III. That prayer to be efficacious must be mingled with gratitude.—“With thanksgiving” (ver. 2). The apostle has, throughout the epistle, repeatedly enforced the duty of thankfulness. He once more recurs to it in this place; and we cannot fail to note the vast importance he attached to the exercise of this grace, and how it ought to interpenetrate every Christian duty. We are ever more ready to grumble than to give thanks. Such is the deceitfulness of sin, or the vanity and purblindness of the human heart, that the very regularity and abundance of the Divine mercies, instead of increasing, are apt to restrict our gratitude. We take, as a matter of course, what ought to be received with humblest thankfulness. An old writer has well said, “Need will make us beggars, but grace only thanksgivers. Gratitude opens the hand of God to give, and the heart of the suppliant to receive aright. Thankfulness for past mercies is an important condition of success in pleading for additional blessings.”
IV. That prayer is efficacious in promoting an efficient declaration of the Gospel.—1. Prayer should be offered on behalf of Christian ministers. “Withal praying also for us” (ver. 3). The Colossians were exhorted to pray, not only for Paul, his fellow-labourer Timothy, and their own evangelist Epaphras, but for all teachers of the Gospel. The preacher is engaged in a work of vast magnitude, environed with colossal difficulties, and is himself ferociously assailed by great and peculiar perils. The earnest intercessions of a devout and holy people are to him a safeguard and a tower of strength. A once-popular minister gradually lost his influence and congregation. The blame was laid entirely upon him. Some of his Church officials went to talk with him on the subject. He replied: “I am quite sensible to all you say, for I feel it to be true; and the reason of it is, I have lost my prayer-book.” He explained: “Once my preaching was acceptable, many were edified by it, and numbers were added to the Church, which was then in a prosperous state. But we were then a praying people. Prayer was restrained, and the present condition of things followed. Let us return to the same means, and the same results may be expected.” They acted upon this suggestion, and in a short time the minister was as popular as he had ever been, and the Church was again in a flourishing state. The great apostle felt the necessity of co-operative sympathy and prayer (Rom. xv. 30; 2 Thess. iii. 1).
2. Prayer should be offered that the most prominent features of the Gospel may be declared.—“To speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds” (ver. 3). It has before been explained in this epistle that the mystery of Christ is a grand summary of all the leading truths of the Gospel: the mystery of the incarnation of Christ, the mystery of His sufferings and death as a sacrifice for sin, the mystery of admitting the Gentiles on equal terms with the Jews to all the privileges and blessings of the new covenant. It was the apostle’s intrepid advocacy of the rights of the despised Gentile—maugre the fierce bigotry of his own countrymen, the deep-seated prejudice of the times, and even the slavish indifference of the Gentiles themselves—which led to his imprisonment: “for which I am also in bonds.” The prayers of the good give the preacher courage to declare all the counsel of God, whether it be palatable or not, and to give special prominence to those truths which are of priceless importance to humanity.
3. Prayer should be offered, that opportunity may be afforded for the free declaration of the Gospel.—“That God would open unto us a door of utterance” (ver. 3). The door had been closed and barred to the apostle for four years by his imprisonment. He felt a holy impatience to be free, that he might resume the loved labour of former years, when “from Jerusalem and round about into Illyricum he had fully preached the Gospel of Christ.” But he waited till the door was opened by Divine providence; and this he knew was often done in answer to believing prayer. So there are times, in all ages of the Church, when the door of opportunity for disseminating the Gospel is shut by the opposition of the world, by the plottings of Satan, by the prevalence of a rabid infidelity, or by the removal of eminent champions for the truth; but, in response to the earnest intercessions of God’s people, a great and effectual door is opened, and the Church advances to fresh conquests.
4. Prayer should be offered that the Gospel may be declared with fearless self-evidencing power.—“That I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak” (ver. 4). There are some who preach the Gospel in a cold, lifeless, perfunctory manner, or with unmeaning feebleness and unmanly timidity. When the preacher sinks down into a condition so abject as this, he has lost sight of the true meaning of the Gospel, he becomes the most pitiable object under the sun, and is exposed to the scathing vengeance of heaven. To preach the Gospel with clearness, with intrepidity, and with irresistible persuasiveness, that he “may make it manifest, as he ought to speak,” demands the best energies of the soul, and, above all, the special endowments of the Holy Ghost. A minister is mightily aided in preaching by the wrestling intercessions of a holy and sympathetic people.
Lessons.—1. Prayer is an excellent training for efficiency in all other duties. 2. Prayer is a gigantic power in the propagation of the Gospel. 3. The topics for prayer are vast in range and not far to seek. 4. When you can do nothing else you can pray.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES.
Ver. 2. True Devotion.
I. Explain the meaning of the text.—It is:—
1. Not to be engaged without intermission in outward and formal acts of devotion.—This is inconsistent with our nature, with commanded duties, with the ends of prayer.