Colossians 2:13-15 "The Triumph of the Cross"

Introduction

Christianity has the Cross as its chief religious symbol.

Imagine that the instrument used to inflict capital punishment under the authority of the ancient Roman Empire would become the quintessential symbol of the expression of the love and mercy of God.

I say that because even though there are those in Christianity who try in the modern day to minimize the Cross, the Cross is still the defining element of the believer’s redemption before God.

Where in the modern day this is not emphasized as much anymore in mainline Protestantism. This is because the gospel of the Cross is offensive because of two basic reasons.

Because of what it says about the sinful condition of man and what it says about the exclusivity of Jesus Christ.

It is far more popular in the modern day to minimize the Cross due to the idea that all religions are valid ways to God. And that all religions make a helpful contribution to the optimistic moral progression of man.

Of course an obvious problem with this idea is that the religions of the world are inherently contradictory. But the response to that is usually that doesn’t matter as long as a religion is helpful to the one who holds to it.

But the biblical theology of the Cross will not allow does not allow for the inclusivity of the religions of the world. Simply because no religion of the world can accomplish what Jesus Christ did on the Cross. And it must be said that the events surrounding the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ were all designed by God in accordance with historic revelation.

If you miss or minimize the truth of the Cross of Jesus Christ you will never see the Triumph of Jesus Christ in His revealed glory associated with it on our behalf. The Cross is a triumph on behalf of fallen man. Look back at verse 13a as we see the human condition being described:

I. The Condition (13a): And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, (13a).

Of course this is talking about a spiritual condition of deadness which will result in physical deadness that came because of the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden. All of humanity was in Adam biologically. And the sin nature passed on from Adam through the natural process of conception and birth of children.

And all of us know because we can see the sinful condition of man being manifested in all of our lives. It comes natural to us and we think nothing of it because it is so soothing and affirmative to our conscience. Children don’t like being corrected and they don’t have to be taught to sin.

Have you ever noticed that you don’t have to teach your kids how to be selfish. Nor do you need to teach them how to lie when they are being confronted. Nor do you have to teach them how to be defiant against authority.

The evil we see in our culture comes natural to fallen men and women. It seems right to them and any prohibition against the natural inclinations of fallen humanity is judged as having been imposed by the moral convictions of Christianity and its influence upon the culture.

Christians often think that we need to uphold moral principles through law or we will loose the culture. Law has never ben and adequate deterrent to combat effectively against the human condition.

It would be like trying to save the Titanic from sinking by bailing out water with a soup spoon. The whole is too big and the spoon isn’t able to compensate for the amount of water that is flooding in.

How can a dead man compensate for the sin of Adam and his own sin before the biblical God whose standard is holy perfection?

The religions of the world answer back and say, “by doing good deeds or through pious acts of religious practice.” All of these pursuits are expressions of human attempts to justify themselves in the eyes of God. But God always had another plan in mind to justify sinners before Him. Look back to the second section of verse 13:

II. The Connection (13b-14): God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross (13a-14).

The connection I am talking about is God making us with Christ in our identification with Him. It is in our identity being with Christ that our spiritual rebirth has come to pass. So how does this Christ connection translate into being accepted by a Holy God whose standards are perfection?

The answer is by the forgiveness of God. But then immediately we have a dilemma, “How can such a God be just and righteous if He pardons the guilty?” The Universalist argue that the forgiveness of God is universal and that in the end He forgives everybody. Man needs only to do his best from a relative standard and in the end God will just forgive the rest.

This sounds all flowers and butterflies until the person in question is Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin or some other murderer or severe criminal. Well yes of course such people go to their condemnation because they are in a whole other category distinct from the rest of humanity.

Then the question is who gets to set the standards that determine the category that people are in. It must be some relative standard that is subjective that can accommodate the moral failures of human beings. All of us know this is nonsense because it undermines the very character and nature of God.

God doesn’t just pretend our sin is not there. He actually deals with it in complete consistency with His holy perfection as verse 14 tells us.

He canceled our debt that we owed. You say I didn’t know we owed God money. It is not about money it is about the legal demands of the law of God. In summary it would be to love God with all your heart, soul and mind and obey all of His commands perfectly. He is God and He created us and we owe Him our allegiance and because we have all violated His law we owe a debt for being in defiance against Him.

This is the record of debt that verse 14 says that God canceled. That term canceling in the original language means to cause to disappear by wiping it away.

These legal demands that stood against us were “set aside” verse 14 says. They were nailed to the Cross with Christ as He took our sin upon Himself on the Cross.

Story, when I was a little boy our pastor on Palm Sunday was preaching on the Cross from this passage and He had an old rugged Cross up in the front and he had pieces of multi colored paper and hammers and nails up in the front. He asked us all to come forward and write our sin on the paper and nail our sin to that Cross. Everybody in the whole church went forward and did it and we all followed as some of the men took the Cross out to the front yard of the Church.

The pastor had already dug a hole and the men set the Cross down in that hole and filled dirt in around it. There it was with all those multi-colored pieces of paper nailed to it. Standing in front of the church right on the main highway coming into Sacramento. The pastor left it up all week.

Every time I went to town with one of my parents I saw it. There it was, I wondered what the Baptist and the Methodist thought about how many pieces of paper were on that Cross. I was sure glad pastor didn’t ask us to put or names on the papers.

Before Easter Sunday we had a storm and it rained and the wind blew hard. After the rain and the wind the papers were all gone. Just a Cross with no more papers with nails in it. And I know the rain drenched the papers and the wind blew them off.

And I remember thinking it was if God had taken all those sins away. It helped me understand something too profound for my little mind to fathom. God had confronted my sin and taken it away. Christ had triumphed over my sin through the Cross. And in the process He destroyed His and our enemies Christian look at verse 15:

III. The Conquest (15): 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (15).

The term “disarmed in the ESV is too kind and civil. The term literally refers to take off or strip off (BAGD). In ancient times when a leader was conquered the triumphant leader would often order the defeated leader to be stripped of their clothing and paraded around in disgrace. It was through the Cross that Christ defeated the devil and all His demonic dominion including death itself.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead has confirmed this with absolute certainty.

And the Justice of God is upheld because Christ the second person of the Godhead and He has compensated the Father for our debt and satisfied the demand of the law as the lamb of God who takes away our sin. And God commands us to put our faith in Christ alone for salvation.

Conclusion:

Unbeliever: Believe the gospel turn from your sin and turn to Christ.

Christian tonight we are celebrating the Lord’s Supper and it reminds us of our Union with Christ as we come to fellowship with Him as the body of Christ. It is so appropriate to do this on good Friday. You see, Good Friday is good because of the Cross.

Our debt has been wiped away and the legal demands of the law are all satisfied in full.

Let us examine ourselves before Christ in preparation of this table. Confess your sin and know that He is faithful and just to cleanse us of all our unrighteousness. Let’s Pray!