Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the joy of joining with the people of God in your worship. We pray that you’ll bless the Sunday school hour with the ministry of your Spirit so that our teachers’ labors and their presentation of the material that they’ve prepared will have true spiritual benefit to all who sit under it. We ask for Pastor Fred, as he teaches this class, that you will encourage him. We thank you for his ministry. And we pray, Father, that when we leave the end of this hour, we will be able to say that it has been a wonderful experience to settle into the teaching of your Word. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
All right, Colossians chapter 2. Colossians 2, we are in the heart of Paul’s argument, we can call it that, in his letter to the church at Colossae. Some kind of false teaching had come in. It had been confusing the message of the gospel and the simplicity of what we have in Christ. And so Paul’s overarching theme is our sufficiency in Christ. In him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That’s chapter 2, verse 3. And so verse 6: “As you have received him as all sufficient, continue in the same.” And then he starts to address straight on this empty deceit, this human tradition, this philosophy—human philosophy—that has come into the church. And he has contrasted it starkly with the sufficiency that we have in Christ.
And in a sense, the heart of the book—I’m not ready to call this the theme statement or anything—but in a sense, the heart of the book is chapter 2, verses 9 and 10. “In him,” that is in Christ, “the whole fullness of deity dwells.” Notice the conjunction at the beginning: “for in him.” That is, put off all of these other things that have been creeping in. You don’t need it because in Him all fullness dwells. That is, He is God Himself incarnate. How could you need anything more than that? And then add to that, verse 10: “you’re complete in Him.” Since you have Him, you have everything you need. You need nothing else.
And then he begins to describe in two broad categories what we have in Christ. One, we have been transformed in Christ. And then what we’ll see today, we have been justified or accepted in Christ. What Christ has done in us and what Christ has done for us.
What Christ Has Done In Us
What Christ has done in us, we find in verses 11 and following: “In him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off of the body and the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him.”
So there is Christ’s work in us. He has transformed us. We saw this last time, the metaphor of circumcision, cutting away of the flesh, the old nature that has renewed us, transformed us. The other expression he uses is that of baptism, that we have died with Christ and raised to a new life in him. And that gives us, then, all of the enablement and the transformation that we need to live in the way that God has called us. So this is the first broad category. We saw this last time. What Christ has done in us, he’s transformed us, made us new. So even in terms of Christian living, enablement for Christian living, all we need is Christ. That’s his point so far.
What Christ Has Done For Us
Now then, we get to verses 13 through 15, and he takes up that second category: what Christ has done for us. So again, verse 13: “you who were dead in trespasses, in your trespasses and 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 his cross.”
All right, so first of all, we deal here with the matter of Christ’s transforming work in us, and now, verses 13 and following, Christ’s work for us. Okay, Colossians chapter 2, let’s start there. We get to verses 13 and following. We deal now with that second category of Christ’s work for us, and that is the broad area of God’s justifying work, or His forgiveness that is given to us in Christ.
We have, first of all, in verse 13, a statement that we didn’t take in detail last week. “You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.” So here he takes the idea of our death, burial, resurrection with Christ. There’s a new life that we have experienced, that union with Christ is not only an objective thing before God, that because we’re united to Christ, God accepts us, but it is an experiential thing as well. Being united to Christ means being united with him in his death, burial, and resurrection. So that the old life has gone, we’ve been raised to a new life. And that’s what he tells us in verses 12 and the first part of verse 13.
The New Testament is pretty clear on the idea of total depravity and the idea that we are enslaved and bound in our sin, but what he’s telling us here is that that grip has been broken through our union with Christ. All right, now the end of verse 13 and then into verse 14, we have this second area, this area of forgiveness. “Having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the debt of the debt of sins that stood against us.” The lighting up here is not good. That’s why I went to an iPad. Okay. Verse 14, end of verse 13: “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 his cross.”
All right, notice here, first of all, that forgiveness is spoken of as canceling a debt. So in other words, then, sin is figured as an indebtedness to God. Every sin accumulates debt to God, something we owe to Him. That’s why we are taught to pray, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” This is reflected also in Romans chapter 2 and verse 5, where Paul speaks of our sins as treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. So each sin, it’s like making a deposit in the bank for that final day of judgment for it to come back against us. That’s the idea here of sin as a debt.
And he says that sin, that forgiveness, is simply canceling that debt. In fact, the terminology that’s used here—”the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands,” the record of sins that stood against us with its legal demand—it’s actually precise terminology in the Greek world of the idea of written notice of indebtedness. Something like a written notice we would have today that documents that we owe. That’s an IOU or that kind of thing. So this is our debt, our guilt. This is the basis of our condemnation. We owe a debt to God and it must be paid.
Now, with this also is the idea of God keeping the books. That’s a familiar metaphor, both in the Old Testament and in the New. We find it in Daniel, picked up again in Revelation, that when God comes in judgment, the books are opened. It’s really a haunting idea. He’s been keeping a careful record of sins, and in the day of judgment, judgment will be assigned accordingly. And the debt will have to be paid. But what he’s saying here, then, is that debt was canceled. It was set aside. It’s a commercial transaction of some kind.
So forgiveness is the idea of removing sin, canceling sin. We find that often in the scriptures. Psalm 103 talks about it: God removing sin, God canceling the sin, casting it as far as the east is from the west. One of the prophets uses it in terms of casting it into the sea—God forgetting sin, God overlooking sin, God wiping out sin. Those kinds of metaphors are used frequently in the scriptures. “I blot out your sins.” There’s another expression of the same. The idea is that of canceling the debt; it’s a commercial transaction, it’s accounting imagery.
And this then is what we find in the New Testament, at least once in the Old Testament as well: the word “imputing.” Forgiveness is the non-imputing of sin. Imputing sin would be to hold you accountable for it. Pay the debt. But David will say in Psalm 32, “blessed is the one to whom God does not impute sin.” It’s not credited against him. So forgiveness is a canceling of the debt, a canceling of this record that we have against us.
Now the question is, how? How can God cancel the debt? We have to think that God keeps honest books. This is the subject Paul takes up in Romans chapter 3. How does a holy God, a righteous God, who is judge, judging righteously, count sinners to be righteous? How does he do that? The answer is, he doesn’t impute sin. What does he do? He imputes that sin instead to Christ. So the whole idea of Christ’s substitutionary work, paying the debt of sin that we owe.
Now that’s what Paul says here in verse 14. “He canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to his cross.” It’s explicit. The idea is that of substitutional payment of the sin. I think I’ve told you this illustration before of forgiveness—one of my favorite, because it’s, I think, so clear. When I graduated from undergraduate school, I had a debt. I had the first year paid for, and then I worked toward the second, third, and fourth, and all of that, but it finally accumulated some debt, and my parents covered that for me. There was a debt, and then when I graduated, I started paying it off. Mom and Dad had a record of what I owed, and each month I would pay them some money. Then one year at Christmas, there was a card on the Christmas tree, and it had that record of debt, total owed, and then it was crossed out, and Mom had written on there, “Paid in full.” My debt was canceled. Who paid it? You think the school just absorbed the cost? Mom and Dad paid that debt.
So it’s canceling the debt, but it’s not just letting bygones be bygones. God keeps honest books. This case then with our sins against God, we’ve accumulated a debt, but it was paid. It was nailed to his cross. We owed a debt we could not pay. He paid a debt he did not owe. So there’s the idea of double imputation: my sins imputed to Christ, His righteousness then imputed to me. In fact, we should take a look at another verse in that regard in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, where the Apostle Paul deals with this explicitly. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 19: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.” Now, how can he do that? How can a righteous, holy God befriend and take into fellowship a sinful world? “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” That is the non-imputation of their sins. He didn’t credit their debt to them. But what did He do? Verse 21: “For our sake He made Him,” Christ, “to be sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
So here we have the idea of double imputation: my debt charged to Jesus’ account, His righteousness charged to mine. Now that’s part of what Paul’s dealing with here in Colossians 2. We owed a debt of sin. That debt has been canceled, but it has been canceled at a great cost. Christ himself has taken up the payment of our sin. Maybe I won’t take the time to look at it, but just think for a minute with me. In Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 to 34, we have the great New Covenant prophecy. There God promises, He says, “this old covenant you’ve broken, you’ve violated, and I’m going to make a new covenant with you. It’s not going to be like that old covenant.” That old covenant demanded, but it didn’t provide. In the New Covenant, “I’ll write my law on your heart. I’ll provide for enablement.” We’ve already seen that in reference to the previous verses here in Colossians 2. He gives enablement, breaks away the grip of sin. “I’ll write my law on their heart. They’ll all know me from the least of them to the greatest. For,” he says this in verse 34, “I will forgive their sins.”
All right, how will he forgive them? On what ground? Do you remember where that comes in in the New Testament, in the Gospels? Remember, Jesus picks that up, Matthew chapter 26, verse 28: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for many for the remission of sins.” So Christ takes that new covenant promise, brings us the forgiveness it promises, but he does it by the shedding of his own blood, paying the price in our place. All right, so we have forgiveness then. And this is very important to recognize: forgiveness of sin is not by divine fiat. It’s not just God saying, “OK, forget it.” God keeps honest books. God forgives, and He forgives fully and freely. But He does it because the payment was made. The debt was paid in the person of Christ. He nailed it to his cross. He took that document that said, “I owe you,” put it on Jesus’ cross, nailed it there, and it was paid in full.
This, by the way, is why a related doctrine becomes so important today. One of the worst insults you can give to our contemporary world is to say that Jesus is the only way. If you want to believe Jesus is your Savior, that’s fine with today’s pluralistic world. But don’t say that that’s important for me. I have my way, you have your way, you have your truth, I have my truth, and we’re all basically the same. If it works for you, it works for you. One of the cutting edges of the Christian gospel is there is no other way. And here we are at the reason why there’s no other way. There’s no one else who can pay the debt. You either pay it yourself or you find a substitute. It’s all you have. It’s all you have. The Christian gospel comes and says God has sent his Son to make payment of sin for sinners. And because He has made the payment of sin, we then have acceptance with God; the debt is erased because it was paid by our substitute.
Alright, any questions on forgiveness? Alright, notice then next the extent of the payment of the debt. “Having forgiveness,” this is verse 13 at the end, “having forgiven us all of our trespasses.” Not just some, not just the little ones—complete payment of the debt. This is entailed—this is not all that’s entailed in it, but this is entailed in Jesus’ words when he’s dying: “It is finished.” Done. The work of salvation is complete. He’s paid the debt in full. I have a long list of favorite hymns. I don’t know which one is my very favorite, but I have a list of some of my favorites. Right up there is “Jesus Paid It All.” All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow. Then we sing the chorus of every stanza: Jesus paid it all. Jesus paid it all. That’s the gospel. Christ did for us what God requires of us.
Now again, notice the flow of thought here in verses 13 to 15. First of all, Christ’s work in us: He’s transforming us, cuts away the old flesh, gives us new life in Christ, sin’s grip is broken, we’re transformed. But then notice the end of verse 13: “having forgiven us,” He made us alive together with Him, having forgiven all of our trespasses. That is, God’s transforming work in us is grounded in His justifying work for us. Our first obstacle before God is the debt of our sin. All this talk about transformation and everything else comes after that problem has been dealt with. So having worked at this matter of justification, having accomplished our acceptance before God because our sin debt is paid, then we have transformation and every other blessing as well.
He Disarmed The Rulers And Authorities
Alright, now then, verse 15. We have some graphic imagery here. “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them.” He disarmed the rulers and authorities. Now that expression, “rulers and authorities,” is typically in Paul a reference to the demonic realm. There are ranks and orders of angels and demons. This typically refers to the demonic realm and their work. We have some hints of that in Daniel chapter 10. You might remember the prince of Persia, the prince of Greece, and so on. And they have their realms of authority, and we have rankings of angels, and we have the chief prince, and that kind of language used in the Bible, and hints here and there that tell us about this ranking of powers, both among the good angels, the elect angels, and the demonic world as well.
And what he’s saying here is that he has disarmed the rulers and authorities, and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. So God has defeated the demonic realm through the death of Christ. Now, there are many angles to view the work of Christ. How are we supposed to best understand the work of Christ? You can speak of it as redemption and propitiation. You can speak of substitution. And you can speak of all these different models. One of them in the early church that was prominent was this idea of Christ’s defeat of Satan. Christus Victor. Christ the victor. Christ defeating Satan. I would argue, and in our series on soteriology that we’re resuming today—but later in that series I’ll argue—that substitution is central to all of those. It’s not just another model.
But there are many aspects to the work of Christ, and this is an important one. He triumphed over Satan. You find this in Hebrews 2. He defeated him. 1 John has a statement of it, 1 John 3, verse 8, that this is the reason he came into the world: to defeat the works of the devil. There’s something specific he had to do. And the thinking is God gave vice-regency to humanity when he created them in the garden. That was surrendered. It was surreptitiously taken by Satan. And now he is the god of this world. That’s what he’s called in Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. You remember at the Mount of Temptation when Satan tempted Jesus, he offered him all the kingdoms of this world if he just bowed down. That was not just an idle boast. There’s a real sense in which he has become the ruler of the world.
Now, of course, God is sovereign over all, and he rules over the devil too, but in a real sense, Satan now is the god of this world. The world lies in his lap. This is his, and he holds men and women captive, is the language Paul uses. He blinds their minds, and so on. Satan has authority over humanity because of humanity’s sin. Now, if you can just deal with that sin problem, Satan’s grip on humanity is broken. He’s defeated. And that’s the point here—that he has triumphed over Satan. Satan had authority over humanity. In the language of Hebrews chapter 2, he has authority over death, holds us in the fear of death because of our sin. But once propitiation has been made, Satan’s grip is broken. He has no rule over humanity at all.
Now the language that he uses here: “he disarmed them, put them to open shame, triumphed over them.” That has a specific historical reference, not a specific event, but a specific kind of event that happened in the Roman world. When the Roman armies would defeat the next army, they would strip them of their arms, disarm them, and they would often march their POWs all the way back to Rome. Sometimes make slaves of them, sometimes put them in the arena to be fed to the lions for the cheering crowds. Horrible world. But they would bring their POWs and parade them through the streets of Rome. And the people would be cheering. And they’d be mocking the prisoners that were coming by. And then the Roman soldiers would be throwing some of the booty out to the crowds. Big triumphal procession, mocking the POWs and all of that. And he’s using that kind of imagery to say what God accomplished in Christ’s death over Satan stripped him of his power and triumphed over him, put him to open shame and public humiliation.
So, we have then in Christ’s death a complete defeat of Satan. And in fact here, there’s a delicious irony in all of this. When Jesus was crucified, He was paraded out of the city. Crowds were cheering and they were mocking. And he was put to open shame. And now through that moment of weakness and death, he has triumphed over Satan and disarmed him and put him to open shame and triumphed over him. One of those wonderful ironies of the gospel. So he has achieved his lordship. He has died, He has secured the right to save, and He has triumphed over Satan in it all.
So here we have the work of Christ for us. He has paid the debt of our sin, therefore canceling our debt, and He has defeated Satan and his hold over us. Now in context here, it has another interesting little observation. And that is, particularly when we get down to verse 18 and following, there was something with this false teaching that entails some kind of reverence to the angels. We don’t know all of the history behind it. Praying to the angels—maybe it was this idea of the elements of the world and spirit beings associated with the planets and having to appease them. Maybe some of that had come into mess up the thinking of the Colossians. It’s called the worship of angels. You see how this bears on that. What Paul is saying is whatever these teachers want to make of those spiritual rulers, understand this: Christ has defeated them. He’s lord over them, and even they are subject to him. So again, the idea of the all-sufficiency of Christ. We have in him all that we need.
Alright, so again in this passage then, Paul is taking on the false teaching that has crept into Colossae. He has stated up front the all-sufficiency of Christ. He has, beginning in verse 6, especially with verse 8, addressing specifically this false teaching that has come in. We don’t know all that lies behind this, but they would have known. He describes it as in the various ways of empty deceit and philosophy and all of that. You don’t need that, because verse 9, in Christ dwells all the fullness of Godhead bodily. In Him is God incarnate. And verse 10, we have everything in Him. We’re complete in Him. And then he itemizes the two broad categories, verses 11 to 13: transformation in Christ, enablement to do all that He has commanded us to do, and then also acceptance in Christ or justification and the forgiveness of sins in Christ. And not only that, but in doing so he has triumphed over the demonic forces that would rule over us.
All right, that’s as much as I wanted to cover today. We’re a little bit early. Nobody complains about that. Any questions? Yes.
What verse, I’m sorry? Okay, 15. How exactly should we understand that as far as like—I don’t see, I don’t think of demons or demonic forces. That’s probably because I’m very much removed from this time period when such thoughts were much more common. But how exactly, like, you know, especially when I think of putting them to open shame—like, I know that that’s in the cross, but like, I don’t, sorry. How did they make the connection? Is that what you’re? I want to know, like, how did people perceive it? Or, like, how is it supposed to be perceived? You know, like, we don’t have demons. We don’t see them this way.
Well, it’s metaphorical. It’s like when Jesus says in John chapter 12, “now is the prince of this world cast out.” You don’t have to picture someone grabbing him by the nap of the neck and throwing him. It’s a metaphorical expression to speak of Christ’s defeat of the devil and his reign over humanity. I think he’s using metaphorical language here to be graphic to display the fullness of his triumph over Satan. And they would have made that connection of this language. But first of all, principalities and powers, rulers and powers—that’s an expression they would have been familiar with in terms of the demonic world. Anybody who reads Paul carefully has noticed that at some point. So I think they would have gotten that. And then this other language of disarming and triumphing over and putting them to open shame—well, that was the Roman procession.
All right, let’s be dismissed in prayer then. Pastor Greg, oh, yes, Joe.
Just an observation that, you know, when you study and think about these things and what God has done for us in Christ, that’s why this church can worship so fervently and effectively. You know, it’s not necessarily the strength of our voices, et cetera, et cetera, though that’s nice to hear. But when you just meditate on these things, I mean, how joyful were you at that moment when that financial debt was forgiven by your parents? Here we read and think about how our sin debt has been permanently canceled and you know, you gotta love it.
Wow. Wonderful observation. And that’s why also I just so appreciate the content, the hymns and songs that we sing because they, you know, careful attention is given for the theological content, that the songs we sing have that theological content that just is constantly bringing these things before us and reminding us of them, you know? Why else sing? Amen. Good. All right, Pastor Greg.
Our Father, our hearts certainly raise a hallelujah on the review this morning from your Word—the basis of our salvation, our acceptance, our transformation and process. We can never imagine spending all eternity separate from you, paying for our sins and yet never having them paid. But Jesus, in six hours on the cross, paid that eternal debt in full, both past, present, and future. How grateful we are, how ready we are to praise and thank Him not only now but forever, and how ashamed we are that we would take this great reward so lightly sometimes. We pray that we will ever prize it and be amazed at the grace of God in Christ on our behalf. We give you thanks and pray your blessing upon the service to follow in Jesus’ name. Amen.
That’s why I’ve never funded these elections. I’m staying for the paper. We have other options. All right. All right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.