Words of Grace: Forgiven
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11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
Colossians 2:8
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. 9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; 11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
The dominate theme throughout all of scripture is the finished work of Jesus Christ.
It is upon that theme, and that teaching that we pick up at in verse 8
In chapter 1 of Colossians the Holy Spirit reminds us through Paul of whom we preach.
25 Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, 26 that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, 27 to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. 29 For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.
Colossians 1:
Interpretive Note:
The Holy Spirit does not give us options to fill in the blanks.
“If you’ve been raised with Christ” - first class condition - meaning: you certainly have.
“Seek those things which are above” - the Holy Spirit does not expect you to fill in the blanks, “what are the things that are above”
“whom we preach, warning/teaching every man - the Holy Spirit does not expect you to fill in the blanks, “warning/teaching everyman what?”
We don’t have the right to suggest that we know what teaching and admonishing every man in all wisdom is.
When the Holy Spirit uses the word “sophia” for wisdom, it is alway referring to the word of God.
The Word of God is the only source of truth and true wisdom. Not other books or media or think groups…not even experience.
Oh dear saints, don’t get caught in this “student of experience” mentality as though you experience develops some form of truth for you.
Don’t you know that when you look at your experiences you are not looking at truth. An experience is an observation of something, but it is not a developing of, nor a proclamation of truth. To base truth upon experience is to base truth upon self as it’s source and - not to offend anyone - but you are by no means the source of any truth.
This book (the Bible) is truth. If you want to know truth, you cannot be so lazy or prideful as to base it on experience, preference or anothers “expertiese”.
So then, when I say that we do not fill in the blanks of “what are the admonisings and teachings of the Word of God”, that leaves us dependant upon the text to be given the answer. Chapter 2 is an outline of those. And it is that so that we might be comforted in the Lord.
, ought not to be passages which leave the congregation with burden over sin, but rather with comfort in the Lord.
6 Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
Colossians 2:
Colossians 2:
Theres no hopelessness in this, there is now weighing down of conviction to urge you to labor out of guilt. Oh, but you can know that such guilt will be the them of much religion. It will seek to weigh down the saints and lead them astray from such a blessed assurance and into a self striving, personal choice of righteousness in which one would so easily forget and be led astray from that which is the elementary teachings and principles of Christiandom.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
Mankind uses such words that sound right but in truth are not.
“If you receive Christ the Lord because you believe then so walk in him,” your belief will be told to be due to some kind of brilliance of choice on your part, where you were able in self to establish the need, desire and ablity to preform.
Such a gospel framed in such a self-reliant way leads to one also considering their walk that way.
On the otherhand, if you look to the Word of God (as the source of truth) and realize that you recieve the Lord Jesus Christ freely as a gift, soley by grace, and if you make it anything other than grace then it’s not grace, then in the same way, you recieve how you walk. It is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
I give you, that from our side of this it appears hard to understand or even times where one might think He made a mistake, but when we peer into truth over circumstance we are made certain that He does not.
Oh how this pesimistic world can take it’s toll upon us and grieve the soul. The world always wants a fallout, allways wants a blame thrown, and vengance had. So bad things happen and the christian who preaches soveirgnty of God all of a sudden jumps in on the pecimism and throws sin or choice or fallen state into the mix rather than the hope of truth. Now I’m not saying that sin is true…please don’t hear that. I am saying that sin does not trump God’s soverignty. I am saying that in a sin fallen world, God is working in you dear saint to do of His good pleasure. That is a truth to sustain us and give us hope rather trapping us in the pesimism of current circumstance.
In other words, it is not just in some part of your life when you try hard enough that you triumph. That would remove grace. It is in all of your life that He causes you to triumph. God always gives you the victory. For you to say that it doesn’t appear that way, well beloved, that does not change the truth of the word of God. Your present experience does not trump the eternal Word of God in the truth category, or in any category. And I say praise God for that.
Oh the burden that is rolled away when we realize that God has taken the major obligation of our lives as in chapter 2 verse 7:
Rooted: God said I did that
built up: God says Im doing that
established in the faith: God says Im doing that
Those are all passive. They are not exhortation of what you ought to do, but rather proclamations of things that you ought to realize.
God undertakes the rooting, building up, establishing of the faith and the teaching or instructing. And it is there in verse seven that the “passives” end with, “overflowing with grattitude” or “abounding in thanksgiving”.
That is your responsibility: grattitude, thanksgiving. You cannot properly give thanks unless you realize who God is and what He has done. Anything less that will be a shallow form of thanksgiving, a shallow worship.
And yet that is where so many churches are living. In a shallow, personal works based thanksgiving.
Most “churches” and thus christians in those churches are living in a experiential sham rather than a true realization of the person and purpose of the Almighty God.
“We’ve got to do more, we’ve got to work harder, we’ve got to adapt to the times, we’ve got to strategize better”…and on and on the cries of the church go out and these cries are nothing more than empty deception and philosophy of ministry that is taking the multitudes captive, and they are all rooted in traditions of man that early church was freed from and that later again protatism was purposed to break out of and yet in this day has gripped so firmly back onto.
Look at verse ten and the gravitous of the statement given:
10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;
All mighty God has declared you to be complete in Him. Philosohy, empty deceit, tradition of men, the elementary principles of the world can not comprehend your completeness in Christ, nor can it be married together with it. They are lies only to make you think that you are less than and to lead you away from Christ. But God has declared you complete in Him and so you are.
Now the rest of the chapter is a seven fold description of that completness.
The first of the seven is circumsision
Not one comentary that I have observed would state or suggest that the circumcision in vs.11 is physical. The expression used in vs 11 is actually “made without hands”.
It is a “putting off of the sins of” or more rightly understood as “the old man”. In other words, you did not cease being human, nor is this putting off something that you are striving for. It is something already done. Don’t spend your life doing something that God has already done. Much more beneficial is to know what God has given you to know.... says, “Do not lie to one another...seeing that you have already put off the old man and have already put on the new self. It has already been done and you didn’t do it, God did…How? In the circumsision of Christ. In putting off the old man (not your human body) and putting on or being in the circumsision of Christ. When Christ was cut off, your old man was cut off. Thats not your battle. That is why God can speak such comfort and give such victory.
The circumsision of verse 11 is being described as “not man made” and that has been my consistent finding in every reference that I have examined. Yet, the interesting part is that I have yet to find a reference that will say that the next one is not “water baptism”.
12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
Baptism
So while everyone agrees that the first one is not physical circumsision, all of a sudden we jump to a position that says “been buried with Him in baptism” not only includes water which isn’t mentioned but is an actual physical event (the right of water baptism) whereby everytime someone comes to Christ and is baptised that Christ is again buried and they with Him. I just cannot believe that. No pun intended, but that just doesn’t hold water to me.
I struggle to comprehend how the Christian community can make “the baptism” here to be some kind of a water right.
Now again, I am not trying to upset anyone who holds the water right of baptism as precious and I do want to be careful with it.
Remember baptism is a untranslated word. It is a greek word…beta…alpha..paw...
I don’t know why the translators won’t translated. The first description of water baptism is that Christ might be made manifest to Israel. (ironic that Southern Baptist rarely preach on this verse)
I have spoken before, that I don’t believe that water baptism is intended in the scripture unless water is spoken. So when you have baptism without the mention of water, I don’t see it as water baptism.
For Example:
the Holy Spirit says to Paul that two things are going to happen to him
You will receive your sight
You will receive the Holy Spirit
The very next verse two things happen
Paul receives his sight
Paul is baptised
modern church takes that as Paul receives his sight and was water baptised and that Paul recieved the Holy Spirit through water baptism. I don’t see that.
I take it to be, just what was spoken in the verses, that Paul recieved his sight and was baptised (Gk word: identified) by the Holy Spirit.
So I believe that we are being showed what is meant by the greek word “identified”…which is the proper translation of baptism, not “immersion”. Immersion is descriptive of how something was baptised or identified.
immersion of a sweater in blue die identifes the sweater with the blue die. or
if you are hit in the face and get a black eye then you have been baptised, or identified by a fist
the point is, baptism is identification with context defining the how. Here Paul was identified and the context says by the receiving of the Holy Spirit sent by God.
Now, let me say again. I am not making light of the right of water baptism. You need to settle in your own mind what kind of ritual that you want in water baptism. Just understand that the one here is made without hands, just as circumcision. It is the baptism which is accomplished by God.
Raised
Raised up with Him = co-raised. When? When Christ was.
I was co-buried with Christ in His identification with me, and I was co-raised with Christ
When was I co-raised? When Christ was.
How? By means of “dia” or through the faithfulness of God’s operation who raised Christ from the dead. It is not your faith in it, but the faithfulness of the operation.
So the verse is full of meaning which is often lost through so much time being spent on what mode of baptism one uses.
Jesus came to accomplish something. Christians if you want to do one thing in Bible study, at least go through the word of God and be honest in what Christ came to do. When you identify in scripture what He came to do, then you face squarley the question of, “did he do it?” Did Christ accomplish what He came to do?
Why did You (Christ) come? I came to seek and save the lost
Did He do it or not?
What did He mean when He said, “it is finished”
most of what I came to do is finished
what I came to do is finished
the crucifixion is finished and none of what I came to do is finished
I came to deliver my people from my sins - it is finished
I came to seek and save the lost
I came to do the will of Him who sent me - it is finished
This is the will of Him who sent me, that you believe upon Him who sent me - it is finished
You are forgiven - it is finished
Why can’t I believe that? It doesn’t appear to me to be stretching the text. Just the opposite, it appears to me to be taking it for what it says. But if you say to me that the ecclesiastical system doesn’t believe that, then I would agree with you.
I would also offer that the ecclesiastical system has sold our great spritirual truth for a bowl of stew, just as Esau did when he sold his birthright. Church we are not…I guess I should say, I am not interested in what the system says, but with what the Word of God says.
Remeber, we have already been told in verse 8: “don’t follow the tradition of men” - is not the tradition of men the so called “spiritual logic of the organized ecclesiastical system”
Friends, what does it mean that Christ was raised from the dead?
Christ wasn’t raised just to demonstrate God’s power. God had already raised others from the dead. So what is the meaning of it?
Have you ever stopped to think that Christ could not have risen if you were not made righteous? If there is one person, for whom Christ died, that was not made righteous, then God could not have raised Christ from the dead.
25 He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.
Why did Christ die? because of our offences/transgressions
13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,
Why was Christ raised? because we are justified
What if I had not been justified? He couldn’t have risen.
So what is involved in this statement that Christ was raised from the dead is that God is satisfied in what Christ came to do. Had you not been made righteous dear Christian, Jesus Christ could not have risen. And beloved I tell you Christ is risen.
That is a marvelous truth to know.
Oh the statements of the gospel are so much more than simply God’s strength over death.
This is another area where the universal use of the word saved waters things down.
You ask a Christian how they are saved and more often than not they will say by the death of Christ, even though no scripture says that.
You are justified, you are redeemed by His death, but you are saved by His life.
We will get more into that in the coming weeks. But let me tell you to often I hear Christian after Christian say that God doesn’t overrule mans will in this area when all I see in scripture is example after example of how God absolutely does and did. Do you realize how much scripture you have to twist and discount to say that God does not over rule mans will? Not to mention the perversion that places upon the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man.
Let us go on...
13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
You being dead - present active participle - this is the third aspect of our completness in Christ.
the old man removed
identified in Christ
co-raised with Christ
having (already) forgiven you all trespasses
FORGIVEN -
Aorist participle preceding the action of the main verb - meaning - when you were co-quickened or made alive you had already been forgiven.
This is a truth that is so huge that I cannot even think of the word to describe it and yet it is a truth understood by so few Christians today because we have turned forgivness into a work of human striving and activity.
We have diminished the work of Jesus Christ so greatly that our modern gospel delivery describes the work of Jesus as lacking at best. Enter in human delivery, phylosiphy and methods of obtaining something that only Jesus can and has accomplished.
I cannot put this more clearly than scripture, so let me quote it:
YOU WERE DEAD IN YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS
YOUR WERE DEAD IN THE UNCIRCUMCISION OF YOUR FLESH
Both of those two things have just been taken care of in verses 11&12
A dead person did not take care of either of those things. Christ took care of them.
What happened?
You were then given life with Him. You were co-quickened with Him.
because or having - you have already been (aorist participle) forgiven.
God is not in the process of forgiving all trespasses, but already has forgiven them. All of them. The very ones in which you were dead.
Let me say it this way:
If you go to God and say (in the sense that the word is bing used here) “please forgive my sins” then you might as well be saying that God did not mean what He said when He said that He has forgiven you.
God has never told us to use the word “forgiven” in the sense that I am not forgiven.
God did use the word aphiemi which we will discuss next week.
aphiemi .
But legally, you are not under the penalty of any sins.
Now you may have a fellowship problem with God and with that you would use the word “aphiemi” meaning you confess and He cuts off, but He has already forgiven.
Not only are your past sins forgiven, but all and this includes your present and future sins are already forgiven.
25 He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.
If in the death of of Jesus Christ you were not made absolutley righteous, then you could not have been co-quickened (made alive) with Him.
The forgivness preceded the co-quickening.
If in the death of
Far too many Christians believe that Abraham was made rightesous because he believed God.
Thats just not true.
Abraham was shown to be, he was credited as righteous because he believed God.
In other words: God had already made Him righteous as displayed by His belief.
You do not become righteous by believing, neither are you forgiven by belief.
In belief you show yourself to be already made righteous, and in being already made righteous you must know that you are forgiven.
All sins forgiven before you were co-quickend with Christ.
Now as you think on this, allow me to unpack the word forgivness a little more.
This forgiveness in which we are speaking of this morning is the first of two primary words that the Holy Spirit uses, which are translated as forgivness.
It is the word “charizomai”
Charizomai is used to point out the complet forgiveness of all sin by His grace, while the other word “aphiemi” is used to deal with the restoration of fellowship with God when we walk after the flesh.
Charizomai is to forgive graciously and completely. This is legal forgivness and this is fully accomplished in Christ by no work of you. It has been accomplished, before you were born. It is finished.
deals with this not only with us and Christ but the obvious result of how we deal with one another in the legalities of forgivness
32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:
This is charizomai forgivness. Next week we will go into aphiemi. But this morning hear this:
There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord. Christ Jesus has already forgiven all trespasses, all in the past and all in the futere. This was done when you were made righteous and is made evident in His resurrection and your co-quickening with Him.
Beloved - you are forgiven. - Amen.