Gospel Encouragement

Sermon Transcript

Committing to a new diet or exercise regimen is a common practice for many in America today. If you’ve ever done it, you know how hard it can be, especially at the beginning. You feel hungry, your muscles are sore, and you have to keep saying no to foods you enjoy. But what makes it all worth it is the results for which you hope. So what do you start doing pretty early on? You start weighing yourself, maybe you spend a bit more time in front of the mirror than usual, and you wonder, “Is this really working?” And if you sense it isn’t, what are you tempted to do? Give it up, or try something else, especially given the plethora of other options the dieting and exercise industry will market to you.

 

This morning we’re beginning a new series of sermons through the book of Colossians, a letter written by the apostle Paul, one of the earliest Christian leaders, in the first century to the saints and faithful brothers in the ancient city of Colossae, a city of the Roman Empire, located in modern day Turkey. The Colossians had heard the Christian gospel, believed it, and begun to live as Christians. But at the time Paul wrote this letter, there were new marketers in town, suggesting that the Christ in whom the Colossians had believed was not enough for the spiritual fulfillment for which they longed. And today in our Christian lives, don’t we also sometimes wonder, “Is this really working?” Should we give up, or move on to something else, like a dieter who isn’t sure their new diet is working? The answer of the whole book of Colossians to that question is no…If we have Christ, we have all we need. And today as we look at the first passage of the letter, we are going to see that far from “not working”, God is working in you through the gospel…and there is still more work for him to do. So we’ll look first at how God is working in you, and then at what’s still to be done.

 

How God is working in you

 

Paul introduces himself in verse 1 as an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Apostles were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ who were then commissioned by Christ to give the authoritative proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection along with its implications for life. Paul was especially commissioned to proclaim that message to the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people of the Roman Empire, and so he travels throughout the Roman Empire going especially to the major cities to preach the gospel, and as he does and people respond to the gospel by professing faith in Christ and getting baptized, Paul gathered those people into churches, appointed elders for them, and moved on to do the same thing in another city. Colossae, however, was one city to which Paul never made it. So Paul had not met the saints and faithful brothers in Colossae to whom he is writing. Instead, Epaphras, who our passage mentions in verses 7-8, preached the gospel in Colossae, and then reported back to Paul and Timothy what happened there, as verse 8 tells us.

 

So what can Paul say to the Colossians at the start, having never met them personally? He can say in verse 3 that he and Timothy always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when they pray for the Colossians. Though he’s never met the Colossians, he prays for the Colossians, and when he prays for them, he gives thanks for them. He hadn’t seen them come to faith in Christ, but he tells us in verse 4 that he heard, again likely from Epaphras, of their faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that they have for all the saints. Note the simplicity of what Paul hears that leads him to such consistent thanksgiving to God for the Colossians: They believed in Christ Jesus, and they loved all the saints. He doesn’t give thanks for how many new members they took in in the past year, how many baptisms they did, how much their giving increased, how diverse they were, how impressive their building was, or how much Colossae had changed as a result of their presence there. No doubt much of that would be worthy of celebration as well, but we learn something here about the apostolic insight into spiritual realities. Paul knows as well as we do that there are a lot of ways to gather a bunch of people; the Phillies do it regularly, concert venues throughout the city do it regularly. He knows as well as we do that there are a lot of ways to generate revenue; businesses throughout the city do it well. And he knows as well as we do that you can even rally people around a charitable cause; we have plenty of volunteer organizations in the city that do that well.

 

But here’s what really leads him to give thanks to God for the Colossians: They believe in Christ Jesus. Later in chapter one Paul will describe the Colossians as having been alienated from God, hostile in mind, and doing evil deeds (Col 1:21). But then Epaphras came and told the people of Colossae while they were still in that state, that God the Son became man in Jesus Christ, and this Jesus Christ then kept the law of God perfectly, but died on the cross to take the punishment for the sins of others, and then rose from the dead, such that God now promises that whoever turns from their sins, turns from their efforts to make themselves righteous, and receives and rests upon him alone for salvation is reconciled to God and receives the gift of eternal life. And guess what? Some of the Colossians actually believed that! They were hostile in mind toward God, they never personally saw Jesus die on the cross or rise from the dead, and yet they let all their hopes for eternal life ride on him.

 

Imagine someone comes to you inviting you to commit to one of those new diet and exercise routines, only they say the cost isn’t just 20 $/mo or even 2000 $/mo—the only way to get in on it is to commit all  your assets to it. That’s a bit like what Epaphras called the Colossians to do when he preached the gospel to them—not that he demanded they give all their money to him, but in calling them to faith, what he was calling them to do was to commit not just their money, but their whole selves entirely to Jesus Christ, and to invest all their hopes, not for weight loss or lower cholesterol, but for eternal life, into Jesus, and the saints and faithful brothers in Colossae actually did it! They didn’t just believe in God in some vague sense; most people throughout the world and in human history have believed in some God. They didn’t even just affirm a correct doctrine of God, like the doctrine of the Trinity. They believed in Jesus Christ; they relied on that particular person for their salvation.

 

And, as is always the case with true faith in Jesus Christ, their faith was accompanied with love for all the saints. How could Paul and Timothy hear of these things? Faith is a matter of the heart (Rom 10:10), as is love. But faith is publicly professed in baptism, and love is publicly displayed through good works done to others. The Colossians demonstrated a sincere love for all the saints that was observable enough that Epaphras could report it back to Paul and Timothy. Their love was specifically for the saints, other believers in Christ. Though Christians are called to love all people, even their enemies, one of the fruits of saving faith is a special attraction to other believers in Christ, simply as other believers in Christ. Their love was for all the saints. We read elsewhere in the New Testament of churches raising funds to send relief to other, poorer churches, or churches suffering hardship (e.g., Acts 11:27-30). Within their local church, the Colossians loved all the saints, not just the ones with whom they naturally got along, not just the ones who shared their life stage, not just the ones who shared their cultural background, and so on.

 

From where does that kind of love come? Paul tells us in verse 5 that love for all the saints is because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which they heard before in the word of truth, the gospel. Something about the hope of heaven compelled the Colossians to love all the saints. What could it be? Well, what is the hope of heaven held out to us in the gospel? It is the hope that one day, in the words of Colossians 3:4, when Christ who is our life appears, we too will appear with him in glory. It is the hope that one day our bodies will be resurrected and made like his glorious body, never to die again. Now again, why would that compel us to love all the saints? Because that hope is not just the individual hope of your individual resurrection. It is that, but more than that, it is the hope of a whole new humanity, made up of people from every tribe and language and people and nation. To preview again where we are heading in the letter, here’s how Paul puts it in Colossians 3:11 – “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”

 

That’s true now; we believe it by faith, and one day it will be true by sight. The hope of heaven is that one day we will be resurrected to eternal life into a family of Greek and jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free. So if that is your real, eternal family, it compels you to love that family now. Perhaps what you see when you look at certain saints are their flaws, the ways they’ve hurt you, or the ways they are different from you. Don’t think of what you see now, when you look at them, though. Think of what you will be together one day. The Bible tells us that the righteous will live by faith, but Christians are also those who love by faith. The great pastor John Newton once said this to a fellow minister who told Newton that he planned to oppose the errors of another minister: “In a little while you will meet in heaven—he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now! Anticipate that period in your thoughts, and though you may find it necessary to oppose his errors, view him personally as a kindred soul, with whom you are to be happy in Christ forever.” If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, here’s what you can know now about every other believer in Jesus Christ: In a little while you will meet in heaven, and that saint, whoever they are, will be dearer to you then than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now. So anticipate that period in your thoughts.

 

I can’t help but think of how I saw so many of you love Elvio and Cristina through the recent loss of their child. Elvio and Cristina were born and raised in Paraguay; they don’t look like Mark and Kaley Lankford’s brother and sister, for example. Kaley’s a white sister from Ohio, and Mark was born to Korean parents but raised by adoptive parents in Upper Darby. Nonetheless, it was Mark who let me know about Benjamin’s passing, and it was Kaley who sent Elvio and Cristina songs to listen to in the hospital. Steph Nguyen was born in America to Chinese parents; Denae is a white sister who grew up on a farm in central Pennsylvania. But it was Steph and Denae on the phone with me Tuesday night trying to plan funeral and burial arrangements. Renata is a black sister from Chicago, and her husband Dave is a black brother from South Jersey. But on the night Elvio and Cristina got home from the hospital, it was Dave and Renata at their house along with Steph and others to grieve with Elvio and Cristina as they grieved. Anthea’s a black sister from Florida, Meryl was raised in Kuwait by Indian parents, but when I went to drop off a card for Elvio and Cristian, Meryl and Anthea were already there. Elvio and Cristina could give more examples, but that’s just one way recently that I have seen your love for all the saints, Citylight Center City, and why is that love there? Because God has made us a family.

 

That gospel has come to us and borne similar fruit among us because that’s just what the gospel does. Look what Paul says about it in verse 6: The gospel is bearing fruit and increasing in the whole world, and then he adds that it also continues to do so among the Colossians, since the day they first heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. A couple things to notice here: First, the gospel is a word of truth. The Greek word translated “word” there is logos, from which we get our word “logic”. The gospel uses logic and requires logic to understand it. Notice even what the Colossians did with it: Later in verse 6 we read that they heard it, understood the grace of God revealed in it, and then in verse 7 that they learned it from Epaphras. Understanding and learning—those are thinking words. The gospel is a relatively simple message, but it is still a message communicated with words, and that means you must hear it, understand it, and learn it, if you are to have confidence in being saved through it. Sometimes even Christians resist the importance of understanding and learning. The late pastor Timothy Keller was once responding to those who said things like, “We are not saved by assenting to propositions, but by obedient trust in God. What matters is living like Christ did.” Keller responded in this way: “When you say, ‘I don’t care about doctrine, it’s how you live that matters,’ you are ironically promoting the doctrine of justification by works. You are proposing that what God really wants is a good life.” His point was there is no way around doctrine, and if you try to say that really exercising your brain to understand or learn the word of truth, the gospel, doesn’t matter, you’re making a doctrinal claim, with words, that still needs to be understood, learned, and tested as to whether it is true. And when you evaluate such a claim against the evidence of scripture, you find it’s not true. So don’t despise learning and understanding.

 

The gospel is similar to any other message in that it is communicated with human language and logic that must be learned and understood, but the second thing to notice is that the gospel is different from other messages in that it itself has the power to bear fruit and increase. Paul says that’s exactly what it’s doing in the whole word as he writes to the Colossians. And he says it is continuing to do that in their lives. Most of us here today lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, and you remember that it was such a problem because of how infectious it was. It bore bad fruit in peoples’ lives—headaches, fevers, congestion, difficulty breathing, sometimes loss of taste, and even death. And it increased through the world, from Wuhan, China, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Paul is saying the gospel is like that, except instead of bearing bad fruit in peoples’ lives, it bears good fruit: The hope of heaven, love for all the saints, faith in Christ Jesus. And it increases. It got to the Colossians, even though Paul never went to them, because after Epaphras heard it, understood it, and believed it, he went and proclaimed it to the Colossians, and that same sort of thing was happening all throughout the Roman Empire in Paul’s day, and continues to happen all throughout our world today.

 

And so in any Christian church, this is the fruit the gospel bears. A church is formed when people hear the gospel, understand it, and believe it, and the gospel then continues to bear fruit in them since the day they heard it as it imbues them with the hope of heaven and fills them with love for another and for the saints scattered throughout the world. The gospel is doing this work in you, Citylight Center City. Each of you publicly professed your faith in Christ when you joined this church; many of you were even baptized at this church. You love one another through the sort of hardships to which I have already alluded, you love one another by the ways you serve on Sundays to make our gatherings possible, you love one another by faithfully gathering to worship together, praying for one another, listening to one another, speaking the truth of scripture to one another, seeking to help one another grow to greater maturity in Christ, rejoicing together, and many more ways. You love saints outside our church by praying for other churches, encouraging members of other churches as you interact with them at work or in your neighborhood, and by financially supporting churches like Risen Christ Fellowship in Germantown, Citylight NYC in New York City, Stephen and Alexandra Tipton working with Logos Community Church in Nagoya, Japan, Harshit Singh pastoring a church and training pastors in South Asia, and so on.

 

Anytime these sorts of things are happening in any church, it is reason to give thanks to God. Anywhere there are saints and faithful brothers, anywhere there is faith, hope, and love, it is reason to give thanks to God. Those things don’t look nearly as impressive in the eyes of the world as large budgets and big crowds, but they are the fruit of the gospel, and to the eyes of faith, they are cause for rejoicing. I think of Pastor Denis Boris’ little church of 36 in Kazakhstan; did you know that church existed? Of course you didn’t; how would you? No news outlet is covering that church. But do you know what I know about that church? They believe in Christ Jesus. They have love for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for them in heaven, and given that they were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, that’s nothing short of miraculous.

 

Sometimes the hardest church to recognize that about is our own. Every church has its weaknesses and problems, every church falls short of the glory of God, and part of the reason is your and my presence in it. If you think you know a church that doesn’t, all it proves is that you don’t know that church very well. And when you do get to know your church better, you will also get to know its flaws better, and may even feel hurt by them. The Colossians fell short too, and we’ll see ways they had room to grow in just a moment. Paul prays for them precisely because they have room to grow, but he doesn’t start there. When he prays for them, he always thanks God for his work in their lives through the gospel, and when he writes to them, he starts by telling them how he is giving thanks for them. There’s something simple you could incorporate into your own prayer life: When you pray for your church or another church, when you get out your members’ directory to pray for your brothers and sisters in this church, start by giving thanks to God for their faith in Christ Jesus, and the love they have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for them in heaven. Consider specific ways you have seen their faith in Christ Jesus and their love for all the saints. Thank God for those things, then go tell them the ways you were giving thanks to God for them.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his classic Life Together, writes, “If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ…When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament. But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief…Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.”

 

The gospel was bearing fruit and increasing among the Colossians, as it always does. There are no asymptomatic carriers of the gospel. Where it is heard, understood, and believed, faith in Christ Jesus, love for all the saints, and a hope laid up in heaven will follow in the timing and to the extent that God ordains in his wisdom. So Paul and Timothy give thanks to God for his work in the Colossians through the gospel, but they also share with the Colossians how they are praying for them, and we learn from this that there is still work to be done. So let’s look next at what is still to be done.

 

What’s still to be done

 

And so, Paul says in verse 9, from the day they heard, they have not ceased to pray for the Colossians, asking that they may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Notice again the positive value ascribed to knowledge: Paul’s prayer is for knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, but it is a spiritual wisdom, that is, a wisdom taught by the Spirit of God himself, who teaches us not merely abstract truths, but the knowledge of God’s will, so that, verse 10, we may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. The Colossians had faith in Christ Jesus, love for all the saints, and hope laid up for them in heaven, but they weren’t yet living lives fully pleasing to the Lord; who of us is? Paul knows they can’t do that, so he doesn’t just tell them to go live a life fully pleasing to the Lord. But he also doesn’t dispense with it as a goal. He doesn’t pray for them to do the bare minimum to be free of heinous sin. He has the audacity to pray that they would live lives fully pleasing to God.

 

Is it your aspiration to live in a manner fully pleasing to the Lord? Is pleasing him your ultimate aim? No doubt that often means you won’t get to please your own flesh or other people; it sometimes means you will really disappoint or even anger people you really love. Jesus told us as much: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Paul himself wrote elsewhere, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal 1:10). We all know you can’t please everyone, so make it your sole aim to please the Lord.

 

To do that, though, you will need to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, as Paul prayed. That doesn’t mean the knowledge of God’s will for who you will marry, what job you will take, or where you will live. The more you get to know God, the more you realize he cares far more about how you interact with your spouse than he cares about which spouse you choose, he cares far more about how you do your job than which job you do, and he cares far more about how you love your neighbors than which neighbors you live around. And he’s given us plenty in scripture to tell us how to live a life fully pleasing to him, but how can you understand the scriptures, and especially how they apply to your specific situation? You pray that the Lord will fill you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. That’s a prayer God loves to answer. “Father, I want to live a life fully pleasing to you. Will you show me what that would look like?” You pray that prayer, you take what God has clearly revealed to be his will in scripture, you seek wise counsel, and you trust him to lead you. And the good news is, right in this passage, Paul gives us four features of a life fully pleasing to the Lord.

 

First, he says in verse 10 that it involves bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. We saw already that the gospel bears fruit and increases; now we see that as the gospel does that in us, we bear fruit in every good work and increase in the knowledge of God. A good work is good because it conforms to God’s revelation of what his goodness ought to look like in our lives: Worshiping him, prayer, giving to the poor, working hard at your job, speaking the truth in love to one another, moving toward people who are suffering, sharing the gospel with those who don’t believe, sending missionaries, bringing up children in the discipline and instruction of Christ, showing hospitality, and so on. It’s possible to do any of those things without faith in Christ Jesus, but it’s not possible to have faith in Christ Jesus and go on not doing works like those. They are the fruit of a true and lively faith, and yet even then, we remain dependent on the actual ongoing influence of the Holy Spirit to work in us to will and to work for God’s good pleasure. So we pray for one another, that we’d bear fruit in every good work.

 

And we pray next, that to live a life fully pleasing to God, we would increase in the knowledge of God. I feel like I’m veering into broken record territory here, but notice again the positive place of knowledge, not just abstract knowledge, but knowledge of God. To walk in a manner fully pleasing to God doesn’t just mean working for him, like an employee at the bottom of an org chart works for the CEO she’ll never meet. It means also getting to know him better, spending time with him, drawing near to him in prayer and worship, and learning more about him as a means to that end. It means wanting to learn not just the essence of the gospel, but the trinity, the attributes of God, the person and work of Christ, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and more. But to increase not merely in knowledge about God, but in the knowledge of God, requires actual communion with God. And so we pray that we’d increase in the knowledge of God.

 

Then Paul prays for the next aspect of a life fully pleasing to God in verse 11 that they’d be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. A life fully pleasing to God looks like a life of good works, a life of increasing knowledge of God, and we could say here now, a life of endurance and patience with joy. Endurance and patience are active and necessary when we face suffering. It assumes that we will face suffering, because the whole Bible assumes that, and much of the wisdom of human history has assumed that. Advances in technology have made that assumption harder for many of us to swallow in 2025, though. Where our ancestors could see a third of their population wiped out by a plague, we now have antibiotics and vaccines. Where our ancestors had to endure the cold of winter, we now have central heat. Where our ancestors had to go hungry for days because the crop failed to produce or they couldn’t successfully complete a hunt, we have grocery stores, and so on.

 

Authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, in their 2018 New York Times bestseller, The Coddling of the American Mind, point out that every generation tends to view the one after it as “soft”, because with every generation, new technology advances that makes our lives easier. This is a good thing, a gift of God’s common grace I would add, but they point out that it carries with it a danger: As we are less and less exposed to suffering, we become less and less adept at handling it when it does come. In fact, they show how Americans have essentially trained a generation to be hyper-sensitive to even the smallest doses of suffering, like hearing an opposing viewpoint, and then to demand that others change to alleviate that suffering. In other words, our world is doing a very poor job right now of training us to endure suffering. It’s training us instead to exaggerate our suffering, blame others for it, and then demand that others change to alleviate it. Yet Paul says here that one aspect of a life fully pleasing to God is the ability to endure suffering, patiently, and with joy. Where does that come from? It comes as we are strengthened with all power, according to God’s glorious might. And so we pray that we’d be strengthened with that power, for all endurance and patience with joy.

 

And, that kind of endurance with joy comes as we engage in the fourth aspect of a life fully pleasing to God, which we encounter in verse 12: Giving thanks to the Father. We saw already how Paul is giving thanks to the Father for the faith and love of the Colossians; here he suggests that at all times, even through suffering, we too have good reason to give thanks to our Father in heaven. Really think about this: God has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light, and he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Do you remember what it was like to be in the domain of darkness? Some of you became Christians at a young age, so you may not have many conscious memories of what it was like to live in darkness. But do you realize that you once were? Do you believe that your natural state was one of slavery to sin? If you don’t, you probably won’t be very thankful for salvation. You know who I generally find to be the least thankful for salvation? Those who say thing like, “I’ve been a Christian my whole life.” And do you see why? If you don’t think you ever were in the domain of darkness, why would you give thanks for being delivered from it?

 

Some genuinely become believers at a young age; many can’t mark exactly when it happened, but all Christians have this in common: He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. And then the joy, the glory of the good news comes through: He didn’t leave us there! He didn’t give us orders on how to get out, and then leave us to do it. He delivered us! He transferred us into a new kingdom, with a new Lord, his beloved Son. Instead of being under the authority of Satan, we now get to live under the authority of Christ! And verse 14 tells us why that’s such good news: In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. To redeem someone in the ancient world meant to release them from slavery to something, and the word translated forgiveness there also indicates a release: To forgive someone their sins is to release them from them. As long as our sins were still being held against us, God’s justice required that we remain in the domain of darkness. But when Christ Jesus died on the cross, our sins were held against him. From the 6^th to the 9^th hour he hung on the cross, darkness was over the face of the land as he took the judgment our sins deserved. And since our sins were placed on him, we are now released from them, and from the penalty they deserved, if we believe in Christ Jesus.

 

That is what gives us the hope of heaven. That is why we believe in Christ Jesus. That is what drives our love. And that is what enables us to give thanks to the Father, even when enduring suffering. And yet, that doesn’t come naturally to us. So we pray. We pray for fruit-bearing in every good work, we pray for increasing knowledge of God, we pray for endurance and patience with joy, and we pray for thankful hearts because of what God has done for us in Christ. Do these sorts of things make up your prayers? I appreciated the humility and honesty of one sister in the church recently who shared with me that though she prays regularly, she feels like she can get stuck praying mainly for whatever issue in her life feels front and center. Certainly we should pray for such things, but consider how a prayer like the one Paul gives us in verses 9-14 could reorder our priorities in prayer. Consider even just opening to this passage and using it as a springboard for praying for yourself and others. Are these the sorts of things you want to see in your life? Are these the sorts of things you want to see in one another’s lives? An increasing knowledge of God’s will, so as to walk in a manner fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened for all endurance and patience with joy, and giving thanks to the Father for his incredible work of salvation in our lives. May such things animate our prayers for ourselves and one another, and may he work such things in you even today, for he is working in you through the gospel…and there is still more for him to do.