Alive in Christ

Well, it is good to be with you this morning.

It's good to uh examine these things together this morning as we continue in this study in the book of Colossians.

I sound like I'm in a stadium.

And I guess that's okay.

I guess that's fitting coming off of the World Cup, right?

So I'll just say, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, right?

That's how it all works.

That's good.

Well, if you have your Bibles open or you've got your scripture journals, you can turn to that passage that Isaiah just uh just read.

How many of you uh came to VBS and you saw Isaiah in his wonderful safari hat?

Yeah, isn't it great?

I know I was kind of hoping he'd show up wearing that this morning, but he didn't wear it this morning.

Um it was pretty great.

He was like our safari guide for VBS through the jungle.

Pretty wonderful time.

How many of you saw the vines out here with the snakes hanging from the vines?

Yeah, in the lobby.

That was pretty great.

They weren't real snakes.

That was pretty great too that they weren't real, so that's a nice thing.

Well, you can turn to that passage in Colossians chapter 2 and verses 11 through 15 this morning.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

Let me ask you this question.

If you were to walk down the street today and ask the average person, what is a Christian?

If you were just to do a man on the street interview, you had a microphone maybe and a camera behind you, and you went down the street and you said, What is a Christian?

You'd probably get all kinds of answers, wouldn't you?

You'd get somebody saying, Well, it's someone who goes to church on Sunday, right, is a Christian.

That's what we know about Christians.

I guess if you don't go, you probably think those are the people that clog up the traffic on Sunday morning, eat all the donuts at Donut King, you know, and on their way to Sunday school.

Someone else might say it's someone who is a good person, you know, lives a good life.

I mean, if you asked our Catholic friends, they would say somebody who goes to Mass, right?

I mean, you get all kinds of answers.

And maybe, maybe just maybe more different answers in other parts of the world, right?

If you ask this question in Bombay, you would get different answers than you would on the streets of the great metropolis of Mount Washington, right?

Um, if you ask this question in New York City, you would probably get some really weird answers, wouldn't you?

What is a Christian?

I know that when we talk about being Christians on social media, we we boosted our ad on Facebook for Vacation Bible School, and we got all kinds of interesting comments.

Many of them derogatory about Christians.

I won't tell you what they said.

We deleted all those.

We took all those.

Now you're like, oh, I want to see it.

No, we took it all down, right?

Because people just come out of the woodwork, right, to have an opinion on what Christians are, what Christians are like, what Christianity means.

But when you open the New Testament, you discover that the Apostle Paul has a very different way of describing what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

And I think that it's important for us to define these things and even to know by what terms we can refer to ourselves, because you know, you'll look at you look at an interview on a news show, and it'll be with a musician or an actor or something, and they'll have what hanging around their neck?

They'll have a little gold cross hanging around their neck.

And then they're in a movie that's horrible, you know, it's got horrible language and sex and violence and all this kind of stuff, and you're going, how in the world could that person be a follower of Jesus Christ?

So it means different things to different people, but you know what's most important?

What it means to God.

What it means to God to be a Christian or a follower of Christ.

Well, for the Apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, being a Christian is not about having religious polish.

It's not about necessarily about going to church on Sunday, though going to church on Sunday is something you'll want to do if you're a Christian.

It's not about living a perfect life, though trying to live a godly life is something you'll want to do if you're a follower of Christ.

It's not about keeping a particular set of rules, external ones like we talked about two weeks ago, or internal rules that we set up for ourselves like we talked about last week.

It's not about trying hard to perform religious rituals, whether that's praying with rosary beads or going to Mass or communion or even religious rituals we may have here.

To be a Christian, according to the Apostle Paul, according to the New Testament, is to be in Christ.

And it's amazing how much that little phrase comes up in the New Testament.

We were in youth Sunday school this morning, and it came up again.

To be in Christ.

It is to be brought out of spiritual death and brought into spiritual life.

It is to be made alive together with him.

And that's why on that last song, I was pulling the, you know, worship leader guy, the guy with the ripped jeans, you know, and the cool hair.

I'm not that guy, I don't have the ripped jeans or the cool hair.

But you know those worship leaders that are always like talking to you in the middle of the song?

I couldn't help but doing that.

And at one point I said, that's worth smiling about.

Because some of you, honestly, on that song, I don't know if you were having a trouble reading the lyrics because they were in kind of a funny script, but some of you looked like this while we were singing that song.

There is one gospel.

She's laughing because was it you?

Okay, some of you, some of you looked like that during some song.

Some of you were like this during the song.

Others of you are kind of like this during the song.

And you can relax.

It's good news, I promise you.

Okay?

It's something worth smiling about, something worth being happy about.

We were dead, and now we are alive in Christ.

Amen?

There you go.

That's what I'm talking about.

The little church in Colossae, as we know, that Paul was writing to in the book of Colossians, was facing a real danger.

False teachers had crept in telling these young believers, Jesus is fine, that's a great start, but he isn't quite enough.

If you want to be mature, you want to be a super Christian, you want to be really acceptable to God, you need Jesus plus our special rules available right now, 1995.

And if you buy now, we'll throw in this special set of steak knives, right?

That kind of sales pitch.

You need Jesus plus religious rituals, or you need Jesus, plus you need to be involved in this act of service.

So you need Jesus, plus you got to wear this special hat and these special robes over here, right?

And we still have that stuff today.

I mean, nobody's going around pitching special robes, but I've got to tell you, I was in Rome two years ago or so, and you would not believe the number of shops with all of the cassocks and the headdresses and all the accoutrements that people wear.

And it really kind of brings it home to what they're talking about here.

All the accoutrements of religion.

We have our own.

People say to be a Christian, you gotta read this book.

Everybody's reading this book.

This is the book right now, man.

If you haven't read that, it's gonna change your life, right?

How many times have you heard that from people?

You gotta read this book by whoever, whoever the teacher of the day is.

And it might be a good book.

It's probably not gonna change your life.

This book will change your life, right here.

This one.

You know the one I'm talking about, right?

But there's always a new one.

You gotta read this one, you gotta read that one, man.

If you haven't read that, I'll tell you what.

That'll just, you'll be on the seventh level of heaven right there, you know, with Jesus.

It'll be you and Jesus this all the time.

You just kind of hover off the ground, like levitate two inches off the ground everywhere you go.

We like to make these kind of rules, you might like to feel special.

You are special if you're in Christ.

Jesus Christ died on the cross for you.

That's as special as we need to be, right?

But the little church in Colossae was facing this.

People were coming in and saying, Jesus is good, but you need Jesus plus this.

And Paul writes this letter basically to say that is absolute rubbish.

That's garbage.

You don't need Jesus plus anything.

You just need Jesus.

That's it.

That's enough and more than enough and completely sufficient for all of your need.

In him dwells, we read last week, in him dwells all the fullness of God, and you have been given fullness in him.

Jesus is like, it's like a superhero movie, you know, where like he's gonna take the cape off and he's just gonna glow, you know.

You open him up and just God comes out, right?

Jesus, all the fullness of God dwells in Christ, and we have been given, we read in the verse last week, all fullness in Jesus.

Well, this is how Paul continues to break this down in these five verses we've got today.

It's really three simple headings, and you know I like big words, right?

You're learning this.

I like big words that say a lot.

So we're gonna break it up into three sections.

The first section is verses 11 and 12.

It's about the inward transformation.

The second section is verse 13, the incredible resurrection.

And you know I've got to start the first word with an I, and the last one has to end in T-I-O-N.

So here we go.

The indelible vindication.

What does that mean?

It means the being made right that can't be taken away.

The indelible vindication.

Being made right that can't be taken away.

That's verses 14 and 15.

So let's look through this.

Look at the text with me there.

Verse 11.

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

Now, I had to laugh when I came to this verse because for the 10 years that I was pastoring in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine, my fellow pastor, my fellow lay elder, uh Daniel Bates, is an emergency room doctor.

And so we kind of jokingly said, you get to preach all of the passages that have to do with circumcision and anything having to do with the body, because you're a doctor, right?

It just kind of fell that way.

Like every time there was a pastor about circumcision, Daniel ended up being the one scheduled to preach.

And we just thought that was kind of funny since he's a doctor, so I guess he knows about these things.

Well, we're not going to dig deep into the subject of circumcision today.

Not just because it makes the men really uncomfortable, but because we don't need to.

We just need a basic definition of what that meant to the Jewish people.

What did that signify?

Well, the false teachers in Colossae were pushing physical circumcision, and they were basically saying to really belong to God's people, you have to undergo this physical procedure.

But Paul tells them that physical circumcision was merely an outward shadow.

What matters now is what God does on the inside, not on the outside.

Really, a surgery of the heart is what is needed.

Basically, like this false religion tells you to fix yourself in your own strength.

But real gospel faith is a supernatural cutting away of the old sinful nature by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's what we're talking about.

Cutting away of the sinful nature.

What John Owen would write about in a book called The Mortification of Sin, he would write about this the mortification, the putting to death of the flesh, of the sinful nature.

John Owen said mortification, putting to death of the flesh from a self-strength carried on by self-ways with self-ends, is a soul-subverting work of all false religion.

To think that we could do that on our own strength is false.

The circumcision of the heart, which is the mortification of the flesh, he said, is the work of the Spirit alone grounded upon our union with Christ in his death.

That's what it means to be in Christ.

He does away with our sinful nature.

Not that we will never sin again, but what happens when a Christian sins?

The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin for repentance, right?

That's what should happen in a Christian when we sin, sometimes right in the moment.

That ever happened to you?

Have you ever been in mid-phrase and you're saying you're gossiping about someone else or you're saying something not nice about someone else?

And in mid-phrase, before you even get through the sentence, the Holy Spirit convicts you and you go, well, never mind, I'm not going to say that.

Has that ever happened to you?

It's happened to me.

Raise your hand.

Be honest.

We'll have a little support group here this morning.

Anybody ever?

Yeah.

Isn't that great?

The Holy Spirit just brings conviction in that moment and stops us even in our pattern of sin.

That's what's supposed to happen.

God is the one who does that.

God is the one who does that for us.

That's what Paul is saying.

That's what John Owen is saying in his book.

Well, then from circumcision, Paul moves to baptism.

That's a pretty fast transition.

In verse 12, he moves to baptism.

I got to have a conversation yesterday with one of our teenagers about baptism.

And it's funny, the two times we've gotten together, we've eaten pizza.

And so I think he's going to associate Christianity with pizza, right?

Maybe that's the religious ritual that he's going to associate with when Christians eat pizza.

That's what they do.

What is a Christian?

Someone who eats pizza, apparently.

Because every time he and I get together to talk about things of faith, we end up having pizza together.

But we talked about baptism when we talked about that baptism is an outward symbol of an inward change that God brings about in our life.

Paul writes here in verse 12, having been buried with him, with Jesus in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

We see this beautiful picture here.

Baptism doesn't save us, but baptism is a picture of what has happened to us.

When a person goes down into the waters, right back here in the baptistry, or wherever you do the baptism, any of you baptized in a lake or a river or a stream?

In Maine, we baptized people in the ocean and it's cold.

You feel that one, you know.

Wherever you're baptized, the picture is you go down into the water and it symbolizes burial.

Right?

The old life is gone, buried in Christ.

And when they come up out of the water, it symbolizes resurrection.

Raised, we always say, raised to walk in newness of life.

Charles Spurgeon described it like this.

He said, Baptism sets forth the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and our participation in that.

It is the outward sign of an inward grace.

We're buried with him by baptism into death.

That, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

In other words, we can baptize you as a symbol, and again, that is an important act, first act of a new believer, to be obedient, to be baptized, to repent and be baptized, right?

But it's a symbol of the baptism of the heart.

That Christ works in us, that he is the one who makes dead people alive in him.

He is the one who makes filthy people, people filthy in their own sin, clean in him.

That's what he does.

So circumcision and baptism.

And the sign points to the reality: if you trust in Jesus, your old life is dead and buried and gone, your old sinful life, your sinful ways, you are now joined to him in a new life.

And then the second part of this the incredible resurrection.

Incredible resurrection.

Look at verse 13.

This is kind of the pivot point of the passage.

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 or all of our sins.

Now, notice the word that Paul uses here.

He doesn't say you were sick.

He does not say you were struggling or confused.

He says you were dead.

Dead in your sin.

And this gets confusing for those of us who are raised in the church because you're, you know, I was baptized at eight years old, and it's not like at seven I was a drug dealer.

You know what I mean?

It's not like at seven I was this horrible, horrible sinner with all of these visible external sins.

I was a kid.

I did what kids normally do.

But I was raised in the church.

Some of you share that testimony, right?

You were raised in the church.

Maybe you never knew a time that you didn't know Jesus loved you.

And so you're not looking at your life before Christ as, oh, I was this horrible sinner and I was doing all these horrible things, and then I came to Christ and I didn't want to do those horrible things anymore.

Well, if you were a child, or even if you were a young adult, or even if you were an adult who was trying to live a moral life without Christ, your testimony may not be one of gutter to glory, right?

But again, that's external.

Paul is making a point of using external things to signify the more significant thing which is happening inside.

External circumcision, external baptism, symbolizing inward things that God has done in us.

And so we don't have to have a gutter to glory story on the outside, one of those testimonies that, like, yeah, man, I was six and I was running a street gang in my school, you know, and we were knocking over old ladies on the street corner and stealing their purses and robbing banks.

I mean, it doesn't, it's forget the external stuff.

What he's saying really is that without Christ, it doesn't matter how moral you are, you are dead in your sin.

I mean, we go we even go farther than that.

You're dead in Adam's sin, right?

You're dead in Adam's sin.

You're dead because humanity sinned, right?

Not just because of your own sin, though you got plenty of those of your own.

You don't get to say, well, I shouldn't have to be condemned to hell because I've never really done anything wrong.

Oh, yeah, you have.

Men, look at your wife.

Ask your wife.

Ask your wife.

If you're thinking you haven't done anything wrong, ask your wife if you've done anything wrong.

She'll tell you.

Right?

She may have already told you this morning.

Okay?

And wise, same thing goes for you.

Your husband can probably tell you.

If not, your kids can tell you for sure.

We know, don't we?

We're dead in our sin, and Christ raises us to newness of life.

John Gill talked about it this way.

He said, Men are by nature dead in trespasses and sins.

They're spiritually dead, devoid of spiritual life, light, strength, and motion, they can no more quicken or raise themselves to spiritual life than a dead corpse can raise itself from the grave.

Right?

We can't make ourselves spiritually alive.

If you go to a cemetery and you stand before a grave, you can preach the most passionate sermon in the world.

The person in the casket will not move.

I guarantee it.

Because dead people cannot respond, they lack life.

This was our spiritual condition before God intervened.

We didn't just need a hand up, we needed a resurrection.

That's what He has done for us.

God made us alive together with Him.

You think back to that question on the street and you say, What is a Christian?

And people say, somebody goes to church, somebody lives a good life, somebody whatever.

Think about your own testimony.

What would you say if someone asked you what it means for you to be a Christian?

What would you say?

Would you say, I go to church a lot, or I got this cross around my neck, or I got a Bible, or I was baptized when I was eight?

I hope not.

I hope you would say, Well, let me tell you, man, I was dead and God made me alive.

I was filthy and God made me clean.

I was lost and God found me.

I was blind and now I see.

Would you like to see too?

Think about what your testimony will be when that happens.

When someone asks you what it means that you are a Christian.

Think about that testimony because that moment really matters.

What we say really matters for us, and it really matters for them.

How compelling is your testimony, how compelling your testimony is to others depends on the way that you see your salvation.

Right?

How compelling your testimony is to others depends on the way that you define what it means to be a follower of Christ.

And if your definition of what it means to be a follower of Christ is, man, I was dead.

And Jesus raised me up from the dead, and now I am alive in him in this life and the next forever and ever, and everything that I do is about people seeing that they can be raised from the dead too.

Now that's a compelling testimony, and I hope yours is like that.

John Piper says your core identity is no longer defined by the fallen flesh, but by your vital union with a resurrected Savior.

And for some of us, we still define ourselves by our biggest mistake.

Do you do that?

Do you still define yourself by your biggest mistake?

Or do you define some other people in your life by their biggest mistake?

Because that's not the way that God looks at us.

God doesn't look at us that way.

God looks at us and sees the perfection of Christ.

He sees the righteousness of his only begotten Son.

He doesn't define us by our biggest mistake or by our last mistake.

He defines us by the defining work of Jesus upon the cross.

Last section here.

The indelible vindication.

I just had to make it match, right?

Indelible means can't be undone.

Indelible can't be undone.

Alright?

You can't undo it.

It lasts forever.

Vindication means being made right.

So this is being made right that can't be undone.

We are made right by him, and nobody can touch that.

Nobody can undo that.

Verses 14 and 15.

Look at verse 14 with me.

It's by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

How can God forgive us without ignoring his justice?

Here's the answer.

He upheld the legal demands by nailing our record of debt to the cross.

You ever tried to make a list of your sins?

Would you even want to try to make a list of your sins?

I wouldn't.

I'm not sure I could make a list of my sins this week.

Not because I've been especially bad this week, but just because, you know.

Right?

And I probably wouldn't remember them all.

I probably don't even realize that I did some things that were sinful.

Well, all of that record of debt is condemning.

The wages of sin, the book of Romans says, is death, spiritual death, separation from a holy and perfect God.

The right punishment for that is the wrath of God leading to spiritual death.

And yet Jesus set that record of debt aside, nailed it to his cross, taking the full penalty for all of that.

The ones I know I did, the ones I didn't even realize I did, the ones I will do.

All of that nailed to the cross, paid in full, the legal demand, legal requirement fulfilled.

In the Roman world, when someone was convicted of a crime or accumulated a massive debt that they couldn't pay, a written record was made listing all of their offenses or debts.

Now, how would that be?

Not just the Roman world either.

In England, 150, 200 years ago, you would go to debtor's prison.

And they'd parade you through the street and take you to debtor's prison.

Then somehow you had to pay it off.

I don't know how you're supposed to pay it off when you're in prison and you couldn't work.

It didn't work very well.

It wasn't a great system.

But everybody would know.

You'd be paraded through the street.

What's going on with so-and-so, you know?

What's going on with Alistair over there?

Or whatever, what's another British name?

Give me a British name.

Somebody.

What's a good British name?

Ian.

What's going on with Ian over there?

He couldn't pay his debts.

He's going to debtor's prison.

Everybody knows.

The Romans made a list.

And Paul says every one of us had a record of debt before God, every selfish thought, every angry word, every act of disobedience written down, and that debt demands payment.

And Jesus paid it.

Paid the whole thing.

God didn't ignore it, God just canceled it by nailing it to the cross.

Jesus, Tim Keller writes, Jesus took the certificate of our moral indebtedness, paid it in full by his sacrificial death, and canceled it.

Put a big stamp on it.

Right?

Paid in full.

Nailed it to the cross, showing that the account is paid and settled and cleared forever.

When Jesus cried out on the cross, it is finished.

The debt was paid in full.

Your debt, my debt, was paid in full.

Completely.

I heard a preacher saying one time, you know what double indemnity is?

It's when they try two different people for the same crime.

Do not pay for what Christ already paid for on the cross.

Those of you that are condemning yourself over what you did wrong and won't let it go and will not forgive yourselves, don't pay again for what Christ already paid for on the cross.

Because our debt is paid, Satan loses his power over us.

Now if you're here today and you're like, what is that?

Satan, the devil, right?

Fallen angel.

The Bible says that he prowls like a roaring lion, seeking whom he can devour.

He would destroy us.

That is his intent.

I know this sounds like Greek mythology stuff.

It's real.

Bible talks about it.

Bible talks about Satan.

We need to be wary of his attacks on us.

But the Bible says that because our debt is paid, he loses our power over us.

Look at verse 15.

It says he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him, in Christ.

In other words, when Jesus died and rose again, he disarmed Satan and his evil angels.

The devil's main weapon against you is accusation, pointing at your sin and saying, look at what he did or look at what she did.

They deserve hell.

That's his main weapon against us.

He would have us absolutely paralyzed by our own sin.

Unable to function, unable to serve, unable to live joyful lives, unable to live lives in service to God and others, because we're paralyzed by our own sin.

Satan would accuse us over and over and over and over and over and tell us that we're not saved, and tell us that no one could save us because our sin is too deep.

Our sin is too great.

Those secret sins that you've never told anyone about, Satan would accuse you and tell you that those sins are too much for Jesus.

And let me tell you, ain't nothing too much for Jesus.

Okay?

Bible says here, this passage says right here, that when Jesus died on the cross for our sin, our debt was paid, and Satan loses his power over us.

He is completely disarmed.

When you are in Christ, whatever accusation Satan would make against you fails.

The debt is gone, the record is wiped clean.

Satan has no grounds left to condemn you.

For Jesus, we might call this, just because I like big words, N and T-I-O-N, we might call this domination.

Jesus completely dominated on Satan.

Okay?

If you're an MMA fan or you like wrestling or you like boxing, okay.

Jesus, you know, Satan, down for the count, not getting up again, right?

He dominated Satan.

He has defeated Satan utterly.

He completely disarmed and dominated him.

But for us, this is vindication.

In other words, we are in every way made right in Christ.

Because Jesus dominated Satan.

We are vindicated.

We are declared innocent, righteous by the righteousness of Jesus.

We don't have to be ashamed.

We don't have to live in our shame of our sin.

We can live rejoicing.

We can be glad in Christ and what he has done for us.

Grateful lives.

The expression is that we are just grateful and we serve because we are grateful, not because we're trying to make things right because of what big sinners we are.

We know what we did.

He knows what we did, but he's canceled the debt.

And Satan has no weapon against us.

And so this should lead to exaltation, celebration, jubilation, right?

How many words that sound alike can we come up with, right?

This should lead to us rejoicing in the Lord always.

And again I say rejoice, because it is in the Lord, in Jesus, that we have our cause for rejoicing.

And that's why the Bible says that we should be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have.

Because we should look like people in our countenances, we should look like people who have hope.

We should wake up in hope.

We should go to bed in hope.

We should eat lunch in hope.

We should drive in hope when we're driving around, you know, on the interstate and they've got all those signs, clothes, clothes, clothes, clothes, clothes, they've got up right now.

Looks like some elementary school class got out there with a bunch of tape, you know, and put clothes in over all the signs.

Everything we do, we should do in hope, and people should be going, what is wrong with you?

Don't you see what's going on in the news?

Don't you see what's going on in the world?

And there's there's wars and politics, and gas prices are going up and grocery prices are going up, and I'm pretty sure those cereal boxes are smaller than they used to be, you know.

401k took a hit last week, right?

My back hurts, my leg hurts, my ankle hurts, my head hurts, you know.

Kids won't return my phone calls, whatever else.

I mean, whatever's going on in your life, we should be people who have hope because of this.

Because Satan is defeated, and we are made right in Christ, and our debt is paid in full.

So I don't know where you're looking today for your acceptance in God or even if you're thinking about it.

But let me just take you one more place before we finish, and that's Luke 18.

If you got your Bible, you need your Bible for this one.

It's not in your scripture journal.

Look at verse 18 with me for just a second.

Because I feel like this is some of us too.

Luke 18.

Verses nine through fourteen.

This is what it says.

Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.

Here's the parable.

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, a Jewish religious leader, and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I've got.

But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

I tell you, says Jesus, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Here's the point.

What would it sound like for that Pharisee to repent?

His prayer begins proclaiming what he has not done with a list of people that he is not like.

So repentance must be renouncing such boasts before God.

And in the end, the repenting Pharisee's prayer is the same as the tax collector's, is the same as the thief on the cross, is the same for every one of us.

I cannot save myself.

Save me, O God.

Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Ultimately, whether for a Pharisee or a tax collector, there is only one gospel, as we sang a few minutes ago.

There's only one gospel, one hope of salvation, and that is that God shows mercy to sinners, whether they're self-righteous or whether they're self-loathing, on the basis, the only basis, of Christ crucified and risen from the dead.

And in the end, neither the tax collector or the Pharisee, neither the self-loathing or the self-righteous, can earn his forgiveness or merit a standing on their own.

We are both, all of us, the tax collector and the Pharisees.

One moment we're wallowing in our sin, relenting of any hope due to the greatness of our evil, and the next moment we are boasting of our own righteousness and finding comfort in our external goodness and our delightful self-control.

Right?

I mean, that's how I am.

One minute, I'm man, I can never get it right.

And the next minute, I'm doing pretty good today.

Right?

Jesus came to lift us out of the ditch on both sides of the road.

Whichever one you fall into, and probably both, Jesus came to lift us out of both of those.

There's a great song.

We'll sing it sometime soon.

We're not going to sing it this morning, but I wanted to read you a couple of the lyrics.

It's called Not in Me.

And it says this no list of sins that I have done, no list of virtues I pursue, no list of those that I am not like can earn myself a place with you.

Oh God, be merciful to me.

I am a sinner through and through.

My only hope of righteousness is not in me, but only you.

No humble dress, no fervent prayer, no lifted hands, no tearful song, no recitation of the truth can justify a single wrong.

My righteousness is Jesus' life.

My debt was paid by Jesus' death.

My weary load was borne by him, and he alone can give me rest.

No separation from the world, no work I do, no gift I give can cleanse my conscience, cleanse my hands.

I cannot cause my soul to live.

But Jesus died and rose again.

The power of death is overthrown.

My God is merciful to me.

And merciful in Christ alone.

My righteousness is Jesus' life.

My debt was paid by Jesus' death.

My weary load was borne by him.

And he alone can give me rest.

That's the good news of Colossians chapter 2.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

You don't need to try to earn what Christ has already finished.

You can't, but he did.

Your old nature has been cut away in spiritual circumcision.

Your past has been buried in spiritual baptism.

Your soul has been made alive with Christ.

Your debt has been nailed to the cross.

Your enemy has been defeated.

Why are you not yet smiling?

Right?

Amen.

You're smiling in the back.

If you're not yet a Christian, turn to him in faith today.

See what he has to offer.

What a bargain.

All that you are for all that he is.

Stop trying to save yourself.

Trust in the one who died for sinners and rose again.

If you're already a believer, rest in him and what he has done and walk in the freedom that he has purchased for you in his death on the cross.

You are no longer dead in sin.

You are alive in Christ.

He is risen.

He is risen indeed.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, I thank you for saving me.

It is good to unpack all that that means.

And even these five things, as marvelous as they are, just a few.

Just a few of the things that you accomplished through your death on the cross.

We would be here for days and weeks and months and years if we were recounting all of the things that you have done with us, done for us by your death on the cross.

We rejoice in all of that.

And we rejoice that you are alive and we live with you forever and ever.

Amen.

We stand, let's sing in response to God's word.