Colossians 1:21-23
Please turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 1 as we come to verses 21 to 23, which is a text that really tells every Christian’s origin story. And also, this text predicts every Christian’s happy ending. So we might call this every Christian’s testimony. This is every Christian’s testimony, Colossians 1, verses 21 to 23. We have been in the classroom the last few weeks with the Apostle Paul learning in Paul’s three-week course on Christology in verses 15 to 20.
And now it’s time to apply this doctrine and see its implications, for us in us to save us. Follow along as I read those verses, but let’s read those verses in their context. Verses 21 to 23 are one long sentence in the Greek, but let’s read it in context. We’ll start back in verse 13, because that’s where this really all began. “He rescued us from the authority of darkness, and transferred us to the Kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
“Who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things have been created through Him and for Him, And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the Head of the body, the Church; Who is the beginning, the first born from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross-through Him-whether things on earth or things in heaven.”
And now our text. “And although you were formerly alienated and enemies in mind and in evil deeds, but now He reconciled you in the body of His flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach- if indeed you continue in the faith firmly grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.”
Now what God did to rescue us by Christ, how it was that he transferred us, as verse 13 says, from the authority of darkness to the kingdom of his beloved son. What it took for him to reconcile us to himself, forgiving us of all of our sins and making peace by the blood of his cross, that’s our subject for today. That is the subject of these verses.
What happened in our reconciliation and what it means for us, what it means for us positionally, and then what it means for us practically. Three points I want to make before we enter into a very simple outline for this morning, and the first point, just by way of observation is this, that the main verb in this section, verses 21 to 23, the main verb is in verse 22. It’s the verb, he reconciled, that’s driving all the action. So even though verse 21 comes first, what comes first is supporting what comes second, the reconciliation of God in Christ.
Next observation is that verses 21 to 23, one long sentence in the original. The LSB writes it that way, but in verse 23, notice the word, if. If, provides an important clue to the text showing us that this sentence is what’s called a conditional sentence.
A conditional sentence, you may remember, is an if/then sentence. So if it snows in the next few weeks, then we might be able to claim we had winter in Colorado this year. Or perhaps some loving parent out there might say to a loving, strong, obedient child, if you sit still, stay quiet, listen carefully in church today, then I will make sure you get a special treat this afternoon. Something like that maybe.
Here the thought is if you continue in the faith, start of verse 23, if you continue in the faith, then go back to the beginning of verse 22 then, to get the rest, then he reconciled you; if you continue, then he reconciled you. Which brings us to a third observation. And right now we’re just going to simply raise the issue.
We’re not solving this issue yet, but this is a question that we need to answer about the relationship between continuing in the faith, as it says in verse 23, which sounds like works, and then the grace of reconciliation in verse 22. How do Grace and works work together? What is the connection and the relationship between the two in this text? We’re going to come back to that, as we get into verse 23.
But right now let’s get into our outline and give you three points, very simple. What you were, what you are, and what you will be. What you were, what you are, and what you will be. And as we are preparing for the Lord’s Table to celebrate communion together, I pray that at the end of this, your heart will be filled with joyful gratitude as you think and hear about the gift of reconciliation by God in Christ.
Let’s come to that first outline, point number one: What you were, and you can just put a colon and write the word, stubborn sinners. What you were: you were stubborn sinners. In verses 15 to 20, Paul’s been using the third person, because he’s been teaching about another person. He’s been teaching about the nature and the work of the son, Jesus Christ.
Now you can see very clearly, he switches to the second person: you, you, you, to drive this home to his audience, to his readers, and to us. And he’s describing in verse 21, when he describes us, he’s describing what is the gravest, the most desperate, the most hopeless of all conditions. “You were formerly alienated and enemies in mind and in evil deeds.” That is bad news, isn’t it?
It’s the bad news that we all need to hear. The word alienated means to be estranged, separated from, cut off from. It’s in the present tense, refers to a continuous state of being. You were alienated, refers to this continuousness. Similar language to Ephesians 2:12, Therefore, remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, “remember that you were at that time without Christ,” and you were, “alienated from the citizenship of Israel,” You were, “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
More bad news from the apostle Paul, but go into Romans 1 through 3, we see, man, he takes three chapters to unpack these kinds of verses and unpack and show us how bad the news really is. It’s like you going to your doctor and saying, doctor, examine me, take a look. What do you see? And he looks at you and he does the test and he examines.
He says, I can’t find a pulse. You’re not breathing from head to toe. You’re riddled with cancer. In fact, I don’t even know how you’re standing here. You’re a zombie. And we’re going to quarantine you because something strange is happening. You’re a dead man walking. What’s the prognosis? What do I do? What pill do I take? No, no, no. You don’t understand, you’re dead.
That’s what the Bible says about us. So we need to hear that bad news from the doctor before we’ll pay attention, wake up and say what? What’s wrong? What do I need? What hope do I have? The Bible says those who are fallen, sinners are basically pitiful waifs outside the people, in the promises of God. We’re homeless, hopeless, godless, utterly without any comfort from truth.
We don’t hear the truth, understand the truth, know the truth. Doctrines like divine creation to tell us where we come from; what we are, don’t give us any comfort. We don’t find any comfort in divine sovereignty and providence. In fact, we find those things to be imposing doctrines that we recoil from. It’s because we’re aliens and strangers.
We’re completely cut off and all alone and like a dog cornered, we snarl and bite at the hand that comes to feed us and care for us and look at the rest of the sentence, to be alienated, to be estranged. You can think about maybe the plight of the orphan, think about being alienated and estranged, it brings sympathy.
But this is worse than being orphaned. It’s worse than being bastardized or found out as illegitimate and having no parentage. It’s worse condition than that for us. In the case of all the Pagan gentiles, which is what we all were before knowing Christ, our situation was far worse than that of an orphan or an illegitimate child. Our parentage had been established for us.
We actually know clearly from Scripture what our parentage is. It’s quite evident in the way we think, live, speak. As the text says, we were enemies in mind and in evil deeds. It shows us exactly where we come from, which is to say, as Jesus actually said when he condemned his own generation in John 8:44, “you’re of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.” That’s the mind that is in us.
That’s our parentage, Ephesians 2:1 says, “You were dead in transgressions and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world.” Dead, unresponsive, unfeeling, unable, and unwilling. We were hostile in mind due to the immersion in our transgressions, our high-handed acts of rebellion against God’s clear law, our sins and our offenses.
Sin meaning, missing the mark, always missing the mark of God’s goodness and righteousness and perfection. Paul continues in Ephesians 2:2, he says, “we used to walk according to the Prince of the power of the air.” That’s our daddy, the spirit that’s now at work in the sons of disobedience. He’s our father.
That’s the spirit, that’s the breath that we breathe in and breathe out, “among whom we all formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we’re by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” Not a good picture in that iniquitous state, vile and wretched, we were submerged in sins.
We’re saturated with our impurity, burdened with our guilt, covered with shame and those who do not sense the shame and don’t see themselves that way, they’re merely blind to it. They think highly of themselves while they are covered in muck. It’s the worst condition possible. It’s enslavement to wicked spiritual forces, demons, dungeon masters, lusts, as taskmasters. We become slavishly obedient to this cursed nature that’s within us.
That’s what the Bible portrays us as before Christ. And what’s the result of all that? Well it’s a life of anxiety and fear? It’s a life of insecurity. It’s a life of trouble, refusing to consider the reality of a life dominated by sin and the consequences of lifelong sin in our eternal fate.
In summarizing our former condition, as alienated, an enemy as Paul is locating the heart of the problem, as the mind, the word dianoia, it’s the inner self, the heart, and Jeremiah 17:9 says it very clearly is, says, “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it?”
It’s describing the unbelieving heart, the unregenerate heart. And so the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. It’s not about the brain, it’s not about social conditioning, it’s not about bad parenting. It’s not about what happened to you. You weren’t rocked enough or you were bottle fed or you were not bottle fed or whatever it was.
It’s not about your mental health, which is the in-vogue term in psychology these days; so gathering all the hurts and the traumas and the toxicity and the abuse, that’s a big term, very broadly defined. Anything that hurts anybody’s feelings is now called abuse. And now people live forever in therapy because they need to nurse their mental health all the time.
Very fragile thing, this mental health, but in this therapy and in this environment, there is no such thing as sin and guilt. There is no such thing as taking personal responsibility for offenses against a Holy God. And so because of that, there is no hope either.
There’s no forgiveness, there’s no deliverance, there’s no freedom. Why not? Because taking no personal responsibility before God, who is the only lawgiver and the only judge, to refuse personal accountability and to refuse and deny your own accountability before a holy God.
Because you have broken his law and been a transgressor, means you don’t acknowledge your sin. And if you don’t acknowledge your sin, there is no forgiveness. What did David say in Psalm 32? If you don’t take personal responsibility and acknowledge your sin and your guilt and confess it and forsake it, there’s no hope for you, and you will continually be living under the fever heat of summer.
Your vitality is wasted away and it’s drained away, spiritually speaking, until you find yourself dead and standing before a holy God to give an account. No forgiveness, no freedom, no freedom, no righteousness before God, no peace, no deliverance from anxiety and fear and guilt, no evaporation of the shame that accompanies all of that.
It’s a stubborn and intractable situation that we’re in, because it’s rooted in the mind. It’s down at the very core of what we are as human beings. It’s the inner self. And so because of that, we’re not talking about just where it’s located, which is true. We are talking about this, where it’s located in the mind, but it’s really more of what comes out of that, a mindset proclivity, this continual bent towards sin and sinning.
Fundamentally, it’s a disposition of self-love that’s always bent toward the self, always pleasing the self, favoring the self, justifying the self. It’s really, as the Bible describes it, a heart disposition of idolatry and the idol perched up on the throne of our hearts in this state of unbelief is the self. It’s about self-worship. It’s about self-love.
Now this alienation and enmity, rooted in the mind, this is proven by means of what Paul describes there as evil deeds. So what is going on in the mind and in the heart comes out. Jesus said, “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” right? So that, it’s out of the heart that comes the words we speak and the evil deeds we do, and those deeds and words prove and demonstrate what we are.
The heart is manifest and the mind is manifest in wicked works. Works reveal the heart, the mind, and we tend to think, don’t we? We tend to think of works as just an external thing only, just about our speech, our behavior, what we do, what we don’t do, what we say, what we don’t say.
I pray that at the end of this, your heart will be filled with joyful gratitude as you think and hear about the gift of reconciliation by God in Christ.” Travis Allen
But works can be internal too, because works fundamentally defined in Scripture, theologically defined, works are anything that is generated from the mind of man, anything generated before him. And when it’s works that are trying to make ourselves acceptable before God, it’s what’s generated from inside that makes ourselves acceptable to God to gain his favor or maintain his favor, that’s works in a justification sense.
We’re not justified by our works. Nothing comes from within us that can make ourselves pleasing before God. Paul says, “I know that in me dwelleth no good thing.” It’s true. No, the works that we need to save us and justify us come from outside of us, are the works of Jesus Christ. But defining works that way as that which comes from within a man and comes from the mind and the heart, that means that it’s not just external overt things that are works; biblically defined internal works are going on as well. And I’m talking about how we think, it starts in the mind, it’s more subtle, but it’s far more consequential because it really is at the root of everything.
Our thoughts, our motivations, our desires, our imaginations, our plans, our ambitions, our priorities, all those things, those are works too. Now we can only see them as human beings looking at one another. We can only see them when they do come out in words, in actions, but God sees all of it. All of it is laid open and bare before him. In fact, when the Lord looked down from heaven in Genesis 6:5, “He saw every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually.”
We know at that time there was great bloodshed on the earth and lust and filth and immorality. But what does God say when he indicts the world? “Every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually.” That’s something God can see. We can’t. We see the result of it. We see what comes out. God sees the heart. He sees the works of the mind coming out in the thinking. And so God, as you know, judged the world so severely, flooding the entire earth, killing all life except those saved and preserved in Noah’s ark.
All that to say, mental works matter. What you think about, imagine, what you want, matters. The mind of a fallen man is like a sewer bubbling up from its depths. Horrible thoughts, self-centeredness, pride, self-flattery, terrible things thought and said about God and others. Blasphemies, slanders, gossip, false reports, careless, flippant words, all these evil things planned and done make us filthy and vile before a pure and holy God. That’s not a pretty picture, is it?
It’s unpleasant to talk about. It’s unpleasant to say. Any good Doctor, who has to give a tough diagnosis to his patient doesn’t rejoice in talking about the cancer, doesn’t rejoice in talking about the heart condition, the clogged-up veins and arteries. No, but he is speaking about it soberly. And that’s why we can’t make any apology about this report that God gives in the pages of Scripture about our spiritual state and our spiritual condition, because without it we never seek treatment. We’d never seek help.
After describing the stubborn, sinful condition that used to characterize us, we find one of the most uplifting features in Paul’s writing, “You once, but now,” isn’t that good news? You once were, and yet now you are and this brings us to a second point: what you are, which we want to speed our way to, don’t we?
Number two: what you are, forgiven, friends. You’re forgiven, friends. Paul announces this new reality in verse 22. Describing what reconciliation really means, he says, “You were alienated enemies, but now he has reconciled you in the body of His flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
Paul uses the same verb there that he used in verse 20, apokatallasso. We talked about that last time to transfer from one state to another, to a quite different state, to bring you from one condition into another condition, from one state into another state. But here as different from what we talked about last time, in talking about pacification.
Here he’s not talking about pacification, a forceful subduing, here we’re not rebellious enemies. We’ve been made friends. Here the focus is salvific. The reconciliation is about mending a friendship, mending a relationship, making a friendship. This reconciliation work goes deep, just as deep as our sin is in the mind and the heart.
This reconciling work goes so deep it starts in the heart, the control center of our being, the seat of human personality. God starts in the heart. He goes to where only he can go, and he works from the heart outward to transform the entirety of our life and our being. The thinking, the desiring, the willing, the internal mental reasoning, the habits and patterns of living comes out in the behavior, the words, the actions. Everything changes, but it starts in the heart.
Now we want to take some time here and work this out a little bit, break it down and talk about the theology of conversion. We’re going to talk about the theology of conversion, because of what’s coming in verse 23. We need to understand how this whole reconciliation happened.
Reconciliation’s a big word and it covers a lot of ground in redemption, but we need to understand what are the details. What is the, what are the steps of the process, the logical steps of the process in reconciling work? What is the reason for the change is another way we could ask the question.
What is it that explains this change, this transformation, this change from enmity to amity? Why should we expect a transformation on the outside? Well, in part because of the evidence of this verse. He reconciled you, and he reconciled you not to leave you as you are alienated and hostile in mind, but to change you to not have you alienated but close, not hostile but friendly. And why is that? Verse 22, “To present you before him, holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
Before explaining those terms again, just want to review a few biblical texts and understand the theologically rich terms that summarize this doctrine of conversion or reconciliation. This theology conversion tells what happens when God reconciles a sinner, and this is really our own conversion story. This is what happened to us. It’s our testimony.
We have to ask again, looking at this text, verses 21 and 23, do we expect our lives to change or not? Does Paul expect our lives to change or not? Turn to Romans 8 in your Bibles. Put a finger in Colossians 1 and turn to Romans 8. And I want you to look at verses 29 and 30 because that is a classic text that gives us what is called an Ordo Salutis.
Ordo Salutis is a fancy Latin word that just simply means order of salvation. Order of salvation, you say, well, why don’t you just say order of salvation? You try to impress us with fancy Latin words. No, I’m just trying to help you so that when you read theological texts and you see some Latin term like Ordo Salutis, you’re not intimidated by it, but you’re saying, you know, when I heard that in church the other week, and I know exactly what that means. Keep turning the page, keep learning. That’s all I’m saying it for, okay.
Anyway, Ordo Salutis, order of salvation, just outlines what happens in salvation from first to second and third. And a lot of these terms in salvation really happen simultaneously. So it’s not a temporal ordering necessarily, though there are temporal elements, but there is a logical ordering of these elements.
First, we want to talk about in Romans 8:29 and 30, we want to talk about predestination and election. Predestination and election. Predestination, God’s predetermined outcome, you could say for his predetermined or chosen people, that’s what this is talking about. This is very biblical.
Look at Romans 8:29. Those whom God foreknew, he predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son so that he would be the first born among many brothers. What does foreknowledge mean? Does it mean he knows beforehand? Does it mean he looks down the corridors of time and sees things and then makes decisions based on that seeing? And no, no, God does not need to learn. God does not need to look ahead and then make a decision based on that to keep his 100% batting average in making choices.
Foreknowledge states God’s intention before time began to predestined those he foreknew to become, what does it say, to be conformed to the image of his son. Whatever the image of his son means, it’s got something to do with Colossians 1:22, “holy, blameless, beyond reproach.” It’s got something to do with that. The image of his son is a holy image, a blameless image, an irreproachable image. He is the perfect one, and God intends to conform us to that one.
Now, is this merely positional conformity to Christ? Is this merely talking about a legal decoration of holy blameless beyond reproach? Or should we also expect a practical conformity to Christ too? Notice in Romans 8:29. The object of divine foreknowing is not a knowledge of what, it’s a knowledge of who.
When the objects of the verb proginosko are persons and not things, the verb is referring here to an intimate knowledge of relationship. Foreknowledge and knowing is to determine a relationship with somebody. That’s what it’s saying here. Those God chose to redeem before time began. He chose to bring them into a saving relationship with himself. He chose them as the objects of his redeeming love.
They’re caught up in the love that before creation was only expressed between the members of the Trinity, but now they’re brought into the fold of the Trinity to know that love expressed between Father, Son, and Spirit. It’s a beautiful thing. And those whom he foreknew, he predestined them, the verb proorizo, to decide beforehand. He predestined them for conformity to his son.
When we consider what we were, I guess we’re expecting some changes. It’s a predetermined outcome for a predetermined people, as Ephesians 1:4 says, a predetermined people, “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world,” and for a predetermined outcome “to be holy and blameless before him.” Ephesians 1:4. Paul says this through and through.
He teaches about God’s foreknowledge. He teaches about his predestination and his election that are not according to any human works, any human merit, nothing generated inside the man to make him gain favor or maintain favor with God. It’s all because of what Christ has done, and it’s according to the good pleasure of his will. It’s according to the choice that he had from before the foundation of the world to give the gift of his grace.
All of God’s gifts and his decisions are uncoerced. Unconditional election is what’s talked about here, purely a matter of God’s free choice. All right, so first words, predestination, election. Second, said here is God’s choice leads to an effectual calling and it’s pronouncement of justification.
Predestination, election, those happened before time began. So there isn’t some time marker there. There isn’t some sequencing there. It’s one decree. God is pure act, another Latin term, Actus Purus. Throw that one around at Coffee with a friend sometime. God is pure act. He’s not potential, he’s there’s no potential in God. He’s not becoming anything, he is.
God is, his decree is, and his predestination and his election those decisions, those choices, pure before time began, but now we enter into time, and we see God’s choice, and it, secondly, relates to an effectual calling and a pronouncement of justification. Again Romans 8:29 says, “Those whom God foreknew He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first born among many brethren, and whom He predestined.” These he also hears the temporal portion. “These He also called, and those whom He called these He also justified.” This happens in time and space, according to our lifespan.
In our time, God calls us and he justifies us and between those terms, calling and justifying, there are several works of redeeming grace that causes calling to be made effectual. It’s not a hope. It’s not a wish. When he calls salvifically, it’s an effectual call. It comes to pass. He accomplishes what he set out to do.
Several steps in his redeeming grace that caused this calling to be effectual, and then make his justification legal according to his righteousness. God is fastidious about his righteousness. He doesn’t bend the rules at all. He doesn’t sweep one sin under the rug, but he deals with everything, so that he can be just and the justifier of the one who puts his faith in Jesus Christ.
So calling, effectual, justification, legal, that steps between calling and justifying, the effectual call is God’s initiative in salvation, without which there would be no human salvation. Since we’re dead in our trespasses and sins, as I said, we’re like zombies standing before the doctor saying, why isn’t there a pulse? In fact, we’re not saying anything to the doctor. We’re dead. We can’t say anything. We’re lying there.
We can make no move toward God unless God does something in us and God does something to us. What is that? He calls us. It’s like Jesus calling Lazarus while he is dead and wrapped in grave clothes in a tomb, and he calls to Lazarus. The dead Lazarus, which cannot hear anything, doesn’t have a brain that processes anything, and yet he calls and Lazarus comes out. What happened? It’s an effectual call of Lazarus.
It’s a picture of what happens to us in salvation. God does something in us and He does something to us. Now let me make a distinction. His offer of salvation is general, and sometimes people make the mistake of thinking the calling of the effectual calling is the same as the offer of salvation. It’s not.
We broadcast an offer of salvation to all. It’s a general offer of salvation goes out to many. But this effectual call, specific, issued to his elect only. Effectual call starts with regeneration, causing us to be born again, as Jesus taught Nicodemus in John 3 verse 3 and verse 5. You must be born again. You must be born from above. There must be something spiritual that happens to you that you cannot manufacture.
The Holy Spirit has to come to you and cause you to be born spiritually. Jesus was alluding in that passage, speaking to Nicodemus, to Ezekiel 36:26. God is speaking to Israel through Ezekiel. He says, “I will give you, Israel, a new heart.” They didn’t have a new heart. They had an old dead heart, a heart that continued rebelling against the living God, breaking his covenant, making him angry, causing their exile and their judgement.
He says, “people, I will give you a new heart, I’ll put a new spirit within you, I’ll remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” Responsive, living with a pulse, this effectual call awakens the elect when the Holy Spirit comes to them and regenerates them. It’s called the miracle of regeneration because he creates in them a new nature.
We were born into this world, dead in our trespasses and sins, but we need a new birth. We need new life. There must be in us a new nature that hates sin and loves righteousness, that confesses and forsakes sin and pursues Christ and puts faith in Christ. How does that happen to a dead sinner apart from the regenerated work of God by the Spirit?
This turning from sin, pursuing Christ, trusting in him, pursuing him, it’s called conversion, repentance from sin, trust in Christ, faith in Christ, faith in his gospel. And those who trust in Christ, when they put their faith in him, they are immediately justified by God. They are declared righteous by faith.
That justification, that declaration before the court, before the bar of his justice, is never to be revoked, it’s never to be recalled, never to be undone, it’s permanent. When God makes that determination, when he declares that justification, it is a done deal and “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
This here is the fundamental, the radical, the core issue and the point of reconciliation with God. This is when he makes his enemy his friend. This is when the death of the son of God for sins is applied to the sinner and when the peace won by Christ is granted to the repentant believer. This is called conversion and it’s God who does the converting work. It’s not we who convert ourselves.
God converts. He is sovereign, He takes the initiative, He does the work. It’s called monergism. Mono, single, one ergism is actor, one acting, one energy. God converts the sinner’s nature by regeneration of the Holy Spirit. God converts the sinner’s orientation to sin and righteousness. No longer is his nature and disposition bent toward unbelieving, but now toward believing.
No longer is his nature hostile to God, but friendly. He’s forgiven of his sin. He’s zealous for righteousness, that’s because of a new nature, that’s what God did. So God converts the sinners’ nature, he converts the sinners’ orientation, and he converts the sinners’ legal status from condemned to justified, because of what Christ has done.
Christ died to satisfy divine justice requires that every single sin gets its just reward. That means, even thought sins, even stray imaginations. All those are forgiven by faith in Christ. God declares that guilty sinner righteous in Christ, no longer rejected, but now accepted.
So God’s reconciliation, again, just reminding you where we are, it involves all of this, a pre-temporal before time began, predestination and election of us, choosing us, predetermining the outcome that we’d be holy and blameless before him. It involves effectual calling, which is regeneration and conversion, all that by faith. We put our trust in him, that leads to God’s justification to declare us righteous by faith. What grace he shows, what kindness.
It’s a judicial act. It’s a new positioning of our souls before him. But boy, it has practical consequences. We see many things in our time that make an impact. There’s a before and after. For some of you who are a little bit older may remember where you were when JFK got shot and you say, boy, that was a, it was a defining act. It’s something that happened and the world changed.
For another generation it was 9/11. I know there are some in here who are not even born when that happened, but 9/11, when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and caused them to topple and the world changed. Maybe we’ll say in our day it’s Iran or whatever is going on in the world now. We’ll say, boy, there was a before and after. Nothing’s been the same since. In such a more radical way. For those who are in Christ, for those who have gone through this reconciling work, that God has done this to them, there is a before and after. There is an old and there is a new.
Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come. There’s something that happens positionally to you, that practically something changes in you and it takes time; and overtime and development and growth, maturity. It’s apparent to everyone because of this new status we have.
We’re no longer alienated and kept at a distance. God brings us close. He draws us near. In fact, he couldn’t be nearer because he puts his own spirit within us to dwell within us. He wants us all the way in. No longer an enemy of God, but now a friend, more than a friend, by adoption we’ve become family.
So we come to a third set of terms. We’ve talked about predestination and election. We’ve talked about effectual calling and justification. Now let’s talk about adoption and sanctification, because this is the reality for us, this is where we live now, that we are Christians. And Paul moves that way in Ephesians 1:4 as well, from election right to sanctification. “He chose us in him.” That’s election, “that we should be holy and blameless before him.” He’s talking about sanctification.
In the next verse, verse 5, he goes from predestination to adoption. In love, he predestined us; pretemporal work to adoption as sons. That happens in time through Jesus Christ. And then verse 6, accepting us in the beloved, in other words, is before the foundation of the world, God decreed our adoption into his family, but then that happened, when he justified us, when he reconciled us, he brought us all the way in and adopted us as sons and daughters of his.
And the mark of family resemblance, the divining characteristic of all who belong to God’s family, sanctification, piety, holiness, that’s what marks us now. For some, it’s who are younger and less mature, it’s in smaller measure, but it’s like a seed planted that grows and grows and grows until it fills the life; fruit being borne by the Spirit in greater measure.
We pointed this out a few weeks ago in Colossians 1:15, we talked about the son as the image of the invisible God, and he is the perfect ECTYPE or exact representation of the father’s eternal archetype. Remember that, the father designated the son as the first born over all creation, first born over the church, and that makes the son then, take the place in creation and in the Church, of being the archetype. He is the pattern now for mankind to be made after his image. He’s the archetype of the Church and the people whom God is conforming to the image of Christ; ECKTYPEs, reproductions of him and that will come to its full perfection.
Two more terms in the Ordo of Salutis, which we’re going to find in verse 23. So we’ll save that for now; come back to it. But go back to Colossians 1:22 in your Bibles. I want you to see the implications of adoption in the positional and the practical aspects of sanctification. Paul says he has reconciled you in the body of his flesh; aorist tense, so accomplished fact. The body of his flesh refers to his physical human body. He’s just making that distinction.
The last time he used the word body, which was a metaphor for the church, now he’s talking about Christ specifically in his fleshly, human, physical body. It’s in the body of his flesh that he reconciled you through death. His death, a physical, actual death in order to present you holy and all the rest.
By the physical death of the human body of Jesus, God has reconciled us to himself, In one blow the due penalty of divine justice is paid in full, when Christ died on the cross; in an instant the son secured the sanctification of all God’s people throughout all the ages.
God removed our guilt, as we’ve said, not by ignoring it, but by paying the penalty required by divine justice in Christ. “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us,” 2 Corinthians 5:21, “so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Guilt is removed, penalty is paid, forgiveness granted, and God rewarded his son’s obedience. Giving his elect the gift of the covering of divine righteousness in Christ; takes all those forgiven, cleansed people, he covers them with a new robe, new clothes, pure, spotless white.
The sin is paid by Christ’s passive obedience. What he’s suffered his humiliation, his suffering, sealed by dying on the cross. He paid the ultimate price. That’s his passive obedience. But the righteousness awarded to us is because of his active obedience, that fact that he fulfilled the law of God in every single way in the thought, word, in deed; never committed a sin of omission or Commission, but he fully did what God required.
He never did what God forbade. That obedience and that righteousness is granted to us and we’re covered with it. Now as he is exalted into heaven, Christ is there to present us always before his father. Colossians 1:22 says, “holy, blameless, beyond reproach.” This is talking first about positional sanctification. This positional sanctification, positional holiness is granted to us by God in Christ because of his practical sanctification, because he was practically holy, we’re made positionally holy.
Look at the first two terms in Colossians 1:22, “holy and blameless.” Those are sacrificial terms. This is sacrificial, ritual, ceremonial language and the picture here is of the worshipper coming to the temple to offer God the animal that he had set apart from its birth. And in bringing his sacrifice to the temple, he needed to come and have it examined by the priest before he was allowed to offer it on the altar to God.
So by this first term, holy, hagios, the lamb is set apart by the worshipper, identified from birth as perfect. It’s a fitting picture of the moral and ethical perfection that God requires and that he seeks. By the second term, blameless, amomos. Literally, it refers to the absence of any defect in that sacrificial animal. That animal is, by all observation, spotless, faultless, unblemished, blameless. It doesn’t have any defect, nothing weird. It’s clean. It’s perfect.
Very important to pause and make a point. Speak this to our individualistic age. When I talk about our individualistic age, I’m talking about the individualistic impulses within each and every one of us. We are children of this culture. And so we have, we have to shed the sinful elements of this culture as we enter into the church, as we enter into a ,a culture that’s revealed to us from Scripture, we need to shed sinful elements of our own culture and embrace the culture of heaven. That’s a joy to do.
We need to be comfortable living our lives before one another and before God.” Travis Allen
But we really need to say this to an individualistic age which is suspicious of external scrutiny, doesn’t like anybody looking in on the life, uncomfortable allowing others to examine claims, profession. Personal judgement of the individual is not all that matters.
As a member of the community, of the people of God, we have to submit to the wider judgement of the community. And when we do that, it’s humble and it’s reasonable. The lamb for the Israelite, for the Jew, for the worshipper was set aside in private.
That setting aside of that lamb for sacrifice later on was an act of individual worship, private worship, but it’s brought into the public domain when he comes to offer it as a sacrifice because he can’t do private sacrifices in his own home. God says no, you bring all your sacrifices. This is not your individual altars. This isn’t on every high place and on their every green tree; you do it exactly as you want to. No, you bring that sacrifice that you’ve devoted privately, you bring it publicly and we’re going to do this together.
If you’re going to take part in the institution that God gave in the temple, well then you’re going to submit to the ordinances of the temple. Private worship is therefore made public as that worshipper brings the lamb that he set apart for the priests’ public examination, his scrutiny, his approval.
That priest examines the animal thoroughly, carefully, and then upon his approval, the worshipper is then allowed to go and partake at the services of the community and offers approved sacrifices publicly, holy and blameless to God, it’s been verified. Beloved, there are many professing Christians today that still need to learn this. And I think for us, when I call you beloved, I say, beloved we need to learn this.
We need to be comfortable living our lives before one another and before God. We need to subject our private views of worship to the institution of the church. Ordinances are not a private thing; Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, they’re public. The services of the church are not tailored to individual preferences, so that we have a service for every kind and flavor of people. Every preference, every kind of thing you like is done according to your individual preferences and desires.
No, when we come as individuals, we enter into a corporate environment, we enter into a community, and we submit to that community and its ordinances and its orders, as stipulated by the Word of God. We do that willingly because we’re God’s people. We trust God to be working in his people, through his people, with one another. We do that together.
The third term there, beyond reproach, Paul moves away from the moral sacrificial language that he used in the first two terms, and he’s here using legal language to speak of a judicial acquittal. The once guilty sinner stands before the court, irreproachable, charges are dropped. There’s no longer any cause for accusation, free of reproach, not even a shadow of doubt about our innocence before a holy God.
What a remarkable testimony being made about us and it’s before him, of all beings in the universe, before him, who is the all-seeing, all-knowing God, and of anyone, he knows who we’ve been. He knows what we’ve done, practically speaking. We’ve not been, practically speaking, holy, but unholy. Practically speaking, we’ve not been blameless, but blameworthy. We’re not irreproachable, but we’re guilty of sin. We know it.
And yet here is Christ, our atoning sacrifice, a holy lamb, unblemished and spotless, who is offered up as a sin offering to atone for our sins, and we’re forgiven and we’re clean and totally free, holy, blameless, beyond reproach. But notice in verse 22, Christ is not the one portrayed here being presented to the temple, is he? We are. Paul says in verse 22 that Christ comes before God to present you this way.
Christ, our great high priest, he’s holy, innocent, undefiled. Hebrews 7:26 says, He’s exalted before the heavens and He is the one who brings us to God as offerings. He’s not bringing guilt or sin offerings. That’s his role. That’s what he’s accomplished. He’s bringing us as peace offerings to God. He comes to give thanks to God with us in hand. What a beautiful picture.
Colossians 1:22, then speaks of this already accomplished work of Christ in his own perfect atonement, bringing his holy, blameless, irreproachable people to God, one by one through the ages, through the centuries, saying, here, I, I bring this before you, I bring this one before you, I bring her before you, I bring him before you, gives them to God to give thanks. He sets them apart, sanctifies them, pledges them to God so that they would become practically what they already are positionally. What a picture.
Paul calls upon the same concept, doesn’t he, in Romans 12:1, when he calls us to present our bodies as living sacrifices. Christ presents us as a living sacrifice there, as we see here, but he calls us to join in that, so that we willingly put ourselves on the altar, as it were, that we would be holy and pleasing to God, which is our reasonable and spiritual service. We obey him, we pursue holiness, we grow in sanctification because we’re filled with humble gratitude.
We want to do this and to encourage us along the way, we come to a final point in Colossians 1:23 and here’s what we’ll come back to the two final terms in the Ordo of Saludis. Third Point, number three: What you will be, what you will be. You can fill in steadfast saints, steadfast saints. Christ presents us before God, holy, blameless, beyond reproach.
And then verse 23, if indeed you continue in the faith, the word, continue, epimeno, it, remain, abide, present tense. If you continue, “if you are continuing in the faith firmly grounded and steadfast, not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which I, Paul was made a minister.”
Now two ways to take this, you can either take this conditional sentence as a warning or as an encouragement. Kind of depends on your orientation to it, doesn’t it? The thought, though, very clearly is, if you continue in the faith, then back to the beginning of verse 22, then he reconciled you. In other words, it’s not the profession of faith that counts, nor is it how you started in the faith that counts. It’s the possession of faith made manifest not necessarily at the outset or at the start of the race, but in how you end the race, persevering to the end.
Paul does, in Colossians, in the context here, he does add this condition as a warning, yes, but also as an encouragement. There were some in the Colossians church who needed to hear and heed the warning, as do, I think, many professing Christians today, since they are either not living as Christians or not practicing what they’re professing, or because they’re leaving.
Leaving the church, that’s what’s happening in Colossae under the influence of false teaching, some had stopped being content in Christ, and they sought something better, something newer, something more visible, more triumphant, more sophisticated, more real. And they needed this warning, as do many today who sit under the ministry of hirelings and pretenders and charlatans and follow influencers on the Internet.
Paul would be happy to say, Epaphras would be happy to report most of the Colossians were not in danger of departing. So this word in verse 23 says to them, yeah, maybe it’s a mild warning, grabs the attention, but really it’s an encouragement and propels them forward in their sanctification, so that in terms of 2 Peter 1:10, “they would make their calling and election sure.”
There’s no need to turn there, but you can just listen. Romans 8:30 says, and this is finishing the Ordo of Salutis, “whom he called he justified, and whom he justified, these he also glorified.” This is future to us and yet Paul writes about it 20 centuries ago. He writes about it with an aorist verb, as a completed fact.
We’ve talked about predestination and election, talked about effectual calling and justification, talked about adoption and sanctification. And now this is the final step in the Ordo of Salutis, glorification. And closely attendant to it, is the promise of preservation. Which brings us to the blessed doctrine of perseverance for the believing, for the faithful in Colossae, for the faithful today.
Man, this verse is such an encouragement because it’s telling us we’re going to make it. We’re steadfast saints. We’re propelled forward in our sanctification, making the most of our adoption, because we love the father. The father loves us, and we nestle into that love and learn to walk as he walks, to be like Christ, to live like he has lived. It’s Philippians 1:6, isn’t it? “He who began a good work in you will perfect it.” He will complete it. Texts like Colossians 1:23, tell us how that happens; faithful, humble, sincere believers hear and heed these warnings.
In terms of Hebrews 12, they strengthen weak hands and they strengthen feeble knees, and they make straight paths for their feet. They “lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles them, and they run with endurance, the race set before them, looking unto Jesus, the one who authored their faith and the one who perfects and completes their faith.” It’s by his work in us and by our working with him that Christ will bring his believing people to final glorification.
So those who need to be warned, take warning, heed this word from Paul; there is no reconciliation if there is no continuing in the faith. We must continue in believing, continue in the faith, and by God’s grace, all of his elect are going to do just that. They’re going to persevere to the very end. Take this as an encouragement, if that’s you.
Paul here in this verse is using building metaphors: Firmly grounded, steadfast. Those are, the first, firmly grounded, refers to a structure’s foundation. The term, the noun is themelios, a foundation. The second, steadfast, refers to the structure’s strength and stability and firmness. Can be hit by an earthquake, it’s not going anywhere, because it’s got a firmly grounded foundation and it’s steadfast in its stability and its firmness.
So continue in the foundation set by Christ, continuing in the teaching the doctrine of Christ, grow stronger, more stable in Christ and as you do, you grow firm, you grow established, your unwavering, that’s the picture here. And then, not move to, the verb is metakineo. You can hear that word kinetic. Kinetic having to do with movement, meta referring to change, so metakineo, changing, moving. There is to be no shifting for us, no changing, no moving away from the hope of the gospel that we heard.
There are some today who start out with hope in Christ and they have a simplicity of gratitude for forgiven sins. They’re joyful to have a clean conscience before God. They’re happy every day because they’re covered in his righteousness. They’ve been declared righteous by God. They’re justified. They’re reconciled with God. They know of their adoption into his family. They’re a son, they’re a daughter.
They receive this gift of this eternal, abundant life that starts for them now. They don’t have to wait to get it. Till then, they understand there’s an eternal kind of life growing within them, changing them, doing things, they’re thinking things they’ve never thought before, they’re breaking patterns they’ve never been able to break before.
Somewhere along the way, for some, they move away from this gospel clarity, from this joyful simplicity. Somewhere along the way, the goal posts moved. Somewhere along the way, the joy of walking in obedience and even the thought of pursuing obedience, somewhere along the way, the peace of holiness, the happy experience of evangelizing and teaching others the truth.
Somewhere along the way, someone convinced them that the hope really isn’t in forgiven sin. The hope isn’t really of the gospel. It’s not really about a clean conscience. It’s not really about eternal life. It’s not about piety, good works. It’s not about evangelizing and discipling.
It’s about attaining triumph and glory here on earth. Get involved politically, be an activist. On the right you can see this activism, muscling up against dark forces, father exalting patriarchy, religious child centers, sentimentalism. On the left you can see wokeism, social justice, environmentalism, this anti-law enforcement lunacy, protesting, burning things down. They call it religious.
You’ve heard about this PCUSA guy in Texas, totally says he’s a Christian, totally deceptive view of the Bible. Somewhere along the way, this message of simplicity in Christ and faith in him and happiness and a joy in forgiven sin, somewhere that got lost, that message has been shoved to the side, something else has entered in to take its place.
And Paul says, look, folks, Colossians, Christians, stay anchored in the hope of the gospel. Stay there. Go back to your foundation set in the hope of the gospel. Grow up stronger, more steadfast, firmer in the hope of the gospel. Don’t ever move away from it. Don’t go anywhere.
You say, you know, that could be me. I used to walk in joy. Something’s happened to dim that in my soul. Okay, so how do I do it? How do I get back? Thankfully, Paul gives three practical tips about maintaining and growing and returning even to this gospel hope in verse 23.
Notice he talks about there, number one, the gospel hope that you heard. Number two, the gospel hope that’s proclaimed in all creation under heaven and number three, the gospel hope of which Paul was made a minister. So we could boil those down to three words, personal, universal, and original. Personal, universal, and original.
So first examine your personal gospel hope. That is, go back and figure out what your personal hope is grounded in. What’s the basis of it? What is your hope have you doing now? What are you aiming at? What are you living for? Are you hoping what the Bible explicitly promises? Are you hoping what the work of Christ explicitly accomplished in what the Holy Spirit is working to apply to your life in holiness and righteous living? Or are you drifting from that explicit word of scripture to pursue what others have been suggesting to you?
Then second, take that personal gospel hope and compare and contrast it with the universal gospel hope. Again, it’s not just about you and your private religion, your private thoughts and your private devotion and religion and worship. They have to conform and comport to the universal church.
Ask yourself, how does my version of the gospel hope, play out in other parts of the world? Does it measure up to history, what’s been taught throughout time? Start with the geographical, social, cultural question and ask yourself this, is your gospel an Americanized gospel? Is it a hope that’s really specific to your own people and nation? That doesn’t play well in China or Russia or Africa.
Is your hope a catholic, small C, meaning universal? Is it a universal hope? Is it a gospel hope that is hopeful and freeing for every tribe and tongue and people and nation? If you ask those questions, examine the time that you live in and resist our modern tendency toward chronological snobbery, as if our time is the most important time and we ignore all other times, because we’ve reached the pinnacle of sophistication. It’s ridiculous.
History has so much to teach us about the repetition of really bad ideas. And you know who falls for it every time? The young, they are the prey for predators all over the Internet. Young people under 40 years of age, they tend to listen to some voice, follow some popular influencer who is really a grifter, just a pied piper.
And they listened to that and through a few podcasts. It’s amazing to see how they think they’ve got a line on the truth. They fail to see, whatever seems novel to you has been tried before. It’s a dead end, and it’ll create shipwreck in your faith. Listen, if you need help comparing your personal gospel hope to that universal gospel hope, universal in time and universal in place, ask a pastor or an elder for help. Ask a mature, seasoned Christian for help. Join the community of the saints and subject your private thinking to more mature, older, wiser people than you. Be humble enough to admit that you need that.
Third, take your personal gospel hope check it against the universal gospel hope, and go back to the original gospel hope in Scripture, because not everything you find in time and history is according to the original gospel hope in Scripture, and not everything you’re going to find in all the far reaches of the earth is the original gospel.
So you got to check everything against this Apostolic gospel and see if what you believe in and what you hope in and what Christians throughout time and history and place have hoped in. See if it’s the same thing that Paul taught, what Peter taught, what the New Testament teaches.
And if all three of those line up, your personal gospel hope is the same as the universal gospel hope and those line up with the original gospel hope taught by Christ, preached by the apostles. Pursue that hope. Pursue it zealously, vigorously, relentlessly, to the very end.
Beloved, there is no better Christ. There is no better hope. There’s no better gospel news than this: He rescued us from the authority of darkness. He transferred us to the kingdom of the son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Abide in that hope, beloved. This is the true grace of God, so stand firm in it. Let your heart be filled with joyful gratitude for God’s gift of reconciliation in Christ Jesus. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we are so grateful to you for your reconciling work and all that’s been kind of unpacked today. There is for every single term, there’s a sermon, there’s a course of lectures to learn more and more and go deeper and deeper. And we rejoice that whatever we can pick up now is beneficial to us. So as we pray, Father, that you would deploy your Spirit to every heart and help us to absorb and reflect and learn and grow and mature. And we trust that whatever we can’t pick up now, there will be for those who are in Christ by your grace, there will be a later. There will be an eternity of going deeper and going further in Christ.
You’re an infinite God with infinite treasure, and all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ, and they’re being made like him, being conformed to his image, being glorified without any sin, with no weakness, no blinding effect. We’ll rejoice to run in the path of your commands because you’ve set our heart free. Thank you, Father, for what you’ve done for us in Christ. And now as you come before your table, help us to reflect on these things and for some to reflect and confess, and others to reflect and rejoice. We want to come one and all in the name of Christ and remember what he’s done by his body and his blood. It’s in his name we pray. Amen.