My good friend and our priest associate the Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright had the assignment to preside and preach at services for St. Andrew's on Sundays July 24 and July 31, while I was away for a bit of summer vacation. Phil focused on the Epistle lessons appointed for those two Sundays. As always, the one thing I regret about my summer vacation weeks is that I can't slide into a spot in a back pew at St. Andrew's to hear Phil preach. Reading what he had to share is the next best thing.
BruceR
July 24
Epistle Appointed: Colossians 2: 6-19
The last couple of Sundays we’ve been reading Paul’s
epistle to the Colossians, and I want to draw your attention to today’s
passage, p ? of the service leaflet, but since Bruce has been preaching on the
gospel rather than the epistle, I’m going to begin with a brief overview of the
whole epistle, so we can put today’s passage in context.
Paul wrote this letter to the Christians in the town of
Colossae, because he had heard from their minister, Epaphras, about the
challenges they were facing, and Paul wanted to help them meet those
challenges. The challenges were two: first, that many of them could not believe
that faith in Christ was all that was necessary for them to enjoy communion
with God, and second, they couldn’t quite get straight in their minds that
communion with God meant living up to certain standards, not all of which were
easy or popular.
Colossians is worth reading because so many people today
are in the same case; sure that communion with God means doing something we’re
not doing, and afraid that it might mean not doing something we are doing. So
some serious reading of Paul’s words is worth a try, and I commend it to you.
It’s not long, you can read the whole thing in less than ten minutes, and if
you read the whole thing, and accept it not as the word of men but as the word
of God, to quote Paul in another letter, you’ll be better immunised against
both these mistakes. Today I’m going to consider what Paul says about needing
something more than faith in Christ; next week, God willing, I’ll look at what
he says about living up to God’s standards.
That the idea was circulating in Colossae that what
Christ had done was not enough, and that if one wanted to be acceptable to God,
faith in Christ was not enough, and that one had to indulge in various
spiritual and ritual disciplines as well, seems clear. Paul mentions
specifically the worship of angels, new philosophies, special food and drink,
special festivals and various other things of that sort. His first object in
writing to them was to assure them that all they needed was faith in Christ and
Christ alone.
Verse 8 of today’s passage, about four lines down: See to
it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to
human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not
according to Christ. Verse 16, at the beginning of the next paragraph, let no
one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a
festival. Verse 18, three lines further on, Let no one disqualify you,
insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, taking his stand on visions,
puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the
Head, ie to Jesus. We don’t need to concern ourselves this morning with what
particular philosophies were being promoted, what particular festivals or what
forms of self-abasement were being touted, we only need to know that somehow
some of them had got the idea that Christ alone, and Him crucified, was not
enough. They needed Christ plus some spiritual act or technique.
Paul is slightly incredulous at this. They should know
better than to think they need more than Christ from their own experience. Look
back to vv 12–15:
when you were buried with him in baptism, in which you
were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him
from the dead, when you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of
your flesh, when you were dead in your sins, God made [you] alive together with
him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which
stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the
cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of
them, triumphing over them in him.
Paul had made this point about the sufficiency of Christ
back in chapter 1, v 21f, using the image of estrangement and reconciliation:
you, who once were estranged 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 irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the
faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the… gospel which you heard.
You who were outsiders, Christ and Him crucified brought
in. Nothing else.
Here in chapter 2 the image is dying and being made alive
again, when you were dead in your sins, God made you alive together with him:
human beings have real communion with God through what Christ did on the cross,
provided they turn their back on their sins, ie repent of them, and continue in
that faith. Nothing else is needed. In Christ, and Christ alone, God has put us
right with Himself, reconciled us, made us alive again. The rest of these 3
verses tell us how He did it, and when we think about what they tell us, we
will see the essential part that Christ’s death on the cross played in the
process.
Verse 13, He made us alive by forgiving us all our
trespasses, all our sins.
This is further explained in v 14, in what might at first
seem a difficult phrase: having canceled the bond which stood against us
with its legal demands. this He set aside, nailing it to the cross. There are
some translation issues here, I’m afraid; the word ‘cancelled’ is not a good
translation, ‘erased’ or ‘wiped out’ would be better. The word ‘bond’ is a bit
misleading, too. The Greek word here usually means an IOU, a signed statement
of indebtedness, but that doesn’t fit the context well; another meaning the
word can have is the likelier one here: a record of offenses for which one is
to face justice, a list of the charges, the accusations against us. It is those
sins which have the ‘legal demands’ of v.14: the law demands punishment for
them. The legal demands are justice: punishment for the wrongdoer. And we are
wrongdoers; we have offended against God’s holy laws, we have left undone those
things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we
ought not to have done. But it is that list of sins which has been set aside.
The phrase translated ‘set aside’ means that it has been taken from its place
in the hands of our accuser, and has been ‘nailed to the cross’.
It is this phrase ‘nailing it to the cross’ that makes
the meaning of IOU an unlikely one. When a person was crucified, a placard
describing his offence was nailed to his cross. IOUs were never nailed to a
cross, for crucifixion was not the appropriate punishment for non-payment of a
debt. When Jesus was crucified, you remember that there was an argument over
what to put on the placard; the High Priest and his cronies wanted it to read
“This man said ‘I am the King of the Jews’”, but Pilate simply had “The King of
the Jews”
written on it (John 19:21).
Historically, that was the placard over Jesus at his
crucifixion. But spiritually, something else was nailed to that cross,
Colossians tells us.
It was the complete list of accusations against all men
and women everywhere, at any time. It was the record of our sins, and its legal
demands. It was the list of offences for which you and I ought to face God’s
judgement. Christ died for what you and I did. Scripture tells us this over and
over: I Cor 15.3, Christ died for our sins; Galatians 1.4, Christ gave Himself for our sins; I John 2.2 and
4.10, Christ is the sacrifice for our sins.
But the good news, the gospel, is that the price for sin
has been paid for us. All our pride, our selfishness, our deceits, our lusts,
our covetousness, all our disobedience to God’s commandments, has been erased,
set aside. The legal demands have been set aside. They are no longer on the
record. Jesus, God Himself become man, took the punishment for them, and He did
it because He loves us and wants to see us keep the life He gave us. He is the
author of life, and to sin is to be separated from Him, which must mean death;
but in Christ, death is swallowed up in victory, as Paul put it on another
occasion. When we admit them, and repudiate them, that forgiveness, and
therefore that victory, is ours.
Verse 15 explains it this way: the principalities and
powers, a Greek term for the spiritual forces of evil, have been disarmed. Their
weapons, their only weapon, actually, has been taken away from them. Because it
is our sin that is the weapon that Satan has against us. The very name Satan
means ‘accuser’, and that’s what he does, he goes to God and says ‘Wainwright
did so and so’ like a tell-tale child. And it’s an effective weapon as long as
it’s the truth. Justice is one of God’s characteristics; he cannot allow sin to
be ignored, and as long as men and women are in their sins they are dead, they
are estranged, God cannot know them. Satan isn’t interested in justice, of
course, he just hates us and is out to get us, and every time we sin we give
him a weapon. Christ took Satan’s only weapon away on the cross. For those who
have faith in Christ, for those who have confessed their need of His salvation,
there is now no condemnation. There is no longer any case to answer, any price
to pay, as long as we have repented of our sins and turned to Him in faith.
Nothing else is needed.
The last part of this verse, making a public example of them,
triumphing over them in Him, celebrate this. The public example and the triumph
referred to here are a reference to something we no longer experience, but
which every citizen of the Roman Empire had seen from time to time: the Triumph
was the huge parade of enemy prisoners and captured weapons that followed any
victory of Roman arms. The defeat of an enemy was not just talked about, it was
publicly demonstrated by parading the helpless enemy troops around in chains.
The victory was made visible to everyone. According to Paul, Christ has done
that too. The triumph is in Him, and the victory is to be celebrated. Anyone
who adds their sins to the list on the cross shares in Christ’s victory. Those
who deny their need for Christ, or who deny their own sinfulness, or who think
they can earn their salvation through philosophy, or human tradition, or
observing festivals, or self-abasement and worship of angels, or having
visions, against those people the enemy still has a weapon. Their record still
stands. But for those who are in Christ Jesus there is no now no condemnation.
God has done what the law could not do, sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh as a sacrifice for sin.
Christ’s death is the occasion for the greatest Triumph,
the greatest Victory Parade, of all time. And it is part of the work of today’s
church to keep the Parade going, to continue to make it plain to anyone who
looks that evil has been conquered, that men and women can be freed from the
bondage of sin, that they can be restored to communion with God, and that faith
in Christ and Him crucified is all that is needed. We who know the joy of the
Lord’s salvation show in our own lives what it means to be born again, to be
brought from death to life in order to be presented to God holy and blameless.
See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy
and empty deceit, according to human tradition. Let no one pass judgment on you
in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival. Let no one
disqualify you, insisting on this or that spiritual technique. Put your faith
in nothing but Christ, and Him crucified, and start celebrating victory.
July 31
Epistle Appointed: Colossians 3: 1-11
Last week we took a look at Paul’s letter to the
Colossians, and if you were here you’ll remember that there were two points he
wanted to make in this letter: first, to reassure them that if they had a true
understanding of Who Christ is and what He has done, faith in Him is all that
is necessary for them to enjoy communion with God, and second, to help get
straight in their minds that communion with God entails living the life for
which God’s word says He created us, not all of which is easy or popular. We
hear both these themes set out in the first chapter, as in v 9: We… pray for
you, asking that you may be filled with… spiritual wisdom and understanding,
and that you may lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him. Last
week we looked mostly at what Paul says about spiritual wisdom and
understanding, this week I want to look at what Paul says about leading a life
worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him.
Not that these are two separate subjects; the first
implies the second. Because we believe certain things about Christ, we live a
certain way. Paul says this more than once. In the first chapter, vv 21f: you,
who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, Christ has now
reconciled in his body of flesh by his death—as we talked about last week—in
order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before [God]. The
purpose of reconciliation with God is a godly life. Chapter 2, v 6: As… you
received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him. Chapter 2.20: If with Christ
you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you
still belonged to the world? The purpose for which He bore our sins in His body
on the cross was not just that we would be forgiven for our sins, but that we
would put them all away, as He says in this morning’s reading, p ? of the
leaflet.
But before we look at it, let’s not misunderstand God’s
purpose. So many people believe that God’s commandments aren’t God’s at all,
but human inventions designed to limit human behaviour according to the
standards of some humans. But Paul’s words simply summarise what God’s word
says throughout, and God’s word also assures us that His standards do not limit
the lives of Christians, but the exact opposite— they make possible what Jesus
calls life in abundance, and what Paul calls in this letter fulness of life.
2.9 in [Christ] the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have come
to fulness of life in him. Life as it was meant to be lived.
Chapters three and four are simply describing what fulness
of life, what abundant life looks like, and urging Christians, Christians 2,000
years ago and Christians today, to grow up into that full, abundant life, to
accept nothing less for themselves than the absolute best there is.
And today’s passage urges us to live the life that is
implied in what we believe about Christ: 3.1 If then you have been raised with
Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right
hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are
on earth. In
2.20 he asked If with Christ you died to the elemental
spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?
and he doesn’t think there can be any answer to that. If you live as though you
still belong to the world, the full significance of what Christ has done for
you can’t have fully penetrated yet—that’s why he spends the first half of the
letter reminding us Who Christ is and how His sacrifice on the cross changes
our options, and only after that does he go on to encourage us to live as
though we really believed not only that our sins are sins, but that they now
belong to the past, to a life we no longer live. So Paul turns his earlier
question into a positive principle: seek the things that are above, where Christ
is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above,
not on things that are on earth. Note the word mind—a reminder that it is
essential to understand who Christ is and what He has done, which is why he
spent the first half of the letter on it. Verses 3f restate some of what he
said in the first half, so let’s go on to v 5: Put to death therefore what is
earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,
which is idolatry. The phrase what is earthly translates the same phrase as was
translated in v 2 as things that are on earth, but Paul adds in you, because it
reminds us why it takes a conscious decision, a mental act, on our part to put
them to death—we are not yet free from temptation as we will be when we are
with Him in eternity, but we now hold ourselves to the standards of heaven, not
those of earth. We don’t just sit and wait for eternal life, we begin to live
it now. Verse 8, put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul
talk from your mouth.
Verses 5 and 8, although they’re not a complete list,
cover a lot of ground, and there are entire sermons to be preached on every
item in those lists. In the rest of chapters three and four, Paul expands a bit
on those things that the Colossians need to think about most, and every one of
those expansions has something to say to Christians in America in the 21st
century. But we are vulnerable to some of those temptations in ways that
apparently the Colossians weren’t, so let me just highlight a couple that Paul
doesn’t come back to: covetousness, which is idolatry, for instance. People
today are actively encouraged to be covetous by the society we live in in ways
that we’re not encouraged in foul talk, for example. There’s plenty of foul
talk out there, we hear it all the time now in circumstances where we would
never have heard it fifty years ago, but so far no one has said to me ‘go on,
use the f word’ or some other word or phrase that has no other linguistic
purpose than to shock and offend. But we are actively encouraged to covet in
every magazine we read, on every television show we watch, and on every
web-page we visit. Look, here’s something you didn’t even know you wanted, but
you should want it, everyone else wants it and half the world already has one,
you must want one too, order it now, just one click will do it! Our entire
economy is built on covetousness, it is so widespread that we can be deeply
covetous without even noticing. That’s why it is so important to set our minds
as well as our desires on the things that are above, where Christ is; if we
don’t think carefully, we might never see where we are still enmeshed in a
world that God never created, a world that didn’t come into being until mankind
turned away from God.
I would mention anger and wrath in that category, too. We
live in a society that has made a virtue of anger. It is not enough for us to
see an injustice and disapprove it, or even to act against it as best we may;
only anger at it is proof that we’re on the right side. ‘If you’re not
outraged, you’re not paying attention’, says the bumper sticker. But according
to God’s word, anger is not something human beings can afford to indulge in.
Jesus says, every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to
judgment. In the words of the apostle James, Let every man be… slow to anger,
for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.
So Paul says, put
them all away: anger, wrath, and so on. The Old Testament teaches
this too: do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their
wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads
only to evil. Many things in our world deserve anger, but anger is a force that
will destroy any human being who embraces it. Only God’s anger is righteous.
And nothing proves the sinful nature of human anger more
clearly than the fact that as our society has exalted man’s anger, so also it
has denigrated God’s anger. We rebuke God for displaying wrath, but treasure it
in ourselves. Put it away, says Paul, and if we hear nothing else in this
epistle, let us hear that. It’s on account of these sins, v 6 says, that the
wrath of God is coming, and because we know that God is a righteous God, with a
righteous anger against sin, we can leave anger to Him who can be trusted with
it. Let it be true of us that we once walked in it, once lived in it, even, as
v 7 says, but now have put it away.
Paul goes on to put lying to each other, and exalting
Greek above Jew or freeman above slave among the things we must put away, and
in the parts of chapters 3 and 4 that we don’t have time to read today, shows
us how Christians relate to one another as husband and wife, employer and
employee, parent and child and so on, and I needn’t go through them all. But
let me commend to you the image he uses in vv 9 and 10 of putting off the old
nature with its practices and putting on the new nature, which is being renewed
in knowledge after the image of its creator.
If you’ve taken seriously any of Paul’s words about
putting these things aside, your most likely response is ‘if only I could!’
That is in fact the only honest human response, because we have no power in
ourselves to put even the lightest of these things away. Paul explores this in
his own spiritual life in some detail in the letter to the Romans, admitting
that he, like us, is helpless, unable to live by God’s commandments simply
because he knows he should. It’s no good trying to give up the old life, he
says, instead we are to drive it out with a new one: put on then, v 12, as
God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness,
and patience,13 forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against
another, forgiving each other… 14 And above all these put on love.
Put these things on. Cover the wrong things with the
right things, set your mind on the things that are above, rather than on the
things of earth. It is only in Christ’s power that we can set any of our sins
aside, and it is in turning to Him that we find the power to live the lives God
intended for us; v 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts… and be
thankful.
And the most effective way to set our hearts and minds on
Christ is to fill them with His word, and talk about it and rejoice in it
together. Verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and
admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Only by meeting Christ in His
word can we avoid creating Him in our own image, only by talking about His word
with other Christians can we avoid confirming our imagined version of Him, and
doing those things together leads inevitably to praising and thanking Him from
the bottom of our hearts. It is through His word that we are filled with His
Spirit, and it is only by the power of His Spirit that we can live by God’s
standards rather than the world’s. We simply do not have the will to do it
without the Holy Spirit, let alone the power. But the Spirit comes through
hearing the word, and with that Spirit, we can begin to put all these things
away. It’s a lifelong process, but we can see progress as we turn back to His
word, and to our fellow-Christians, again and again.
So again I commend this letter to you; less than ten
minutes to read all the way through; make it part of your spiritual diet. Let
me also invite you to join in with Christians throughout the centuries who have
treasured this letter, and all of God’s word, and distilled it into the Nicene
Creed, p ?
of the leaflet. Let’s stand and say it together.
