“A-Life” in Christ
Colossians 2:6-15
Stephen H. Becker, M.Div.
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
July 29, 2007
9th Sunday After Pentecost
Friends, you and I are alive and have “a-life” in Christ! In our reading today from Colossians, the Apostle Paul is writing to the Christians in the young Church there at Colossae, a Church that he helped plant through a man in Ephesus whose name was Epaphrus. Unfortunately this young Church had fallen into some practices that placed human doing and human wisdom up and above the absolute saving Grace of Jesus Christ. Paul writes this letter to the Colossians to address these false practices, this heresy, and through the letter, we today can learn so much about who we are, as Christians, who have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior. Though this letter written some 2,000 years ago, we also can learn from the great Apostle to the Gentiles, the Apostle Paul, when he teaches us of the absolute adequacy of Jesus as our Savior, as the Lamb of God who brings us life, compared to the emptiness we have on our own, in our own human wisdom. Just like the Colossians, we believers have also been set free from what sin has earned us, set free to be alive in Christ, set free to live “a-life” in Christ. So let’s open with prayer…
As Christians who are active in our Church here at St. Peter’s in Elk Grove, or for most Christians who are active in their Churches in America, we have the opportunity to be instructed in our Christian faith. We have the Bible that we can reference. We have our Lutheran Confessions. There are Bible studies and Bible colleges. The young Churches being established during that first century didn’t have these kinds of documents or these opportunities to look back and study our faith. And so as the young Church began to grow, it was often attacked by outsiders, or even by individuals within the Church, who wanted to insert their own teachings, their own human wisdom into the true Gospel given us to by Jesus, and recorded for us by His apostles. Here in Colossae we find just such an event.
The Good News of Jesus Christ had been carried to Colossae, but there were individuals there who were falsely teaching that Christians must still perform certain things, in addition to believing in Jesus, in order to receive salvation. For example, they were teaching that the Law of Moses still had to be followed, including what to eat and what not to eat; they were teaching circumcision, and teaching what can and cannot be touched in addition to believing in Jesus Christ as the Way to life. In reality, they were really teaching that Jesus’ mortal ministry, Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, His resurrection, and ultimately His ascension, are not sufficient to save us. So here in Colossians, Paul refutes these false teachings. He sets the record straight. And in order to do so, Paul teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He is God in the flesh, and that He is absolutely worthy and sufficient for our salvation. Here in Colossians Paul teaches that salvation is in Christ alone and through that salvation in Christ, we receive eternal life. Paul outlines for the Colossians what Luther did for us in the Reformation: explaining that we can put our complete faith in Jesus’ atonement for our sins, and that by completely trusting in Christ’s finished work of the cross, we leave behind our old lives of sin to begin a new life, ALIVE in Christ.
So let’s take a look at each of these verses and see what Paul is saying and how his words apply to you and me today. In verses six and seven, Paul says “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” Paul is obviously talking to individuals who have already been taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ, people who at least to a degree, began living Christian lives. And so living the life of a Christian, Paul tells us we should be overflowing with thankfulness, knowing that we have eternal life right now because of what Jesus has done for us. That’s interesting because remember Paul is refuting those who are saying “don’t do this and don’t do that.” In other words, Paul is saying that we don’t have follow certain rules in order to be saved because faith in Jesus brings us immediate salvation…immediate eternal life. We can be overflowing with thankfulness that we have eternal life through Jesus Christ, received through our faith, and so having that eternal life, we naturally will want to live a righteous, Christian life.
In theological terms, what we are talking about here is justification and sanctification. We are justified—we are saved—by believing in Jesus; And in this Saving Grace, we live a good, righteous life not because we have to, but because we get to—this is sanctification. And putting it even more simply, Paul’s teaching us to stop worrying about something that we have already…we are free now to enjoy it! We can’t help living a Christian life because of the joy and peace we find through faith in Jesus; because of Jesus Christ, like Paul says, we are “overflowing with thankfulness.”
And friends, being saved by grace through faith in Christ, we are made alive. We begin new lives in Christ. We leave behind our sin, our death, because God has forgiven us all because of Jesus. Paul emphasizes this point in verse 8 when he says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” You see what Paul’s saying is now that you and I are saved by Grace through faith, now that we have eternal life, we don’t need human ways, human reasoning, or the ways of this world in some vain attempt at earning a salvation that Jesus has already completed. Now, he’s not saying that you separate yourself from this world because indeed every person, you and I, live in this world. But we aren’t dependant upon it. It isn’t our main focus because now that we have Jesus Christ literally living in our heart, we turn our focus to Him. And in doing so, we again cannot help but to do good, to bring the Gospel to those who don’t know Jesus, to bring more and more of the people who are still lost in “this” world to the world of eternal life purchased by the blood of Jesus. Friends this is important too because once you come to faith in Jesus, you don’t begin waiting for eternal life because you have it, and you have it now! Yes, you and I will one day both die physical deaths. But we know that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, our faith receives the eternal life, with God, that Jesus purchased for us. We have it RIGHT NOW! We believers are spiritually alive right now! We don’t need human tradition, we don’t follow “hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition,” because although we live here in this world, we already belong to the next.
And how is it, friends, that Jesus was able to do this for us? How is it that we have, and are “A-Life,” in Christ? It’s because of Who Jesus is, and What Jesus has done for us. Notice, over and over again, Paul shows us that it’s all about Christ. He says in verses 9 and 10, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” Wow. Here in plain English—well plain Koine Greek, Paul is saying that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh; He is the divine lovgoV. And because Jesus is God in the flesh and because Jesus died for you and me, “you have been given fullness in Christ…” You are saved because of Jesus’ incredible worthiness. Paul’s telling us that we are saved because Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man and He is “head over every power and authority.” So not only is Jesus, God in the flesh, but He has that power and authority to save us. It’s all about Jesus.
So what does this salvation bring us? What has Jesus done for us? He has made us alive, and has given us “a-life” in Him. Paul writes, “In Him you were also circumcised in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” My brothers and sisters in Christ, here in these two verses of Scripture Paul is telling us so much. He is telling us that all of the “do’s and don’t” are complete in Jesus; they are a “circumcision done by Christ,” and that through our faith in him, through the means of Grace in baptism, we will be raised up just like Jesus Christ. Through our faith, we are spiritually alive, right now, through the power of God.
Verses 13 and 14 really drive home the point of who we once were without Jesus and who we now are in Christ; Paul says that, “When you were dead in your sins and in the un-circumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” Notice who is doing the work here friends. “God made you alive with Christ.” God “forgave us all our sins.” God “took it away, nailing it to the cross.” Friends, remember that God loves us so much that He sent His one and only son into our world, “that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” See what Paul is teaching is that without Jesus, we are dead in our sins. But because like John tells us in John 3:16, God loves us so much that God makes us alive in Christ. God did this work, God forgave our sins through Christ. So how is Jesus’ death on the cross sufficient for the Colossians? How is His death on the cross sufficient to save us from our sins? Because Jesus Christ is the Son of God; Jesus resisted the temptations of this world, and so was able to take our sins and the sins of every person who has ever lived or will ever live upon Himself and then cancelled “the written code” by paying the price on the cross, with His blood. Paul writes, “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” This is great theology friends; this is comparing the public humiliation and the public spectacle of Jesus’ temporary physical death on the cross with the permanent disarming of the power of evil by Jesus Christ.
So what do we do with our life in Christ? What do we do now that we have “a-life” in Christ? Well, like Paul writes, overflowing in thankfulness, we embrace a life in peace. We don’t have to worry about all of the things that have to be done in order to be saved because, friends, Jesus Christ did them all. We believe in Jesus and we live. We believe in Jesus and we live our lives as Christians, living Godly lives because we have life in Christ, life that will never end. And being eternally alive in Jesus Christ, doing His work comes naturally to us. Not because of Who we are, but because of what Jesus has done for us; not because of what we have done, but entirely because of Who Jesus is. Friends, God is in Christ, and Christ is in you. You live in Christ, you are alive and have “a-life” in Christ. Amen. Let’s pray…
Now may the true faith…
