The Reconcilation of God

Scripture Reading/Prayer

Tonight’s sermon will be based on Colossians 1:21-23, which is on page [X] if you’re using one of the black Bibles on the table.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Let us pray: Our Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you for Jesus Christ, who has reconciled all things to himself through the blood of his cross, especially those of us who were alienated and hostile to you in our sinfulness. As we look in depth at the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, I pray the Spirit opens our hearts to hear the Gospel news, and convict us of our evil deed, and to desire to be reconciled to you and have peace with you forever.

Introduction/Recap

Last week we continued our new series in Colossians by looking at one of the most important passages in all the New Testament concerning who Jesus is. Tonight we are going to continue working through the book of Colossians and we are going to tackle the second half of Colossians 1:15-23. We split this passage up into two weeks because there is so much here incredible truth in these verses that warrants us slowing down a bit to really make sure we understand what Paul is saying here.

Last week we introduced the question “who is Jesus, and why do you love him?”, and we tackled the first half of that question. Tonight we are going to tackle the second half of that question: “why do you love him?” This question is one of the most important questions that Christians could know the answer to. We need to be able to say with confidence and certainty that we know who Jesus is and what our reasons are for why we love him, and this doesn’t need to be just cold, hard facts about Jesus, but a personal knowledge and love for him, and that’s what this section of Colossians is helping us to learn how to do.

Last week, we looked at verses 15-20 and discussed what these passages said about Jesus according to three recurring themes: the words “firstborn”, “created”, and “God”. Ultimately, what we concluded is that in this passage, Paul is saying that Jesus is fully, completely, God, and Paul is also saying that Jesus isn’t anything lesser than God, or a created being, or a part of creation himself, but that as God, Jesus Christ created all things and holds all things together as he stands over and above all of his creation as the Creator. We concluded these things because there is so much misunderstanding, even in the church today, about who Jesus is, and how people still believe today that Jesus is not actually God, but simply the supreme created being or a part of creation itself. Like I said last week, if Jesus is a created being, he is not God, and if he is not God, he cannot save us. Paul is making clear, in no uncertain terms, that only someone who is God can reconcile us back to God, which is what Jesus Christ has done for us in the cross.

But what exactly did Jesus do on the cross? How does dying on a cross save me from my sins? Nearly all of us in here understand that Jesus Christ saved us by living the perfect life we couldn’t live and by dying the death that we deserved on the cross, but have you ever wondered how that actually works? What exactly happened on the cross? Tonight we are going to look at the “mechanism” (if you want to call it that) that makes Jesus’ death on the cross actually able to save us, and if we understand what exactly took place on the cross, not only will we have a better understanding of the Gospel, we will have a personal understanding of why we love Jesus: because he paid the penalty for my sin as my substitute.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement

The way that Jesus’ death on the cross is actually able and capable of saving us is summarized in a phrase that some of you maybe have heard before, a phrase called “penal substitutionary atonement”. If you’ve seen American Gospel or watched it with us over this past summer may remember this phrase, but even if you haven’t heard this phrase or can’t remember what it means I am going to break it down piece by piece because, as you can probably tell, it’s three different words made up at once. Even if you don’t know what the phrase means, you’ve heard us talk it nearly every week here at Redeemer Youth: basically, the phrase as a whole means that Jesus Christ died the death we deserved in our place. If you’ve heard us say that before, you’ve heard us talk about penal substitutionary atonement, but tonight we are going to zero-in on this concept and why it is so important to understanding the Gospel and why we love Jesus.

“Penal”

Let’s look at the first word in the phrase: “penal”. If you think this sounds like the word “penalty”, you’d be right - the two words are related to each other. Each of us in here knows what a “penalty” is - it’s a decision an authority figure imposes on you for doing something wrong. If you are caught speeding, your penalty will be paying the speeding ticked the cop writes you. If you show up late for work consistently, your penalty may be being written up or getting fired by your boss. If you get too rough in hockey, your penalty is to be sent to the “penalty box” by the ref, which is basically time-out for pro sports. Our entire criminal justice system is governed by something known as a “penal code”, a universal standard for what kind of penalties are appropriate for certain crimes, and some of those penalties involving being sent to “penal institutes”, which is basically a fancy term for “prison” or “jail”.

What about in the context of the phrase “penal substitutionary atonement”? If the word “penal” is being used here, it must mean that a penalty of some kind is involved, but what the crime, and what is the punishment? You probably already know the answer to this: the crime (or rather, crimes) is sinning against God by breaking his law, and the punishment for breaking God’s law is death and eternal separation from him. If God is the source of a life, goodness, beauty, and joy, being eternally separated from him also means being eternally separated from all life, goodness, beauty, joy, and more - you cannot conceive of a more serious punishment than this. Romans 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, and Romans 6:23 tells us that “ the wages of sin is death” - each of us in here are guilty of breaking God’s law, and each of us in here deserve death.

You may be thinking “this isn’t fair, I’m not perfect but there are people in this world who are truly corrupt and evil, and I haven’t done anything as bad as them. Why should I get the same punishment they do when they’re worse than me?” Here’s the thing: those other people are not the standard that determines whether or not we are “sinners”. Let’s look back at Romans 3:23 - what is the standard that we have fallen short of? The glory of God. God, and his glory, his holiness, his perfection, his sinlessness, and his righteousness, is the standard that determines whether or not we are sinners - not other people. Not only is God our standard, his law - which is based on his holiness and perfection - is able to reveal to us the specific ways we have fallen short of his glorious perfection. When we read through the 10 Commandments, none of us in here can get to the final commandment without knowing, in their conscience, that they are guilty of breaking at least one of these commands - and in the book of James, we are told that whoever is guilty of breaking one of God’s commandments is guilty of breaking all of them.

If it sounds like I am trying to make things sound as bad for us as possible, it is because I am. Our modern age is desperate to make us think that we aren’t as bad as we think we are. Our entire society is consumed with trying to posture and position ourselves as being on the “right” side of history, as opposed to all those “other” people who are the “true” sinners and evildoers. Our entire society is consumed with normalizing and minimizing idolatry, covetousness, lust, murder, deception, greed, and more, and because it’s so “normal” to us we are often tempted to think “oh it’s not really that bad.” No. It really is that bad - in fact, it is much worse than you think. But, as we are about to see, there is good news: let’s look at “substitutionary”, the next word in “penal substitutionary atonement”.

“Substitutionary”

The word “substitutionary”, as you could probably guess, is based on the word “substitute” - we all know what that words means, so I’m not going to spend too much time defining it. Let’s jump right in to connecting the dots between this word and the previous word.

All of us are guilty of sin, and the penalty for sin is death. There are only two ways to avoid this outcome - either we don’t break God’s law (which is already too late for us), or someone else pays our penalty in our place. The problem, though, is that if every one of us is equally guilty, then there isn’t anyone else to take our penalty for us, because everyone already has their own penalty to pay. In other words, if there is no one else to pay the penalty in our place, all of us are condemned without any hope - unless someone who is not guilty comes to us and willingly takes our place.

Listen to the words of Romans 5:6-9 - “ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Jesus Christ - who perfectly kept the law that we broke, who lived the life that we should’ve lived, who is both fully and completely God and sinless and perfect man, took the penalty for our sin in our place. Jesus was not forced or required to take our place - verse 8 says that Jesus died for sinners because he loves them. He chose to take our place because he loves those who hate him, and saves those who deserve death by dying in their place.

But Jesus did more than just die in our place - look at the end of verse 9: “much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Our death is an expression of God’s holy and righteous wrath towards our evil deeds, and each of us deserved to face this wrath. But Jesus, if he is to truly pay the penalty for our sin in our place, means that he pays the full penalty in our place - including experiencing the full wrath of God for each and every one of us. What an unbelievable cost for someone to willingly choose to pay for us. On the cross, Jesus experienced the penalty of God’s wrath to an incomprehensible degree, and this despite the fact that Jesus himself was sinless and blameless of everything he was suffering for.

What was the result of Jesus dying in our place? Let’s look at “atonement”, the last word in “penal substitutionary atonement.”

“Atonement”

The word “atonement” simply means to make right a situation right after it had previously been wrong. In the Old Testament, the idea of “atonement” appears all over the place; the entire book of Leviticus is dedicated towards the sacrificial system of Israel, which was designed to “atone” for their sins and make the people right with God. When we say that Jesus has atoned for our sins, we are saying that by taking the punishment for our sins in our place, Jesus has made us “right” with God.

We’ve spent a lot of time tonight looking at other passages of Scripture; let’s return to our text here in Colossians and lets see how these ideas play out in the text. Let’s look at verses 21-22: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,  he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.” These two verses perfectly capture all the dimensions of penal substitutionary atonement. Listen again: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds” - there is the “penal” aspect. We were alienated from God and hostile to him because of our sinful and evil deeds. “He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death” - there is the “substitutionary” aspect. We were the ones doing evil deeds, but who is the one who died here? It was not us - it was Jesus. And what is the result of Jesus death? Atonement - Jesus paid the penalty for our sins in our place “in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him”, the “him” being God the Father. We were the ones doing evil deeds, but because Jesus died in our place as our substitute, we are no longer guilty of sin before God - like we talked about last week, we now have peace with God because our relationship with him has now been corrected and made right.

But it gets even better - not only are we at peace with God, something else is given to us also. On the cross, Jesus Christ bears our sins in our place, and when we place our faith in Christ that he alone can take the penalty we deserve for our sins and make us right with God, the righteousness of Jesus Christ becomes our righteousness as well. Our record of sinfulness is replaced with Jesus’s perfect record of sinlessness - we are given more than just a clean slate, we are given a holy slate before God. This is why it says that we are now “holy and blameless and above reproach before him” - it’s not enough that our sins are forgiven, but that we are fundamentally transformed from being hostile to Christ to being identified and represented by Christ and transformed to look like Christ. This is what the early church fathers called “the great exchange”, and what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 5:21 when he writes “for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might becomes the righteousness of God.” Jesus Christ, in his grace and love, takes the penalty for our sins in our place, and in return gives to us his perfect and holy righteousness before God. Could there be a greater display of grace and kindness and love? Could there a more unfair arrangement - Jesus gets all our sin and we get all his righteousness? That doesn’t seem fair! And you’d be right, it fundamentally isn’t fair, because our salvation isn’t based on what’s fair, but on the grace and mercy of God. If our salvation was based on what was fair, all of us would receive the full penalty for our sins, but because our salvation is based on the abundant and generous grace of God, we have a sinless substitute who is not only willing to take our penalty for our sins upon himself, but to also freely give to us his perfect righteousness.

Each of us in here will die at some point, and each of us in this room will stand before God the Father to be judged. On that day, one of two things will happen: you will be condemned for eternity in your sins, or you will be declared by the holy God that you are holy, righteous, and just in his sight because of your faith in Jesus Christ. If you’re in here tonight and you are not a Christian, I implore you today - turn away from your sins and recognize your need for salvation in Jesus Christ. Take your trust in yourself and confidence in your goodness and realize that your “goodness” isn’t enough before the perfect, holy God, and place your faith and trust that Jesus Christ, in his life, death, and resurrection, has paid your sin’s penalty in your place - and that this is the only way to avoid having to pay your penalty yourself. And if you’re here tonight and you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ that he has taken the penalty for your sin in your place, I ask you to respond with gratitude and joy as we transition into a time of worship. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the perfect, sinless, holy Son of God. Why do you love him? Because he willingly took my penalty for my sin on himself, and freely gave me his righteousness so that on the day when I stand before God the Father, he will look at me, declare that I am holy and righteous before him, and welcome me into his everlasting kingdom.