To Encourage You

Colossians 2:2-3 “. . . the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

I have a confession – I think I’m a news junkie.  I’m always curious about what’s going on in the world, so I read two local newspapers every morning as well as peruse various websites that report the news.  I don’t like those news websites that as you click on them and start to read, block you until you pay their prescription price.  You’re locked out otherwise.  I like free news! 

For some reason that’s what came to my mind as I was contemplating the awesome words in the passage above.   It talks about the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are available to us, but we’re locked out of having them unless we know Christ.  You see, Christ knows everything, for it was He Who created it all. He invented the atom, water, air, giraffes, lions, rocks, trees and all the elements that make up these things.  He created light, the planets, the stars, and everything else that is anything.  He knows how it all works, and whether man wants to acknowledge it or not, any truth that anyone has ever gained about anything is nothing more than a revelation of the knowledge and wisdom of Christ.  Anything they’ve learned, God, in one way or another, allowed them to learn.  He’s the One who has given us the minds that we have, and with that, the ability to understand anything and everything that we’ve ever learned. 

But beyond the physical universe, all spiritual treasures are hidden in Christ, as well, and it is those spiritual treasures that will remain hidden forever from those who never knew Him.  The apostle Paul tells us that it was his purpose in life to impart to others the wisdom God had revealed to him. That’s what he’s doing in his epistles.  In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul writes about this same thing in the following words: “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of god, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’— These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”

Do you hear that?  It is only by God’s Holy Spirit that anyone has access to the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are available in Christ.  But with the Holy Spirit we are given the very mind of Christ.  It’s His very mind that is revealed to us in the pages of the Scriptures. In this infinite book God opens up to us Christ’s infinite mind. 

So, do you want access to all this, or are you ok with being blocked from all that is available to you in Him.  May God open our hearts more and more to the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are in Christ Jesus. Without Him, we will never know what we don’t know.  Without Him our ignorance of what really matters in life knows no bounds!