God in the Flesh (Colossians 1:19-23)

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions, but now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him.

If indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard.

This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.

Let's pray.

Lord, your word is so rich.

And we thank you for it.

We love it, Lord.

We pray here this morning as we look at these verses that you would continue to reveal yourself to us.

That yes, we would gain head knowledge, but that that wouldn't be it, Lord, that we would gain heart knowledge of what you desire each one of us to gain from the scripture we have here this morning.

So would you do a work here by the power of your spirit?

Would you mold us and shape us and teach us and help us to become more and more like Jesus on a daily basis, we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

So if you remember, if you were here last week, this part, these verses we have today are really a continuation of last week.

Once again, we are gonna do a not so typical Christmas message, and it's just kind of how it worked out with where we were in Colossians, but it's gonna be very much Christmas focused, all about God becoming flesh, the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

So I want to start by telling you about a guy.

There was a guy in Israel that was born about the same time as Jesus.

His name was Josiah Ben Hammon.

Anybody heard of him before?

Has anybody taken any time this December to be thankful for him?

Why not?

How come nobody, you know, he was born at about the same time as Jesus in the same area as Jesus?

So why haven't we celebrated him this month?

Why would we, right?

Who is this guy to begin with?

Well, he's a guy that I made up.

So I can ask you here this morning, what makes us thankful for Jesus being born 230-ish years ago?

What makes us thankful and in this season to be celebrating him, regardless of what time of year he was actually born?

But what makes this season the time where we actually come and put our focus and we sing these special songs and we have these special services?

And I want to start off with the same questions that I started with last week.

The first question is: if Jesus wasn't God and was just a really good man, would we still celebrate Christmas?

And the second question is, if Jesus came and was God, but he just came, walked among us, ascended in his old age, but didn't make a way for salvation, would we celebrate Christmas?

Or would we celebrate in the same way?

You know, I don't think we would be celebrating in the same way in either one of those scenarios.

What really makes us thankful for the incarnation of Jesus Christ, as Amy just prayed, actually, is that being fully God and fully man, he lived a perfect life, he fulfilled the law, he fulfilled all the prophecies, and then he laid his life down for our sins as a perfect sacrifice.

He was crucified on a cross.

He was buried and then raised from the dead three days on the third day.

Without that, I'm not sure we would take the time like we do to celebrate his birth.

You know, instead of a church, we would probably all be sitting in a synagogue if we were sitting anywhere at all, you know, hoping to be saved by following the law close enough.

And don't get me wrong, we should absolutely celebrate the birth of Christ.

But today's verses are really about why we celebrate the birth of Christ.

Last week and this week's passages combined are to show how the combination of Jesus being fully God and fully man was required for the forgiveness of our sins.

We talked a lot last week about the Gnostics.

If you didn't listen to that message yet, I encourage you to do that.

And we were talking about how these Gnostic beliefs that were being formed in this time were having issues with Jesus being the supreme being, with being fully God, but also having flesh, also becoming fully human at the same time, because that didn't match up with their belief system of the things that they believed about the physical and the spiritual realm, and of how could something good actually be physical at the same time?

Because if you remember, they thought that anything good had to be divine or spiritual, and that anything in the physical world was inherently evil, and that's just the the dividing line that they had, including Christ's physical body.

How could a supreme divine divinity actually be in the flesh?

That did not marry up with their belief system.

So, with all that, let's jump in and we're gonna see how Paul just continues to knock down these arguments one at a time.

So look at verse 19 with me.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.

If you're a note taker, underliner, just note all his fullness here.

Because this word fullness in the Greek is pleroma.

And in the Greek it means exactly what you would think in English, you know, as far as fullness and what fullness would mean.

But those that were holding these Gnostic beliefs in this time, they used this word very specifically.

They used it to describe the sum total of everything divine.

You know, if you added up all of divinity and the attributes of divinity, the total of it all would be pleroma, would be fullness.

So, Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is using a Gnostic term to defeat their own false teachings of Jesus Christ by saying, Jesus is the sum total.

Jesus is the pleroma.

You know, look at verse 19 again, keeping that in mind.

For God, the supreme divinity, was pleased to have all his fullness, pleroma, dwell in him.

So dwell in Christ.

And if you look down a little bit in your Bibles to chapter 2, verse 9, Paul outright says, For the entire fullness of God's nature dwells bodily in Christ.

You know, Jesus was never a lesser divinity to God the Father or to God the Holy Spirit.

He has been always.

So he's not a created being.

And there is no hierarchy in the Godhead, in the Trinity.

You know, it's not like God the Father existed and was like, you know what would be cool if I split into three, you know.

But I'm gonna remain the highest of the three in the hierarchy just to make sure I always have control.

It's one God, three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all equally God.

Always has been that way.

There's no hierarchy in the Godhead.

Yet Jesus was fully man.

He was not a ghost.

Some of the Gnostics were trying to say, well, if he really was the supreme divinity, then he was probably just a ghost that we could actually see.

Or maybe he was just posing as a man, but he didn't have physical flesh and DNA.

Or maybe it was just God possessing a man.

Things like that.

He became, Jesus became fully man.

He had a biological mother in Mary.

Jesus experienced everything that a human experiences pain, hunger, stress, rejection, exhaustion, all the full gambit of emotions that we experience.

And Jesus became, becoming fully man was God's plan for the salvation of man.

You see, sin was introduced by one man, and therefore sin had to be reconciled through one man.

Now I encourage you this week to read Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Talks a lot about this.

It talks a lot about what we're talking about here in these verses.

And in chapter 5, you're gonna see verses like, Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way death spreads to all people because all sinned.

A little bit later in chapter 5 of Romans it says, If by the one man's trespass death reigned through the one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

And then the last one in chapter five says, For just as through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

So Jesus is that one man.

And then the next chapter of Romans, in Romans chapter 6, verse 23, it says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

Jesus being fully man through his flesh, as it says in verse 22 of our chapter here, reconciled us to God, which God was pleased to do.

Remember, we started off?

And that theme is gonna continue on through verse 20.

Look at verse 20 with me.

And this is still under that subheading of God being pleased, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

Now we're gonna be talking about this word reconcile a lot, so I want to throw the definition up on the board.

It says to reconcile completely, that makes sense, but I really want us to focus on the second part of this definition.

It says to reconcile back again, bring back a former state of harmony.

So what is that former state of harmony that we're looking at here?

It was before the fall, before the original sin, before Adam and Eve in the garden, before the curse, before death was introduced to this earth, before separation from God.

Adam and Eve enjoyed before sin, they enjoyed this pure, intimate relationship with God, where there was no guilt, there was no shame, where they could see him, they could hang out with him, they could ask him anything.

And as soon as they ate of the fruit from the tree of good and evil, they lost that intimacy.

And mankind has been without that intimacy, without that relationship with God ever since.

Because sin brings separation between mankind and God.

Sin is a wedge in that relationship between mankind and God.

And we've been driving that wedge down with a sledgehammer ever since.

With hostility, we're gonna see in our verses today, toward God.

And we've been doing that since the fall.

That relationship with God to bring back a former state of harmony that's been lost because of sin.

Salvation in Christ allows that relationship to begin once again.

We won't be back to that state of Garden of Eden until heaven, of course.

But that relationship and that forgiveness and that reconciliation with God, that starts the moment that we accept Jesus into our life as the substitute for our spiritual death that happened in the garden.

He reconciles us by, look at verse 20, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

You know, this peace that we're looking at here in this verse, it's not talking about stress or anxiety or things like that.

This is speaking of establishing harmony, like we just saw in that definition of reconciliation.

This is peace with God, bringing us back to that former state of harmony that was lost.

And when Adam and Eve sinned, what they were really doing is they were choosing to wage war on God.

You know, verse 21 in our passage today says hostile toward God.

That was the state of relationship before Jesus Christ.

We made God our enemy, not the other way around.

I think we oftentimes confuse that.

We made that choice, and we can't blame Adam and Eve, we would have made the same choice.

We can't sit here and think, I can't believe they messed it up for all of us.

That's not how it is.

We all would have messed it up for all of us.

We chose death over peace.

The wages of sin, as we just read in Romans, is death.

And all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, are separated from him.

So only death paid by a perfect man could pay that debt that we had acquired for ourselves.

Only Jesus Christ, that perfect man, could reconcile that debt for us.

And before that peace was made, look at the state that we were in in verse 21.

This is where we were before Christ.

Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds, as expressed in your evil actions.

You know, you may ask, well, if somebody doesn't even know about God, how can they be hostile toward him?

You know, you can't be hostile towards somebody that you don't even know exists, can you?

Well, Romans chapter 1 talks about how man is without excuse because God's invisible attributes, power, and divine nature are clearly seen in creation, leaving everybody without excuse.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

You know, and proof of that hostility we had before God, before we came to Christ, is so clear in the behavior that we can track back before Christ, isn't it?

That's proof of that hostility toward God.

Was anybody here living a life even close to glorifying God before Jesus?

You know, I don't fancy a lot of headshaking like that.

Quite the opposite, I would guess.

You know, Adam and Eve chose to be estranged.

They chose to walk away from their fellowship and their intimacy with God.

And every person since then has done the exact same thing except Jesus Christ, which is why he could be the perfect sacrifice for us in the first place.

Now look at verse 22 with me.

But now, so that was before, before Christ, our hostile behavior before Christ, but now he has reconciled.

There's that word again.

You by his physical body through his death.

Notice in the middle of verse 22, right there, he says, both physical and body.

You notice that they're kind of the same thing.

So it's it's kind of redundant here, but I think he did this because Paul just wants to drill down on this idea of Jesus becoming fully man in the flesh, the fully human side of the argument here, so that the Gnostics that are coming up with other ideas can't say, well, the word body that he used is symbolism for da-da-da-da, and actually, you know, all that stuff.

Paul says, no, his physical body, so that there can't be any arguments against what Paul said or twisting of his words.

He's like, physical body, don't twist my words, guys.

And he goes on in regard to why Jesus did this by his physical body.

Look at the second part of verse 22 to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him.

Let's have a moment of honesty here this morning.

Hopefully it's all been honest so far.

But with yourself, does anyone else here have a hard time dealing with the sin and the struggles of life and at the same time seeing yourself the same way that God sees you?

That's a struggle, isn't it?

I think for all of us.

But look at the words here.

This is how God sees us after being reconciled to Christ.

Holy.

That means a most holy thing.

A saint.

Faultless.

Can't even be accused of doing something wrong if you're faultless, can you?

Blameless.

This is without spot or blemish.

Unblamable.

Your translation might say above reproach right there.

Where this is where accusations can't even be brought against you because of the way that you are before God.

You know, next time the enemy of your soul starts to accuse you, you know, he's good at that.

He's called an accuser for a reason.

We just need to say nope.

Not believing that.

Because those accusations are gonna come.

And remember these three words holy, faultless, blameless.

This is who we are in Christ.

And God wants us to start believing that and not believing the accusations of the enemy.

You know, don't forget what it says in verse 19.

It was God's pleasure.

He was pleased to make us holy in this way through his son.

To reconcile us and bring us to a place of peace with him through the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross.

He was pleased to make us this way through Christ, through the blood of Christ.

And it's all through Jesus' righteousness and the death of his physical body, as Paul said, that we can now claim those words of holy, thoughtless, blameless for ourselves.

God already believes this about all of us that are in Jesus Christ.

Why aren't we believing it?

You know, 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, and see the new has come.

You know, if you haven't accepted this gift of Jesus, this reconciliation to God, that is what salvation is, you know, being forgiven of all wrongdoing ever through the blood of Christ, that was the price he paid for you if you simply accepted.

So that you can be holy, faultless, blameless.

Made a new creation in Jesus Christ.

And it's as simple as believing and accepting the gift of Christ.

This is why he came.

This is why we're celebrating Christmas.

Now, verse 23, it's a bit of a shift here that can make it seem like salvation is dependent upon us, but we really can't read this verse in that way.

It would mess up everything Paul has already said in chapter one.

This has to do with there being one true gospel, what he's about to say next.

Remember, Paul's writing to this church whose beliefs are being challenged.

They have these false teachers coming in, teaching a false gospel.

There are some that are saying Jesus was not the only way, the truth, and the life, that there were other ways to come to the supreme divinity, that you needed Jesus and something else in order to be saved.

Everything that we've talked about in these last three Sundays, since we've been in the book of Colossians, are dependent on believing the correct gospel of Jesus Christ.

That no one can come to the Father except through Jesus.

Believing that Jesus is fully God and fully man, and that he is the supreme divinity.

Lesser divinity to God.

You know, and just believing that Jesus is fully man and paid for our sins through his physical body.

You know, you believe that, you're good.

You start adding to it or taking away, and that's where you really end up in trouble.

You believe anything else, and that's where verse 23 comes in.

Because let's read verse 23, but to get a running start, let's start at verse 22, and we'll go through the whole passage so it makes a little bit more sense.

So look at verse 22.

But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him.

If, and that's the word that tree that trips people up, if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith, and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard.

So the the correct gospel, the correct good news of Jesus Christ.

So first, I think this is speaking to a couple different groups here in Colossae.

I think this is speaking to the people in the church that were believing some sort of a false gospel.

But I think mainly this is to the people as a warning for those that were believing the true gospel, but are maybe starting to doubt some things because of these false teachings that they're hearing.

So Paul's basically saying, believe the one true gospel, Colossi.

The one that first brought you to faith, the one that first brought you the hope of salvation, the hope of an eternity with Christ.

You know what?

I think this is really good for us to hear as well, for our church to hear as well.

Because it's possible for us to get sidetracked in our Christian faith with new winds of doctrine and this person's saying this and this person's saying this.

And I think it's easy for us in our current circumstance, in our current world, to lose our hope in Jesus.

As Paul's warning against here.

I think one of the biggest temptations for us Christians in a Tascadero 2025 is getting sidetracked and losing hope by two different things.

I think the first is legalism.

I think that's a big struggle for our culture.

You know, making non-salvation issues, non-salvific issues seem like salvation issues.

Those thoughts usually start with, you know, if you're really a Christian and you're not doing this, then I don't think you're really a Christian.

You know, or if you call yourself a Christian and you are doing this, then I'm not so sure you're saved.

Or I think you may be backsliding because you're not living up to my standards.

Legalism is a big temptation that we need to be very careful of.

You know, the second place I think that gets us sidetracked is getting overwhelmed by the world around us and then therefore starting to lose our hope.

The world's bleak.

We're living in Satan's kingdom.

But I think so often we get so caught up in it that we start to lose hope of what God has for us, the hope of the gospel, the hope of heaven, the hope of eternity with Him.

He talked about the hope of heaven in the beginning of this chapter.

But this world is bleak because we're not where we're going to end up.

You know, we turn on the news and we see all the shootings that are going on.

We see all the wars that are going on, the rumors of wars, the hostages, you know, the less legislation that's anti-family and anti-Christ.

It's so easy to see the hopelessness of the world and not get caught up in the hopelessness of Satan's kingdom.

You know, to not get tied up in the latest news cycle.

I think it's good to be aware of what's going on, to know what's going on in the world and in our country and in our community, to be active members in our community and government, to vote, all of those things.

But if our hope is tied to those things, we're gonna be in trouble.

And we're gonna be miserable.

Those things cannot take a place in our life above Jesus Christ.

It cannot take a place in our life where it steals the joy we have of the gospel, the hope that we have of an eternity in perfection with Jesus Christ.

You know, it sounds like a number of Colossians were either losing hope or we're on the brink of losing hope.

So this is an encouragement from Paul.

You know, remain hopeful in the good news of Jesus Christ that you first heard.

He's telling them, hey guys, don't shift away from Jesus and the gospel that you first heard, that you first learned, that you first believed.

The one true gospel of Jesus Christ that gives you hope.

He's telling them, don't add to it.

Don't let others add to it either.

Don't take away from it.

Don't lose your hope in it, but to persevere in it.

You know, some will read verse 23 and they'll say, because that word if that I pointed out, they'll say things like, Well, see, you can lose your salvation.

Our salvation is workspace because it says if right there.

You know, God will present us holy if we do these things.

But Warren Wearsby explains this way better than I can, so I just want to read you this blurb from him.

He said, Paul used an architectural image in this verse, a house firmly set on the foundation.

The town of Colossae was located in a region known for earthquakes.

And the word translated moved away, shifted away in our translation, can mean earthquake stricken.

Paul was saying, if you are truly saved and built on the solid foundation, Jesus Christ, then you will continue in the faith and nothing will move you.

So Paul is just saying, stay grounded, stay steadfast, don't be shaken by these false teachers.

Look at the next part of verse 23.

Says this gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.

There is one true gospel of Jesus Christ.

I don't know how many times I'm going to say that today, but that just keeps coming up.

Of him being fully God and fully man, reconciling us to God.

The one true gospel is the power of God to salvation.

It doesn't need anything else.

So much so that Paul has become a servant of the gospel.

And that may sound weird at first, until you remember that gospel means good news.

And in this context, he's talking specifically about the good news of Jesus Christ.

And servant here is the same word that we get the word deacon from.

And I want to show you that definition as well.

It says, one who executes the commands of another, especially of a master, a servant, attendant, minister, the servant of a king.

So he's saying, the good news of Jesus is ruling my life, is basically what Paul's communicating here.

We need to remember, Paul didn't have superpowers, did he?

He didn't, you know, have these special things, you know, or or whatever you want to imagine.

He did incredible things, absolutely incredible things, but it was through the power of God.

It was through the Holy Spirit moving inside of him.

The same power and the same Holy Spirit that we not only have access to, but we have living inside of us if we are believers.

You know, it's easy to read this and think, well, of course Paul was a servant of the gospel.

He's an apostle.

You know, he had superpowers because that's how we look at these guys, you know, way back then.

He was just a man.

He was no better than you and me.

Once he learned the one true gospel, as we see in Acts, he chose to be a servant to the good news of Jesus Christ.

Yes, he was called to it, but I think we are all too.

This is no different than what God desires for each one of us as well.

Because if everything is true that we've read in chapter 1 so far, which I believe with all my heart, then the gospel is worth living for.

If Jesus is fully God, the supreme God, he's worth living for.

If he lived a perfect life, he's worth living for.

If he then died on the cross as the sacrifice for our sin to reconcile us to God, if he was buried and then resurrected on the third day, if he ascended to heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, if he is preparing a perfect place of eternal bliss with him for those that place their trust in him, he's worth living for.

It's worth us becoming a servant to the gospel, just as Paul has.

And we don't need superpowers for that.

We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us that's willing to do everything needed and to help us and to bring us along and to counsel us and to provide the power of God that we need to be a servant of the gospel.

We just need to allow him to do that.

Now, as we close up today, I want you to turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.

2 Corinthians 5:17

It's another part of scripture that Paul wrote.

It's a few books to the left in your Bible.

2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.

2 Corinthians 5:17

And it really sums up everything that we've been talking about so well.

So I just wanted us to turn there and read through it together.

2 Corinthians chapter 5, and we're gonna start in verse 17 and read through verse 21.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

We're gonna see a lot of the same themes, even some of the same orders that we just saw.

2 Corinthians chapter 5, starting in 17.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Holy, faultless, blameless, right?

The words we just saw.

The old has passed away, and see the new has come.

Everything is from God, who has reconciled, there's that word again, us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

And he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.

Since God is making his appeal through us, we plead on Christ's behalf.

Be reconciled to God.

He made the way who did not know sin.

He made the one, sorry, who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

If you are a Christian, this is what you already have.

If you're not a Christian, this is what God is inviting you into.

You know, Jesus did all the work all by himself.

And he's simply saying right now, follow me.

If you would like to be holy, faultless, and blameless, Jesus is saying, here I am.

Just follow me.

Believe in me.

Scripture says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is God, and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

You will be holy, faultless, blameless, and now have a hope in this life that you didn't have before.

And now have a hope for eternity that you didn't have before.

Jesus is worth living for.

I promise you that.

This is why Jesus came.

This is why he was born of a virgin in a physical body.

Because it took a perfect man that was fully God to undo what one man set in motion in waging war against God.

So he came to be the Prince of Peace.

That's peace with God.

He came to be Emmanuel God with us.

Please pray with me.

Jesus, we thank you so much for all that you have done for us.

We thank you that you chose to step down from your heavenly throne and to be born, as we sing, in such humble estate, Lord, and placed in a manger, to be born into a family that didn't have much, to live a very humble life in a city in Galilee that was looked down on, that was not Jerusalem or some highfalutin place.

We thank you that you humbly walked this earth, that you were despised and ridiculed, that you were beaten and tortured and killed on a cross.

Being fully God at the same time and allowing those things to happen because you love us so much.

And Jesus, we thank you that you rose on that third day.

Proving that you defeated sin and that you defeated death, and that peace with God was now available to all of mankind.

And we thank you that you made it so easy that we just need to confess with our mouth that you are God.

Believe in our heart that God raised you from the dead, and we will be saved.

Lord, if there's anybody in this room this morning that has not done that, I pray that they would do that right now.

In their seat.

Just realizing all that you've done and how much they are loved by you.

That you would do all of this for them so they could be holy, faultless, and blameless as well.

Lord, may today be the day of salvation.

The day where we can all walk out of this room saying, holy, faultless, blameless.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.