Daily Bible Reading 26th May 2025 // Colossians 1:3-8
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7 just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf 8 and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
It appears that Paul has a twofold intention in beginning his letter with this prayer of thanksgiving. He wants to encourage the uncertain believers and he wants to give his seal of approval to the Gospel Epaphras preached to them. Paul gives warm and sincere thanks to God, from a full heart, for their faith and love and hope in Christ, intending to reassure the hard-pressed believers as to their proper standing as Christians and to confirm the authenticity of Epaphras' Gospel. This thanksgiving to God, if it is nothing else, is an impressive piece of pastoral reassurance. This is the depth of a pastor's heart, gently and kindly seeking to reassure those who are tempted to doubt their salvation by the innuendoes of the new and alien teachers who have arrived in Colossae. The evil one loves to make us doubt our salvation: By whatever means he can he will inveigle himself into our consciousness to rake over the past, to heap up guilt and to undermine faith. He comes as an angel of light, as he did in Colossae, in the shape of teachers of a new spirituality, to deceive if he can even the very elect of God, to insinuate some question mark over our salvation so as to sweep us on to the faith-wrecking rocks of doubt. How far we have drifted from the apostolic gospel when, so often within the Church of God in these days, doubt is encouraged as a virtue. Paul will have none of it. Instead, praise and gratitude to God well up in Paul's heart for the marks of genuine Christian experience shown in the lives of the Colossian believers and he puts his thanksgiving in writing for their encouragement, to dispel any doubts. Paul rejoices and he explains, that from the report he has received from Epaphras, he has no doubt that they are truly born again. He has no doubt but that they are really and truly Christian.