What We Render to God: Time (Colossians 3:12-4:6)

Hi, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into Newsong Churches Podcast.

We're a biblically faithful, gospel-centered Anglican church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

You can learn more about us at Newsongportperry.ca.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

Our first lesson is from the book of Colossians, chapter 3, verses 12 to chapter 4, verses 6.

Colossians 3:12

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of I service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.

Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Christ.

For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak.

Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

The word of the Lord.

Join with me in prayer.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Lord Christ, we thank you for your grace to us.

We give thanks to God the Father through you.

We thank you that your word is living and active.

Your servants are listening.

Please speak to us.

Now let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Amen.

You may be seated.

A German psychologist by the name of Dr.

Mark Whitman recently wrote in the magazine Psychology Today about his survey research into how the digital age has impacted our perception of time.

He says this.

Digital technologies are often marketed as time savers.

Yet many people told us in their surveys the opposite.

That these tools leave them feeling under constant time pressure, or as if they have less time than before.

This time drain takes at least three different forms.

First, digital time feels less valuable.

Many saw hours online as less meaningful than activities in the real world.

Second, digital inefficiency.

Rather than saving time, bureaucracy and inefficient systems drain it.

And thirdly, information overload.

Endless streams of content made decision making harder and less efficient.

And yet, Dr.

Whitman continues, the relationship is complicated.

When there's a spare moment waiting for us at a bus or standing in a queue, many of us gladly turn to social media to fill the gap and ward off boredom.

It's a double-edged sword, a convenient escape, but one that can also leave us wondering where the time went.

So Dr.

Whitman is reporting that these technologies might leave us wondering where the time went.

In the last couple of weeks, this community has been examining through the scriptures what the Lord would have us render to him, and particularly in how, uh in the last two weeks, how we've stewarded our talents and our treasures.

So two weeks ago, Rob preached about stewarding talents, as illustrated in the Gospel through the parable of the talents.

And remember that Rob explained to us that a talent is roughly twenty years of working wages.

Twenty years.

So there is a time component to understanding the parable of the talents.

And last week Mike exhorted us to remember that rendering our treasure to God is not about how much we give, but rather it is about the condition of the heart.

Our hearts must first receive the gift of grace in Christ before any true generosity can flow out of us to others.

But when we have been touched by the generosity of Christ, he will enrich us in every way to give back to him in thankfulness.

So there is a heartfelt thankfulness or thanksgiving motive to rendering our treasures to God.

So today we're going to look at the third and final subject of what we render to God, and that is time.

Specifically, we're going to do this looking at the last section of St.

Paul's epistle to the Colossians, chapter 3, verse 12 to 4, verse 6.

That has just been read, and if you'd like to open your Bibles to that, you can do so.

Colossians chapter 3, verse 12.

Colossians 3:12

So, first, for a bit of background on Colossians, we should recall that Paul writes this epistle to the Colossians from prison.

Likely in Rome, likely around 60 or 62 AD, according to scholars.

The church in Colossi was like a was probably a church plant from Paul's missionary work in Ephesus, which was a nearby larger city in Asia Minor.

And Paul was writing to this church plant to address the problem of Jewish pagan syncretism.

Well, to encourage them, but with a specific purpose to address a problem of pagan Jewish syncretism, a mixing of biblical truth with human inventions.

And this was manifesting in this smaller city, the smaller Greek city of Colossi.

And other than Paul's epistle here, the city of Colossi does not give, uh does not figure very much in the New Testament in general.

But we do have a couple of uh touch points with uh uh the Church of the Colossians in the New Testament.

And the first is that Paul's letter to Philemon on how Paul would like the slave or the bondservant Onesimus to be treated by his master Philemon, who is a believer, and how Paul would like Onesimus to be made available for gospel ministry, uh, that that's addressed in the letter to Philemon.

And scholars believe that the letter to Philemon, to him personally, was likely sent by Paul to Colossi, along with the letter to the Colossians.

So they're coming together.

One's addressed to the church as a group, and one's addressed to this individual about another individual.

So Paul's teaching there is on the relationship between masters and bondservants.

And that comes up in our passage today.

And you can see the letter to Philemon as like a real-world application of a bit of the teaching that Paul does in the letter to uh Colossians and the passage that we had read.

So Philemon is the first New Testament connection to the epistle, uh the Colossians epistle, and the second connection is Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

So remember, Colossi is a church plant from Ephesus.

He writes another letter to the church of Ephesus, which is in the big city.

And scholars note that around one-third of the words and phrases in the letter to Colossians appear in the letter to the Ephesians as well.

So thus there is a there's a general agreement that the letter to the Ephesians was written by Paul close to, or perhaps slightly after, the letter to the Colossians.

And it's an expansion on the ideas provided in the Colossians letter.

And it has a similar structure.

And it might have been sent at the act at the same time.

It might have been sent all together, as three, all three letters.

One going to Ephesus, and then two going to Colossi.

From Rome, of course, where Paul was in prison.

So we know that at least some of the issues facing the churches of Colossae and Ephesus were overlapping.

In Colossians, particularly, Paul is encouraging the church to hold fast to the apostolic teaching while he's targeting this error of syncretism that had crept in among the Colossians.

And there were three aspects or three errors that Paul especially targets in his letter.

So one is legalism.

That's the idea of salvation by keeping rules, and specifically the Old Testament rules.

He's attacking that idea.

The second one is esotericism, or the idea of salvation by special intermediaries, or specially angelic intermediaries, and the worship of angels.

Paul brings this up.

And then the third error is the error of asceticism, which is the idea of being saved or having salvation by effort, by the things that we do to earn salvation.

Similar to legalism, but a bit different because it's about uh denying even our embodied selves to a certain extent.

So each of these errors makes the mistake of placing something else above Christ, and his work communicated to us in salvation.

Salvation is through Christ alone.

So legalism places my rule keeping above Christ in his work.

Esotericism places my manipulation of lesser beings above me, above Christ in his work, which is overall.

Asceticism places my own effort to mortify sin above Christ in his work of putting sin to death on our behalf.

Which then, yes, we do express through things like fasting and prayer, but not as the means to salvation.

So, in contrast to these errors, Paul is spending the last portion of the letter to Colossians describing the new life in Christ and what it looks like for us.

And Paul takes us straight to Christ as the starting point.

So he says, chapter 3, verse 1.

Then if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Verse 3, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

So what does this mean practically?

Well, Paul gives then a list of negative examples.

What the life in Christ, what the life with Christ in God is not like.

And then he gives us positive examples.

So first the negative examples, chapter 3, verse 5.

Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

So these negative things are the earthly things.

Now, don't make the mistake of conflating these sinful things with Paul denigrating our created bodies and the created order in the material world, the world that was created good by God.

Remember that Paul has just reminded us that we should seek the things above, the heavenly things, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, and there Christ is fully resurrected and embodied in the same body that his disciples saw and touched before he ascended into heaven.

Thus, the putting to death of these earthly things is not a denunciation against God's good material creation, but rather, it's rather a denunciation against the twisting of the order of the material world for sinful purposes.

So the heavenly minded Christian, like Christ, seeks the perfection of all of the created order, in heaven and in earth, which only Christ can do.

So put to death these earthly things, Paul tells us.

So that's a negative example.

But how so what should we do?

How then shall we live?

Well, this is where we pick up in our epistle reading today, verse 12.

Paul turn returns to the Lord again and he says, put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

So the good stuff starts with God.

First, God has chosen you, holy and beloved.

If you are genuinely asking how to follow Christ, then you already know that the Lord has chosen you and has imparted his grace to draw you to himself somehow.

So that is the source of our holiness.

For only God is holy.

And that is the source of our title as beloved.

For it is God who loves us.

So second, then, the life that we live as one of these chosen ones is planted within.

It is from the heart.

So Paul says, put on then compassionate hearts.

Kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

Verse 14, and above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Beautiful musical image there.

So right there we have some of the main fruits of the Spirit in these virtues.

And these come from the heart, and everything else Paul describes following this section flows out of the heart.

Out of the heart into our relationships with others.

So Paul then sets out three groups of people that the Christian will normally have in their life, and how they are to be treated.

How should you live?

How should you conduct yourself?

So these are the church, which is his body, the Christian household, and those who are outside of the community of believers, who Paul here calls outsiders.

So first the church.

For the church, Paul says in verse 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you, plural you, were called in one body.

And be thankful, he adds.

So Paul here is connecting the peace of Christ in our hearts, being a rule or a governor over the community, called to be one body in the church with thankfulness.

And that word, thankfulness, is of course Eucharist, from which we get our word for Eucharist, for the Holy Communion.

So Paul continues his admonition to the church then with the word in the Holy Scriptures.

Verse 16.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

There's that thankfulness again.

So very practically, the church, Paul's just being very straightforward.

The church is to be gathering in teaching for all wisdom, in worship together.

And finally, again, in thankfulness or gratitude to God.

And we Anglicans often like to summarize that as the ministry of word and sacrament.

What we order our week around by beginning the first morning of the first day of the week in gathering in worship.

That's what we're up to.

So then Paul concludes his exhortation to the church, specifically to the group of people that comprise the church in Colossi with this famous summary.

And whatever you do, again, plural you, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks, Eucharistones, again, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

So, did you hear that?

Whatever you do in word or deed, there is no boundary to the church's worship and our thanksgiving, our Eucharist.

The four walls of the church building do not fence the church's thanksgiving inside.

No.

Whatever the Christian does, whatever, in word or deed, everything is done in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Giving thanks to God the Father through him.

The Christian life is total.

Doing the dishes, going to work, taking out the trash, going to bed at night, graduating from university, heading into retirement, mowing the lawn.

It is all to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

And as Mike preached last week on treasure, all of these things that we do in the name of the Lord Jesus are not to earn God's favor as a precondition to acceptance, but to respond to God's free gift of grace with thankfulness.

To live a Eucharistic life, you could say.

So this is how Paul contrasts the church as a group with those problematic heretics who are promoting legalism and esotericism and asceticism in Colossi.

Okay, so that's the first group.

The second group that Paul turns to and counsels about are the households.

So this is verses 18, chapter 3, verses 18 to chapter 4, verse 1.

For each member of the Christian household, Paul connects their duties back to what serves the Lord.

So he calls wives and husbands to live together in love, and the word love is agape love, self-giving love.

And he also references submission, and that submission is tied only to what is fitting in the Lord.

To what is fitting in the Lord.

And he calls children to obey their parents in everything, for it is pleasing to the Lord.

And then finally, Paul counsels bondservants to obey their masters.

And the word for servant here, doulos, is the same word that Paul uses a few verses later to describe eprephas as a servant, a doulos of Christ Jesus.

So the bondservants within the Christian church.

Are to obey their earthly masters.

Not, this is important to note, not because the institution of indentured servitude was necessarily a good system or a just system.

If they were to participate in it for that reason, you could perhaps see that as people pleasing that Paul is speaking against here.

But rather, servants are supposed to obey their masters out of fear of the Lord.

Paul says plainly, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men.

It's all for the Lord.

Why?

Why for the Lord?

Well, because it is from the Lord that the bondservant, Paul tells us, will receive his or her inheritance.

A true inheritance.

So either, perhaps, through just pay from a good master, recognizing that that actually ultimately comes from the goodness of God.

So you can see you could receive an inheritance in that manner from God.

Or from the spiritual inheritance that that servant will receive in the next life.

If they've been treated unjustly by their master, and they obey them anyways, as a witness to the Lord.

And this is the same attitude that all of us who are employees should take towards our employers, to those who we're we have obligations to in this world, this messy world.

People work in all kinds of industries.

I'm a lawyer, I've represented all kinds of clients.

It's a messy world.

But we do it as unto the Lord, not to please, not to be a people pleaser, not to get the benefit or the favor in material terms from those who are above us.

So for masters, Paul is very simple and direct.

Be fair and just in the treatment of your bondservants, because you are a bondservant with a master who is in heaven, who is the Lord.

So again, he's back, he's bringing us back to the Lord.

Masters, don't think you're you're uh just because you're you're the one, you're the boss and you have people in your household to order around, don't think you're not a bondservant yourself, like Eprephas, the bondservant of Christ Jesus.

So if you want to, we don't have time today, but if you want to see a specific commentary from Paul on this whole idea, you go to the letter to Philemon.

There he's taking this one sentence about how masters treat slaves, and he's turning it into a whole letter to encourage Philemon.

Philemon, you have a brother, Onesimus, who is your bondservant.

Here's how you really should be treating him.

You should be releasing him to me for ministry as a brother.

So Paul then wraps up his directions on how all are to behave within the church with the this final instruction to continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful, which means keeping alert in it, the prayer.

So be steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it, in the prayer, with thanksgiving.

There it is again.

Eucharistia this time, thanksgiving.

So that's the second group, the household.

The third group and final group for whom Paul provides instructions to the Colossians are who he calls outsiders.

He tells the Colossians to walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.

Or you might be familiar with the phrase, redeeming the time.

That's how the Old King James Bible says it.

So this walk, walk in wisdom towards outsiders, this walk that Paul counsels is the idea of showing forth a good witness to those outside the church, to be above reproach.

As Paul says in the very next verse, for one's speech to be gracious with outsiders, for one's speech to be seasoned with salt, like a tasty meal.

That is how we are to know how to answer each person, each outsider with whom we come into contact.

So the concept of making the best use of the time or redeeming it is an economic idea.

It's like an economic analogy for buying out a product, going all in on it, on that risk, because you see the opportunity.

So you can hear echoes of Christ's parable, for example, of the hidden treasure in the field, where the believer sells everything that they have in order to go all in and go buy that field that has the treasure in it.

Paul wants the Colossians and us to make the best use of the time that God has given us and to use it to the full in those opportunities that we're given.

To avoid no expense in taking advantage of our time for the gospel.

And Paul is also indicating to the Colossians that when you are encountering outsiders with the gospel, they should look for the opportune moment when an opening for the gospel is available.

So the word for time here, when Paul says to make the best use of the time, the word for time comes from the word kairos.

And kairos time in ancient Greek was understood to be the opportune time or the ripe moment.

You can see an example of this in the idea contrasted with the idea of chronos as time, with the other Greek word for time.

And chronos time is the succession of events, you know, one event after one event after another, the chronology or history of events as they go by.

An opportunity.

So in ancient Greek writing, for example, the Greek philosopher and one of the colleagues of Aristotle at the Lyceum was Theophrastes, his name, and he used the idea of a Kairos moment to explain when a secular politician has the occasion to seize a political opportunity.

Politicians are always trying to do this.

And if they can if they can take advantage of it, they will.

When they find that opportune moment to take advantage of a wedge issue or to make a move when their opponents can't counter them.

That's a kairos moment, according to Theophastries.

So that's the idea.

Obviously, we're not talking about political advantage in material terms.

It's an analogy to the gospel when we have this opportune moment.

So, on a practical level, what does this look like?

Well, the church father John Chrysostom says that this means that Christians should be careful to befriend unbelievers, those outsiders that Paul's addressing.

Do not just rush in to present the gospel by force necessarily.

Be looking for an opportune moment, Chrysostom says, a kairos moment to bring them to the good news of Jesus Christ.

So that's the third group.

And that basically brings us to the end of our passage.

So now I'd like to talk a bit about applying this in our digital age.

I would like to suggest that this framework or picture that Paul provides us of the Christian way of life, the Christian way of passing the time, of redeeming the time, is helpful for us to see how Christians render to God our time.

For Paul in the Colossians, time is precious.

And the fabric of time, that long stretch of Kronos, just one thing after another, is pierced by God's ordained moments for Him to work through us in particular opportunities.

So Paul's idea of time here stands in contrast to how our society struggles in the digital age with time as less valuable and less meaningful.

So we can see, I hope, how the gospel presents us with the antidote or the remedy to what Dr.

Whitman was seeing in his research, to these three distortions of time that we experience in the digital age.

So, first, in contrast to the digital age, having time feeling less valuable, in contrast to that, the gospel shows us that our time on earth is not only these passing of events, these one change after another, Kronos time, but that it is within time, and specifically the gift of these kairos moments, when we are watchful, that's when we encounter God's purpose and meaning for us day by day.

If we're watchful, if we're paying attention, we're gonna see it.

And second, in contrast to digital time feeling inefficient, feeling sort of bureaucratic, the gospel shows us that we are to make the most of and to use up every opportunity in the moment when God presents it to us.

We don't need to gather up a database.

When that moment comes, we use it and move on, keep moving.

So to gently invite the church to work.

Sorry, uh misspoke here.

So as an example, to gently invite to church a work colleague who said to the who has said to you, they've been thinking about the meaning of life and they've been kind of interested in religion and looking into various religions.

You know, just gently invite them to church.

That's a kairos moment.

They're opening up about something quite personal, for example, if a if a work colleague shares something like that.

And don't be too rough, but take advantage of the opportunity to reach out to that person who discloses a need that they have that you could help fulfill.

To give money, even a small amount of money, to a church fundraising goal that will impact the community.

There's a moment, there's an opportunity.

As a community, we're gonna we're gonna do this thing.

This is the moment to participate.

Give.

Eternity is breaking in now, it's in the present, it's it's coming in these opportunities.

So seize it, redeem it, go all in when the opportunity arises.

So, third, in contrast to digital time giving us information overload, Paul's presentation of the gospel and gospel living provides us with a beautiful and elegant simplicity of life in the Lord.

You can think of uh what Jesus said to the Mary Magdalene when uh when she was sitting at his feet.

He said, There's only one thing needful.

And Mary chose the better part by sitting at the feet of Jesus.

And in Paul's application, you could see he does not require the Colossians to fret about learning all the information in the world and caring for all the needs in the world, however distant.

No, no, no, no.

That's not what Paul's presenting.

Paul focuses the Colossians on the local people with whom the believers come into contact, the local church that they're in, the household that they're a part of, either as head of the household or as child or bondservant, and the local community of outsiders.

Here is where Paul wants the Colossians to focus and make an impact for the gospel.

So I don't mean this to say we shouldn't like engage on the internet and that real ministry doesn't happen on the internet.

It does.

But but uh the church is always rooted in the material world.

We are we're rooted in real communities, and to the extent that those are extended through the internet, thanks be to God.

But it's always an extension of something that's that's real and something that's local.

That's what Paul is bringing the Colossians back to.

So if we keep Christ at the center of our daily practical living, all the other information and the noise that is thrown at us in the digital age, just coming to us constantly, it begins to be filtered and prioritized.

We have a set of priorities in which to understand this, all of this information that we receive in our day and age.

So that that way we can go from being distracted with overload to live with purpose in the here and now where God has strategically placed us.

He decided you were going to be born in this place and be living at this time in this community, be in this church with these people.

That's a kairos moment.

You know it.

So take advantage of it, redeem it, go all in.

But finally, and most importantly, Paul reminds us constantly in this passage, this passage particularly, chapter 3 of Colossians, that all of our time and everything that we do is given to us by the Lord, and we render back to the Lord in thankfulness for what Christ has done for us.

So we redeem the time for him and to his glory.

It is living totally in the name of the Lord Jesus in a life of thanksgiving, a Eucharistic life, where we offer and present unto him ourselves, our souls, and bodies in all that we do to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto him.

That's our goal.

And we ask the Lord that he would do that in us this day, as we gather here at the Lord's table for the Lord's Supper.

So let us pray.

Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for this opportunity that you've given to us by bringing each one of us into this world, by giving us this time in which to live, as an opportunity to receive from you and then to give to others from our time and to give back to you our thankfulness.

We thank you for this great gift and grace.

And we ask that you would multiply it in all of us and in this community here in Port Perry.

And we pray this through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for all time and for all ages, world without end.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at Newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.