INTRODUCTION
Please turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2. We’ll read verse 15 this morning as we continue in the letter to the Colossians.
This verse completes Paul’s paragraph in which he is helping the Colossian believers and us to understand all that we have in Christ; all that is true for those who have salvation by faith in Christ. This ‘gospel awareness’ is Paul’s primary strategy for protecting believers from false teaching that claims there is some other way to find hope and satisfaction outside of Christ.
We learned that God has given us everything for life and godliness in Christ, that he has taken away our old sin-enslaved self and given us a Spirit-regenerated and Spirit-empowered new self to love and serve God. That’s what God has done in us through Christ’s work on the cross. And he has also done two things for us.
We learned last week that he has forgiven us our sins by paying the debt we incurred by sinning against him. That debt is the obedience due him and which we have withheld from him every time we go our own way. Since we cannot pay that debt, since we cannot go back in time and do it over again or make up for it, the only way the debt can be cancelled is by the sin penalty being paid for the obedience that was withheld. That sin penalty is the wrath of God poured out on the sinner, the penalty paid by our Savior Jesus Christ on the cross.
Today we learn the second thing he did for us on the cross. It’s in verse 15. So let me read that sentence and then we’ll pray for the illumination of the Holy Spirit as we consider this text.
READ COLOSSIANS 2:15
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.
PRAY
This text is about the defeat of the power of spiritual beings who seek to harm us. And the title of this message is ‘Rulers Disarmed in the Death of Christ’.
Originally I was going to include verse 15 in last week’s message because there is a connection between this concept of the rulers being disarmed and our debt being cancelled. And we’ll see what that connection is this morning.
But the imagery and truth in this sentence from Paul is so rich that it seemed to call out for a full treatment on its own. This text is a great gospel truth that explains why we can follow the Lord with confidence and without fear in a world that is full of evil and evil spiritual beings. Though we are like sheep in the midst of wolves, we have a Shepherd who has snatched us out of the lion’s mouth.
I pray we will see that more clearly as we work through this text.
We’re going to answer three questions. Who are the rulers and authorities? How have they been disarmed? And where does that leave us?
So let’s begin with…
1. WHO ARE THE RULERS AND AUTHORITIES?
Well we can discover that by reading a similar statement that Paul made in Ephesians 6:12 where he expands on what those words mean. There he said,
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
The rulers and authorities are the cosmic powers over this present darkness. That is, they are the beings which have power over the kingdom or domain of darkness which we were told about in Colossians 1:13. That’s the kingdom that everyone belongs to because of their sin, unless they escape it by being delivered by God into the kingdom of his beloved Son Jesus. And that kingdom of darkness is ruled by spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
In various places, we are told who those evil rulers are. John said in 1 John 5:19 that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Jesus called him “the ruler of this world” in John 12:31. In Revelation 20:2 he is called the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan. And he is accompanied by legions of angels who are also called demons. Therefore Jesus, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, speaks of the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41).
These are the rulers and authorities of Colossians 2:15.
And these rulers exercise their cosmic powers for their own purposes. Jesus told us what those purposes are. One good summary of those purposes is what Jesus said of the devil in John 10:10. He said the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. That is, his mission which the demons also take up with him is to steal glory from God, and to seek to kill and destroy those made in the image of God. This arises out of their rebellion against God.
We have some glimpses of what that can look like in the Scriptures.
There was a boy afflicted with a demon in Mark chapter 9. And the father described what the demon did to him in this way: “…whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. … And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him . That’s one way the devil exercises his rule. That’s the way that gets people’s attention and leads to endless horror movies.
Have you ever noticed that probably one third of all the movies being advertised have something to do with evil and death. There’s a cultural fascination with the idea of evil spiritual forces at work.
But as sensational as that is, that’s not the devil’s main work. That’s not the ultimate that he’s after. His main goal in exercising his rule is what we find in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4. Let me read that text.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
The devil’s main goal is to work to see that people perish eternally. He doesn’t want people to see the light of the gospel so they will repent and believe it and be added to the eternally happy worshippers of God. All his plans and designs are to oppose the gospel and he will use any means to accomplish that. It doesn’t matter if it is physical affliction or encouraging worldliness and self-indulgence, his aim is to keep people enslaved to sin and seek our eternal destruction away from the goodness of God.
So that’s who are the rulers and authorities in our passage—the devil and his angels who have power over the kingdom of darkness, and who seek to destroy the people created in the image of God.
Now let’s ask the second question.
2. HOW WERE THE RULERS AND AUTHORITIES DISARMED?
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame.
This word disarmed in Colossians 2:15 is found only one other place in the New Testament, and that is in chapter 3 verse 9. There Paul says Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices. To put off has the idea of removing something like an outer garment; it’s to strip off something.
So when Paul uses that word with rulers, he’s saying that God has stripped the devil and his angels of their robes of power. He has stripped them of their ruling authority over all the people that God saves.
So to see how that works, and how that authority has been stripped, we have to first understand the basis of the authority and power that the devil has in the first place. What gave him the ‘right’ if you will to steal and kill and destroy people? What gave him that right or that opportunity to do so is the curse of the law against sinners.
We learned last week from Galatians 3:10 that …it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them." To be cursed means to have God forsake you and turn his face from you and give you judgment without grace and remove his peace from you. It’s life outside the kingdom of God and his blessing. And everyone who has not obeyed God perfectly is under the curse, and therefore a member of the kingdom of darkness.
And in that kingdom, the rulers and authorities seize their opportunity to see to it that everyone in it remains in bondage to sin and receives the eternal consequences to sin. This isn’t done from any desire to see God honored in justice being done to lawbreakers. It’s done from a desire to oppose God by harming those made in the image of God.
But because the curse of the law places sinners in the kingdom of darkness, it arms the devil and his angels with the opportunity to steal, kill and destroy, even to eternal destruction.
This is illustrated in C.S. Lewis’s novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In the chapter called ‘The Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time” the witch wants Aslan to hand over Edmund to her. Edmund is the boy who turned traitor on his brothers and sisters and Aslan. The witch represents the devil. Aslan represents Christ. And Edmund represents sinners like us.
The witch says, “You have a traitor there Aslan. …You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill. …And so, that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”
Edmund’s sister Susan then said, “Oh Aslan …can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something you can do to work against it?” “Work against the Emperor’s magic?” said Aslan turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.
The Emperor represents God the Father, and Lewis was saying that God himself is the one who set the penalty for the law, which arms the devil with his authority to steal and kill and destroy those in his kingdom.
Now, that’s the bad news. But here comes the good news. God has disarmed the devil and stripped him of his authority to destroy God’s people.
Here’s how he did it.
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
In other words he disarmed them in Christ through his death on the cross.
You see the basis of the devil’s power to destroy is the curse of the law because of man’s sin. Without sin he could have no kingdom. His power comes from the record of debt that we have to God because of our sin, and which has legal demands that we be cursed if we can’t pay that debt.
But on the cross, as we saw in verse 14, God cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. He set is aside, nailing it to the cross. He fulfilled the curse requirement of the law by cursing Jesus in our place. And in that way he forgave us all our sins and released us from the curse.
And the moment that happened, the basis for the devil’s authority over God’s people was undermined. The devil can have no authority to destroy if we are no longer in his kingdom and under his rule. Colossians 1:13-14 has come true for all who are in Christ. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Christ has triumphed over the devil as in a field of battle and has rescued his people from his rule. He has taken the sword of the law out of the devil’s hands and left him defeated.
That’s the imagery and meaning behind the word “triumph”. In the days when this letter was written, the Romans would sometimes hold what was called a triumph, which was a procession in which the conquering general would be honored as he rode through the streets in victory. In his train were the captives taken in battle, the ones formerly powerful but now humiliated in defeat and paraded through the streets as vanquished.
God has vanquished the devil and his angels; he has put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Christ, who took away their power to keep his people under the curse of the law.
Now…
3. WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?
That’s the last question to answer. What is the current state of things? How do things now stand with us, seeing that we still live in this world and the devil and his angels are still present?
Well, we have to realize that although the devil is defeated, he is not destroyed. A day is coming when he will be destroyed and thrown into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night forever and ever (as Revelation 20:20 says).
But for now, though he is stripped of his ruling authority over all who are in Christ by faith, he still has influence and we can be affected by him as long as we live in this world where he still has a kingdom.
So I want to walk through four things that are true for every believer in Christ because of
Christ’s triumph over the devil and his angels on the cross. And as we go through these we’ll consider the implications and how it applies to life.
The first thing that is true for believers is that…
The devil can accuse but not condemn.
The devil is called the accuser of our brothers in Revelation 12:10. He can point out our sin to us and to God. He can remind us of how sinful we are. He can tell us that we are deserving of judgment. But he cannot condemn us in God’s court of law.
We know that from Romans 8:33-34. Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
In other words, though the devil should list our many sins before God and call for the curse to be given to us, it will not be given. Always before God is the person of Jesus Christ at his right hand who bore the curse for us. Always before God is the reminder that the law has been carried out, that justice has been satisfied and we have been justified, meaning counted as righteous. Therefore there will be no condemnation for the ones Jesus interceded for.
That is the answer to every accusation, whether it be from the devil or from our own conscience. We don’t need to be righteous to escape condemnation. We just need to be counted righteous to escape it. And we are counted righteous, we are justified, by God because of the one who died to take away our sin.
And so Paul can say in Romans 8:38-39, I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Friends, that gospel truth is the foundation for what we call spiritual warfare, or what Paul called ‘wrestling against the rulers and authorities’ in Ephesians 6:12. Growing in our understanding of the gospel and our confidence in the gospel is central to our being able to walk confidently in the ways of God amidst the attacks of the enemy who would do whatever he can to prevent us from doing that.
And in fact, Ephesians 6:10-18, which is the classic text on spiritual warfare affirms the centrality of the gospel in our fight.
In that passage we are called to take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil (vs. 11). That armor is then described as follows: the belt of truth… the breastplate of righteousness …feet shod with readiness given by the gospel of peace… the shield of faith… the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.
All of these pieces of armor are described with words that describe the gospel – the truth, the righteousness, the gospel of peace, the faith, the salvation, the word of God. It is gospel armor that we are to be clad with. It is the knowledge of sins forgiven and evil powers defeated that will protect us from the fiery darts of the evil one. That’s where our focus should be, not on materials that focus on the demonic. The gospel is our source of protection and strength.
But this gospel armor is armor that we must take up. We don’t automatically wake up every day depending on this gospel for comfort and protection. We must tell it to ourselves, preach it to ourselves, and have it preached to us by others. Spiritual warfare begins with growing in our understanding and confidence in the gospel.
So let that be our main application this morning. Continue to grow in understanding the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ and all that means for us. Therein lies our strength, for the joy of the Lord is our strength.
The devil can accuse but not condemn. That’s the first thing that is true for believers rescued out of his kingdom. The second is this: The devil can tempt, but not compel.
The devil is called the tempter in Matthew 4:3. He delights in tempting people to sin because he is opposed to God and he would like nothing better than for others to join him in opposition to God. So he tempts. But he cannot compel. He cannot force us to do anything.
James 4:7 says, Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
The devil will flee from you when you resist him. He does not have the authority to overcome your resistance. When you are submitted to the Lord and seeking to follow his will, he cannot force you to do otherwise. He cannot force you to sin.
I like the words to a song by Sara Groves, probably my favorite recording artist. In her song Generations, she says, “To say that the devil made me do it is a copout and a lie. The devil can’t make me do anything when I’m calling on Jesus Christ.”
That is wisely said. That is the truth of James 4:7 put to music.
And I would make an application from that. There are deliverance ministries that will teach that if you are battling with sin, the root of it must be that you have a demon of that particular kind of sin. It’s not because your heart is actively seeking something besides God for refuge. No, it’s because the demon is making you do that.
So if you are battling lust, you have a demon of lust. If you are consistently angry, you have a demon of anger, and so on with many other sinful tendencies. And the prescribed remedy then is that you need a deliverance from that demon, after which you will be free from that particular sin.
Now, there is real demonic influence in people’s lives. There is real affliction that demons can inflict. But nowhere in the Scriptures is a demon of sin cast out of someone. Nowhere in Scripture do we see the responsibility for sin assigned to a demon. Man is always held responsible for his sin.
When we sin as believers, we do it because we give into temptation, not because we are being forced into it or controlled by a demon. James 1:14-15 says But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin…
Our sinful desires and our decision to act on those sinful desires is the reason for our sin. It is not being forced on us. All who are in Christ we are no longer slaves to sin. We can say no to sin and yes to obedience.
And that is really what the activity spiritual warfare amounts to. Armed with the gospel, we repent of sin and move forward in obedience to God. We do as James says, we submit ourselves to God and we resist the devil. We take specific steps of obedience to God’s will, and we turn from all the sin that the devil would seek for us to do.
David Powlison wrote in his book Power Encounters that “Spiritual warfare with the power of evil is a matter of consistently and repeatedly turning from darkness to light in the midst of assailing darkness.” I think that is a simple and helpful summary.
The devil can tempt, but he cannot compel. That’s the second thing that is true for believers because Christ has triumphed over the rulers and authorities.
Here’s the third one; The devil can hinder but not stop.
That is to say, he cannot stop the advance of the gospel either throughout the world, or in bringing salvation to those whom God has called. He can make it more difficult, he can slow progress, but ultimately the gospel and its saving effects are unstoppable.
We see this at work in the first and second letters to the Thessalonians. In 1 Thessalonians 2:17- 18, Paul writes, …since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you--I, Paul, again and again--but Satan hindered us.
We don’t know what form that hindrance took, but we know that whatever it was Paul, Silas and Timothy were hindered by the devil from a return visit to the church they had started there.
But did that short-circuit God’s plans for his people in that church? Did the Thessalonians miss out on something crucial to their growth in the faith? No, they did not. For Paul reports in 2 Thessalonians 1:3 the following:
We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.
Their faith continued to grow despite the devil’s hindrance. The devil can hinder, he can slow progress, he can make things difficult, but he cannot stop the gospel from saving those whom God has called, and he cannot stop the work of grace in a person’s soul who has received the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. He is defeated in that regard. He has no power to stop God’s plan.
That is our hope in evangelism and in building the church. Though we will have setbacks, though there will be spiritual opposition from the enemy of our souls, God’s purposes cannot be thwarted. We are still to pray that the Lord will deliver us from evil – prayer is also an essential part of spiritual warfare – but we pray in confidence that Jesus will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
The devil can hinder but not stop. And I would mention one more encouragement from Christ’s triumph over the rulers and authorities; The devil can afflict but not destroy.
While we live in this world we can be on the receiving end of the devil’s attacks. They can be painful. They can also be physical. But they are under the sovereign control of our Lord who will turn them into good for us, and they cannot be fatal to our souls. Our enemy cannot destroy us.
There is an example of this in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul was describing the fact that he had seen a vision of heaven. He didn’t know if it was in his body or out of his body, but he was caught up into paradise and heard things that cannot be told. Here’s what happened next, from 2 Corinthians 12:7.
…to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
Paul said he was harassed by a messenger of Satan. Paul, a Christian. Paul, a faithful laborer for Christ. Paul, a man for whom the rulers and authorities had been disarmed. Yet he was harassed by a messenger of Satan. He was harassed by the devil.
We don’t know exactly what that looked like. It may have been physical. He called it a thorn given to him in the flesh (verse 7). Whatever it was, it was an affliction.
But notice that the affliction was under the control of God and it was ultimately for the purpose of God being glorified in Paul.
Paul’s thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan was given to him. Not by Satan, but by God. How do we know that? Because Paul said the messenger was given to him to keep [him] from becoming conceited. It was to promote Paul’s humility. That is not the devil’s agenda. The devil is not interested in making us humble and therefore Christlike and therefore honoring to God. The devil is interested in making us proud and rebellious and not dependent on God.
This affliction by the devil, this uncomfortable harassment that Paul asked God three times to remove was God’s tool to bring about God’s good result in Paul. And it came with God’s promise in verse 9: … he said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
The devil can afflict, but not destroy. He is under God’s sovereign control and can only do that which God allows in his plans for our good. And God will give us the grace to endure it.
That is a comfort to those who might be prone to fearing demonic activity and being afraid to turn the lights off at night. Remember that though the devil is real, he is “God’s devil” and he and his demons can do no more than God allows for our good.
CLOSE
Christ has triumphed over the devil and removed his power to condemn us and destroy us. He has disarmed and defeated him, though he still lingers until the appointed time. But a day is coming when 1 Corinthians 15:24 will be our reality. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
I want to close by reading the benediction from Charles Spurgeon’s message on this passage, which serves as an invitation and an encouragement.
Will you be there…? Will you behold His final triumph over sin, death and hell? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Is he your confidence and trust? Have you committed your soul to his keeping? If you can answer yes, your eyes shall see him in the day of his glory; nay, you shall share his glory and sit with him upon his throne, even as he has overcome and sits down with his Father on his throne. May God enlarge your faith and strengthen your hope and inflame your love and make you ready to be made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, that when he shall come with flying clouds on wings of wind, you may be ready to meet him and may with him ascend to gaze forever on the vision of his glory.
Amen
