In Whom We have Redemption
Colossians 1:12–14 NKJV
Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
Last week we covered in Colossians 1:9-11 three things Paul prayed for the Colossians. Indeed this is something which applies to all believers. He prayed that the Colossians might fully understand the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. He prayed that the Church would walk worthily before the Lord and be fruitful in all their works for the Lord including, again, growing in knowledge. Thirdly, that the church would be strengthened by God’s might that they might be patient, longsuffering, and joyful.
This week we move on to verses 12 through 14. Paul moves from petitionary prayer to that of thanksgiving for what God has already done. What has Jesus done for the Colossian church and for us? Starting in verse 15 which we will cover next week, extraordinary truths about the person of Christ will be revealed. What we have here are the basics of the Christian profession. Paul had prayed earlier several times that the Colossians would grow in their understanding of the will of God and in the fullness of knowledge. But knowledge has a beginning. An infant does not read Shakespeare. This child will have to learn the rudiments of speech and skills like reading and writing. The child learns simple concepts first and then progresses to more difficult and abstract thoughts. there is nothing wrong for a young child to think like a child, but if that child as an adult still processes thought as a child, something has gone badly wrong. A church that refuses to grow in the faith, or individuals, will live a fruitless existence. We must grow. The deeper things of the faith will require hard work and time to acquire, but it is God’s will that we do exactly this. In proceeding to teach the Colossians the deeper things of the faith, he is actually helping to answer the petition to God for the church to grow in all knowledge.
These are the basic truths one must first acquire before diving into the deeper things. the first is that the believer must be made qualified to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Note that this word “qualified” or “meet” is passive and not active. We do not through our own effort make ourselves worthy of this great inheritance. This is an act of God’s grace for which we give thanks. In other words, before one can grow in the faith, they must be Christian believers. All the great truths which are about to be revealed will be of no benefit to one who does not believe. One must be born before one can know anything. In spiritual terms, one must be born again. A non-existent entity cannot be the heir of anything. So birth is the prerequisite.
Then the Christian who has been born again comes to self-awareness, just like any infant comes to the time that they have cognition of their own existence. Here the believer realizes that they have been qualified for an inheritance. They are heirs, and heirs in a family. This family is the church of whom Christ is the head. We might not yet know what that inheritance is. Knowing what the inheritance is requires further knowledge of the estate. It is good enough to know that the babe in Christ is an heir to something special. the very idea of light is a powerful concept which everyone perceives and no one really knows other than it is bright. Even the physicists and scientists of this age are not fully sure. They know in part, but the rest remains a mystery. In the Christian realm, Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 says that we know in part and see in part. Later we shall know all. In the meanwhile, we are to grow in our understanding of our heavenly reward. As we grow we come to a greater appreciation of how valuable this inheritance is. In the meanwhile, we know that the One who has qualified us shall bring this to fruition in us.
The next thing we need to know is that we have been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love. We have been delivered. Note again that this is passive. We did not rescue ourselves. We were perishing and need to be rescued. We were in the grasp of darkness, another powerful metaphor set against the light. We had been made meet to the inheritance of the saints in light. But before we were made heirs of this great inheritance in light, we were in total darkness. Not only were we in the dark, we were under the power of the dark. We had no way of seeing our way out of this evil darkness. This implies that someone must shine the light into our darkness that we might see, We also have to be led out of this dark place in whose captivity we were held. We were rescued from the dark and made heirs with all the other saints who have been enlightened. This light we now see is the light of the Kingdom of the son of His love. This “son of His love” seems awkward. We might be tempted to say “His loving Son.” This can be done in Greek as well, so Paul deliberately chose the core complicated construction. This is done for emphasis. It emphasizes how deep the Father’s love is toward His Son
Again, we did not place ourselves into the kingdom. We were moved from the evil darkness into the light. We were once the blind servants of evil, but now we have been placed where we can see. This is why we should be always thankful to God for what He has done for us.
“In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin.” Paul had just told the church at Colossae, and us the fact that something miraculous had happened to us by the grace of God. He told us where we once stood as well as our current standing with the saints in light. Now He tells us the means that God used to make this miracle happened. We should notice that the text is properly translated “in whom”. It is not “by whom.” Even though the Greek preposition “en” can be translated “by” it is richer to translate this word by the usual “in.” Paul could have used another preposition if he wanted to say “by”. why am I making what seems like a trivial distinction. The English preposition “by” indicates agency. This isn’t wrong as Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross is the means by which find redemption. But this redemption happened in Christ also. One of the richest terms Paul uses is that he tells us that we are “in Christ.” This means that we are personally involved in the process. We died in His death. If Jesus was merely the agent, like a real estate agent, there can be a certain remoteness. We need to feel the suffering of Christ who died for us. The sins that He bore in His body were our sins. The blood he shed was the blood we deserved to have shed. Can you see just how rich “in Christ” is?
Let us now look at the word “redemption.” It can be used for the paying of a ransom to free a prisoner. An example of this is to pay off the debt of one who had been made the slave in order to pay back the debt. This was a trap that would leave the debtor a slave for ever. The debt slave earned a denarius a day to apply to paying the debt. But the master charged the slave a denarius a day for room and born. Whether large or small, the debt could never be paid. But someone could show mercy and pay off the person’s debt and allow for his release from debt slavery. Sometimes, even the one to whom the debt was owed could out of charity cancel the debt.
I like this idea of paying off the debt of the one whose debt could not be paid off or earned by the effort of the slave. This is where we all are. There is a song which is sung in many churches which begins with “He paid a debt He did not owe; I owed a debt, I could not pay. I needed someone to wash my sins away.” This seems to be a better idea that the idea that Jesus paid a ransom to redeem us. To whom would Jesus pay a ransom to? Certainly not Satan! It would also be difficult to say that Jesus paid the ransom to the Father. This would place the Father and the Son at odds to some degree. This would make the Father out to be an angry vindictive God whose Son had to appease Him. One could go down this line and have Mary or the Saints intercede to appease the anger of a vindictive Son.
We owe God perfect obedience to His standards, something that every man except Jesus lacked. The fact that some lacked more and others less does not matter. as we have noted, in every case, the debt could not be repaid by us. We needed someone to redeem us. This is what Jesus did.
Some might ask why God did not simply forgive this debt we could not pay out of compassion. This is a good question, but we must realize that the forgiveness of a debt involves a loss from the ledger of the one to whom the debt is owed. And the cost of this loss caused by the sins of the human race was astronomical. Jesus took a great loss on our behalf. The wages of sin were death, so Christ died for us. By his blood the debt was cancelled in full for those who believe on Jesus. We must also realize that this is not the end of the story as Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. He ascended and is at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us. He is going to return to judge the living and the dead as well as to receive us into the full glory of the inheritance of the saints in light, in the Kingdom of the Son of His love.
These truths we have looked at this morning are foundational to our faith. There is as I have stated much more to learn. But there is no use to learn the deeper things of God until we have grasped these truths. There are many who have not faith in Jesus which speculate much about God, but this is useless apart from a personal relationship with God through Jesus by faith. Apart from this, one is lost and without hope and facing eternal judgment.
for those of us who have believed on Jesus and have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus and had our sins forgiven, it is good for us to review these first truths. Now let us go on to perfection and learn the rest of the story.
