Colossians 1:11

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness." (Colossians 1:11 .)

So at once the soul is lifted up from its own dependence, and from all its collateral relations, to the very fount and origin of strength, to the very almightiness of God himself. We draw our strength from heaven. If we have any strength of intellect, it is nothing in itself, unless it be sustained day by day by special communications from God. The battle is not won by might, nor is the race won by swiftness; the whole scheme and outcome of life must be immediately connected with the might of God; then all goodness will come to fruition, and all evil will be withered as by an infinite blight. The "glorious power" of God is the strength of God's glory. God's glory is his manifestation of himself in love to man. In his letter to the Ephesians the Apostle uses the expression, "According to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man." But even the fact of being strengthened with all might according to the glorious power of God, or the strength of his glory, does not relieve saintly experience from its more chastening and humbling aspects. All the strength that was derived from God was to be expended in patience and longsuffering. One would suppose that a direct and abundant communication of Divine grace would lift the soul above all trials, and, indeed, release the soul from any further spiritual probation; but, to our amazement, we find that the very omnipotence of God is to be turned into human patience and human longsuffering, as if almightiness itself must be weakened in human experience, in order to achieve the fulness of its own purpose. Nor is the Apostle content that patience and longsuffering should express the soul's communion with God. Patience and longsuffering may be silent, simply resigned, quietly submissive and expectant; it may be very triumphant, not to resent or not to use the language of reproach; but far beyond this the Apostle's desire extends; he will have the patience and the longsuffering of the saints expressed in "joyfulness." Here again the Apostle touches the very line of the teaching of Christ. Jesus said to his suffering ones, "Rejoice and be exceeding glad." Another Apostle says, "Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy." Is the Apostle in this exhortation simply rhetorical or sentimental? Is he describing an ideal state of experience, the kind of emotion which ought to be possible to those who live in the very raptures of piety? On the contrary, he is simply wishing the Colossians to realise what he himself had experienced in processes of chastening. He says that he had learned in whatsoever state he was therein to be content; that, indeed, may be regarded as a passive experience; but in another instance he declares that he rejoices exceedingly in tribulations also. Throughout this prayer, therefore, the Apostle has never gone beyond the line of his own personal experience. He has done nothing to magnify that experience in the estimation of the Colossians, but those who are acquainted with the history of Paul know that every line of this noble aspiration has been lived in his own tragical experience.