Paul Praises Christ for His Work of Redemption
As a result of Adam’s fall, something has been lost to us and something has been left to us. We lost Paradise, and we inherited a fallen nature. It would have been of little value for God to restore our lost estates and boundless potential without first dealing with our fallen condition. We would only have lost it all over again.
God begins with us by making us “meet to be partakers of the inheritance.” The word Paul uses is hikanoō. It occurs only here and in 2 Corinthians 3:6. It literally means “to enable” or “to make efficient.” The phrase can be rendered “who qualified us to be partakers.” We were disqualified in Adam from handling our inheritance; we are now qualified to do so in Christ.
God has remade us and equipped us to enter into a dazzling inheritance. The word that Paul uses here for “light” is phōs, light underived and absolute, the very opposite of darkness. The word is characteristically used in the New Testament to describe God (John 1:4–5; 8:12; 1 John 1:5). One of these days, when we are in our glorified bodies and we shall be equipped to bear such light, God will lift up the light of His countenance upon us and bathe all of our future with bliss.
Paul had one such remade prodigal with him there in Rome, even as he wrote—a runaway slave and thief by the name of Onesimus. Paul was sending him back to Philemon, right there in Colosse, with a memo hinting that Philemon should receive him, not merely as a repentant slave, not merely as a new brother in Christ, but as though he were Paul himself] That would mean the best robe, the best room, the best place at table, and the best seat in the church! An inheritance indeed! But not before he was first “made meet.”
The word Paul uses is delivered. It can be rendered “translated.” Behind the word is the picture of an eastern conqueror who uproots his vanquished enemies and carries them away to another place. The same word is found in Paul’s statement, “though I have all faith, so that I could remove [methistēmi] mountains” (1 Cor. 13:2). This is what God has done. He has rescued us. He has “removed” us from Satan’s sphere of darkness and has put us in His own kingdom. The Holy Spirit speaks of it as “the kingdom of his [the Father’s] dear Son”—the kingdom of the Son of His love.
The rivers of blood that flowed from the sacrifices of Old Testament times could not redeem people from their sins. As the apostle puts it, “The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect” (Heb. 10:1). The shadow of a key cannot set a prisoner free. The shadow of a meal cannot satisfy the hunger of a starving man. The shadow of Calvary could not redeem a sinful soul.