Introduction

Good morning. If you have your Bibles, turn to the second chapter of Colossians. We’re going to be focusing this morning on verses 6 through 15 … sort of.

Here’s the deal: We, in our modern day, go through the Bible section by section each week, digesting a little at a time. And that’s generally a good thing, allowing us to take our time thinking through God’s Word. But in some ways that can also be a disservice. Think about it this way: when the letter to the Colossians was originally received by the church in the first century, they didn’t read one paragraph the first week, then another paragraph the next, and so on. The whole book of Colossians was the sermon! And there is continuity that can sometimes be lost when we divide up the text.

And I think that’s what we have to be careful about here. Really, all of chapter 2 through the beginning of chapter 3 is a single argument. The first part of chapter 2—and I would argue everything in chapter 1 as well—lays out the theological truths about Christ and the Gospel that form the foundation of the argument. What comes after our passage, starting in verse 16, is the application. The passage before us this morning, then—verses 6 through 15—is the hinge upon which we transition from those critical theological truths into specific application.

My strategy this morning is to respect that same development of the argument. So unlike a typical sermon, I’m not going to get into a lot of specific application this week—that will come in the weeks that follow. This morning is going to have a lot more of a “classroom Sunday school” feel. This morning we’re the setup, so to speak, taking a softball and tossing out that nice, slow, juicy, fat pitch, and then over the next several weeks [other teachers] can crush that thing and bring us home.

Let’s start by reading all of chapter 2 together.

I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

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.

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. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

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

The Problem

Let’s be real clear about the problem that Paul is addressing. He doesn’t want his readers to be duped by certain “fine-sounding arguments.” He describes it in both general and specific terms:

General	Specific
“fine-sounding arguments” (v.4)	“what you eat or drink” (v.16)
“hollow and deceptive philosophy” (v.8)	“New Moon celebration” (v.16)
“human tradition” (v.8)	“Sabbath day” (v.16)
“elemental spiritual forces” (v.8)	“false humility” (v.18)
“rules” (v.20)	“Do not handle / taste / touch!” (v.21)

There’s a false way of going about the Christian life that revolves around rules, ritual, and tradition. Paul doesn’t want us to be suckered in by these hollow philosophies. But we do get suckered in, don’t we?

And here, I think, is how we often fall into this. Because we believed the Gospel, we know that our sins have been forgiven. The penalty has been paid. And we’re thankful in our hearts to God for that gift. So wouldn’t it be awesome if, from the moment you believed, your life was actually free from sin? But that’s not how it works at all, is it? As we actually live life, day after day, our words and actions betray a continual struggle with our brokenness.

We get angry and yell at our kids or spouse;
We return again to an addiction like alcohol that we swore we’d never return to;
We give in to lust and the temptation of pornography;
We just find ourselves kind of apathetic and lazy about spending time with God in prayer and devotion—there’s no real sense of urgency or intimacy with God.

And to many of us, that continuing failure is really frustrating and discouraging. And right here, I submit, is where we often go wrong. In the midst of our frustration, we start to look around for that silver bullet that will bring us up to “level 2” Christianity. And when you start seeking, there will be no shortage of people lining up to sell you those secrets.

In Paul’s day, these things, as we just read, involved elements of ritualistic Judaism and asceticism, probably spread by local teachers and gurus. In our day with more global information, these typically take the form of movements:

Rituals that promise the secret to God’s blessing .(Some of you remember the “Prayer of Jabez” craze from the dawn of this millennium.)
Specific rules that regulate the “Christian” way to diet, educate our children, and so on.
30 days of this, and 12 weeks of that.

And here’s the thing: they sound good at the time. That’s why we get duped. As verse 23 states, “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.” They often work for a time, but tend not to last. Or often, they just swap out one vice like laziness and replace it with another one like arrogance. My goal this morning is the same as Paul: to present before us an appreciation of the glory of Jesus Christ and the Gospel—and what that means for us—so that we find our sufficiency in Him and are not taken in by the Next Great Thing that promises way more than it can deliver.

The Alternative: Union with Christ

The alternative is found right there in the first verse of our passage, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him…”

When we talk about the Gospel, sometimes we come away with a limited view that the Gospel is merely the message that gets us into the kingdom. We believe the Gospel, the penalty for our sins is forgiven, and now we need to get busy with our discipleship programs. That’s an incomplete understanding. The Gospel is the proclamation that we have been set free from the penalty of our sins, but it is also the proclamation that we have been set free from the power of sin in our lives, and that makes a huge difference to how we go about the rest of our lives here on earth.

“Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord [salvation], continue to live your lives in him [sanctification]…”

Let’s walk through the passage a bit…

In verse 9, “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form…” That’s the same glorious truth we studied in the previous chapter. That Jesus Christ is fully God, perfect in power and righteousness. But look where the passage goes next with that truth in verse 10: “and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.” In most of our English Bibles the word “fullness” is used in both verses. It’s not exactly the same Greek word, but they share the same root and basic meaning. If you write in your Bibles, you might circle those two words and draw a line connecting them. This is the “hinge” that I was talking about earlier—in this section Paul is taking what is true of Christ and explaining how our union with him makes certain realities true in our life as well. Not in exactly the same way—we will never be divine—but in some way our union with Christ in the Gospel brings us also to a place of fullness, of completeness. Significantly, this completeness isn’t just in heaven in the future—notice the tense of the verb—but now, in this life. That fullness is going to be explained in the verses that follow.

We’re actually going to skip ahead and then come back to these verses 11 and 12. Skip ahead to verse 13 and hear (again) the gospel message:

“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.”

Now I don’t want to rush through or skip over this, but it’s impossible to improve on what Paul says here. This is the good news. We were dead in our sins—condemned, powerless, but God made us alive with Christ. The penalty for our sins has been cancelled, paid in full by death of Jesus on the cross. God did this: not our good deeds, not our ritual, not our sincerity. Because of Christ’s righteousness. We just believe.

If you’re here this morning, not as a believer (and so everything I’ve said so far has sounded pretty irrelevant), but just because you’re curious about what Christians believe, this is it. Honestly, that’s the only thing you need to hear this morning. You have my permission to tune out everything else I say this morning and read that over and over.

But for those of us who are believers, notice how then Paul moves on from the penalty of our sins being forgiven to the power of sin being broken:

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

In verse 10 it was stated that Jesus is head over all powers and authorities, and in verse 15 it states what he’s done with that rule: He’s disarmed them and exposed them as powerless. That’s the attitude we’re supposed to have when we think of our spiritual enemies: not just the demonic realm but our own flesh and calls to temptation. In light of what Christ has done, they no longer hold power over us.

But sometimes we don’t live that way, do we?

I’m going to do something I promised myself I would never do. I’m going to use a super-hero analogy. (You can take away my “Reformed” card after the service.) Nonetheless, I think it’s helpful.

In the Spider-Man mythology, ordinary guy Peter Parker gets bit by a radioactive spider, which grants him superpowers. Now from the moment he is bit, he has been changed, but there’s a period of time where he is still living as his old self. Two things need to happen: one, there’s a knowledge component—he starts to recognize what has happened (mostly through accidents); and two, there’s an element of choice, to embrace that new identity—and that makes all the difference. And “with great power comes great responsibility” and all that—I’m not going to push the analogy.

So also with us. If you are a believer in Christ, this passage lays out before you some really important truths about your identity in Christ. That’s the knowledge component, which I pray we all have ears to hear this morning. But there’s also an element of embracing those truths of who we are in Christ, of finding our identity in Him.

Union with Christ

Jumping back up to verse 11, Paul uses two metaphors, circumcision and baptism, to help us understand our identity in Christ. Both of these are signs that God gave to his people, and like all signs, the signs themselves aren’t the point, but they point toward a greater reality and truth.

The first sign, in verse 11, is circumcision. Circumcision is, literally, the physical cutting off and removal of a part of our flesh. That’s as far as we’ll go this morning—we’ll keep things PG-13. That sign points to the reality that if you are in Christ, your old self (ruled by the flesh) has been removed. “Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ.” It’s cut off. It’s gone. It’s dead. It’s powerless. That’s part of our new identity. Not just the penalty for sin forgiven, but the power of sin over our lives is dead.

The second sign, baptism, communicates the same truth but takes it one step further. “…Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

Now, we need to have a quick aside here. When we talk about baptism in this church, our minds are naturally going to envision infant baptism done via the sprinkling of water. That is, by far, the most common form of baptism to which most of us are familiar. It’s a sign of the New Covenant promise, recognizing that it is ultimately God who chooses and saves his people. However, the Presbyterian Book of Order also recognizes and encourages baptism for adult believers who were not baptized as an infant—that’s not just a Baptist thing. An adult who has made a credible profession of faith is baptized as a sign of the faith that he already claims as his own. That’s a less common occurrence for this congregation—and often this happens out at Brady’s Run Lake so it’s not as common an experience for many of us. It would have been a very common experience, however, for the early church as the Gospel is spreading over the Roman Empire and that first generation of adult believers is coming to faith.

In order to understand the point Paul is making here, you really need to picture in your mind adult believer’s baptism by full immersion—think dunking under Brady’s Run Lake (which represents our union with Christ in His death—we were “buried with him” the text says) and then coming back out (representing our union with Christ in His resurrection—we were “raised up with him”). It’s the same reality as the analogy of circumcision. In Christ, our old enslaved-to-sin self has died. But the image of baptism goes one step further. It’s not just that the old self is gone (and we are left void), but we are “born again”—a new self is put on, one that is alive in Christ, with the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome. “If anyone is in Christ,” the Bible will say elsewhere, “the new creation has come: the old is gone, the new is here!”

I want to reiterate the point one more time. In Christ, the penalty for our sins has been forgiven. But it is so much more than that. Our old self, which was enslaved to sin, which had no choice but to give into temptation, has been cut off and buried with Christ. And we have been given a new self, which, by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, has the ability to say “No” to temptation and sin.

This truth, then, forms the backbone of the application that follows. Follow along with me on a few highlights:

2:20 - 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!”?

3:1 - Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

3:9 - Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

How this makes a difference

One thing I want to make clear as we close. Paul is clearly attacking legalism and ritualism in this section. Yet, just as clearly, as you read through the New Testament—or even the rest of this letter—there are obviously rules and expectations that we are to obey as followers of Christ. So what’s the deal? And that really needs to be teased out in a larger study, but I want to say here that there is a world of difference between a silver-bullet mentality (based on man-made rules, rituals, and traditions) vs. Gospel-motivated love and discipline. So to take one example from earlier:

When you are struggling with your anger… That’s a gospel moment: “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” Confess your sin, thank Jesus for His righteousness that paid the penalty for sinful anger, and embrace the reality that the power of that sin is also broken. Your old self has died—your struggle with anger doesn’t have to end in defeat. As you pray for the Spirit’s help, He might lead you to seek counseling, or to have a daily ritual of writing down things you are thankful for, etc.

At the end of the day, there should still be rules in your life that you follow, discipline that helps you keep your spiritual priorities, etc. But those rules and discipline are not the secrets to success—to reach “level 2” Christianity. Rather, they are tools that the Holy Spirit is using, as part of your new self, to transform you more and more into the image of Christ.

As I try to communicate it with words, the difference sounds very subtle, but I honestly don’t think that it is. It’s just a matter of not getting the cart before the horse.

As it so happens, we find ourselves in the period of Lent. Many fast or give up certain things during Lent. Can you see how this passage speaks precisely to that issue? One can fast in a superstitious or ritualistic way that believes the act of fasting somehow taps you into spiritual blessings or makes you more pleasing to God. And this passage would say that’s bankrupt. One might also fast as a Spirit-led discipline that gives you opportunity to reflect on the humility and sacrifice of Christ. Same external act, different motivations.

The gospel, then, is not just the message that the penalty of our sins has been taken away, it is also the good news that the power of sin has been broken in our lives. We are united with Christ in his death and in his resurrection—which means that our old self, enslaved to sin, is dead, and have the ability to walk in newness of life.

And over the next several weeks we’re going to hear how Paul makes those abstract truths practical and real in our lives.