Circumcision Accomplished

Well, good morning. To our Canadian audience this morning, happy Thanksgiving. We had our cranberry sauce last night. We had a great time together. This is the benefit of being kind of, you know, we get two Thanksgiving dinners. Well, we'll see what we do in November, but anyhow. It's great to be here with you this morning. And yeah, just a real privilege to be gathered together this morning around the Word of God.

And let's just begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the privilege of coming together to study your Word. And Lord, we thank you for what you have revealed to us in it. It's so important, and Lord, we need understanding. And I pray that you would Illuminate each one of us this morning to what you've revealed. Give us just a real sense of the significance of the words that you've given us.

This wasn't put together haphazardly. This is critical information. So I pray that you would allow us to just really take everything from it this morning that you have for us to learn. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, this morning's message is called Circumcision Accomplished. And that's just designed to be memorable, okay? So now, you know, hopefully going forward, you go, what did we talk about on Sunday? Oh yeah, Circumcision Accomplished.

Let's review a little bit of where we're at. And J.D. read starting in verse 8, and so that's where we taught last week was verses 8 through 10. And we're going to be picking up at verse 11 this morning. But we just want to review that because it's connected. It's so important to see the connections and the flow between verses.

And so we don't want to be, you know, have these things disconnected in our thinking. So last week, especially focusing on verse 8 here, Paul is giving a warning, right? We said the word there at the beginning is kind of like, beware. In fact, your translation might even say, beware. And the risk, the danger is that there were false ideas or false teachings coming into the Colossian church. And what we could really sum these ideas up as being in their core thought is really the opposite of our series title, right? And so these false ideas could be summed up as saying that Jesus is not enough.

Of course, no Christian would ever say that out loud, would they? Right? We wouldn't say, oh, Jesus isn't enough. We wouldn't say that. But we imply it all the time. Because every time that I make the Christian life depend on my ability, I'm saying that Jesus is not enough. And we didn't get too specific last week about what these ideas are exactly, and we're still not going to this week because Paul's going to get into that starting in verse 16. So next week, we're going to talk more specifically about these kinds of ideas that say, oh, Jesus isn't enough.

It depends on me. I've got to do it. If I'm going to have a Christian life, it's me who's got to do it. Right? And if it depends on me even just a little bit, just a little bit, right? Then we're saying, in essence, that Jesus is not enough. And these ideas have a lot of different flavors, right? But we have to understand what is at the core of these ideas. And so to do that, I have invited a special guest appearance. Anyone a Muppets fan? Okay. We're gonna give this a try. Does anybody like the character Beaker? Does anybody know the only word he ever verbalizes? Okay, watch. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, happy birthday. Happy birthday, happy birthday. Okay, I hope that's permissible at Holly Hills.

And maybe the first and the last time that we see Beaker as part of our Sunday morning service. But what is it that was Beaker's only word, right? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And we don't want to be Beaker Christians. We don't want to be Beaker Christians.

We have this tendency to always make the Christian life depend on me. And really, we call it the Jesus-plus mentality. Jesus-plus. Jesus-plus my effort, Jesus-plus my devotion, Jesus-plus my rituals. And really, all of this is what what Paul called in verse 8 really philosophy, human wisdom, the human tradition, and the elementary principles of the world. And so we've got to throw this mentality all together, and we've got to find out that the only one who can live like Jesus is Jesus, right? And that really is a huge breakthrough for us as Christians to discover, to realize that I can't produce that kind of righteous life, right? And that's why the Christian life is not what I do. It's always what Jesus does through me.

And that's really what Paul sums up in Galatians 2.20, right? And we could just summarize that verse as the not-I-but-Christ life. So how does that happen? How does a Christian life work that it's not I who live, but Christ who lives in me? Do we just sit around and twiddle our thumbs until Jesus does something? No, the answer is really right there in the verse, right?

The life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God. Our responsibility is faith, trusting Him to do what only He can do. And you might hear that and think, aha, that is something for me to do, because I've got to have faith. But that's a misunderstanding of faith, because faith isn't doing something. Faith is really depending on someone else to do what you can't. Just releasing the responsibility back to Jesus, allowing Him to live through you. That's what faith is.

So basically, Paul's point in verse 8 is, on the one hand, we have man's wisdom, and it's always the me, me, me, me kind of Christian life. I've got to do it, as compared to God's way, which is by grace through faith. And from verse 8 on, going down from verses 9 through 15, what Paul is doing is he's telling us why.

Why shouldn't we go after these human ideas that are really so natural to us? It's very natural to us to think that, you know, I've got to crank this out. I've got to produce it. So what's the basis? for depending on Jesus rather than trying to do it ourselves.

And so this is really important information here because Paul is explaining what makes this dependent walk a possibility. And in verses 9 through 10, as we looked at last week, the first thing that Paul's got to tell us is that Jesus is able. Jesus is able because of who he is, right? And Paul says he is the fullness of deity in bodily form. And both sides of that are really, really important.

Because if he was just deity and he wasn't a man, then there's no way that you could ever be joined to him. You could never be united to Jesus Christ. Right? But because he is God and man, he has both the character and nature of God, and he is the kind of person, the kind of, he's as a man, that you can be united to. And that really is the second part, is what God has done to you to make it possible for Christ to live through you. Because if you think about the question, can just anyone depend on Jesus Christ to live through them?

No. Why not? Because until you've received Jesus Christ as your Savior, you're not joined to him, right? You haven't been made a part of his body. And as an unbeliever, Jesus isn't your life, and you're still enslaved to the sin nature. So the unsaved person can't have Christ living his life through them, right?

But you and I can. And the reason is because of what God has accomplished, and that's what Paul is about to explain. Verses 11 through 15, Paul is explaining what God has done to make the not-I-but-Christ life possible. And he introduces that in verse 10. If you look back, it says, in him you have been made complete.

By the way, I'm gonna use a bunch of Canadian pronunciations today. I mean, we've got the word buried coming up a lot, so. Just settle in, it's gonna be okay. But we have been made complete. And it's in Christ, in union with Jesus Christ, that we are supplied with everything that we need for godliness. And now, in verses 11 through 15, we're going to study how God has accomplished this. And something you should notice, and just up front here, is that this is going to be very familiar territory.

This is because it's very parallel to Romans 6. In fact, when I taught these verses at a teen camp a couple of years ago as just a way to make it memorable, I found a little acorn shell and folded up the—wrote the words, Romans 6, on a piece of paper, stuck it inside, and got one of the kids to open it. What does it say? Romans 6 in a nutshell. So this is, this is Romans 6 in a nutshell.

But why is it so similar? It's similar because Paul is dealing with the same question. The question is, how do I live the Christian life? And the answer is always the same. The answer is dependence on Christ. And Paul knows that believers have to be reminded of what makes that possible. We've got to go back to these same basic facts over and over and over. We have to know what has been accomplished. So I'm just going to reread verses 11 through 15, because that's what we're going to be studying today, and just also to get it on the recording.

It says, And in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

So what's that all about? There's a lot of kind of even strange stuff in there. So beginning in verse 11, just keep in focus here that we're looking at what God has done to you to make it possible for Christ to live through you. And what's verse 11 all about?

Circumcision, of course, right? That might not make much sense. Circumcision, though, is what? It's a surgical procedure. And we need to pay really careful attention here, right? Because this isn't physical circumcision. Right? This is very clearly a circumcision made without hands. So what kind of circumcision is this?

Well, Paul's drawing on a really common Old Testament theme, right? Of course, we know that the nation of Israel was given physical circumcision as what? A sign of his covenant with them. But the Old Testament is very, very clear over and over that physical circumcision never changed the person, right? And God was always telling the nation Israel that they needed a different kind of circumcision, not physical circumcision. And in the Old Testament, it's often called heart circumcision.

And we want to just kind of ask ourselves, is that what Paul's talking about here? Is this the same thing as heart circumcision? And it kind of depends on what Paul means by the flesh, because in verse 11, Paul describes this circumcision as the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. So what is the flesh? Is that the same thing as the heart? Well, we know that the flesh, from our study in Romans, is kind of Paul's— one of his terms for the sin nature. Right? But is that the same thing as the heart? Well, if we compare these things, we'll kind of see the similarity. On the one hand, the Bible tells us very clearly that the heart is evil.

Jeremiah 17.9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?

And then over in Romans 7.18, Paul says this, for I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh.

So very parallel. But we can also see scripturally that the heart is a wellspring of wickedness, and we can see how that parallels with Paul's use of the word flesh in Romans 7, 18. So in Matthew 12, 34, just as Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and he says, you brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks of that which fills the heart.

The heart overflows in wickedness. Look at Paul. in Romans 7, 18, for while we were still in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. That reference should be Romans 7, 5. The sinful passions which were aroused by the law were overflowing from our flesh.

And so there's this—the heart and the flesh are the wellspring of wickedness, and then we can see the fruit, the result of that. This is, again, Jesus in Matthew 15 verses 19 through 20 says, But Galatians 5, 19 through 21, again Paul, Paul's word here, now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger.

And so we see that really Paul, when he uses the term flesh, has a very similar thing in mind. They're basically parallel in this context. Okay, and so this, you know, this concept of the circumcision of the heart and Paul's concept here of the circumcision of the flesh is a parallel concept.

And what Paul is, what we would use, or how we would understand what Paul's saying is the sin nature. The sin nature, there needs to be a circumcision of the sin nature. And what we need to understand about the sin nature is that the sin nature can't be changed, it can't be improved, Hey, the sin nature is thoroughly evil, and it needs to be cut off.

But who does this apply to? Who are we talking about here? Paul says, and in him you also were circumcised. Paul doesn't limit this circumcision to a particular group of believers. He says, in him, you, plural, That's the nice thing about the Greek. In English, we don't know if you is singular or plural, but in the Greek, it's very clearly plural. In him you were also circumcised. This is an aorist indicative. This is a fact. And it's plural. And so this is true of you if you are a Christian.

If you put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, then your sin nature has been circumcised. You've gone through this circumcision. Okay? Now you might say, and this is really important to understand, you might say, well, I don't feel very cut off from my sin nature. Right? I'm still controlled by my sin nature way too often. And that's true, and this is where we get a lot of confusion, right? Because the circumcision that we're talking about is a judicial separation.

It's exactly parallel with what Paul says in Romans 6.6. He says, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with. And we've taught that, and we understand that it doesn't mean that the sin nature is gone.

Okay? You are judicially or legally freed from the power of the sin nature. It's not gone. It's always seeking to control you, but it doesn't have any power over you. Right? You don't have to obey it. That's what this means. So when we say that your sin nature has been circumcised, it's the same thing that Paul was saying in Romans 6. It doesn't mean it's gone, but its power over you is cut off. Okay? which answers the question of why we don't feel very cut off from it, right? Because we can still respond to it. We can still walk according to the sin nature, but we don't have to. Its power, its authority has been severed, has been cut off.

So that's what verse 11 is really all about. But we really want to answer the question, well, how was this circumcision accomplished, right? And the first thing to understand here that's really important is that you didn't do it. Because in Greek, the words, you were circumcised, isn't a passive. It's something that God did. And you notice at the end of verse 11, right, that it says, this circumcision is by the circumcision of Christ.

Now that word, of, in English is a little bit confusing, it's a little bit ambiguous, right, because, well, who was circumcised here? Like, right, so I mean, I always say, you could be the baker of the cake, or you could be a slice of the cake. And those are two very, very different things, right, using the same word.

And so the question is here, well, what's, you know, is this a circumcision done by Christ, performed by Christ, or is this Christ's circumcision that we participate in? And then to make it simpler and just, is this a circumcision done by Christ? He is the one who did this. He is the one who carried this out. but how did he do it, right? Circumcision, as we said, is a picture of being cut off from the power of the sin nature, and it was done to you the moment that you believed in Jesus Christ, but how was it done?

And that's what verse 12 answers. Okay, verse 12 says, having been. And so this circumcision done by Christ is on the basis of having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. Now, again, and this is why this passage may be a little bit confusing just to read, because now we have the word baptism, and this is not talking about water baptism. This is talking about being united to Jesus in his death and resurrection.

And really, the main reason, we could go into a lot of things. I have two pages of notes on this, and you'll be glad. I'm just going to give you the brief version. But the main reason here is that, notice how Paul describes this. He says this is through faith. It's diapistos. It's by means of faith that this took place. Paul says that you have been buried and raised up with Christ as a result of faith, and water baptism is not by faith, right? Water baptism is by dunking. This happened, this baptism happened the moment that you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior through faith. That's the baptism we're talking about.

Paul says being buried with him. And it's easy for us to look at that and think, okay, yeah, I could, you know, that's a picture of my water baptism, being buried with him, going down into the water. The problem with that is that the word buried in the Greek can't mean that. because it's not, it's not like our English word, buried, which could say, well, I, you know, I'm buried in homework, or I'm, you know, no, the word buried is, the only English word we have that I know of is the word interred. It means to put a body in the ground.

Okay, Paul is, is not talking about water baptism here, he's talking about dying with Christ. So why does he say that we have been buried with him in baptism? Well, baptism is, and, you know, we hear that word and we automatically think water baptism, right?

But it's kind of an unfortunate English word because rather than translate the word, they just transliterate it, right? If you have familiarity with the Greek, the Greek word is basically the same as the English word. And that just makes things confusing, right? Because in Greek, baptism didn't just mean dunking a person in water the way we think of it, right?

The basic sense is yes, usually connected with the concept of being immersed, but we could also even say placed into. And it has a whole bunch of uses, even just in the mundane common sense. And what it always implies is a permanent identification, being placed into so as to permanently change the identity of something. And here, it has to do with being placed into union with Jesus Christ, being joined to him in a permanent union.

That's the idea, right? This is actually very parallel to Romans 6, 4. And I think if you see this verse as well, you'll kind of see a little more clearly that that's what he's talking about. He says, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life." This is all about being identified with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. This is something that God did to you the moment that you put your faith in Jesus Christ.

Water baptism pictures this. That's the visible, outward demonstration of this. But nothing happens at your water baptism except that you're displaying to people what has already happened. And it's just what Paul's talking about here. This is the, you could say, the real baptism.

And so if you are a Christian, then Jesus' death on the cross is counted as your death, and his resurrection is counted as your resurrection. And that's an incredibly profound truth, but it's really simple. To be able to state it like that is really, really simple, but if you think about that, it's a lot like the gospel. The gospel is very, very simple. The fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins. And it's not hard, but Do people readily accept that? No. It's hard to accept, though it's very, very simple.

And to say this is the same truth for you as a Christian, you might look at this, and if you're not familiar with this, you might think, boy, that's strange. I don't understand that. I don't think I can believe that, because I don't know what that means. And so we have to learn to understand these things and understand that this is what God's Word says, and accept it as that. But it's not complicated. It's simple truth, very, very simple truth.

And so, what verse 12 is doing is it's telling us how the circumcision of verse 11 was accomplished. And it was accomplished by making us participants in Jesus' death and resurrection. Now, if you were in the 2 Timothy class this morning, you might be thinking, but we have to understand that though our bodily resurrection is yet future, right, we have participated in Jesus' resurrection judicially and spiritually so that the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ is our life. We participated in His resurrection. Our bodily resurrection is yet coming, but we have to understand, the scripture clearly reveals this, that we have participated with Jesus in His death, in His resurrection. And by making us participants in Jesus' death and resurrection, we are separated from the power of the sin nature. We've died to its authority over us. And not only have we died to sin, we were also raised from the dead, and we have a new life.

And that brings us to verse 13, right, where Paul expands on this. Verse 13, he says, when you were dead, I know that font is probably too small for a lot of people to read, but just follow in your Bible, okay? That's just kind of our, keeping us on track with where we're at. Verse 13 says, when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.

And so Paul here, he's looking back. He says, you were dead. He's looking back to before the Colossians had accepted the gospel. And this idea of being dead is actually how the Bible refers to all unbelievers, right? We have to get a handle on the way the Bible uses the word death, right?

Because it uses it in several different ways. But if you can remember that it always has to do with separation, then that helps. I did a VBS program a few years ago, and we talked about death, separation, and then eternal life, right? But every time we said death, we got the kids to go, And it's just a way for them to remember death means separation. There's a separation, a tearing away between two things.

And if you can remember that, it's gonna help you understand where the Bible uses the word death in different senses, in different contexts, right? So the question when you see the word death really becomes, well, who is separated and from what, right? Because we just talked about the fact that we are dead to the sin nature through our death with Christ, Right? And that doesn't mean that our sin nature ceased to exist, but it means that we are separated from its power.

We are dead to it. And separation explains why the Bible can say that all unbelievers are dead. And will actually, if they never accept Jesus Christ, an unbeliever will remain dead throughout all eternity, though they will be in conscious existence. They are still as dead then as they ever were. Right? Because the deadness of the unbeliever is deadness to God, separation from Him, a broken relationship.

You can't be in a relationship with Him. And before we were saved, that was all of us, that was every single one of us, dead in our transgressions and the uncircumcision of our flesh. And Paul is there pointing to two things that kept us separated from God, right? The transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh.

And transgressions is the plural. So these are the acts of sin, sins committed against God, offenses against Him, all of the times that you have violated God's righteousness. And they are definitely plural, are they not? These are sins against God. And then Paul points to our second problem, and this is really the source of our transgressions, right? The flesh. He says, "...in the uncircumcision of your flesh," which, as we said, is the sin nature, and this is the root of the problem, the wellspring of all wickedness, right? In our very nature, we were hostile enemies against God.

And so those are the two things that kept us dead to God or separated from Him. On the one hand, our sinful acts, what we've done, And on the other hand, our sinful nature, which is what we were. So what we've done and what we were, and we had no way to remedy either one of those problems. We couldn't fix either one of them. We couldn't pay for what we've done, and we couldn't change what we were.

But the cross changed both of those things forever, right? The verse says, when you were dead, implying what? You're no longer dead. Writing to believers, you were dead. Now in Christ, you are no longer dead. And then look at the words, it says, he made you alive together with him.

So when we accepted Jesus as our savior, we were accepting God's twofold solution. And verses 13 and 14 tell us that through the cross, God dealt with both of those problems, our transgressions and our flesh. And the end of verse 13 speaks to our first problem.

What does it say there? It says, "...having forgiven us all our transgressions." Right? So we were dead in our transgressions and the uncircumcision of our flesh, but he has now forgiven us all our transgressions. Well, how can God forgive transgressions? We don't want to be—we don't want to just fly past that point. Oh, God, forgive—you know. It's because God is perfectly righteous. He can't just—He can't just sweep sin under the carpet, right?

So how is this sin forgiven? Only on the basis of the fact that Jesus fully paid the penalty for those sins. Every single one of them in full. God the Father couldn't turn a blind eye to your sin. He forgave your sins because Jesus paid for them on the cross. So Jesus' death on the cross for us has solved our first problem. But verse 14 tells us how God has answered our second problem, the problem of our sin nature.

It says, having canceled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." And you're probably reading that and you're thinking, what does that have to do with the sin nature? You said that this was answering to the problems of the sin nature, and I don't see it in there. Well, this verse used to puzzle me, and there's definitely some strange things in there, right? Because we have this expression, the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us. Well, what in the world is that, first of all, right?

You might have the handwriting of requirements that was against us, or the record of debt that stood against us. Okay, and the literal word is handwriting. It's something written by hand. Okay, but in the, you know, the extra-biblical Greek literature of the time, this term was used as a, like an IOU, or maybe a UOM, you know, either way. And it was, so that's why some have translated it as certificate of debt. or a record of debt, so a handwritten note of what is owed.

And, you know, we can spend more time on this, but, you know, most commentators agree, and I think if we think about it, we can understand that this is a reference to God's righteous law. And, I mean, because what other standard could God use, right, to evaluate based on? It's got to be his righteous law. But if you think about that, how could God cancel out his law, right? That doesn't make sense. And then it says that God nailed it to the cross. And what is that all about? Is the law being crucified? And that doesn't make a lot of sense either, right? So first of all, we can't take this verse as saying that God canceled out the law. God would have to cancel out his righteousness in order to do that, right? So he can't cancel out his law, he has to uphold his law.

And so there's no doubt that God's righteous law condemned all of us. We know the law was given to Israel, but did you know a verse in Romans tells us that the law condemns all of us? It says, Romans 3, 19, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. And Paul goes on in those passages, he talks about how that is, but the law condemns every single person in the world because it shows us God's righteous standard, what is righteous and what is not, and none of us meet that righteous standard, right? And so the law condemns all of us.

And it says that the law was hostile against us, and the law was hostile against us because of what we were, what we were by nature. In the core of our being, we were unrighteous, enemies of God, hostile against Him. And so the law, God's righteous standard, is hostile against us. If you and I were evaluated by God's righteous law, what would it say? What would the verdict be?

It would say that you are a sinner by nature deserving of death. You are a sinner by nature. And now maybe you're beginning to see how this is connected a little bit to how our sin nature, our flesh problem is dealt with. The law labels you. The law says that you are a sinner by nature. It's not just the things you've done, it's what you are. You are a sinner by nature.

Okay, so what's this all about? We've got a law that condemns us, and we know that God can't just cancel out the law in order to, you know, let us into his presence, right? So what exactly is being canceled out and taken out of the way, and how is that done?

Well, let's see if we can connect some dots here. I want you to think about Jesus' crucifixion. And as I was thinking about this some time ago, I realized that Jesus wasn't the only thing being nailed to the cross, was he? Think about what Pilate did. What did he do?

He has something posted above Jesus' head, something that was nailed to the cross. and it was a handwritten notice. It was a handwritten notice giving the charges against him, the reason for his death. Matthew 27, verses 37 says, and above his head, they put up the charge against him, which read, this is Jesus, King of the Jews. And over in John 19, 19, Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written, Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.

And this was a common practice for the Romans. They would do these crucifixions in public places along the roadway, near a city gate, where everyone is going to see these executed criminals. And they wanted everyone to know exactly what the crime was, because that was a very powerful disincentive to crime. And so the crucified man was hanging right under the charges against him, and he was paying the penalty for that crime. Right? Now, the Romans didn't really know why they were crucifying Jesus. Isn't that kind of interesting? It was political expedience. The Jews knew why they called for his crucifixion, but they were all false charges. Right? But God had a reason, a legitimate reason for Jesus' death. God the Father knew exactly why Jesus was on the cross. What was the charge that God the Father nailed to the cross, so to speak, when Jesus died?

2 Corinthians 5.21 says, He made Him, God the Father made the Son, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.

This is a really important verse because it doesn't just say that Jesus bore our sins, which He did, but it says He made Him to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Before God the Father, Jesus was dying for your crime of being a sinner.

Not because he was a sinner, right? It wasn't his crime, it was our crime. That was the sentence that we deserved, right? So our crime against God was the crime for which Jesus died. Enmity, hostility, unrighteousness before God. So what does that mean for us?

If we are identified with Jesus in his death, then God looks at us as having died with Jesus. And if Jesus has died to that charge, which is posted against him, the charge of being a sinner, then so have you. If you are identified with him in his death to the charge of being a sinner, then you too have died to the crime, to the sentence of being a sinner. And that's how verse 14 is answering to our problem of being sinners by nature. If Jesus has died for that, if Jesus has died to that crime, then in Jesus, we've died to it as well. The old man that God's law condemned as a sinner has been put to death.

It's finished. So the charge of sinner has been canceled out. It's been taken out of the way. Not swept under the rug, but taken out of the way because it's been fulfilled, the sentence has been carried out in full. And so God's law can't condemn you anymore, because it already has. It's already been satisfied.

And so as new creations in Christ, we stand before God righteous, right? So that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. The condemnation of the law has been taken out of the way. So that's the two sides of the cross work that we see here. Jesus died for our sins, our transgressions, making forgiveness a possibility, and God has forgiven us because our sins are paid for. And Jesus died as a sinner in our place in order to set us free from the sin nature that condemned us before God. So incredibly profound truths packed into a very tight couple of verses here.

And then we have verse 15, which says, and this isn't on the screen, so you can just look in your Bible. It says, when he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through him. And by the way, this is the third time we've seen this term rulers and authorities already in this short letter, right? Last week, we saw it in verse 10, which we looked at a little this morning. Jesus is the head over all rule and authority.

And what did we say when we taught that? These are angelic beings. And we know that here in verse 15, these are specifically the fallen angelic beings. Why? Because Jesus has triumphed over them. Right? So this is Satan and his demons, who are angels, fallen angels, right?

The rulers and authorities, or powers and principalities, perhaps in your translation, are the fallen angels over whom Jesus has triumphed. And that word triumph, if you're into history a little bit is what the Romans would do, right? When they defeated someone, they would take the captives and they would put them on parade through the city so that everybody knew they'd been defeated. And on the cross, Jesus gained a decisive military victory over the powers of darkness. The cross was a decisive victory, and it was a total upset for Satan, a total upset. Remember what Paul wrote to the Colossians back in chapter one, verse 13.

In order to understand this victory and this upset for Satan, Colossians 1.13, we studied that, for he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. The entire world is held in bondage to Satan, and only the cross provides freedom. Hebrews 2, 14 through 15 says, Since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself, Jesus, likewise also partook of the same, that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

And so the cross is the equivalent of a mass exodus out of Satan's dominion, and it actually parallels the exodus of Israel from Egypt quite closely. If you remember that event, right, God completely decimated and despoiled Egypt when the Israelites departed. God had triumphed over the Egyptians, and in the same way, God has triumphed over Satan. He has led us out of slavery and into a new life.

And you think about it even, just like the Israelites were hemmed in at the Red Sea. Go back and reread that this afternoon. They were completely boxed in. Nowhere to go. The sea in front of them, rock formations beside them, and the Egyptians behind them.

And what did God do? He opened up the only possible way, the only possible way of deliverance. And that's what the cross is. The cross opened up the way of salvation for anyone who will receive it. It delivered us from everything that held us in bondage to Satan and placed us into a permanent relationship with God. That's why the cross is such a massive upset for Satan and a total victory for the Lord. Because nothing else, nothing else could have possibly delivered us out of his dominion, out of Satan's kingdom and slavery to him, slavery to sin and death and separation from God. The cross opened up the way. And how did it do it?

Remember, let's just recap what we talked about this morning, right? Verses 9 through 15, they give us the reason that we should never buy into ideas that make the Christian life a beaker performance. 9 through 15 tell us why the Christian life is not I, but Christ.

Right? And we have to understand what God has done to deliver us from the power of sin nature, to forgive us of our sins, and to deliver us from the power of the sin nature, and to make it possible for Jesus to live his life through you. Right? It says that circumcision made this possible.

Not physical circumcision, but this permanent and irreversible work of God that severed you from the power of your sin nature, and you're not going to reverse that, okay? The sin nature is still present in you and active, but you are not a slave to it. You've been severed from it. You're freed from its power.

And how was that circumcision accomplished? Through baptism, but again, not water baptism. through the identification of yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ. And that identification made you a participant, a sharer in Jesus' death and resurrection. And so we've been buried and raised with Christ Jesus. We're dead to the power of the sin nature. We are free to have Jesus live his life through us.

And these are the simple facts, really, about what God has done. And we've got to know them. We've got to know those facts so that we can trust the Lord about what He's done, because that's really what it's all about. The Lord is always simply looking for trust. He's looking for faith. So that's really the simple takeaway this morning. The question is, is this true? Is everything that Paul has packed into these verses true? And you have to be able to answer that question in your own heart. And maybe you're settled about that. Maybe you're not.

But I want to assure you this morning that if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, then this is exactly what God has done for you. And your only responsibility is to trust Him about it, which again, remember, is not something that you have to do because it's really, it's trusting Him to do in you what only He can do. And we need to trust Jesus, not only as our Savior, but also as our life.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word this morning. We thank you for what you have communicated to us, and some of these things perhaps challenging for us to comprehend, and we need you, Lord, to teach us to understand these things so that we can trust them. It's critically important to our Christian walk that we understand that we've been identified with your Son, Jesus Christ, in his death and resurrection, so that we are freed from everything that enslaved us, and we are Welcome to walk in dependence on you, to produce through us the kind of life that we can't live, the kind of life that is pleasing to you, as we saw back in chapter one. A worthy walk, pleasing to the Lord. And Lord, we're just so thankful for what you have done. We're so thankful for what you accomplished.

And when we didn't even know it, we had no idea what we needed. We didn't realize it, and we thought we could, you know, as new believers and as growing believers, we thought, I can live a life that pleases you, And we tried, and we failed, and finally begin to come to the realization that if there's going to be a righteous life in us, it's got to be you who does it, and then to realize that you've provided everything for that life. And we're just so thankful, Lord. We pray that you continue to teach us these things in the coming days, and that we would just continue to seek you about them, to study these things out in your word, and to ask you to make them clear to us. And we just pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.