Colossians 1:23a
~15 min read
💭 Consider this: Has there been a period of your life when your faith was really tested? How would you testify to another person that it was God who carried you through that period?
TRANSCRIPT
I greet all of you in the blessed name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Our text for today’s message is taken from Colossians 1:23, the first part. Allow me to read for you. “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven”.
Have you ever doubted your salvation? Have you ever questioned your faith? Have you ever asked yourself, ‘I have believed in the Gospel. I have called out to Jesus to save me and forgive all my sins. But how do I know if I am not like one of those whom Jesus said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). [Depart] from me, ye workers of [iniquities] (Luke 13:27). I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23)’?
Perhaps, there are times when you have doubted and questioned the genuineness of your salvation. In times of doubt, we want to be assured, validated, and affirmed in our hearts. And one of the most significant marks of a true believer is the evidence of faith demonstrated through his life. And this is what we want to learn from this one verse. The title of our message is ‘The Evidence Of Our Salvation’.
I. We Will Continue In The Faith
The first evidence of our salvation is that we will “continue in the faith”. The Apostle Paul said to the Colossians, “If ye continue in the faith”. The usage of the word “[if]” is not to cast doubts as to whether or not we will continue. But rather, if we are truly saved then this is what will happen. We will continue in the faith. To “continue” is to abide or to remain.
If I may simply put it, it does not mean, ‘Yesterday I believed, but today I’m not so sure’ or ‘Yesterday I was in the faith, but today I am throwing in the towel’. If we are capable of giving up our faith then what we have professed to believe in is not true and genuine in the first place.
In the Gospel of Luke 8:13, Jesus said in the Parable of the Sower about the seeds that fell on a rock that, ‘They are those who heard the Word, receive it with joy. But there are no roots. And for a while, they believed. But in times of persecutions, and troubles, and temptations, they fall away’.
In John 6:66, after Jesus taught those so-called disciples many difficult and challenging teachings, the Bible tells us, “From that time [onwards], many of [those] disciples went back, and walked no more with him”. The Apostle John also said in 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us”.
In other words, to “continue in the faith” is to persevere in the faith. We love the doctrine, ‘Once saved, always saved’, don’t we? As Jesus Himself said, ‘No man can pluck you out of my hand’ (John 10:28). But that, ‘Once saved, always saved’, also tells us that, ‘We will continue. We will abide. We will remain in God’s hand. We will not give up, no matter what happens’.
II. We Will Be Grounded And Settled
The second evidence of our salvation is that we will be “grounded and settled”. To be “grounded” speaks of a strong foundation and the word “settled” means to be steadfast, firmly seated. It is a solid commitment.
But the question is: ‘To be grounded and settled in what’? In the Gospel. It is the Gospel that has saved us. And it is the Gospel that we must build our foundation and be firmly rooted. Again, it does not mean that we can lose our salvation by not being grounded and settled. But rather, what it means is that the evidence of our salvation is in our continuous steadfastness.
Some people look at the Gospel as if it is just ABCs or the elementary of the Christian faith. And they will say, ‘Well, I’ve graduated from that. I’ve heard and learned the Gospel many, many years ago. I’ve gone past that. The Gospel is not for me. It is for the unbelievers’.
Dear friend, the Gospel is not just some ABCs. It is everything about our Christian life. We need the Gospel to live for Jesus every day of our lives. We need to preach the Gospel to ourselves all the time. Why? So that we will live out the Gospel in our lives. B.B. Warfield, the theologian, once said, ‘The Gospel is not only true at the point when we believed. It is just as true after we have believed, and it will continue to be true for as long as we live’.
What is the Gospel? It is the Good News that Jesus came for us. He died and shed His precious blood to wash away all our sins. He was buried. But on the third day, He rose again from the dead to give us the victory over sin, death, and eternal life. Do we only need that at the point of our salvation and then we can forget about it altogether after that? Most certainly not.
Our need for Jesus Christ, our relationship with Him, our fellowship in His life, in His suffering, in His crucifixion, in His death, in His blood, in His resurrection will always be there for as long as we live. The Gospel is not only good for the unbelievers. You and I need the Gospel to be saved. We need the Gospel to live our lives, to be empowered by the Gospel, to be sanctified by the Gospel, to persevere in the Gospel until we see our Lord Jesus face to face.
Dear friend, do you still remember the time when you first came to know the Lord Jesus Christ? You heard the Gospel message. Your heart was convicted. You cried out to Jesus to save you and forgive all your sins. You were so happy that all your sins have been forgiven. God became your Heavenly Father. The Holy Spirit indwelt in your heart, and you knew that one day you would dwell in the heavenly mansion that Jesus had gone to prepare for you. You were so excited to come to church, so eager to attend fellowship group meetings, so zealous to serve the Lord. Do you still remember those times?
And then what happened? Problems start to creep into your life. You have to go through certain trials and struggles. You have to face very difficult people. You have a lot of challenging commitments. You have to carry heavy burdens and so forth. You start to doubt whether God still loves you. You know you are saved and you will not lose your salvation.
But you begin to lose the joy of your salvation. Coming to church is no longer your priority. You start to drag your feet to church every Lord’s Day. And you disappear immediately after the worship service. Giving your tithes and offerings is like rendering your income tax. And serving the Lord is more of an obligation than a joy. You start to give excuses not to attend all the spiritual activities.
Now consider this: ‘What has happened between the time you first believed until the time your heart became so cold toward the Gospel’? ‘You have drifted away from the Gospel’. Is that not true? That is why we must be grounded and settled, to make a conscious effort in letting the Gospel of Jesus Christ be the foundation of our lives.
How do we do that? The same Gospel that had moved us to believe at the beginning, it must still move us today. The same truth that Jesus died on the cross to offer us the forgiveness of sins, which had brought tears to our eyes, it must still bring tears to our eyes today. The same motivation that caused us to rise up and serve our Living Saviour at the beginning, it must still motivate us today. We need the Gospel to live our lives, not just at the point of our conversions, but at every moment. And this is what it means to be grounded and settled.
III. We Will Be Unmovable
The third evidence of our salvation is that we will be unmovable. “[Be] not moved away” means to be unmovable. It has the same idea as the word “settled”, but with more intensity. Why? Because there are certain things that will work against us and force us to be moved. And we must not waver. It has the idea to stand our ground in the midst of adversities and challenges, whatever they may be.
If I may give you an illustration, it would be like sailing a boat. Once you decide on the destination, ‘This is the direction to go’, you start to sail the boat, right? There will be many things that will try to blow you off course. Sometimes, the wind can carry you forward. But it can push you backward as well. The waves can be so strong that they can capsize the boat. And on top of that, you have to endure the uncertainties of the weather. It can be extremely cold or tremendously hot.
This is an illustration of us as believers. Our destination is on the shores of Heaven. And we set our eyes toward Heaven. We start to live as a new man in Jesus Christ just like the boat sailing toward its destination. But there will be so many things that will trouble us; that will distract us, try to shake us off and move us.
Just when we thought everything seems to be good — our children are doing well in school, we have just gotten a promotion, bought a new house in a nice neighbourhood, a new car — then all of a sudden, we receive a medical report from the doctor and it is bad news. Our whole world seems to collapse. How can we not be moved?
Or our children go to school and they are taught all kinds of philosophies and humanistic opinions. They come home with those strange ideas about atheism, evolution theory, homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle, same-sex marriage and then they tell us, ‘Well, Daddy and Mummy, it does not really matter what you believe in because all roads lead to Rome’. How can we not be moved?
Or your husband goes to work and all his colleagues are unbelievers. Day in, day out, he has to listen to their ungodly conversations; he has to endure their dirty jokes. He is surrounded with immoralities and worldliness. Then you start to notice a change in the way he speaks and in the way he behaves. You realise that he has been influenced by the things of this world. How can you not be moved?
Well, it is not just the family. What about the church? You have been attending the church for many years. You are very happy to attend a Bible-believing and Bible-defending church, a church that believes in the fundamental doctrines of the Bible.
And then gradually you notice some changes. People start to bring all kinds of strange teachings into the church. The leaders are not able to stop the infiltration for they themselves are no longer strong in their convictions and they try to compromise and accommodate everyone. The music in the church has changed. The preaching has changed. The people are worldly and the church has turned ecumenical. How can you not be moved?
We have to understand that there will be many things that will work against us, whether as a family, as a church, as an individual, to move us, to shake us. Satan cannot do anything against the cross. Our Lord Jesus has accomplished the work of salvation when He said, “It is finished”. But what Satan would do is to try his best to move us away from the Will of God, to dishonour God, to disobey God. And when he does that, he has achieved his goals.
That is why the command is given to us, “[Be] not moved away”. This unmovable stance does not come automatically. We do not become a strong and firm believer all of a sudden. It is a spiritual exercise that we have to be engaged in at every moment. We have to stand our ground in the midst of adversities and challenges all the days of our lives.
And how do we do that? By clinging onto “the hope of the gospel”. Do not let it go. ‘Be grounded. Be settled. Be not moved away from the hope of the gospel’.
Take a moment and consider this: ‘If there’s no such thing as life after death, no eternal life, no judgment, no accountability, no resurrection, no heaven, and this is the only life we have, when we die, everything is finished, then our hope is based on this temporal life. Such a hope is no hope at all. Whether it be 70, 80, or 90 years, if that is the case then you and I should just live every moment for ourselves, eat, drink, and be merry. And then we die’.
Someone once said, ‘The word useless is one of the most dreadful words in the English language’. To be called useless is a terrible thing. However, the most dreadful word is not useless, but hopeless. A useless person may someday still become useful. But if there’s no hope then all is lost. Without hope, there’s nothing left.
Hope is a most wonderful thing. It is the blessing that gives meaning to life. Hope is the very thing that causes us to do what we do, to live the way we live our lives. True biblical hope can only be built on a true promise. It is built on the confidence in a person who can deliver what he has promised. If someone promised to give you $1 million, you want to be sure that he actually has that amount of money. You also want to be certain that he is a man of his word, that he is credible. If he does not have sufficient money or he is not a man of his word then his promise would be worthless. Our hope is based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Oftentimes, people understand salvation as only in saving a person at the point of his or her conversion and that’s it. But the power of salvation, the power of the Gospel does not stop at our conversion as in our justification that we are safe to go to Heaven. Full stop. It continues to save us as in our sanctification, transforming our lives moment by moment. And this sanctifying work of the Gospel will continue to save us until, ultimately, we are saved in our glorification.
That is the time when the salvific work is perfected. We will be forever and ever free from sin, Satan, and the world. Jesus who had saved us in the past, He promised to continue saving us in the present and He will save us in the future, ultimately. He is the Everlasting God — who is Truthful, Credible, Unchangeable, Almighty — and He will keep His promise. Believe in Him.
We can see this clearly in our lives. Even after our conversions, we still struggle with temptations. And at times, we are overwhelmed with sins. Every time we sin, we are convicted. We confess, repent, and ask the Lord to forgive us. And we are cleansed. And then we stumble and fall, we are convicted. We confess, repent, and ask the Lord to forgive us. And we are cleansed.
This is the process of sanctification whereby God does His mighty work of transforming our lives. And it goes on, and on, and on, until the day we die. And in the Resurrection or when our Lord Jesus comes for us in the Rapture, we will be glorified, both body and soul. He who saves us saves us to the uttermost.
Therefore, Paul said to the Colossians, ‘This hope of the Gospel which ye have heard and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven. Cling onto it. Never let it go’. In other words, the Gospel is universal. The Gospel was for the Colossians just as it was for the whole world. Every creature under the Heaven.
Some people have this misconception that Christianity is a white man’s religion. That is not true. It is a blatant lie. In fact, Jesus was born a Jew in Middle East. And in our modern times, He would not be classified as a white man. The Gospel is not only for a particular race, culture, or gender. It transcends ethnicities, cultures, genders, geography, and political boundaries. It is for the whole world — “every creature which is under heaven” — whether Caucasians, Asians, Chinese, Indians, the Middle Eastern people, and so forth.
Whenever we preach such a message about the evidence of our salvation, there will always be people who would say, ‘Are you trying to question my faith? Are you trying to cause me to doubt my salvation’? ‘No. That is not our intention’. To demonstrate the evidence of our salvation is for our own good. It is for our own benefits. It is inevitable that there will be trials, tribulations and afflictions, challenges and other issues of life, sicknesses and illnesses, painful separations, agonising financial and relationship struggles, all sorts of problems. But those things cannot steal away our salvation.
Do you know what those things can do? They can rob away the joy of our salvation. They can plague us in such a way that you and I would be rendered ineffective in the work of the Lord. They can plague us in such a way that we will not live a meaningful and godly life to the glory of God. God does not want that to happen to us. So, He commands us, ‘Continue in the faith. Be grounded and settled. Be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel. Cling onto it. You who believe it, press on and persevere in it’.
Even as we speak, our dear beloved Reverend Reggor Galarpe from the Philippines has just been diagnosed with cancer. And he’s still waiting for the biopsy results to determine the spread of the cancer. Will he survive the cancer? Nisha has been admitted to the hospital because her water bag has broken. Even though the baby is still not due yet, it will be due in two months time. Will both mother and child be preserved? Sister Gek is still in hospital. She’s not out of the woods yet. Will she get better? Will she recover? Or will she be taken away from us?
We do not have the answers to all these questions. But one thing we do know, the Gospel that has saved them in the past will continue to save them in the present and will save them in the uttermost. Even if death knocks on their doors, it is but an instrument to usher them into the presence of God. And when our turns come, we will meet again on that beautiful shore in Heaven in the sweet by and by.
Dear friend, this is the hope of the Gospel that we believe in. And the evidence of our salvation is that, ‘We will continue in the faith. We will be grounded and settled. We will not be moved away from this blessed hope of the Gospel’. The perseverance of the saints is one of the most blessed evidence that we are forever saved. The true believer will press on and persevere, not because we want to be saved, but because we are already saved. In reality, in all truthfulness, God is the One who is keeping us. And we are responding by trusting in His faithfulness to the glory of the Almighty God.
Let us pray. Our Father in Heaven, indeed, as we consider this one verse, we are taught this wonderful lesson about the evidence of our salvation. One of the most significant marks of a true believer is the evidence of his faith demonstrated through his life. And we want to demonstrate this true faith. As Thy children, we truly believe in Thee. And we who believe in Thee, we will continue in the faith. We will be settled and grounded. We will not be moved from the hope of the Gospel.
Jesus who had saved us in the past, He continues to save us in the present and, ultimately, He will save us in the future in the glorification. This is the blessed promise that we cling onto. O Lord, help us to live such a life, not for ourselves, but for Thy glory. Indeed, the perseverance of the saints is one of the most blessed evidence that we are forever and ever saved. It is all Thy doing. And we are just responding, trusting in Thy faithfulness. We give Thee thanks. And we pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
THE BOOK OF COLOSSIANSA Faith And Love That ShinesA Faith And Love That ShinesColossians 1:1-4
The Blessedness Of Our Christian HopeThe Blessedness Of Our Christian HopeColossians 1:5-6a
The Transforming Power Of The GospelThe Transforming Power Of The GospelColossians 1:6b-8
The Need For PrayersThe Need For PrayersColossians 1:9
Prayer for Spiritual ExcellencePrayer for Spiritual ExcellenceColossians 1:9-12
Walk Worthy Of The LordWalk Worthy Of The LordColossians 1:10-11
What Does It Mean To Call God Our Father?What Does It Mean To Call God Our Father?Colossians 1:12a
What Does It Mean To Be Citizens Of God’s Kingdom?What Does It Mean To Be Citizens Of God’s Kingdom?Colossians 1:12b-13
I Am Redeemed And ForgivenI Am Redeemed And ForgivenColossians 1:14
Christ, The Invisible GodChrist, The Invisible GodColossians 1:15
Jesus Our Creator Loves Me, This I KnowJesus Our Creator Loves Me, This I KnowColossians 1:16-17; Romans 8:37-39
What Is Christ’s Relationship With The Church?What Is Christ’s Relationship With The Church?Colossians 1:18
What Does It Mean To Be Reconciled To God?What Does It Mean To Be Reconciled To God?Colossians 1:19-22
The Evidence Of Our SalvationThe Evidence Of Our SalvationColossians 1:23a
Are We Willing To Suffer For Christ?Are We Willing To Suffer For Christ?Colossians 1:23b-24
How Faithful Are We?How Faithful Are We?Colossians 1:25-27
What Does It Take To Be Faithful In The Ministry?What Does It Take To Be Faithful In The Ministry?Colossians 1:28-29
The Indispensable Component In Serving GodThe Indispensable Component In Serving GodColossians 2:1-2a
Message 3: What is Christ to you? My Covenantal Head!Message 3: What is Christ to you? My Covenantal Head!Colossians 2:4-9, 19
Message 4: What is a healthy and sound church? My Covenantal Haven!Message 4: What is a healthy and sound church? My Covenantal Haven!Colossians 2:7
Message 2: What is Church to you? My Covenantal Family!Message 2: What is Church to you? My Covenantal Family!Exodus 12:48-49, Colossians 2:11-12
