Colossians Ch.1 vs. 6 - Preach The Gospel, Not Yourself

Warning: This small exegesis contains some references to Greek which those unfamiliar with the language will not understand. The conclusions I will draw, however, will be explained without any knowledge of Greek necessary.

Here is the text of Colossians verse six according to the NASB and a link:

"...which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth..."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%201:6;&version=49;

Here is the same text for those NIV folk out there:

"...that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth..."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%201:6;&version=31;

It is interesting to observe how the NIV augments “God’s grace” with “in all its truth,” which I assume is due to the augmenting force of epignosis preceding it.

I was translating Colossians and came upon this passage which has a few interesting words in it. The first is karpophoroumenon, parsed as a masculine accusative singular, present middle participle from karpophreo, and the second is auxanomenon, which is a masculine accusative singular, present passive participle from auxano (both of these are parsed according to Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of 1889, pages 326 and 84, respectively).

The first word is translated by the NASB as “constantly bearing fruit.” This is perhaps a better translation than the NIV because it conveys the aspect of the present participle, which is a continuous action. The second word is translated “increasing,” though it is also a present tense participle and as such is subject to – theoretically – the same nuance of a continuous action, and thus could be translated “continually increasing.” In any event, this is an aside to my main point but nonetheless worthy of being pointed out.

The main observation that I wish to make depends upon whether or not Thayer’s Lexicon is accurately telling me that karpophoroumenon is a middle participle. Since I rely upon this volume to give me accurate translations, and I have not heard that it is in any way unreliable, and that this interpretation is corroborated by Blueletterbible.org (http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgibin/c.pl?book=Col&chapter=1&verse=6&version=kjv
), I will assume it accurate. It is also important that auxanomenon be passive.

So I am almost at my observation. The significance of the middle voice in Koine Greek is stated by William D. Mounce (in his widely-used grammar) as, “The classical definition of the middle voice is that the action of a verb in the middle voice in some way affects the subject,” (emphasis original, The Basics of Biblical Greek, Second Edition, Zondervan 2003, Pp. 230). Hence Thayer’s suggests a translation of the middle voice for karpophoreo as “To bear fruit of one’s self,” (326). It also suggests the translation of the passive auxanomenon as “to grow, increase, become greater,” (84).

Thus, here is my observation. If the significance of the verbs in the statement can be taken a generally representative of Paul’s attitude concerning the growth and effectiveness of the Gospel (which would require more space than I have), then I yield these conclusions: 1) Based upon the middle voice and accusative case of the participle for the word translated as “constantly bearing fruit,” we can understand that the Gospel “bears fruit of itself,” as Thayer’s suggests. It is not that preachers or pastors, or cute stories, or nice-sounding lists of rules or “principles to live by” are the truths that change our lives. Rather, it is accepting the Gospel as true that will naturally yield to changes in the individual. (c.f. http://www.churchstaffresources.com/ to see the opposite of what Paul seems to be saying, I especially like the “More Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching…” But I suppose that when you have not the tools to disagree with the culture you might as well absorb it entirely into the church). God of course works out in the individual’s life how this process is to take place regarding particular sets of behavior, but only He can show us how this is to be done because we are each very different (c.f. Phillippians Ch. 2 vs. 12-13).

The second conclusion I draw is based upon the passive participle translated as “growing” in verse six, or perhaps “continually growing” if this conveys continuous action better for you. If this can be taken as generally indicative of Paul’s attitude regarding the growth and effectiveness of the Gospel, then 2) We do not cause the Gospel message to be spread, we do not grow God’s Kingdom, only God does. Of course if the Gospel is receiving the action of “being grown” while the agent is not named, then one could stipulate human beings as being the cause of growth. But given that the Gospel “bears fruit of itself,” I am inclined to think of the truths of the Gospel as being more dependent upon God and what He has done than on what we are doing, thus I submit that He is a better explanation for the growth of the Gospel.

Now, all that having been said, what is a particular application of this material? Given that I can only speak for myself, I will do just that and say that my understanding would be that the church’s responsibility is to educate people regarding Christian beliefs and behavior, and then work through other means of exhortation towards fulfilling these duties. From much of the preaching I hear, the focus is motivation rather than education. The truth of the Gospel is focused on much less than it should be, and I understand the power of “If A is true then I should not do B” to be much harder to ignore than the power of a good anecdote. In any event, this is only a brief exegesis and the verse should be read in context by anyone wishing to explore my observations. If anything appears to contradict what I have said, or if simply the language that Paul uses cannot be taken to convey so much content, then junk my conclusions. After all, language is rarely subject to the kind of scrutinizing analysis that Biblical exegetes apply to the Greek N.T., therefore I would take care not to overemphasize.