having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and the love which ye have towards all the saints,
Paul is writing to believers he had never met. All that reached him was a report of two things: they had faith in Christ Jesus and love for all God's people. Those two marks raise a question. What does a real work of God look like from the outside?
One writer explains why that report was enough:
Paul wrote so confidently because of what he had heard. A faithful servant of the Lord had been working among them, and he reported that they not only claimed to be Christians but showed the two central marks of Christianity, "faith in the Lord Jesus, and love to all the saints." He also told the apostle of their "love in the Spirit" (Col. 1:4, 8). It goes without saying: these movements of soul are never found in the natural man. Only a divine work can produce them.
The faith Paul heard about was not only the first step of a sinner coming to Christ. It marked the whole way they lived, and it proved itself in something visible:
Faith in Christ Jesus and love to all the saints marked them. Faith had drawn them to the Lord Jesus as needy sinners, and they went on walking by faith as dependent saints. Their love to the saints proved that their faith in Christ was real. Their love was not human love, which might have attached them only to certain people. It was divine love that went out to "all saints" because that is what they were.
Faith and love can sound like ordinary words. Do they say much?
This may seem a small thing to say. One might ask, Is this unique to the Colossians? Does not every believer trust in Christ and love those who are His? We may reply with another question: Does it characterise every Christian? Does it characterise us? It involves more than believing in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. It means He is the blessed, lasting object of our faith, and that the saints are the circle where our love is now at work.
Paul mentions faith before love, and then adds one testing word — "all":
Our love would bring in the thought of something on our part that would make us important. So although he is about to speak of love to the saints, he introduces the matter by "faith," because faith throws us not so much on our love to Him as on His love to us... This is a very important word in judging our love. We are all inclined to form a circle even among God's people. We have those we prefer, those who suit us best. Their thoughts, feelings and habits are more or less like our own, or at least are no great trial to us. But this is not love to the saints. There is more love of ourselves in it than love of them. The flesh likes whatever is agreeable to us, whatever causes us no pain.
Natural warmth cannot reach that far:
These two things, simple and elementary as they may appear, are extremely important. They show clearly and surely that a person has the divine nature — see 1 John 3:14; 1 John 5:1. An unconverted person may be quite attached to one believer here or there who happens to appeal to him. But he does not love "all the saints." That is beyond anyone except the one who is born of God.
Verse 8 calls this same love "love in the Spirit." That phrase explains how it reached Paul himself:
Here their love to the saints unfolds and grows. They did not know Paul personally, so they could only love him in the Spirit. I might know a fellow believer and be drawn to him by something attractive in the flesh. But love in the Spirit loves him because he belongs to Christ. Now love in the Spirit takes in "all saints," as we have it in verse 4.
The sentence does not stop at verse 4. The next verse gives a reason for their love:
It was "for" or "on account of" the hope that love to all the saints marked them. They would all be together with the Lord Jesus Christ and like Him, sharing the coming glory with Him. That hope was laid up for them in heaven, not on earth as Israel's hope is. That is why they loved all the saints.
- Heard. Paul had never seen these believers; a report of their faith and love was enough for him to thank God for them.
- Faith. Faith is named first: it rests us on His love to us, not on ours to Him — and it goes on as a daily walk of dependence.
- Love. Love is the proof faith gives of itself: divine love goes out to God's people because they are God's.
- All. The test is the word "all" — preferring a few who suit us is love of self, while loving saints as saints is beyond anyone not born of God.
- Hope. Behind that love stands the hope laid up in heaven; because their portion was there, their love reached everyone who shares it.
on account of the hope which [is] laid up for you in the heavens; of which ye heard before in the word of the truth of the glad tidings,
Paul thanks God for the Colossians' faith and love. Then he names what stands behind both: a hope already stored up for them in heaven. What is kept there? And why does a future hope change the way people live and love now?
"Laid up" is the language of storage, and the place matters as much as the fact. One writer sets both against two pressures on this church: philosophy and strict religious rules.
Their hope was laid up. It was safe. It was "in the heavens," not on the earth — despite philosophy and rules about denying the body. They had to beware of all these, whatever they looked like and whatever they promised. He would remind them of their own true hope, calling them back to the heavens where Christ is. That is the true and only deliverance from all the working of the human mind in divine things, and from earthly religion.
What is stored there is not a list of benefits. It is a Person, and everything else is bound up in Him.
It is not merely that we shall be there. Nor is it just that we have put all our interests into the hand of Christ, and that He will take care of all our happiness and joy in heaven. Christ Himself in glory is our hope. God has treasured up all that is ours in Him in the heavens, and we are to enjoy it now as hope.
The opening words tie the hope back to the faith and love of verse 4. One writer reads that hope as the reason these Colossians loved as they did.
It was "for" or "because of" the hope that love to all the saints marked them out. They would all be together with the Lord Jesus Christ and like Him, sharing with Him the coming glory. That hope was laid up for them in heaven, not on earth as Israel's hope is. So they loved all the saints.
Paul says they had heard of this hope already. It came to them with the gospel that first converted them — which means the gospel itself carries more than pardon.
The gospel, the good news of grace, had good news of glory wrapped up in it too. Such was the range and scope of the gospel they had heard. It was God's good news not only of the forgiveness of sins through the blood of His Son, but of eternal blessedness with Him in heaven.
That has a direct consequence for anyone who preaches, and the balance cuts both ways.
We learn from this that those who preach the gospel should stress its present effect, which is deliverance from the power of sin. They should stress its final effect too — bringing the believer into glory. It would of course be just as much a mistake to preach the final effect without insisting on the present one.
Paul piles up three weighty terms instead of just saying "the gospel." Each one answers a pull the Colossians felt.
It was not intellectual groping, but "the word" sent to them — God's revelation. It was not dabbling in legal forms, but "the truth," the truth of the gospel. The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The gospel came to them, and was still there with them, as unchanging as the One who is its sum and substance. Real truth, even when new, never sets aside the old. Instead it supplies the missing links, deepens the foundations and widens the scope.
In everyday speech "hope" means a wish that may not come true. Here it means the opposite. Paul urges it on them for a practical reason.
Hope in Scripture is not something uncertain. It is looking ahead to the future with no doubt at all involved… It was necessary to press this prospect on them, since they were travelling through a wilderness, exposed to present dangers and temptations. How vital it is for us all to keep the end in view!
One writer compares this letter with Ephesians, and the difference shapes daily life.
Heavenly things are our hope. Colossians does not begin with the counsels of God, as Ephesians does. Instead we get a long opening in which the apostle longs to settle the saints in this hope of heavenly things… My hope is laid up in heaven, but I am not sitting there.
- Hope stored. God has already stored the hope safely in heaven, not on earth — out of reach of philosophy and religious rule-keeping.
- Hope is a Person. God has treasured up everything for us in Christ in glory. Christ Himself is the hope, and we enjoy it now in anticipation.
- Hope fuels love. The Colossians loved all believers because of the hope. They were all heading for the same glory.
- Hope was preached. They heard it in the gospel itself. It announces forgiveness through the blood of God's Son, and eternal blessedness with Him. Preaching that drops either half is unbalanced.
- Hope keeps you walking. It is certainty, not guesswork. It steadies travellers still exposed to danger, whose hope is in heaven though they do not sit there yet.