24.04.08
Colossians (10): In Christ Alone - Colossians 2:6-15
The basic question this text is asking each one of us is this: where do you find your hope for salvation? In the good things you can do, in how well you perform according to the standards of this world – or where? Where do you find your security and hope for the future? In August 1940 a German Raider torpedoed a British merchant ship called the Anglo-Saxon. Only 7 men escaped on a lifeboat and began a 2,000 mile 9 week voyage with only a few gallons of water on board, from just west of the Seychelle islands all the way to the Caribbean. Out of the 7, only 2 survived – but can you imagine the tremendous hunger, loneliness and thirst these two men felt as they were becalmed for days on end in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Can you imagine how much they longed to be saved? Do you long to be saved from your guilt, sin, emptiness and the feeling of God’s coming wrath? If you do, how will that happen?
In these verses, Paul is talking to the Christians of Colossae who were in danger of being led astray by false teachers, teaching that believing in Christ was not enough to be saved – that Jesus had not done enough on the cross to ensure their salvation. Other things were required – whether those things were secret knowledge available to only a few, harsh ascetic lifestyles or whatever. Although we may not face exactly the same false teaching, we Christians are so often tempted to believe that Christ Himself is not enough – that more is required. How liberating and freeing it is then when we read these verses to hear the Bible’s clarion call to us to live and believe in Christ, and in Christ only. That is the greatest gift I can give you this Christmas – the liberty of knowing that Christ alone is enough and that there is no secret knowledge, no harsh lifestyle required – faith and trust in Christ and in Him alone is all you need to be saved from your guilt, sin, emptiness and the feeling of God’s coming wrath. It is as the hymn says, “In Christ alone, my hope is found”. One thing you will notice about this text is the sheer quantity of times Paul talks of us as being ‘in Christ’. We walk ‘in Him’, we are built up ‘in Him’, ‘in Him’ dwells all the fullness of the deity, we are ‘in Him’, ‘in Him’ we were circumcised and so on. And this being ‘in Christ’ is the entire status and aim of the Christian – to remain ‘in Christ’ – not to give in to the pressures of the world around us or to the traditions of false teachers tempting us to think “I need Christ plus something else” – no, Paul says, “All I need is to be in Christ.”
The passage between vs. 6-15 is so typically Paul – long, complex sentences, filled with clauses and sub-clauses. Gaining access to His teaching here isn’t easy. Sometimes, when you are faced with so many layers of such awesome teaching, it would seem almost a blasphemy to try and pick it apart – rather, we just stand back and worship the Christ of whom all these things are true. But access to this passage can be gained by the two commands Paul gives: first, the command in vs. 6 to walk, or live in Him, and secondly, the command in vs. 8 to see to it that no-one – or to believe in Christ.
[A] Live in Him! (vs. 6-7)
This section of Paul’s teaching is really covered in vs. 6, with vs. 7 being an expansion of what it means to live in Christ. Paul is basically saying two things: first, you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, and then secondly, therefore, you are to walk in Him:
1. You have received Christ Jesus as Lord – if anything, the whole of Colossians 1 could be summarised by this statement –“Jesus Christ is Lord”. It talks of the wonder of Christ Himself – fully God and fully man – creator, sustainer and revealer. It talks of the wonder of all Christ has done in reconciling a lost world to its God, so much so that all things are under His authority and power. He is the logic and coherence of the Universe and of our faith. And Paul is saying to these Christians in Colossae, that their becoming Christians in the first place was a receiving of Christ Jesus as Lord. It wasn’t just that they received certain teaching, certain customs or a certain culture – not just that they behaved differently and were good people – but rather, in becoming Christians, they received Christ Himself. He, the Lord of the Universe, became theirs through faith. They received Him. You may have agreed with everything Paul said in Colossians 1 about Christ being the Lord of the Universe, but here is the question: is He your Lord? Have you received Him by faith? Is He yours, because there really is all the difference in the world and in eternity between you saying ‘Christ is the Lord’ and ‘Christ is my Lord’? Isn’t it a simply amazing truth from God’s Word, that in becoming Christians we receive Christ Himself!
2. You are to Walk in Him – the heart of Paul’s thinking by linking a section describing what God has done in your life, to what God requires from you, is to inextricably join together what we believe with how we behave. The two cannot be separated. Eventually, what we believe comes out in the way we behave. For example, in the last 50 years, our society has moved away from believing the traditional Christian gospel – but it is only in the last 10 years or so that we see this disbelief and doubt showing itself in the life of the whole nation. The same is true for us as individuals – however much we say we believe in Christ and trust in the Gospel, if your lives don’t match up, then for all that we say, we don’t really believe and we don’t really trust. Rather, having believed in Christ and received Him as Lord, we are to live, to walk, in Christ.
Think of what it means to live in Christ a little like this. Imagine you are in a centre of a huge sphere – this sphere is Christ and you are in Him. Everything you do, wherever you go, whoever you speak to – you do these things in Him. I want to look at two features of Paul’s command to live in Christ: first, what does this mean and secondly, how can we do that?
a. What does this mean? – the apostle gently guides us back to where we began our Christian life by using three metaphors, or picture words – all of which correspond chiefly to God’s activity within us at the time when we received Christ Jesus as Lord. First, he uses an agricultural metaphor when he talks about us being rooted. The picture is of us having been transplanted from the barren soil of this world and having been rooted in Christ – ready, as it were – to grow, to flourish and to produce fruit by having our roots deeply sunk into Him. The second metaphor is taken from the architectural world when Paul talks about us having been built up in Him. The picture is of believers having Christ Jesus as our solid foundation, a foundation solid enough to build our lives upon. The third metaphor is taken from the legal world when Paul talks about us having been confirmed, strengthened or established in the faith – it’s the guarantee of a legal contract – the signature on the mortgage which confirms that you now own a new house. You are no longer in the Kingdom of Darkness but are legally a child of the light. That’s where we began as Christians – having been rooted and built up in Christ, legally one of His. And now Paul says to us that we are also abounding in thanksgiving. There is more, I feel, to this thanksgiving, than Christians merely praising God in Church or saying thank-you to God in their prayers. Rather, here we have the whole Christian life in a nutshell – it’s a life of thanksgiving. Why don’t we do certain things and choose to do others – out of thankfulness to God. Why do we lay our lives on the altar of living sacrifice – out of thankfulness to God.
Is this why we live out our Christian lives – out of thankfulness to God, or has it just become bare and routine duty? Have we forgotten who God has made us – have we stopped being grateful for all He has done for us in Christ Jesus? Has living our Christian lives become a dirge rather than a joy? Does being ‘in Christ’ no longer excite you? Perhaps you need to look again at what you really are in Him.
b. How can we do that? – in vs. 7 Paul says that all these great privileges of God came as the Colossian Christians were taught. It was through the teaching of the Word of God – not just the bare facts of the historical record of Jesus, but their meaning also – that God worked in their lives and they received Christ Jesus as Lord. See how crucial teaching is in the Christian life? So many Christians today are looking for all kinds of stimuli, but the central work of evangelism is to be teaching and preaching. And if this is true of the beginning of our Christian faith, how much more true is it to be of the whole of our Christian lives? It is as Christians are taught about what really happened to them on that day they received Christ and about what it must mean for them from day to day, that they grow are build a Christian life upon the foundation of being in Christ. Tony Blair emphatically highlighted his priorities in government as being ‘education, education, education’. We in the Church emphatically highlight our priorities in Christian growth as being ‘teaching, teaching, teaching.’
See then how dependant we are as Christians upon the teaching of the Word of God. If you want to grow and live in Christ, be teachable and eagerly suck up sap of God’s Word.
[B] Believe in Him! (vs. 8-15)
In vs. 8-15 the order differs from vs. 6-7. In vs. 6-7 what God has done for His people comes before what God commands His people to do, but in vs. 8-15 what God commands His people to do comes before what God has done for His people. I don’t really think there is any theological reason for this – it’s probably just the way Paul is writing. But the underlying message is the same. God works wonders for His people, and because of that, He asks us to believe in Him. Again then, in this section, I want to begin with those great things we have and are in Christ Jesus, and then move on secondly, to look at how we are to respond to that.
1. In Christ you have all things (vs. 9-15) – In Christ Himself, and in all the things Christ has done, we have all things. There is nothing else we need other than what He is and what He has done. Paul expresses this thought most comprehensively from vs. 9-15 using three ideas: the idea in vs. 9-10 of what we have in Christ; then the idea in vs. 11-13a of what we have with Christ; and then lastly in vs. 13b-15 of what we have through Christ:
a. In Christ Himself (vs. 9-10) – this whole pyramid of ‘in Christ alone’ – everything rests on who Christ is. And Paul leaves us in no doubt as he recaptures some of the thoughts about Jesus he wrote earlier in the letter. He says, “in Him all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form”. Everything God is, Jesus is in bodily form. You want to know what God is like and to see God, as it were – then look at Christ. The false teachers in Colossae were teaching that between earth and heaven there were an infinite number of spirit beings – each of which contained progressively more of God and less of man. But in this one person – the Lord Jesus Christ – we have the fullness of Deity and the reality of His bodily form. He is 100% God and 100% man. No need of these spirit beings to get you to God – all you need is this one person Jesus Christ. He is everything you could possibly need in and of Himself because in Him dwells all the fullness of the Deity. All the smart-alec philosophy of these high-brow teachers means nothing compared to the brilliance of who Jesus is. This Jesus Christ, according to Paul in the second half of vs. 10, He is the head of all rule and authority. Why follow a lackey when you can follow a King? Why rely on the resources of a beggar when you can have access to the treasuries of the wealthiest of the wealthy?
And there is a strange, but marvellous follow-on from Jesus being the fullness of God – and it is this: in vs. 10, Paul says that in Christ, we also have been filled. It is as if God is pouring Himself out into us – emptying us of ourselves and filling us, fulfilling us, completing us and perfecting us with Christ. What dignity and responsibility is ours as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ for we are bearers of Christ – our hearts have been filled with Him. What need then is there for any other – for if we are filled with Christ, there is no room for these other things – there is no room for speculative philosophy regarding spirit beings; no room for the kind of false teaching which leads to asceticism – there is only room for more of Christ.
b. With Christ Himself (vs. 11-13a) – If we are in Christ – if we are united with Him (although tonight I do not want to talk about the theology of ‘Union with Christ’) then what He experienced, we, in Him, also experience. The idea is fairly easy to understand – imagine you were on Noah’s ark – every thing the ark went through –every storm and every wave – you experienced also. The same is true with Christ – because you are in Him, you have experienced everything He did. All over the early Church, you had false teachers teaching that in order to be a Christian you had to believe in Christ, but also be circumcised. Well, here Paul is saying that if you are in Christ, you have already been circumcised. You got people saying that to be a Christian, you had to believe in Christ, but also do all kinds of other things – but Paul is here saying that if you are in Christ, there is really nothing left to do, because in Christ, you have done it all. You have been circumcised, you have died, you have gone through the resurrection and you have new life. What else is left to do? What else do you need in order to be saved? What really can anything we do, outside of Christ, contribute to this magnificent opera of the person and work of Christ? People literally kill themselves trying to make themselves right with God, trying to get rid of the guilt and the emptiness, when all they need is to be in Christ. Christians torture themselves with feelings of inadequacy and continuing guilt, when all they need do is understand who they are in Christ – that in Him they have everything. Everything He is, we are; everything He has done is ours – He fills us, spiritual head to spiritual toe.
c. Through Christ Himself (vs. 13b-15) – if all that was not enough to set our feet dancing, then Paul continues. He tells us, in vs. 13b and 14 about the forgiveness we have in Christ – the great divine pardon. The picture is of a list of our sins – the record of our debt of sin – and underneath it all we have signed it with our own blood – “I did all these things, signed …”. But Jesus, King Jesus, Saviour Jesus, has taken this record of our debts and nailed it to the cross. His blood has covered our signatures and He has paid our debt in full. His blood has erased and rubbed out our guilt. It’s no longer there – God can no longer see it. In His sight, it’s all gone. When Satan tries to make you feel guilty about things you did, you just point Him to this record which Jesus erased on the cross. Those sins are gone and the more you believe that, the more contented and fulfilled you will be in your Christian life. I know only too many Christians, myself included at times, who live in the past – dwelling on past sins and transgressions – but they are all gone. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we could beat ourselves up about the sins He forgave there.
But if that isn’t enough, the very weapon the devil used to try and destroy Jesus, Jesus now wields in victory and triumph. The cross, far from being Satan’s weapon of death, becomes Jesus weapon of life. The words Paul uses here in vs. 15 were words used to describe a triumphal procession of Caesar and his armies as they marched back into Rome after a successful military campaign. Behind the chariot of Caesar, those chieftains he had defeated in battle would be chained and shackled – they would be subjected to an open shame and disgrace. And according to the apostle Paul, this is precisely what Jesus has done with Satan and the powers of darkness. Behind His cross-shaped chariot, are dragged His and our chained enemies. God is victorious in Christ – as are we. The Roman armies, on defeating an enemy army would shout, “Rome Victor” – can we shout out also, when the devil throws up in our minds all our past sins and present failures – ‘Christ Victor’. Satan is a defeated enemy – He is chained behind the mighty chariots of God, having been openly shamed through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And in Christ, you are on the winning side. Him the victor!
2. In Christ you must believe (vs. 
– given all that we are and we have in, with and through Christ, we are to make “see to it that no-one makes us captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy … rather than on Christ.” To be deceived through fine-sounding, plausible and persuasive philosophy is tantamount to being held prisoner – every word a shackle and every concept a chain. Paul here isn’t talking about every aspect of philosophy – there is much about the study of philosophy that is good and wholesome – he’s talking here of he philosophy of the false teachers in Colossae, with its infinite series of angel-like beings mediating between a sinful world and a holy God, and the dominating philosophies of the Greek world of the day. Earlier on in the chapter – in vs. 3, he has stated that Christ Himself – the person and His work – are the thesaurus of wisdom and knowledge – if you love wisdom and knowledge, which is the meaning of the word ‘philosophy’, then you have to begin with Christ as the foundation and the superstructure. Every other reality must find its place in Him. To build on any other foundation is to be a prisoner of human traditions and the basic principles of this world. Rather, believe and trust in Christ. Do you think of that as narrow and close-minded? Have you ever really understood the greatness of Christ and the majesty of all God has done for us in Him? Let His glory dominate you, overpower you and possess you and your thinking will change. Study Him in the Scriptures and in prayer and meditation and your whole understanding of what constitutes reality will change – you’ll begin to see that this Universe finds its meaning in Him and in Him alone – not in the laws of human reason – but in divine presence and power.
You don’t need Christ plus – you only need Christ. The pathway to salvation lies through faith in Him. Don’t go trying to be circumcised again because you have already been spiritually circumcised. Don’t go back to the muck and mire of thinking that your good works contribute to your salvation, or letting your sins destroy you. Rather, through faith in Christ, confess your sins and then live in Him from day to day. Realise afresh what you are in Christ, and what you have in Christ. Rejoice daily and live lives of thanksgiving to Him. Live as grateful victors and as those who are dead to the principles of this world, but alive with Christ – encapsulated in this great bubble of faith with Jesus Christ – letting Him shape your reality and worldview. May God bless us and give us the deep joy of hearts which know who they are and all God has done for them. AMEN