In which we review “the knowledge of God,” discuss the bearing of good fruit; confession in the Old Testament; the fruitlessness of the Old Covenant; the fruit of the Gospel.
July 20, 2025
Tim: Open up to Colossians 1:9-12.
9 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 the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 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 11 strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.
In our last study, we contemplated the idea that as the early church was preaching that the Old Covenant and its worship were fading away, it was going to give way to something better. Some were still practicing the rituals to an extent, but they were being taught that this culture was temporary and would soon disappear.
There was an eschatology that permeated the preaching of the early church that the apostles expressed in the word “hope.” We noted that Colossians was written in about AD 62, within a decade of the temple being destroyed. Scholars think that Colossians was written while Paul was in jail which would put it around AD 62.
Dwight: This would be a tough message for those whose whole lives had been caught up in that theology that, if you want to please God you need to offer the sacrifices, show up four times a year, and everything else.
Tim: Exactly! It was difficult because Christians were getting a lot of pushback from the Old Covenant devotees and Judaizers. They equated going to the temple with pleasing God. The preaching of the apostles was a challenge to this. The Old Covenant worshippers didn’t like the message that their religion had an expiration date on it. That made things tumultuous for the early church.
Paul is praying for the Christians to have knowledge of God that aligns with the Gospel as opposed to the Old Covenant. Shifting their understanding of God was essential for traits like godly conduct, steadfastness, and patience. Albert Einstein said, “Any fool can know, the point is to understand.”
The apostles considered it essential that people understand that God was defined by Jesus and not by the Old Covenant. The Gospel was to govern their conduct, not the religion of the scribes and Pharisees. I paraphrased verse 9 like this, “We are praying that you take the knowledge of the Gospel that you have heard from us and that you can wisely put that together in these last days so you will be outstanding citizens of the New Jerusalem, walking with an unshakable strength at a time when God is going to shake the world.”
Modern church theology doesn’t really give the needed attention to the split between the two covenants. It is important to understand that one of those covenants was about to come to an end, to be eradicated from history. The conflict was about to come to an end between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, Abel and Cain, grace and law, Mount Sinai and Mount Zion, works of law and works of love, and the Spirit and the flesh.
In the last days, God revealed himself not through the law and prophets, but through Jesus Christ. We live on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, and God says he has spoken to us in his Son (Hebrews 1:1, 2). Hebrews mentions multiple sources of the word of God in the Old Testament, but in the last days the word of God was spoken by the mouth of Jesus.
We saw this in the Mount of Transfiguration where Moses and Elijah appeared representing the law and the prophets. The glory of Jesus appeared and outshined both. The voice from heaven, or as Peter describes it, “the divine utterance” (2 Peter 1:17-18), said, “This is my beloved son; listen to him.” This is not a slam on Moses and Elijah. They were great men with great ministries leaving a great legacy, but when the voice of God declares that his Son will be his spokesperson, things change. Preaching the Gospel of Christ leads to liberation from legalism, a joy inexpressible and full of glory, and a conscience cleansed from dead works.
Another point we made was that Gospel thoughts are heavenly, not traditional. In the true heavens, the love of God in Christ reigns supreme. We cannot define the Gospel by how traditional churches established themselves. I don’t want to criticize everything that goes on in traditional churches, but some of those things are the creations of human minds and not God’s heaven.
Heaven is a deeply spiritual place that transforms us inwardly while traditions are created to impress outwardly. When I visited England, we saw some architecturally beautiful churches. They were impressive to the eye, but our point is that an opulent building without a loving community is not a heavenly place.
We also need to remember that Gospel thoughts liberate, not enslave. Gospel language is that of freedom and joy instead of slavery and fear. In Galatians 5, Paul says that followers of Christ were called to freedom. Peter expresses the faith of the believer as being “joy inexpressible and full of glory.”
Gospel thoughts saved people from the coming destruction. When people who embraced the Gospel saw the armies surrounding Jerusalem, they got out of town and were saved from God’s wrath upon the Old Covenant. They understood that Holocaust as being God vindicating them in the eyes of the world.
This concludes our review; any comments or questions?
Dwight: All that just goes along with 2 Peter 1:2-4,
2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. 4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Peter is saying that everything pertaining to life and godliness comes through “true knowledge.” We can’t really appreciate the beauty of God’s gift without that knowledge. Without the knowledge, we can’t have everything that God has granted to us.
Tim: And if that knowledge is corrupted from the pulpits, it robs us of the beauty of God’s gift.
Leslie: Looking at this in retrospect, in the rearview mirror, it’s like everything that they knew as a believer was turned upside down. They knew what the teachers of that day called them to do, but there was a juxtaposition with the Old and New Covenants. They were being led in a direction that conflicted with their heritage.
I often think about how that must have felt. Many today, rather than delving into scriptures, look for someone to tell them what to do, what boxes they need to check. It is easier to follow and it is our human nature to look to someone to tell us what to do.
Tim: We’ve reminisced about that several times. The Southern Baptists would print the Sunday school envelopes with five boxes to check. Each box was scored and you could grade yourself on how good you were during the week.
Leslie: If you check enough boxes, you can be assured that, if you died, you would go to heaven.
Tim: That defined the conflict in worldviews that went on in the first century. This freedom from a spiritual report card is a fight that has gone on century after century, generation after generation. It has always been a battle to maintain a Gospel worldview where we are liberated from that through Jesus Christ.
Valori: Enslaving ourselves again is easy.
Tim: It’s easier to put on the shackles than it is to get out of them. Like Leslie said, we often want people to tell us what to do and many of those are willing to restrain us in some way. Mark and I were discussing the subject this morning. Working with community corrections, law enforcement deals with people who must be in an environment where they’re told what to do every moment. They are compelled to be up at a certain hour, be ready for work at a certain time, and be back in there cells at a certain hour or there will be consequences.
In other words, there are those who cannot function if they were granted freedom. Freedom would be a disaster for them. They can only function when someone is telling them what to do every moment of their day. I imagine this was the case in the first century. It was the mentality that they could not get forgiveness for sins unless they consulted with the priest and were compelled to make a sacrifice.
Even today, convincing people that Christ has taken away their sins is a chore. We want a preacher who will direct us to the altar, or to confession of some sort. People want to know where they can send their postcards so God’s will answer them. Modern theology likes to give God’s address as a building or even in modern Jerusalem instead of presenting the gathering of Christians as the dwelling place of God in the spirit.
Valori: That’s the temple made with living stones.
Leslie: From a therapy standpoint, we can work with someone who is in a prison of their making. You can see the bars in front of them, but they don’t realize the cell door is wide open and all they need is a step to one side and they are out of the cell. Our thinking sometimes imprisons us when freedom is just a step away.
Tim: The key to liberating ourselves is in the mind and in the transformation of our thinking.
Roger: Before we go on, let’s remember the only limitation to this freedom would be the love of Christ restraining us. In other words, instead of being restrained because of bars and fences, which are rules and regulations, it’s the love of Christ for others that would keep us from bad behavior. Everything we do is done out of love for our brothers and sisters.
Tim: That’s a good point. Remember again Galatians 5:13 which says, “You were called to freedom, brethren, but don’t turn that into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
Roger: I think we understand “flesh” here to mean that we don’t turn our freedom into another legalistic limitation.
Tim: Yes, “the flesh” being that attachment to the Old Covenant. It’s the attitude that says to your brothers and sisters, “We can walk together as long as you keep Sabbath or eat kosher.” Today, a church might say, “We can walk in unity as long as you don’t disagree with the denominational confession.”
Leslie: We see the playing out of that from denomination to denomination.
Tim: This is something we don’t dwell on enough. Paul elaborates on this in Galatians using some of the strongest language in any of his epistles. He’s emphatic that if anyone preaches a Gospel other than the one he is preached, that person should perish. In chapter 5, he predicts that if they keep going the way they are in legalism, if they keep biting and devouring one another then they will end up consuming one another.
This is what happens when people make their doctrine or rituals sacramental. It becomes the litmus test of whether you will be accepted into the fellowship and considered to be a brother or sister in the community.
Leslie: Elevating all the non-essentials to essentials.
Tim: Right! Churches turn doctrines into sacraments and if you don’t hold to them, you become as a tax-collector and sinner.
Leslie: That quickly becomes a doctrinal mess.
Tim: Let’s look at verse 10 where Paul prays that they, “…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.” I want to spend a little time on this concept of “bearing fruit in every good work.”
He has already introduced this word, “bearing good fruit” or “bearing fruit” in verse 6 where he says, “…which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth…” The question is, what did Paul have in mind when he talks about the Gospel “bearing fruit?”
Debbie: Different from the dead works.
Tim: That’s right, the conscience is cleansed from dead works to serve the living God. What did the early church think of when it spoke of “bearing fruit?” We may be going off on a tangent here, but I’m just going to put the pedal down and we’ll see where this takes us. The idea of “bearing fruit” is a prominent theme in the Bible. “Bearing fruit” is brought up even before Jesus begins his public ministry.
Valori: I think about the fig tree.
Tim: A few years ago we looked at the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree. He said no one would ever eat fruit from it again and later the fig tree withered. We found that was a picture of Israel. His statement after that was that if you have the faith of a mustard seed and “you say to this mountain be uprooted and cast into the sea,” geographically this mountain was the temple mount. That’s a good segue into our study today, because I think there is a similar theme when it comes to “bearing fruit.”
We want to begin with John the Baptist in Matthew 3, starting about verse five. I think this is crucial because I believe there is a depth to this concept of “bearing fruit” than just what we usually think of. Fruit usually recalls the fruit of the spirit like love, joy, peace, etc., but I think there is a more foundational principle to explore.
5 Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; 6 and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; 9 and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. 10 The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Before Jesus’ public ministry, we have John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, addressing the religious leaders about fruit. They were coming out to him and confessing their sins. Let’s talk a little bit about that. We often think about this in the context of the Catholic confessional or when Protestants have a revival meeting and call upon people to publicly confess their sins.
We need to look at this more in the context of the Old Testament. We have instances where Israel gathered and there was a corporate confession of sins. One example is the dedication of Solomon’s temple. His prayer to God was predicated on the expectation that the people were going to sin. In the case where the people are suffering drought or crop failure, he beseeched God to hear their prayers and show mercy.
Another example is the post-exilic Judeans. In Ezra and Nehemiah, we find recorded where they confessed their sins before God. They would recite their national failures, acknowledge the greatness of God in his deliverance of the fathers, and recount the history of their ancestors grumbling against God in the wilderness. Again, their confessions focused on the failures of their fathers under the Old Covenant.
What we notice is that their confessions were a prelude to pledges that they were going to try harder in keeping the Old Covenant. They confessed the failures of their fathers but renewed their promise to God that they would be successful. They acknowledged that their fathers failed in keeping the worship of the tabernacle and temple, but swore that they would not fail be like their fathers did. They committed to success in keeping the sacrifices, the sabbaths, and the fundamentals of the law.
They set out to be a people who would succeed where their fathers failed. In chapters 8 and 9 we read where they reestablished the tithes in support of the Levites and priests. They wanted to make sure the priestly caste kept going and was strong. They restored the practice of Sabbath-keeping as well.
In their commitment to faithfulness, they noticed that many of the Jews who stayed in the land married foreign women and now had families. Ezra found this out and confronted them by and cursing them and resorted to assault and battery. I do not recommend this as and approach to ministry.
This conflicts with passages that command fair treatment of foreigners. We also consider the times of the apostles where the Gospel was going out to the foreign nations beyond the Jews. Ephesians 3:6 calls the Gentiles fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the body. In Apostolic times, it was the Old Covenant practitioners, the scribes and the Pharisees who were hostile to foreigners.
When the Pharisees and Sadducees came to John for baptism, confessing their sins, John pushed back because their confessions were most likely a pledge to do better at keeping the law. They would acknowledge the failures of their fathers, but they were committing to be more zealous in their legalism.
I think they were committing to getting bigger attendance at the temple, compelling people to give more money, and being more strict to the tax-collectors and sinners. They would redouble their efforts to get people in line with Sabbath-keeping. John’s anger was stirred in that he was preaching that these things were soon to be “chopped down and thrown into the fire.”
Their confession was going to be like Ezra and Nehemiah’s confessions, a pledge to try harder in a system that had a continual record of failure. John the Baptist challenges their whole premise saying they were committing to further fruitless efforts. If their repentance was to be genuine, it was repentance of that failed system to commit to something brand new in Christ.
Valori: So this was not the nature of other confessions, is that correct? I’m trying to compare this confession to the idea of confessing sin.
Tim: I think this is a different idea of confession and what we think of today. The religious leaders of the day grasped that the failure was not only their fathers, but it was the whole Old Covenant systems that had failed them. This was the theme of Jesus’ preaching, it was the theme of Peter and Stephen’s preaching as well. The religious leaders wanted to inject steroids into the temple worship and give extra effort at keeping sabbaths, eating kosher and observing the sacrifices. John would have none of that and called them to abandon that system and to look to Christ.
Dwight: Didn’t they believe that if they kept the law perfectly for one day that the Messiah would appear?
Tim: If memory serves me, it was something to that effect. It might have been that if they would just keep the Sabbath one time perfectly, then he would appear. Again, that is reliance on a failed system.
Dwight: That could have been in their thoughts when they came out for confession.
Tim: It’s possible. When it comes to bearing fruit, John recognized that the agenda of the Pharisees and Sadducees who came for baptism would be another legalistic effort that would end in barrenness. Anyone who grew up in evangelical circles would have heard the message preached regularly that you never did good enough so come forward and commit to try harder.
Roger: If you made it to the Wednesday night service, you would be scolded for not being at Tuesday night’s visitation.
Tim: This is pretty much the foundation for the Baptist’s practice of “rededication.”
Roger: Rededication was just the Baptist version of, “You’ve got to try harder!”
Tim: This was the mentality of the religious leaders coming to John the Baptist for baptism. John preached that there was an eschatology attached to this. There was a wrath to come where an axe would be laid at the root of fruitless trees which would be cut down, thrown into the fire, and burned.
That fire would come forty years after this event. It was a judgment upon the failed system they supported. The system they would try harder to keep would be burned up within a generation. More effort and harder work on this system would continue to produce no fruit. In the work of Christ, the age of fruitless religion had come to an end.
Roger: The scribes and the Pharisees presented their sacrifices to God as the fruit he desired. Jesus told them this was not what God wanted; God wanted the compassion as their offered fruit. He told them that the Kingdom was going to be taken away from them and given to a people who would bear fruit. The fruit was compassion over sacrifices.
Tim: Good fruit was a product of a healthy root. If the vine is corrupted, then there will be either bad fruit or no fruit at all. In the Gospel, Jesus and the apostles assumed that the Old Covenant was a corrupted vine. Its root had rotted and there was no chance of picking good fruit from it. Isaiah 5:1-2 brings this out in a prophetic parable.
Let me sing now for my well-beloved
A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.
My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.
2 He dug it all around, removed its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
And He built a tower in the middle of it
And also hewed out a wine vat in it;
Then He expected it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.
It’s not unreasonable to think that John the Baptist had this passage in mind when he was addressing the Pharisees and Sadducees. He was basically warning them that they were trying to get grapes out of a rotten vine. Let’s read on,
3 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
Judge between Me and My vineyard.
4 “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?
Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones?
5 “So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard:
I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed;
I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground.
6 “I will lay it waste;
It will not be pruned or hoed,
But briars and thorns will come up.
I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.”
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel
And the men of Judah His delightful plant.
Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed;
For righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.
The last two lines perfectly describe the nation’s leadership as portrayed in the preaching of John and Jesus and the apostles. They should be a people standing for justice, but they instead shed the blood of the innocent. Jesus felt compassion for the masses who sat under these leaders. He saw them as distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd. It was truly a fruitless religion that was being confronted.
The worldview you hold can bring health and joy, or it can bring corruption. The scribes and Pharisees pursued a righteousness by a system that was doomed to failure and destruction. The Gospel, under the New Covenant, proclaims a righteousness that is a free gift to us, something we no longer pursue by works. This produces a healthy vine, a renewed heart that produces good fruit, fruit like compassion over ritual.
Institutional churches that try to mix the two covenants, who try to infuse law into the Gospel, will kill the life of the vine and crush any hope of good fruit for the Kingdom. Ritual religion demands works to earn the blessings of God. Sacrifice is more desired than compassion, observation of holy days is preached over love, and tithing to the institution is a priority over giving to the needy. It will never bear the fruit of righteousness.
Roger: This is where the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has us set us free from the law of sin and death.
Tim: It’s quite a contrast when we consider the result of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. It was pretty much a Gospel message, but the resulting actions of the converted community was a far cry from the religious legalism of the scribes and Pharisees.
Dwight: They had a love for one another.
Tim: They were all bound together in one mind and one spirit. They were living out Paul’s prayer in Colossians where they were coming to the knowledge of God, increasing in humility, gentleness, patience, and showing tolerance for one another in love. They were diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, standing firm in one spirit with one mind. They were striving together for the faith of the Gospel.
Those are some of the things that Paul lists in his letters. When we are conducting ourselves in the manner of the Gospel, this is the fruit that is produced. It is not a community committed to fervent practice of ritual, nor is it bringing in large numbers of people, having a big staff, or an opulent building.
Let’s pause and we’ll pick this up later.
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