Christ is Our Life and Victory

stories, poems. It's so diverse and so powerful. It's beautiful. And of course, being the greatest piece of literature, it's oftentimes mimicked and imitated. Our modern stories, contemporary stories, stories ever since the Bible has been written, have mimicked and imitated Scripture. And one of the biggest themes or ideas that has taken away from Scripture is the Christ figure. There are many stories in contemporary movies and literature that have a Christ figure, someone who dies for the sake of others. Now, I would love to use illustrations here, but I also don't want to ruin any books or good movies for you. So I'm going to refrain. Many of these Christ figures, someone who dies for a people so they might live, Many of them concern me, many of them actually bother me because they will try to imitate Christ too much. It'll be a sign of the cross or it'll be too close because one of the problems there is the death of Christ is unique. I want to make sure we're protecting the death of Christ, imitating the power of the stories of the gospel. There's a certain hesitation one should have. And so many of these stories, well, they concern me because they could come close to profaning the uniqueness of Christ's death. What's actually amazing is if you look at all the different stories that have a Christ figure, they can't do it all. No one person will die for a people so that an enemy won't conquer them, but no one can actually capture everything that Christ accomplishes, because usually if that Christ figure dies and even if he arises from the grave, those people are still the same people and they're still in danger of another group of enemies that are going to come. Further. No story that I know of actually has the Christ figure give the people a new transformed life. You can imitate Christ, but you can never get to the full impact of all that he accomplished. No one other than Christ has died for his people and then transformed his people. I think if you actually found this in media, it would be very odd because they would then have to admit there was something wrong with us to begin with. They don't want to make the Christ figure the full Christ figure, because that would assume there was something wrong with them. They just don't need protection. They need new life, a different kind of life. Jesus Christ, he doesn't just protect us from our enemies. He gives us life when we were dead. Our message this morning is from Colossians chapter two, verses 13 to 15. And the message summary is this, God gives life to sinners by washing away our sins and triumphing over our enemies. God gives life to sinners by washing away our sins and triumphing over our enemies. We're only going to break this passage into two parts. First, God gives life to sinners. That's verses 13 and 14. God gives life to sinners. Verses 13 and 14. Secondly, God gives life with absolute authority. Verse 15 alone. Let me read our passage in its entirety. And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him referring to the son. 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. Again, referring to Christ. Our first point. God gives life to sinners. The first thing we need to look at here is that Paul says we were dead in our sins. We were dead. Christians, we have life. We have life in Christ, but we were dead. He modifies the death in two different ways. We were dead in our trespasses. We were dead in the uncircumcision of our flesh. I think here we can see that we were dead in our sins first because of what we do. We were dead in our trespasses. We were dead in that everything we did was in rebellion against God. What we did was fight against God with our works. Our actions demonstrate a rebellion against God that is evidence also of a deadly heart, a heart that is dead, a heart that is opposed to God. Now, let me clarify something. We were talking about the doctrine of total depravity here. Does that mean that no one ever does anything good? In a sense, no. We know people who do good things. We know people who we would say are good people. They give their lives to others. There are non-Christians who give their entire lives to helping orphans and those who are out in the streets and need help because they're helpless. Yeah, we can categorize them. They're good. They're not selfish. We have categories of good and bad, but really if we look at it, all people in God's eyes are sinners. Because even that person who spends their entire life feeding the poor, if they're not doing it in submission to God and His will and His word, they are rejecting God's rightful role in their life. God is their creator. He has a right to say what we will do and how we will do it. He has a right over us. And even if we do what we would consider the greatest goods of all the world, if one is not submitting to God and those good deeds, they're transgressors. They're sinners. They're not in a right standing or in a right position with God. There is not peace with God. There's wrath from God. So, of course, we can see we're dead in our trespasses, no matter how many good deeds we think we've done. If we're not submitting ourselves to God, we are a trespasser because we're not obeying his sovereignty and his lordship. Secondly, it says we are dead in the uncircumcision of our flesh. Here, I think he's saying we are dead because of our desires. The transgressions are fruit of a desire that comes from within. The uncircumcision of the flesh refers back to that desire that we have that has not been fixed or corrected. See, he's speaking to Gentiles. They didn't have the law. The law was meant to be a reminder, a barrier for all the Jews to say, this is what God will live. This is what my heart wants to do. And it was supposed to be a teaching tool. It was supposed to keep them from sin. That wasn't even effective for them because their hearts need to be circumcised. They need to be given a new heart with new desires that are good and seek to glorify God. We all, apart from Christ, had uncircumcised hearts. Our desires were opposed to God. We all do what we want to do. And unless God comes and does something in our hearts, we only do that which is opposed to God. In many ways, we have to see these two causes of our death or these two modifiers of what it means to be dead in our actions and our desires there together because we do what we want to do. We are sinners. We're destructive to others, we're destructive to ourselves, most of all, we are rebellious against God. Now, this leads us to really one of the most important questions you're going to have to answer. You know, the important questions are, did Jesus Christ rise from the grave? That is the most important question you all, we all must answer because that changes everything. But here for Christians and non-Christians, there's a teaching that we have to ask, what does it mean to be dead? This is extremely important because how we define what it means to be dead will change the way we view God, ourselves and salvation. How we define death here in this passage and other passages changes everything. It's an extremely important doctrine because it tells us who we were without Christ. So how we define death really affects everything about our other doctrines. We can see its importance because at the very foundation of Scripture in Genesis, the very beginning, God said, if you eat of that fruit, if you eat of that tree, you will die. That's the problem. We ate of that tree, we rebelled against God, and now we are all dead. Death is our problem. So we have to ask, what does it mean to be dead? If you're a Christian, this is important because it will lead you to more dependence. The more you understand what death means, the more it should lead you to greater dependence. If you're not a Christian. I pray that learning more about what it means to be dead will send you closer to the cross where you find life. First, there's a trajectory that I want to go through on what dead could mean. First, dead could mean that we will all stop breathing one day. Now, that's obviously implied in Genesis. As God said, you will surely die. Adam, he was going to live forever if he had obeyed. He would always have breath in his lungs, his heart would always be pumping blood toward his body. He would have lived forever. So is what Paul is referring to here the necessary end to all of life? That all of us being dead in our trespasses in the uncircumcised of our flesh, does that just mean that we'll one day stop breathing and stop having blood run through our veins? Well, I think it implies that. But he's saying you were dead. He's actually saying the state in which you used to exist was death. They still have blood in their veins. They still have air in their lungs. So it can't just be referring to physical death. Paul has to be talking about spiritual death here. There's something more than just the end of life. So let's look at a second level of death. It certainly means we will stop breathing one day, but let's look at the second level. Death means we will be judged by God. This is referred to the second death, when we will face God and he will judge us for what we have done to the body and good or bad. He will judge us in our transgressions. We will not be annihilated when life ends, when breath leaves our lungs. No, we will be judged by God. And there, many of us, if we're without Christ, will face a second death, a judgment for everything we've done. Again, I don't think this is actually getting down to what Paul is really saying. I think it involves it and includes it, but it doesn't quite get to the state that we were in. Third and finally. Death means we are unresponsive to the things of God. We are not able to respond to the things of God. We have a complete incapacity to recognize, respond to, and trust the things of God. Let me give an analogy. You can't teach a turtle astronomy. He doesn't have the capacity to learn astronomy. Now, he can sit there if you have lettuce. He can't move that fast. You can lay out all the astronomy you want, but the turtle doesn't have the capacity to actually take in, understand astronomy. He doesn't have it in him. He's dead to all things related to astronomy. He is unresponsive. He cannot respond or comprehend anything to do with astronomy. That's how we are with the things of God apart from Christ. Only our problem isn't a mental problem. The turtle's problem is a comprehensive intellectual problem. Our problem is a heart problem. Apart from Christ, we are dead because we do not desire the things of God. The turtle has a head problem. We had a heart problem. In our deadness, we do not have the capacity to hear, to trust, and to respond to God properly. We're very much like zombies. Not the cool zombies in the Michael Jackson video. No, we're zombies. We move, we breathe, we walk, some may even dance, but you can't live life appropriately. When you're a zombie, you're moving, breathing, but you are not living the life you were meant to live as a human being. You cannot respond appropriately. We're not doing what is called the true life, the life that God has given us. You see, friends, in our death, we're opposed to him, that is, God. We're opposed to his will and we're opposed to his word. We were dead. Let's just be more simple. What can a dead person do? What can a dead person do? Someone drowns in the pool, they take in the The water. They cannot breathe. They're lying there. What can that dead person do? Nothing. A dead person can do nothing until someone comes from above and starts breathing life back into them. We were dead. We had scales on our eyes so we could not see the beauty of the gospel. We had deaf ears so we could not hear the truth. Until God came from above and breathe life back into us. See. We need something from outside of us to rejuvenate us, to regenerate us, to give us life again. This leads us to the great declaration of this passage. We were dead. Now God has given us life with his son. Now God has given us life with his son. God made alive together with him, having forgiven us our trespasses by canceling the record of dead that stood against us with its legal demands. This, he set aside, nailing to the cross. So the hard truth to swallow is actually that we were dead. As Americans, we have the pride that we can fix ourselves, we can fix whatever it is, we can at least meet you halfway. No, you have to rely completely upon Christ. This leads us to our second point in this verse. We have life in Christ. We were dead, and we needed a power more powerful than the power of sin. We needed something that was more powerful than the cause of our death, and that alone can be God. Let's think about the power of God in His life. First, God in His perfect power spoke everything that we see Except for sin into existence. He said, let there be a tree and there was a tree. He said, let there be fish in the sea and there were fish in the sea. He spoke them into existence. This is amazing power. This is amazing life giving life, creating power. Secondly, we can see in creation he breathed. life into man. He formed Adam from the dust. And then very intimately, very personally, He breathed life into him. He gave us this special life that images him. We are all made in the image of God. He breathed life into us. The same God who created all of us with His powerful Word, with His powerful breath, He's now come down to us. Jesus Christ descended. The son of God from the father who is God. He came down to become like us in every way except for with sin. He was without sin. And that same Jesus in John 20 after he rose from the grave. He breathed on the disciples. He breathed out the Holy Spirit. He gave them the power of life that would circumcise their hearts, that would writhe along their hearts, that would change their hearts, give them desires of God, that now they can obey God. That same God who breathed life into us originally, now has come to breathe a new life by giving us the Spirit. We all know, because we've all seen the fellow with the rainbow hat or the rainbow hair in John 3, 16, that when Jesus is asked, How do you receive eternal life? How do you see the kingdom of God? He says you must be born again. You must be born from above. New life. Must take place outside of you. It must come from another and it can only come through the God who is alone more powerful than us. The beauty of this is. We now share in the life of Christ. We now get to partake in the powerful life of God. He has made us alive together with Him. We share in the indestructible, perfect, eternal life of the Son. That life that He has, He shares with us. Now we have a life that's indestructible, eternal, perfect, imperishable. The life of the son is given to us. Let's continue to look at our passage, because there's three ways in which this life is given to us. First, in verse 13, God gives life by forgiving our sins. God gives life by forgiving our sins. Now, notice our passage began with we were dead in our trespasses. Now it says he has forgiven us all. trespasses so we're meant for relationship with God and the main problem in scripture is our sin that is the main problem that's the main mission of God that is the focus of all scripture our sin is the problem and God is working constantly and always to overcome conquer remove that sin so there's no longer wrath but peace The main goal of Scripture is to point to the sin being forgiven, and that is only done through the death of Christ. We are supposed to be removed from death to life because He created us to live. He created us to know Him. He created us to be loved by Him and to love Him. And sin has kept us from that relationship. What's interesting here is He says that we are forgiven for our trespasses. We are dead because of our trespasses. He doesn't speak of sin as if it's this one abstract concept. He speaks of it as if it's the numerous, multiple sins that we have all accomplished, that we have all committed. Sin isn't this abstract idea. Sin is what we do. Sin is what we desire. I think it's too easy for us to think of sin as this abstract idea that needs to be fixed, especially fixing other people. What we really need to see is, are we sinners? Do we take a real account for our multiple sins so that we repent of them? If we were to take account for all of our sins, we would be overwhelmed. But here's the encouraging news, friends. The beauty of the gospel is that we have sinned more than we will ever know. God knows all those sins and he forgives them all in Christ. We have sinned more than we could ever comprehend. Christ and God knows all of our sins more than we could ever comprehend, and he has forgiven them all in Christ. This is why we can sing with the great hymn writer Spafford. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross. I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Oh, my soul. It's not some sins. It's not just the sins we confess. It's every sin has been nailed to the cross so that we have perfect peace with God, which gives us the only response. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Oh, my soul. The second way in which we see God giving life is by cancelling our record of sin. This begins verse 14, God made alive together with Him by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. Now, a key question is what is the legal demand referring to? He actually uses the same phrase in chapter 2 verse 15 of Ephesians that Ron read earlier, and there it was clearly referring to Moses' law. Colossians, he never refers to Moses' law. Maybe this is, since he's writing to Gentiles, he's referring to that moral standard, the common moral law that we all have written on our hearts. The key here is that God has a moral code, He has legal demands, He has a right to tell us how to live, and we have not obeyed it. The record of debt, really, that's a we could we could summarize that an IOU. We were created by God to be aligned with him, our allegiance is supposed to be with him and for him. We owe him our obedience. And now there is a record that stands against us, a record of our failure and our guilt. The most important word for us as we think about the legal demands and how we've broken them all and that there's a record against us is this word cancelled. There's a long list of sins written on about us. And here he gives us life by cancelling that record of our failure. Really, the picture here is that it washes away. Ink and paper did not connect at the same level that our ink and paper connected so you could wash words off a sheet. It's a beautiful picture where you could see a record being held up and a water will be thrown on it over and over again until the words just melted off the page. Our record of debt that stood against us is washed away, now pure as white as snow. It's erased. It's canceled. There is no more record against us. We can see this concept in Psalm 51 where David prays, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash away my transgressions, cancel my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Friends, we have a Savior who's done this that we can actually look back to and praise Him that He has given us life by washing away that record of sin. Third, the third way God gives life, it's in the cross. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. Very climactic phrase. Something important as we think about this. How and who is doing the nailing? The father is the subject of this verb. The father washes away our sin, the father forgives our transgressions by nailing his son to the cross. Why did the Father need to nail His Son to the cross? It's because it was the only way He could remove our debt. The Father, God Almighty, sent His Son to die for us. Again, what stood in our way of loving the Father and knowing the love of the Father is our sin. And the only way to get rid of that sin is to have a mediator. Someone who would take that sin upon themselves. And that is Jesus Christ. The Father sent Him to be nailed to the cross. If you ever question and wonder about the love of God, look to the Father who nailed His Son to the cross. Because there, as the nails were going into Jesus' hands and feet and the crowns being placed on His thorn, the greater agony is the fact that God Himself, the Father, is nailing the wrath that we deserve to His very being. Yes, we can think of the agony of the physical pain of Christ. The greatest pain He suffered that day was being held distant from the Father as the Father nailed our sin to Him on the cross. Friends, this is love. While it's extremely disturbing to think about a father killing his son, the end of that is that He has now forgiven us. In Jesus Christ, he, Jesus Christ, the innocent one has died in our place so that the innocent one can take upon our sin and we can receive his innocence. Praise God for his perfect sacrifice. Let's move to our third and final or I'm sorry, our second point, our next verse, the third verse, verse 15. God gives life with absolute authority. He is on the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Now, a key question, I know many of you have not been with us, who are these rulers and authorities? I believe they're referring to demons. to angelic beings who have rebelled against God. You can see this in Colossians 1.16 and even clearer in Ephesians 1.21. When Paul is referring to rulers and authorities, he's referring to those that have actually power over us. Angels have a greater power than us human beings. They are rulers and authorities, but they are resisting God. That makes them enemies. Now we see three different parts here. He disarms them, he puts them to shame and he triumphs over them. It's really a fantastic passage to think about in terms of what does this look like? One of the first things we need to make sure we are clear on is that God in no way was ever threatened by any demon. God created those angels that were perfect and good and they rebelled. Their life depends upon God. He is not threatened by any power. He is the ultimate power. He's not threatened by these angels, these demons. But he's triumphing over them because they were a threat to us. We are his beloved children, and the spiritual battle takes place when those demons are attacking us. That was Satan's plan all along. Keep us away from God. He came and tempted us with that fruit, with that rebellion, so that we would be distant from God. We would not know Him. We would not love Him. We would not be loved by Him. So the first thing we need to make sure is that God's triumph is never in question. God is not threatened by them. He is fighting them and has victory over them because they were a real threat to us. So what is, how does God disarm and put the shame and triumph over these authorities. Let me try to paint a picture of what this might look like. I don't think this is exactly what it would look like, but I think this hopefully will put flesh on what Paul is speaking of here. Picture yourself in a courtroom. You're sitting there as the defendant. God is the judge now at the risk of having an image of God in your mind. Don't picture God. Picture a gavel sitting on the judge's desk. That gavel represents perfect and absolute justice. This is a just God. This is a just judge who will make a judgment that is right. He will punish sin appropriately. So you're there. You're the defendant. You're sitting at your table. You're by yourself. God's gavel is there. The metaphor for absolute justice. And then there's the prosecutor. It's Satan himself. He is there to accuse you. Because that's what he does. God calls the court to order. He says, Satan, what are your accusations? He simply snaps his finger. And a host of demons start writing on the walls of the court all the things you said, all the things you've done, all the things that you even try to forget because they're so shameful. They're making a mural out of the walls of the court with your life being played out before all to see, and the demons that are still sitting there are laughing and mocking. They're cheering. Satan says they're smug. Content. See, he's dangling the truth of your sin before you. God doesn't have to answer to Satan, but Satan is there accusing you. And those accusations are accurate. They're evident to all. And you know they're true. So you slouch down. You become scared. You realize you're absolutely helpless. You realize you're absolutely dead. The judgment will come. Then someone else enters the courtroom. The back door opens up. A beaming light comes shining through. God the Son. He stands in front of the courtroom. He's not your lawyer. He's not going to find loopholes around these walls. He's going to tell the Father, this one believed in me. I have taken the wrath for all these sins on the cross. He is forgiven. Immediately the courtroom mood changes. The gavel drops down. And God says this one is innocent because his sins have been judged on my son and he has washed them away. He has conquered them. He has triumphed over them. Satan. This is his content is his conscience that falls. The demons that were writing all of a sudden, the markers become so hot in their hands, they drop them. They can no longer make these accusations in the courtroom of God. Because the Son has said, this one is mine. The Father has declared he is innocent. He has put Satan and his accusations and his power to accuse to shame. He's disarmed him. This is where it gets difficult for us. We still live in a world where Satan is accusing us. We have been declared innocent. We have been declared righteous only in Christ. Our sins have been washed away in him in the courtroom of God. He has said you are justified. While still being just. But Satan, he's still dangling those sins in front of us. He's still wanting to use our real sin. To overwhelm us with guilt. He's still wanting to use our real sin to keep us from experiencing God. What we have to remind ourselves of is that that accusation, while the sin was real, it is no longer counted against us. His power of accusation has been lost. Christ has taken it away. He has shamed him. He has disarmed him. He has had victory over him. See, Satan wants to attack us. Even as Christians now, because if we are guilty, if we feel guilty, we will not be effective in the kingdom of God. We will not enjoy a relationship with God. We will not enjoy a relationship with one another as brothers and sisters. That's why we have a spiritual battle to fight. Many people are talking about how God is blessing Jefferson Park. Do you know what happens when God begins to bless a church? Satan will begin to attack it. If we're going to start marching against the gates of hell and fighting in the domain of darkness, we're going to have to go to battle with the powers and the rulers. We can't do it alone. We're powerless and helpless against. But praise God, we've got a big brother who we can pray to, we can pray through. We have the power of Christ. We have the power of his atonement. We can say your accusations and your lies no longer matter. We can denounce him. Friends, we must realize that we are in a spiritual battle. This world is not a playground. It is a battlefield for our souls, the souls of our loved ones and the souls of all Charlottesville and all the world. Are we going to be content with what God has done for us? Are we going to fight? the one who is fighting against us in the power of Christ. Let this promise from Paul and Romans be a relief to you. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. Genesis 3 God promised that he would send a son who would crush Satan. Christ has done that sufficiently and completely on the cross. But now he's saying the Satan, the demon that continues to tempt you, continues to lie to you, he will also be crushed under your feet when Christ reconciles all things to himself. We must persevere in the cross. We must persevere, trusting in what God has said, not the lies of the evil one. We must persevere in uniting together for the purpose of God's glory, not afraid of what Satan will do to us. We also must be aware that he wants to cause disturbance. He wants to cause disunity. He wants to keep us from fighting together. The way to be united, is to commit to the headship of Christ. To each one, recognize that it is the head of Christ that saves us, the head of Christ that unites us, it's the head of Christ that leads us in the battle. It's in his power that we will have a victory. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you that you have declared us innocent. that Your perfect justice has been met because You sent Your Son to be nailed to a cross and to take upon the wrath that we deserve. We praise You. We thank You. Help us, Lord, to see what the true death that we had apart from You. Let us see how deep it was. Let us see how we were completely incapable of responding to you and how you breathe life back into us. You sent your spirit to illuminate us, to regenerate us, to even give us faith that we can follow you. We praise you, our God. We pray for Jefferson Park. We pray for this body, that we will be unified under your headship and that we would see many come out of the domain of darkness. That we will be a church that shares your gospel, that goes into the domain of darkness and takes your children back to the power of your gospel. Lord, protect us from the evil one. Let us trust in the power of your son to be our perfect victory and our perfect triumph. We thank you, God, that you give us life. We thank you, Lord, that it is sealed and perfect in your son. In your holy name, we pray. Amen.