Nailed to the Cross (Col. 2:13-15)

This sermon was preached on 23/1/2011

It seems that the Christians in Colosse were drifting away from a position in which their focus was on the person and work of Jesus. The particular attraction that diverted them is not that important for us (if it was crucial for us to know what the alternative interests were, Paul would have told us). Instead what is important is Paul’s response to their departure, and his response is given in great detail in this letter. The reason why it is vital is because Christians must always focus on the person and work of Jesus and not allow themselves to accommodate, even in a little way, different ideas about how to live the spiritual life.

Of course, focussing on Jesus is a wide subject. In a sense, it is like telling a wealthy person to view all his territory and assets. Sometimes such a person can view his possessions from a high vantage point, another time he can view them from a distance and take a lot of them into sight, and at another time he can move close up to a section of his possessions and view it in more details. The person and work of Jesus can be viewed in general or it can be viewed in detail. In Colossians, Paul has mentioned many details about Jesus, expecting his readers to view these features and realise afresh how great Jesus is, and that there is no need for adding other ideas or practices into a healthy Christian spirituality. The Christian life is like a wheel: Christ is the hub, the spokes are all features of Christ coming from him to the wheel, and the wheel is the Christian wherever he is. In every situation, there is a spoke (an aspect of Christ) or spokes providing the believer with spiritual blessings through contact with Jesus.

In the verses we are considering, Paul calls attention to three matters. First, he reminds the Colossians of what life was like apart from Christ; second, he reminds them of what Jesus did for them on the cross; and third, he points out the effects of Jesus’ work on opposing spiritual powers (v. 15).

1. Life apart from Christ

Paul mentions three features of the Colossians before they were converted. They were Gentiles, they were dead in their trespasses, and they were bankrupt.

His description of them as Gentiles is seen in the phrase ‘the uncircumcision of your flesh’. A religious ritual is a symbol of an inner reality, although in itself the ritual does not give inner reality. Still, in the case of the Colossians, the absence of the ritual was a powerful statement that they did not belong to God’s special people, Israel. The Colossians had not experienced national deliverances such as Israel had enjoyed, they did not know how to worship the true God, and they did not have any prophecies about a coming Deliverer. Instead they were in spiritual darkness, unable to find God and discover a remedy for their situations, lost and detached from their Creator.

In addition, the Colossians ‘were dead in their trespasses’. A trespass is a deliberate violation of a law. It is an activity, it is an expression of animosity, and it indicates the trespasser prefers to live in a different atmosphere from the lawgiver. Since the Colossians were not Israelites and therefore had not received the ten commandments, how can they be described as breakers of God’s law? The answer to this question is that God’s law is written on their hearts, and that they knew that many of their actions were expressions of rebellion against a higher Authority.

While they were aware of their wrongdoing, they were not appalled by it. Instead they delighted in it, and had no wish to regulate their lives by the divinely-given conscience in their hearts. Instead they freely and gladly expressed their desire to live sinful lives. Even their pre-conversion religious behaviour was an expression of defiance against the true God.

This activity and animosity revealed the spiritual atmosphere in which they lived. Paul’s calls it ‘death’. By this he means an environment marked by death. It commenced with death, it expressed death, and it led to death. He is not speaking about physical death, but spiritual death. This environment began when Adam first sinned against God, and the atmosphere of spiritual death is the setting in which people have lived since then. The breathe it in and express themselves through the energy it gives, but it is the demonstration of spiritual death. And it is the way to greater death, eternal separation from God.

The third feature of the Colossians pre-conversion state was spiritual bankruptcy, the ‘record of debt that was against them with its legal demands’. A person can be in debt for a number of reasons. One business may collapse because people have not paid their bills; a person may become penniless because of war or disaster; or a person may become a debtor because of inability to pay a penalty imposed for wrong behaviour. The debt Paul has in mind is the last option. The Colossians had disobeyed God and his penalty was eternal punishment, a penalty which they could not pay. They were in danger of being eternal bankrupts.

Paul reminds the Colossians of what their spiritual state had been before the met Jesus. They had been distant from God, they had been disobedient to God, and they were in debt to God. The Colossians needed help, and the help came only through Jesus. And Paul tells them how he did it. And we must remember that we were like the Colossians. We were Gentiles, we were deliberately disobedient to God’s requirements, and we were bankrupt before the court of heaven. The dilemma of the Colossians and our dilemma is the same.

2. Rescued by Jesus

Paul mentions God’s antidote to their three problems (and not just the problems of the Colossians because he changes the pronouns from ‘you’ to ‘us’ and ‘our’). Their spiritual death and separation is remedied by ‘made alive together with Christ’, their disobedience is remedied by God’s forgiveness, and their debt is met by God cancelling it by nailing it to the cross of Jesus. We will look at them in the reverse order to that of Paul’s order because we experience them in that reverse way.

First, the debt of the Colossians (and ours) is nailed to the cross of Jesus. It was customary when a criminal was crucified to inform persons of his crime by nailing a board stating his misdemeanour above his head. This happened to Jesus literally when Pilate ordered that the statement ‘This is Jesus, the king of the Jews’ should be attached to his cross. Paul takes that literal nailing and uses it as a picture of what God did at the cross. We are to imagine God nailing a list of our sins above the head of Jesus, a statement that reveals he was dying in order to pay the penalty we could not pay. Since Jesus has paid the penalty, all those who trust in him are no longer bankrupt and can never become spiritual bankrupts again. But we only remember this reality by focusing on Jesus. If we take our eyes off him, we will forget what he has done for us.

Second, because Jesus paid the penalty of their sins, God forgave the sins of each of the Colossians when they repented of their sins and trusted in Jesus. Paul stresses that God forgave all their trespasses, not only the sins of the past life, but also the sins they would commit in the future. The payment of Jesus was sufficient to cover all their sins from God’s sight and therefore God gladly forgave them. To take their eyes of Jesus would be an expression of ingratitude as well as a means of losing their assurance of pardon. Yet that is what some of the Colossians were thinking of doing. And we can be distracted from Jesus as well. So we should always remember that forgiveness comes only through what he suffered on the cross.

Third, having forgiven the Colossians, God then united them to Jesus. Union with Christ is a massive subject and we have to break it up into individual parts in order to grasp it. What Paul has in mind here is practical (or actual) union with Jesus. Other aspects include our eternal union in election or our redemptive union when he suffered on the cross, but we were not actually involved in those real aspects of union with Jesus. But when we believe through the regenerating power of the Spirit, we are united to Jesus practically for ever. We are no longer separated from God. But we have to keep focussed on Christ in order to understand the fullness of blessings that he has for us.

What a marvellous trio of spiritual benefits! Yet the fact that the Colossians were in danger of turning away from Jesus should lead us to pray that the Lord would enable us to focus on Christ day by day.

3. Rulers defeated at the cross (v. 15)

It looks as if the Colossians had an unhealthy interest in the spiritual powers of the kingdom of darkness. In a sense, this is not surprising because the signs of its existence were all around them and they had to live amid all the various pressures that were caused by the presence of spiritually-hostile forces. It is the same for us today as we live in a society that becoming increasingly tolerant of various ways of life. So what was Paul’s assessment of these unfriendly and intimidating powers? His answer may surprise us, but it was, ‘They have all been defeated by Jesus at the cross.’

Paul takes us back to the cross and enables us to look at it clearly. Just as he asked us in the previous verse to observe what was written above the cross, so now he asks us to observe who is naked at the cross. Physically, it was Jesus who had been stripped of his clothes and nailed naked to the cross. But Paul tells us to look closer and observe that the crucified Christ actually stripped the hostile rulers and authorities of their power. They came to the cross armed to the teeth, determined to destroy Jesus, but discovered that they had been totally weakened because Jesus deprived them of their powerful weapons. Their weapons included demanding punishment for those who had broken God’s law, but such a demand is powerless once the penalty was paid by Jesus.

Yet the victory is only remembered when we look constantly to the Lord. If we take our eyes of him, we will resort to various schemes for overcoming spiritual opponents, and these schemes will not work. The path of triumph for Christians is the same path as Jesus had, his cross. As we look at the cross, we see that instead of being overcome by his enemies Jesus defeated them. So when they attack us by accusing us of our sins, we should respond by saying they were dealt with by what Jesus did at the cross. God the Father knew all the sins that we would commit, but he also knew that the atoning death of his Son was more than sufficient to pay our penalty. But in order to have an ongoing sense of this blessing, we have to focus on Jesus on the cross.