"Full in Christ" Colossians 2:6-15 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning, let's continue to worship the Lord by reading from His Word and studying His Word together.

Colossians and chapter 2, verses 6 through 15 is our text for this morning.

So let me begin our time by reading from the Word of God.

Let's read our text, beginning in Colossians chapter 2 and verse 6.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

Follow with me as I read from the Word of God.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

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.

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

In him you also were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

He disarmed the rulers and authorities, and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Masada.

Masada was an ancient fortress perched upon a high plateau on a mountain in the Judean desert outside of Jerusalem.

And after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70, a group of rebel Jews fled from the city to the fortress of Masada, and there they continued in opposition to the Roman overthrow for two years until the Roman army, having finished up in the city, marched through the desert to overthrow the last vestiges of the remnant hiding out in the fortress of Masada.

The Roman army began to build a siege ramp up the mountain in order to attack the fortress.

And the Jews hiding in the fortress, seeing what the Romans were doing and lacking really proper military equipment to respond, began to throw rocks and anything that they could acquire down upon the heads of the Romans who were working to build this ramp.

The Romans then responded by withdrawing their own troops and forcing Jewish slaves captured in Jerusalem to continue the work of building the ramp.

And the Jews in the fortress, seeing their own people building the ramp and refusing to attack their own people, ceased any opposition, even though they knew that in so doing the Romans would be able to complete the ramp and make it up to the fortress, and make it they did.

The Romans completed the ramp, brought a battering ram up the mountain, bashed in the doors of the fortress, entered and found nine hundred and sixty dead bodies.

Because the Jews in the fortress of Masada determined that it would be better to take their own lives than to be taken captive by the Roman army.

Well, that's a cheerful story.

Why do I begin with that?

Because Paul is using that kind of wartime language in this passage.

Look at verse 8 in the text.

He says, See to it that no one takes you captive.

He's picking up that kind of wartime language and applying it to spiritual life.

And in so doing, he's compelling us to take our spiritual lives very seriously.

So we could begin this morning by just asking ourselves the question: Do we take our spiritual lives this seriously?

Do we recognize the reality that there are forces in the world that could take our souls captive?

Do we say to ourselves, honestly, it'd be better to be dead than to be taken spiritually captive?

Paul uses that language, you see, in verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive, compelling us to be vigilant and active in our spiritual lives.

It's so natural, it's the natural human course to let your life go on autopilot and just coast and let things happen to you.

But the scripture again and again compels us not to be passive people who let life happen to us, but to be active, to be vigilant, to seize hold of your life.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is taken by force.

So the scripture calls us to be active and vigilant in our spiritual life, to stand up and pay attention and take our lives very seriously.

So what are the dangers that would take us captive?

Well, they're not marauding armies.

Verse 8 says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy.

And in using the word philosophy, Paul's not being nearly as restrictive as we naturally are with the word philosophy.

To us, philosophy typically means some airheads in an ivory tower at a university.

But the word philosophy in the ancient world just meant any system of thought.

That is, just any way of answering life's big questions.

Why am I here?

How did I get here?

What is the point of life?

And Paul says there are philosophies in the world, there are many different competing answers to those questions, but many of them would, if you believe them, and if you begin your live your life influenced by them, they will take your souls captive.

So what specific philosophies pose the danger of taking you spiritually captive?

Look at what he says.

Any philosophy that's really just empty deceit, because it's according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

Any philosophy, any way of thinking and living that would diminish, detract from, or distract from Christ poses the danger of taking you spiritually captive.

And Paul in this text calls us to arms, calls us to spiritual arms to beware and vigilant that no influence in the world would take us away from Christ.

Now the specific dangers that were posed to the Colossians were really not dangers or pressures to renounce Christ, but to adapt Christ.

The Colossian environment wasn't calling the Colossians to stop saying they're Christians or stop worshiping Jesus, but it did pressure them into adapting their understanding of Jesus to the cultural Melu.

So adding some different spiritual practices or not pressing the gas so hard on the exclusivity of Christ.

We'll look at verses 16 and following next week, where Paul lays out some of the specific dangers posed to the Colossians that likewise really are dangers in our own society.

But the way he begins to train us to make sure no one takes us captive in this text is by focusing our attention on Jesus.

That's what he does in verse 6.

Look at verse 6.

He says, Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

That's the thesis statement, not just for this passage, but really for the whole book.

As you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him.

By holding fast to Jesus, as long as you are holding with two hands tight with all your might to Jesus, no one will be able to take you captive.

Notice the specific language he uses to refer to Jesus, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord.

To call Jesus Lord for Paul is just a shorthand way of summarizing everything that he says about him.

So far in our study of this letter to the Colossians, we've seen that Paul describes Jesus as the image of the invisible God, all that is in God, the fullness of deity is in Christ.

He's the creator of heaven and on earth, things visible and invisible, he's the preeminent one, he's the supreme one, he's the Lord of all.

So to call Jesus the Lord is just to summarize all that Jesus is.

And here Paul summarizes spiritual life by saying, What is spiritual life?

It's receiving Christ Jesus as Lord.

If you ask yourself the question, what does it mean for me to be a Christian?

Here's an answer to that question.

It means I received Jesus as Lord.

I received him as all that he is, which means that he's the Lord of all and he's the Lord of me.

What is Christian life then?

Paul says, Christian life is walking in accordance with the Lordship of Jesus.

It's believing the truth about Jesus, it's responding appropriately and love and worship and obedience to Jesus.

The whole of Christian life is to know Jesus more by walking in him.

And that little phrase at the end of verse 6, walk in him is so crucial.

Nine times in this passage, Paul uses that expression, in him, with him.

All of Christian life is defined by and influenced by the reality that a Christian is united to Jesus Christ in a real, spiritual, forever, eternal union.

To be a Christian is to be united to Jesus the Lord.

So characteristic of Christian life then is a growing understanding of who Jesus is, which produces a growing obedience to who Jesus is.

Then that dynamic, Paul then in verse seven fleshes out with three little metaphors to describe the dynamic reality of growing in Jesus.

Look at verse 7.

He calls us to be rooted, that is, as the roots have spirit have life, so we have our spiritual life in Christ.

And built up as a metaphor from a building, so we have our strength and our solidity in Jesus so that we're established in him, which speaks of perseverance and endurance.

You have your life, your strength, and will endure in life, and not be taken captive by any opposing philosophy so long as your life is characterized by walking in Christ, a growing awareness of all who Jesus the Lord is, and a growing obedience to all that Jesus is.

And when that characterizes your life, the end of verse 7 will happen.

Your life will be abounding in thanksgiving.

The word abounding is a word that's just overflowing, excelling in, exploding with thanksgiving.

And we've seen thanksgiving is not just a trite religious term, but thanksgiving is really synonymous with joy, contentment, and meaning.

So Paul says, this is what I want for you.

You heard the gospel and you received it, you believed it, which is to say that you received Jesus as he really is as Lord, and you are united to him.

And your life is now characterized by finding life, strength, and stability in him, a growing awareness of all that he is that produces a growing obedience to all that he is.

And as that's happening in your life, your life will be exploding with, growing in profound contentment, thanksgiving, joy, meaning, satisfaction.

Paul says that kind of life is worth fighting for.

So when he says in verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive, he doesn't say that because he's some kind of grumpy online watchdog apologist.

He says it because he's a clear-eyed apostle who has his mind fixed on our spiritual good and satisfaction.

And he knows that the only way for us to attain that is to recognize all that is ours in Christ.

So what he does in the rest of this text is spell out for us three reasons that you are full in Christ, and your life needs to be, if you would have a life characterized by abundant thanksgiving, joy, satisfaction, your life needs to be rooted in a growing knowledge of all that is yours in Christ.

So I think a good outline for the rest of this text would be three reasons you are full in Christ.

Let's just walk through them.

The first reason that Paul gives us in this text is that Christ is in you.

Christ is in you, Paul says in verse 10.

Or rather, let's look at verse 9 first.

In verse 9, Paul says, For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells.

The whole fullness of deity dwells.

That word dwells is the same word that's used of God dwelling in the tabernacle or the temple in the Old Testament, which was to say that God put his presence in a special way in the tabernacle and the temple, so that humans could know him and worship him.

And Paul takes that language, and John the Apostle in John chapter 1 takes the same language and says that God dwells in Christ.

John 1 · chapter mention

But unlike the temple or the tabernacle, where God's presence was available in a special way, in Christ, God's presence is fully available.

All that is in God is in Christ.

That's what Paul says in verse 9.

In him, the fullness of deity dwells bodily.

All of God's glory and all of God's power and all of God's grace and all that is in God is in Christ.

And in fact, Paul uses a very emphatic expression to make sure that we understand this.

And I the way I want to point that out to you is by playing a little grammar game.

Many years ago, I taught SAT classes and wrote SAT curriculum, and one of the sections of the old SAT, and looking around, I think if you took the SAT, I'm I'm guessing that most of you took the pre-2016 SAT.

Where in one of the primary sections of that old standardized exam was you would be given a set of questions and you would have portions of the sentences underlined and you have to identify where's the grammatical error.

Well, if you handed me this sentence in verse 9, for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, I would quickly identify in English a grammatical error in this sentence.

I wonder if you can spot it.

For in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

One of those letters indicates there's a grammatical error in this sentence.

Can you spot it?

Yeah, it's letter B.

In him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Well, the word fullness is a word that does not admit degrees.

It's like the word unique.

If you say to me, he's the most unique, I'll say, I know what you mean, but as an editor, I want to fix that sentence.

It's wrong.

Something is unique or it's not unique.

Uniqueness does not admit degrees.

The word fullness, by its definition, also, does not admit degrees.

It's either full or it's not.

So to say, wholefulness is redundant.

It's tautologous.

It is an error in English grammar.

But Paul is a well-versed scholar.

He knows that the only rule in grammar that really stands is that rules are meant to be broken.

And he's making a specific theological point here.

The point that he is making is this absolutely everything that is in God is in Jesus, without any reservation or exclusion.

All that is in God is in Christ.

The whole fullness of divine attributes, of divine essence, of everything that constitutes the eternal, self-existent God is in Christ wholly and entirely.

So that there's nothing else in the world worth seeking.

There's nothing else worth pursuing.

There's nothing else worth dreaming of, there's no goal that's worth setting outside of knowing this Christ, who is the fullness of God made available to you.

If someone offers you something that is outside of Christ or says that there's something in addition to Christ that's necessary, then that is tantamount to saying there's something outside of God that's necessary, which makes no sense whatsoever.

There's nothing outside of Christ that's worthwhile because there's nothing outside of God that's not in Christ.

The whole fullness of God dwells in Christ.

And then Paul adds this little word at the end of verse 9: the whole fullness of deity in him dwells bodily.

Which is to say, this has been an eternal reality, the fullness of God and the eternal Son, but the eternal son chose to become a human, and in the incarnation, the fullness of God took on a human nature.

And the reason he does this, well, it's very simple.

Twelfth century theologian St.

Anselm said in his little book that humans have a debt to God, a debt for sin.

Only human beings should pay that debt.

But that's an infinite debt that no human can pay.

So while only a man should pay that debt, only God can pay that debt.

The only solution to our problem is the God man.

Jesus takes on human nature, he becomes a man, he becomes the fullness of God dwelling bodily in order to solve that dilemma, in order to be the human who rightly and truly represents us in his death and resurrection, but does it divinely so that he satisfies the fullness of our debt to God.

But there's a second reason that we could say Jesus becomes incarnate and brings all the fullness of God to dwell in a human body.

That is, God is in his fullness dwelling in inaccessible and inapproachable light, but in becoming a man, he makes himself imminently knowable to us in a way that transcends even the presence of God and his Shekinah glory in the temple or the tabernacle.

God in Christ makes himself known to us so that you can know God genuinely, truly, and eternally.

But then Paul turns around and says, The fullness of God, resident in Christ bodily, verse 10, now fills you, so that all that is in God is in Christ, and all of Christ is in you.

Look at verse 10.

And in him, excuse me, verse 10, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

Just notice the verb tense that he uses here.

You have been filled.

In English grammar, that's called a passive perfect.

Passive, it's something that happens to you.

It's not something that you attained by your merits or your abilities.

It's not something that you attained by your wisdom or your knowledge.

Rather, it's something graciously given to you.

The fullness of God filling you when Christ becomes resident in your life.

And it's a perfect tense.

He has been filled.

You have been filled.

So it's an ongoing reality.

From the point in time in which Christ comes into your life, in a permanent, forever way, Christ takes residence in you and fills you so that all that is in God is accessible to you because Christ is in you.

There's so many ways that we could illustrate this, but I think I have used this illustration before, but I'll use it once more.

When I was a new parent, my wife and I discovered that there was a very easy way for us to take our youngest daughter, our oldest daughter, who was very young then, to a restaurant and keep her entertained so that we could have an adult night out.

We would walk in the restaurant and we would ask the hostess, could you please give us a plastic cup?

And we would sit down at our table and set her in her high chair and hand her the plastic cup, and our daughter would be enthralled for the whole dinner.

And we could have an adult conversation and it was wonderful.

My daughter is now nine, and when we go to a restaurant and I try to hand her a plastic cup and say, Go nuts, kid, she gives me that hardcore teenage eye roll.

Why?

It's just basic human reality.

As you grow, you need bigger, greater, more profound, wonderful things to occupy you, to fill you, to satisfy you.

What satisfies you and occupies your attention when you're a child is not big enough, complex enough, wonderful enough to occupy you as an adult.

If that's true on a human level, let's just ask the simple question what is big enough?

What's glorious enough?

What's profound enough?

What is deep and wide enough to occupy and satisfy the heart of God?

And the scripture says emphatically one thing and one thing only.

Christ.

The Son of God is fully sufficient to satisfy the heart of the eternal God forever and ever.

And that is what Paul says now dwells in you.

The fullness of the Son that has been eternally satisfying and satiating the soul of the Father for all of eternity has now taken up residence in you.

And what Paul is saying is since that is true, then your entire life must be, ought to be oriented around, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, nowhere else.

Seek no other fulfillment, no other meaning, no other satisfaction, no other answers outside of Christ.

For Christ in himself is sufficient for all of your needs.

Christ is in you, is the first reason you're filled.

But Paul goes on in the rest of the text to tell us a second reason.

That is, you're raised with Christ.

You have spiritual resurrection life in your union with Christ.

Look at verse 11.

Verse 11, Paul writes, In him you also were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands.

In Jesus, you got circumcised.

Woo-hoo! That's weird.

Circumcision, of course, in the Old Testament is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant.

God gives it graciously to Abraham.

Genesis 17 is a sign of his covenant with him.

But even in the Old Testament, God already began to speak of circumcision as a spiritual surgery that forms a picture of a spiritual, excuse me, a physical surgery that forms a picture of a surgical, spiritual reality God will perform on his people in the future.

So for example, Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 6, Moses says, The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

Deuteronomy 30:6

That's what's described in this text.

You see that because looking in at verse 11, you were circumcised with a circumcision without hands.

That word without hands, it occurs just a couple times in the New Testament.

The other time Paul uses it in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 to describe the resurrection body.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

You don't make the resurrection body.

There's no surgeon that can create a resurrection, eternal, immortal, imperishable body.

God alone can do that.

By divine power, God, in a supernatural, spiritual, powerful act, creates a resurrection body, and so likewise, he creates, performs a spiritual circumcision on his people.

So one way to understand this very simply is what Paul is describing is this reality that in your union with Christ, God removes your old nature, removes that nature that was oriented against God and towards self, he removes it, strips it, cuts it away, so that you are a new person in Christ.

But I think we could go a little bit further in the details that are given here.

Specifically, look at verse 11 that says, In him you were circumcised with a circumcision without hands, by putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

What does that mean, the circumcision of Christ?

Is it a circumcision Christ does to us?

I don't think that's what it's talking about.

Notice at the beginning of verse 11, we have this circumcision by virtue of being in him, by virtue of being in Christ, of sharing in Christ's life, sharing in the person of Christ, we have a circumcision.

We have the circumcision of Christ.

I think the best way to understand this is this is Christ's circumcision, something that happened to Christ.

We share in the circumcision that happened to Christ.

What is that talking about?

What circumcision happened to Christ?

And I think the answer is in this little word at the end of verse 11, rather, by putting off the body of flesh.

That sounds like a very common expression, but actually that phrase body of flesh only occurs two times in the whole Bible.

And the other time is in chapter 1, verse 22.

So turn over in your Bibles to chapter 1 and verse 22.

In that verse, Paul's describing Jesus' redemptive act by saying, chapter 1, verse 22, Christ has now reconciled us in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

So that text is describing Jesus' physical death and his body of flesh, that is, he takes on full human nature, including the physicality of human nature, and in his human nature he stands in the place of sinful human beings and dies in their place as the representative, suffering the penalty for sin.

What then happens?

Is Jesus' perishable human body is stripped off in his death and burial, and in his resurrection, he puts on immortal human life.

So Jesus is resurrected from the dead to an immortal life, an immortal, imperishable human life.

He is stripped of the body of flesh and puts on an immortal human life, so that all who are united to him likewise can put off their sinful body of flesh and put on immortality, sharing in a resurrection like his.

I think that the circumcision of Christ is referring to his death on the cross, wherein he stands in place of sinful human flesh, bears the penalty against it, and resurrects to new human life.

All of us who are united to Christ will share in that reality.

And we see this using other metaphors in the New Testament.

For example, in Romans 6.6, Paul says, we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.

What happens to us who are united to Jesus Christ is that our old self dies on the cross 2,000 years ago and thousands of miles away.

Your old body of flesh that you live in now was actually crucified in Christ by virtue of your union with him, so that by virtue of your union with him, you likewise will put on new immortality, new human life in the resurrection to come.

All of this is because you are genuinely and truly united to Christ, which is what Paul says in verse 12.

How do we get united to Christ?

Verse 12 says, Well, we've been buried with him in baptism.

And good Baptist conscience would say, pump the brakes there.

Are you saying baptism is what unites us to Jesus?

Those are there are no laughs.

Did you notice that?

No laughs for that.

This is a serious matter.

I love our instincts in this church.

That is exactly the instinct that you should have.

But let me ask you a couple questions here.

What is it that you have to believe in order to be a Christian?

You say the gospel.

Okay.

Look at the end of verse 12.

You have faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

So Paul just says you just have to believe in God raising him from the dead.

In fact, Romans chapter 10 and verse 9.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Believe in your heart, God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

So don't you have to believe in the incarnation and the virgin birth and the perfect life and all of these things?

We just recited the Apostles' Creed a moment ago.

Don't you have to believe in those things?

Yes, of course.

But New Testament authors will sometimes use the resurrection as shorthand for the entirety of the gospel.

You believe in the resurrection is just shorthand for you believe the whole story of Jesus.

Likewise, sometimes the authors of the New Testament will use core constituent parts of conversion to stand for the whole reality of your conversion and your union with Jesus Christ.

So sometimes they can just speak of faith as the instrument of salvation.

Sometimes just repentance.

2 Peter chapter 3, verse 9.

2 Peter 3:9

God is patient towards you, not wishing that any would perish, but that all would reach what?

Salvation?

Peter says that all would reach repentance.

Repentance there just standing a shorthand for the whole reality of conversion.

Sometimes the New Testament authors will do the same thing with the gift of the Spirit or even baptism.

Because baptism is the ordinance that God ordained as the means that unites us to the church, that the means by which we come into and join the church.

And it's also the ordinance that pictures graphically our union with Christ in death and resurrection, so baptism appropriately can be used by the New Testament authors to just stand as shorthand for our conversion and our union with Jesus Christ.

The reality that we are united to Jesus Christ as those who are baptized, joined to Christ, and part of his church, is the means by which our old person died on the cross and our new person is as sure as Jesus was raised from the dead, so will we too.

But just in case there's any doubt in our minds as to what exactly is the instrument that God uses to enact to create this union with Christ, Paul adds, It's faith.

The end of verse 12.

So my Baptist brothers and sisters, be not alarmed.

The end of verse 12.

You're buried with him in baptism in which you are raised through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

That's the instrument that God uses to place you in Christ.

It's your faith, it's your repentance, it's your believing in the gospel, it's your receiving Jesus as Lord.

It is the instrument that God uses to place you in an indissolvable union with Christ.

And by virtue of your union with Christ, all that is true of Christ is true for you.

Death to the body of flesh and resurrection to immortal, imperishable human life.

Faith with Him places you in a reality so that you share everything that is true of Christ.

Now, we obviously will ask the question, well, what about right now?

That might be true in like the mind of God, in some kind of outside of time way I can't fully understand, but right now it's 2024, I'm sitting in a pew in Northern Virginia, and I struggle with sin and temptation and doubt and fear.

The message that Paul is giving us is this.

Yes, that's true.

We still are resident in our body of flesh.

But it's also true that the body of flesh was fully and finally put to death in the death of Jesus Christ.

So that your resurrection is so sure, Paul can speak of it as past tense and present tense.

You are genuinely and truly raised to Christ, so that just as Jesus resurrected to immortal human life, you too, by your union with him, will resurrect to immortal, eternal human life.

So your body of flesh that you struggle in right now is a little bit like an elected official that has lost the recent election and is a lame duck candidate.

His time in office is coming to an end.

Yes, he can cause some trouble in the meantime, but his time has is numbered.

So your body of flesh in which you reside right now, his days are numbered.

Your struggle will come to an end.

Your fears will be relieved, your sin will be removed, and all that you struggle with in your body of flesh in this life will be taken away when immortality swallows up mortality.

That is absolutely true for you.

No going back, because through faith in Christ, you're united forever to Jesus, who died on your pl in your place and resurrected to guarantee your resurrection.

So Paul is saying, that's true of you.

You are raised with Christ.

There's no going back, so live like it.

As you receive Christ Jesus the Lord and you're united in a resurrection like his, live like it's true that the resurrection is coming.

Don't live as though this current candidate who's a lame duck is his priorities matter.

His priorities don't matter anymore.

His term in office is coming to a close.

Live like the new candidate who will be in office forever is the one who's in charge.

Live as though you have been raised with Christ because you have.

Here's the two truths that Paul's showing us so far.

Christ is in you, and you've been raised with Christ, and there's a third truth he wants to show us.

You are forgiven in Christ.

And that's in verse 13 and following.

Look down at verse 13.

Paul says, You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.

Verse 13 uses this little expression that we've encountered before, where he puts you at the very beginning in the emphatic sense, in order to say, Even you, can you believe it?

God is in the world doing this great reality of redeeming his people.

And even you, he's redeemed you, he's forgiven you.

Can you believe it?

He did the same thing in chapter 1, verse 21.

It's worth flipping over in your Bibles to chapter 1, verse 21, where, at the conclusion of verse 20, having just finished that hymn where he extols Christ as the image of the invisible God, creator of all things in heaven and on earth, that great God, verse 21, and you, even you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.

The sense that Paul wants to stir in our hearts is shock and awe that Christ, all that is in God, is in Christ, and Christ would deign to save you.

How shocking, how incredible, how overwhelming, how amazing.

Jesus forgave my sins.

Look at the text in verse 13 again.

You were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh.

So there, Paul is summarizing and reminding us of our condition apart from Christ.

And the uncircumcision of your flesh is just a way of signaling your alienation from God, which is what he said in chapter 1, verse 21.

You were alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.

But the reason for your separation from God wasn't just what you did, it's also who you were.

Paul says here in this verse, you were dead.

And dead is a Greek word that means dead.

Unresponsive to the call of God to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and unable to change.

Unwilling, unable to change, absolutely dead in sin, separated from the life of God, under divine and just judgment for your sin.

And God looked at all people of you and entered your life and made you alive by placing you in a union with Christ and forgiving all of your sins.

How incredible is the gospel.

Paul then describes how Paul, excuse me, how Jesus forgives our sins in verse 14, where he says, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

That record of debt is a term that would be used for an acca it's an accounting term.

If you have an account of violations and all of the consequent fines that would be due to those violations.

So God has a scroll or a book of every single sin you have ever committed.

Everything you've thought, everything you did in middle school that your mom didn't catch, everything that you have ever done in your entire life, He has a book of it, of the violation of his law and the consequent punishment it deserves.

But that's not a mountain, that's mountain ranges.

What are you going to do with that?

Every human has a way of trying to deal with their guilt.

Some of us will blame others.

It's someone else's fault, it's not my fault.

Or we'll try and sweep it under the rug and just ignore it, and eventually the feelings will just go away.

Or we'll try and outweigh it with good works.

If I do enough good things, I'll stop feeling bad about the bad things.

All of those are superficial and faults.

What the scripture offers is an offer, look at verse 14, to cancel the record of debt.

That's a word that's used in the ancient world for wiping clean that papyrus.

That papyrus where all of your debts are and your transgressions are written out, blotting it out to make the papyrus white and clean as though nothing had been written on it.

This is what God offers to do.

Not hiding it, not justifying it, not excusing it, but opening the scroll before God and saying, God, I'm deserving of all of this, and God wiping it clean.

Past, present, and future sins, all of them, as though they never happened, entirely and completely cancelled out.

Why?

Because at the end of verse 14, because he nails it to the cross.

So that on the cross, Jesus genuinely and truly deals with all of our debt, the fullness of the judgment that should fall upon us for every single one of our transgressions, paid for entirely in Jesus' death on the cross.

That's the gospel.

Paul says in verse 13, even you, God made a partaker in that great reality.

Jesus forgave all your sins.

Then he goes on in verse 15, and he tells us one more great component of this reality is he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

The rulers and authorities is a term Paul uses to describe spiritual powers.

You could call them angels and demons, spiritual beings.

Verse 16 says that Jesus is even the creator of, but spiritual beings he disarmed in his death on the cross.

In what sense did he disarm them?

Well, in the sense that that record of wrongs that you have done, they could pick it up and use it in God's courtroom to accuse you, and they'd be right.

But by nailing the record of wrongs to the cross, God disarmed the rulers and authorities of this world, spiritual powers, from anything that they have against you.

There's no record of any wrongdoing you have ever done that a spiritual being could bring against you as a charge, and it's stick, because Jesus has canceled the record, past, present, and future forever.

So he put them to open shame, the text says, which is a phenomenal use of irony.

The cross is the greatest instrument of human shame ever devised, wherein a human being is publicly dragged through the streets, stripped naked, nailed to a cross, to die alone and in shame for days at a time.

And God humbly submits himself to that shameful death.

And in that shameful death, he pays the record of our debts, disarms the rulers and authorities of their only threat against us, and so the instrument of shame actually turns into one of triumph.

And what Paul says is this instrument of human shame, the cross, actually became the chariot by which Jesus leads the rulers and authorities of the heavenly powers in open triumph.

His shame becomes their shame.

His shame becomes our glory.

So we start where, excuse me, we finish where we started.

Paul says your spiritual life is so valuable, it's worth fighting for it.

It's worth taking very seriously.

And the way to take your life, the way to take your soul very, very seriously is by fixing your attention firmly, resolutely on Christ.

For Christ is all that you need.

For vibrant, joyful, contented life through joys and suffering in this world, Christ is all you need.

Christ is in you, you're raised with him, he's forgiven you.

And to live a vibrant spiritual life in this world consists in one thing: as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Lord, we thank you that you are all we need.

And we ask you by your Spirit to fix our focus upon Christ.

We ask that you would enable us through worshiping you this morning, through our songs, our prayers, and through your word, to encourage our hearts that we would reach full assurance of understanding, that we would have a deeper knowledge of our union with you and deeper satisfaction in knowing we're united to you forever, and all of our needs are found in you.

So we ask you now as we come before your table to humble our hearts and enable us to find assurance that we, by taking of your body and your blood, share your spiritual life, and so your victory and resurrection also belongs to us, and we await the day when you will come and bring to us what you've already purchased on our beh behalf resurrection life and your kingdom forever.

We pray this in the name of Christ.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.