Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: A Christian fundamentally is someone who has new spiritual life in them, the resurrection life of Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled All About Jesus. Let's listen in as JP gives us part eight of The Reconciler.

JP Jones: It's quite possible that some of us, pardon the analogy, but we're living in our own stink and we don't even know it. We're just living life the way we've always lived life. We don't even have a consciousness that it's not the way we should be living. We don't even have a consciousness that it's an old, dead, sinful life because it's the life that we know. It's not until we're confronted with the holiness of Christ, the love of Christ, the beauty of Christ, the truth of Christ, that we all of a sudden become aware that I don't like the way I am.

The beauty of salvation is once we have that realization, what Christ does is he takes away the old life and makes us brand new. He cuts off the sinful life, just as circumcision was a cutting away of the flesh, spiritual circumcision is a cutting away, a putting away, a removal of the old sinful life. That's what we have in Jesus Christ. That's the truth about us. We've been spiritually circumcised in Christ.

Now Paul switches to the New Testament sign of baptism. Here's a third reality of what's true about us. We've been buried and raised up with Christ. It says in verse 12, "Having been buried with him in baptism and raised up with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead." Circumcision was a sign and seal of the Old Covenant; baptism is a sign and seal of the New Covenant. We were co-buried and co-resurrected with Jesus Christ. That's what Paul says. He says it's already an accomplished act. It is our spiritual identity. We have been buried, we have been raised up with Christ.

He says the same thing over in Romans chapter six, verses three to seven. "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? And therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life. If we've become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin."

A lot of times people get hung up on this passage and passages like this because they are guilty of reading into it their life experience, their theology, their denominational distinctive, rather than reading out of it what it actually says. We live 2,000 years removed from the event. We can't take 2,000 years of church history and theology and personal experience and go back and read it into the Bible and then come up with the accurate interpretation. We have to let the Bible say what it says. So let's put ourselves in the sandals of those New Testament believers, the folks at Colossae, the people at Rome that received the letter to the Romans.

What was their actual experience? Well, many of them were Jews, and if they were Jews, they'd been circumcised. So when Paul talked about circumcision, they understood what he was saying. That was their experience. As New Testament believers, based upon what we read in the book of Acts, when they heard the message of the gospel and salvation and they believed in salvation, what was the very first thing they did after they believed in Christ? They got baptized. In the book of Acts, that's the pattern you can see it over and over again. The gospel is preached, people believe it, they baptize them.

Paul's writing to people who have been baptized. It's quite possible that they had been circumcised and didn't really even understand what circumcision was. It's quite possible they'd been baptized and didn't really even understand what baptism was. So Paul now, after the fact, is explaining the reality of a sign and seal that they had experienced. So don't get caught up on the sign and a seal because in both cases, circumcision and baptism, Paul says what's the real important thing? What it represents, not the actual physical sign, but what it represents.

Just as circumcision actually represented God cutting away the old nature and giving us a new heart, baptism, he says, what it represents is the co-burial and co-resurrection that we have with Jesus Christ. We died with Christ, we were raised up with Christ. Spiritually, we are alive because of our relationship with Jesus Christ. We were spiritually dead; we've been made spiritually alive. We were buried with Christ and raised up with Jesus Christ. God made us new people.

A Christian fundamentally is not someone who goes to church, not someone who lives a good life, not someone who even believes certain dogma. A Christian fundamentally is someone who has new spiritual life in them, the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. That's why spiritual growth is becoming who we already are. It's living out of our new identity in Christ. It's experiencing in daily thoughts, daily choices, daily habits, the resurrection life of Jesus in us and through us. It's being transformed.

And what we couldn't do for ourselves, God did for us. Just as he says in verse 11 that it was God who spiritually circumcised us, it's God who raised us up with Christ. It's God's power working in us and through us. Now we're not completely passive in this, because Paul says in this passage, "We've been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God." The gospel message is preached, we hear it, we exercise faith, and God spiritually transforms us. God did all of this for us. It's part of our salvation. This isn't a story, a narrative passage of scripture talking about what some people did or didn't do. This isn't an exhortative passage of scripture giving us a series of commands. No, it's a doctrinal passage of scripture laying out some truth that we either believe or don't believe. If we don't believe it, we're held in bondage. If we do believe it, it sets us free.

We have been given fullness in Christ. We've been spiritually circumcised in Christ. We've been buried and raised up with Christ. Here's a fourth thing. We've been made alive with Christ. Verse 13 says, "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ." The "when" part is significant here. It doesn't say when we were seeking to transform our own lives, God made us alive in Christ. It doesn't say when we were working on a personal reformation project, God made us alive in Christ, or when we were doing everything we could to clean up our own act. No, when we were dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of our sinful nature.

In order to drive home the point more clearly, when we were dead in sins, plural, it's the Greek word paraptoma. A paraptoma is a misstep. If there's a line right here and I'm trying to walk the line and I go, "Whoops," that's a misstep. That's a paraptoma. God has a line of truth, a standard of holiness. We misstep it. And it's in the plural. We don't just do it once; we do it multiple times. We were dead in sins. And then he says, "In the uncircumcision of your sinful nature." He's going back to that analogy of circumcision and says there was a time when we didn't experience what God has done in taking away our old nature. We were in not only individual acts of sins, but we were by our very disposition sinners, and that's all we were.

He describes that condition of being dead. If I had a cadaver up here on display and I was going to have an object lesson here and I approached the cadaver and said, "All right, you can get up now," nothing would happen. If I looked at the cadaver again and I said a little more forcefully, "Get up!" nothing would happen. If I started to feel embarrassed and angry and started pushing on it, "Get up, get up, get up!" would that make any difference? No. Why is it that the cadaver is not going to respond to my commands? It's dead. It's pretty obvious; it's not a very difficult scientific fact to grasp. It's dead.

God says we were dead, unable even to respond to his commands. Paul writes the same thing over in Ephesians chapter two. "You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the spirit of disobedience, according to the prince of the power of the air. You too indulged yourself in the lusts of your flesh and your mind. You were like the rest, children of wrath. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, he made us alive together with Christ. He raised us up with Christ and he seated us with Christ. For by grace you've been saved."

See, we were spiritually dead, but God made us alive. Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans five, "But God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." What we couldn't do for ourselves, God did for us. God didn't just help sick people; he gave life to dead people. That's our salvation. We were spiritually dead and we've been made alive with Jesus Christ.

If you're a believer in Christ, you've been made alive with Christ. If you're here and you're eager to know more about God and you want to understand what salvation is all about and what does it really mean to be a Christian, it means to be made alive. In that very moment when you in faith call out to God and ask Christ to save you, God makes you alive. And let me tell you, in a way that I can't fully explain and you probably don't even realize, if you're here today and you're not yet a follower of Jesus, you're not just here because you're on your own personal intellectual pursuit. No, God is drawing you. God brought you here. God loves you. God is revealing himself to you and God wants you to come to a relationship with him.

God takes great pleasure in saving lost people. In fact, Jesus in Luke chapter 15 gave three stories about how much God celebrated this. He told the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, and the conclusion is there's rejoicing in heaven when one sinner repents and is saved. God delights in seeing people who were dead be made alive through faith in Jesus Christ.

So Paul here in Colossians two, correcting this false paradigm that the Colossians had about what salvation was all about and what spiritual transformation was all about, tells us this is what's true. We've been given fullness in Christ. We've been spiritually circumcised with Christ. We were buried and raised up with Christ. We've been made alive with Jesus Christ. It's as if God has taken his spiritual defibrillator and just shocked us with the resurrection life of Christ. Boom! And now we've been made alive.

Here's a fifth thing. We've been forgiven and what condemned us has been taken away. Verses 13 and 14, "He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us, that stood opposed to us. He took it away and he nailed it to the cross." Two words for forgiveness in the New Testament. One means to take away and then one means to bestow grace. That's the word that's used here. It's charizomai. It means to grace someone with so much grace that it completely covers all your sins. That's what God's done for us in Christ. He's forgiven us our sins by giving us so much grace that it covers our sin. We're forgiven, past, present, and future, because of our relationship with Jesus Christ. It's the truest thing about us.

And he's canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and stood opposed to us. This is kind of a difficult phrasing, but the written code is the law. It's as if God took his law and handwrote it out and every one of those laws not only represents a holy standard of God, but every one of those laws is a point of condemnation for us because we violated them, we broken them. It represents a debt that we owe to God because we failed to live out his commandments.

In Matthew 27, it says that all the lists of Christ's offenses were nailed to the cross above him and it was summarized in his statement, King of the Jews. That's what condemned him because he claimed to be the Messiah, the Son of God. Well, all of our obligations to God, our debts to God that are embodied in the written code, they're nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ. So all that stood to condemn us has been taken away in Christ. In fact, he says he's canceled it. It's literally the word for washed it. It was the word that used when they would write something on a papyrus and they wanted to use it over again. They would take a material and a certain liquid and they'd scrub the papyrus to where they would wash away what was written on it before and now it was clean.

That's what God's done for us in Christ. There was written above every one of us all God's commandments that we failed to obey and in Jesus Christ he's washed the slate clean. It's like walking into a classroom and taking the eraser and just completely going like this on the board and erasing everything that was written up there. All that was written up there were all our sins and failures. God's taken that away and wiped it clean by nailing it to the cross of Jesus Christ. Everything that would condemn us has been removed. That's why Romans 8:1 says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Christ died for our sins and Christ paid the penalty and Christ fulfilled the debt that we couldn't be good on: obedience and righteousness. He did it for us. That's true for us in Christ. We've been forgiven and what condemned us has been taken away.

One last thing. We have spiritual victory and authority in Christ. So Paul here is talking about our salvation, what's true about every believer, it's our birthright, it becomes true the very moment we put our faith in Christ. We have fullness in Christ. We're spiritually circumcised in Christ. We're buried and resurrected in Christ. We're made alive in Christ. We're forgiven in Christ. The debt that we owed God has been removed, that which condemned us has been taken away and nailed to Christ's cross. And we have victory and triumph and authority in Jesus Christ.

Verse 10 says Christ is the head over every power and authority. Verse 15 says that Christ disarmed the powers and authorities. He made a public spectacle of them. He triumphed over them by the cross. Christ is the absolute head over all human and angelic and demonic authorities. At the cross of Christ, he disarmed the demonic authorities and powers. Christ's death, resurrection, ascension, and seating made a public statement that he defeated Satan and triumphed over demons.

Hebrews 2:14 says since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil. And Ephesians 1:20-22 says when he exerted in Christ his power, he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. In the present text, Colossians two, it says he triumphed over them.

It's a term that's used twice in the New Testament. Used here, it's used in Second Corinthians chapter 2:14, that says God always leads us in his triumph in Christ and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of him. It's a term that described the victory parade of a Roman general. When a Roman general would conquer a country or culture in the name of Rome, he would bring back captives and he would have a parade. The streets would be lined with all the people of Rome and there would be flowers set up on display and they'd be throwing flowers and it created this fragrant aroma. They would sing a victory song.

So there was an actual ceremony. Paul takes that word that describes that ceremony of a Roman general who has conquered his enemy and brings back the captives of those he conquered into town and a big parade is held and a celebration is held. That's the term triumph that's used here in Colossians chapter two. What it's being applied to is Christ's death on the cross and all that the cross brought. It not only benefited us, we died to sin, we were raised to new life, it defeated our enemy Satan and his demons. He triumphed over them and now they are in his captive train, Christ the victor bringing the captives, demons, following him.

That's a public spectacle. In other words, the cross of Jesus Christ is the single most important event in all of human history because it represents what God did to bring absolute victory over sin, over Satan, so that we could live out the new life that's ours in Christ. Wow, JP, that's kind of heavy stuff. Yeah, it is. It's what's true about us in Christ. Just like the Colossians, we have a paradigm for how we're seeing God and how we're seeing Christ and how we're seeing salvation and how we're seeing the life that we ought to live. If we don't see fundamentally who Jesus Christ is and our union with Christ, if we don't really understand that we've been given fullness in Christ, we have spiritual circumcision in Christ, we've been buried and raised up with Christ, we have new life in Christ, all that would defeat us and condemn us has been taken away in Christ, we have absolute victory and triumph in Christ, if we don't see that, then we're in bondage. No matter how sincere we are, we're believing something that's not true. Another word for that is we're believing a lie. And that lie is holding us in bondage. The only way we can be on the outside the way we really are on the inside is to know who we really are on the inside. Most of us in one way or another are just going oops, oops, oops. We need to know we're new. We're in Christ, and that's the key to living in spiritual victory.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just five dollars. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of 25 dollars or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, Facing Goliath. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We're in this series from Colossians talking about the fact that it's all about Jesus. Jesus Christ is our only Lord, our only Savior. He's the unique God-man. He has sovereign authority over all powers, over all angels, over all demons. And Jesus Christ is the only Savior. In this passage that we're looking at in Colossians chapter two, the apostle Paul is in some ways comparing this New Testament salvation to what was revealed in the Old Testament in terms of God's covenant.

In the Old Testament, God made a covenant with his people and the sign and seal of his covenant was circumcision. In the New Testament, God makes a covenant of salvation with us through Jesus Christ and there is a sign and seal, baptism is parallel to circumcision and it represents the salvation. The Bible is clear: baptism doesn't save us any more than circumcision saved the Jews in the Old Testament, but it represents our salvation. It represents the fact that Jesus Christ died and rose again. It represents the fact that Jesus takes away our old life and gives us a new life. It represents the fact that Jesus cuts away the fleshly nature and imparts a new nature to us.

So Paul, using these metaphors in Colossians two, talks about how we have been spiritually circumcised. God's taken away our old life, he's given us a new life in Jesus Christ, and it all represents this great picture of salvation that is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. So let me ask you a question. Do you have the absolute certainty that you're saved? Do you know that Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again from the dead? Have you asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior? Have you experienced the cleansing of Jesus? Have you experienced Jesus taking away your old life and giving you a new life by grace through faith? That's possible to anyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

If you would desire to know Jesus and have the certainty of your salvation, you can experience it right now if you will call upon him. Wherever you are listening, in your home or in the car or sitting with a group of friends over the internet, you can have the certainty of salvation if you will call on Jesus Christ to save you. If you'd like that, I invite you to pray with me right now. Lord Jesus, thank you that you're a Savior. Thank you you're the only Savior and you died for our sins and you rose from the dead and you take away our old life and you give us a new life. Jesus, I pray right now that anyone who listens would call on you and be saved, that in their heart they would say, "Jesus, save me, forgive me, come into my life and be the Lord of my life." I thank you for that in Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.