Many so-called Christians out there think that you and I need more. You and I are in some way spiritually deficient. A second class Christian, at best, or not a true believer at all, at worst. It may be the particular form of baptism that you have or haven't had. So if you haven’t been fully immersed in a water baptism as an adult, you aren’t saved. You need to be fully immersed to be saved. There are churches around who say such things.
Or you have to be baptized or christened in our church to be saved. If you were christened elsewhere, it’s a bit dodgy, but if it is in our church, the one true church, you are OK, and you will be saved, all other things being equal.
Or some point to a particular religious experience. Unless you speak in tongues, which they define as a miraculously-given angelic language, you don’t have the Holy Spirit and you aren’t saved. Or unless God talks to you directly, you are a second rate Christian at best. Unless you can feel the presence of God, there is something wrong with your faith. You need some second experience. Or it might be seeing angels. Unless you have seen angels and spirits, you are not really a spiritual person.
Or others, that unless you do particular works, you can’t be saved. It might be door knocking. Unless you go door knocking, you aren’t saved. Or it might be reading your bible. Unless you read your bible this particular way, I’m a bit worried about you. Or it might be your politics. Unless you support this left wing social justice program, or this right wing political campaign, how can you be a real Christian?
Or it may be fasting or it may be feasting. If you eat at this time, in this season, you can’t really be religious, or Christian. After all, really religious people fast, showing they are serious about God. Unless you are a teetotaler, you can’t be a Christian. If you touch the demon drink, you are not saved. Or unless you feast at this type of year, and celebrate this religious festival, you aren’t really a Christian. Unless you celebrate Christmas or Easter, you can’t be a Christian.
Or it might be being married or not being married. It might involve looking down on marriage, that marriage is something less than a holy estate, gifted to humanity in its innocence. Or it might be looking down on singleness, convinced that singleness means that there is something wrong with you, rather than, as Paul says, singleness enables those so gifted to serve the Lord Jesus with an undivided body and mind.
Or maybe its some sort of deep and secret knowledge that you don’t have. Maybe there are some secrets that the church is not telling you. Maybe the church, too, is some secret society, where you only find out the true stuff as you move up the hierarchy. Maybe true things are only available to those special people, the people in the know.
The people who know this special language – Greek or Hebrew or Latin. They have studied a lot – with their degrees and their PhDs. Or these people who have been ordained. They’ve been magicked. The grand poo-bahs have placed their hands on them. They are OK now. They are special and holy. We need to attach ourselves to them, so that they can get us to heaven, with everything that they know, all their knowledge.
Paul is writing to the Colossians, a simple group of Christians in an insignificant rural town in modern day Turkey. They are so insignificant that Paul has never met them, so remote are they. They are so important that Paul writes a letter to them, so precious are they.
It seems that there is some sort of false teaching that is a potential danger to the Colossian Christians. People debate about what it might have been. We can only work it out from inference.
False teachers seem to be saying that the Colossians haven’t got the full gospel, the whole truth.
Sure, Paul have given you the truth. But has he given you the whole truth? Has he kept back some things from you? There’s something missing in your Christian lives, isn’t there?
And so some self-proclaimed super-spiritual people are putting at risk the Colossians' faith. Your gospel needs to be plumped up a bit, puffed and fluffed, made a bit fuller. You don’t have the whole message, the fullness of everything God wants you to have.
And the risk is, the Colossians start doubting their salvation in Christ. Has all the mystery been revealed? Maybe we’ve missed out on something? Paul says ‘circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing’. Is that right? Does circumcision matter, after all? Are we missing out on something after all? Boy, that bloke over there says he’s seen an angel! I haven’t seen any angels. God speaks to him directly, but not to me. Maybe there is something wrong with me? Hey, look at them observing these special feast days and fast days! That looks so impressive and so religious. They fast on this day, feast on that day. I don’t do that. Maybe something is wrong with me? Maybe I didn’t start off the Christian life right? Maybe my baptism wasn’t done right? Maybe I need circumcision? Maybe this new group of teachers will do a better job than Paul and Epaphras? And look at all this new philosophy and knowledge! I’m just a simple Christian. I don’t have all that knowledge, all that wisdom. They’ve got all this wisdom and learning and experience. I don’t have that.
And so, it seems, the Colossians faith in the sufficiency of Christ is at risk.
But all of these doubts and concerns are a distraction from Christianity. Christianity is Christ. And Christ is Enough. And if you have received Jesus Christ, you have received everything you need.
No, says Paul. My job was to share the full message with you. And I gave you the full message. And when you accepted the full message you received the full Christ.
Once this message was a mystery, a secret – but no longer. The shadowy outline of the Old Testament has now taken body in Christ. From Easter AD 33, a new reality has broken into our world: the Resurrected Christ, God in the Flesh. And Paul has revealed and made known the fullness of the message in Asia Minor. See chapter 1 verse 25. Paul says of himself in verse 25:
I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness (NIV)
Paul didn’t skimp on the message. He fully delivered and proclaimed the fullness of the message. And from that date, our world would never be the same. And here we sit, on the edge of our great metropolis of Sydney, and the primary documents that bear witness to this message lie open on our laps.
And what is this full gospel message, this mystery now revealed? Paul puts it at it’s most basic in chapter 2 verses 2 and 3:
in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (NIV)
Christ is the mystery of God now revealed. Jesus of Nazareth, who lived died and rose again, is the mystery of God. The mystery of God is a person, that person is Jesus Christ, and Christ has now been revealed to you through the gospel about Christ. Christ comes to you clothed in his gospel. And if you have the gospel of Christ, the mystery revealed, you have Christ Himself.
And if you have Christ, you don’t need anything else. Christ is a storehouse, a safety deposit box, a treasury, of all wisdom and knowledge. Chapter 2 verse 3 again:
in whom [that is, in Christ] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Christ is all-sufficient. There’s nothing outside of Christ that you need. If anything is outside of Christ, or apart from Christ, you don’t need it. Indeed, things outside of Christ are positively harmful. If it doesn’t depend on Christ, it is dangerous, it is hollow, it is deceptive. It is the philosophy of this world. It is demonic and Satanic. I’ll say it again, if it doesn’t depend on Christ and the riches in him, it is demonic and satanic in origin.
Oh, but it looks so good and religious. Look at its harsh treatment of the body. Look at all of its rules and regulations. Look at the food laws, and its religiosity. Look at its claims to spiritual experience.
If it does not start and end in Christ, it might look good and wise and religious and holy, but it is evil and of the devil.
If you’ve got Christ, you don’t need anything else or anybody else. If you have Christ, you are rich, and have everything you need. And you my friends, are recipients of the glorious riches in Christ, because you have received the message of the gospel of Christ.
But not only is there nothing outside of Christ that you need. The all-sufficient Christ is in you, says Paul to the Colossians. Christ dwells in the hearts of his people through faith. Christ dwells in the hearts of his people through the Spirit of Christ, who indwells every believer. The person of the Holy Spirit brings the Person of Christ, the Son of God, God the Son, to each believer. So we read in Colossians chapter 1 verse 27:
To them [the saints, that’s you, if you believe in Christ] God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (NIV)
All the riches of wisdom are hidden in Christ. And Christ is in you. Christ dwells in your hearts through faith. Christ lives in you. You have the mind of Christ. You have the Spirit of Christ. He is there with you and in you, and will be with you till the end of the age. Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ. You have everything you need. Because there’s nothing outside of Christ that you need. And Christ, who is everything you need, is in you.
And the indwelling Christ is the deposit guaranteeing your inheritance. The Spirit of Christ, who brings Christ to us to dwell within us, brings the hope of glory. We look ahead and see that Christ has gone ahead of us to prepare a place for us. My Fathers house has many rooms, said Jesus, and I am going there to prepare a place for you. We believe and trust that death is not the end, but that we will go to be with Christ, which is better by far.
So, can you see how, if you know and understand you have Christ, you need not desperately chase after other things, as if the answer is not Jesus Christ. No matter what the question is, the answer is Christ. That is why we are so desperate to name Jesus Christ.
That is why I wish to name the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and his death and resurrection. That is why I am upset when so-called Christian clerics are content to drop the name of Jesus Christ from their message. They only do it because they don’t agree with Jesus that ‘no one comes to the Father except through him’. They do it because they are afraid of people, and believe humans can work their way to heaven. They have forgotten that Jesus’ name is the only name under heaven given to humans by which we must be saved. They have forgotten that ‘no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ’. And no matter how many questions humans have, the answer is Christ. We have the answer, and it is Christ.
The name of Christ isn’t magic. It’s not a mantra, a talisman, that wards of evil, like a spell. The name of Jesus Christ points to a unique and divine person on whom we desperately call, and who graciously and mercifully condescends to live in us. His is the only name that can save us because he, the Lord Jesus Christ, Second Person of the Trinity, was the only person able and willing to save us.
And if that isn’t clear enough, to crush into dust the idea that you are missing out on anything, Paul makes sure we know the fullness of God is in Christ, and that we have been given that fullness in our union with Christ. Colossians chapter 2 verses 9 to 10
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. (NIV)
Jesus Christ is God. Father and Son share the same nature and essence. The persons of the Father and the Son are of one being, one nature, one essence, one substance, consubstantial, homoousios, co-equal and co-eternal as touching their essence, together with the Holy Spirit. The essence of the Father is identical to the essence of the Son, and also the Spirit. So we are told here that the fullness of the essence of the Godhead dwells in the person of Christ, who became incarnate and took a human body, fully man like us. Christ is equal to the Father as touching his Godhead, though inferior to the Father as touching his humanity.
To put it simply, Jesus is Fully God. And Jesus lives in you. So God lives in you. And you cannot be indwelt by anyone Holier, more Special, more wise, more glorious, than God himself.
Seen an Angel! Woopdidoo, I’ve got something better because God lives in me. Spirits or Demons! Pah! You’ve got better than any angel or spirit. You’ve got God himself in you, and with you, and by your side. Because you have Jesus Christ. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. You cannot possibly wish for any more ‘full’ and ‘abundant’ experience of God than that, this side of glory.
Christ indwelling you is ‘the Hope of Glory’. The indwelling Christ by the Holy Spirit is the deposit guaranteeing the inheritance of those who are Christ’s possession. You have already had a taste of the glory that lies ahead.
But Paul wants us to remember what Christ has done for us. Christ suffered much trouble, though all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form.
In verse 11 and 12, we are given two images of what has happened to us because we are united with Christ through faith.
In verse 11, we were circumcised. That is, when Jesus Christ was hung up on the cross, he was stripped naked and his body was exposed to be gazed upon and shamed. We know that. He probably was bereft of even the loincloth that religious art respects him with. The embodied Christ’s was publicly exposed.
But something else happened to Christ there. Christ died. And death does something else to us humans. Death denudes us and strips us of our bodies.
We know that there is an ‘us’ – call it our soul or our spirit – that our bodies carry around for us. Since our creation and formation in our mother’s wombs, and from now on, we have each of us an everlasting soul. Here I am using the word ‘soul’ and the word ‘spirit’ interchangeably (cf 1 Corinthians 2:11). We are both body, and soul or, to use another word for soul, spirit.
When Jesus Christ was killed, His body of flesh, that is, his physically body, was stripped off in death (Colossians 2:11).[1] His body was violently cut and then peeled off his spirit when he was crucified. Jesus Christ’s death was a kind of a circumcision. Christ’s spirit or soul was denuded and stripped of his fleshly body when he commended his own spirit into the hands of God his Father.
And in verse 12, an allusion is made to the baptism Christ endured. Jesus twice called his death a baptism. He was plunged into death as a person was plunged into water and drowned in it. Jesus said, ‘I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed’ (Luke 12:50; Mark 10:38-39). The sign of Jonah was that Jesus like Jonah was plunged into water as a baptism. And Jesus rose up from death, just as a person rises up from waters in the sacrament of baptism. Christ came up from death resurrected, alive, with a new resurrection body. And in verse 12, because we were united with him in his baptism of death, we are also raised with him by faith. By trusting Jesus Christ, God considers us to have been raised with Christ.
And the effect of Christ’s circumcision and baptism for us is given in verses 13 to 14:
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 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. (NIV)
We all are sinners. And this sin has created a debt. We are conscious we have an IOU with God, written in our own handwriting. It is a debt we cannot repay. We know deep down we have this debt to God.
And the law condemns us. We look at the 10 commandments, God’s good and holy law, and it nails us time and time again. Do not covet, but we covet. Honour your mother and father. But we don’t. Love me with all your heart. But my heart is so cold. Love your neighbor as yourself. The law tells us we fail.
So God took the written code, with its regulations, our hand written acknowledgement of debt together with the legal decrees that was against us and that stood opposed to us, and he nailed it to the cross. Your sins have been nailed twice. First, by the law, which nails you and me. And second, by God on the cross, which nails our sins to the cross. He who knew no sin became sin for us. And he was nailed to the cross.
He has even removed this handwritten acknowledgement of debt from our midst, by nailing it to the cross. Our IOU to God is no longer there. It has been removed from us. God has forgiven us our great debt which we owe him. No longer is our acknowledgement of guilt or the condemnation by the law with us. It has been whipped away, removed from our sight, removed from God’s sight. Our sins have been plunged into the depths of the sea, hidden behind God’s back, removed as far from us as the east is from the west.
And Christ did something else. Christ was stripped naked and exposed in death. He was even stripped of his body in death. But his death did something to those bad angels and demons and the dark realm of Satan. Christ’s death stripped naked the rulers and dominions Verse 15:
15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (NIV)
When a victorious Roman General defeated his enemies, he led a procession in his chariot to the very heart of Rome. It was like a great ticker tape parade. And behind his chariot were dragged his enemy generals, naked, beaten, bleeding. All their weapons stripped from them. Their clothes rent and torn. They were dragged to the very centre of Rome, and in front of everyone killed and humiliated. And that is what God has done to Satan and his angels. God boldly exposed them in public by leading them in triumphal procession, in Christ. The irony is, when Christ was stripped naked, he was stripping naked and disarming the rulers and authorities that the Colossians were being tempted to put so much hope in.
Perhaps almost all of you here have been Christians a long time, although it may be that some of you are not believers in Jesus Christ at all. Well, Colossians is still the letter for you, whether you have been a believer in Jesus Christ for many years, or not at all. Come with me to what is probably the key two verses of the letter, Colossians chapter 2 verses 6 and 7:
6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (NIV)
Verse 6 speaks of a past experience. About 10 years before, Epaphras returned from Ephesus with a message. He spoke of a man, Jesus that he had learnt about in the Lecture Hall of Tyranus in the capital city of their province.
And most of you, some time in the past, received Jesus. Jesus was a Jewish man, but not just a Jewish man. His title is ‘Christ’. Christ is not a surname, like first name ‘Matthew’, last name ‘Olliffe’. The Hebrew word is ‘Messiah’, the Greek word is ‘Christ’. ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’ is the highest exalted title from the Jewish Scripture given to any man, meaning ‘Anointed’.
And this Jesus is also Lord. The word connotes for the Greek Old Testament reader Yahweh, the God of Israel. Again, it is a way of saying Jesus is God. All the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form in Christ. He is the head of every authority and power, whether on earth or in heaven, because he made it and rules over it and will inherit it.
By receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ, both you and the Colossians received Christ. Because Christ came to you clothed in his gospel. And the idea is, not to graduate from the gospel of Christ, move away from the gospel of Christ, get bored with the gospel of Christ, look for something new and different from the gospel of Christ.
What we must do is four things, four metaphors are used to describe what to do now. Just like we received Jesus as Lord and Christ in the past, we must now work on these four things.
The first idea is to be rooted, to send roots down buttressing upon the gospel, just as a great tree develops thicker and thicker supports to hold its weight, growing thick at the bottom, in our foundation on the gospel.
The second idea is to be built up in him, that is, to build upon this foundation, raising and setting up structures upon the gospel, just as builders construct their buildings on deeply laid footings. For Christ is the foundation of the building. Build up the building on Christ the foundation.
The third idea is to be strengthened in the faith as you were taught, that is, reinforced in the gospel by continued trust, just as engineers reinforce existing buildings whenever required. They do it will old buildings. They drill holes into existing buildings and drop in their steel and concrete reinforcements.
And the fourth idea is to overflow with thankfulness. To well up, as a full cup of beer or soft drink does, so that there is that healthy overflow down the sides. To well over and spill over with thankfulness, as Archimedes full bath did. Eureka, I have found it. For God hasn’t skimped in giving us the gospel. We have been given fullness in Christ, in whom all the fullness of the deity dwells. And because Christ is in us, our hope of glory overflows, and so too does our thankfulness.
May it be. May we experience it, because it is true of us.
[1] One can take the genitive in the prepositional phrase‘ in the circumcision of Christ’ (ἐν τῇ περιτομῇ τοῦ Χριστοῦ) as either the circumcision performed by Christ (subjective genitive, Christ circumcises us) or the circumcision performed on Christ (objective genitive, God circumcised Christ). Here I prefer the objective genitive, and take it not as a reference to Christ’s actual circumcision on the eighth day, but as a metaphorical reference to his death. Note use of ἀχειροποίητον (a house not made by hands) in 2 Corinthians 5:1 and the clothing imagery ‘longing to be clothed’ (ἐπενδύσασθαι ἐπιποθοῦντες: 2 Corinthians 5:2, that is longing to have clothes put on over us) and ‘assuming, that is, that when we are also clothed, we will not find ourselves naked (εἴ γε καὶἐνδυσάμενοι οὐ γυμνοὶ εὑρεθησόμεθα). For the textual issues, see Harris, 2 Corinthians: NIGTC, 368. Thus, Dunn says, ‘More likely the phrase in an adaptation of the description of physical circumcision – a stripping off of the flesh of the foreskin – applied to Jesus’ death in deliberate echo of 1:22: in this case the flesh which was stripped away was the whole physical/fleshly body’: Dunn, Colossians: NIGTC, 157-8. Contra Moo, Colossians: Pillar, 199-200.