The Believer's Gratitude toward God

Jim ButlerColossians 1:12–14

Colossians 1:12–14 presents thankfulness not as a general Christian virtue but as an identifying mark of the believer — the fourth of four participles Paul uses to describe a walk fully pleasing to God. This sermon works through the structure of Paul's prayer in Colossians 1:9–14 before expositing the two great grounds of the believer's gratitude: the inheritance of the saints in the light, and the threefold deliverance from the power of darkness — comprising rescue from spiritual darkness, transfer into the kingdom of the Son of His love, and redemption from bondage through the blood of Christ. The Lord's Supper serves as the sermon's occasion, pressing the congregation to come to the table not as a religious routine but as those who genuinely reckon with what forgiveness, deliverance, and a heavenly inheritance cost the Son of God.