Christ Of The Covenants

Good morning.

Today's reading comes from Colossians 2, 11 through 15.

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also 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 in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling 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.

Please be seated.

Welcome to church this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church.

We're gonna splash water on the walls of Arsana halfway through the sermon today.

And uh also right after uh church, we are having our first annual.

That's what you call it when you know that's gonna happen again.

Our first annual Parish Olympics.

Yeah.

So I hope you've been training.

We've been working on a lot of cardio, a lot of trivia.

I don't really know what it's going to entail.

So you've got to train all across the board.

All right, let's pray, and then we'll move into our text for today.

Holy Father, we pray that you would attend this morning.

Lord, that you would show us your word and apply it to our hearts, that the intentions that the Holy Spirit had through the pen of Paul might land on our hearts this morning, that we might even commune with your word.

Your word is truth.

And it is your very word to us.

What does it mean that God spoke to us?

Lord, help us to see that this morning and be strengthened in our hearts to hold fast to you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So last week we saw Paul present the heart of the letter to this young Colossian church.

And he summarizes basically the whole book in this one sentence.

So we'll just quote that sentence.

This is Colossians 2, verse 6.

Colossians 2:6

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

This is his advice to this young church that had just received the gospel.

It says, just as you received Christ Jesus, so walk in him.

And the rest of the book is kind of supporting premises for this exhortation to continue walking in Christ.

And so we're going to follow those today.

Last week there is a real defense that Paul is saying, don't be taken in by the religious authorities, by the philosophies of your day, by the political institutions of your day.

Don't let any of those displace Christ as the absolute priority of your life.

And today he continues in the same mode as he provides these reasons for why we ought to hold fast to Christ.

And that's what he's doing this morning.

So these reasons are seeing that Christ has given us his promises, he's freed us from our sins, and he's triumphed over our enemies.

Christ gave us his promises, freed us from our sins, and triumphed over our enemies.

So let's look at how he explains this first of all.

In Colossians 2, verse 11, he says, In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.

Colossians 2:11

Okay.

This was supposed to be supporting arguments for why, above all else, we're meant to hold fast to Christ.

So let's talk about circumcision.

This is our gateway in.

We have to understand this.

It says, in him also, you, you, the Colossians, these new believers, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

We could translate it, Paul is coining a new phrase here.

It's a Christian circumcision that the Colossians have received.

Now, if we kind of read into this, we can hear in the background there was something that was plaguing the Colossian church.

And this was typical amongst all of these new Christian churches around the Roman Empire.

Because they were mostly born out of Jewish synagogues.

So if you consider the Christian faith is birthed out of these Old Testament promises, ones that we've been spending the first half of our past several years moving through as we've been preaching through the book of Genesis.

And we've seen how God laid out these promises to a particular group of people, beginning even with one man, Abraham, who he promised, you will become a multitude of nations, and through you all the nations of the world will be blessed.

And in raising him up to become a great nation, he gives him a sign of this promise from the Lord.

And the sign of that promise is circumcision, that Abraham would be circumcised, and all of the men in his household, and then all of the boys who are born to that family will be circumcised on the eighth day, as a marker that the promises of God were to this people.

They were to this nation, the offspring of Abraham, the Hebrews, the Jewish people, they are the ones who were to receive the promises.

And those promises grow and expand throughout the entire course of the Old Testament as we see the people of God waver from their faithfulness to the promises of God, not upholding their end, not being obedient to the law, not staying faithful to the Lord, but God is always faithful to them.

And we see that pattern throughout the whole Old Testament, and these promises remain.

Now you can imagine Christ has come.

These promises have been fulfilled.

So you might consider you're a tender-hearted Christian, you're a Gentile.

You haven't been brought up in this Jewish community.

You haven't been exposed to the origin of what these promises are, but you see that your salvation is in Christ alone.

So we can imagine this conscientious, tender-hearted Christian considering, okay, I'm getting to know the Word of God, I'm beginning to understand this.

We see that these promises were to this Jewish community, and that the marker of identity with that nation was circumcision.

They were the ones to whom the promises belonged.

Therefore, in order for me to fully apprehend the promises of God, I too will need to take on this national identity marker.

I will need to go the rest of the way.

Sure, Christ is open to the Gentiles, but he's fulfilling the promises to the Jews.

So if I am to truly apprehend those promises, I must identify myself with the ones to whom the promises were given.

And the way that you marked that identity is circumcision.

Now, what's missing in that is that Christ has accomplished what that marker of circumcision was only meant to point to.

That marker of circumcision was just a shadow of the substance which is Christ.

So Paul is coming to these, to this young Christian church, and he sees their minds being corrupted, and they're considering we're going to need to add something else to Christ in order for us to be truly a part of this body.

And what they're adding even seems logical.

And it doesn't even seem like it's that far outside of the story, right?

Christ did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law.

Christ did not come to eliminate the history of the Jews, but to fulfill the promises that were to the Jewish people.

And so you can see this is, if you were to add anything to Christ, you could even rationalize in your mind, this is adding something which is a part of the same story.

It's adding something to Christ which is so close to who he is.

And Paul is saying, no, you must not.

Do not consider that you must be circumcised in order to receive salvation in Christ.

You add nothing to Christ.

Christ accomplished it all.

So you have been circumcised with a Christian circumcision.

That means that in Christ, your body of flesh was disrobed from you.

That sinful tendency in your heart was taken away and dealt with on the cross by Christ.

And so, how is it that the Colossians receive this?

This Christian circumcision of the heart.

Colossians 2.12 says, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

Okay, so follow the language.

You received this Christian circumcision, and they might be saying, I don't remember ever being, I would remember.

You know?

And he says, How does that happen?

Having been buried with him, with Christ in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

Your baptism into Christ corresponds to what this circumcision symbol meant to the Old Testament believers.

But why does the symbol change?

Why is there this changeover from the Old Testament, the marker was circumcision, to the New Testament, in Christ, the marker is baptism?

Because the circumcision has happened in Christ.

Pardon me for getting graphic, but Christ was cut off.

The body of flesh was removed in the true bloody rite, which was his crucifixion.

And in that bloody rite, the fulfillment had taken place.

And there's a new marker of a new people, which is one of cleansing, one of being washed as if by water, one of being washed by his spirit.

And so when the fulfillment of the sign has come, we no longer deal with the sign.

Instead, it must be replaced.

So we see this difference in this movement from the Old Testament where circumcision was the marker of being included in this covenant community, of being the ones who hold the promises, to where now the circumcision of Christ is marked by our baptism, which we take up by faith.

So let's consider the differences between these.

Paul here is making clear that baptism has replaced the sign of circumcision in Christ.

In circumcision, we see a bloody rite of cleansing.

In baptism, we see a purifying.

There is no blood involved.

Why?

Because the blood has been spilled in Christ.

He is the one who marks us off.

He is the one who sets us aside.

One is a sign of what is to come.

It is a promise made.

It is a pledge.

It is a sign of a covenant promise.

That's what circumcision was.

And the other is a sign of what has been fulfilled.

Your baptism looks to what Christ has accomplished.

It doesn't look forward to a promise of salvation, it looks backward to the accomplishment of salvation in Christ.

One is for a marker for a particular nation.

Circumcision marks out who the promises are for, to this particular nation, one group of people whom God chose out of all the world.

Baptism is a sign to all the nations.

All may come through Christ.

All need the baptism of Christ.

Now we can just imagine what this might have meant.

And we almost have to imagine to try and grasp what's happening here, what this meant to Paul.

Paul is raised a Jewish person.

He's circumcised on the eighth day, a marker of this community.

He describes himself as to the law of Pharisee.

That means he had the most strict adherence to the Old Testament law possible.

And he considered that the reason that he could hope for salvation in the Lord was because of his membership in this particular community to whom God gave his promises to.

They were not even to eat with Gentiles, let alone consider sharing God with them or sharing a salvation with them.

And yet here, Paul is saying this fundamental marker of that national identity, this fundamental marker of the object of God's promises is to be done away with.

And we are to see instead this inclusion of the whole world in Christ.

So Paul would have been raised hearing over and over again God is calling out a people for his own possession.

God is calling out of the world a people who he will make a royal priesthood, who he will adopt as his sons and daughters, a people who he will call his firstborn.

And Paul knows as he's growing up that the people he is talking about are the offspring of Abraham.

They are the ones who were led through the water out of Egypt.

They were the ones who were given the promised land.

They were the twelve tribes of Israel.

They were me, Paul would think.

But then Christ comes into Paul's life.

And he says, The people that I am calling out of the world are from all nations, all tribes, all tongues.

I am calling a people to myself out of the whole world.

It is too small a thing that I send you out only to get back the tribes of Israel.

I will send you to all the nations of all the world.

And Paul realizes that this God who he knew was sovereign over all was no mere tribal deity.

But he is the one who sought the whole world, so that all might be reconciled to Christ, that this dividing wall which was put between the Jews and the Gentiles by the promises of God was always pointing towards a fulfillment which would reach out to all the nations.

So why do we not go back to circumcision?

Because circumcision is a sign of whom the promises would come to, would come through.

But who were the promises for?

They were for the benefit of the world.

Because through Abraham, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

The circumcision is a sign of the through.

The baptism is a sign of the blessing.

And so we take on this sign in the very same pattern because we see the replacement of it, that where circumcision once stood for this nation, now baptism stands for all nations who might take this up by faith.

And in we see, as we see the pattern layout, we see that this is laid out in the same orientation towards the same objects that it was laid out for Abraham and his offspring.

So too, Christians take this up by faith for us and for our offspring.

We deliver the sign of baptism.

This is why we perform infant baptism at our church.

Because we see the parallels of these signs.

I can see someone laughing because they knew it was coming.

That's right, it was, and here it is.

The overlap of the signs is made plain here by Paul.

And so the object is likewise made plain.

Now, that is not to say that baptism is some sort of mystical, uh, you know, uh, it it if you just cast the right spell, if you just say these magic words, then you will be signed and sealed in baptism.

No, Paul is clear that baptism is wedded, it is, it is actualized, made real through faith.

Our baptism is to be taken up by faith, which is why when we baptize our children, we pray for them and we seek that they would take up their baptism in faith.

But what are we saying?

Just as one of Abraham's offspring, he could say to them, These are the promises of God to you.

Take them up because they are for you.

Now we extend those very same promises to you and to your children.

We offer them to the world because of what Christ has accomplished, saying, Take it up by faith.

And it is not a vague faith in which we take it up.

We take it up through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

Our faith is not a general faith.

Our faith has an object, the power of God, which was able to raise Jesus from the dead.

That is what your faith is in.

What is your hope of salvation?

What is your hope of overcoming temptation, of living in a life that is freed from sin one day, of gazing upon the glory of the Lord one day, of a sinner like you, even you, standing before the Lord and enjoying his presence.

What is your hope of that?

It is in the very same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

That is what our faith is in.

Now, so here's what Paul is calling them to do.

He's saying, continue in Jesus.

Don't let who Jesus is be replaced or displaced by some other religious institution or by some other political authority or some ruler and powers in the heavenly places or some new custom or something that needs to be added to Christ.

Instead, hold fast to Christ.

And you can remember that you are in Christ and have his promises by remembering your baptism.

Remember that that points towards what was fulfilled in Christ, what he already accomplished on your behalf.

Remember the covenant that Christ has made with you and sealed with you by his baptism.

If you know my wife and I, you will know that her feet are firmly planted on the ground, and my head is 100% in the clouds.

Sometimes that's not fun for us.

And when arguments like that arise, it typically happens um around bedtime, where when I'm just getting going, and Megan is just wanting to go to bed.

Uh uh something about feeding kids uh or something.

I don't know, I didn't find it interesting.

But the uh oh no, she's gonna listen to this.

And here's the here's the shape of those arguments.

I will have just like read something, and I'll be really, really excited about it, and and I'll I'll seek to share it, and I'll I'll be like, I'll say something to Megan at 10:30 at night when she's exhausted after a day with kids.

Like, I think meaning is prior to matter.

Like I think that the world is fundamentally made of meaning, and then the physicality of it, it just like supports the meaning.

And I'll be thrilled by that sentence.

And like I like identify with it in my heart, like this is this is me.

I'm sharing me.

And Megan will be like, I what I First of all, what does that mean?

And then I'll be like, what do you mean?

What does it mean?

Like I feel like it means what I just said.

And and well, I'm laughing, but it's it feels it feels.

Here's what it feels like.

It feels like I'm sharing this thing that's so important to me.

And if you aren't interested in it, you aren't interested in me, I'll never really be known.

You know what?

This just confirms that I'll never really be known.

So I'll get to a point like that of like absurdity.

One day, I said to Megan, one night.

If it was like lunchtime, I probably would have been fine.

One night, I said to Megan, you know, I think like I I don't have to share these things with you.

Oh it's just like too, it's just too painful.

I I feel like I'm just like setting myself up for some sort of rejection that I I this those things that I've that I'm like interested in don't don't have to be a part of our marriage.

I've got friends I can talk about those things with.

And Megan said, remember, we're in a covenant together.

You made a covenant with me that you would share your whole heart with me.

I do desire to know you.

Maybe just not at maybe not at bedtime.

And what she was calling me to, I was saying, you know, this would, this relationship might just be easier and simpler if I just didn't allow you to have this particular part of my heart.

Because I don't know how to negotiate sharing it.

I don't know how to articulate it or when or how to make this work in our relationship.

And Megan's answer was remember our covenant.

You don't have an option of withholding your heart from me.

Easier that may seem.

Paul is saying here, remember Christ's covenant with you.

When it seems as though it might be easier to stray, remember I've been baptized into covenant with him.

He has given me his promises, he's fulfilled my salvation, my whole heart belongs to him.

And when there comes a time where it says it might be easier, if if, sure, I gave Christ this, but but also I gave myself these other signs, these other ways to uphold my salvation.

If I added this sort of discipline into my life, or if I, you know, got this routine going in some particular order, then I could know that I have my salvation.

And it could be mine then, and I would feel secure in it.

He's saying, remember the covenant that was made.

He has all of you.

Now that you understand the covenant has been made, live in accord with it.

Just like my wife told me to do.

It adds that.

There's a second, there's a second even you in this.

Paul is saying, this next part you have to receive personally.

You have to know that I'm speaking directly to you, and you, even you, were dead in your trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh.

And what does that mean?

He gives us two qualities there.

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

Paul is demonstrating you had no hope of salvation.

You were dead in your trespasses and sins.

You could not please God.

No hope of salvation before him.

You would always choose sin over him.

And the uncircumcision of your flesh.

What is he saying there?

Saying you didn't even have the promise of salvation.

You were outside of the people who received the promise.

You had no hope, and you were without God in the world.

That is absolute hopelessness.

Now, for some of you, something like absolute hopelessness will not be hard to imagine.

Some of you have lived in places of absolute hopelessness for long, long seasons.

And so it's not hard for you to imagine.

There is no people to whom I am identified or who identify with me, and there is no hope of me ever changing.

That is the position that Paul describes us in when we are left to our sin.

And you, even you, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.

How did God forgive?

Colossians 2 14.

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.

Megan and I moved this week.

Don't ever do that.

It's not worth it.

Just stay.

If you're thinking of moving, just stay.

Now, we were talking about what we hate about moving.

And Megan and I hated different things.

I was explaining to her, you know, it's we're surrounded by these boxes and by barn doors that need to be hung.

And all of these little projects to make this house livable.

It's a very old, very old house.

And I said it's like I said, uh, I wake up every morning and I feel behind.

I'm letting someone down, I'm not accomplishing something that I ought to be accomplishing.

That that that I wake up in the morning and that greets me in the morning.

And then I have to pray it away.

Um and we so we bought uh this new house, and now it's like somebody was like, oh, congratulations on finishing that list of things to do in your old house.

Here's your new record of debt for this uh new place to come into.

Now, many of us live lives just constantly experiencing our own record of debt.

And you know what?

It's real.

It's really there.

There is a real record of debt.

Oh the name is slipping my mind.

The guy who translated the message, translated.

Eugene Peterson, yeah.

So he wrote this great book called The Pastor, and it's a memoir about his time in Major League Baseball.

And I'm just kidding, about his time as a pastor.

And he uh uh he says, I think this is true of all things, but it was really helpful to read as a pastor, so I'll just share it.

He said, uh if if anyone made as many mistakes as pastors make being pastors in any other job, they would just be fired.

And I think that I read that and I was like, man, I think that's so true.

And uh I'm sure that's true of so many vocations.

Um there's a joke there somewhere, but I don't know what it is.

Consider, and I think it's because this job is is like fundamentally relational.

And I don't know if you've ever been in relationships with people, but it's just like you just make so many mistakes.

It's incredible.

I'll say just the wrong words, you know, or or I'll not understand where this person's coming from and offer some advice, and then I'll reflect back and be like, you know, that was really good advice for me, but it had nothing to do with their situation.

And or it you you'll you'll get disproportionate with your time and give you know too much to uh the church and not enough to your family, and you'll neglect your own disciple-making uh opportunities that are right in front of you.

Look, look, I'm just sharing mine because I know that you're hearing this and thinking, same, same, same, same.

There's this record of debt.

A record of debt.

I want you to consider yours.

What's at the top of the list right now?

Your record of debt.

It's canceled, it's gone.

God took it from you and he nailed it to the cross.

There is no record of debt anymore for you.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

This is true.

It was dealt with on the cross.

We have been freed by what Christ has accomplished.

Now, Paul, in this speech, gets a little ironic because he he says they canceled the record of debt that stood against us.

He's referring to the Old Testament law with its legal demands.

And what the law in the way that the words actually translate, ESV is a little gentler, he says, he describes the Old Testament law as just a handwritten note.

He's being so coy, like almost cutting with the encroachment of the Old Testament view of the law to what has been developed and fulfilled in Christ.

Were you saying that old handwritten note of the law that was handed down from God to Moses on Mount Sinai with thunder and fear and terror?

That old handwritten note?

Saying that's been fulfilled.

That's been done, that's been canceled.

And remember the first, the verse right before this?

He says, and you who were uncircumcised, dead in your trespasses and sins, and you, even you, here, he says, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us, he has to include himself in it.

Yes, he was circumcised, yes, he had the law, but there is no one who can find salvation through the law.

Our only hope of salvation is in Christ.

YouTube, it's this great website.

I'm sure you'd love it.

The algorithm, the YouTube algorithm, knows me better than many of my closest friends.

And so it's been sending me the uh these uh videos from this guy, Ryan Holliday, who writes these like like popular level books on stoicism.

And uh that it's like, would is this something James would like?

Yeah.

It is.

And uh there's this hope in his videos of I can get my routines right.

I can get, I can orient my mind properly.

I can disregard the chaos of the world and get control of my own mind.

And there's there's this hope in these things of I'm moments away from an experience of salvation.

And it's not there.

There is no law that we might find through which we might be saved.

Our only hope is Christ.

So Paul includes himself.

He says, He says, This record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, he set it aside, nailing it to the cross.

What why maybe I'll go to another religion, maybe I'll go towards back towards Judaism again.

Have you considered that Christ has fulfilled this for you?

And then he describes how the rulers and authorities of the world, those satanic and demonic powers which hold us captive in our hearts, those ordinary modes of being which enslave us to their practices.

Paul explains that Christ disarmed those.

They are removed.

Now I know those are strange words, so just a quick aside, this is maybe helpful.

I'll frame it like this.

If you were to look at the way that the world has been operating, in let's say since 2020, I'll pick a random year.

And if we were to look at the way that the world has been operating, you could go to an economist, and they might say something like, Well, we're all self-interested rational actors.

And so really we're able to map all these trends of the way that humans are interacting as though they're just self-interested rational actors.

Now, let's take that self-interested rational actor map and lay it over a map of the world from 2020 until now.

That does not add up.

That doesn't add up.

How are people acting?

Well, you know, they're they're uh they're just a kind of like an aggregate of individuals' ideas.

And if we take all of those individuals' ideas and we add them all up, then we get these broad cultural trends.

Okay, so we can give like a sociological bottom-up description.

And the way that we'll do that is we'll we'll survey a bunch of individuals, we'll have them, you know, write down these certain things, and then we'll be able to give a qualitative description of of a trend.

And the way that we'll describe that trend is all these bottom-up actors.

Okay, now here's why that doesn't work either.

Have you talked with uh individuals?

Not that crazy.

They're a lot like I've in my experience, they're a lot like me.

Say similar level of crazy for any given individual that I talk to.

Some, of course, you know, there are some outliers that are particularly crazy.

Some people I've met, they're much more sane to me.

I can't tell.

Now, if we were to add all of those individuals up, I don't think we would get a cultural picture of the world like we've seen since 2020.

Culture is not just an aggregate from the bottom.

It's something that's driven from the top, that we participate in.

In our Western culture, we think only a bottom-up.

But it's helpful to show that the Bible thinks bottom-up and top-down.

There is a there are rulers and authorities in the heavenly places which describe the absurdities of the cultural movements that we are seeing take place.

Jesus disarmed those.

Are you tempted to be taken in by them?

To think that the answer might be might lie in a better, clearer, more accurate macro analysis.

You know, if I were to describe the cultural trends of groups of people and the way that we're interacting with one another, it doesn't look like an aggregate of a bunch of individuals.

It looks like a deranged personality, doesn't it?

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

Those rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, responsible for so many of the absurdities that we see.

Christ has triumphed over them in him.

Now, how did he do it?

And we'll close here.

He put them, he disarmed, put them to open shame and triumphed.

Disarmed literally means disrobed.

That's what the word translates to.

So he he stripped them naked.

And then he put them to open shame in their nakedness.

And then he triumphed over them.

Now this is borrowing a Roman image.

And the Roman image is when Rome would conquer a people, say Jerusalem, in 70 AD, then they would come back and say, hey, we got a bunch of new Jewish slaves, and we're going to build a Colosseum.

And the way that we're going to show our victory over this people is we're going to strip them, parade them through the streets, and then demonstrate our triumph over them.

You know, there was no news from afar to like you, you know, it wasn't like you pick up the Roman Times.

You know what their font was?

Yeah, man.

Um they would have to bring it in person into the street.

Okay, look at look at the image of this language.

Christ is stripped by the Romans.

He is put to open shame, held up on a cross.

He has triumphed over.

They hang an ironic sign on top of his cross that says King of the Jews, as as as sarcasm, triumphed over.

And if you look into Christ and if you have eyes to see that moment, you'll realize that all that they were, all that the rulers and authorities and the conspiring of the most advanced religion in the world and the most advanced governmental system in the world, all that those united to conspire to do to Jesus, in their doing that to him, he was accomplishing it against them.

In his being stripped, they were being disarmed.

In his being put to open shame, our shame was being removed, and his enemies were being shamed.

In their triumphing over him, he was triumphing over the world so that we would no longer look to the most advanced religion and we would no longer look to the most advanced political system for our salvation.

Instead, we would follow Paul's exhortation and hold fast to Christ as we see how utterly superior he is.

Are there any questions today?

How do I hold the reality that I am free and do not have a record of debt while also being wildly aware of my sin, especially repeated sin?

Great question.

So the way that our salvation plays out here in time and space, none of you were born when Jesus was crucified and resurrected.

And the good news about his crucifixion is it took place once for all time.

And so our righteousness is absolutely secured by Christ.

So we can read in Romans 8, I quoted it once already this morning, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

There's none.

In Christ, if you were to stand before the Lord right now, after having just sinned or in the middle of a sin in Christ, God would say, You're taken care of.

You are utterly righteous.

Jesus has accomplished that on our behalf.

Now, what happens when we sin?

Well, Christ has given us away.

I might reframe the question a bit.

Why would we not sin then?

Why is it that why would we ever try and resist sin if we know that Christ has just taken care of it?

We don't sin all the time because we don't like it.

You know.

Sin cannot remove our salvation.

But it can steal our confidence, it can steal our vigor, our vitality, it can steal our joy.

And our promise for obedience in Christ is knowing him.

If anyone loves me, he will keep my commandments.

And if you love me, you will be loved by my Father.

And I will love him and will disclose myself to him.

What is the promise of obedience?

In living in the way that God has designed us to live, to know him, he promises, you really will know me.

And when we sin, what is our repentance?

It is just a turning back to Christ.

It is a remembering over and over again, He is the one who made me righteous.

He is the one who secures my salvation.

I will add nothing else.

I will not add my own righteousness in any way.

I never brought any of my own righteousness to the table in the first place.

As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Before you received Christ Jesus the Lord, what righteousness or obedience to him did you have to bring?

You're always at square zero.

So you continue trusting in him and then you pursue him.

Often that pursuit just looks like repentance.

Repentance is obedience.

And you pursue him in hope that you will know him more completely.

And in knowing him and seeing him, you will be made more like him.

That is the pattern of our life.

And then one day we will die and be glorified with him.

We will no longer have the capacity to sit to sin because we'll see him as he is.

Until then we muddle on together.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Invite you, if you are a Christian, come to the table this morning.

Proclaim the Lord's death.

See how great a salvation you have in Christ and hold fast to him.

See how much he deconstructs whatever else might encroach.

And hold fast to Christ Jesus.

Holy Father, I pray, that you would bless this meal, and that we might share and table fellowship with you as friends.

Lord, you call us friends.

Let us remember the sacrifice that you made for us, that the record of debt has been removed, and that we might come together freely with you.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.