Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: In Christ is the fullness of deity and we are united with Christ, we are in Christ, Christ's fullness has become ours.

Greg: 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 as JP gives us part seven of the reality in Christ.

JP Jones: If you have your Bibles, would you open to Colossians chapter 2? We're continuing in this book, talking about the fact that it's all about Jesus, and in particular this morning, the reality of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

A couple weeks ago, I was teaching a class on Saturday up at Biola. It was a graduate class, seminary for Talbot Seminary, and I was walking through the hall and I passed one of the professors, Dr. Holloman. Dr. Holloman was one of my professors when I was in my master's program at Talbot many years ago.

In fact, he was teaching in the same class that I actually sat in as a student. It made me remember that class, it was a class on the theology of spiritual growth, spiritual formation. I was given an assignment in that class 25 years ago, actually, on the relationship between our new identity in Christ and spiritual growth.

I had to write a paper and then give an oral presentation and kind of defend my presentation. As I gave that presentation, I took a little different approach than my fellow theologues in the seminary. I told a little story, in fact, I told a joke. It's an old joke. I probably told it here before, and I'm going to tell it again.

I told it on Dr. Holloman, which he kind of appreciated, because I said there were these seminary professors that were out of work. They couldn't get a job teaching the Bible, couldn't get a job teaching theology, and they were desperate. It reached a point where they started looking in a paper looking for any job.

One of the seminary professors saw an ad for the fact that the circus was in town and they were hiring people. He desperately needed a job, so he went down and applied at the circus. When he got there and went into the personnel office, he was maybe looking for a job for selling tickets or looking at a job being a ringmaster or trying to think of something that could make a connection with some of his background.

But all they were looking for, believe it or not, was someone who could take the place of Bonzo the gorilla. Bonzo was the star attraction and he had gotten sick and died. All these kids were coming to the circus to see Bonzo and so they were looking for someone who would wear a gorilla costume and pretend to be Bonzo.

The seminary professor thought, that's just beneath me, how can I do that? But then he realized he desperately needed a job and he thought, no one's going to know it's me, so why not? What the heck? They gave him this costume, he puts it on, he looks in the mirror and he thinks, what an idiot.

Here I am in a gorilla costume and I've got a PhD in theology. He looks in the mirror and goes "Ooh, ooh." So he walks backstage, he gets into the cage and all of a sudden all the people start arriving. Sure enough, all the kids come straight over to Bonzo to see Bonzo.

He's standing there and all these kids are out in front looking at him, and he looks and goes "Ooh!" and the kids cheer. So he goes "Ooh ooh!" and the kids cheer more. Then he starts running back and forth, and the kids are going wild.

They have some kind of playground equipment inside, so he starts climbing up the equipment and grabbing onto the bar and they're laughing and having such a good time. He starts swinging on this rope and kids now are going nuts. Right next to Bonzo's cage was the lion cage.

Every time the guy would swing near the lion's cage, the lion would roar and the seminary professor dressed up like Bonzo would go "Ooh ooh ooh!" and the kids would go nuts. Now everybody in the circus is watching this. He's swinging on the rope, the lion is roaring, and people are going crazy.

Only he gets out a little further than he thought he was going to be and the rope breaks and he falls in the lion cage. The lion squares off with him and roars. Now the guy goes nuts and he goes, "Help! Help! Help!" All of a sudden a voice comes from the lion and says, "Shut up you idiot or we'll both lose our jobs."

Imagine, I tell this joke in a seminary environment on my professor, Dr. Holloman, and he's laughing. Here was my smooth transition which marked my career in pastoral ministry. I said, both the lion and the gorilla had the same problem: they were different on the inside than they were on the outside.

In the New Testament, spiritual growth is pictured this way: we've become new on the inside in our salvation, we've been identified with Christ, and spiritual growth is the process of becoming on the outside who we really are on the inside. That's what this passage is all about in Colossians chapter 2.

It's talking about who we, believers in Jesus Christ, really are on the inside. When we know who we really are on the inside, then in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are to live it out on the outside. Paul writes this truth and these particular truths to an audience, the Colossian believers, who were operating from a paradigm that influenced everything about their life.

They had a paradigm of reality that influenced how they saw God, how they saw relationships, and how they saw the spiritual life. There were a lot of things about that paradigm that was false, both from some of the secular ideas that they had and because of some of the religious ideas that they had.

They had some false thinking that affected their ability to actually engage Christ in salvation and they had some false thinking that affected their ability to live out that salvation in a spiritually transformed way. Paul is correcting false ideas. It's quite possible that just like the Colossians, we have a paradigm that's affecting our view of God, our view of relationships, and our view of life.

Some of us are holding onto some false ideas about Jesus, false ideas about what it means to be a Christian, and false ideas about how we live. So this passage is a corrective because it's the truth that sets us free. Jesus said you shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free.

This passage is a statement of what's true about us in Christ. Colossians chapter 2 verses 10 to 15: You have been given fullness in Christ who is the head over every power and authority. In Him you were also circumcised in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ.

Having been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through your faith and the power of God who raised Him from the dead. 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, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us, that stood opposed to us.

He took it away, nailed it to the cross, and having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. A couple of things by way of introduction to this passage. One is Paul's extensive use of past tense verbs.

There are two past tense verbs in the Greek language: the aorist tense, which is just describing some kind of action that took place in the past, and then the perfect tense, which is something that happened in the past but it was completed so that its results continue on in the present. Paul uses both the aorist and perfect tense in this passage.

So what he's describing is something that has already happened. Paul is making reference to the fact that at salvation, that critical moment when we called on the Lord and believed in Jesus Christ, God did some phenomenal things for us. What Paul is unpacking in this passage is all that's true about us in Christ because it became true at our salvation.

If you're here today as a guest or as a seeker, this is a promise of what will become true for you when you receive Christ. This is a statement of all the spiritual blessings you will receive the very moment you cross the line and put your faith in Jesus. If you've already done that, this is what's already true about you.

A second observation by way of just introducing this passage: Paul looks at the signs of salvation both in the Old Testament and the New Testament to teach about what salvation really is. He looks at circumcision, which was an Old Testament sign, and he looks at baptism, which is a New Testament sign.

In both cases, Paul's conclusion is the real substance is not in the sign but in what it represents and what it points to. So there are six things that are true about every believer in Jesus Christ from this passage. Here's the first one: We've been given fullness in Christ.

We looked a little at this last week in our study of Colossians, but he says in verse 10, "And you have been given fullness in Christ." This follows the statement that he says about Jesus, that in Christ dwells all the fullness of deity in bodily form. Christ is the unique God-man, fully God and fully man.

It flows out of the fact since in Christ is the fullness of deity and we are united with Christ, we are in Christ, Christ's fullness has become ours. Not in terms of His essential deity, we're not god-men like Jesus, but Jesus fills our life. The word here for fullness is having been made full.

If I was to pour water in a cup, there would come a place where it is completely full. That's the description. What are we completely full of because we have Jesus? You've got to look at the context. We know with Jesus, He's completely full of deity, He's fully God. That's not what it's saying about us.

What it's saying about us is all the teachings that follow after this. What are we completely full of? All that salvation brings. Everything that is a part of salvation is already ours in Jesus Christ. Everything. It's ours in Christ. It's a package deal. It's our birthright as believers in Jesus.

We have been given the fullness of all that Christ brings in salvation and we received it when we received Christ. John 1 says but to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to them that believe in His name. Salvation in John 1 is described as receiving Christ.

When we put our faith in Christ, when we believe in Christ, when we ask Christ to come into our lives, when we trust in Christ for salvation, we are given fullness. Everything that is a part of salvation is now ours. So Ephesians 1:3 and 4 says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

That's your birthright as a believer in Jesus if you know Him. You have been blessed already with every spiritual blessing. You have been made full in Christ. For the Colossians that was significant because they were on a quest of spiritual experiences that would somehow give them what they thought they lacked.

Have you ever felt like that? That you need some new experience, you have to get into some new teaching, you have to follow some new thing in order to get what you think you don't have. The Bible says you don't have to do that. You already have it in Jesus Christ.

See, it all comes back to Christ, knowing Christ, experiencing Christ, living in Christ. Jesus Christ is the answer. That's why Jesus said so succinctly, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me. In Christ is the reality of salvation and in Christ is the reality of every spiritual experience that we'll ever pursue after.

If we know Christ, we already have Christ. It may be that you've been ignorant. That's certainly possible and I don't mean that as a rebuke or criticism. That's just possible. Maybe we just don't know who we are. Maybe we're like a person who has been adopted into a family and is in search of their birth parent to know what's my real genetic lineage.

There are a lot of Christians who don't know the spiritual lineage that they have. If you don't know who you are, it's probably going to be difficult to live it out. You're still going to be going "Ooh, ooh, ooh." When you know who we are on the inside, we've been given fullness in Jesus Christ.

That's our spiritual identity. So now Paul unpacks what that means. Here's the first thing he says about it: We were spiritually circumcised in Christ. He looks to this Old Testament sign and seal and uses that as a metaphor to teach about salvation.

Verse 11, "In him we were circumcised in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with a circumcision done by Christ." Circumcision in the Old Testament was the sign of the covenant that God established with Abraham. God in Genesis chapter 12 establishes this relationship with Abraham and He makes a promise to him, a spiritual promise to bless him.

At a certain point in time, Abraham clued in under what God was doing and Abraham believed God. The Bible says that he believed God and it was reckoned to him or imputed to him or given to him as righteousness. He was declared righteous because of his faith.

Then at a certain point after that, God ratified this relationship with him by giving him a covenant, and it was the covenant of circumcision. It may seem very foreign to us, but it's a very deeply spiritual physical act. Circumcision was the physical removal of the foreskin of the male.

What that served to every Jewish boy, every Jewish man, was a scar that every day of his life reminded him that he had a special relationship with God. It was a physical act to represent a spiritual covenant. Now Paul says the reality wasn't in the physical act.

The reality was in the spiritual truth it represented. In fact, in Romans chapter 2, Paul describes this in Romans 2:28 and 29: A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, not by the written code.

Such a man's praise is not from men but from God. So Paul's telling us that the real spiritual reality was what God did in circumcising the heart, in cutting away the sinful nature of the heart. That's what he comes back to over in Colossians chapter 2.

He says now for every believer, not just males but for every believer in Jesus Christ, we have been spiritually circumcised in that Christ has cut away the old nature. Christ has cut away the old flesh, not the physical flesh, but the spiritual flesh, that aspect of our being that is unregenerate, that is rebellious to God, that is only preoccupied with sin.

Christ has cut that away. So we have a spiritual circumcision as a new identity. We have new life, we're not just defined by who we were, we're defined by who we are in Jesus Christ. Term that Paul uses to apply this is he said Christ did this in the putting off of the sinful nature or the old nature.

That term putting off is a Greek word to describe taking off dirty clothes. Imagine somebody who worked for the city in—and this just happened recently over in Santa Margarita near where I live—a sewer line breaks. They have to dig a ditch, they gotta pull that out, and they gotta jump into that ditch and completely repair that sewer line.

After a time, I would imagine if you're down there in all that muck and guck, you'd kind of just take it for granted that that's what you're doing and you'd lose a real sense of consciousness of the smell. You'd just be taking care of business.

But after you left that and you went into a bathroom and you're about to take a shower and the smell of soap and the smell of shampoo and just the clean smell of being in the shower now all of a sudden becomes a contrast to your own smell. You realize, my gosh, I gotta get these clothes off of me.

You just tear them off. That's the picture, that taking off of dirty clothes that is the term that Paul uses to say Christ put off the old nature. He took it off. He stripped it away from us. 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. And 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 like, oh, 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 is a third reality of what's true about us: We've been buried and raised up with Christ.

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 6 verses 3 to 7: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?

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 free from sin.

Greg: 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 $5.

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 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 a.m. 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.

Jesus Christ is the only Savior. In this passage that we're looking at in Colossians chapter 2, 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.

And 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. And 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 2, he 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.

Greg: 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.