Topic: Advent
Speaker: Pastor Justin Wheeler
Scripture: Luke 2:1-7
The Perspective of Christ
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ (1 of 2)
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What is the greatest truth in all of the Bible? Many of us would scratch our heads thinking that this is not an easy question to answer but perhaps it’s easier than we think.
On April 23, 1962, Karl Barth (the renown 20th Century Swiss-German, neo-orthodox theologian) spoke at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago. Many have reported that, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth, if he could summarize his theology in a single sentence. As the story goes, Barth responded by saying, "In the words of a song I learned at my mother's knee: 'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'"[1]
The love of Christ for sinners is an amazing truth but the fact that Jesus loves me, not as a possibility but as a reality…now that has to be the greatest Biblical truth I will ever discover.
The fact that God knows us intimately and still loves us unconditionally is the greatest news that you will ever hear in your lifetime and when we tease out the details of His love for us it gets even better. He loved us before He made the world (Eph 1:4). He loves us with an everlasting love. His love for us moved Him to send us the greatest gift the world has ever seen (John 3:16). He loved us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8) and there is nothing in the universe that can cause Him to withdraw His love from us (Rom 8:31-39).
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, then you can be absolutely sure that Jesus loves you and this love should produce two things in our hearts: gratitude for His amazing grace and repentance from the sin that once grieved our Savior’s heart. The kindness and love of God should lead us to repentance, to turn away from sin and to seek to bring glory to Him for who He is and for all that He has done.
Transition…
God loves us and when we come to see His love for us in the gospel and we embrace it by faith it brings about a change in our heart that also results in a change in our life. Now, if we get this out of order then we will miss the point of the gospel entirely but if we can keep this in place then we can live our lives with enduring confidence and Christ-like obedience.
With this in mind let’s read together, our passage for this morning from Colossians 3:12.
Col 3:12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Sermon Focus…The Rule of Christ in the Lives of His People
This morning and next week we are going to learn 5 ways the love of Christ impacts our lives as believers. Today we will look at the first 2…
I. The Power of Christ’s Love (V. 12)
Col 3:12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,
You may not see it at first glance but there is an immeasurable power at work in this verse. Paul’s shift from doctrine to practice is still underway. He has spent 2 chapters helping us to get our minds right when it comes to who Jesus is and what He accomplished for us on the cross. But now Paul is working to apply all of that doctrine to our lives. He wants us to know that right-teaching (orthodoxy) necessary leads to right-living (orthopraxy).
And the thing that he wants us to understand is how one motivates the other. What is the mechanism of action between right doctrine and right living…it’s the saving love of God. In one sense this passage is very basic and immensely practical. We are being instructed here to put on the character of the Christian life and these characteristics are intended to contrast with the sins that we once walked in (Col 3:5-8). But the simplicity of how are we to live as Christians is rooted in the deep magic of Gods love for us.
Notice that the calling for us to put on the character of Christ is rooted in the fact that we already belong to God. We are God’s chosen ones, the eternally elect children of God. How do we know this? Because we believe the gospel. We know because we, “heard the gospel and we understood the grace of God in truth (Col 1:4-6).”
1 Peter 1:3 According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
The gospel assures us that our membership within the family of God depends not on our goodness but gods grace, not on our loveableness but on His love.[2]
By faith we are the chosen ones of God, holy in His sight, and dearly loved by our creator. THIS is what motivates us to put on godly character. We are well loved children who long to be more like our loving Father.
(Illus…In the early generations of the Christian church the ceremony of baptism sought to illustrate this in a tangible way. Baptismal candidates would symbolize the radical change of Christian conversion by arriving at the place of their baptism in old and shabby clothes that symbolized their old way of life. Then just before going into the water they would take off those old garments, laying them aside. They would undergo baptism as a symbol of their new life in Christ and as they came up out of the water the church body would gather around them and wrap up in fresh, new and often bright white garments to symbolize the new life in Christ that lay ahead for them.[3]
The love of Christ is so powerful that it completely changes the course of our life. The gospel is so amazing that it can pry our hands away from a lifetime of sin and rebellion. The good news of God’s love is so thorough that it can change not only our eternal destination but also our earthly journey. Our identity as the chosen, holy and dearly loved people of God gives rise to a new way of life.
And that new way of life includes “putting on” a deep sensitivity to the needs and cares of others. Our lives are to be filled with compassion for others and this flows out of the compassion that Christ has shown us. We didn’t deserve His pity, or love; and yet He came to live and die in order to meet our deepest need. By faith we have received compassion and now we become conduits of compassion to others.
Being compassionate toward others leads us to show kindness to them. Kindness is compassion in action. In other words, the love that we have been shown is to affect us deeply and then flow out of us freely. The gifts of God are not intended to terminate on us. They are meant to fill our hearts to the point of overflowing and then burst out of us so that others will experience the kindness and compassion of God for themselves.
Kindness is a Christ like attitude toward others and humility is a Christ like attitude toward oneself. Christian humility is to have an accurate view of your importance in light of the cross. Our sin is so great that Jesus had to die to save us, but Christ’s love is so great that He was willing to die to save us. This doesn't cause us to boast it cause us to worship. The gospel brings us all to our knees.
The supreme act of humility in the history of the world was put on display by Jesus and His act of humility is to fuel our own.
Phil 2:5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Meekness does not mean weak in fact it means the opposite. This word refers to a person that is so strong in their character that they master themselves and willingly assume the role of a servant to others. Isn’t this exactly how Jesus treated us. He was and is the eternal Son of God but He willingly laid down His life for us and He calls us to follow Him.
The last trait in this list is patience. God calls us to be patient, slow to anger, understanding, and willing to wait on the Lord. But there is another application to this and it has to do with how we treat those within the church. The main verb in this verse is a 2nd person plural verb which means that these character traits are to be employed within the context of the church. God wants us to live in this way all the time but especially in our relationship with other believers.
The power of Christ’s love is so strong that it transforms our individual lives and begins to spread out to transform the community that we belong to. But the next question is how do we put these into action?
II. The Function of Christ’s Love (V. 13-14)
13 bearing with one another…
The newfound compassion in our hearts functions to impact our relationships with one another. Jesus calls us to bear with one another, to be patient with each other, even to put up with one another. This is the same word that Jesus used when he said to the disciples, “O faithless generation, how long am I to bear with you?” IOW, how long do I have to put up with your spiritual ignorance and immaturity.
But it’s more than mere tolerance, it’s love that binds us to others no matter what. Our love for one another is to be so strong that it causes us to overcome that frustration.
(Illus…Mark Dever tells a story in his book The 9 marks of a Healthy Church and in the story he is talking with a friend. The friend has gotten into the habit of coming to church only for a portion of the worship service (the sermon) and then he quickly ducks out to go on about his business. He wouldn’t stay around to meet people, to build relationships with people, to share with people or to help people. He simply came in to get what he wanted and then he would leave. Mark asked him about this and the friends responded by saying that he could get everything he needed from the sermon and then by leaving he was making sure that other people weren’t holding him back from his growth in the Lord.
In his mind, hanging around and investing in the lives of other people would be a frustrating waste of his time. He might have to hear their stories, they might request his counsel, and that would require him to bear with them to help them grow in Christ, but he really didn’t want anything to do with that.
Now let’s contrast this with how Jesus treats us. Jesus never hears us praying and thinks, “I really don’t have time for you today.” He never sees us coming and says, “Oh no, not this guy again.” He never loses focus when I ramble on about my problems, He never rolls His eyes when I confess the same old sins, He never looks at His watch as a signal that I need to move on.
Jesus bears with me, He bears with you and He calls us to bear with one another. To be patiently present to listen, to encourage, to offer counsel, to rebuke when necessary, to share scripture often…this is what it means to bear with one another.
V. 13…and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
If you spend even a short amount of time in the church you are going to learn a very important lesson and it is that we are not perfect people. Your brothers and sister in this church are not perfect people. We will let one another down, we will let slip something that was shared in confidence, we will offend one another and when these things happen we need to remember the gospel. The ultimate offense is not what someone has down to us but what we have done to God.
The deepest and most egregious offense in our lives is not that someone let us down but that we sinned against our God. And yet the Lord has forgiven us. He forgave and He forgives and He calls us to follow Him by forgiving one another. There is not a time when we are more like our Heavenly Father than when we forgive those who have betrayed, hurt or offended us.
As Christians we know the joy and comfort of being forgiven and Jesus is calling us to extend that joy and comfort to others. When we forgive one another in the church we are echoing the forgiveness that each of us has already received from the Lord.
14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Paul goes back to the clothing metaphor here and he paints the picture of us taking a large cloak that covers over everything and he tells us to fasten it tightly around our shoulders. The one garment that pulls everything together is love. If we try to pursue the other virtues and we forget that they flow from a heart of love then either we will fail or those virtues will become distorted. Rather than bearing with one another we will become manipulative and controlling. Rather than forgiving one another we will hold grudges that will eventually burst out and ruin our friendship, or cause us to pull away altogether.
But when love is the motivation for our care for one another it covers a multitude of sins. We can look at one another and think the best rather than the worst. Love makes the commands of God a delight rather than a duty, it makes us want to listen to one another rather than have to listen to another.
1 Cor 13:4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
This is the function of Christ’s love.
Conclusion…
(Illus…Many of the battles that we see in the church don’t come down to doctrine at all they come down to one person’s preference over another. One person wants this while another person wants that. One person likes this style while another person likes that style. One person agrees with this presidential candidate while another person agrees with that presidential candidate.
Personal opinions and preferences are a natural part of life and we aren’t always going to agree on some things. But there must be something or someone holding us together that is greater than our personal preferences. That person is Christ and our unity in Him is far more important than our differences.
The default mode of the human heart is pride and pride rails against the idea of someone having authority over you or getting preference over you. Pride looks upon another person and desires to dominate them. Pride causes us to compare ourselves to others and to think that we are better or more important than them. Pride seeks power. It seeks to be superior to everyone else.
But the gospel comes in and it not only chips away at our pride, it destroys it. The gospel obliterates the idea that we are better than the next guy by telling us that we are just like the next guy. Sure, we may have more education or experience but those are only external things. You see the gospel gets at the heart of who we are and lets us know that we are not as awesome as we think.
The gospel attacks the default mode of the human heart and in the place of pride it inserts humility. And the fruits that flow out of this gospel humility are gentleness, patience, bearing with one another and an eagerness, a zeal, to maintain unity and peace in the church.
In the world pride fuels competition but in the church humility fuels community and that is what God is building. Through the gospel of Jesus Christ God is creating a new counter-cultural community. He is building a city on a hill and the only way that we can be brought together as a city that displays the love and grace of God is if the pride in our hearts that would cause us to compete with one another gives way to humility before God that would have us embrace one another.
Christ is All
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We have come to the point in this letter where things are going to shift from theology to practice. The first 2 chapters were devoted to Christian Doctrine (Who Jesus is, What He has done, and Why does it all matter); but here in Colossians 3:5 Paul is going to turn the corner and help us understand how all of that doctrine is to impact our day to day life.
But before we jump in to this I want to make sure we understand how our day to day Christian life fits into the bigger picture of the Biblical story.
When God created the heavens and the earth He made them good. The sun and moon were good, the water and dry land were good, the plants and animals were good and then on the sixth day God made man. Adam and Eve were unique among the created things and God pointed this out when He looked at them and called them “very good.”
They were made in God’s image. They were made with the capacity to have a relationship with God. He walked with them in the Garden. He spoke to them about why He made them, what they were going to do and how they were going to enjoy His creation. Adam and Eve were residents of this earth but because God dwelled with them, they were partial residents of Heaven.
Heaven is not some ethereal location hidden out in the cosmos; Heaven is the place where God dwells. So When God would come into the Garden to talk to Adam and Eve, He was bringing Heaven with Him. Adam and Eve were able to enter Heaven and come into God’s presence because at that point their hearts hadn’t been corrupted by sin, their eyes had never seen the horror that would come, their hands and feet had never come into contact with the corruption and rebellion that would plunge this earth into sin and judgment.
But Genesis 3 did come bringing sin into the world and into every human heart. Our access to Heaven is barred and out of our sin soaked hearts flow constant rebellion. Our hands grasp was doesn’t belong to us because of the covetous longing in our heart. Our eyes linger on temptations, our hands reach for sinful pleasures, our feet walk toward sin all because of the sinful longing that lies in our hearts. “The heart is deceitful above all things (Jer 17:9).”
Jesus taught His disciples in Matthew 15:
V. 18 What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person…”
Transition…
The Bible tells us that the corruption in our heart is what gives rise to the sin in our lives and the sin in our lives gives rise to the judgment of God. This is the ground floor of Biblical teaching on what is going on in our world. Sin has entered the frame through Adam and Eve, it has spread to all of us and because of that sin we all stand in the path of God’s divine justice.
So what are we to do? Most have decided to try and take matters into their own hands and to deal with their sin problem on their own…it will never work. But God so loved the world that He sent Jesus, His true and only Son, to pay for our sin and earn our freedom, through His cross. And where we were once dead in sin, slaves to sin, Christ has set us free.
“My chains are gone, I’ve been set free; My God, My Savior has ransomed me…”
Jesus came to set us free from the tyranny of our sinful hearts and to lead us into new life free from the functional bondage of sin. And here in Colossians 3:5-11 Paul is going to help us understand how we are to live in the freedom that Christ has purchased for us.
Col 3:5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Sermon Focus…
The question we are seeking to answer today is how are we to live now that we belong to Jesus. How are we to live now that we have, “received Christ Jesus as Lord (Col 2:6).” How are we to live now that we have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world (Col 2:20)” and now that we “have been raised with Christ to seek the things that are above (Col 3:1).”
The first thing we need to understand is that we have a fight on our hands and it is a fight to the death.
I. The Christian’s Fight (v. 5-6)
Col 3:5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming.
Paul is using strong language here to help us grasp the seriousness of our daily battle against sin. He calls us to put to death the sinful practices and longings that still reside in our heart. He wants us to go to war against the sinful impulses and practices that once ruled our lives as unbelievers. But notice that our fight against indwelling sin is connected to the victory that Christ has already won for us in the eyes of God.
When Paul uses the term therefore in verse 5, he is helping us to understand that our battle against sin today is fueled by Christ’s victory over sin on the cross. The war has been won but there are still skirmishes to be fought.
(Illus. Near the end of the 2nd world war, behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany there were prison camps. And American soldiers were kept there. In one camp they were not well fed, they were starving, thin discouraged and wondering if they would ever be free and able to go home. One day the guards came and looked upon these malnourished men and saw their downcast faces and slumped over shoulders. On this day like many others the prisoners were not talking to one another because their hope of rescue was almost completely gone.
But on the next day everything changed. They were still behind the fences, they were still unfed but the guard noticed that they were happy and were walking about talking with one another, they were smiling and every now and then the guards would hear a muffled shout of joy and excitement.
What had happened was that someone had smuggled in a small transistor radio and these prisoners heard the news that the Allied forces had landed, they had triumphed and were moving steadfastly inland. And the good news of their coming liberation was powerful enough to give them life and hope. None of their circumstances had changed, but this news brought about an amazing change…it made them stand up like soldiers once more.
On the cross, Jesus dealt a death blow to sin. He cut off the head of the serpent and claimed victory for all of us who believe. Our task is to embrace that victory and let it give us strength and confidence as we continue to fight against the straggling sins that haven’t yet given up their hopeless fight.
But how are we to fight? We fight by focusing on the root of our sin. What we see in this passage are two lists of sins: one list deals with sexual sins and the other deals with relational sins. Biblically speaking it shouldn’t surprise us at all to see these things on a list of sins.
Sexual immorality refers to any type of sex outside of marriage. Impurity refers more generally to our overall sexual corruption. Passion or lust refers to the overwhelming urge or longing to commit the physical act of sexual sin. Evil desire is closely related but probably refers more to the mental side of sexual longing.
But the final term in this list gets to the heart of the fight. Covetousness or greed is the root of the problem and I see in this list a progression from the physical acts of sexual sin (sexual immorality) all the way down the motives that give rise to sin (Covetousness). In this list Paul moves from the fruit and he traces it all the way back to the root. The root of the problem of sexual sin, or any sin for that matter, is the covetous idolatry that dwells in our heart.
How is covetousness idolatry? Doesn’t that just mean wanting something that doesn’t belong to you? Covetousness is us wanting what is forbidden. It is us saying, “I want this no matter what God says.” And this is idolatry because we are putting our wants over the commands of God. Every sin that we commit has a starting point and that starting point is our heart that says, “I will do whatever I want because I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
Every time we sin against God we are choosing to worship ourselves rather than our creator. That’s idolatry and this is where Paul wants us to take the fight…to the root of the problem. To put something to death you have to cut it off at the root, at its line of supply.
Our ongoing fight against sin is ultimately a worship issue. Every day of our Christian life we are going to have to battle against the natural impulse to put our self and our desires on the throne of our hearts. We have to remember that Christ belongs on that throne and we, like Paul, are to die to ourselves daily. Every day we bow to the lordship of Jesus remembering that He saved us by His grace, and He has set us free from the tyranny of our own sinful hearts.
Every day we hear the call of Christ from Luke 9:23, “Come after me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” Every day we hear the call to repent from our sin.
Martin Luther began his 95 statements against the teaching of the Roman Catholic church by saying:
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ``Repent'' (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortification of the flesh.[1]
Luther’s words are still true for us today. The Christian’s daily fight is to set Jesus Christ upon the throne of our hearts as Lord and to put our indwelling sin to death through repentance. Now let’s turn our attention to the Christian’s past.
II. The Christian’s Past (v. 6-9)
6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.
There is a range of emotion that many of us feel as we read verses 6-7. Verse 6 makes clear that God’s wrath is coming (future tense) and is going to be poured out because of these sins. But for us who believe in Christ and are trusting in Him to save us, there is no more wrath to be poured out. Our sin has been paid in full, even though we once did all of these things.
1 Cor 6:9 Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
We were headed for destruction but Christ saved us. We deserved judgment but Jesus rescued us and now the things that once defined our lives are no longer held against us…we are free. What a relief! What an amazing and gracious God we serve.
And now that we understand our former way of life to be idolatrous, we need also to understand that Christ has called us to live differently. All the sinful behavior that once ruled our lives, now we must put them all away.
But what does this mean exactly? Paul is not telling us to rid ourselves of sex in general but to repent and turn away from sexual immorality. Sex is not the problem; it is actually a gift from God to be enjoyed within the God established boundary of marriage. The problem is when we take God’s gift and we drag it outside the boundaries of what He created it for and then it becomes sinful and idolatrous and wrath inducing.
The thing we must understand about our past is that all of it was fueled by our love for self. The prime motive for our past life of sin was the self-worship in our hearts. So part of what Christ does in our lives is He comes and exposes that idolatry. He shows us that we had placed ourselves on the throne and that our desires had become the object of our worship. He shows us that we had taken the gifts of God and corrupted them for our own glory.
But now, He is calling us to live a new life. He is calling us to line our lives up with the way God has created us to live. He wants us to enjoy God’s good gifts in the way God intended and to repent of the ways that we had corrupted those gifts. But there are also some things that He wants us to put aside altogether.
8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices
Like the previous list this one also follows a progression from root to fruit, only this one works in the opposite direction. He starts with the motive, the root of the problem, and he works to the action, the fruit of our sin.
Anger is the root problem and it is described as the smoldering wick. All that is needed to move us from Anger to hateful speech is for the right set of circumstances to fan our anger into full flame. When someone provokes us they don’t cause us to be angry, they are simply revealing the anger that is already present. Those of us who struggle with anger all the time, we have a secret in common with the Incredible Hulk and that secret is that we are always angry. All we need is the right set of circumstances to blow on us and ignite what is already smoldering in our hearts.
Anger is the smoldering wick but taking the next step Paul mentions are rage and malice. These refer to the full-blown fire set ablaze. And when they reach full blaze they burst out of us as slander and hateful speech. When this sin comes to the point of action it is being directed at the people around us.
The first list exposed the root of idolatry, sin against God; this list exposes the root of anger, sin against man. When the sin in our hearts burst out it effects our vertical relationship to God and our horizontal relationships to others.
But through Jesus our vertical relationship to God has been restored and our horizontal relationships with others can be put right as well. Our past no longer defines us.
III. The Christian’s Mind (v. 9-10)
9 …you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self,
Put off the old and put on the new. That sounds simple enough. It’s like changing clothes. You take off the old torn up jeans that fit so comfortably you don’t want to get rid of them and you put on the new jeans that Christ has given you to walk in. Sounds simple right. But it’s the next part of the verse that is really going to rub some of us the wrong way.
…which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
You know what this verse means? It means that our growth in Christ is going to take time.
There are some interesting studies being done in our culture right now and most of us will ignore them. These studies have to do with the effects of mobile computing devices on our brains. The little phones that we carry in our pockets and hold in front of our faces all day are altering our brain chemistry. They are causing us to be impatient and irritable all the time. They are also destroying interpersonal communication and having a terrible impact on our relationships.
But the reason I am bring this up has to do with the fact that now, more than ever before we expect things to happen instantly. One of the negative effects of handheld mobile computing is that we can’t stand to wait for anything. We want it now. We want things to happen now. We want things to change now and when they don’t we just abandon the pursuit. And this is going to pose a problem for us as Christians because growth in godliness doesn’t happen in an instant.
Seeking the Kingdom of God and growing as a Christian cannot be downloaded on the App Store or Google Play. This is going to happen over time as our minds are being renewed in knowledge after the image of our creator. What does this mean? It means that you and I are going to grow in Christian faithfulness as we grow in our knowledge of God and His Word.
William Hendriksen describes the Christian life in this way:
“When a man is led through the waters of salvation, these are ankle deep at first, but as he progresses, they become knee deep, the reach to the waist, and are finally impassable except by swimming.”[2]
To grow we are going to have to learn to swim in the deep end, to led God’s Word shape our understanding and to guide our lives.
Romans 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Jesus wants us to be sanctified in the truth of God’s Word. Peter tells us that to grow up in the faith we are going to need the nourishment that comes from the pure milk of the Word of God. The Bible is the food that fuels our growth as Christians. We are called to read, study, sing, pray, hear and share God’s Word, but we aren’t called to do this alone.
IV. The Christian’s Family/Community (v. 11)
11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
The Christian life isn’t one that we live in a vacuum, but one that we share with our new brothers and sisters. And notice that those brothers and sisters are not going to be just like us. We may not have many things in common but we have Christ in common and He is enough.
The gospel breaks down every social barrier that exists. Christ restores our relationship to God and He restores our relationship to humanity. In fact, Jesus and His gospel have given rise to a new humanity that is no longer divided on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, wealth, political class, or social standing.
In the church, the rich man and the slave sit at the same table. The Jew eats with the Gentile. People from once warring nations now sit around the Word and pray together in peace. The gospel brings peace because the gospel unites our hearts to the same person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have all been set free by the same man and therefore our allegiance is no longer tied to what once defined us but it is defined by our redeemer. Do differences still exist between us? Yes, but those differences no longer define us, our unity in Christ now defines us.
Our differences once caused us to have little concern for the life of others, but now our common faith in Christ means that I have a great concern for the life of my brother. When I show no concern for my African American brothers I am ignoring Christ and the ones He died to save. When we show no concern for the poor among us we are ignoring Jesus and the example that he gave to us. Our old prejudices must die along with our old self and in its place our new self must learn to embrace the new Christian Community that we have been born into.
Conclusion…
In closing, I want us to think back to how this whole sermon began by looking at the beginning of time and how it all went wrong. When Adam and Eve sinned against God they plunged all of humanity into rebellion. The result was that we were separated from God because of sin. God’s judgment is a reality now because of our sin. Our hearts are corrupted and idolatrous because of sin. Our relationship to one another was also corrupted.
War fills human history. Anger and hatred fuel the way we treat one another. Our chief concern is to think only of ourselves and not to care for others.
But Christ came to heal that brokenness and bring us back together again. He heals our relationship with the Father by sacrificing Himself to pay our ransom. He gives us a new heart and sets us free from the controlling influence of self-worship. He then brings men and women from every tribe, tongue and nation to the same table and gives us bread and wine to drink.
Sin brought chaos into the world but Jesus has come to bring peace. Christ is all, and in all.
[1] http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html
[2] Hendrickson, William New Testament Commentary on Colossians (Baker) pg. 150
Resurrection Hope
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This morning we are celebrating something that is absolutely essential to the Christian faith, to the degree that if it is not true then Christianity is pointless.
1 Cor 15:17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins…19 If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.
What we are celebrating is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We call it Easter, which is an old English term identifying the Christian festival of the resurrection. I prefer to call it Resurrection Day because that cuts through all the cultural and religious confusion to get to the heart of what this day is all about.
· We are celebrating the historical reality that a first century Jewish rabbi named Jesus, who also happens to be the one and only Son of God, was crucified in Jerusalem during Passover week and then three days later he was raised from the dead.
· We are celebrating the theological reality that by His death, burial and resurrection we who believe have been saved from our sins and have been granted eternal life.
· We are celebrating the present reality that because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead we of all people have reason to live our lives with indestructible hope no matter how good nor how horrible the circumstances of our life happen to be.
· We are celebrating the supernatural reality that the founder of our faith went through death and came out the other side.
And because of these things we worship Jesus Christ as our risen Savior and our God.
The worship of God is the ultimate purpose of our lives and the ultimate purpose of the church and it is also the goal of today’s sermon. In 1 Peter 1:3 we read this, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” The word bless means to worship or praise. It means to express gratitude toward God and to express joy in what He has done. Which begs the question, “What has God done?”
I Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
Transition…
Now, if we miss the first few words of this verse, then we will miss the point of all that we are going to learn in this passage. It is not Peter’s goal to simply expound on Christian theology so that we will marvel at theology itself, but that we would praise and worship the God who has revealed Himself in that theology. The result of these truths is that we must worship God. So working backward from the response of worship we need to understand the truths that motivate us to worship. IOW, why do we bless God?
My purpose in preaching this morning is to help us understand how the resurrection of Jesus Christ leads us to love, worship and serve God.
Sermon Focus…
I. We worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He has shown us mercy.
I Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy
Mercy happens when someone shows kindness to another even though it is within their power and right to punish them. When our kids get in trouble they want us to show them mercy. When we do something wrong we want to be shown mercy. When we are pulled over for speeding we deserve the be held accountable, but we would much rather our crime go unpunished.
Now, there is something that we need to understand about the God of the Bible and it is that He shows us mercy every day. God shows us mercy when He withholds from us the punishment we rightly deserve because of our sin against Him. God owes us nothing but judgment, and yet He shows us mercy every day by holding back that judgment from us.
God’s mercy is the divine restraint that keeps Him from unleashing the righteous wrath our sinful rebellion demands.
Notice in the text that God’s mercy toward us is great. We are the recipients of His abundant mercy. Our God is merciful and this means that His desire and ability to withhold what we deserve is like a storehouse so full that it is constantly overflowing (Lam 3:23). The mercy that God has for His people will never run out and we praise Him for this.
(Illus…Most of us would like to think of ourselves as merciful, showing kindness instead of judgment to others. But this tends to fall apart when we actually try it. Try to be merciful toward your children, your rude co-workers, that person who cuts you off on the road…And you come to see just how difficult (or impossible) it is to be merciful. But our God is so filled with mercy that He never stops showing us kindness.
But there is another side to God’s mercy. Divine justice demands that our sin be punished, which means that for God to withhold punishment (show us mercy) is to short-circuit His justice, unless the punishment we deserve is poured out on another. That is where Jesus steps in. Friends, this is what makes the gospel so beautiful.
Jesus stepped in to receive the justice of God that we deserved. He bore the wrath for you and me, so that we could be free. That is what He was doing on the cross. He wasn’t dying because He deserved to die, He was dying because we deserved to die. He took our place so that God’s justice would be upheld and so that God’s mercy would overflow toward us, and for this we Praise our God.
I. We worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He has shown us mercy.
II. We worship God because He has caused us to be born again (v. 3)
It was Jesus, in John 3, who told us that in order to enter the Kingdom of God we must be born again. In our first birth we were stamped with the image of Adam, but the new birth emblazons us with the image of Christ. This new birth is given to us as a gift from God. He is the cause of our new birth.
But why do we need to be born again? Because our nature is totally corrupted by sin and we are powerless to overcome that nature on our own. The Bible teaches that by nature we are dead in our sins and children of wrath. This is what our first birth in Adam has afforded us. We need to be brought from death to life and Paul tells us how this happens in Titus 3.
Titus 3:4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
We weren’t born again because of our good works; it was God’s mercy that fueled our new birth. The new birth is not the result of your prayer, or your baptism, or your trip down the aisle to talk to the pastor. The new birth is the work of the Holy Spirit in you. The Spirit brings life where there was death. He opens our eyes to see the truth of the gospel that we hadn’t seen before. He gives us a new heart of flesh replacing the heart of stone, and the result is that those who possess new life will respond with faith and repentance.
(Illus…Let’s imagine that a man is pulled from the water having just drowned and someone present begins to administer CPR. The man’s heart has stopped, there is no air in his lungs, and his brain function has ceased as well. But when the first responder begins to work he is able to bring all of those dead functions back to life. He compresses the heart to make it beat again, he fills the lungs with air in order to make them breathe again, he does all this in order to call the dead man back to life.
When that life finally rushes back it is only natural for the man to begin breathing new fresh air into his lungs, his heart begins to beat again on its own and his brain function jumps into high gear. The first responder has done his job and now the revived man has to do his job, which is to live.
The Holy Spirit is like a first responder who works within us causing us to be born again and the signs of our new life are faith in Jesus and repentance from sin. Faith and repentance are not the cause of our new birth; they are the evidence of it, meaning that we praise God and not ourselves for our new birth.
II. We worship God because He has caused us to be born again (v. 3)
III. We worship God because He has given us a living hope (V. 3)
What does Peter mean when he tells us that we have a living hope? What He means is that the source of our hope is not an idea it is a person. Let’s think back to the events of this past week some 2000 years ago.
On the night when Jesus was arrested, Peter was by His side and at first it seemed that Peter was willing to go to war in order to remain by Jesus’ side, but that is not how the night ended. Before the night ended, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. And to make matters worse, Jesus told Peter that it was going to happen.
Earlier in the night Jesus told His disciples that the Jews would seek to put Him to death and that His followers would run in fear. When Peter heard this he jumped out of his seat to confess his commitment to die at Jesus’ side. But the Lord knew Peter better than Peter knew himself.
By mid-morning the next day Peter had denied His Lord and Jesus was hanging on a Roman cross atop Golgotha’s hill. Jesus was dead and Peter was devastated. Jesus’ death on the cross dashed Peter’s hopes. His death made Peter’s denials all the more bitter. It meant that there was no possibility of making amends or being restored to the one Peter had come to love. The crucifixion robbed Peter of hope.
But when the girls came in from the tomb on Sunday morning and told Peter that it was empty, can you imagine what this did to his heart? His hopes had been dashed to pieces, but this news was enough to cause hope to flicker in his heart again. Peter heard this news and then flew out of the door to go and see for himself and when He saw Jesus His hope was restored. But it was a new kind of hope. It wasn’t a false hope, a misplaced hope, a blind hope, a fond hope; it was a living hope.
Peter’s hope was not based on an idea it was based on a person, a person that is alive and for whom death has no hold. So when Peter writes to us about our living hope he writes from personal experience. His hope is alive because his hope is in Christ and Christ is alive. The resurrection of Jesus was not a mythical tale for Peter, it was a life-changing reality.
III. We worship God because He has given us a living hope (V. 3)
IV. We Praise God because He raised Jesus Christ from the dead (v. 3)
The Roman crucifix meant one thing death. It signaled the end of rebellion. It was the great silencer of those who dared to stand against the power of Rome.
The men who cried out to Pilate for Jesus to be crucified trusted that if they were successful Jesus would be no more. They were voting NO to Jesus and His Kingdom, but the resurrection shows that God voted YES.
N.T. Wright says,
Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the re-description of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it.
An earthly court sentenced Jesus to death but a higher court reversed his sentence. Death couldn’t hold Jesus because death had no claim on Him. He did not die because of His own sin He died for the sins of His people. Therefore, death could not hold Him.
Now, it’s one thing to claim that Jesus was a great rabbi worthy of our attention. It is quite another to claim that Jesus was raised from the dead, but that is exactly what Peter is doing here. He is claiming that Jesus, the man crucified on a Roman cross was raised from death to new life by the power of God.
The resurrection of Jesus is proof that He was the Christ and the God appointed Savior of the world. Friends, there is no reason nor is there any hope that you will find peace in this life and the next unless you receive Jesus Christ as Lord. And the most powerful evidence that Jesus is worthy of your worship and devotion is the resurrection.
All of the things that we praise God for (His mercy, our new birth, our living hope) are only made possible through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection was absolutely necessary; otherwise none of these gifts could be ours. If Christ had somehow failed, then His sacrifice would not have been accepted by God as a sufficient ransom for our sin. If Christ had somehow failed then there would be no reason for Him to be raised from the dead, because His work was not complete and acceptable to God. If there was no resurrection then we would receive death and not new life, wrath and not mercy, despair rather than hope.
The Apostle Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 15 when he writes,
V. 14 If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
V. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
V. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
If it weren’t for the resurrected life of Jesus we would have nothing to celebrate, nothing to rejoice in, nothing to hope for and no reason to want to praise God.
V. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,” which means that all of these things, all of these gifts are ours and they should result in praise to our God. Because of the resurrection we have received the Father’s mercy. Because of the resurrection we have been born again. Because of the resurrection we have a living hope.
Conclusion…
I. We worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He has shown us mercy.
II. We worship God because He has caused us to be born again (v. 3)
III. We worship God because He has given us a living hope (V. 3)
IV. We Praise God because He raised Jesus Christ from the dead (v. 3)
Here in this text, Peter is leading us to praise God because our salvation is His work and not our own. We couldn’t begin to accomplish it and we do not in any way deserve it. For Peter, praise is not a religious duty that earns us God’s love, rather it is the overflow of our joy in what God has done for us through Christ.
One of the things that today should force us to do is to look upon the empty tomb and ask ourselves what must I do with Jesus? It is easy to come to church on Easter Sunday and celebrate a cultural holiday. It is easy to get together with family to hunt Easter eggs, wear new spring clothes, and go to church. But we’ve gotten really good at ignoring the earth shattering truth that this day is all about.
Jesus Christ a man attested by God with signs and wonders died in the place of sinners and was raised to new life on the third day. The power of God in his life, death, and resurrection is the un-ignorable truth that we must all reckon with today.
So my plea for you is that you run to Jesus, that you would see the weight of your sin before God and that you would see Jesus as the only one who can wash that sin away.
Christ Has Made You Free
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Some habits are hard to break and sometimes it’s hard to let go.
In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, in a state of war-like readiness even though World War II was over. He survived by eating coconuts and bananas and evading search parties that he believed were enemy scouts.
When he was deployed in December of 44 his division commander gave him these orders:
You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we'll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you [to] give up your life voluntarily.1
And he obeyed these orders for 29 years.
In the early 1970’s, a college dropout named Norio Suzuki decided to travel to the Philippines and He joked to his friends that he was going to search for the long lost Japanese Lt. Onoda and in 1974 Suzuki found him. He made contact with Lt. Onoda and tried to convince him that the war was over. But the old soldier explained that he would only surrender if his commanding officer ordered him to do so. Over the years he had heard rumors that the war was over but he simply would not believe the stories.
Suzuki traveled back to Japan and found Onoda's former commander, Major Taniguchi, who had become a bookseller. On March 9, 1974, Suzuki and Taniguchi met Onoda at a preappointed place and Major Taniguchi read the orders that stated all combat activity was to be ceased. Onoda was shocked and, at first, disbelieving. It took some time for the news to sink in.
After nearly 30 years of fighting in the jungle Hiroo Onada eased off the pack that he always carried with him and laid the gun on top of it. The time for fighting was passed, now was the time for peace.[1]
Some things are hard to let go. Some things get so embedded in our lives that even when they come to an end it is hard for us to accept that it is time to move on.
Transition…
Now imagine that you have an entire nation of people who had lived a certain way for as long as they could remember. Imagine that you have a nation whose identity is tied to their religious practices that go back 1000’s of years. Then try to tell these people that because of the death of one man all of that history has been redefined and brought to a practical end…how do you think they would respond?
The gospel of Jesus Christ has changed the world but it also fundamentally changed the way of life for the Jews and they had a very hard time letting go. Like Lt. Onada they simply could not believe that their battle was over, that their debt of sin was cancelled by the cross of Christ. They couldn’t
accept that through one man they were now free. And so rather than lay down their arms and accept that the war was over, some of them have decided to continue the fight. And the way they’re fighting is to insist that new Christians must obey the law of Moses in order to be saved.
Their weapon is legalism and Paul is fighting back! Here in our text this morning the Apostle Paul wants to help us as a church embrace the freedom we have in Christ, to embrace our freedom from the burden of the law. He wants us to embrace the freedom that comes from God Himself.
Col 2:16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
Sermon Focus…
There are two ways that Paul wants us to take action when it comes to legalism but neither one of them call on us to really do anything. Instead, he wants us to make sure that we don’t let someone else do something to us. And the first thing he says is, “Don’t let anyone pass judgement on you.”
I. Let no one pass judgment on you (Vv. 16-17)
Col 2:16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
Our passage this morning is linked to what we studied last week by the term therefore. Last week we learned that Jesus and His gospel are better than OT religious rituals because those rituals were powerless to save us from our sin, but where they failed Jesus succeeded. The OT rituals were incomplete symbols that pointed to the deep spiritual need of our hearts. Jesus came to complete those symbols and meet the deep need of our hearts. He came to fulfill what the OT rituals were pointing us to. And now, because of Christ’s victory, we are free from the guilt, penalty, and burden of the law.
Jesus gives us true circumcision of the heart, He gives us true spiritual life, He accomplished complete forgiveness for all our sins, and He has triumphed over every authority to make us free. And Paul starts the very next verse with the word, Therefore. Because all of this is true for the believer there is no reason for us to allow someone to pass judgment on us in regard to the fact that we don’t follow the law of Moses.
If you are a believer in Christ, then you need to understand that the law of God has been fulfilled not by us but for us. Jesus kept the law perfectly, He earned the perfect righteousness that God requires and by faith, we receive His righteousness.
Rom 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified (declared righteous) in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law… 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
That is why we sing the song, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.” The Apostle Paul wants us to understand how amazing God’s grace truly is and as a result, he wants us to be free from the judgment of others. He says, “Let no one rule over you. or oppress you, or become your judge with regard to these things.”
But what do I mean by these things?
We can break these down into two categories; food and drink, and the observance of special religious days. Both categories were instrumental in the life of the Jews and served to set them apart from their pagan neighbors. These things were part of their identity and identity markers aren’t easily set aside. To make matters more intense we need to remember that God commanded the observance of these dietary laws and special religious days as part of the Old Covenant.
So the questions we need to ask are, “What exactly are these false teachers trying to impose? And how has the gospel changed our views on these things?”
What are they trying to impose? The phrase food and drink is most likely referring to the dietary laws of the Old Testament (Lev 11) and certain restrictions on wine that were common in 1st century Judaism. I say most likely because the truth is we don’t know. Paul doesn’t tell us what specific food or drink is being prohibited here.
It could be the same type of thing that was taking place in Romans 14 where the issue is meat and wine that was commonly used in pagan rituals. Or it could be that a group of Jews are trying to force these Gentile believers to follow the dietary laws in Leviticus (Moses).
But either way, we need to know that God has spoken to this issue and has declared all foods to be clean.
Last week we talked about Peter’s vision in Acts 10. In this vision, God showed him a collection of animals that were declared unclean in Leviticus, but God told Peter to “rise, kill and eat.” Peter wasn’t comfortable with this but God kept giving him this vision until he realized that in some way Jesus death, burial, and resurrection had brought an end to these dietary restrictions. What once served to mark God’s people as distinct from the rest of the world was no longer the mark of God’s new covenant people. In Christ, we are free from the burden of the OT dietary laws.
The OT dietary laws were meant to distinguish God’s people from the other nations. They were meant to communicate that God’s people were those who followed God’s Word. It’s not that eating shellfish is necessarily sinful, but that God’s people were to follow His instruction, His Word.
But now, in this gospel age, the invitation to become the people of God is extended not just to one nation but to all and the distinguishing mark of the New Covenant people is that we follow the Word of Christ. And the Word of Christ is one of freedom and rest. We are free from the burden of the law and able to rest secure in the gospel of Jesus.
It’s not that Christianity wants nothing to do with Judaism, but rather it’s that Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. Those OT dietary laws were a shadow; Christ is the substance.
The second issue has to do with the observance of special religious days (festivals, new moons, and the Sabbath). The Jews observed quite a few festivals including Passover, the Feast of Firstfruits, the feast of Weeks and the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement (Lev 23). New moons were celebrated at the first of the month and involved making sacrifices as a sin offering (Numbers 28:11-14). The Sabbath day was a weekly day of rest that also included a holy convocation or gathering for worship (Lev 23:3).
All of these elements were part of the Old Covenant Jewish religious life. The festivals were important in that they reminded the people of how God saved them, protected them and brought them into the Promised Land. The new moon sacrifices served as regular reminders of the people’s sin and need of forgiveness. The Sabbath taught that God wanted His people to rest from their works and rely completely on Him to meet their needs. All of these things were vitally important in the religious life and to the theological understanding of the Jews, but all of these things were mere shadows of what was to come.
17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
That’s what Paul says here. He says these things are “merely a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” Now what does this mean?
(Illus…Imagine that you are standing in the middle of the desert in the heat of the day and you have to shield your eyes from the intensity of the sun. Even with your hand up to shield your eyes you find it difficult to focus on anything. You can only get small momentary glimpses of your surroundings as you blink due to the intensity of the sun.
But finally you spot an image on the ground nearby. It is indistinct but it is clearly a shadow. You begin to move toward it and the closer you get the more distinct the outline becomes. You can’t dare look up at the at the solid object casting the shadow because the sun is simply too powerful, but as you move close and blink your eyes the object begins to take shape in your mind.
Then finally the object steps into the sun’s path and shields the intensity from your eyes. You look up and your eyes begin to adjust and what you see standing before you is a man.
This is what life has been like for the Jews. Their entire religious existence has been occupied by getting glimpses of the shadow but now Jesus Christ has come and He is the one who has been casting that shadow all along.
In other words, Jesus is the point and the fulfillment of all the Old Covenant law and our standing with God is not determined by our adherence to that law but by our faith in Christ. Don’t put your hope in the shadow to save you, put your hope in the man Himself. Let your heart and mind rest secure in the fact that Jesus alone saves you and reconciles you to God.
II. Let no one disqualify you (Vv. 18-19)
18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
First, it was don’t let anyone judge you but here the command is don’t let anyone disqualify you. Don’t let false teachers condemn you or rob you of your prize. Your salvation is secure because of Jesus so don’t allow these men to steal away your hope and freedom in Christ.
This time the problem is not related to Old Covenant laws but rather to certain spiritual experiences. These false teachers are insisting that in order to be fully integrated into the Kingdom of God you and I must practice asceticism or in some translations humility. I think the NIV gets this one right when it translates it as false humility and it may be best understood in its connection to the next phrase and the worship of angels.
It seems that the false teachers were employing these ascetic practices as a way to induce heavenly visions. It may even be the case that they were insisting that by fasting from certain food and drink that they could stimulate the experience of visions and because of this they were boasting (puffed up) of their unique spirituality.
But what does Paul say about all of this? He says the problem is that you have lost sight of what matters most…Jesus. He accuses them of “not holding fast to the head.” Spiritual experiences are not the goal, Christ is. If your spiritual experience is more important to you than the gospel, more important than the salvation that Christ has accomplished for you, then your experience hasn’t elevated your spirituality but diminished it.
Christ is the head, supplying life and growth to the whole body. Growth in the Kingdom of God comes from keeping our focus on Jesus, from understanding his function as the fulfiller of the law on our behalf. Spiritual maturity comes when we embrace the cross of Christ as the standard of our freedom and we embrace Jesus and His Word as the fountain of all spiritual life.
The true test of whether or not one belongs to God’s people is neither the observance of dietary laws and Jewish festivals, nor the cultivation of super-spiritual experiences, but whether one belongs to Christ and is alive with His life. [2]
So why does all of this matter? The bottom line is that a group of people have come into the church and they are seeking to impose their convictions about food and drink, about certain religious days and about spiritual experiences upon these new believers. They are saying, “If you don’t follow these laws and do these things then you can’t truly consider yourself part of the covenant community of God’s people.”
And Paul is saying to the church, “Don’t let them come in here and bind your conscience with their convictions. You put your trust in Christ alone. Christ has set you free from the burden of the law and He calls you to follow His Word alone and to live for His glory alone.”
III. Live in the freedom Christ has purchased for you
I’ve been serving as the pastor of Cornerstone for more than 7 years now and I have never had to address someone trying to force circumcision on the church. I have never felt the need to actively defend the church against 1st-century Jewish legalism, but that does not mean that we are free from all types of legalism. Unfortunately, there are still those who seek to bind the conscience of Christians and you may not even realize it.
This type of legalistic judgment and disqualifying is still going on in the church. We have people in our lives who hold really strong convictions about things such as politics, education, entertainment, alcohol, etc. They hold these convictions so passionately that they become evangelists for their position and directly or indirectly begin to demand that others fall in line with their way of thinking.
You hear it in statements like this, “I don’t see how someone could hold that view, do that, say such things and be a Christian.” Now, when we do this we are making a judgment call on someone’s salvation based on what they do or don’t do. And in those moments we need to remember that our political views aren’t the measure of our salvation. Our views on education aren’t either. Our right-standing with God is determined by our faith in Christ. Yes, our faith will guide our thinking and our actions, but just because someone holds a different view than yourself doesn’t mean that you’re right and they’re wrong. Nor does it mean that they don’t love Jesus.
And let’s be careful that we don’t sit back and think that this is only a problem for them, this is a problem for us as well. We do this too. We hold our convictions so strongly that we often leave little room for others to hold a different position. It is right for us to study, it is right for us to think deeply and develop convictions on certain subjects that the Bible doesn’t clearly address. But when we take our convictions and impose them on others that’s when we’ve become part of the problem.
Conclusion…
Ray Ortlund posted an article this week about the one another commands that we don’t see in Scripture but that we do often see in the church.
The beautiful “one another” commands of the New Testament are famous. But it is also striking to notice the “one anothers” that do not appear there.
For example, sanctify one another, humble one another, scrutinize one another, pressure one another, embarrass one another, corner one another, interrupt one another, defeat one another, sacrifice one another, shame one another, marginalize one another, exclude one another, judge one another, run one another’s lives, confess one another’s sins . . .
The kind of God we really believe in is revealed in how we treat one another. The lovely gospel of Jesus positions us to treat one another like royalty, and every non-gospel positions us to treat one another like dirt.
Our relationships with one another reveal to us what we really believe as opposed to what we think we believe, our convictions as opposed to our opinions. It is possible for the gospel to remain at the shallow level of opinion, even sincere opinion, without penetrating to the deeper level of conviction. But when the gospel grips us down in our convictions, we embrace its implications wholeheartedly. Therefore, when we mistreat one another, our problem is not a lack of surface niceness but a lack of gospel depth. What we need is not only better manners but, far more, true faith.
If this gets a hold of our church, then the watching world might start feeling that Jesus himself has come to town:
Where the Scriptures are clear let us all hold fast to the Word of Christ but when it comes to our personal convictions let’s not be those who pass judgment on others who don’t think the same way we do. Let’s not be those who disqualify others who don’t do the same things we do. Let’s allow Christ to be the Lord of their Conscience and learn to love one another as Jesus has loved us.
Let’s be those who champion the glorious truth that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone and for God’s glory alone. Let’s also be those who strive to let that glorious gospel bear its fruit in the way we love another.
[1]The War is Over . . . Please Come Out By Jennifer Rosenberg,
[2] N. T. Wright Colossians and Philemon (TDNT) pgs. 128-29.
Remain in Christ
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In January of 1999 my whole world was new. It was a new year and the new Spring semester had just gotten underway. I changed my major a few months before, which meant that I was in a new building with new classmates, new professors, and new subject matter. But this fresh start was about more than just the surroundings and the curriculum.
In the fall of 1998, over the Christmas break a friend shared the gospel with me and I was born again. I hadn’t been to church in years and my life was filled with sin and addiction but Christ had made me new. I was still learning what it meant to repent and trust in Christ. I was just beginning to learn the Bible and the doctrines of the faith. I was young and weak but I was alive for the first time.
I walked into class that first day back and I saw an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. We had grown up together, played sports together and gone to church together when we were little but hadn’t seen one another for years. I sat beside him and we began to catch up and I couldn’t wait to share with him that I had recently become a believer. To my surprise he shared a similar story.
For the next few weeks we spent quite a lot of time together and much of that time was spent talking about the Bible. He had a lot to share and I was eager to learn. He was convincing, he was articulate, he was polished in his thinking and looking back on it I can tell that he had been trained by the leaders of his church, but I had not.
My doctrine at the time consisted of the fact that I was a sinner and Jesus was my Savior. I didn’t understand the details of how that happened and while my knowledge of the Bible was growing I was still very much a baby in the faith. I couldn’t pick out truth from error and my interaction with this friend exploited this weakness in me.
He was teaching me that in order to truly be saved I needed to be baptized by the right person, in the right place and only then could I truly be sure I was a Christian. He took me to a few passages of Scripture, which all seemed to prove his point. His argument seemed plausible and in the end I believed him. I followed his line of thinking. I embraced what he was teaching me and because he had given me the key to unlock the confusion that I had on the issue…I began to share it with others.
I shared it with my friend but he didn’t buy it. I shared it with my girlfriend and she too was skeptical. Then I shared it with my dad and he promptly sat me down, opened his Bible and pointed out step by step why my friend was wrong.
I didn’t realize it at the time but this young man had caused me to shift from putting all of my hope in Christ to putting my hope in my own works. He had convinced me that my salvation was a Jesus + works equation and when my father pointed out my error, I was pretty devastated. My friend meant well and there is no doubt that he believed his doctrine was right, but in the end he was leading me away from Christ alone as the hope for my salvation.
Transition…
I hope it’s not the case but I know that some of you have found yourselves in a similar situation. You know what it’s like to have someone lead you to embrace false teaching. The same thing was happening to the Colossian church and that is the major reason why Paul wrote this letter. Let’s look at what he says to the church…
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
Sermon Focus…
Here in these verses Paul gives us instruction on how we are to remain faithful to Christ when facing false teaching.
I. Remember the Gospel (V. 6)
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,
Verses 6 & 7 are known as the heart of Paul’s argument in this entire letter. The church is being tempted to abandon their confidence in Christ alone and Paul is urging them to remain centered upon Jesus. He is saying, “Remember when and why you received Jesus, hold on to that and let it guide your life from this point forward.”
I love the pattern we see in these verses because they help us make sure that we understand the role of faith and obedience in the Christian life. Faith comes first and our obedience is the result.
Notice what Paul says here, “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord…” In order to become a Christian and rest in the forgiveness of sins and the hope of everlasting life all that is required is for us to come to Christ by faith, to receive his precious gift. There is no work we must do in order to be saved.
“It is by grace that you have been saved, through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, and not a result of works…Eph 2:8-9”
These folks became Christians when they received Christ Jesus as Lord. They heard about Him; who He was and what He had done. They heard about their sin and God’s coming judgment. They heard about Jesus who died on the cross and then rose from the dead to save them. And these men and women believed. They put all their hope in Jesus to save them and bring them to God and Paul wants them to think back and remember when this happened.
Essentially, Paul is saying that the starting point for our Christians life and to overcoming false doctrine is the same; to remember the gospel. Remember that you are a sinner and Christ is a great savior. Remember that there is nothing that you can add to Christ’s work. There is nothing that you and I can do to make up for our sin. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves except to put our hope in the One who died to do it all for us.
Paul is saying remember this and let it be the fuel for tomorrow. Our hope for tomorrow does not shift away from the gospel to something else. There is no hope of being saved from God’s judgment outside of Christ. We didn’t add anything to Christ’s works on the front end, so don’t allow someone to cause you to try to add anything to Christ on the back end.
Our faith begins with the gospel, it is carried along by the gospel and its future is supplied by the gospel. There is no Christianity 2.0. One biblical illustration of a church turning away and not holding onto the gospel is the church at Galatia who started out on the right foot of faith in Christ and then somewhere along the line they were taught that Christ was not enough. And Paul warned them that to deviate from a hope in Christ alone was to “fall from grace.”
Our battle against false doctrine begins by remembering the gospel and we must do this daily. We do this by preaching the gospel to ourselves. We have to understand and remember that our relationship to God is not based on what we do it is based on what He has done. My right standing with God is the result of His grace not my works and if we can remember this we are one step closer to being equipped to battle the false teaching that would have us add our works to God’s grace as the means of our salvation.
II. Walk in the Gospel (V. 6)
This central confession of Christ Jesus as Lord is the foundation that helps to ward off the false teaching and guide our conduct in life. Obedience to Christ doesn’t save us but it is a fruit that is born out of our salvation. IOW, we don’t walk in Him in order to receive Him as Lord, but because we have received Him as Lord we walk in Him.
This term walk it refers to the way we live. It refers to our way of life and Paul is saying “let your conduct be fueled by and animated by Jesus and not some other religious belief or philosophy.” As Christians, we are to let Christ and no other, established our values, our thinking, and our conduct.
So let me ask you a couple of questions that I think we should ask ourselves regularly as followers of Christ: What in your life is distinctly Christian? Is your home life distinctly Christian? Is there anything about the way you spend your time, money, etc. that uniquely shows that you love Jesus and are committed to his Word? Is your way of life, are your daily decisions being fueled by your love for Christ and His teaching or are these things being shaped by the culture and what feels good in the moment?
It’s not enough for us to remember what we believed, we are also to let our faith guide our lives. It’s incredibly easy for us to allow our lives and our thinking to be shaped by tradition, by the way we were raised, or by the flow of culture. But as Christians, we have to fight against this impulse and let the gospel and teaching of Christ guide us.
As we preach the gospel to ourselves and let it guide our behavior the result is that we will be…
7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Here Paul gives us four images that help to elaborate on how Jesus and His teaching are to affect our lives. The first thing he says is that we are to rooted in Christ. Like a tree we are to be planted in the gospel and let our roots run deep. Second, he says we are to be built up in him and this is a construction metaphor. Christ is the foundation and our lives are to be built upon Him and nothing else.
Third, Paul wants us to be established in the faith, solidly grounded, and not shifting from our faith in Jesus. And finally, he says that if we remain rooted in Christ, built up in Him and established in the faith, we will overflow with thanksgiving. In other words, this is not a loose connection. Paul is painting a picture of discipleship that is firmly fixed on Christ alone and producing the fruit of thanksgiving to Christ.
What we are being called to here is to let Christ and the gospel determine both our identity and our conduct.
Let me try to illustrate what I mean by this. How many of you had to deal with cliques when you were in school? When we were little we are all friends and we all played together but when I started junior high I found myself for the first time trying to understand which group I fit into. You had the really smart kids in school, the really athletic kids in school, the cheerleaders, the band kids and then another group of troubled kids. And each group had these unwritten rules that you had to obey if you were to be part of their group. If you identified with the group, then you were expected to act a certain way. Your identity fueled your actions.
Athletes dated cheerleaders and cheerleaders dated athletes. Smart kids dated band kids and vice versa. Every now and then a cheerleader would go out with one of the rebels but there was a lot of pressure for her to come to her senses. The whole system was propped up by shows like Saved by the Bell and movies like Can’t Buy Me Love.
But we all got caught up in the system and we followed social expectations. Our identity within these groups determined our actions. But then as we grew up and matured a little bit we realized how silly some of this was and we began to establish our own identity based on what we believed, what we liked, what we wanted and our lives began to change, because our life was now being shaped by our new identity.
As Christians we have a new identity that is rooted in Christ and the Scriptures. And we need to grow in both. We need to grow in our trust in Jesus and our knowledge of His Word. Then as we grow we are better equipped to identify thoughts and behaviors that don’t match up with the Scriptures or the gospel.
And this leads us to the third point which is…
III. Be Captivated by Christ Alone (V. 8-10)
8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
So how are we supposed to identify philosophies and traditions that would lead us away from Jesus? First, Paul says to examine their origin to see whether they are from Christ and the Word or if they come from human tradition. Is it from God or man?
This was a major part of Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees. They would come to Him with a question designed to trap Him but He would end up flipping it and showing them how they had actually abandoned the teaching of the Bible and put their trust in their own man made traditions. In one exchange the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples follow the traditions of the Elders and wash their hands before they eat?” Jesus replied, “Why do you abandon the commandments of God in order to follow your man-made traditions?”
Another one of these exchanges took place in Matthew 19:1-8, where the Pharisees posed a question about whether or not it was lawful, consistent with the law of Moses, for a man to divorce his wife for any cause.
The backstory on this verse is that there was a provision in the law of Moses that allowed for a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce in certain cases of infidelity or idolatry. But over the years, rabbis had added their own opinion to this law. They had given husbands the ability to divorce their wives for something as trivial as failing to properly cook dinner.
And Jesus knows all of this. He knows that these men have added their own human interpretation to God’s Word and have authorized the practice of things that were sinful in the eyes of God, and that these authorized practices had become normative in that day. So what does Jesus do? He goes back to the beginning and confronts them, not with the law of Moses, but with the decree of God in Genesis 2.
Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
So Jesus is not going to play their game nor is He going to allow them to twist God’s Word. He says, “In the beginning God established and decreed that the only context for human sexuality is that which takes place between a male husband and a female wife who have been joined together in the eyes of God and having been joined together it is God’s purpose that they remain that way.”
What is Jesus doing in this reply? Well, He is confronting the Pharisees for corrupting the Word of God and promoting false teaching. He doesn’t accept their teaching nor their tradition, but rather He points them back to the very beginning and to God’s Word. Jesus understands that they have an opinion on this matter, but He shows them how their opinion doesn’t match up with God’s decree.
So how does this happen today? Let’s stick with the issue of human sexuality and marriage. If you do a search online for “what does the Bible say about sex before marriage?” you will find articles, blog posts, videos and books that will tell you whatever you want to hear. You can find articles that support sex before marriage and articles that oppose it and depending on what you want to believe; you can adopt the view that suits you.
But the problem is that Jesus is the one who determines whether something is sinful or not. So that blog post you read may have given you the green light on something but that guy ain’t Jesus. And when Jesus quotes Gen 2:24 He is making it clear that nothing has changed in God’s design for marriage and sexuality. If you engage in sex before marriage you are sinning against God, it doesn’t matter what blog post you read. When we do this we are allowing human tradition and worldly philosophy to masquerade as spiritual teaching and we are being taken captive by it rather than by Christ and His Word.
So why does this happen? Sometimes it’s a matter of confusion. Sometimes it’s a matter of immaturity. Sometimes it’s a matter of rebellion, but in each case we are allowing human tradition to take us captive and Paul says, “Don’t allow that to happen.” He even goes a little further here and says that when we do adopt human tradition and philosophy over the teaching of Christ we are begin led astray by something that is “empty and deceitful.”
What this means is that this teaching doesn’t add to your knowledge of God it actually takes away…it is empty. But even worse is the fact that it doesn’t lead you into truth and freedom, rather it deceives you. It’s a fraud and there is no value in it no matter how religious and plausible it may sound.
What does Paul mean when he says this false teaching is according to the “elemental spirits of the world?” Some take this to refer to the teaching as being elementary and infantile. In that case the “elemental spirits” would be referring to elemental truths and not the deep things of God. But there is another view that interprets this to refer to teaching that is promoted by spiritual forces of darkness in the heavenly realms.
This second interpretation is how the ESV translates the phrase. And this fits with the overall context of this letter. In Col 1:16 Paul shows us that Jesus created and rules over all
things including, “thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities.” In Col 2:15 he refers to these rulers and authorities once again. In Col 2:18 Paul references the worship of Angels and it appears that each of these references opens the door for us to understand that one of the elements of the false teaching in Colossians had to do with focus on spiritual beings.
Whatever the precise meaning of this phrase, the point that Paul wants to make is that this teaching is “not according to Christ.” Whatever is being said is not consistent with nor is it dependent upon the teaching of Jesus. Therefore, it is not true. It might sound reasonable and it may make you feel better about your sin but it cannot save your soul.
But the Word of Christ can be trusted because…
9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
What does this mean? It means that it makes no sense for us to seek out the wisdom of men and human tradition when we have the eternal Son of God to lean on for understanding. It makes no sense for us to pay heed to instruction that comes from spiritual beings when God in the flesh has given us His Word once and for all.
Hebrews 1:1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
In these last days God has spoken to us in His Son and there is no way that any created being can “add to” Christ. His Word is definitive.
Conclusion…
The point that Paul is making is that there is no way to improve upon the gospel. There is no divine mystery that needs to be revealed. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh and He has not only died for our salvation, but has also opened the door for us to enter into fellowship with Him and His father. The greatest gift that God could ever give us is Himself and that is what He has given to all those who trust in Him.
And we have been filled in Him! There is nothing else that we need to save us and satisfy our souls for eternity except what we already have in Jesus.
The first steps in our battle against false teaching is to:
1. Remember the Gospel
2. Walk in the Gospel
3. Be Captivated By Christ Alone.
Our Division Destroyed
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I want us to think for a few minutes about the divisions that we experience in our lives, our families, our culture and our world. When I mention division I’m talking about the differences that divide us from other people. Some of those divisions are simple ones, like which college football team you root for (Aggies, Longhorns, Red Raiders, Bears, or Horned Frogs). Some of those divisions are more personal, like your convictions on education (homeschool, private school, public school). Some of those divisions are more serious, like political philosophy, ethical positions or theological heritage.
Then some of our divisions rise to the point of being eternally serious, such as our religious beliefs and worldviews. You probably have neighbors and friends who don’t practice any faith, some who are atheists, some who are Christian but from a different denominational heritage, then others who are Muslim, Mormon, or Jewish.
These are all very real divisions that we deal with on a regular basis. Some of these cause us more stress than others. And yet, all of them pale in comparison to the division that matters the most, which is the division between a holy God and sinful man.
Over the last few weeks we have been looking at Jesus. We have seen this glorious picture of His eternality, His authority, His power, and His preeminence. Jesus’ glory fills the entire stage of Colossians 1 and what it does is to cast this huge shadow upon us.
Jesus beauty and glory is staggering but the thing that stands out for us is just how unlike Jesus we are. He is holy and we are not. He is totally righteous and we are totally corrupted by sin; and this helps us to see the division that exists between God and man.
Transition...
In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus talks about the division between Heaven and Earth as being this great immovable chasm. Because God is holy and we are sinful there is an unbridgeable space between us and it is the greatest division that we will ever experience; but Jesus Christ has come to destroy this division.
Listen to Paul talk about it...
Col 1:21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Sermon Focus...
My purpose in preaching this morning is to show how Jesus has destroyed the division that exists between God and followers of Christ. In order to fully grasp what Christ has done we are going to look at our past, our present and our future and then we will finish things up with the encouragement to stay grounded in the faith.
Let’s look first at our past...
I. What Once Was (V. 21)
The Contrast of Once and Now (Vv. 21-22)
Col 1:21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled...
In this new section of Colossians, we see Paul put into use one of his favorite literary devices when he contrasts what we “once” were and what we are “now.” This should be one of our favorite literary devices as well. But that depends on how well we know our sin and how much we long for forgiveness.
And it depends on whether or not you have turned from your sin to trust in Christ. For many of us here this morning we can say that this is a description of what we once were, but for some I want you to understand that this is a description of what you still are.
As we come to understand our spiritual condition according to the Bible we are confronted with the fact that we are not just separated from God but we are sinners who deserve God’s wrath. As a culture we tend to avoid talking about the wrath of God, but if you read your Bible faithfully you can’t avoid it. God’s wrath is an extension of His justice and since we have rebelled and broken God’s law we deserve His just wrath.
Now, I believe that when we have a right understanding of our sin it is going to cause us to long for forgiveness, to long for salvation, to long to be made right with God. We are going to long for our status to change. Like the prodigal son when he finally recognized how desperate and dreadful he was, he wanted nothing more than to be reunited with his father, even if only as a servant.
When we see just how broken our lives are we want the kind of change that only the gospel can bring. So the question we need to ask is, “How desperate is our situation? Just how broken are we?”
Here in Colossians, God’s Word tells us that our identity apart from Christ is that we are alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. Let’s break this down a little bit.
To be alienated from someone means to be separated or isolated from them. We were separated from God when He exiled us from the Garden and now we are strangers to Him. Apart from Christ we have no fellowship with God, no relationship with God, no communion with God.
One NT parallel is Ephesians 4:18 where it talks about being alienated/separated from the life of God because of our sinful ignorance. As unbelievers, we were not only separated from relationship with God but were separated from the very life of God.
We thought we were wise and we were confident that we had something to offer the world, but we were living like pagans in a pagan world with nothing to look forward to but death and judgment. In our minds there was hostility toward God.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you were angry with God, like many atheists are today, but rather it means that the things that you think of as good are actually the opposite of what God declares to be good. One of the clearest ways that our hostility toward God can be seen is that we, apart from Christ, love what God most hates and we hate what God most loves.
When we were separated from God the things of God were cold, dull and boring to us. But the passions of the flesh were exciting and we put all our energy into them.
We were enemies of God in our hearts, minds and behavior. Another NT passage that parallels what we see here in Colossians 1 is what we read in Romans 1:21-32.
Rom 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God...
Our hearts were corrupted by sin. Our minds were bent toward sinful ideas and our lives followed along. This is the spiritual status of everyone apart from faith in Christ.
You might say, but wait aren’t there good people who do good things who aren’t Christians? Well first of all that depends on how you define the term good. Within the scope of God’s common grace there are people who do good things. They care for their families, help others, perform services that strengthen and stabilize society; but every single one of those acts falls short of the type of good that would change one’s status with God.
The law of God makes two things abundantly clear to us: 1. We aren’t’ as sinful as we could be and 2. We are far more sinful than we care to admit. And the bottom line is that even though we aren’t as sinful as we could be, we are still sinful and that sin separates us from God and demands divine justice. The wages of sin is death...and that’s the bad news. But that is not where Paul ends.
II. What Now Is (Vv. 22)
V. 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and
blameless and above reproach before him
I can think of no greater comfort to someone who has come to understand the weight of their sin than for them to hear that because of what Christ has done they are now reconciled to God. The separation was our fault. The judgment was what we deserved. But Jesus kept the law perfectly and then gave His life in order to save us from sin.
And now, by faith in what Christ has done I am reunited to God. The sin that I committed in my youth is no longer held against me. That lifestyle that you once followed is no longer admissible in God’s law court. The past memories that haunt you are paid for, washed away, forgiven.
Apart from Christ we were enemies of God but now by faith in Christ we are children of God, invited to sit at our Father’s knee, to pull up a seat at His table, and to enjoy the closest fellowship we can imagine.
Do you think I’m over stating this? Should we really think of ourselves as that close to God simply because we trust in Jesus? Look back up at the beginning of verse 21 and notice how Paul begins this section with the two words, “And You.”
And You...just so we stay connected to the surrounding context of this passage we need to understand that Paul views “us” as a subset of “all things.” You can and should follow the progression that started with Christ being supreme over all creation, then moved to Christ being supreme over all authorities, last week we saw that Christ is supreme over redemption and here we see that Christ is supreme over us.
The focus of God’s redemptive work is not simply to restore creation to its former glory and it’s not just to bring peace into the animal kingdom. The culmination of all that God has done through Jesus is that we are now brought into intimate fellowship with our God, whom we call Abba.
I think this is one of Paul’s favorite things to teach. He wants us to relive our conversion and be moved to deep emotion and worship because we grasp again what it means to be saved. We were lost but now we’re found, we were blind but now we see, amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
For all those who believe, Christ has fully reconciled us to God. By His death on the cross, Jesus bridged the gap between heaven and earth, He spanned the chasm between us and God. He has transformed our status, which means that we are no longer separated, hostile strangers, but are now newly adopted sons and daughters, who love and worship our redeemer God.
God shows us our past sins, He covers them to reconcile us in the present and He also promises to work in us in the future.
III. What is to Come (V. 22)
V. 22...in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him
Here Paul tells us the ultimate end of our reconciliation. Christ’s ultimate goal is to not only bring us back into fellowship with the Father but to present us to God. This word carries the idea of a formal presentation, like a wedding, when we will be led down the aisle to stand before God. And when we get there this is what we will be; holy, blameless and above reproach.
Let’s look into what these words mean and think about how this is going to be accomplished.
Holy (hagios) carries the meaning of being separated from sin and set apart to God. We see this
same language in Ephesians 1:4...
He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless
before him.
Now are we singularly responsible for making ourselves holy before God? Not according to the text here. This verse indicates that Christ is the one ultimately responsible to present us holy before God. He works this holiness in us both practically, through our grace-wrought obedience and positionally, through His own imputed righteousness.
Here is what I mean, we will not stand before God on our own and present ourselves as Holy but rather when Christ presents us He will covers us with His own holiness. His holiness is imputed to us, credited to our account, so that on the day we stand before God, God will not see our righteous deeds but will see the prefect righteousness of Jesus in us.
Christ will bring us to God and when He does we will stand before Him in the perfect holiness of Jesus. God’s purpose was to create a holy people and when the day comes that we are called to stand before God, Jesus will put upon us the robe of His holiness and present us to His Father.
Blameless means without blemish which reminds us of temple sacrifices. The lamb of the sacrifice had to be without blemish otherwise God would not accept it. When we stand before the Judge at the end of the world we too will be presented as spotless, blameless, with defect or blemish.
Above Reproach which means free from accusation. No charge will stand up to the scrutiny of our redemption. Christ’s work is absolutely perfect. It lacks nothing and accomplishes full atonement, full acquittal, full justification before God’s judgment seat.
On the day when we are called to stand before God, our purification from sin will be complete. In fact, according to the NT God sees us now as we will be then.
Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified...all in the past tense. In God’s eyes our salvation is complete. Christ has given us everything we need to stand before God and to be welcomed by Him into everlasting joy.
This is amazing! From hostile enemy exiles to humble loving children; this is what Jesus has done for us. This is the hope of the gospel; this is the power of Christ’s cross. All our sin cleansed away, all our separation removed, all of our future secure. Why would anyone turn away from this?
That’s Paul’s concern. His concern is that through false teaching or a lack in our understanding of the gospel that we might abandon this faith. So here in verse 23 he urges us to make sure that we remain firmly planted in our trust in Christ.
IV. Stay Grounded in the Faith (Vv. 23)
23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Christ calls us to persevere in the faith. To remain faithful till the end, not shifting from the hope of salvation and eternal life that we heard in the gospel. He has called us to His side and given us every reason to trust Him, and here in this verse He is saying to us, “Keep trusting Me. Keep following Me. I will not abandon you, I will not let you down, so don’t stop trusting in Me.”
When you are in a relationship with someone, especially a marriage relationship, there are ups and downs. There are days, weeks, months when things are great and there is joy and intimacy in the relationship; but there are also seasons when things get difficult. You are still married but you don’t feel the same security and confidence that you feel at those other times. And when this occurs it is often because we have stopped doing the little things.
We don’t say I love you. We don’t hug in the kitchen as much. We don’t flirt anymore. We don’t serve each other. We don’t sit and talk the way we used to and unless something changes the heart begins to wander. What has happened is that, in a sense, we have lost our first love. We have let things get in the way of our love for our spouse. We have let things get in the way of serving our spouse, flirting with our spouse, and making them feel secure in our love and in our relationship.
There are few things more painful than a lack of security in our relationships. But when that happens we have to ask how did it get this way and often times we will find that we simply stopped doing the little things. We didn’t stop being married, but we stopped being faithful to love our spouse the way we should. We stopped doing the things that fostered joy, intimacy and security.
So what does this have to do with Colossians 1? Paul is urging us to keep doing the little things so that we don’t look up one day and realize that our hope has shifted. He is urging us to stay grounded in Christ and stay faithful to love Him, to trust Him, to submit to Him, to learn from Him, to grow in Him.
As Christians, we have put all of our hope in Christ to save us, we don’t hedge our bets with other remedies. We build our house upon the rock of Jesus Christ and we don’t seek any other foundation. We stay grounded, we stay faithful.
This doesn’t mean that we never struggle, or never have doubts. But when doubts come or when sin gets the better of us we don’t run from Christ, we run to Him. Friends, the gospel is powerful enough to save us and it is powerful enough to sanctify us. The grace of God is the foundation of our salvation and it is the motivation for why we remain faithful.
When we stumble in sin we have to remember the gospel and cling to Christ once again. One of the marks of true saving faith is perseverance in believing and that is what we are being called to here in Colossians 1. To persevere in faith and faithfulness (obedience) to Christ and His grace.
Grace doesn’t lead us to ignore sin or to continue sinning, it motivates us to love God and to pursue a life of faith and obedience. Our active faith in Christ and active obedience to Christ are spiritual fruits that bear witness to our salvation. They are not the cause of our salvation but they are indications that we have been born again.
John 15:8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
Conclusion...
So in this passage, Paul wants us to learn 4 things. He wants us to understand the state of our souls before we came to Christ. He wants us to understand that because we now trust in Christ we have been united to God. He wants us to know that our future is incredibly bright because Jesus will present us to the Father and will supply everything we need on that day. He also wants us to stay faithful, to stay grounded in the gospel and not lose or abandon our love for Jesus.
One of the ways that we stay grounded in our faith is that we sing the praises of the One who saved us. So as I close in prayer let’s prepare our hearts to worship Christ and fix the hope of our hearts on Him again.
