The Grace of Gratitude (Colossians 3:15-17)

Giving thanks should characterize our relationships, our worship, and our service. It is a grace that should be evident in all aspects of Christian living and church life. An exposition of Colossians 3:15-17.

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Jim Osman

Pastor-Teacher, Kootenai Community Church

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The expository preaching ministry of Kootenai Community Church by Pastors/Elders Jim Osman, Jess Whetsel, Dave Rich, and Cornel Rasor. This podcast feed contains the weekly sermons preached from the pulpit on Sunday mornings at Kootenai Church.

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Well, we almost universally recognize that gratitude and thankfulness are virtues. It's not something that comes to us naturally. In fact, it is something that we have to teach our children, thankfulness and gratitude. Children do not come out of the womb thankful for, well, anything really. They demand everything and are grateful for nothing. And then you have to spend basically the next eighteen to twenty-five years of your life teaching your children the habit of being thankful and the virtue of thankfulness. And you have to remind them sometimes to give thanks for things which even ought to be obvious that they should be thankful for those things. And then we have to nurture and cultivate within them a heart and an attitude of gratitude and thankfulness.
It is something that has to be practiced and learned not just by children but also by adults, and even sometimes for those things which we take for granted, those things for which we ought to obviously have a profound and abiding gratitude. We can take those things for granted and even begin to forget to give thanks for the common things. How many of you have thanked God for the air that you breathe even this morning? And yet there are a thousand other blessings that you and I have been lavished with this morning that we enjoy and we take for granted, and we bask in them and we never even really think to give God thanks for those things.
We universally recognize how virtuous an attitude of thankfulness is. And we universally recognize just how distasteful ingratitude is when we see it. When we see somebody who is not thankful, instead who is bitter and responds to everything with an attitude of entitlement like they deserve what is coming to them and what they are getting and they are not grateful for it, we look at that and we are just disgusted. So for instance, when you stop in the middle of a busy street to let somebody else turn in front of you, and they just pull in front of you without waving, without smiling, without nodding, without even acknowledging that you exist and that you have inconvenienced twelve people behind you just so you could get a thanks out of this person, and they turn in front of you as if you owed that to them, that's kind of a little off-putting, isn't it? It is. And we need to have a frank and honest national conversation about when it is appropriate to stop traffic in the middle of a busy street and let somebody pull in front of you just so you can get a smile from a random stranger. We should have a national conversation about that. Spoiler alert, “never” is the answer to that. Never ever. But we can still have a national conversation about that before the public executions commence. That's for another day and that's not our subject today.
Our subject today is gratitude and thankfulness. And our passage this morning is Colossians chapter 3, verses 15–17. Now in the nearly thirty years that I have been preaching here at Kootenai Community Church, I'm sure that at some point in the past thirty years, I have preached a message on thankfulness and thanksgiving before Thanksgiving. But we were just in this subject in Hebrews chapter 12. I can't remember when the last time is that we sort of deviated from the normal routine of going through a book to take a subject like thankfulness and thanksgiving right before Thanksgiving. But because I'm trying to avoid getting into Hebrews 13 before we take this long Christmas break, we decided to kind of jump around and do some other things for at least two weeks before we jump into the Christmas series. So that is going to make us land here in Colossians chapter 3, verses 15–17. Let's read these three verses together, and we will get through all three of these verses this morning.
15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.
16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
17 Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. (NASB)
Now the context of this is very important in understanding what Paul is addressing and particularly the application that he is enjoining for us to apply to our lives. But before we sort of dive into this, I want to make some connections in the context. And before we kind of jump to the context of this passage, the rest of the book, to see how the apostle has sort of been building a case to this throughout, I want you to notice just four things about this passage in particular. First, I want you to notice that the idea of thanks and thankfulness are mentioned in all three of those verses in verse 15, in verse 16, and in verse 17. “Be thankful” in verse 15, “singing with thankfulness” in verse 16, and “giving thanks” in verse 17. Now that would serve as a very good outline for our sermon this morning, those three points: be thankful, sing with thankfulness, and give thanksgiving. But that's not the outline that we're going to use this morning.
This idea of thankfulness is mentioned in every chapter of this book. This is a theme all the way through Colossians, which I think is remarkable given the fact that this book is written from prison. It's kind of like the book of Philippians, which is all about joy and rejoicing, and that was written in prison. And the book of Colossians was written from prison, and yet the apostle Paul weaves this theme of thankfulness and thanksgiving throughout the whole book. Look back in chapter 1, verse 3: “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you.”
Look at chapter 1, verses 11–12: he prays that they would be “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.”
Look at chapter 2, verses 6 and 7: “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, [look at that last phrase] and overflowing with gratitude.”
Look at chapter 4, verse 2: “Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving.”
That is a theme that is woven throughout the Epistle. And here in chapter 3 we have this concentration of this idea of thanksgiving in these three verses. It's mentioned three times. And interestingly, each time gratitude or thankfulness is mentioned, it is mentioned in a different part of speech. You'll notice in verse 15, it is an adjective. In verse 16, it is a noun. And in verse 17, it is a verb. So we could talk about thankfulness being an adjective, a noun, or a verb. And that would make a good outline for our sermon this morning. But we're not going to use that.
The word that is translated as “thankfulness” or “thanks” is the word charis. It is translated as “grace” most often in Scripture. In fact, of the 155 times that that word appears in our New Testament, it is translated as “grace” 121 of them. Eighty percent of the time when you read that, you're just reading the word grace. But a form of that word can also be translated as “favor” or “graciousness” or “gift” or “blessing.” It is translated as “gratitude.” Sometimes it is used to describe receiving grace or saying grace—in other words, thanking in grace. We kind of have that same idea today when we speak of saying grace before a meal. Really, we're talking about saying thanksgiving. That's what grace is. Because the word grace is translated as “thankfulness” or “thanksgiving.” So when we say grace before a meal, we're simply thanking and acknowledging in our words the grace that has been given to us in the meal that we're about to enjoy.
This word grace in Scripture is something that should characterize us, and we should be grateful for the amazing grace that has been poured out upon us. In fact, it is that pouring out of grace that we give thanks for and we give thanks to God for. It is that which makes us thankful.
Third observation, I want you to notice how Christ is central in each one of these verses. He mentions in verse 15 “the peace of Christ,” in verse 16 “the word of Christ,” and in verse 17 “the name of Christ.” And thankfulness is connected to all of those. Thankfulness is connected to the peace that Christ gives us, the Word of Christ which dwells in us, and the name of Christ in which we do everything. And that would serve as a really good outline for our sermon this morning. We're not using that either.
Instead, I want you to notice, fourth, that these three verses deal with three different aspects of our life together as believers. In verse 15, thankfulness should characterize peace within the church—that is, our relationships one with another. In verse 16, thankfulness should characterize worship in the church. We sing with thankfulness in our hearts. And then in verse 17, thankfulness should characterize everything in the church and everything in our lives. And so that would make for a good sermon outline for our sermon today, so we're going to go ahead and use that one. Thankfulness should characterize first peace in the church (verse 15), worship in the church (verse 16), and then everything in our lives, which includes obviously the relationships within the church (verse 17).
Let's look first at the peace in the church, verse 15. I want to connect this to the context, the rest of the Epistle. How did we get here to Colossians 3, verse 15? Well, you say, I know how we got here. You asked us to turn there. That's how we got there. But I mean in terms of Paul's argument, how did he get to this point of talking about thankfulness in the book of Colossians? Back in chapter 1, he describes the redemption that has been accomplished by an incomparable Savior. Verses 15–16: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.” “Without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3, NIV). He is the comprehensive Creator of all things. And this Creator, who has comprehensively created all things, is Himself the image of the invisible God.
And He, verses 13–14 of chapter 1, “rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption [that is, in Christ we have redemption, forgiveness], the forgiveness of sins.” And further, He has then reconciled us to Himself. Look down at verses 20–21: “And through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace [interesting, just take notice of that] through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind”—that's the opposite of peace. Alienation and hostility, that describes what you formerly were. Now, Paul is saying, you have been reconciled by this incomparable Creator. You have been reconciled to Him through His work on the cross by His blood. Verse 22: “Yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
So that's the redemption, the salvation, the forgiveness, that complete reconciliation that is now taking place. Because of what Christ has done, you and I are made at peace with God. We are no longer at war with Him. Instead, we have bowed the knee and yielded ourselves to Him. We have come to Him and been reconciled to Him. And by the way, God is the initiator in all of that. Hostile sinners do not seek reconciliation with God. Instead, we are enemies of God pursuing our own course, doing our own thing, and we are hostile against Him in mind and in heart and in deed and in word. But God takes the initiative and chooses us in Christ before the foundation of the world and then does what He does to reconcile us to Himself through the death of Christ, draws us to the Son, grants us repentance and faith, and causes us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, reconciling us into this one body, which is the church of Christ.
But then Paul's concern in chapter 2 is that in light of that magnificent reconciliation that we have been given, that you and I might become captive to man-made philosophies and persuasive arguments and lofty-sounding rhetoric that would take us captive to worldly thinking and false doctrine. So he says in chapter 2, verse 18,
18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind,
19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. (Col. 2:18–19 NASB)
These are all distractions, the apostle Paul says, these false teachers that come along with their lofty-sounding rhetoric and their false doctrines, and they want to take you captive and bring you in after their own little cults, their own little ideas, their own little man-made philosophies. So the apostle says in chapter 2, verse 20,
20 If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as,
21 “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!”
22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?
23 These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, [this is the key, the next phrase] but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.
So see, the question is, as the apostle begins to now transition to the application of this magnificent redemption, the question now becomes, what then do I do with sin? I've been reconciled to God, and yet I still find myself sinning. I still find myself going to war with my flesh and these lusts of my flesh, etc. How do I handle those? Well, you shouldn't be made captive by these fancy teachers who come along and say, look, the key to fighting your flesh is to live by these man-made standards, these man-made restrictions, these man-made philosophies. And if you can just self-abase your body and you can just deny those things and make yourself suffer, then you would end up mortifying the deeds of the flesh. No, that is not how mortification works, the apostle Paul says. Those things are of no value against the indulgences of the flesh. So what then is my battle plan against sin? Chapter 3, verse 1:
1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (Col. 3:1–4 NASB)
Notice the similar focus there to what we have in the book of Hebrews: “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of . . . God” (Heb. 12:2). Therefore, consider Him, focus your mind and consider Him, give thought to Him who endured such hostility against Himself at the hands of sinners. It's focusing your eyes on the Lord Jesus and setting your mind on things above that is one of the keys to mortifying our sinful desires.
Then, verse 5:
5 Therefore [since you have died with Christ] consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,
7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. (Col. 3:5–7 NASB)
The time has passed, the apostle Paul says, for you to have endured all of those things and done all of those things, but that was what you once were. You are no longer that. Instead, you have died to those things, so consider your earthly members as being dead.
Verse 8: “But now you also, put them all aside.” So there is a mindset. There's a mindset in verses 1–7. The mindset is fixing our eyes on Jesus and considering heavenly things, and then we reckon the members of our flesh as being dead to sin. That's the mindset. Then verse 8:
8 But now you also, put them all aside [we are to put off, to stop doing, to lay aside the deeds of darkness and stop participating in them]: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
9 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
10 and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him— (Col. 3:8–10 NASB)
You are being renewed. You have been made new. You have been reconciled to God, brought into the body of Christ, and this renewal that has taken place for you individually has placed you together corporately into the body of Christ, “a renewal [verse 11] in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.” So there is a renewal that has taken place in your life because you have died to sin, you have been reconciled to God, placed into the body of Christ. That is a renewal that makes no distinction between circumcision and uncircumcision, slave or free, barbarian or Scythian, Jew or Gentile, Jew or Greek. All of those distinctions mean nothing inside of the body of Christ because now you have been reconciled together.
So then that raises the very next question, which is how then do all of these people who were formerly at war with one another live together in peace and harmony? Verse 12:
12 So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience;
13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
14 Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. (Col. 3:12–14 NASB)
Notice the reference to putting off and putting on. You had to put off certain things and you were to put on other things. You lay aside the deeds of darkness, and you put on the deeds of light: gentleness, humility, kindness, and patience. This is how we treat one another.
So Paul in verses 12–14 is obviously dealing now with relationships within the body of Christ. How do we live with one another? How do we relate to one another? How do we deal with hostility and conflict between one another? You see there are all kinds of these warring factions that have been brought together in the church of Jesus Christ. Scythians and barbarians, at war with one another, warring tribes; men and women, hostile toward one another, brought together; Jew and Gentile; circumcised and uncircumcised; slave men and freed, masters and slaves, all brought together into this one body. So what then is to characterize this one body? What does Paul say? “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (Col. 3:15). What is it that keeps people who have been brought together by the reconciling work of God, who once were warring against one another, what is it that keeps them from going to war with each other now that they're in the body of Christ? The fact that we have been reconciled and now we are to let the peace of God rule among us.
Now the apostle Paul is not talking about having peace with God. He described that back in chapter 1. Remember we read that? God has reconciled us and made peace. No longer are we at war with God. He's describing now peace between brothers in the church. He's not talking here about a tranquility or an inner sense of peace. I just have to throw this in since I've written a little bit on this. The apostle Paul here is not giving counsel for how to make decisions and suggesting that we make decisions by consulting some inward sense of tranquility or peace, that if offered two opposing options, that we take the one that brings us the most peace or tranquility. He's not talking about decision-making, not talking about looking inward to your own feelings about some voice of God or some direction in the Divine for making decisions in the day-to-day. That's not in the context. Nowhere in the context. That's not what Paul means. And if you had gone back to Paul's time and said, “Here, Paul, is what I think you're talking about,” he would have said, “You have completely missed the point. That is not what I'm discussing at all. I'm discussing peace which is to work as the arbitrator in the body of Christ between these once warring factions.” That's what peace is. It is the cessation of hostility between once alienated or once hostile factions within the church. And now because we have been reconciled to God, we are now reconciled with God. F. F. Bruce says this,
The common life of fellow members of the body of Christ is in view. When differences threaten to spring up among them, the peace of Christ must be accepted as arbitrator. If the members are subject to Christ, the peace which He imparts must regulate their relations with one another. It is not to strife but to peace that God called them in the unity of the body of Christ.
Notice in verse 15 he says, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.” He's talking about body relationships. You were called in one body of believers to Christ, reconciled to Him. Therefore peace is to be the arbitration between you. Peace is to be the goal.
And by the way, this is the answer to ethnic hostility in our own day. This is it. You just read it. If men have been reconciled to God, then they have been reconciled to one another. And we call it racism, it's not racism. There's only one race, the human race. It's ethnic hostility. We're all just varying shades of brown. All of us are. And so if my brother, my Black brother who's a darker shade of brown than I, has been reconciled to God, and me, the lighter brother who's more like a latte, I've been reconciled to God through the death of Christ, and we can stand next to each other, all racial and ethnic—and I use racial in the way that our world uses it—all ethnic hostility ceases.
This is the answer to socioeconomic divisions amongst people—the rich going to war against the poor, the poor going to war against the rich, everybody complaining about one another, upper-class, middle-class, lower-class, super low-class, etc. This is the answer to it. Men who have been reconciled to God are reconciled to one another.
The world can do nothing to end any of that hostility. Anti-bullying campaigns in the public school are not going to do it. Commercials are not going to do it. You know what does it? The gospel does it. When two people who once were at war with one another have been reconciled to each other and they both come to the Lord's Table to drink from the same cup and to eat the same loaf and they recognize they've been saved by the same thing, all the hostility must cease. And a pox upon the house of anybody who gins up those hostilities just to keep ethnic strife at a fever pitch for some political or financial purpose. This is the answer to all of that hostility.
And we are to do this and be thankful. Why? Because you've been chosen of God (verse 12). You've been made holy in Him. You once were alienated from His life; now you have life in Him. You've been included in God's redeemed, brought into the body of Christ. You have been forgiven for your sins. You're no longer at war with Christ. You have died in Christ. You have been buried in Christ. You have been raised with Christ. You've been seated in the heavenlies in Him, and you await now (verses 1–4 of chapter 3) the glory that is to come that has been promised to you. And so as you gather together into the body of Christ, what is to be the rule or the arbitrator between all of these once warring factions? Peace. The peace that Christ gives to His people is to be the thing that is pursued in unity and in love.
And we are to be thankful, verse 15 says. We are to be thankful. That's the response of gratitude for such blessings. It's amazing how much, by the way, gratitude will do to alleviate your hostility toward somebody else. It's amazing how far gratitude will go to alleviate and to dissipate your hostility toward somebody else. It is impossible to be at war with somebody for whom you are profoundly thankful. It's impossible. You cannot have a profound sense of gratitude for somebody and to somebody and be at war with them at the same time. You can't do it. Gratitude is the grace that is expressed by one who receives something that they do not feel entitled to. Hostility is the opposite. It is the attitude or the response of one who does not receive what they feel they are entitled to. When you get something that you say, “Man, I don't deserve that,” you are grateful for that. But when you don't get something that you think you deserve, you're hostile. Two different responses, two different attitudes of heart. They spawn two different things in ways that we respond to those things.
Thankfulness is the mark of the redeemed, and ingratitude is the mark of the enemy of God. Paul says this in Romans chapter 1, verse 21 in his condemnation of all of humanity. He says, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” The unbeliever knows that God exists, he knows he should be thankful, and he refuses to give the blessed and triune God his thanksgiving, and so his heart becomes darkened. It becomes vain and foolish in his imaginations and in his thinking.
The peace of Christ is to rule in the church body where people are thankful. And when we are grateful for our salvation and for the salvation of others and for the benefits and blessings that others bring us, the hostility ceases. So, thankfulness is connected to the peace that is to rule within the body of Christ.
Second, thankfulness should characterize worship in the church (verse 16). This describes corporate worship: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We're to sing with thankfulness. Now the question kind of comes up at the beginning of verse 16 when Paul says, “Let the word of Christ richly [the word means “lavishly and extravagantly”] dwell within you,” is he talking about corporately or individually? In other words, is the apostle Paul saying, “Let you, as a body of believers, let the Word of Christ dwell lavishly and abundantly and extravagantly among you,” indicating that what should rule and what should be abundant inside of the church and its gatherings is the Word of God and the centrality of that, or is the apostle Paul describing individually? Let the Word of Christ dwell abundantly within you, inside of you particularly? So is it an individual command or a corporate command?
Well, if it's not fulfilled in the individual, it will not be fulfilled in the corporate. And if it is not predominant in the corporate, it will never take place in the individual. So these two things must go together. I think the apostle Paul primarily has in mind here corporately the idea that the Word of Christ should dwell amongst us as a congregation. It is in that way that Christ rules His church. It is in that way that the peace of Christ rules in the affairs of His church, when the Word of God is central to everything that they do. But it is also true that the Word of God should abundantly and lavishly reside within each and every individual believer. In fact, this is what it means to be filled by the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit. Ephesians 5, verse 18. Listen to the description that Paul gives, and David did an excellent job with this a couple of weeks ago in his description of this passage. Ephesians 5:18:
18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,
19 speaking to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;
20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;
21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. (Eph. 5:18–21 NASB)
Notice that the fruit of the filling by the Spirit and the fruit of having the Word dwell within you is the same. The outcome is the same. And by the way, the methodology is the same because the Spirit and His Word go together. So you cannot divorce the Spirit from His Word. How is it that you are filled with the Spirit? What does it mean to be filled by the Holy Spirit? It doesn't mean that you come forward in a meeting and some anointed man of God lays his hands upon you and you fall down on the ground and shake violently and utter gibberish out of your mouth and have some ecstatic experience or that you get visions and dreams or you get Holy Spirit bumps that run down your arm and your liver starts to quiver and you get some sort of a vision or revelation. It's not what it means at all.
To be filled by the Spirit of God is to be controlled by the Word of God, to think God's thoughts after Him, to walk in obedience to what He has revealed. And how do we know what God has revealed? When we are filled with the Word of God in the sense that we read it and we memorize it and we hear it preached and we sing it and we express our thanksgiving for it and we bring it to bear upon every aspect of our lives, the Word of God begins to flow through us, flow through our hearts, into our minds, comes out our souls. We bleed, we sweat, we excrete the Word of God in everything that we do. That is what it means to be filled with the Spirit. That is what it means to be led by the Spirit. It doesn't mean you have some ecstatic experience. It means that you are under the control and walking in the Spirit of God by virtue of the fact that His Word rules your life. That is what it means to let the Word of Christ dwell richly within you.
And when you do that, when that happens, then there will be certain fruits from that. You will teach and admonish one another. Teaching is the positive side of that. Here's what we are to do. Here's what I'm doing right now. Preaching and teaching is the positive aspect of building up and encouraging and exhortation. Admonishing is the negative side of that—“Don't do that.” You warn one another. You correct one another. Rebuke and reprove sometimes. There's teaching, the positive side, and admonishing.
We sing together with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, verse 16 says, singing with thankfulness, with that attitude of grace and gratitude in our hearts to the Lord. Now “in our hearts” does not mean that we are singing only inside and that our mouths are silent. Some of us on Sunday morning think that that's what it means to sing in your hearts. That's not what the apostle Paul is describing. He's saying that we ought to sing, but it ought not just to be the expression of our lips; we are to sing in our hearts as well. It is out of our hearts that we give this thankfulness, not just the utterances of our lips or the singing of our lips, but we are to sing with our lips and in conjunction with expressing the desires, the sentiments, and the gratitude that exists within our hearts. And we are to do this with thankfulness. Singing is the vehicle through which the thanks is expressed, so that the theology of the songs that we sing is an opportunity to thank God for those things that are true.
And singing is not intended to disengage the mind. Singing is intended to engage the intellect and to engage the heart in truth. This is why, and I'm very grateful for our music team doing this, this is why the songs that we sing are very thoughtful, they're very theological, and they're not just rote nonsense. Because singing is intended to engage us in the truth so that we may offer to God thankfulness based around that truth, which is in a form teaching the Word of God.
So number three, thankfulness should not just characterize the peace that exists within the church and the worship that is offered by the church, but in everything. Verse 17: “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” And here the scope is expanded a little bit. It's not just our worship, and it's not just our peacefulness, our unity, our love, but it's now in everything. And I think there is a sense in which the apostle Paul is here summarizing what he has given to us in verses 15 and 16, because verse 15 kind of describes the deeds that we do in everything prior to verse 15, right? The being together in humility and gentleness and bearing with one another, forgiving one another, that list of things that he has called us to, beginning in verse 12, coming through the end of verse 14—all of those things are the deeds that we do which make for peace in the body of Christ. And then “in word” (v. 17) is teaching and admonishing and singing. So in word or in deed, whether it is teaching, admonishing, singing with thankfulness, or in the things you do in expressing gratitude, in forgiving, in being kind and gentle and understanding and loving and united, whatever you do and whatever you say, do that in the name of Christ, which means basically you don't do anything that is out of keeping with the reputation, the name, the honor, the glory, and the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what it means to do something in His name.
It doesn't mean that you simply utter a mantra over everything you do: “I do this in the name of Jesus.” You give somebody a gift and they say thank you—”I do it in the name of Jesus.” It tells me to do everything in the name of Jesus, so I can't do anything—“Open the door for you in the name of Jesus.” It doesn't mean that you utter this mantra every time you do something. But it means that you do everything that you do in keeping with His honor and His glory, His name and His will. How do I know what His will is? Well, if the Word of Christ dwells richly amongst us, we will know what the will of God is. And then and only then will we glorify Him in everything that we do. This is comprehensive instruction in verse 17.
1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” If we are marked with the peace of Christ and the Word of Christ dwells within us and we do everything we do in the name of Christ, then everything that we do will be honoring to God.
Ephesians 5:20: we are to “always [give] thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus.”
1 Thessalonians 5:18: “In everything give thanks.”
Hebrews 13:15: “Let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.”
By the way, if you're looking for advice on decision-making, it's not found in verse 15, it's found in verse 17. You want a principle for making decisions, it's in verse 17. You ask yourself, “Can I do this thing and it be in keeping with His revealed will? And if I do this, can I do it in the name of Christ, giving Him glory in it? And can I do it in an attitude of thankfulness to Him?” And if it passes all of those stipulations, if it passes all of those principles, then you can do it. You have the freedom to do it. Rather than consulting some inner sense of tranquility, you consult doing the thing in the name of Jesus Christ for His glory and for His sake.
Now you say, Jim, everything here in verse 17 seems so nondescript, nothing specific, nothing exact, nothing that tells me exactly how this is to work out between the various peoples inside the church. Is there anything that the apostle Paul has revealed that might tell me how it is that I live this out exactly? I'm glad you asked that question.
Look at verse 18: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them. Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.” What is the apostle Paul doing? He is taking everything that he has said in chapter 3 and he is drilling it down into the life of the home.
And by the way, the next instructions that he gives, beginning in verse 22 going through chapter 4, verse 1, that deal with slaves and masters, those were household relationships in the first century as well. Now we may apply those outside of that to our employees or employers, people out in the commercial sphere. Those principles would apply to that. But these are home relationships that he is talking about.
So now you have within the church people who once were at war with one another from all kinds of various nationalities, all kinds of various ethnicities, all kinds of various social and economic classes. And you could have had within the church people who in the home were masters and they had slaves and then they go to church and one of the slaves is an elder in the church and now has authority over that master in the church setting. Now how do you deal with a situation like that? I go home, you're my master; I come here, I'm your spiritual authority. Well, you talk about conflict just waiting to explode, right? “Yeah, you just wait till we get home. Then you're going to see what authority looks like.” What a potential there would be for hostility and a lack of peace and a lack of unity. So what the apostle Paul does is he says, “Look, ‘in everything give thanks’ (1 Thess. 5:18). ‘Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father’ (Col. 3:17).”
So that means wives, you are submissive with thankfulness to your husbands. Husbands, you love your wives with gratitude to the Lord for the gift that she is. Children, you obey your parents, being thankful for the fact that God has appointed them and put them in your lives. Fathers, don't exasperate your children. Instead, raise them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord so that they will not lose heart. Slaves, you be submissive to your masters. Masters, you treat your slaves with kindness. He’s working out the implications of this in every area of the home and every area of church life.
So, thankfulness then is to characterize our body life together and the peace and tranquility and the unity that we have here together, one with another. It is to characterize our worship as we sing with thankfulness in our hearts. And it is to characterize our home life and everything that we do. The kindness that we show, the peace that we seek, the Word of Christ dwelling among us. Our submission, our leadership, our authority, our submission to that authority. Children, parents, husbands, wives, slaves, masters. There is no relationship, there is no ethnicity, there is no cultural distinction, there is no socioeconomic class where these things do not apply.
And the governing rule in all of it is an attitude of gratitude and thankfulness that is governed by the peace that Christ gives us, the Word of Christ that dwells within us and rules us so that it works itself out in everything that we do. And we can do it with thankfulness, giving thanks through Christ to God the Father for all that He has bestowed upon us.