In which we discuss Colossians 1:11 ff.; Paul’s prayer for the Colossians; the nature of God’s strength and dominion; the strength of a cleansed conscience; making decisions in the body of Christ; the nature of love; dominion in Genesis; dominion in times of suffering.

Tim: Let’s read Paul’s prayer for the Colossians in verses 9-12:

“For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with all the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.”

Today we are going to focus on verse 11 and talk about being “…strengthened with all power according to his glorious might.” This will be interesting since we are prone to think outside of the box of tradition. In your average church prayer meeting, one of the top ten prayer requests is, “Lord give me strength to do this or that, or strength to face some upcoming trial.”

What’s interesting is to ask the questions, “How do we know this prayer is answered? What are the actual signs that we have received the requested strength?” Let’s take some time to explore that.

The Greek word for strength it is dunamis. We have explored that word before. It is where our English word “dynamo” comes from and it is also in the word “dynamite.” It is also the root for the adjective “dynamic.”

Paul prays that this dunamis comes from the “…glorious strength of his might.” This word “might” is a different Greek word. It is kratos and means “force” or “strength,” or sometimes it means “dominion” and refers to what one commentator calls “…inherent strength which displays itself in the rule over others.”

I want to explore this concept of God’s dominion in connection with our having strength. We know that God does not give us strength to Lord it over others, so this is an interesting turn of phrase. The word kratos appears in 1 Peter and Revelation where the word is translated “dominion” in the New American Standard Bible. So, how are we strengthened by God’s glorious dominion?

As our men’s Bible study has been going through the book of Acts, we have noticed that the early church had extraordinary power to be steadfast and patient in a world that was persecuting them. It is remarkable to see the apostles on trial in front of officials who have the power to put them in jail or even execute them. They faced these authorities with uncanny strength of character.

What motivated them to refuse to back down from the religious leader’s threats? Why did they count it as boundless joy when things did not go their way? The authorities forbade them to speak in the name of Jesus and in one instance they flogged them. After that, we are told that the apostles went on their way rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. That sounds like they were strengthened by God’s dominion!

Roger: It says, “according to his dominion.” In his mind, the one that had the dominion was the Father.

Tim: We are going to look at it from that perspective. Here is my paraphrase of Colossians 1:11,

“I’m praying that you are empowered with the ability that comes from grasping God’s glorious dominion over the world that comes in Christ.”

I’m trying to give the spirit of the syntax. Young’s Literal Translation renders it: “…in all might being made mighty according to the power of His glory, to all endurance and long-suffering with joy.”

Hal: “Of his glory” instead of “his glorious might.”

Roger: It is interesting to compare their understanding of strength. Remember the event where Jesus’ disciples asked him if they could call down lightning from heaven to consume those who would not accept them?

Tim: That would certainly have been a display of power, but that is not the power that moves the Gospel along, is it? This is worth discussing because the idea of dominion today has a multitude of preachers, mainly of the charismatic and Pentecostal types, to be loudly proclaiming that Christians should take authority over this or that in the name of Jesus. I think there’s something fundamentally twisted with that approach.

Valori: I would ask, “Why would I want it?”

Tim: I am not exactly sure what their strategy would be if God gave them the authority to “calling down fire from heaven.” Hopefully, they understand it does not work like that, but I doubt they have a concept of exactly how it does work.

Imagine Paul standing before a group and they tell him to quit speaking in the name of Jesus. In his best Pentecostal voice, he shouts, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus!” Historically, then, they grabbed him and gave him the 39 lashes. If Paul was expecting some supernatural exhibition from heaven, he was sorely disappointed, but I don’t think that is what he understood when seeking to be strengthened by God’s dominion.

Let’s explore that a little bit further by examining the historical context. After the day of Pentecost, the disciples were driven by an extraordinary strength after their transformation. They had a remarkable sense of God’s dominion after the Holy Spirit came upon them. Historically, though, they understood that the culture to which they were ministering had an expiration date. They knew the Old Covenant was coming to an historical end.

Ty: Could you clarify?

Tim: Sure. It was taught in the early church that the legalistic religion and temple worship was about to come to a crashing end. They knew that God’s dominion was displayed, no longer in the Old Covenant, but in Christ and the New Covenant. The Holy Spirit gave them a conviction that this was God’s world, that he would do whatever he wills, and no one could stop him. This empowered the apostles to charge ahead boldly in the firm belief that God was going to accomplish his will in Christ in historical time and space.

The apostles were not merely preaching empty theology or philosophy. They preached with a boldness and urgency as they understood that their world was hurtling toward a historic event that was going to bring the Old Covenant culture to a historic end.

Roger: You mentioned that it could not be stopped. Neither could it have been sped up to happen sooner. That’s why they had to have steadfastness and patience. They had a joy in the journey because they knew it was decades down the road before it would happen.

Ron: Did God give up control over us when he gave the gift of eternal life? It seemed like the Old Testament had rules and if you broke those rules, you would be punished or killed. There does not seem to be these rules in the New Testament. Is he letting us govern our own affairs as we see fit? We have had a lot of wars without anything being done about it.

Tim: It is certainly a good certainly a conversation to have.

Ron: He gave us a gift, but it’s only useful if you recognize it.

Roger: Some have tried to control people by fear, but God has given the Gospel in a way that we are controlled by his love for us. We are compelled to love one another in Christ, not out of fear for punishment, but out of the joy of his love. Like in 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.”

Ty: It’s interesting that the relationship of the people to God in the Old Testament emphasized separateness. When Moses comes down from the mountain, the people don’t want to look at Moses directly and they don’t want God to look at them directly because there is no relationship. There is a dividing wall between God and the people. In Christ, there is no dividing wall since it has been torn down.

Ron: Their relationship is based on fear.

Ty: The disciples understood their relationship with God in Christ so they could say to the religious leadership when they jailed them or flogged them, “Do your worst because it has no effect on us!” They understood that they did not have a relationship with that system anymore or a relationship with the people of that system. Their relationship with Christ was stronger because it was a direct relationship between them and God. To me, this changes the whole dynamic.

Ron: My question had to do with our being free from punishment by the Lord. We are free from punishment and free from the law and the punishment of the law, but we are not free from our relationship with Christ.

Tim: There’s a saying attributed to, I believe, to Saint Augustine who said, “Love God and do whatever you want.”

Roger: In other words, your love for God will drive what you want to do.

Tim: I think the cleansed conscience has been missing in the conversations on the Gospel. In Christ, we have a conscience that’s cleansed from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). This cleansing is not an enablement to go off and live however we want even though there is no wrath, judgment, or punishment to come. It is just that we no longer accept guilt for failure in religious ritual. Since ritual is no longer a means of righteousness, our cleansed conscience never struggles with that.

Ty: Cleansed of guilt.

Tim: Yes. We no longer struggle with guilt and questions of whether we have kept the religious standard to God’s satisfaction. It is a theology that says God really does not care about our ritual performance, he cares only about the victorious work of his Son.

This makes the skin of institutional leaders crawl. They cannot stand dismissal of their rituals. If you want to irritate someone within the institution, quote Saint Augustine or bring up the idea that people do not have to live up to the institutional standards. Say to a Southern Baptist, “No one has to be immersed in baptism to be loved by God.”

In the eyes of the institution, you have stepped over a line that robs them of their ability to control someone through fear or guilt. Freedom in Christ irritates the institution, but this is what the joy of living in Christ is all about. We possess that free gift of God’s grace, we are loved by the Father, and our conscience is cleansed. The only stipulation left is that everything you do, you do it because you love the brethren.

This frees us to enjoy the lives we want without the institution acting as our overlords. The institution may rebuke you, but the response is, “You don’t have dominion over me, my Heavenly Father does!”

Valori: And it changes the control from external control to self-control.

Ron: That is a good way to put it because you are in charge of yourself.

Tim: Paul emphasizes freedom in his letter to the Galatians, but he does state that we cannot do whatever we want. Christ calls us to be directed by love, not fear or guilt. We are well aware of the manipulative power of fear and guilt, why can’t we accept the motivational power of love? It says, “There are certain things I will not do because I love my brothers and sisters.”

Valori: Are we now in the dilemma of defining “love” for each one of us? I know there’s the broad sense of Christ sacrificial love for others, but how does that fit in our own personal lives?

Tim: That’s a good question! We do have some defining principles in 1 Corinthians 13, but the application of that in our own personal lives may take some work.

When Debbie and I go back 15 years to the day Bekah died, we were faced with this question. The question was not so much about the definition of love because we had been discussing this in our gatherings for years. We questioned the nature of love in the context of being kicked out of the Baptist Church. We were wondering, “How did this happen?” So, we had a good understanding of love.

Now we faced the challenge of how to apply that definition toward the drunk driver who took Bekah’s life. It is a personal struggle that we face in our own lives. The challenge in our Gospel communities is how to work with people to teach them to love rather than to lord it over their lives and direct their movements.

Back before I was even married and worked in Christian bookstores, I remember the ministry of Keith Green. He was a good guy and a great musician. He was zealous for the Lord, but he got a little weird toward the end of his life. In his zeal for spreading the Gospel to foreign lands, he preached a philosophy which declared that the command of God is for every Christian to go to foreign missions. He preached that the only reason you would not go to the foreign field was if God clearly revealed that you stay in America. Like I said, he was a good guy, but I think he was dead wrong in this instance. It was not for him to say how you direct your life or to Lord it over someone else’s conscience.

Valori: It seems like the definition of legalism would be making the decision for others on where God wants them.

Tim: Yes. Deciding what someone else’s conscience is bound to is legalistic. We are called to love God and love one another. Beyond that we encourage others to make their own decisions based on that love. If you have a decision, you can bring it up to the church body or seek counsel, and the body of Christ can give you wisdom or direction. They can point out things you are unaware of, but we ultimately grant the liberation to you to make the final decision. Not everybody may agree with your decision, but it is not up to everyone else to decide your righteousness before God.

An example of this would be Paul and Barnabas making the decision on John Mark. He was their companion on the first missionary journey but bailed out before the journey was over going back to Jerusalem. We aren’t told why; perhaps he thought the task too daunting, or he could not deal with accepting the Gentiles. He was a young man and his nerve failed.

When Paul and Barnabas were planning their next mission trip, Barnabas suggests they take John Mark along. Paul does not think this is a good idea and refuses. They go back and forth on the issue and there were apparently strong enough opinions on the matter that Paul and Barnabas decided to separate. Paul partners with Silas and Barnabas takes John Mark.

We know the story ends happily since at the end of his days Paul tells Timothy to send John Mark to him since he is useful in the ministry. We think that Barnabas’ encouragement to Mark through the time of his growing up was instrumental and his development.

When we reconsider the rift between Paul and Barnabas, I believe we can understand that their disagreement was not hostile or acrimonious. They just had a difference of opinion regarding the ability of John Mark to be an effective partner in missions. They did not split and form different denominations. They did not fail to love one another.

Roger: There is a verse in Proverbs that says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). In other words, Paul and Barnabas were having their disagreement, but God had plans for all four of them to be in various places.

Valori: That’s how I feel about our split from the Baptists.

Tim: I consider it one of the best things that ever happened to me. Let’s move along because I have some stuff I really want to share before we get too far astray. Let’s return to the garden of Eden when thinking about being strengthened with power.

If Christ is the recovery of being in the garden of Eden, then let’s consider what God said in Genesis calling Adam to take dominion over the creation. Starting in Genesis 1:26, we are told,

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (vs. 26-28)

I thought this was interesting. Adam and Eve ruling over the earthly environment was established only because they understood their creation to be in the image of likeness of God. The concept of the image of God has been the subject of many theological and philosophical arguments. In our case, I want to approach this as simply as we can.

To be created in the image of God means that we think like God, and we see the world in the same way that God sees it. I don’t think Adam and Eve could have ruled over their earthly environment if they didn’t have some agreement with God about the creation in which they dwelt. They could not have had dominion in the earthly creation if they did not have a heavenly mind.

At other times, we talked about the heavens opened. At Jesus’ baptism, he saw the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove. He heard the voice which said to him, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). The opened heaven was Jesus seeing the world as created in the image of God.

This was relevant in the next chapter (Matthew 4:1-11) where Jesus was tempted by the devil. The devil’s attack was a challenge to his sonship. The first two temptations were prefaced by, “If you are the son of God…” Jesus met the challenge by invoking the voice from heaven. It was as if he were saying, “What do you mean, ‘if?’ I am without a doubt God’s beloved son and nothing you can say or offer will move me away from that!”

Jesus responded to the devil’s challenge by what he saw and heard in the opened heaven.

Valori: And isn’t that how legalism works? They cast doubt upon your status with God.

Tim: That’s exactly how legalism works. Another example is in Acts 7 where Stephen is about to meet his end. They are holding the stones ready to throw at him and they’re accusing him of blasphemy. Their accusation of blasphemy is them saying, “God will not tolerate this man and his blasphemous speech!”

On the other hand, Stephen sees the opened heavens and the image of Christ standing at the right hand of the father. This gives him incredible strength to endure his execution with joy. Stephen looked to heaven and determined from that what the Father thought about him, that he was a son with whom he was well pleased.

Valori: Stephen saw a welcoming God, not one disappointed.

Tim: It was not the frowning countenance that many preachers present from their pulpits every Sunday. In Colossians, Paul goes on to state that the Christians were “…rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred to the Kingdom of his beloved Son.” We should see ourselves as living in the heavenly realms of the Kingdome and not in the darkness.

Ty: What is the “darkness?”

Tim: Remember back in Hebrews we looked at the contrast between Mount Sinai, the Old Covenant, and Mount Zion, the New Covenant. His description of Mount Sinai was like this, “For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched into a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind…” He said that even Moses cried out, “I am full of fear and trembling.” (Hebrews 12:18-21) I believe the Old Covenant from Sinai was the darkness from which God rescued his people.

Paul continues in Colossians 1:14, “… in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through him and for Him.”

This is crucial in understanding how we get strength from God and how we are empowered with his might. It is by rejecting any participation in the domain of darkness, the Old Covenant, and the legalistic mentality. We say, “I live in the heavenly realms now. I live in the image of God in Christ now.”

In Colossians 3:9-10, Paul says, “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old (man) with its evil practices, and if put on the new (man) who is being renewed to the true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him…”

Remember Paul’s statement that Christians had been delivered from the domain of darkness. I believe the “old man” here in chapter 3 is the Old Covenant, it was the old legalist mentality where we are governed by fear and guilt. Strength comes when we put off or lay aside that Old Covenant thinking and are renewed into the new man, the New Covenant, which is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.

Just like God created Adam and Eve in his own image and likeness and placed them in the garden, the new creation is a creation in the image of Christ. He is the image of God himself. When Adam and Eve were cast from the garden, they ceased to think like their Creator. They stopped thinking about God as a loving Father that would walk with them in the cool of the day. Instead of thinking of the sweet fellowship they had, now they were thinking about what sacrifice they needed to make to please God, what fig leaves they needed to cover their nakedness. This was their darkness.

Roger: God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the animals and the plants, but not over humans. Darkness comes when we try to shape the world in our own image. Having eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, whatever people create is darkness. We shouldn’t take dominion over things that God rules.

Tim: That’s a good point! Adam and Eve got legalistic when God caught them in their sin. Their defense was to blame each other. Cain took dominion over his brother (and his life) when God rejected his sacrifice and accepted Abel’s. It didn’t turn out well for Abel.

The Garden would never be restored while everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes, while they shaped the world in their image instead of God’s. This is where Christ steps in. People suffer living in the despair of self-righteous religion, the domain of darkness, and Jesus frees them from that. The Kingdom of his beloved Son is the restoration of the Garden manifested in the New Covenant, the New Creation, the New Jerusalem, and the New Heavens and the New Earth.

This describes the Gospel community built in the image of Christ. We are steadfast and patient because we know that God rules unchallenged in his heaven now. In the first century, the dominion of God was manifested historically in the judgment that happened on Jerusalem in AD 70. This was the king bringing to pass the saying, “Do you see all these stones? Not one stone will be left upon another until it’s all torn down.”

He also demonstrated his dominion by describing the signs that would take place before this judgment. He said to them that they would not go through all the cities until he came. He said wars and rumors of wars would be normal but take heed when you see the armies surrounding Jerusalem.

They had a historical context that was evidence of the dominion of God. God demonstrated his dominion by giving them glimpses into the opened heavens and the Holy Spirit gave them confidence that they could face anything and be victorious.

Valori: “What can man do to me?”

Tim: That was the attitude that came from the strength of God in his dominion. Paul knew that Christians were facing hard times with trauma and trial. They would undergo persecution. He promised them strength to endure those hard times.

Valori: They also had confidence in where they would be if they did die.

Tim: The apostles lived with the mind that they dwelt in the father’s domain who governed over the earthly authorities and rulers. Paul prayed the same thing for the Ephesians when he said, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might (dominion)” (Ephesians 1:18-19)

Valori: Today, when things are tough, we can gain strength from each other.

Tim: I think that too many dismiss this particular function of the church which can be of great strength to members. When the early church gathered together, they weren’t just exploring the depths of theological issues. What they did was to preach the Gospel to one another in order to give them the strength in the midst of persecution.

When a people gather together who were enduring hard times, they preached to one another reminders of the love of God in Christ Jesus. They preached, “Don’t forget the vast love of God in Christ and don’t let your persecutors tell you that you are being judged by God. You possess the righteousness of Christ. You are valuable in the eyes of the Father.”

I believe that every gathering is an opportunity to strengthen the believers with the Gospel. They also reminded one another of God’s dominion and that the time was drawing near for him to render judgment upon the temple system. They were reminded that the Old Covenant was becoming obsolete and was about to disappear (Hebrews 8:13).

Every meeting was a reminder that they were living in the last days. They were the generation that saw the consummation of those days and the end of self-righteous religion. We have asked the question on several occasions, “What has changed since those days?” It’s a good question! What has changed is that we can look back and see that Jesus was victorious in his work. He demonstrated the power of his father’s dominion and the victory achieved in history. We don’t have to guess whether or not God had dominion and will triumph.

Let’s pray.