in Christ, as they had done at the outset. To help them better understand what is needed, he outlines what it looks like to "live in him."

Sometimes the greatest barrier to fellowship with God is not the bad things we do but the good. Not our acts of outright rebellion, but the otherwise good things we do for our own benefit and glory. In Jesus’ parable, the older brother was just as lost as the younger brother even though he had never left home. His pride in his good works had distanced him from his father and made him believe he was without sin. But God offers grace even to older brothers like us through the merit of our Great Older Brother, Jesus Christ.

Though the end of Luke 15 is typically referred to as the parable of the lost son, the main emphasis is on the grace of the merciful father. The one sinned against bears the cost and shame of his child’s disobedience so that he may receive him back in love. So, too, God the Father welcomes back lost sinners through Jesus’ atoning work on the cross, rejoicing to bring the dead to life.

Lost things never find themselves. They must be found by one who is looking for them. The same is true for people lost in sin; we must be found by the Living God. In Luke 15, Jesus seeks us in our lost estate, rejoices to find us, and then calls us to rejoice with Him as we seek others in His Name so that they, too, might know the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

In our last sermon we saw Paul’s passion and purpose to see the Colossian believers become mature in Christ. In this next section we see that Paul’s passion and purpose leads to a problem: the Colossian church is in crisis mode because of deceitful false teachers, and Paul is doing damage control from a distance, but his purpose is to see that they know Christ and are protected against subtle and enticing philosophical heresies.

We live in an age of free trials, no obligation, and cancel at any time. In every sphere of life, both sacrifice and commitment are rare and fleeting. But Jesus offers us something infinitely better: a Savior who is worth committing our lives to, even when it is costly, even when it hurts, even unto death. Jesus is not seeking spectators, but disciples who will follow the “all in” Savior who first gave His life for us.

One of the reasons we fail to welcome those in need is because we forget the extent of our own need before the Lord. Jesus reminds us of just how poor we are apart from Him so that we might rejoice in the feast He has established through His work on the cross. Through the blood of the Savior, beggars like us are welcome at the table of God.

In every sphere of life, our culture celebrates those who exalt themselves. Boastfulness is often mistaken for strength, and humility for weakness. Ever since the fall, our hearts are inherently self-focused, the result being sin, strife, and folly. But Jesus offers a better way. Through His work on the cross, He calls us to live as “after you” disciples in a “me first” world. By humbling ourselves before the exalted Savior, He lifts us up so that we might testify to the One who chose humility before glory.