Colossians 2:5

How is Paul present with the church in spirit?

This is not a throwaway phrase; he supports it by saying that he sees their morale and the firmness of their faith.

In another place, he said that though he was not present in the church in Corinth, he had executed judgment on a man who was sleeping with his father's wife (1 Corinthians 5:3).

Something was going on in the focus verse in a spiritual reality that may be hard for us to put our fingers on.

• Remember when the Holy Spirit transported Philip (Acts 8:39). One moment, he was physically somewhere, and in another moment, he was in another place, not for tourism but for the serious work of eternal salvation and preaching to people that God wanted to hear the word.

• In another passage, Paul cries and is heartbroken when he tells a church that wolves will emerge from among them after he is gone and will teach a perversion of the truth to draw disciples to themselves (Acts 20:30).

• Let's talk about Jesus.

  -He told Nathaniel that while he was far away, he saw him under a fig tree (John 1:47-50).

  -We were told that Jesus knew people's thoughts in many places.

  -When a group of people rushed to him, he said it was not because they saw the miracles but because he multiplied bread, and they ate and were full (John 6:26). Basically, standing before them was the person who could provide food for them without the toil of the Genesis 3 curse. It really felt good, and they wanted that. Jesus could clearly discern their motivation and told them. They did not like being called out. They did not like being told they were food-driven.

• Let's go to Elisha; through the hand of God, he knew so much beyond what he was supposed to know.

  - Someone told a king that Elisha knows whatever he discussed in his bed (2 Kings 6:8-12).

  -Beyond that, Elisha clearly saw that chariots of fire were surrounding him (2 Kings 5:15-17).

  -Elisha declined to collect a reward from Naaman (2 Kings 5:26), who was healed of leprosy. Elisha's servant, Gehazi, decided to go behind his back. In his mind, he could go and get his goods, and Elisha would be none the wiser, and he could act like a good guy, but he was a thief. But that did not fly with Elisha.

  -When someone died, and Elisha needed to be told before he knew it, he was taken aback (2 Kings 4:27). He was so used to knowing unknowable things that when that happened, he said it was strange. For us normies, it is strange when we know things without natural means. For Elisha, it is the opposite; it was strange for him not to know things that are beyond natural knowledge. That was something that marked him as a prophet.

• Saul went to Samuel so that he could tell him where his father's donkeys were. Samuel told Saul things that he could not know by any means but the supernatural. So, it was a divine information system and the benefits of having God as king in Israel (1 Samuel 10:2).

All these operations are the Lord’s work. We consider it amazing (Psalm 118:23).

What do all these have in common? They reflect a dose of divinity in display. They give us a window into who God is. God knows the heart and sees both the seen and the unseen simultaneously. Both seen and unseen are visible to him.

David said, "Where can I go to escape your Spirit?" (Psalm 139:7). We also see that God does not view things the way people do. People look at outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

Maybe Paul's extraordinary effectiveness was due to his extraordinary insight, all because of God's hand upon him.

He tells the people that he is absent in the body but present in the spirit, and he rejoices because he sees their morale and firmness in faith.

This means the Christians in Colossi are full of confidence in their faith. They are assured. They were not shaken at all.

From the angle of Paul writing this letter as someone who has not been there, they might have said, what does Paul have to write to us? He does not know us, he has not been here, he has not seen us. But Paul had seen them, and not only them, but has also seen us. He said the Spirit expressly said that in the last days, difficult times will come (2 Timothy 3:1).