Dennis Tuuri

# Colossians 3:16 – Affirm, Share, Serve: The “One Anothers” in the Church
## Sharing via Teaching and Admonishing One Another

Greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was wonderful yesterday seeing many of you at the Planned Parenthood clinic on Martin Luther King Boulevard. And I know a number of you were also involved with the Run with Love, which happened yesterday. And then I know there was also a PIDEA barbecue picnic for, I think, forty students and their parents yesterday afternoon as well, and there were no doubt various other family things going on, et cetera.

So it was a wonderful day knowing that RCC’ers were all over the place doing great things, encouraging one another, and living the life of faith. Before we read the sermon text, let me just mention: at the Planned Parenthood event, I met a guy named Steve Harmon who actually got it organized. He is involved in the music industry, lives just a few places down from the clinic on Martin Luther King Boulevard in that neighborhood. He fixes electronic devices or creates pedal effects for musicians, and when he looked on the webpage to see who was doing the demonstration on Martin Luther King Boulevard, there was none. So all he did was say, “Hey, you know, I should do this.” So he started one up. He thought he’d get ten people—his friends—out there yesterday, and there were hundreds of people out. He was very encouraged by the providence of God.

It turns out he’s also a Christian. He goes to the Gathering Church in Portland. He knew right away when I mentioned Reformation Covenant Church that we’re part of the CRC. They sell Doug Wilson books there. You know, lots of connections. And then later yesterday afternoon, I looked up their webpage and they have their events. They have a women’s retreat—it’s just one day up at Welch’s—but their speaker is going to be Kristen Silva, the same speaker at our women’s retreat. So wonderful interaction based upon trying to serve God by encouraging defunding of Planned Parenthood and the safety of babies in the womb. So great day yesterday.

Today we continue with our series of sermons on community-building practices, and today’s sermon text is found in the book of Colossians 3:16. It’s actually printed on your handout. So our sermon text today—the topic will be serving one another via teaching and admonishing each other, sharing our spirituality, you could say.

So please stand for the reading of Colossians 3:16 as we begin today’s sermon.

*Colossians 3:16: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.*

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you that before we had this word spoken to us today, we were fulfilling it in this worship service. We praise your holy name, Lord God, for these “one anothers” in the scriptures, calling us through today’s text to teach and exhort, admonish, warn one another as well as evidence of who we are in Christ and to build up the body of Christ. Bless us, Father, as we consider your word, teaching and admonishing from it. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So sometimes lately—the last couple of years, it seems to us—like our house is settling, and not evenly. So things look a little akimbo, you know, and doors don’t quite shut like they used to. And it could very well be—we’re still not quite sure—but the foundation, the house is well over a hundred years old. It’s just got blocks underneath it. So it could be that it’s settling. We know that there’s some reason for that. And as a result, the house doesn’t quite work right.

So it’s an illustration of trying to build the house that is the church of Jesus Christ. We’re using these “one anothers,” and we sort of said that the first three—affirming one another—are kind of the foundational sorts of things. You get to the stuff we’re talking about today, the ability to admonish or warn each other. If there’s not affirmation, that is going to be a lot more difficult to do. If your house is settling, if you’re no longer really affirming each other—just for who they are in Jesus as well as their part in this particular body—if you’re not doing that in evident, visible ways, it’s going to be very difficult to fulfill this command of God, that we actually instruct one another and that we admonish, encourage, warn—could be a translation of the term as well—one another.

So you know, remember as we go through these and continue to build up the view of this house of “one anothers,” that the foundation is quite critical. So please don’t forget that, even though it’s a couple of months ago now, these “one anothers.” There are a couple of handouts—three handouts on the back table—that I should mention. One is simply a list that I found on the internet of all the verses about one-anothering each other in the New Testament—or actually I think it goes back to Leviticus—but so it’s got a list of all the verses, and these are an attempt to sort of subject-put those in particular classes or groups. But the list is back there. I think it’d be useful for all of you to get a copy of it and read it over on occasion for the things that you’re supposed to be doing mutually and reciprocally with one another according to the scriptures.

There are two other handouts back there, by the way, that are sort of in competition with each other. There’s the one from last week about how to live a positive life and telling you not to just look at negative news stories, et cetera. And right next to it, there’s an article from *First Things* called “Orthodox Terrorism,” about the horrific situation in Ukraine and how the Russian Orthodox Church is a large part of the persecution of what’s going on in Ukraine. So I encourage you to read it, but then quickly read the positive handout if you haven’t yet, to kind of put it in balance and not be overwhelmed with yet one more thing that Pastor Tuuri is talking to us about.

All right. So what we’re going to do today, we’re going to talk about 3:16, and we’re going to, just like we did last week, look at the context first—kind of the book of Colossians—and we’ll look at some of that stuff and the particular section it’s in. And then we’ll talk about the specific verse as it just kind of lines itself out for us. And then we’ll look at some related texts about “one anothers” too, if we have time—which we probably won’t.

So, first of all, the overall context. And on your handouts, I’ve got “See Attached.” So the attachment on there is kind of an attempt to look at the particular structure—let me catch up with you—the particular structure that this verse is found in. You’ll see at the top of that structure you’ll see that this is from a book, *Colossians: Encouragement to Walk in All Wisdom as Holy Ones in Christ*, by John Piper. He has a book out. I’m going to be preaching through Colossians in a few months, and I’ll use his book, among other things. But he’s got some interesting structural analysis of the book of Colossians—the whole overarching structure of it—chiastically. And then he looks at the individual sections. He sees it as ten sections, and then he looks at each of those sections individually, chiastically as well.

And so your handout today—this is part of the didactic portion. If you want to think about teaching and admonishing, this is part of the instruction sort of stuff that will lead to admonishing. But to look at the actual structure of the text in which Colossians 3:16 is seen in, his handout kind of gives you a sense of that as you take a moment to look it over. And you might want to take this home, kind of see what he’s doing, see the matches he makes. And as I said, there’s actually an overarching structure to the book as well that he draws out. And this is what’s referenced in your handout: “From Paul warning and teaching with wisdom to the Colossians, doing the same thing.”

Now, this is not—so put away for a moment the thing I had you just look at, the overall structure of this particular section. And I think on your handout I’ve got these. Yeah, I do have these things down. So if you look at Colossians 1:28, listen to what this says in terms of what we just read. “Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom.” Okay, so him we preach, and teach every man in all wisdom. So Paul says that about himself. And then in our text today, you have the same sort of thing going on, but kind of in reverse. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another.”

Do you see how parallel those things are? So back to 1:28, Paul says, “Him we,” that’s Paul, “are preaching, warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom.” And then he says to us, the general congregation of the Colossians, he says, “In all wisdom, teach and admonish one another.” And these are the same words, okay? So you get it. It’s like, you know, it’s a chiasm, right? And very importantly, so there’s an—if he just listed these words in any order, we should be able to see the relationship of Paul and us in terms of wisdom, teaching, and admonishing. But when the text is so marked, that the words are actually, you know, AB CBA, to ignore it would be absolutely ridiculous on our part, right? It’s very significant.

Why is it very significant, Pastor Tuuri? It’s cool. I see that. That’s neat. I like it. Why is it significant? Because it’s the movement of the letter, the epistle, is to talk about things that Paul is doing as an apostle. And sometimes he uses the expression “every man,” right? To then now what we’re supposed to be doing as congregants. And now it’s “one another” in the context of the church. So the audience is somewhat different, but what we have is the special office of Paul—in wisdom, teaching, and admonishing—being now the general office for all of us. We’re all to do these things. That’s a very significant thing to see—that we’re moving through the epistle through a center so that, to the end that we would be like Paul, doing the same sorts of activities, although within the body rather than to every man as Paul was to do.

So it’s a very significant connection of two verses there. I hope you see that. So that’s the first observation from the structure of the text: “Paul warning and teaching with wisdom” to “the Colossians in wisdom teaching and warning.” Right away, what that also does for us—as opposed to just thinking about this as teaching and admonishing—it ties wisdom right in there with it, doesn’t it? So it’s going to take wisdom to do this, and we’ll talk about that more in a couple of minutes.

So what is being accomplished here by this instruction for us—now to teach and admonish each other in all wisdom—is what you could say is the sharing of our spirituality, okay? So we bear one another’s burdens. It’s reciprocal. “One another” is reciprocal. Goes back and forth, back and forth. It’s not all one way. And in that reciprocity of relationships, we’re to bear each other’s burdens. And before that, we were also to share with one another in terms of our physical possessions, our time, our space, our availability to each other, our vulnerability with each other. All these things are involved as well. And now this third set that we’re layering on is this idea that we’re, in addition to sharing those things, we’re to share our spirituality. We’re to share our spiritual understanding of God’s word and in life and how it applies to life. Wisdom is how we practically and, you know, in detail work out the implications of God’s word. And we’re to share that wisdom. We’re to teach didactically one another, and we’re to admonish one another in the context of our relationships.

And so overall, the big message here is that’s another layer of what we’re supposed to be doing to build a godly community. And by implication, if we don’t have that kind of interaction with each other about the word of God—which is the source of all wisdom—and if we’re not going a little bit further than that and saying, “Hey, you know, I want to be careful how I say this to you, but gee, I noticed this. The way you treated your wife, the way you treated your husband, you know, what you were doing in your business, whatever it is”—we also have the obligation to go to that area and be willing to come alongside of each other for their well-being and in grace and in wisdom, all that stuff is assumed—but we have to do that in order to fulfill the requirements of maturing the body of Christ, okay?

So that’s the challenge. That’s the challenge this week. That’s the challenge in your community groups. That’s the challenge in your families. That’s the challenge in your friendships, okay? If all we do is sit around like we do here most of the time in our meal—and I understand it—and just, you know, small talk stuff or catch up on your life, that’s good. That’s the affirming part. But it has to get to the place where we’re talking to each other about the truth of God’s word. And sometimes that means admonishing or warning one another about the possibility of not being in conformity to that word.

So that’s really the big message today. We have a unity that’s supposed to be created in truth, right? Unity is the big deal everybody wants to talk about, but we’re to be united in the truth of God’s word. And we have unity in the spirit through being forgiven, being placed in the same body. But the maturation of unity—Ephesians makes this very clear—is that we come to a unity in truth and an understanding of how the world is and how the word of God relates to that world. If we don’t have that, we’re really not fulfilling this new humanity calling that we have in Jesus Christ to live out the community of the future.

So that’s kind of the big picture. And then this first aspect—it’s so important to see that Paul’s special office is being fulfilled in the church in the general office of all believers. And you could say it in many other dimensions or ways, but it’s the same thing. We’re supposed to read the Bible together. We’re supposed to argue, okay? Have, you know, animated discussions—bringing not sinful ones, but argue somewhat, discourse, dialogue—about the truth of the scriptures. Study the Bible together. We’re to try to reach consensus as much as we can about the scriptures and how they relate to our lives individually, culturally, and in terms of our church. We’re to be trying to move toward a unity in our understanding of God’s word. And part of that is to challenge, confront, whatever word you want to use. We’re going to talk about this term in a little bit, but the word absolutely means going beyond just a casual conversation and saying “everything’s okay at the end. You believe whatever you believe. I believe I—” if we know we’re falling short in some area, we have to be willing to admonish, challenge, warn, whatever word you want to use it. We’re to read, discuss, mutually instruct one another, to challenge each other, and to make reasoned arguments about the application of the word of God to our lives, all right?

So that’s kind of the big task, and it’s laid out right in that first observation about the movement of the book of Colossians. It’s really moving to calling the Colossians to do this thing.

Second general comment on the structure of it. The author here of the book that I just mentioned puts chapters 2:6-23 and chapter 3 verses one to seven at the center of the book. So how do you get from the general or the special calling of Paul—but he’s doing—to what we’re supposed to do? How do you move? What’s the centerpiece? What’s the hinge point? And he sees these two hinge points as being from chapter 2:6 through 3:7 in two specific ways, and he’s got literary things that match up as evidence for that. Whether you agree or not, but that’s how he sees it. And let’s just begin to look at a little bit of this center as he sees it. At least 2:6 says, “As therefore you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so also walk in him,” okay? So this transition from receiving Christ to the walking in Christ—okay—and that’s kind of the way the book is moving as well, to this walk and specifically to walk in the way that our verse talks about today.

And then we read in verse 9 of chapter 2, “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” So there’s a real Christ-centered focus if this author is right at the middle of the book of Colossians. And even if he’s wrong in the specific verses, at the center of the book seems to be where Paul is really putting forward the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ in relationship to us. And it says in verse 10, “You are complete in him, who is the head of all principalities and powers. In him you are also circumcised.” And we have a discussion going on about a relationship to Christ. Verse 12, “We were buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him.”

So at the center of the book of Colossians, the way we get to the stuff we just read about what we’re to do in the church as part of community-building practices, at the center of it is the centrality of the person and work of Jesus Christ and very specifically the gospel of Jesus Christ in its narrow sense—that he was dead and was raised for us—and our unity to Jesus Christ means that we’ve moved away from death into life. He’s the only source of life. And so at the center of this, the thing that’s going to drive our being able to do what we just talked about in terms of teaching and admonishing with wisdom, what’s going to drive that at the center of this is the gospel. It’s the message that Jesus died for our sins and we were buried with him through baptism, and you were raised with him to life. And so at the center of it is: where does this life come from? Where does the ability to have these kind of conversations and, if necessary, these kind of admonitions and confrontations with each other—where does it come from? Well, the only source of that is the center of the book of Colossians: the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ and the centrality of the awareness, the knowledge, the reality that your life now is in him, and you’re in him if you’ve been buried with him in baptism and raised with him as well.

So the gospel, right—Jesus, this is what he accomplished for you. A deep awareness of that is at the heart of the kind of confrontational sort of work we sometimes must do with each other. Now, does that affect things? I think so. If I’ve got somebody coming to me to bring correction about a problem in my life, to try to fulfill Colossians 3:16 this week—one of you says, “Oh, I got to go talk to pastor.” And if I know that you’re a humble person, man or woman, and the gospel is at the center of who you are, and you recognize that you are who you are through the grace of God, that’s going to make it a lot easier for me to hear what you’ve got to bring in terms of your knowledge, your spirituality, and if necessary, your rebuke to me, right? If somebody’s going to come in pride or I don’t know, you know, that grace is at the center, then I’m going to have a harder time hearing them. But if this center of Colossians—the gospel-shaped middle of your life—and it’s evident in your life, then I’m going to hear from you a lot easier what you’ve got to say because you’re going to say it now in a way that’s humble to me, right? You’re going to be humble about it. You’re not going to be prideful about it.

So we can’t talk a lot about the structure of this book, but I wanted to make these opening comments: that we kind of move from Paul’s work to our work. And the way that works is at the center of it is this awareness of our deep unity with the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have to hold fast to him. That’s the other thing that happens in verse 19. We read this: “Not holding fast to the head from whom all the body furnished and knit together by joints and ligaments grows with the increase that is from God.” So the unity that we have—the center of the book—is a result of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I know that’s obvious, but it’s so important, it can’t be overstated—and particularly in terms of equipping us and helping us to move ahead.

Verse 20: “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why then should you live in them?” So he calls on them to make a moral change in who they are, how they relate to people. We’ll see that in a couple of minutes, based upon the fact that we have died with Christ. We’re to put off that old man. Then we’ve died definitively in Jesus and walk in newness of life. Again, in chapter 3:1, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things that are above, where the resurrection is.” Verse 3, “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears”—now, so when Christ, who is our life, appears—at the center of this book, that’s the message: Christ is our life. There’s no life properly defined outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when people know that your life is Christ, with a deep awareness of his grace to you and a desire to serve him for what he’s done for you, you know, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to hear what you’ve got to say with an admonition. But I’ll tell you, it makes it a lot more likely because that’s the wisdom, that’s the accoutrements to the message that the text, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes, points us to.

And then he talks in verse 5 at the center: “Therefore put to death your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” So at the center, he talks about putting off things that really are offenses to God. And now we’ll see in a couple of minutes that he’s going to talk about offenses to one another with our speech.

So that’s the center. Number three, from malice to patience and forgiveness. That’s the movement in the book of Colossians as well. And in this particular section, in verse 8, he says this: “But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.” He’s just told us about the stuff that we’re to put away in terms of our idolatry relative to God. Now he’s focusing in on our relationship with each other, the things that we’re supposed to put off. And at the heart of this list is malice. So what we have in the old man is malice toward other people—maybe lots of paint and rouge on it, but it’s malice nonetheless. And that’s what we’re supposed to be putting off: malice and filthy language, et cetera. And then verse 12 says, “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as God forgave you, so also do them.” So we’re to move away from malice in our reactions to other people and anger into patience. There’s this beautiful development, this change of Christian character, pointed out by specific sins against each other and then specific attitudes of patience toward each other.

Number four: we move from lying to singing—sins of speech about others to singing to others, okay? So again in this section immediately in front of us, verses 9 and 10 of Colossians 3 says this: “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.” Okay, so matching up—if we, if you were to look—don’t do it now—but if you look at that second page, matching the singing that we’re to do with one another, we have prior to this, at the center of this little subsection, we’ve got lying to each other.

So in the same way the book moves beautifully from Paul’s special office to our general office through the center of Jesus, so the same thing is going on here. We’re to move from lying to each other to singing to one another. Do you see this? That movement is so nicely spelled out. What a beautiful metaphor to remember today’s sermon, right? We’re just supposed to stop lying to one another with our tongues and use our tongues—and our hearts significantly enough—to sing to each other. That’s the movement. That’s moving from death to life. That’s being united to the Lord Jesus Christ. We sing because of the grace of God in our hearts. And that singing is really the representation of how we’re to interact with each other in our speech as well.

So we move from lying to singing. What a beautiful picture that gives us. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing what? With grace in your heart. That’s the engine, which we’ll talk about in just a minute.

So we’re to move from evil practices to edifying practices. Now the practices of singing to one another and the way you use your speech, lying is a ritual that you enter into. It’s a practice. And for people who have been involved in deceit, they know that it’s very hard to break that liturgy, that practice of speaking contra truth in various forms. And in the same way, God calls us to a particular practice. I think specifically the text is telling us to sing in church—it’s a practice—but whether you think it’s that or in our homes, the point is he replaces a practice, a liturgy of deceit, with a liturgy of song, okay? And that practice is life-giving. Whereas the liturgy of lying, of course, is death-giving. That was what happened in the garden. The lie produces death. And so we go from evil practices to practices that build each other up—this singing rather than lying, by way of the specific words used here.

Six: personal knowledge of God resulting in corporate acts of love from the heart. And so what’s going on here, overarching in the text, then, is God has done these things for us personally, and we end up then engaging in corporate acts of singing, and whether it’s corporate in the sense of small group or you with your family, but I think corporately in terms of the church setting—the model that’s what we move toward, right? So our connection to the gospel of Jesus and an appropriation of it—and I know I’m going through all this stuff that doesn’t have much to do, just tell me how to do this exhortation thing. Well, that’s what I’m trying to do here, okay? I’m trying to help you and me be able to do this thing and to do it in an edifying way. And so that’s why we really need to look at what the text has set up for us before it gets to this point, helping us to understand that we move through the center of the book, unity with Christ, the presentation of the gospel, and even directly in the verse we have here, the mention of grace—is what this is all about.

And so we’re tempted to use our tongues improperly. We put on not lying but singing. We’re tempted to have evil practices we engage with in terms of others. We put those away and engage in the practices themselves. Even though God calls us to sing from our heart, you don’t wait for your heart to come along. These things work together: liturgy and our heart on the thing. And so he calls us to do that, okay?

Seven: and now the very heart of the section that we’re involved with here. And you can look at your next sheet now if you want to—the one where he does the chiastic structure of this particular section, culminating, or not culminating, but having verse 3:16 in it. And you’ll see that what he sees is that unity in Christ—and I would say personal unity as well as other unity—is at the center of this thing. And so he talks about how you’re one body now, right? He’s done away with, you know, circumcision, uncircumcision, Greek or Jew, another distinction, barbarians and Scythians. Both those groups were non-Greek-speaking and non-Greek culture, but the Scythians were slaves. So free non-Greeks, slave non-Greeks—they had their own distinctions. So at the heart of all of this is a bringing together in unity of one man. It’s getting rid of all the divisions. And so part of what the context for what we’re doing is: what are we trying to do? We’re trying to make manifest the unity we have in Christ, grow that unity, make the church into a picture of one man in Christ so that there aren’t the divisions that exist in the context of the church, and there aren’t the dividing sinful practices that go on in the church as well.

So again, just like with Colossians, what he’s attempting to do to the Colossians is to bring unity where there are all kinds of natural divisions. And you know, it’s no different with us. There are all kinds of divisions. You all come from different backgrounds. Some of you have like backgrounds from other people, but not others here, et cetera. And yet here we are. And that’s the unity that God’s church is to have. And it’s part of the way that unity is expressed and accomplished is sharing. And specifically today, sharing our spirituality, instructing each other, and encouraging each other in the word of God.

Now I got unity here. Let me say: the peace of Christ and the word of Christ, okay? So chapter 3:15 says, “Let the peace of God rule in your heart, to which you also were called in one body, and be thankful.” And then what did I do here? And then in our text, what we’re supposed to be sharing is the word of Christ, right? So earlier, while he talks about the word of Christ here in terms of teaching and admonishing, what he had said earlier was that the peace of Christ is what’s supposed to happen as well. What does that mean? He’s using two phrases: peace of Christ, word of Christ. We’re supposed to connect them—is the point. So the peace of Christ happens from the word of Christ, and the word of Christ correctly applied brings about peace. Now this is quite important in our lives.

We have upsets to our peace, right? We have disunity in our own hearts. We don’t have peace, and we all want the peace of Christ. But the text here says that to accomplish that peace in our lives as individuals, to bring us back to wholeness or peace, what we need is the word of Christ. And usually that word of Christ either being self-exhorted to ourselves or to have other people bring that word of Christ to us, okay? So it ties inextricably together this particular section of scripture: the unity of the person himself being a unity that’s accomplished through the word of Christ, the peace of Christ, and the word of Christ. And then, as I said earlier, from your mouth to your heart. Frequently, apart from Christ, our mouth and our hearts are separate from each other. But the text reminds us that we’re to sing these songs from the heart.

So here’s the point. These texts in the epistles are frequently about division between Jews and Gentiles, et cetera. That’s true enough. But I think if we look a little bit beyond that and push it a little bit, what we see in these texts and in today’s practice is not just a good way to bring unity in the church. It’s the way for you to live out a unified life, for you not to be double-minded, to attain peace, harmony, internal harmony. To attain it is to engage in these practices, to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly—because he’s the source of all riches. So personal peace, I think, can be said to be the absence of division in our hearts and our minds and our actions, and that’s what God’s calling us to do. So it’s not just creating a community. It’s helping each of us individually not to be divided against themselves. When we exhort each other, it’s to the end that the person might have peace, peace as opposed to being divided or disunited, of two minds, so to speak, okay?

So that’s kind of the overall context. And let’s talk now about the specific phrases in the verse before us.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.” Okay. So in Colossians in chapter 1, verse 5, we read this: “Because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel.” So what is this word? Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Well, earlier in the epistle, he’s told him this is the word of the truth of the gospel, okay? So the word of Christ, what does it mean? Well, he’s already defined part of what it means. It’s the word of the truth of the gospel. So the word that’s supposed to dwell in us richly is God’s word, of course, but that word is a gospel word to us. It’s the word of the truth of the gospel.

And so the gospel again is at the center of this thing. It’s the gospel dwelling in our lives richly, ministered through the word of God. That’s the source of all riches. This word “richly” would be a good one to think about. We’ve talked about it before: the riches of Christ. But the riches of Christ, the riches that God has for us, are all filled out in the word of God, in the word which, as verse 5 calls it, the word of the truth of the gospel.

Secondly, this word, according to chapter 1:25, we read this: “Of which I became a minister, according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God.” So the word of Christ is the word of God. It’s the word of truth, which is the gospel, and it refers to God’s revelation of himself. But don’t think of it as God’s revelation of himself alone. You can think of that and think of it in kind of a dry, dusty word on a page sort of thing. They are words on a page. But as we said before, in Hebrews, when he quotes the Psalms, he says the Holy Spirit speaks—and then he quotes the psalm in the present tense. God’s word is a living word to us, ministered to us by the Spirit. This Bible is not a disconnected word. It is the word of God. It’s the word of Christ. It must be at the center of our lives in order to fulfill all these wonderful truths that we’ve been talking about in the text before us, all right?

Then we’re to “teach and admonish one another.” So we go from forgiving one another, verse 13, to teaching and admonishing one another. So in verse 13, we read, “Bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.” So the “one anothers” in verse 13 are to bear with one another and to forgive one another. That’s great. We talked about that in the last couple of weeks. It’s very important that in our community groups, in our individual relationships and friendships, that we’re forbearing each other’s burdens and we’re assuring each other of the forgiveness of God for confessed sin. That’s important. But this is the next step. Not necessarily in terms of time, but this is there also. It’s not enough just to give assurances to each other of forgiveness. That’s not enough, because he moves from that in verse 13—bearing one another, forgiving one another—to now in verse 16, teaching and admonishing one another in wisdom.

You see? So this is another community-building practice that’s to be layered on top of these others that we’ve talked about: forgiveness and bearing one another’s burdens, okay? So this is what the text is calling us to do: to ramp it up. And I’m asking you and myself to ramp it up. If you haven’t engaged in teaching and admonishing each other, to ramp it up now.

Now, whose job is it? This is a perpetual problem. I’ve been doing, you know, pastoral work for three decades and more. And what I’ve seen is here’s the problem. You think that’s my job. Or now you might think it’s the community group leaders’ job, okay? Now, this is isn’t always true. I’m talking generally. The church of Jesus Christ generally thinks that’s Paul’s job, that’s maybe the pastor’s job. We must be in a pastoral epistle. No, we’re not. And what happens then is that people need admonishing or exhorting. It falls to a pastor. And then you know what happens as a result of that? I’m the bad person because you’re the one that’s always encouraging and bearing burdens and forgiving and never talking to them about their sins. And then I become the guy that comes along and has somebody eventually has to do it, right? Or maybe we can get real smart as pastors. And now what we do is we just pass people off to counselors. Now, counselors are great. Counselors are—they do this very thing. They instruct and they admonish biblically, and they admonish. Pastors are great. It’s my job. I don’t mind doing it. I’d love to, you know, bring instruction when necessary, admonition, words of kind of warning or whatever. I can do that, no problem.

But the problem is the Bible says, “Yeah, it’s Paul’s job. Yeah, it’s my job. Yeah, it’s Stephen and Kristen’s job. But it’s your job, too.” What that tells me is that if all we do is have the pastors and the counselors do it, it’s not going to work. And indeed, that’s what I—that’s what I draw theologically from the text. Do you understand? Not good. Not going to work. And my practical experience is exactly that. My practical experience after three decades of ministry is that if the only person talking to somebody about their sin is me or another elder or a counselor, we’re probably not going to let you know about it until you’re ready to excommunicate them, and it’s kind of too late then for you to come along and try to do this fellowship sort of work you’re supposed to be doing.

On the other hand, when we’ve had situations where the pastors get other people involved or there’s natural connection so that friends are admonishing as well as the pastors—when you got that kind of triangulation on the person, it just seems like the Holy Spirit works then a lot more often. And that shouldn’t surprise us because that’s what the text wants to have happen. God can do it any way he wants. This is how he wants it. It’s your job.

Now, we live in good times. We live in times that, since 1970, more and more churchmen and women have seen it as their job. Why? Well, there’s a guy named Jay Adams. He wrote a book in 1970 called *Competent to Counsel*. And he began this nouthetic counseling movement. This Greek word here for teaching and admonishing one another—the admonishing word—that’s nouthetic or noutheo. That’s what it’s from, okay? So J. Adams says, “Well, gee, in Colossians it says that the average person is supposed to teach and admonish each other. That must mean that the average Christian is competent to do that exhortation, that nouthetic counseling, sort of stuff.” That was the basis for Adams’s movement. Now, you don’t just say “go do it.” You try to help people think it through, just like I’ve tried to get training for what I’m doing. And I’ve already talked about that a little bit. You want to do encouragement of this sort tactfully. You want to do it winsomely. You want to do it graciously. You want to do it humbly. Sometimes it’s got to be pretty strong words, even with all that other stuff going on, right?

So I’m not saying you just do it and don’t worry about it. But you are competent to counsel. Adams was actually quoting from Romans 15:14. “I myself am convinced about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and competent to counsel one another.” I don’t know what version that is, but that’s the verse off the new counselor’s webpage. So there was this whole movement begun with Jay Adams of nouthetic counseling, and really at the simplest level, it was just, you know, “This is your job,” in addition to my job. And in addition, he used this word “nouthetic” to encourage the idea that there’s admonition, there’s warning. This isn’t just “gee, I hope you, maybe it’d be good for you to do this way.” This is strong, a little stronger ramped-up language than that. And the movement became kind of known for that and didn’t seem to have empathy with it. So that’s a whole other story. But what’s happened since then is multiple counseling movements of biblical counselors have come from that single beginning element in 1970 with Jay Adams.

And so the biblical counseling movement today largely has its roots in the nouthetic counseling movement of Jay Adams, and they’ve tried to apply it, mature it, refine it, et cetera. And so you know the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation is kind of reformed people more than Baptists, but they’re doing the same sort of stuff. That’s what the training of people—certified or not certified—but have been trained with that program. That’s what it’s all about—is this kind of thing that we’re talking about today. And then there’s a different group that used to be the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors, NANC, and now it’s ACBC—I don’t know what it’s, some sort of a conference of biblical counselors. Mike Leather, Doug Wilson’s associate pastor up there, is trained in ACBC and has a counseling center, et cetera.

So anyway, the point is just that, you know, these are times in which there’s been a great movement over the last forty-five years that really helped understand that this verse is right—that it really is your job as well as the pastors’ and counselor’s job to teach and admonish one another.

Now you know we always get this question: “What can women do at your church?” See all these guys up there? Well, some have a female piano player. “What can women do?” There is no restriction on this very significant aspect of community-building practices to men or women. Women are supposed to teach and admonish one another. And I don’t see any reason to think here that necessarily means just other women, okay? This is an every-believer kind of a deal.

Now, you may like to say, “Well, I’m a woman. It’s not my job. Must be my husband’s job.” No, you’re the one that Paul’s addressing here as well. And he tells you, “This is part of what you have to do. This is a community-building practice that all Christians are to be committed to, and we’re to do it. We’re to do it. We’re to do it wisely, tactfully, as I said, but we have to do it.” Okay? That’s the point here.

So this text tells us that it’s everyone’s job in the context of the church, not just the special ministry of particular people.

How do we do it? Well, we do it “in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” Wow, isn’t that interesting? It’s fascinating. I’m sure Joseph looks at this text and salivates and wants to tell you next week what these terms mean and the significance and importance of singing in the church. And he’s right because I think that’s what’s going on here. I think that—see, it’s a tough job you’ve got to do, believe me. I know. I do it all the time—to teach and admonish people when there’s difficulties. It’s a tough job. But you know what? God prepares you for it every week. You’re actually coming to a biblical counseling session every Lord’s Day in the worship service. You didn’t know that. But if you think about it, this verse, this command to us—this is what you do every Sunday.

You hear the word preached from me, and I admonish you in terms of conformity to the word, and I bring the gospel, hopefully, into the context of that admonishment and instruction, the riches of the grace of God, right? I bring all that in. That’s a model. But more importantly, do you actually do this very thing? That’s what we’re doing today. We sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs—all forms of singing. All, you know, the only necessary part of them is the spirit aspect, right? Spiritual songs, songs of the spirit. The spirit of God uses different means, different kinds of songs, and there are different kinds of songs in the scriptures, and then other songs are built that are based on the truth of those scriptures.

But here’s what you do. When you sing the rest of the songs today, think about this. You’re singing truth, biblical truth. And in this church, there’s quite a bit of it—quite a bit of didactic instruction in the songs we sing. You just sang about the God of Abraham. You’re talking about Bible lessons, right? It was didactic. And those songs also are an encouragement to a particular action. And you know, the way the service works is it begins with praise, so it’s an encouragement to praise God, right? And then it’s an encouragement to think God’s thoughts after him in the responsive reading. And then the psalm usually, or the song of the offertory, is usually a little more exhortive—the admonishment part—to really, you know, do this thing and thank God for it. But whatever it is, the songs here are what you sing. And it’s practice for you because you’re not just singing to yourself. You need to be instructed. You need to be encouraged and exhorted just like I do. But you’re singing to each other. You’re singing in the body of Christ, and you’re singing to the body of Christ. Your words are being used to instruct each other in the word of God and to exhort one another and to nouthetically urge one another to obedience and joy in that word.

So yeah, it’s a tricky task to pull off. I understand that. It’s fraught with difficulties, and God trains you every week. And look at the wondrous way he trains you to do it. You do it through singing. You do it with beauty and grace, right? And that’s kind of instructive, too. You know, when you go to your community group this week, you don’t necessarily—it’s not like an opera going on. You’re not actually singing—but there should be a beauty in the way you bring instruction to one another and encourage and exhort each other. And the beauty comes from the grace of God, right?

I’m out of time. Let me just talk about grace as the engine. It’s the engine that drives everything else. You can look up these verses on the outline from the conclusion on “The Dwelling of God—You and You All.” The word of God dwells in you richly. Word of Christ dwells in you richly. We want to be dwelling places for God, right? I keep thinking of that Seals and Crofts song. “Darling, if you want me to be closer to you, get closer to me.” Seals and Crofts. There’s Terry with his forty-year-old references again. Listen to it this week. Anyway, the point is that’s true. And we’re told in scriptures, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” Now, we always think of God as being the initiator. That’s true. But he initiates you by telling you, “Draw near to him and he’ll draw near to you,” right? Humble yourself before him. If you’re struggling with, you know, a divided spirit, peace—if you’re struggling with peace, if you’re struggling with sin, if you’re struggling with somebody else’s sin—what are we supposed to do? Draw near to God and he’ll draw near to you. He will richly dwell in you. You’re his abiding house, right? The spirit dwells in us. And our response to that is supposed to be the things we’re talking about today.

Well, I think I might have mentioned this last week. I mentioned in our Sunday school class: patronage. So the patronage system in the Greco-Roman world or in third-world countries to this day and other cultures is that if you need something—a loan for a business, whatever it is—a patron will give you a gift. And so the patron provides for you, okay? Maybe he hires you, he’s paying you money, he’s gifting you. That’s the way they see it. In response to the gift, you’re supposed to live faithful to your patron, okay? So if he’s gifted you, you have an obligation. In many cultures, it’s a lifelong obligation to be faithful to that patron. If that patron calls on you, he may not see you for ten years, but if he calls on you and he had given you a significant gift, your obligation was to respond in faithfulness to him.

Paul uses this language of patronage in the scriptures we have before us. He talks about the grace of God to us. It’s *charis*. It’s a gift. And then he talks about us being faithful—faithfulness, right? Faithfulness to the one who gave us the gift. And so God gives us this tremendous gift. The gospel is the engine. It’s the center of the whole thing. An ongoing recognition that God is our great patron who has given us the best gift—you know, that money can’t buy his love for us and redemption of us. He’s given us this gift, and we’re supposed to be faithful to him for the rest of our lives. And part of that faithfulness then is to call other people to the same thing. When we exhort each other, we teach each other again about the word of Christ, which can be summed up as the gospel of Christ, and we remind people about God’s gift to us, and we call on each other: “Be faithful to this God! Believe this God! He’s loved you! He’s graced you! He’s gifted you in ways that patronage is a very, you know, little tiny shadow of the reality of what God has accomplished!” And we’re to call each other, instruct each other in the gospel and the word of God, and call each other, “You know, come on, be faithful in this thing. Don’t be unfaithful. I know it hurts. I know you’re going through hard times. I know your heart’s stony, whatever it is.”

So we exhort and warn each other. And unless we’re faithful to the patron, bad things are going to happen. Death is outside of that relationship with God. Remember what we said? God is the source of life, and the only peace is in our faithfulness to our great patron, the God who has gifted us in ways that are completely inexpressible.

Well, our songs are filled with that grace, for the love of God. Ultimately, all this is summed up in love: the love of God for us, our responsive love to him, meaning that we’re going to love the children that he’s told us are part of the group that we’re to be faithful to as well.

May the Lord God bless us with such faithfulness.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your great love for us. We thank you that the center of today’s text is this wonderful unity that we find—wholeness of life once more—where life was shattered from the fall, where sin breaks all relationships. The wonderful life of our Savior brings people together in a truly peaceful, interior way and in a peaceful bond of unity in the church as well. Bless us this week, Lord God. We’re going to try hard to be faithful to your word this week, specifically in terms of teaching and admonishing one another in our community groups, in our homes, in our relationships. Bless us by your Spirit. We know that ultimately the Spirit is the thing that powers all of this, through bringing the gospel of Jesus’s grace to our hearts. In his name we pray. Amen.