What Jesus Has Done for You

One of the most concerning things about the state of the modern day church is the number of people who believe that they are saved, yet they have no concept of the sacrifice that Jesus paid to save them.

We tend to underestimate the significance of Christ’s work for us. People have a tendency to want forgiveness without responsibility. They want salvation without repentance. They want heaven without confessing that what they truly deserve is hell.

Today, we will see from Colossians 1.12-14 that the work of Christ on our behalf is the only means to salvation. What has Christ done for us?

Let me encourage to underline or circle five words in this text:

· Qualified

· Rescued

· Transferred/brought us (NIV)

· Redemption

· Forgiveness

You have been qualified for the inheritance (12)

Colossians 1:12 NASB95

giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.

The word used here (ἱκανόω) indicates that something has been made *worthy.* We are not *worthy,* we *made worthy*. It is not something that we have achieved. It is something that God has done to us. God gives us what we need to be a part of His kingdom.

We do not possess it. We cannot go and purchase it. It is something that the Lord does to us.

What is it that qualifies us? It is righteousness. It is holiness. The Bible says “Be holy as I am holy.” And yet, the very testimony of our lives is that we are not holy.

We are sinful. We are broken. We are separated from God. And we are hopeless.

So how does God qualify us? God qualifies us by declaring that we are righteous. He speaks a word and we are justified. We are made right—not by our works—but by His grace.

But notice what it is that He qualifies us for: that we would share in the inheritance.

In the OT, the inheritance was the land that flowed with milk and honey where the Lord was taking the Israelites. But the NT promises a new land. In Hebrews 4, that land is said to be a place where the believer rests from his works.

Our inheritance is the land that the Lord has promised to us—the land of heaven. The land where there are no more tears and no more heart diseases and no more cancers and no more fears and worries and doubts. A land where there is nothing but the presence of God.

And we do not “qualify” for that promised rest. We are made to be qualified. By God!

Not only has the Father qualified us. But the Father has rescued us. Look at verse 13:

You have been rescued from the rule of darkness (13a)

Colossians 1:13 NASB95

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

Not only has the Father “qualified us,” but He has rescued us from the domain of darkness. What is the domain of darkness?

The domain of darkness is the kingdom that is ruled by chaos. It is ruled by evil and judgement. It is the kingdom of selfishness and desire. It is the land that is dominated by the evil wiles of the devil.

And you and I belonged to that kingdom. We sought to exalt ourselves. We sought to justify our wrongdoing. We wanted to the glory.

We lived our lives under the authority of darkness. Our god was the prince of darkness. Our guide was the way of selfishness. Our goal was self-preservation.

But God rescued us from that!

This word for rescue (ῥύομαι) is the same word that is prayed in the Lord’s Prayer: deliver us from evil.

It is one-half of the concept of salvation. God has set us free from our captivity that we had to darkness.

You see, it is one thing to say that God has rescued us from a dark kingdom. But if you are rescued from the teeth of a lion only to be left in the wilderness with lions, what exactly has been accomplished.

God didn’t just set us free, give us a compass, a pocketknife, and a role of string. He brought us into His Kingdom! The Kingdom of His beloved Son!

You have been transferred into the Kingdom of Christ (13b)

Colossians 1:13 NASB95

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

Salvation is not merely that we have been rescued. It is also that we have been transferred.

Too many of us are focused on what we have saved from and not enough of us are focused on what we have been saved for!

Interestingly, these two phrases put together—rescued from darkness and transferred into the kingdom—is the testimony of Paul. When he stands before Agrippa in Acts 26, Paul says that the Lord spoke to him while he was on the road to Damascus and said

“Get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appointed you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you; rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the domain of Satan to God, that they may receive the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who been sanctified by faith in me.”

When the Lord rescued you from the kingdom of darkness and put you into the Kingdom of His beloved Son, he not only saved you from the tyranny of the devil’s enslavement. He saved you for the purpose of the Son’s glory!

Imagine that you had been captured—enslaved. And then someone came and gave their lives to rescued you from the tyrannous army that had tortured you. How would you respond?

Would you set silently by? Would you have no testimony to give? No story to tell? No hope to share?

Of course not! If someone rescued you from a kingdom of darkness and deposited you into the brilliant Kingdom of eternal life, you should shout it from the mountaintop! You should be a worshipper!

Also, we should notice that the Kingdom to which we belong is the “kingdom of His beloved Son.” It is not our Kingdom. It is His!

Have you ever met a person who seems to think that the world revolves around them? They want their household to bow to them? They want their church to meet their every whim and fancy? They act as if the world exists for them and you should be grateful that you get to be in the same world as them?

Well, people like that have forgotten that the Kingdom does not belong to us. Rather, we belong to the Kingdom. It is Jesus’s kingdom!

You have been redeemed from the power of your sin (14a)

Colossians 1:14 NASB95

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The word for “redeemed” (ἀπολύτρωσις) is a marketing term. It implies that there has been a price paid and that whatever has been purchased now belongs to the one who has paid the price.

Using this word for our salvation implies that we belonged to someone or something else, and then Jesus bought us. He purchased us.

What were we in bondage to? Some might say the devil, but we God doesn’t pay the devil anything. If God wants something from the devil He will just take it.

We needed to be purchased, set free, because we were in bondage to our sinful natures.

Ever since the sin of Adam and Eve, humanity has been enslaved to sin. We have been controlled by our sinful impulses.

We would rather lash out in anger than serve in humility. We would rather preserve our own lives than give our life for the benefit of others. We watch the clock in church while losing track of time in a football game.

We are ready to fight when someone offends us. But we sit idly by as others are attacked daily.

We. Are. Captured. By. Sin.

Psalm 107 says

“Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary And gathered from the lands, From the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.”

Those who have been redeemed are compelled to praise His holy name! Those who are the redeemed are from all lands!

You have been forgiven for your sins (14b)

Colossians 1:14 NASB95

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

If nothing else, salvation is that we have been forgiven. We have had our sins wiped away from the record of our wrongdoing.

This forgiveness cannot be separated from God’s redemption. Because God has redeemed, He has forgiven us.

This word “forgiveness” (ἄφεσις) is one of the most beautiful words in the pages of the NT. It does not mean that God merely “turns a blind eye” to the things that we have done wrong. But it means that God “sets us free” from the consequences of what we’ve done wrong.

Are forgiveness is ultimately based on God the Father’s love for His Son. Charles Spurgeon wrote:

Forgiveness is not God ignoring our sin. It is God destroying the power of our sin.

“We are today accepted in the Beloved, today absolved from sin, today acquitted at the bar of God… We are now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God accepted, as though we had never been guilty. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of His people. Who dares to lay anything to their charge? There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth.”

Reference: Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Morning of May 15.

To dismiss the power and the ultimacy of God’s forgiveness is to minimize the work of Jesus on our behalf. It is to minimize what He accomplished on the Cross. The Cross is how God simultaneously expresses His love without minimizing the righteous demands of His holiness.

Martin Lloyd-Jones writes concerning Forgiveness and the Cross:

So the Cross does not merely tell us that God forgives, it tells us that that is God’s way of making forgiveness possible. It is the way in which we understand how God forgives. I will go further: How can God forgive and still remain God? – That is the question. The Cross is the vindication of God. The Cross is the vindication of the character of God. The Cross not only shows the love of God more gloriously than anything else, it shows His righteousness, His justice, His holiness, and all the glory of His eternal attributes. They are all to be seen shining together there. If you do not see them all you have not seen the Cross. [Reference: Lloyd-Jones, The Cross, The Vindication of God, p. 17]

Conclusion

What the Lord has done for you the Lord is doing in you. You see, salvation is not only that Jesus gave His life for us. It is also that Jesus gave His life to us. He is our sacrifice. His life is the price of our redemption.

What you need is not merely a new start. It is a new life. A new beginning. A new birth. That comes only through the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Invitation

Perhaps, this morning, you would say that you need a new life. You need to be forgiven. You need to be born again.

In just a moment we are going to stand and we are going to sing a hymn of invitation. If you need to receive a new life in Christ I invite you to come forward this morning and to make that known.

Perhaps you need to publicly demonstrate that new life through the act of baptism. If you know that you have been saved, but you have never followed through with a biblical baptism, I am inviting you to come forward today and surrender yourself to this step of obedience.