Our New Testament reading consists of one verse, Colossians chapter 4, verse 18. And while you’re looking for that, let me thank you so much for your invitation to come back. I’m number ten and the last. My mother used to say that you save the best to the end, so I’m going with that this morning! And I want to thank the choir. I miss you a lot. We have a wonderful choir at First Pres Columbia, but I often think of you. You are a much bigger choir than ours and I’m grateful to Dr. Wymond for choosing the Parry, “I Was Glad.” That was my wife’s, was, is my wife’s all-time favorite introit, and thank you for doing that this morning.
Now before we read Colossians 4:18, let’s pray together.
Our Father in heaven, we thank You for Your Word. Holy men wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. We pray for the blessing and illumination of this Spirit upon this text this morning. We ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Colossians 4:18:
“I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.”
Now Paul is in prison. Scholars disagree, but in all likelihood he is in that period of confinement that we read of at the end of the Acts of the apostles, sometimes referred to as a house arrest. So you must imagine the apostle Paul in a home of some kind, probably not large. There would have been, perhaps, a metal pole, five, six feet, to which his arm would have been chained so that he would have had some movement. He would need to do various things, which we won’t go into. It would be confining, it would be dishonoring, it would be ignoble. He’s awaiting a trial. The Jews in Jerusalem have brought a case against him. The trial never took place; the Jews never appeared. Paul appealed to Caesar. It was his right as a Roman citizen. And we think that eventually Paul was set free, only to be rearrested maybe two, possible three years later. He went, we think, to Spain, but was brought back to Rome and was eventually beheaded, roughly around the same time as the apostle Peter.
So friends in Colossae have come to see him and they’ve brought him news of the church. It’s a church plant. Paul has never been in Colossae. He spent, we know that he spent a couple of years in Ephesus. In all likelihood, folk from Colossae in the Lycus Valley, the same region as Ephesus, made their way to Ephesus, some of them were converted; they went back to Colossae, established a church. And this is roughly ten years old; a ten-year-old church plant. And we know that there are some difficult issues, difficult problems. There are some in the church of Colossae who are suggesting that to have Jesus is not enough. You need something more. You need some insight that only a few in the church at Colossae were privy to. They had access to information with God that they needed in order to reach what the letter calls “fullness” or “completeness.” This has triggered the apostle Paul, no end, and as you read this wonderful, wonderful epistle, you will discover again and again that one of the themes of this letter is, if you have Jesus you have everything. You have all that you need to take you home to glory. If you believe in Jesus, if your trust is in Christ and in Him alone, you have completeness. You have fullness. You have everything that you could possibly need. That’s a great message. That’s a wonderful message because we are prone, as Martin Luther was want to say, “We are prone to add that damnable plus.” Jesus plus something else. Jesus plus, in this case, special insight by special prophets. And Paul will have none of it. He has been making the case throughout this epistle to a church that he’s never been to, that if you have Jesus, you have everything. You have fullness. You are complete.
I Paul, Write This Greeting with My Own Hand
Now in these closing remarks you can tell that Paul was a Presbyterian! He has three points! The first of which is, in this greeting – “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.” Now you need to consider for a minute the background here that he’s in chains. He is under house arrest. He is not in a position to write. It would have been difficult with his hand perhaps up here, his right hand, his writing hand, perhaps with a quill; to write on a piece of papyrus, that would have been extremely difficult to do. So, he’s using what we call an amanuensis, a scribe, a secretary. One imagines the apostle Paul walking up and down – you can hear the noise of the chains as he walks up and down – as he thinks about what he wants to say. And we don’t know how this came about, whether there were corrections – he would say something and then he would say, “No, wait, no, I want to put that in a different way.” There was human input.
But now he is saying, “I write this greeting with my own hand.” We know that there were those in the church in Colossae, and we certainly know there were those in the church in Thessalonica, who were pretending to be the apostle, Paul. And they were writing letters, pretending to be the apostle, Paul. For what motive, one can only imagine. And in order to secure for the Colossians the identity of this letter, the truthfulness of this letter, he signs it with his own hand. This is his handwriting if you like and they can compare this handwriting with say the epistle to the Ephesians to which they were privy. Colossae and Ephesus were both in the Lycus Valley along with the church in Laodicea for example, and they would share these epistles. And he wants them to know that this is genuine.
But what we see here – let’s go a little deeper here – what we see here is that there was human involvement in the writing of Scripture. This is Paul writing. Paul writes in a different manner to Peter; he writes in a different manner to John. He writes in a different manner to Matthew. You can tell when you read Paul, this is Paul. He has his own style. He has his own way of saying things. And yet, at the same time, every word that was penned to this, whatever it was, was God speaking. That’s what we believe. Men wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Yes, men wrote. People like Matthew and John and Mark, Peter, they wrote with their own individual style, their own individual way of saying things. Think of the gospels for example. John is so very different from the other three gospels. Think of Mark. Mark is always in a hurry, always using that little phrase, “And suddenly, and suddenly.” He’s in a hurry. Luke is the historian. He begins his gospel with that long statement to Theophilus, telling him that he has done his research. He has been to libraries. He’s done interviews with people who knew the Lord Jesus. He’s taking time, he’s taken notes; he’s got documents and he wants his readers to know. Yes, men wrote, but as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for doctrine and reproof and correction and instruction in the way of righteousness that the man of God might be thoroughly furnished unto every good work.” “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.”
Remember My Chains
And then secondly, he says, “Remember my chains.” So first of all, he underlines the importance of the document he is sending. This is God’s Word to them. They are to read it. They are to understand it. As this letter will be taken back from Rome, by sea, to the Aegean and then to Greece and then to Colossae, they are to understand that this letter is from Paul but it’s also a letter from God. And they are to mend their ways accordingly. But then secondly, he says, “Remember my chains.” Now Paul is not asking for pity. That’s not Paul. That’s not the Paul that we know and love. He’s been in chains before and he will be in chains again. There’s a cost to his ministry. Just as there is a cost to the ministry in Colossae, when you stand up for truth, when you stand up for Christ, when you stand up for the Gospel, there’s a cost. That’s what he’s saying. “Remember my chains. Don’t be ashamed of my chains.”
2023 is crazy. We’re living in a crazy world. Things happening today that we never could have imagined, some of us, when we were children. Things that people talk about and places of power and places of government. Even the liberal churches, the woke churches. We’re in an age where the very roots and fundamentals of Christianity are being challenged, being torn apart. The very basis of common grace and humanity. Paul is saying, “It may cost you to be a Christian in the first century.” And he’s writing in the 50s, but in the 60s there will be Nero and Christians will be executed and crucified, hundreds, thousands of them. Don’t be ashamed. Stand firm. These chains were real, but Paul is saying, “You know, these chains, they can strengthen you. They can give you backbone. They can give you courage. You must do so winsomely, but you must stand firm.”
First Pres Jackson, just like First Pres Columbia, we are in the glorious Bible-belt of the South, but all of that is changing. Those of my generation have seen a huge change. I’ve been in America for 30 years and I’ve seen a huge change. I go back to the United Kingdom; I don’t recognize it anymore. People are saying things that would never have been said when we were children. There’s a cost to Christianity. If you are going to be a Bible-believing church, if you are going to own the fundamentals of the faith, if you are going to stand up and honor the doctrines of the Westminster Confession; you’ve just elected elders and deacons and they will have to subscribe to the doctrines of the faith, the truths of the Westminster Confession. We recite The Apostles’ Creed. You don’t you do The Apostles’ Creed? What’s up? This is a creed that’s been said for at least 1,500, 1,600 years, and when our congregation recites The Apostles’ Creed on a Sunday morning, it’s the most countercultural moment in the week because you are claiming to believe things that the world around you does not believe any longer. All the truths of common grace that you could rely on in the culture around you has disappeared. It’s the result of late-modernity or postmodernity or whatever you want to call it, but there are no true truths anymore. People can’t define what a woman is. People with PhDs, lawyers of great notability, and they can’t even define what a woman is. That’s where our society is – ripped apart from the truths of Scripture, from the fundamental truths that brought the society into being. “Remember my chains,” Paul is saying. He’s not drawing attention to himself. He’s not asking for pity. He’s saying you may have to have chains too. The world around you may come after you and accuse you of all kinds of things – bigotry and hatred – because you hold to fundamental truths about what a woman is and what a man is, what marriage is. “Remember my chains.”
Grace Be With You
And then thirdly, “Grace be with you.” Grace be with you. It’s a benediction. It’s a very simple benediction. It’s something Paul does at the end of most of his letters. He gives a benediction – that the blessings of the covenant will be with you. At the close of a service, a preacher will raise his hands and pronounce a benediction that the blessings of the Gospel will go with you throughout this week that lies before you. When you walk into that doctor’s office and there’s a sense of sobriety and you know this is not going to be good, and he talks about diagnosis and he talks about possible ways forward and your mind is reeling and you can’t hear a word that he is saying because you’re in total shock – “Grace be with you.” When you are dealing with your teenage children – and we’ve all been there – when they go through those phases and it drives you around the bend – “Grace be with you.” And you’re dealing with elderly parents and all of the difficulties that that entails – “Grace be with you.” When you have a special needs child and life is hard now, life is difficult – “Grace be with you.”
This is an unusual way of saying what Paul is saying here. It would be more normal to say, “Grace to you.” Some of you are familiar with John MacArthur’s ministry in Los Angeles, “Grace to You.” That’s his ministry. But Paul adds this preposition – “Grace be with you,” to follow you. I know you know that I love my dogs. I do love my dogs. I can’t imagine life without dogs. You can have the worst day ever, and Christians can behave badly; maybe not in Jackson, but in Columbia, Christians can behave badly. And you come home and you’re dejected and there they are at the gate and their tails are wagging and they’re looking at you as if you’ve been gone for a thousand years. And they follow you. They follow me into the closet when I get changed, and they follow me into the kitchen because I need something to drink, a glass of water or something, and they follow you. And then you go outside – because if you have dogs, you know you have to go outside and do stuff! And they follow you. “Grace be with you.”
I had a very dear friend, called Douglass, and he was a preacher in the Free Church of Scotland, in Glasgow, and taught at the Free Church College in Edinburgh for a while. He was a shepherd. He went into the ministry. He was saved in his 40s, early 50s, went to seminary, so he was in his late 50s even before he began ministry. And he was just, he was just a wonderful, wonderful man. But I once heard him preach on Psalm 23 and at the end of Psalm 23 you have those words, “Goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.” So he called his two dogs, “Goodness” and “Mercy” – they were sheepdogs and they followed him wherever he went! “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see! ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved, how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils and fears, I have already come. ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace shall lead me home.”
“Grace be with you.” Whatever your trial, whatever your need, whatever your difficulty, whatever the circumstance. At your heels are goodness and mercy and they’re there to protect you, to look out for you, to remind you that you are kept in the arms of the Lord Jesus and He will never let you go. Having begun a good work, He will complete it unto the day of Jesus Christ. You are surrounded by grace every day. In the worst possible circumstance, there is grace – the grace of the Gospel, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ – and may that grace be with you today.
Now let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You and bless You. We bless You for this word of the apostle, and may it empower us and bring us closer to You today, for Jesus’ sake, amen.