“…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, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.”
I came very close to titling this sermon “Taking Out The Trash”. I thought of the title, opened the blank document, typed the title, inserted the scripture passage under it, saved it, and had it ready to begin work on the body of the sermon.
The next morning I got up, got ready to work, opened my computer and went to the document and deleted it. I just could not use a title that sounded glib, knowing I was going to be talking about my Savior dying on that horrible cross and taking away my sin and the eternal punishment I so richly deserved.
It would not have been an error to say that when talking about the fallen flesh and talking about the decree of debt against us He was indeed removing the most despicable stuff that ever needed to be disposed of; but it just sounded trite to say He was simply taking out the trash.
So today we’re going to talk about removals. We’re going to be respectful and reverent, and we’re going to come once more to consider in an attitude of worship the most amazing and wonderful act of love in all eternity, and the One who accomplished it.
REFRESHER
Let’s be careful before we move forward, to look back a step. Our text verses begin in the middle of a sentence, after all, so let’s begin by reminding ourselves of what the Apostle has said up to this point.
He has come to the place of openly and deliberately warning his readers not to be taken in by worldly philosophy and empty arguments coming from the deceivers who are now found among them.
He also admonishes them not to become focused and enamored with tradition or the unhealthy obsession with angels and the spirit realm.
As I pointed out last time, there is angel worship present in modern day Christianity, and in some places although they would probably be shocked at being accused of worshiping angels, yet their teaching is frequently centered in the angelic realm and off of Christ.
Possibly more frequent though, and this goes on everywhere I think, is the tendency to focus in an unhealthy way on tradition. People become so comfortable with the usual and with the familiar that they want to do things the same way all the time and every time they meet together, and their traditions become more of an ever-present concern to them than study of the Scriptures or learning about Christ.
We all make jokes about the ‘we’ve never done it that way before’ mentality, but all joking aside let’s recognize that it manifests a faulty way of looking at things and, more than that, it represents a deeper problem with their spirituality.
The Pharisees were so steeped in the traditions of their religiosity that those things had become a higher priority for them than people, than compassion, than obedience to the Scriptures, even than embracing Messiah when He arrived on the scene.
An unhealthy focus on tradition in the church stifles growth, stagnates fellowship, quenches the moving of the Spirit and halts ministry.
So Paul warns them about all of these things and turns their focus back to Christ. “Don’t be taken in, don’t be misdirected, don’t be led back to the world and pagan beliefs and practices” he is saying, “look to Christ who is all the fullness of Deity in bodily form and is therefore the ultimate authority over all there is, on earth and in the heavens. And by the way, you are made complete in Him and He is all you need.”
Now, and this is the reason I made the division between the two sermons the way I did, he is going to go on and teach us the doctrines that establish the facts of what he has just said. What makes us complete? What does that mean, really? How did Christ exercise His divine authority and what was gained by it; what was produced, what was accomplished?
Let’s go see…
REMOVAL OF FLESH
The commentators all seem to make a big deal of pointing out that the circumcision Paul is talking about here is not physical circumcision, but spiritual and of the heart and so on.
At first I thought it rather unnecessary because the text seems to be pretty clear. Then I remembered that some people pray to their angel for a convenient parking spot and at that recollection I must concede that, yes, there is a need to be clear on these points.
Paul is teaching a fundamental doctrinal truth here and he is continuing by so doing to refute the deceptions of the false teachers. These Judaizers were telling the Colossian believers that they must be circumcised to be true followers of the Messiah.
Now I ask you, if a 30 or 40 or 50 year old man visited a church today, heard the gospel message, repented of his sin and believed on Christ for salvation, and in the midst of his rejoicing was told, ‘Ok, now you have to be circumcised’, how long do you think he’d be likely to hang around?
That thought might bring a chuckle, but think about this. If this is a genuine conversion and the man in question has truly just received life from above and the Holy Spirit is in him then he is saved. He is a believer. He is a born again Christian and that will not change.
So to be told that he must keep some ritual as drastic as that in order to be in obedience would be a very disheartening and heavy load to bear.
What a terrible thing to do to someone who has experienced the grace of God in having the burden of his sin lifted from him forever, and has known the presence of the gentle Spirit of Christ in him and felt joy springing up like a well from way down deep inside.
“Hey, fella, before you get too excited…”
It is no wonder this teaching upset Paul so much that in addressing the same problem to the Galatians (5:12) he wished that the ones brining in this heresy would castrate themselves. That’s strong language!
Listen to Galatians 5:1-6
“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. 3 And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law. 4 You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. 5 For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.” Gal 5:1-6
This is why the teaching disturbed Paul. Circumcision was given as a symbol of a spiritual truth.
When Christ finished his atoning work on Calvary that type was fulfilled and circumcision as a rite was no longer valid or necessary. What he told the Galatians here is that in receiving circumcision they were going back to the Law for their righteousness and turning their backs on the all-sufficient work of Christ, invalidating His death and resurrection.
Let’s look for just a second at that phrase, ‘…you have fallen from grace’.
That is a widely used and for the most part, misused, phrase. What does it mean?
What Paul meant by it is that they were saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ alone. In listening to the Judaizers and turning back to keeping the Mosaic law they had fallen away from being able to enjoy the benefits of His grace, implying in their error that their salvation was at least in part a consequence of some action of theirs.
Does that condition exist in the church today? Even though physical circumcision is not an issue, yes the error is present. When the church teaches that any act or mental assent or the performance of any religious exercise has some part in a person’s salvation then they have fallen into the same error.
If you can have any part in redeeming yourself then you do not need a Redeemer. But let’s go back to our text and see what Paul says there.
Look with me at verse 13. “And 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”
What did he say you were? Oh! Dead! He made you alive. That was the first step in your salvation. It wasn’t your repentance, it wasn’t your comprehension of the truth of the gospel, it wasn’t your recognition of your sin or your need of a Savior. You were dead. He made you alive. He granted you the ability to repent, He granted you faith to believe, He forgave your sins.
You can claim as much involvement in your salvation as a newborn can claim for his conception and birth. You can claim as much involvement in your spiritual rebirth as Lazarus could claim in coming back from four days dead in the tomb.
Now let’s back up.
In saying that you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, Paul is clearly and simply saying there is no need for physical circumcision for the one who is in Christ. That would be an absurdity. The symbol was a tutor pointing forward to Christ. Now that Christ has come, why go back to the tutor?
He brought you a spiritual circumcision, one of the heart, and in Him you have put away the flesh.
This was something promised way back in Deuteronomy and the Jews should have recognized it.
“Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.” Deut 30:6
Now here is how that has happened. “…in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;” By His ceremonial circumcision when He was eight days old? NO, but by the removal of His body of flesh when it was cut off from the land of the living on the cross of Calvary.
What did he say to the Corinthians?
“Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. 17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Cor 5:16-17
That is not to say that Jesus did not raise in a body. We know He did. It was a glorified body, not one of corruptible flesh and bone as we have. We will eventually, by His power and grace, trade our corrupted and corruptible bodies in for one like His, because of this work that He has done for us.
Look at verse 12.
This is our circumcision; the cutting away of our body of death. We were buried with Him in baptism, and raised up with Him through faith, and this is how it happened – it was the working of God. God did it. That’s what Paul is saying.
This was God’s work; He raised Jesus up from the dead and reckons you baptized into His death and raised up in His resurrection.
What did He remove from you? He removed your fleshly body of sin. Yes, I know you still live in it, but it’s just your shell to carry you around until it’s time to trade in. It doesn’t control you any more; you control it. It can’t tell you to sin any more; you have the power by the Spirit in you to take every thought into captivity to Christ.
REMOVAL OF TRANSGRESSIONS
Next, He removed your transgressions. You were weighted down helplessly in sin. He carried that weight away when His body was cut off on the cross. Your transgressions are far from you now.
Remember the spear that was run into His side and into His heart? That was for your transgressions (Isaiah 53:5).
REMOVAL OF THE DEBT
Then too, He removed the decree of debt that was against you. He cancelled it out like a bill you owed, and that is good because you had nothing to pay it with. You were absolutely and eternally bankrupt.
Consider this. He owned the universe and whatever is beyond it. You were a penniless corpse. But the Father accredited your destitution to His Son so that He might accredit His riches to you.
He put your guilt on Him, so He could put His righteousness on you.
“For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,” Romans 8:3
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” 2 Cor 5:21
Read verse 14 of our text again.
“…having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
What a vivid and graphic picture the Apostle draws for us! We owed a debt that could not be paid and it was ‘hostile to us’. It was like a ravenous wolf chasing us down. We couldn’t escape it, we couldn’t fight it, we had no strength against it, and Paul gives us this picture of God reaching down and snatching it up and hammering it to a tree.
Only it was in the body of His beloved Son with whom He was well pleased. And with that in the forefront of our minds I move to the last sort of removal I need to talk about today.
REMOVAL OF SINS
This one is on us. That is, this is where our responsibility comes in as debt-freed, completed, accepted, reborn children of Light.
Listen first to Romans 6:6-7
“…knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.” Rom 6:6-7
…and 1 Peter 2:24
“…and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” 1 Pet 2:24
During my second year of Bible College, when my oldest daughter, Charlene was about a year old, we were given a book to read to her that was written in verse, about a boy who was two people. He was a good boy and he was a bad boy, and the artist drew two of the boy on each page so that the reader could see that he was the same but also two.
It was a clever little poem but the end of the story bothered me because it ended saying that as this little boy exercised at being good and neglected being bad, that eventually the bad him would grow smaller and smaller and eventually fade away. The last picture was of the bad boy popping out of existence while the good boy stood by smiling with a gleam on his face.
I wasn’t quite sure why that bothered me, but I took the little book to school, to my Romans teacher, and asked him if the story represented sound doctrine.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t willing to just give me the answer. He said “Well, think it through and apply Scripture to it and figure it out”.
It was important for Dr. Leslie Eno that his students really know what they believe because they have discerned Biblical truth with the Spirit’s help and not just because Dr. Eno said so.
I agree with his conviction, but I went away in my ignorance and it was quite some time before the Lord brought me to the place of understanding Romans 6. As a consequence of my ignorance I am afraid I produced a great deal of legalistic preaching and legalistic counsel, and lived under a heavy legalistic load in my own life.
After all, if I can make the sin nature go away by effort then it is my responsibility before God to do that and I’d better mind my ‘P’s and ‘Q’s.
Have you tried to do that? Do you live under a weight of self-condemnation and wonder why just when you think you’re making progress you slip and fall again?
Let me tell you what I wish my highly esteemed professor had told me when I asked.
When you became a Christian sin did not die; your sin nature did not die; and you cannot kill it.
When God circumcised your heart and reckoned you buried with Christ in baptism and raised up with Him in life, He reckoned you dead to sin and alive in Christ.
In Christ is your strength for He is your new Master and sin is not. Sin is of the flesh and the flesh no longer controls you. This is a liberating truth, to know that since your sin nature did not die it will be with you until you are glorified. I say liberating because if you understand that then you can stop being surprised by its frequent attempts to rise up within you to manipulate you; you can stop feeling guilty that you have not yet been successful in putting it down permanently.
But there is something that comes with that liberty and it is accountability.
You are freed from your debt to sin but you are set free to put sin away from you. Paul called it putting off the old man and putting on the new. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts us to “…lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us…” (Heb 12:1), and the One who paid the debt for us, the One who cancelled the decree and forgave our transgressions rightfully expects us now to participate with Him in this removal – this putting away of sin in our daily life.
We’ve heard this before and we all know it. We never like to hear it and to face it, but the fact is that the little bad ‘us’ isn’t going to fade away. He’s going to be there until we go to Heaven and leave him behind with the body of this death (Rom 7:24), and it is our responsibility to put him off daily, crucify self daily, and follow Christ.
That’s the Biblical mandate. But let me finish today with a word of encouragement about where your help comes from.
“When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.” (Vs 15)
This Christ we have been talking about, this preeminent One, this one in whom the fullness of Deity dwells, who made you complete, who is the head over all rule and authority, who carried your transgressions away having nailed your debt to His tree… has disarmed your enemies.
He made public display of them.
I know you’ve heard of the ancient tradition, when an army triumphed in battle, of coming back into their city, head held high, riding their horses, with their prisoners stripped and tied in a train and straggling in behind with heads bowed in defeat, being booed and hissed at by the crowds lining the street to welcome their heroes home.
Christ is the victor and He has put to shame the enemy of your soul.
He is triumphant forevermore and you, who were downtrodden slaves to sin, powerless to help yourself, He has rescued; He has redeemed; He has freed; He has claimed for His own – and He will never, never, never turn you away or leave you behind to flounder alone.
He has removed from you every debt, every weight, every penalty, every pestering enemy, and while He calls you now to remove sin from you He is there with every breath you take, every beat of your heart, every thought of your imagination, to empower you to live in the victory He has won.
You will never again come in with head bowed behind the horses. You ride with Him dressed in His righteousness and made full and complete as His redeemed, by His power, by His authority, by His grace, under His banner, lavished with His love.
What a Champion we have! What a blessed responsibility we are given! What a wonderful Savior!
