Sermons

Preeminence of Christ (pt 2): Our Sufficient Savior

July 21, 2019 Speaker: Scott Burdett Series: Colossians

Topic: Preeminence of Christ, Deity of Christ Passage: Colossians 1:21–23

Preeminence of Christ (part 2): Our Sufficient Savior

Sermon Series – Colossians:  The Supremacy of Christ                               Colossians 1:21-23

 

[Prayer]

 

&  Colossians 1:19-23 [added previous verses for context]

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. [1]

 

 

Introduction-

 

Last week we started off looking at the Preeminence of Christ, or His Superiority over all things.  We saw this in His Lordship over all of creation, and His Lordship over the Church.  This week we will continue with this theme as we look at Christ’s Superiority as the Sufficient Savior.

 

It is not uncommon to find Paul making comparisons from the life one had as an unbeliever to a life now possessed as a believer (Once/Now comparisons).  We see it in this morning’s passage and we see it in other passages:

 

& Colossians 3:7-8 – “ In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.[2]

 

& Ephesians 2:11-13 -  “ Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.[3]

 

Proposition [main idea/goal] – Paul is contrasting a life that once was lived to a life now enjoy in Christ with encouragement to continue forward in the hope of the gospel.

 

 

[Transition: Our time this morning, as we talk about Our Sufficient Savior, will be broken down into three sections – What We Once Were; Where We Now Stand; and, How We Must Go.  I also must add that this outline is not original as I borrowed it from Dick Lucas, one of several commentators that I referenced for preparation for this morning’s sermon.]

 

[Back to Colossians 1:21]

 

Our Sufficient Savior

  1. What We Once Were (v. 21)

&And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds”[4]

 

  1. Once were alienated. Throughout Paul’s, we see alienation as a reference to unbelievers.  That fact is that non-Christians are detached from God. Paul describes this quite clearly in the passage we just read (Eph 2: 11-13) that unbelievers are “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  Paul goes on in Ephesians 4 (4:18) to describe unbelievers as “darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”  So Paul is making it clear to the Colossians, in your former life outside of Christ, you were alienated, estranged from God.  You were strangers to God.

 

There are three ways/reason an unbeliever is alienated from God:  he is not part of the commonwealth of Israel (Eph 4); estranged from God Himself; and lastly, simple separated from the life of God.

 

 

[Transition:  We were once alienated.]

  1. Once were hostile.

The Colossians, before Christ, were hostile towards Him.  Or to say it another way, we hated God.  James states the obvious that friendship with world is enmity with God.  Not that unbelievers are just hostile toward God, but they are hostile in mind, meaning their very understanding of God, they show enmity toward God.

 

D.J. Moo: “Enmity is the natural contrast to reconciliation (cf. Rom. 5:10), the condition that makes reconciliation necessary. The Scriptures present human beings in their natural state as hostile to God because of their involvement in Adam’s primal sin. As Paul puts it in Romans 1:21, “their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

                       

Hostility toward God begins in one’s understanding, in one’s thinking.  And because of one’s hostility in mind, it leads to evil conduct.

 

  1. Once doing evil deeds

Evil deeds are active evidence of one’s hostility toward God

 

Dick Lucas: “We deceive ourselves if we imagine that human apathy is the problem, and not, deep down, an enmity which resists the claims of God. Fallen man is not therefore ‘good at heart’, if Jesus is to be believed.2 ‘Evil deeds’ are the inevitable result of an evil heart, and persist in every human culture and reappear in every new generation, presenting man in society with his most intractable problems.

Such is the stark and grim description Paul gives of what the Colossians once were, and there is no reason to think that they would have dissented from the verdict, any more than an enlightened Christian would wish to disagree today.”[5]

 

 

 

So, Paul is reminding the Colossians this is who you were, and for every believer in this room, this serves as a reminder:

  • You were alienated, estranged, detached from God. You had no connection to Him that would result to eternal life with Him;
  • Not only were you separated from God, you hated Him in your thinking, which in turn, resulted in evil behavior that did not please God.

 

 

  1. Where We Now Stand (v. 22)

 

&  (vv. 19, 20) - For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. [6]

 

& (v. 22)  “he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.”

 

Being reconciled, or reconciliation, gives the idea to change or exchange something.  Example:  to change from enmity to friendship is to have reconciliation.

 

In verse 22, Paul uses a different variation of the word “reconciled”.  It is a stronger form.  Paul is emphasizing a complete reconciliation, ‘to change from one condition to another,” so as to remove all enmity and leave no impediment to unity and peace’[7]

 

 

Reconciled

  1. Reconciliation is a work of God.

In verse 21, Paul describes man’s moral and spiritual state that there is no hope of peace unless God assumes the role of peace make.  In verses 20 and 22, order for that to happen, we see that God must take on human flesh to bring peace to mankind through death on a cross.  It is only “through Christ “ a complete reconciliation can take place.

 

  1. Reconciliation is an accomplished work.

Reconciliation is a done deal.  Peace has already been made through the death of Christ on the Cross.  Reconciliation with God does not wait on human action, but by human acceptance.  Remember, God does not need to be reconciled with us, it is we who needs to be reconciled with God.  Again, look at vv. 19, 20:

 

“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.: [8]

 

                           [Reconciliation is an accomplished work of God]

 

  1. Reconciliation was achieved at the cross.

“The blood of his cross” in verse 20 simply means Christ’s sacrificial death.  This is the heart of the Christian gospel.  The heart of this message is the preaching of Christ and Him crucified.” To alter this message is rob the gospel of its power.  Without this power, there is no hope for any human.

Remember, one of the reasons Paul is writing to the Colossian Church is because there is pagan thought that is creeping into the teaching of the church.  These teachings diminish Christ, not only in humanity, but also deity.

 

  1. Reconciliation takes in all things. (touched on this last week.)

& v. 19, 20 - For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. [9]

 

The span of this reconciliation is universal.  It includes all of God’s creation that will share in the peace with God.

 

 

And what are the results or the benefits of reconciliation toward us?

 

 

Results:

 

  1. We are holy

This is a fundamental of our faith.  This has moral and spiritual significance.  We are separated from sin (no longer under Satan’s authority) and consecrated to God. We are declared Holy through reconciliation to God.  We have been set aside, sanctified and made holy is the eyes of God.  And because of this spiritual reality, we are to continue to live a life that is holy, acceptable and pleasing to God.

 

In verse 19, we were once alienated, separated from God.  Now because of reconciliation to God, were are now united back to God and declared righteous and holy.

 

 

  1. We are blameless

Simply, we are faultless.  Because of the peace brought on by the cross, God no longer sees our faults, ours sins.  We are free from any guilt brought on in our former life.

 

  1. We are above reproach (beyond reproach)

This is can be viewed as an extension from the previous point.  To be “above reproach”, anything from the old life cannot be called into account.  We are no longer accountable from the sins of our past life.  We are faultless. It implies not merely acquittal, but the absence of even a charge or accusation against a person.

 

 

We could go on to the next point, but we would be missing two very important words.

 

 

 


&  v. 22 - “he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.”

 

 

In Him… Christ.  Reconciliation only takes place because of the sacrifice and death of Christ.  It is only through the lens through the atonement that God now sees us.  Because of reconciliation, God looks at us and sees Christ.

 

John MacArthur:  God sees us now as we will be in heaven when we are glorified. He views us clothed with the very righteousness of Jesus Christ. The process of spiritual growth involves becoming in practice what we are in reality before God. We “have put on the new self” and that new self “is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him” (Col. 3:10). The Christian life involves “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord [which covers us before God, and] being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).[10]

 

 

[Transition:  What We Once Were; Where We Now Stand; and, How We Must Go.]

 

 

  1. How We Must Go (v. 23)

&  “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.”

 

Continue In the Faith

By being in the faith, you have assurance that what God has said regarding the Gospel will take place.  We are to have confident expectation that those things will happen.

 

 

To continue in the faith is to be content with the gospel that first saved and delivered us from spiritual death and alienation with God, and brought us back to live in his presence, at peace with him. It is to base our lives and our teaching upon the doctrines of grace. It is for those whose confidence that they are reconciled is in Christ’s work.  It is to be unmoved and immoveable in the face of strong winds of new doctrine, not just when people would deny the gospel but when, more subtly, they would improve upon it.[11]

 

[Continue in the faith means to be..]

 

  1. Stable – Those who are stable are established or well-founded in the truth. To move from the gospel is to move from the foundations on which Christ has built his church, and therefore to lose Christian ‘stability’.

 

  1. Steadfast – If we were to literally translate the Greek word for “steadfast” we would get “seated”. Paul is saying to take a seat, remain firmly seated in the confidence of the Gospel

 

 

  1. Not to Shift - A unique New Testament word, it literally means that they are not to be dissuaded from the hope of the gospel. This is extremely significant language. The chief blessing of the gospel is the hope it contains for the future. Meanwhile, in the present, the church lives by faith. Now we have a ‘taste’ of ‘the powers of the world to come’.7 It may be that the new teachers urged the believers not to be content with this ‘taste’, but to claim from God the full heavenly feast. But this, for Paul, is to ‘shift from the hope’. It is to refuse to walk by faith. It is to bring Christ down to earth. It is to give oneself to ‘another’ gospel.

 

 

And it is upon this Gospel that Paul’s ministry is established which we will look in two weeks.

 

[Transition/Closing:  Over the past two weeks, we have looked at the Preeminence of Christ, His superiority and greatness over all things.  Last week, we saw that Christ is the Supreme Lord over all of creation (vv.15-17) and Lord over the Church (vv. 18-20), and this morning, Christ is our Sufficient Savior, the heart and hope of the gospel.

 

Chances are there is someone who does not know Christ as the Sufficient Savior.  Perhaps you have placed your trust and belief in some other thing.  If you have questions about what was taught this morning, come on up after we dismiss and someone would be glad to talk to you.

 

Christians, Grace Church, I think we need to rediscover our purpose to praise, to sing, to express our worship to God.  This morning’s text is an excellent guide in accomplishing this:

 

  • You were once alienated, separated from God with no hope and in complete despair because of your sin. Now you are holy and consecrated to God;
  • You were once hostile to God. You hated Him.  Your thinking showed enmity towards God.  Because of God’s reconciliation towards us, you are now blameless and faultless before His throne;
  • You once did evil deeds because your heart was filled with evil, but now, you are above reproach and any actuation from the Evil One has no merit in the sight of God.

 

There is a lot there to be thankful.]

 

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 1:19–23). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 3:7–8). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Eph 2:11–13). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 1:21). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[5] Lucas, R. C. (1980). Fullness & freedom: the message of Colossians & Philemon (p. 61). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 1:19–20). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[7] Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Vol. 2, p. 514). Nashville, TN: T. Nelson.

 

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 1:19–20). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 1:19–20). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[10] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1992). Colossians (p. 65). Chicago: Moody Press.

[11] Lucas, R. C. (1980). Fullness & freedom: the message of Colossians & Philemon (pp. 62–63). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

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