INTRODUCTION
Please turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2. We’ll be reading verses 9-13 this morning. We’re going to pick up the trail again today in our study of Paul’s letter to the Colossian believers. The first chapter and a half was mainly about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the benefits of his saving life and death to those who trust in him for salvation. We learned that the apostle Paul was called to be a minister of that gospel, and he suffered for doing so. But he also experienced God’s power as proclaimed Christ and served the churches, and he rejoiced in the faith of the Colossians.
That is the story up to chapter 2 verse 5. Then in chapter 2 verse 6, Paul starts to turn from the lengthy exposition of the gospel toward application. His first command is that the believers are to walk in him, that is, walk in Christ. Or in other words, they are to live a life that is informed and motivated by the gospel, by the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. They are to lead a gospel-shaped life.
And if they do this, they will be protected especially from the immediate threat to the firmness of their faith, which is false teaching. Let me read verse 8 to pick up his train of thought. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
There were apparently one or more teachers in Colossae who were persuasive, who made plausible arguments about important life issues. But their teaching was not according to Christ. It wasn’t consistent with the reality that man is sinful and his only hope is the Savior. It offered an alternative hope.
And Paul was concerned that the teaching was going to get into the church and erode the firmness of their faith in Christ. So in our text today he begins to deal directly with that teaching. He begins his defense of the faith to protect these believers from the immediate threat that they face.
So let’s read verses 9-13, which contain the first land mines to blow up the lies of the devil that tempts God’s people to false hopes. Then I’ll pray for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in illuminating this text.
TEXT: COLOSSIANS 2:9-13 / PRAY
One of the ways in which false teaching gets traction in our lives, one of the ways in which we are tempted to fall for a hope that is not according to Christ is if we can be made to believe that we lack something essential to our happiness. And if someone else seems to have that essential something, we are more receptive to them and more willing to buy into what they are offering.
For example let’s throw out a completely hypothetical situation. Suppose a person ate too much and spent too much between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and he or she is starting to think, “I need to make some changes in my lifestyle. This same hypothetical person begins to reflect back on their past and is aware of various ways they failed, goals they didn’t meet, things they could have done better. They resolve to do better in the future.
They open a magazine and as they are flipping through it they see advertisements which say things like this:
Are you overweight and out of shape? We have a fitness facility.
Are you deep in credit card debt or in financial trouble? We can get you out of debt with our program.
Have you reached your goals or your potential? Let us show you how you can reach & exceed your greatest expectations.
Our person is drawn to these ads. Why? Because they all have a consistent message: you lack something important if not essential to your happiness, to living a meaningful, fulfilling life and we can help you get it. We know the key to your success. That’s a powerful message.
Paul addresses that very message in this passage. There was false teaching going around that had an appearance of wisdom according to verse 23. It appears that the teachers were saying that the right way to live, the way most spiritual and fulfilling was to practice self-denial as a religious discipline, to follow certain regulations, perhaps to worship angels and also to pay close attention to certain visions.
And because this teaching had the appearance of wisdom, it had the potential to influence the believers and shift their hope from the gospel to these other things. A believer might start to think, “You know, maybe these guys were right. Maybe they have tapped into something that I’m missing. Maybe some of my problems need a different solution than trusting Christ and looking to Christ. Maybe I’ve been too simplistic or naïve. Maybe they have the key.”
So Paul goes after the root issue of this teaching in our text this morning. He wants to undermine the idea that believers are missing out on something essential to their happiness, something that would yield a more fulfilling and purposeful life than knowing and following Christ. He wants to cripple the effectiveness of this false teaching by showing all that is true for us who are believers in Jesus.
In short his message is that…
We don’t lack anything necessary for life and godliness in our union with Christ. (2x)
I take that phrase from 2 Peter 1:3, which says that His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. In other words, if you are joined to Christ by faith, you aren’t missing anything essential to living a life that is meaningful, purposeful, and ultimately the most fulfilling. As Psalm 34:10 says, those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. That’s what Paul wants to communicate.
In verses 9- 13, the words “in him” or “with him” are mentioned 5 times. You have been filled in him. In him you also were circumcised. You have been buried with him in baptism. You were also raised with him. And God made you alive together with him.
These are all references to what we call union with Christ. That’s the reality that if you have trusted in Christ and in his sin-bearing death on the cross for forgiveness, then you are joined to him. You are in him and he is in you. You are inseparable. You are as connected to him as a vine is to a branch, or as a head is to a body.
And because of that, you don’t lack anything that is necessary for life and godliness, because it is all found in Jesus Christ. You don’t lack any resources. You don’t have any insurmountable barriers. And you have all the power you need to live to love and serve God, which is the most fulfilling life there is.
That’s the message of this text. We’re going to see that as we consider what it means to be filled in him, what it means to be circumcised in him, and finally what it means to be made alive in him. Then Lord willing, next week I’ll say more about being buried with him and raised with him by dealing with verse 12 and the topic of baptism.
So here we go. What do believers have in union with Christ? Here’s the first thing, from verse 10.
1. You have been filled in him.
Now, what does that mean—filled in him? Well, to put it simply, it means that in Christ we have everything we need to be complete or fulfilled. That’s not to say that we’ve experienced it all, God does use means to show it to us and he does it in his timing. But it is to say that in Christ, we are connected to all the fullness of God himself, to the fountain of living waters and therefore we can lack no resource necessary for our eternal happiness and fulfillment.
Here’s where we see that. Paul says in verse 9 that in him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily… and verse 10 [he] is the head of all rule and authority. Christ is not some flash in the pan historical figure, not some quotable wise man with a large following. No, the one you are joined to is the God who possesses all power and authority and all things.
He is none other than the God of the universe, the one who keeps everything in existence by the word of his power, the one who owns it all, who formed it all, and who distributes it as he wills. He is the general over every army, the president over every president, the king over every kingdom. Nothing happens in the universe from the spinning of the smallest atom to the movement of the galaxies without his power and his permission.
This is who Christ is, the one who is in you (1:27), working in you and for you. And not only is he ruler over all things, but he possesses all wisdom and knowledge. Verse 3 says that in [Christ] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom is skill for living well, for living in a righteous and fruitful way. Do you need wisdom for life? Christ is the treasure house of wisdom. Do you need knowledge about anything? Christ has inexhaustible riches of knowledge. He knows everything there is to know and will share with you all you need to know for life.
This is who you are joined to.
Not only that, in Christ you’ve been filled with the blessings of salvation. You have an inheritance in heaven (1:12), you are part of a new kingdom with Christ as the king (1:13), you have forgiveness of your sins (1:14), and you have reconciliation with God (1:22). These are all the things we have in Christ. All this is wrapped up in the statement you have been filled in him. In Christ we have everything we need to be complete or fulfilled. We are connected to all the fullness of who he is, and we have all the blessings of the salvation that he won for us.
We have yet to experience all of that, and there will never be a day either now or in eternity where there won’t be more to experience because he is limitless in his glory, but it does mean we’ve been connected to the fountain of living waters, to the well of satisfaction that never runs dry. There’s no reason to look for it somewhere else.
So here’s an implication of that. Here’s how this makes a difference in our lives. Offers of a better life, of a more fulfilling life than knowing and serving the Savior are only tempting if we feel we are lacking something really essential to our happiness and we need something more. But when you taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8) it weakens the appeal of false hopes that say there is something better out there.
So we pursue our joy and protect ourselves from error by seeking Christ and seeking to experience all that he is. And he bids us to do this.
Christ’s word to us is John 7:37, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” His word is John 6:35, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” His word is Isaiah 55:2, “Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food.”
That’s what daily reading and meditating on God’s word is for. It’s to drink from the fountain of living waters that is Christ. It’s to know him and be satisfied with his fullness. Whatever you or I resolve to do in the future, let the first resolve be to know Christ and experience more of his fullness. That will protect us from false hopes, and it will satisfy our souls.
You have been filled in him. That’s the first thing we have in union with Christ. Here’s the second thing.
2. You have been circumcised in him.
Verse 11 says, In him also you were circumcised. Now, without further explanation, that may not sound all that desirable or helpful. Circumcision is the act of cutting off a piece of flesh from a male child or adult. It’s a bloody and painful thing.
And Paul is saying that all those who are in Christ have been circumcised in [Christ]. What does this mean? Well, it means that the old self, the person you were before Christ who was a slave to sin, that person died in Christ’s death. The insurmountable barrier of sin’s power over you has been broken.
That’s what comes from Paul’s explanation in the rest of the verse. Let’s take it one phrase at a time to see the flow of his thought.
You were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. In other words, this circumcision that has happened to you is not a physical one like the one that the Jews did as a sign of the Old Covenant with God. It’s a circumcision made without hands. This is not a ceremony or an operation. It’s a spiritual sort of circumcision; an unseen cutting off of something.
So that’s the first thing we know about this circumcision. Here’s the second thing. You were circumcised …by putting off the body of the flesh. Ok. So what is the body of the flesh? That’s what is being put off or cut off in this circumcision, but what is it? It’s a body of some sort, and yet not a physical body because it’s being cut off without hands.
So what is it? Well I think we can answer that question from Romans 6:6-7. Paul said this in that text: We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Paul is saying that an old self has been crucified or put to death for every believer. He calls it the body of sin, a body that was enslaved to sin. This body could not for a moment obey God from the heart. It was a body that was ruled by the passions of the flesh, a body that Paul spoke about in Romans 8:8 where he said “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
The old self that has died is the unregenerate you and me before Christ. It’s the person ruled by sinful passions, unable to please God, unable to obey God. And Paul is saying in Colossians that that is the body that has been put off. That is the body that has been circumcised or cut off to die. No longer are you a slave to sin or to the passions of your flesh. No longer are you in bondage to lust or worry or gluttony or fear of man or anything else that is contrary to God’s will. That person who was unable to resist temptation and who was ruled by sin—that person is dead. He or she was cut away and no longer exists.
So here’s an implication of that truth. It means that if you are a believer in Christ, you can say no to sin. You couldn’t do that before, but now you can. The insurmountable barrier of being enslaved to sin is no longer there. Sin has no ultimate power to make you give in to temptation.
It means that if someone wrongs you, sins against you, you don’t have to become bitter or unforgiving. It means that if your finances are not good, you don’t have to worry about it and believe that God might forsake you. It means that if you are tempted to go look at pornography and it is easily accessible on the Internet, you don’t have to do it. The temptation is not so strong that you can’t resist it.
1 Corinthians 10:13 is true for you: No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Name any sin that has beset you for 5, 10, 20 years – you can say no to it. God has provided a way of escape. No sin is inevitable because you are not a slave to sin. The body of sin has died. The slave to sin was cut off in the circumcision made w/o hands.
Now, on hearing that, some of us might be thinking, “But it doesn’t feel that way. I’ve been battling with bitterness or fear of man or lust or gluttony or fill-in-the-blank for a very long time and I feel defeated. It feels like my body of flesh hasn’t been cut away. It feels like I can’t say no. I can’t do what I know I should do.”
Well, if that’s you, I just want to say for your encouragement, not for your condemnation, that yes you can. I’m not saying that there won’t be a struggle. I’m not saying it is always easy. I don’t find it easy. I struggle to make progress on some of my besetting sin patterns. But here’s the truth of Scripture. When we continue in a pattern of sin, it is not because that sin is too powerful to resist. We don’t sin because we have to. Ultimately we sin because we want to. In the moment, it seems like the path that will relieve our pain or increase our happiness. And the struggle is to see sin for what it really is—a false hope, a false place of refuge. The struggle is the fight of faith to believe that all the riches are in Christ and in following him. It’s to believe that’s where our true happiness lies.
In Christ we are not slaves to sin. No sin is inevitable. We don’t have to do the thing we did yesterday or last week or for the last 20 years. The body of the flesh, the body that is ruled by the passions of the flesh was circumcised; it was cut away by God.
And sometimes just knowing that can give us the courage to say no the next time. And that’s where I would recommend starting. If you’re thinking about a sin struggle you have, don’t make it your immediate goal to not sin that way anymore for the rest of your life. That’s too overwhelming. Just make your immediate goal to say no to that sin the next time you are tempted, trusting God’s grace that is abundantly available to you in Christ so you can say no.
We make progress by degrees. We make progress by steps. But in Christ we can make progress. Because the body of the flesh, the body ruled by sin, has been circumcised.
That’s good news.
Now, before we leave this point, there is one more phrase to explain in verse 11, one more aspect of this circumcision that is ours in Christ that needs to be said. The verse ends by saying that you were circumcised …by the circumcision of Christ. Now what is the circumcision of Christ? What circumcision did he go through? Well, if we carry along
Paul’s meaning in this verse, he’s been talking about circumcision not as a cutting away of the foreskin but as a cutting away of a body. In our case, that’s the cutting away of our body that was a slave to sin. So the circumcision of Christ must also be about the cutting away of a body. But what body was cut away from Christ?
And the answer is that it was his real body of flesh, the body that took on the sins of his people, the body that became sin and was crucified on the cross. That’s the body that was circumcised and cut off for us.
The prophet Isaiah described it that way centuries before it happened. He wrote about Jesus, the suffering servant, in Isaiah 53:8 when he said, By oppression and judgment he was taken away …he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people…
He was cut off, or circumcised, out of the land of the living for our transgressions. He took on our transgressions in his body. And that body of sin was circumcised, crucified on the cross under the wrath of God for us. And Paul says you have been circumcised …by the circumcision of Christ. Your body of sin was put to death when Christ’s body was put to death. The union that you have with Christ means that his death for sin became your death for sin. God judged your sins on the cross and he put your body of sin to death there when he put Christ to death for you.
Even though it happened centuries before we were born, God knew whom he would save and he considered all of his people in union with Christ there on the cross. And there he satisfied his justice by putting you to death in the death of Christ.
That’s what Paul means in Romans 6:6 when he said, our old self was crucified with him… It’s what he means in Galatians 2:20 where he said, I have been crucified with Christ. In union with Christ, our unregenerate, rebellious, sin-enslaved self was put to death when Christ was put to death. You were circumcised …by the circumcision of Christ. And that’s why you aren’t a slave to sin anymore.
That’s the second thing we have in union with Christ. And the third thing follows necessarily after it.
3. God made you alive with him.
Not only is the body of the flesh circumcised or killed, but a new body that lives has taken its place. Verse 13 says, And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him.
That is to say that when our sin-enslaved body of flesh was still not cut off, when it remained uncircumcised, we were dead in trespasses. We were unresponsive to God, unable to please God or obey God. There was no true life in us.
But when that dead body of flesh was cut off, God gave you a new body, a body that lives, a body that is responsive to God, able to live a life of knowing and serving God. In place of the uncircumcised you is the circumcised you, the living you that is alive with Christ.
For just as we died in our union with Christ, so also we live in our union with Christ. God made us alive together with him. Just as Christ was raised from the dead, so also we have been raised from the dead. Christ is in us, empowering us for service, comforting us in affliction, sustaining us by his grace. And a day is coming when we will follow him in his resurrection as well.
God has made us alive together with him. That’s the third thing that is true of us because of our union with Christ.
But what are we to do with this life God has given us? Paul said it this way in Romans 6:11-13 … you … must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
In other words, this new life that God has given us is not for the purpose of indulging in sin. We did that when we were slaves to sin. Now we aren’t. Why continue to do the thing that ruins you, why continue in the thing that required the death of God’s Son to pay the penalty?
You don’t have to do that anymore. You’re free to know and serve the living God now. You’re free to work righteousness now, to do that which is good and fitting and honoring to the Savior. You’re free to really live now. So live! Present yourselves to God know. Obey him. Do his good will. It’s the very thing that honors him most and is most satisfying to your soul.
So what is God calling you to do? We all have the same God and the same commands from God, but what specifically has he been showing you? What does it look like for you to present yourself as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus? What righteousness has God been calling you to pursue?
Maybe it’s starting a conversation about Jesus with a classmate or coworker or family member. Maybe it’s having a Bible reading plan. Maybe it’s having self-control in eating or spending, maybe it’s forgiving someone. Whatever it is, God is calling you to take the next step of righteousness. Just do the next thing in faith.
Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. God has made you alive together with Christ. By his grace, we can follow all his good commands.
CONCLUSION
To close, we lack nothing for life and godliness in our union with Christ. We have been filled in him, meaning we have everything we need to be complete or fulfilled. We have been circumcised in him, meaning our old self was crucified with Christ and we are no longer slaves to sin. And we have been made alive in him, meaning we now have the grace of God and the power of God to live for and serve him, which is the best possible life. If we make any resolutions for the future, let all of them serve the ultimate purpose of knowing and experiencing more of Christ. And we can do that as those who have been brought from death to life through Christ.
PRAY
