"What A Relief"

“What A Relief!!!”

Colossians 2:6-23

The late Author and speaker Brennan Manning has a pretty cool story about how he got the name "Brennan."

While growing up, his best friend was a guy named Ray.

The two of them did everything together: bought a car together as teenagers, double-dated, went to school together.

They even enlisted in the Army together, went to boot camp together and fought on the frontlines together.

One night while sitting in a foxhole, Brennan was talking about the old days in Brooklyn while Ray listened and ate a candy bar.

Suddenly a live grenade came into the foxhole.

Ray looked at Brennan, smiled, dropped his candy bar and threw himself on the live grenade.

It exploded, killing Ray, but Brennan's life was spared.

When Brennan became a priest he had to take on the name of a saint.

So, he thought of his friend, Ray Brennan.

So he took the name "Brennan."

Years later Brennan went to visit Ray's mother in Brooklyn.

They sat up one night talking when Brennan asked her, "Do you think Ray loved me?"

Mrs. Brennan got up off the couch, shook her finger in front of Brennan's face and shouted, "What more could he have done for you?"

Brennan said that at that moment he experienced an epiphany.

He imagined himself standing in front of the Cross of Jesus wondering, "Does God really love me?"

And Jesus' mother Mary pointing to her Son, saying, "What more could He have done for you?"

As Christians, it often seems like we are trying to add more stuff to try and make Jesus love us…

…rules, regulations— “Don’t do this”

“Don’t say that”

“You gotta have this.”

“You gotta have that.”

But in our Scripture Lesson for this morning, Paul is telling us that this is a royal waste of time.

I remember, as a new born Christian in college, feeling so bad about my inability to “measure up” to what I thought Christianity was about.

I felt like I was a person living in the hands of an “angry god” and I had to act and do things in a certain way in order to please this angry god.

But I kept falling short.

And every time I fell short I became more and more discouraged.

And with that discouragement came depression, guilt, hopelessness, and a general feeling of unhappiness…

…even a bit of self-loathing, if you will.

It’s like I thought there were a whole long list of rules and regulations that I needed to follow in order to be on God’s good side, in order for God to love me, in order to be saved.

It’s as if God’s love is conditional rather than unconditional.

And so, I felt lost, in bondage.

There seemed to be no way out.

Have you ever felt like this?

Perhaps you feel like this now.

Maybe, you imagine that God is looking down on you with either a disgusted sneer or a hopeless tear.

Or even worse, perhaps you feel as if God has given up on you—turned his back on you.

Do you feel as if you are not good enough?

Have you missed the mark?

Has your train derailed?

Yeah, I’ve felt that way.

And during one of those unhappy spells of feeling that way I opened my Bible to this passage in Colossians and read: “When you were dead in your sins…God made you alive with Christ.

He forgave all [your] sins, having canceled 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.

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Can you sense the sigh of relief I felt when reading those words for the first time?

I was already complete in Christ.

I didn’t need anything else, just more of what I already had!!!

Anyone looking at the Cross of Jesus Christ in the first-century world would think that “the rulers and authorities had stripped Christ naked and celebrated a public triumph over him.”

But, blink and rub your eyes.

On the Cross, God stripped the armor off the rulers and authorities!!!

God’s triumph was over the principalities and powers--the devil and his demons--the very powers that thought it was the other way around.

What a glorious paradox!!!

God’s “supposed” weakness overcomes all other “supposed” strength.

God’s “supposed” folly overcomes everything that stands against us!!!

Dear saints, all the forces that might try and take over your life…

…to steal your salvation or the joy of it…

…are included in the ones shamed by the triumph of God on the Cross of Jesus Christ!!!

And God did all this for YOU, for ME!!!