Tuesday Teaching: Colossians

Series: The Art of Being Unordinary
Sermon: Colossians (6/30/24)

Happy Tuesday, all.

Andrew Courtney from Encounter Campus Ministry at ISU - a partner mission of MCC - brought us the Word this past Sunday, and he continued our series working through the New Testament in chronological order by preaching on the book of Colossians.

Andrew highlighted the text from Colossians 2:13-23, and reminded us that Christ is the reason we are free to live in the full light of God’s glory, knowing we are forgiven and made righteous because of Jesus’s willing act of sacrifice on the cross.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. - Colossians 2:13-15

I love this line from the new-ish worship song “Homecoming” by Bethel Music (check it out!):

These scarlet sins had a crimson cost
You nailed my debt to that old rugged cross
An empty slate, at the empty grave
Thank God that stone was rolled away

Theologians and biblical scholars call this understanding of Christ’s death and resurrection “penal substitutionary atonement.” Penal: punishment. Substitution: trading one thing for another. Atonement: our reconciliation with God because sin is defeated.

Jesus died so that we don’t have to. Jesus took our punishment for sin, substituted himself in our place as he was worthy to do because he is the perfect and innocent Son of God, and made atonement - reconciliation with God - available for all who believe, repent, and follow.

Christ’s death and resurrection defeated the power of sin and death once and for all, and sets us free from the shackles of this life so we can live fully together with God and his people both now and forever.  

This freedom means that our satisfaction, our hope, and perhaps most importantly our identity, are not found in human definitions of success or even human definitions of religious commitment but in Christ alone.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. - Colossians 2:16-17

Andrew summarized this passage by saying that those who are in Christ are not to be shaken or swayed by human worldviews and earthly values, because those are tools of the enemy. Instead, we are to fix our eyes on Jesus and his gospel, finding our confidence and security in the God who loves us with a deep and abiding love; a love that outlasts and persists when everything else falls short.

Everything else - other ways of thinking, other ways of living, other ways of being - will disappoint us. The God-filled life will not.

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. - Colossians 2:20-23

In Andrew’s message, he said Paul is encouraging us to not get caught up in worldly teachings that sound wise on the surface but are actually worthless and without substance. They may help us temporarily modify our behavior, even in good ways, but they don’t provide lasting, gospel life-change.

Our path to health, our path to healing, our path to relational fullness, our path to stability and growth and peace…all of these are realized in real and permanent ways when we let what God has done for us through Jesus on the cross and his continued presence in our souls through the Holy Spirit be the defining characteristic of our identity, our thoughts, and our actions.

By focusing so heavily on the things that draw us away from God, Andrew said, we give those things power; we are submitting to them rather than submitting them to Jesus.

Surrendering ourselves to Jesus - our wants and desires, our temptations to sin, our misplaced hope in self-help gurus or political parties, our “self-made religions” - is the result of a properly ordered spiritual life: prayer, time in scripture, and participation in the body of Christ, his church.  

The Collosian church was fighting against the pervading philosophies of their time and trying to navigate what it meant to organize their thoughts and life together around the person of Jesus. Sound familiar?

Paul encourages them to not be discouraged by false teachers and the skeptical people around them who are criticizing their commitment to Christ. “Those standards are from the world, and you are dead to the world,” Andrew preached. “You have resurrected, and you are alive with Christ.”

Us, too.

Jesus has wiped our dirty slates clean. We have the fullness of salvation because of God’s enduring, faithful love. We can only respond with enduring, faithful love for him and his people.

Know Him and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady

Read for this coming Sunday: Philippians

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