B. B. Warfield’s sermon, “The Heritage of the Saints in Light,” is based upon Colossians 1:12 – “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” This sermon does not appear in the comprehensive Warfield bibliography (and so is not dated), but since it appears in the volume Faith and Life, it was likely given in the chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary as typical on Sunday afternoons.

Mongerism has an electronic version available in multiple formats here. Faith and Life

Here are some excerpts, although I encourage you to read the sermon in its entirety. The theme is “light” as our Christian inheritance, since God is light, and darkness is our condition in sin.

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Our passage is one of those fervent descriptions of the blessed state of the saved soul in which the writings of Paul abound. It occurs in the midst of the prayer which he says he has been offering for the Colossians ever since their conversion. . . . From that day, he says, he has been continually thanking God for the Colossian Christians, and mingling with his thanks earnest petitions for their Christian walk.

The gist of his petition is that they—so lately brought to Christ and so surrounded by danger—should be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that they might walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing. Two points are to be noted here. The thing which Paul desires for the Colossian converts is that they may, in their walk and conversation, be well pleasing to Christ. . . . The second thing to be noted is that Paul expected this perfection of service to be mediated by perfection of knowledge. What he directly asks for is that these converts may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding—and the word used here for “knowledge” is the term for precise, full, accurate, profound knowledge. He prays directly that they may have the knowledge—in order that they may walk worthily of their Lord unto all kinds of pleasing.

Knowledge comes thus before life and is the constructive force of life. Thus the Apostle teaches us the supreme value of a right and profound and exact knowledge of Divine things. Not as if knowledge were the end—life, undoubtedly, is the end at which the saving processes are directed; but because the sole lever to raise the life to its proper height is just right knowledge. It is life—the right life—that the Apostle is praying for in behalf of the Colossians: but he represents knowledge—right knowledge—as possessing the necessity of means to that life.

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