Grace Fellowship    5/24/09    Learning to Knit Together        Colossians 2

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I don’t know if all of you are aware of it, but Justin is in the Boy Scouts.  One of the things the Scouts are known for is their ability to tie different kinds of knots.  They are taught a variety of knots in order to advance through the ranks of scouting.  Knots like the Timber Hitch or the Clove Hitch or the Bowline have specific uses.  I can tie two knots: the one on my shoes (whatever that is called), and the one around my neck.  I can’t remember the name of that one either.

When I think of the word “knot,” I usually think of it as a problem to be solved.  Knots are often tied so tightly they cannot be easily untied.  In fact, that is usually why you tie a knot, unless you know how to tie and use a slip knot (which should not be confused with some very troubled persons that constitute a rock band by that name).  

“Knot” is a very old word from which we get the English word “knit.”  Knitting is, in essence, a collection of knots systematically tied together to make something useful like a sweater.  It is also a medical term.  According to Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, the verb form of the word “knit” means “to cause to grow together.”  Martha fell a few years ago and the broken bones in her arm knit together again when they were set correctly and held in place for what seemed like a year or two.

In Colossians, we read how Christians in a local church are to be knotted or knitted together.  Paul struggled for the encouragement of the hearts of the Colossians and all believers, desiring that they be knitted together.  Look with me at Colossians 2.

1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face,  2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. *

The two words “knit together” in verse 2 is the translation of one Greek word.  It is translated a number of different ways in different Bible versions. 1  The word literally means,

   1.  to cause to coalesce, to join together, put together
         a. to unite or knit together: in affection

Well, what does “coalesce” mean?  “To grow together or into one body.”
Origin: 1535–45; < L coalēscere, equiv. to co- co- + al- (s. of alere to nourish, make grow) + -ēscere -esce  

In other words,  “co” (together) and “alesce” (to nourish, make grow).  Synonyms: unite, combine, join, amalgamate, fuse, blend, merge.  Paul actually talks quite a lot about this concept.  Look at verse 16:

16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments [“bonds”; 3:14], grows with a growth that is from God.

To cause to grow together, coalesce, blend, united, knitted together.  When Martha broke her arm, she went to the hospital, they took X-rays, and they very carefully aligned the bones and set them with metal rods in order to cause the bones to grow back together correctly.  Her arm isn’t healed by accident.  It was broken by accident, but it was healed, the bones knit back together correctly through the intentional actions of the doctors.  Her broken bones were caused or made to grow back together into one.  That is what happens among people who believe the Gospel, and who love and hold fast to the Lord Jesus.  They are caused to become one.  Turn to chapter 3:

12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

If you are over 40 years old, you will undoubtedly remember a song that was played incessantly on the radio for years by a man and wife duet that went by the name, The Captain and Tenille.  One of their biggest hits was Love Will Keep Us Together.  I hesitate to even mention that song for fear it will get started in my head and not stop until August.  But according to Paul, love binds everything together in perfect harmony within the church, and among believers.  That is a very powerful statement.  Unity, harmony, oneness, being knitted together as fellow Christians is dependent upon our putting on love.  And he says it that way to deliver us from this notion that love is emotional rather than intentional.  This is love that is willful.

He emphasizes this same concept in Ephesians 4.

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Love, unity, perfect harmony, speaking the truth in love, the bond of peace, knit together, held together, bound together, growing up, building up ourselves in love - That is what a Christian church is supposed to look like.  This is in perfect agreement with the prayer of the Lord Jesus for his disciples.  In John 17, Jesus prays for His Church.  Turn there and look at the terminology He uses:

20 “I do not ask for these [eleven disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

So you see that this kind of unity/harmony/oneness/knitting together language is spread all over the New Testament.  Where it is not stated literally, it is described in other terms.  In Acts 4, which takes place very shortly after Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit, we read these rather amazing words:

32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

That is a remarkable degree of unity and harmony and oneness immediately upon conversion.  The Lord saved three thousand people at Pentecost and they were instantly of one heart and soul.  When people sell their stuff in order to provide for the needs of those they love, that is tangible, sacrificial love.  Who would ever want to leave a church that behaved like that?  

I was listening to a lecture by Don Whitney and he said something that really caught my attention.  The book of 1 Corinthians tells us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  He says that in response to a particular sin of a sexual nature that was taking place within the church.  So he says to that church, “19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."

There he is speaking to people individually and addressing the responsibility of individuals to be sexually pure.  We as individual believers are temples of the Holy Spirit.  Individually we are to live holy lives.  

But seven times he speaks of the entire church body as the Temple of God.  We collectively are the Body of Christ.  We all together are being built up, individually, but simultaneously and together as parts of a larger Body of believers, into our common Head who is Christ.  

American Christians don’t seem to think that way.  We think in terms of liberty and freedom, of individuality and an independent spirit.  We have the mindset that personal rights are of supreme value.  We have great difficulty thinking collectively, or acting sacrificially for the good of others to the neglect of ourselves.  We have very little sense of belonging to anything bigger than ourselves.  Even in marriage, we have prenuptial agreements because each partner has to guard his or her own individual long-term interests.  So this idea of being “members” of one another sounds strange to us.  Look at Romans 12.

3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function,  5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

10 Love one another with brotherly affection.
13 Contribute to the needs of the saints
16 Live in harmony with one another.

14:19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

15:5 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

These verses all describe what is supposed to be normal church life.  There is a living together pictured here in all these passages that is seldom seen in churches today, and even in our own church.  Part of that has to do with logistics.  How many of you live in Pine Grove Mills?  I suspect every church to whom Paul wrote consisted of a congregation in which everyone lived within walking distance of each other.  Church families lived together in their communities.  They knew each other outside of church meetings.  They were physically much closer than we are today, and many of them had more things in common than many of us today.  They did not have an individualistic, Americanized “right to privacy” mindset like we often do today.  They weren’t self-sufficient.  They were more dependent upon each other outside the church than we are.  Of necessity, they were connected in social ways that our fellowship has never really experienced.

That’s why Paul’s words to the Colossians sound so quaint to us:  "For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love . . . .”  He sounds like he could be our grandmother.  But there is a reason for our hearts to be knitted and knotted together: so that together we might . . . reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

That is something we cannot do as individual Christians.  The privatized believer is, first of all, unknown  to the New Testament.  All believers in the New Testament are assumed to belong to a larger body, a larger communion of believers.  But secondly, we have been saved by God and placed into a body of believers that builds itself up by means of all the spiritual gifts each one has been given, for each other’s sake, in order to pursue Christ together.  We work together as His Body towards all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of Christ.  We strive for that as a body of believers united, combined, joined, amalgamated, fused, blended, merged, knitted and knotted together in bonds of godly love that cannot be broken.

Does that sound like a group of people you would want to be involved with?  Me too.  But these people have at least two things in common. First, they love each other.  We love each other because Jesus loves us all.  In other words, if Jesus loves you, it would be wise for me to love you too.  We are commanded repeatedly to love each other, to love the brethren, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (and the more I think about it, the more I believe that word “neighbor” usually refers to fellow believers, not the unsaved people next door or down the street).  Love for one another is the most obvious and the most powerful attribute of a real Christian.

Secondly, the kind of church Paul is speaking of consists of people who have a perpetual desire to know Christ more because they love Him.  We are knit together in love [in order to, or for the purpose of reaching] all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of Christ.  We are moving together in the same direction, with the same goal, for the same purpose: the full understanding and knowledge of Christ.  How long does that take?  Forever.  But we start here and now.  That is the mindset of a healthy Christian, and the collective mindset of a healthy church.

How do you think we’re doing?  Let’s ask ourselves a few questions:

1.  Is my love for the brethren at Grace Fellowship evident?  Do I think of myself more in terms of an individual believer, or as a needed member of body of believers?  Is our love for this church, this congregation, on display often?  Not the emotional kind of love we’re indoctrinated with by our culture, but a permanent love for each other’s spiritual and physical welfare because we are brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus and because of our common love for Him?  Are we “knit together”, are we merged together in love for one another’s sake and for Christ?  Does the world around us know we are Christ’s disciples because they see how we love each other?

2.  Is our love of Christ evidenced by a longing to know Him more?  Are we satisfied with our individual spiritual lives, or are we constantly in awe of the Lord Jesus and long to know Him more together?  Is that awe obvious because of our time spent in the Scriptures together trying to learn, trying to gain knowledge and understanding of Him, worshipping Him together?  Is it easy to see that as a church family we pursue all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of Christ together?  

Let me ask a more fundamental question: Do we as a congregation more closely resemble the IRS’s definition of a church or the Bible’s definition in Colossians 2, and Ephesians 4, and Romans 12, 14, and 15 of what Paul referred to as a church?  I doubt there is anyone here who would argue with me that when we speak of “the church”, we are talking about people and not a building.  All of you agree that the Church of the Lord Jesus consists of people whom God has saved by His grace.  But what should such a group of people look like?  Act like?  

How should the world around us here in this community reasonably expect us, the real, genuine people of God to behave?  How does God’s family behave?  Is it reasonable to think God’s people would love their Savior supremely?  Is it reasonable to think they would live godly lives and walk as Jesus walked?  Is it reasonable to think such a group of believers would be knit together inseparably in love to each other?  The answer to all those rhetorical questions is an emphatic Yes!

Do those things characterize us as a church?  







* All Scripture references are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.
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1. concluded, concluding, held, held together, instruct, knit together, proving, together