NOTE: This is an unedited transcript and, therefore, contains imperfections and is not for publication or quotation in whole or in part by anyone without the express written consent of Pastor Conley. The audio tape of this message delivered in the evening service on March 9, 1997, is available and may be purchased from the Church.

THE SIGNATURE OF GOD

A Missionary’s Joyful Thanks For Divine Accomplishments

Colossians 1:3-8

Dr. J. Drew Conley, Pastor

Tri-City Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina

We live in a day of confusion as to what Christianity really is, and we could come up with all sorts of reasons for this. Naturally, as believers, we want to blame the cultural, scientific or social trends of the day, but I think more often than not the confusion of the world largely stems from the confusion found in the Church itself as to what Christianity really is. Professing believers in large part do not really understand what they really have, nor who they really are in Christ, which is abundantly clear from the way so many professing believers conduct their lives. Often there is very little difference between them and their worldly neighbors when it comes down to everyday living. We also find that those who profess the Lord are often easy targets for the enemy and often useful pawns in his hand to keep the lost man blind to these spiritual realities.

The apostle Paul devoted his very life to winning people to Christ, to taking the gospel to those who had never heard it before — who had no preconceived notion of what it was — and explaining to them the truth of the gospel and having them truly partake of it in a way that radically transformed their lives. At this beginning of the letter to the Colossians we find that the apostle Paul is overjoyed at what is happening in the lives of the believers at Colosse. He sees in them the evidence that God has done a genuine work of grace in them — he sees the telltale signs of true Christianity.

In verse 3 of Colossians chapter 1, Paul says, "We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you." The word always may very well go with the main verb, and the idea may be, "Whenever we pray, we always give thanks concerning you to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul is going to give thanks to God for what follows in this passage because it is God, alone, who gets the credit for what He has done. In other words, the things he sees in the lives of the Colossians are not things that men can manufacture, but rather they are the things that are the very signature of God upon their lives — evidences that a supernatural work has occurred. These character traits (the spiritual productivity, the loving relationships that he observes) cause him great joy for they are patently supernatural both in their cause and in their growth. This thanksgiving that Paul renders to God is not just a flash of joy, but it is a constant and repeated joy and satisfaction whenever he calls these believers to mind and lifts them up before the throne of grace. God was doing something profound in their lives, and that brings great joy to the heart of this missionary.

This morning I would like to talk to you on the topic of "The Signature of God — a Missionary’s Joyful Thanks for Divine Accomplishments." Read with me beginning in verse 3: "We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel: which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth: as ye also learned of Epaphras, our dear fellowservant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ; who also declared unto us, your love in the Spirit."

The first thing that rejoices this missionary heart of Paul — this first evidence that God is at work (the first evidence that this is the signature of God on the lives of these people) are the hallmarks of true conversion. I have talked with people recently and told them that I am praying that God will give us the joy of witnessing more conversions. We have witnessed professions — those who profess to know Christ — but conversion is something that happens inside a person. Conversion is that transformation of life that God produces.

There are many who profess, and there will be those of that number who will be doomed to eternal fire that profess: "Lord, Lord, we have done many wonderful works in Thy name; we have preached in Thy name; we have cast out demons in Thy name; and He says, I never knew you" (paraphrase of Matthew 7:22,23), because there had never been a conversion from "being lost" to "being saved." There had never been a conversion from "being an enemy of God" — out of step with God — to "being reconciled to God and part of His family."

These believers in the little town of Colosse evidenced the hallmarks of true conversion. It was clear from their lives that they belonged to Christ. Notice what he says: "Since we hear of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel." The first hallmark of this true conversion is faith in Christ Jesus. He seems to be stressing here (by the preposition "in" which is not often used for just placing faith in Christ in the sense of their initial coming to the Lord in belief) that they are those whose lives are characterized by faith — by trusting in Jesus. They are continuing to live in a sphere of trusting Jesus wherever they go — of trusting the realities of walking with Him — of leaning their full weight on Jesus Christ. This is a hallmark of the person who really belongs to the Lord. As the hymn writer put it, "Trusting Jesus, That Is All."

As we look around us today, we say, "There seem to be a lot of people who trust Jesus." But let us make sure that we define who Jesus is. Whenever the apostles talk about trusting Jesus Christ (whether it be the initial turning to God in faith for salvation or whether it be the ongoing of faith to faith — that growth in the Lord), it is always faith in the Jesus that was preached by the apostles. It is faith in Jesus Christ as defined by the Word of God. There are lots of people who want to define Him in different ways. They want to say Jesus was a good man and want to follow His example and that He gave us a good code of ethics that will make our lives happier. They want to follow Him because they see in Him the answer to all of their problems: their mortgage problems and their health problems and their general unhappiness with life. They turn to Jesus Christ as a way of fixing their problems, but they haven’t really trusted Jesus Christ as the Savior from their sin, as God in the flesh, as the divine King, as the one to whom they owe everything — they have never really trusted Him that way. In fact, they have really just trusted Him in the way you would trust your investment banker, or the way you would trust your real estate agent — in other words, insofar as He is useful to them in a particular area. They have not trusted Him for what He came to earth to bring. There are a lot of people who talk about Jesus Christ who have no relationship with Him at all. There are men who devote their entire lives to studying about Him and the gospels, and yet they are not particularly interested in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They don’t live in the sphere of faith.

Many of you here I know personally and I know that you have placed faith in Jesus Christ. Remember that life as a believer is to be lived as it was entered: in the same way you cast yourself on Christ for salvation when you first heard of the Lord and it finally dawned on you that He was the one you needed for salvation from sin (for forgiveness — to be reconciled to God). You had this great debt you could not pay and He had paid it for you. The same way you trusted Him then is the way your life should continue to be lived. You should continue to trust Him. If you can trust Jesus Christ for your eternal soul, can you trust Him for your daily bread? If you can trust Jesus Christ to save you from sin eternally, can you trust Him to give you the power to overcome a stubborn sinful habit? If you can trust Jesus Christ for eternity, can you trust Him for time? Are you living in faith?

Remember when Jesus Christ gave the great commission to the apostles, He tells them not only to preach the gospel (in Mark 16:15) but He tells them (in Matthew 28:19,20) to make disciples (or make learners) of all nations: "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." In other words, Christ wants us to know Him completely. Christ wants us to understand the truth as He presents it to us. He wants us to walk in His ways. He wants us to keep His commandments, and in that, we find the path of life. These are they who evidence faith, or a trusting (a putting of one’s full weight) upon Christ Jesus. They are not looking to something else to get them out of the spiritual trouble they are in. They are not looking to other things that are less important for the satisfaction of their life.

The second hallmark of true Christianity as shown in the Colossian believers, Paul says (continuing in Colossians 1:4) is "the love which ye have to all the saints." This love is not limited to a certain group of people. It is not merely a loosely related clique of people. We naturally flock around those we identify with. Every local church has its own personality and many of you are here because this personality suits you best for now. Christian unity is more than just finding the people who fit in with your basic outlook. It’s more than finding the church that has your particular flavor of service. Christian love is that which overflows those normal barriers and embraces everyone who really knows Christ, and it is a love that is not a shallow kind of love but a love that desires to meet the needs of those other believers.

Even when I separate from a man who is not obeying the Scripture (who is living contrary to the way of God and yet claiming to be a believer), I do that in love. For me to be obeying the Scripture and having a spirit of bitterness and anger towards other people is not consistent with this love for all the brethren, neither is it consistent for me to ignore that man’s need and say, "It’s okay, brother, if you have sin in your life — it’s okay that you have the thing that destroyed the universe — it’s okay if you have that in your life that necessitated that Christ go to the cross — it’s no big deal." It is a big deal. We have love for all the brethren. There is such a thing, as one man put it, as "loveless goodness" — orthodoxy without charity. In the words of the well-spoken unbeliever, Mark Twain: "He is a good man in the worst sort of way." I think so often why the world shuns the gospel is that this hallmark of true conversion is missing among those who profess Christ’s name — their lives are not characterized by love.

A person who is trusting Christ as His Savior furthermore does not practice a solitary or exclusive piety. He is not one who is a Lone Ranger. Some people take the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer and think they can get along by themselves — that is not right, it is not Biblical and not consistent with love. A professing Christian who does not desire the company of other believers is not only denying what the Scriptures teach is necessary to his own spiritual growth and to theirs, but he is revealing a spirit contrary to one of the chief hallmarks of conversion and that is love. You want to be around the people you love. You have a natural desire to be with them. It is the unbeliever who avoids contact with God’s people: it is the man or woman with known sin that he or she will not forsake; it is the person eaten up with bitterness. In other words, all these things while they remain in a person’s life tend to reveal an unregenerate heart. When you see bitterness in someone (a sin that is ongoing), the problem may be that that person is not saved at all. You see this played out time and time again. There are many people who profess the Lord, but if you want to know whether they really belong to the Lord, see if they really like being with God’s people. Some of us have different personalities and some may have more of an aloof personality than others, and we are not talking about personalities. We are not talking about whether you have the gift of gab, whether you are in the world’s jargon a party animal or a person who likes to be around crowds of people. I don’t like to be around crowds of people. I suppose I have the gift of gab like most preachers do, and we have to be careful that we do not heap to ourselves greater condemnation because of this. But the hallmark of love to all the saints is not about personality, it is about the people you long to be with — the people you are willing to sacrifice for — the people you care about. If you are a believer, if you really belong to Christ, you are going to love ALL the saints.

You say, "Pastor, you know I really do not see that in my life." This may just be a symptom of your real problem: the problem may be that you have never really come to Christ at all because a believer has his hallmark — there is really not an exception to it. We have looked at loving God and the outgrowths of it. The apostle John is very strong about it. He made it a theme of most of his latter ministry as an old man. In First John he very categoric in that if you do not love your brother, you do not belong to God. It may be that God is revealing to you a problem that is more desperate than how you treat people — a problem that will really come to bear on you when it comes to facing God at the judgment.

The third hallmark of these believers is hope. "For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel" (Colossians 1:5). Earthly hopes really are nothing much more than strong wishes. We often fix our hopes on what, at best, might be, and what usually will not be. Often our earthly hopes, if they were fulfilled, are set on goals really too small to bring the kind of blessing (the kind of peace to our heart) that we most need. I like the way Alexander Maclaren puts it: "We moor our ships to floating islands which we resolve to think continents." So often our hopes (hopes of the natural man) are set on the wrong things and thus bring us more pain than pleasure because "hope deferred makes the heart sick" (Proverbs 13:12). Often hopes attained are unworthy hopes and cause us great dissatisfaction and great disillusionment of heart. God alone is worthy to carry the weight of our hopes.

Ephesians 2:12 characterizes those who do not know the Lord as "having no hope." Why? Because they are without God in the world. Yet those who have come to Christ according to Romans 5:5 have a "hope that maketh not ashamed." In other words, the hope that the believer has is a hope that will absolutely be fulfilled. It is not a hope such as "I hope so," it’s not a sanctified wish: it is an assurance, a goal, the grand purpose for which the believer lives. Notice what Paul says (he has talked about their faith; he has talked about their love; then he says), "For the hope [not and the hope] which is laid up for you in heaven." The word translated for means because of, or on account of the hope. In other words, the faith and love of the Colossians, as one man put it, has been nourished, not by an inner effort of the will, but by the solid fact of the promises of God. Faith and love are somehow rooted in whatever this hope is. Do you realize how important this concept of hope (this doctrine of hope) is to the gospel? When you start looking through your New Testament, you will see it is the essence — the foundation — of the good news. The gospel is the good news. Why? It preaches a "hope that will not make ashamed."

Paul, when he was tried in Jerusalem (Acts 23:6), set the Pharisees and Sadducees in an uproar when he said, I am called and questioned "of the hope and resurrection of the dead." Later in this first chapter of Colossians, verse 27, he refers to "Christ in you, the hope of glory." In other words, the fact that Christ is dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit is the guarantee that we will receive the glory that we seek. We read in Colossians 1:23 that we will be holy and blameless in His sight "If we continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel." Paul says in Romans 8:24, "We are saved by hope," and in Hebrews 6:18,19, we have "fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." This hope is called an anchor for the soul — it is sure and steadfast. In First Peter 3:15 we are to "be ready to give an answer [a reason] to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." This hope is something that is fundamental to what God promises to those who trust in Christ. We learned from I Thessalonians 5:8 that hope is protective, for there we are instructed to take as a helmet "the hope of salvation." In other words, when I have set my mind and my heart on what God has promised me (and we will define that more particularly in a moment), it helps protect my mind from being drawn away by false gospels, or false promises.

This hope is strengthening: I Thessalonians 1:3 refers to the endurance (the patience) of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. First John 3:3 tells us this hope is purifying: "Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure." In Romans 5:2 we learn it is a source of joy: "(we) rejoice in hope of the glory of God." It is also a source of peace (Romans 15:13): "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." "Pastor, are you saying that the Christian is basically just living for rewards — that his faith and love is just service he renders to get paid back by whatever God is going to reward him with? Is this some kind of selfish motivation for the Christian? In other words, do you put a notch on your stick and turn in your stick at the end of the day and you get paid a certain amount of God’s riches? " No, I do not think it is selfishness. One who lives for the hope God lays up for him is counting the riches of Christ greater than anything the world offers.

In that great chapter on faith, Hebrews 11, verse one, we are told that "Faith is the substance of things hoped for." In other words, when I believe God and His promises, I then have a hope (a foundation) for what I am living for. Whatever you hope for is yet in the future otherwise you are not hoping for it. This has to do with the Christian’s mind being set on another time — he is not living for today, he is living for tomorrow. He is not living for here, he is living for heaven. You really have to be heavenly minded to be earthly good. Faith, we are told, is also the "evidence [the proof] of things not seen." A Christian lives for that which his eyes cannot see — through faith. He believes God. He believes that the most important, fundamental problems and issues of life are not the things that he sees: his bank account, the food he puts on his table, the clothes that he wears. Rather, he believes his spiritual condition and having to face God some day, and the fact that he can’t seem to root the sin out of his life, that is what is important: things not seen. But he also lives for another time and another place: "Faith is the [foundation] substance of things hoped for." I believe we are knocking on the door of what we are talking about with "hope" here. A believer with this hallmark of hope is one who has set his affection on things above, not on things of the earth. He is living for something much greater than anything he could find here; in fact, no one can really be saved until he is restored to fellowship with God and knows the reward of such communion and considers that communion his chief concern. Jesus came to save you from your sin.

The unbeliever says, "I don’t need to be saved. Everybody sins; everybody does it; big deal!" You say, "It cuts you off from fellowship with God." He says, "So? I’m happy." This is one of the big problems I have with those today who say hell (the lake of fire) is nothing but separation from God. The unbeliever already has that: he is already separate from God in this world; he is without God in this world — he has no hope. The unregenerate heart is glad to be separate from God. God makes him nervous. God scares him. God seems like the universal bully. God calls out to him; but the unbeliever says, "I’m not sure I should trust Him; I’m afraid he is going to zap me." You must come to the point when you want that communion with God. You will never consider yourself lost unless you start believing God’s estimate of things — unless spiritual blessing becomes paramount to you.

Notice this hope is "laid up for us." It is stored up, it is reserved, it is put away for use. In other words, this hope is an objective sort of thing. It is not just a feeling I have. When we talk of this hope, we are not just talking about a feeling that the Colossians had: "Well I hope it is going to work out." It is not just a wish. Rather it is the objective hope, the content or object of their hope, that he is talking about as being laid up for them. It was the custom of the Persian kings to lay up goods for faithful servants, and this seems to hark back to that. We find this word "laid up" used in Luke 18:22 in the parable of the pounds there, where the unfaithful servant says, "here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin" — (I reserved it for you).

In 2 Timothy 4:8 Paul says, "Henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness"— it is reserved for me. Hebrews 9:27 sheds light on this: "it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." That word appointed is the same word as laid up. God has reservations set for you. There is a day coming when you will die. There is a day coming when you will be judged; that is reserved — it is laid up. In the like fashion, this hope is reserved — it is laid up; it is there for you. A believer is one who counts this a supreme reality in his life. In other words, the fact that it is laid up for him changes the way he lives. A born-again believer faces the fact that this life that he lives here is just a vapor. Look at everything that everyone pours into this life down here — look at all the efforts, all the schemes, all the programs. It is just a vapor: it appears for a little while and then vanishes away. This body over which the world frets with even the basics — "What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?" — is just a mortal tent of clay. It must be resurrected and transformed, and it will be for the believer, but right now it is our soul that concerns us. A believer confesses himself to be a stranger and pilgrim on his way to the grand objective: his hope. As long as I live for earthly pleasure and worldly gain, I don’t understand the absolute value of heavenly reward, and I don’t understand the utter despair and doom that is mine if I don’t lay hold of that.

There are those who say "Different strokes for different folks: You are living for that kingdom, I’m living for this kingdom, I’m going to get the most I can out of this life, and you can live for the next life if you want — BIG DEAL!" Well, it becomes a BIG DEAL. It is not just that some people invest in cattle futures and some people invest in grain. No, when I invest in the Kingdom of God, when I cast myself on Christ, that changes everything about my eternity. It is not a difference in mansions or paybacks — it is hell or heaven. It is being without God and without hope, or with God and with hope.

What ultimately is this treasure? What is this hope that we live for? It is really to be partakers of Christ’s glory — to know total freedom from sin and death — to no longer be separate from God even as we who know him are to some degree now; but to find the full reality of what we were created to be — to rise to the top, if you will — to once again, only even better, to walk in the cool of the day with the very God of the universe — to find nothing between us and our Lord and Savior — to reach the ultimate longing of the human heart: to have communion with God.

A lot of people think Christianity (at least that which the Bible presents) is essentially what stands between them and having a good time — between them and the life they want to live. If that is your idea then it is quite simple, you are not born again — you do not belong to the Lord. Perhaps you grew up in a home where your mom and dad made you get up Sunday morning to go to Sunday school and church, and you moved out of the house to go to college or start your own home, and you had had enough and have hardly bothered with Christianity since. I know many here today are not that way, you are here this morning, but you know folk who are like this — "the woods are full of them" as the saying goes. The problem a person like that has is what they think Christianity is, isn’t Christianity. They have rejected a caricature of Christianity. They think it is going to meetings. They think it is this list of things to do: this ritual, this code of ethics. They don’t see it as life to their soul. They don’t see it as being born again — being regenerated— or having a change of nature, or as a restoration to what man was created to be. They do not understand the value of the real thing and their absolute need of it. True Christianity does not stand between you and the best there is in life: it is the only way to live — it is the good news worth shouting about.

I know we have here children who are being reared in Christian homes and those who have gone to Christian schools. I think the numbers are high of professing believers in our Christian schools who have not been born again. The fact that your mom and dad believe and walk with the Lord is no guarantee for you. You must deal with God yourself, and what you do right now under their direction, leadership and discipline, really is not the index of what you are. It is very easy for a young person in a Christian home to harbor his secret desire to really get out in the world and find out what it is really all about, to set aside what he has been taught by his parents because he is so sure there is something he is missing — may God keep you from ever finding out because it will be the beginning of tragedy for you. Count it a blessing that you have been reared in a Christian home and seek the Lord for yourself. Let that day come when your parents’ God is really your God and you are seeking Him with all of your heart and all your soul.

People today are very concerned about their current happiness or lack of it. There is something a lot more important than happiness: If you would mark down the days this week that you were really happy, more than likely you would find there really were not that many. There are really just too many problems even though we have an affluent, easy lifestyle comparatively speaking. If we had the real brunt of what life has been like for most people who have lived on earth, it would be much worse. Your happiness on earth will come and go, and there is a day coming when you will be lying flat on your back facing death, about to slip into eternity — about to face God — and that is when you will find out that happiness or unhappiness really does not matter — rich or poor, educated or uneducated, black or while, really will not matter. Your talents won’t matter, your political views won’t matter, your achievements won’t matter; the only thing that will matter is whether you are ready to meet God. The only way for you to be ready in that moment is to receive the gospel now. You may say, "I’ve sinned and blown it so badly; if you only knew what goes on inside of me, or in my home, or the things I have done. God just can’t forgive me." Well God can forgive you, and if you are feeling that way, you are probably closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than the one who thinks everything is okay. He can and He will forgive you if you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior. You say, "I have time, I’ll do that later. I’ve always been one who likes the best of both worlds, so I’m going to clip the coupons from the world’s investments, and then I’ll turn to heaven." When are you going to do that? When you get older? What if you don’t get older? "Well, when I am on my deathbed." What if you don’t have a deathbed? What if you are suddenly taken from life? You have no guarantee of your life. You may step out into eternity to face God this very week. What then?

We hate funerals. We don’t like to think about death and suffering, but God has subjected this world to those things in hope. He has subjected this world to those vanities and those afflictions that we might realize how tenuous, how temporary, how fragile, how insubstantial the things that most people live for are, that we might set our sights on the hope laid up in heaven, that we might walk our walk with the Eternal One, that we might have these hallmarks of conversion and turn to Christ who brings them to bear in our life.

We have looked at only one of the hallmarks of true conversion today and will continue with the others that brought thanksgiving from the apostle Paul in the days to come.

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