He is the Solution to Our Sin Nature
Colossians 2:11-12 · Andrew Molloy · Jun 2, 2019
Colossians (2019), No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926191537691

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I brought a pointer. It's a particularly scary picture, I think. It is, isn't it? Well, that pointer is scary because this is, I think, what my mother used to paddle us when we were kids. Yeah, so, no misbehaving. And the penguins hurt more, didn't they?

Well, she actually had this, what was it, a lexa stick. was more like a paddle, when I was exhibiting my sin nature as a kid. Macaulay has this topical study for Colossians 2, 11 through 12. He is a solution to our sin nature. And this is always the picture I have in my head for the sin nature.

And as you can see, he's tied up to this this post here, kind of like if you were tied up with him, doesn't Paul say, who should deliver me from the body of this death? Somewhere, where does he say that? I can't really come up with the reference. Yeah, 725, right? I think I even have that later on in this study reference.

So what would happen is, when you're a prisoner of the Romans, I think they would chain you up next to another prisoner, and if that prisoner happened to die, right, they would just leave him chained up to the live prisoner, weren't they? And then after weeks and months, it was just horrid. And you'd want to be delivered from the body, this dead body, the body of that death. So I kind of just like that visual there. But here's my outline for today. Last week, right, Bob, you covered 9 and 10.

You are complete in Christ. And I think that's the overarching theme of today still, today's lesson. Paul begins in verse 9, in him you are all the fullness is pleased or happy to be dwelling in Christ bodily. Then he goes on down and says you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power. And then he goes down even further than that in verse 11, which starts our verse for today. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. So if you see what he's, I think what he's doing here, and this is how I think of this passage, is he's going from the general, the general glorious truth that Christ is the fullness of God.

All the fullness is comfortably dwelling in Christ. And then he goes to the specific in 2.10, you are complete in Him. And so you have Christ, His fullness is in you. You don't have the fullness of God, you don't have any deity fullness, but you have Christ in you. the hope of glory and then he goes to the specific about each believer in verse 11 to 11 the specific need that they need they need to know that they're circumcised and the circumcision the knowledge of the circumcision will help them in combating being defrauded of their reward which they were in danger of doing When we get down to Colossians 2 and verse 18, you can see that Paul says, let no one defraud you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.

So I think that's my outline for today, from the general to the specific. And the specific they need to know is circumcision. And that's cutting off at the top. You can sort of read it up there. Colossians 2.11 is where we began today. In him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh. And the word in Greek for circumcised is peritemno.

And you can see my, this class is going to be visual heavy today, because I went through it and I developed these, because I didn't want to explain all this stuff, but I wanted to, in words, I wanted pictures worth a thousand words, right? Is that what they say? So I've got about 3,000 word summary here in pictures.

But what we're doing, and I think you'll see, we'll see this in the passage, is the old man, the carnal man, the sin nature, is being cut away from, and that's you, that's me, cut away with this circumcision made without hands. And so in the spiritual circumcision in Christ, and this is Wiest, that first bullet point there, The whole corrupt carnal nature is put away like a garment, which is taken off and laid aside. And you can see how that, my illustration, that carnal man is being taken off and laid aside. The body of the flesh, the sin nature, is not eradicated though, right? It still goes on, it still can exert power over you there in your body.

And by the way, all my guys here are male, but even if you're female, right, you have an old man. You don't have an old Eve, do you? Everyone has an old man. Everyone's in Adam, an old Adam. There's no old Eve, so everyone is this gentleman here in the black. So, even the women.

The power of the sin nature, or the carnal man, is broken, but it has no more power over the believer than he allows it to have. All agreement with that? The physical body, which was once dominated by this carnal man, this body of flesh, the evil nature, is that evil nature is put away, so you're no longer dominated by the sin nature. And then, now in Christ, and we'll see this in later slides, but now in Christ, your physical body can now be dominated or influenced by, I guess would be sort of a way to put it, by your new divine nature, which is your new man in Christ.

And that's taken from Wyss there. And that's the new nature, that's your recreated, right? Your new creation in Christ. And so that's what we're dealing here with in verse 11. Still on verse 11, in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. by means of the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

And we're going to look at this putting off phrase here. It's ekduomai. In all the examples that I read, it really has to do with clothes, putting off of clothes. And the ek and ekduomai is out of that's a little prefix for out of and you can see there that some guy with acid wash jeans threw off his clothes in a hurry and it also has it this kind of good illustration too because you not only put this this these clothes aren't only put off but they're tossed aside and it has in the greek it has a the force of being laid aside, maybe laid over a chair and then you walking out of the room or something, you're away from these, this whatever you're circumcised from or put off from, I'm sorry, put off from.

When I was a kid, I was, my dad and I, we got gas. I was helping him, I was a little kid. So some, I don't know, back in the 70s, gas pouring wasn't as safe as it is now, right? So in this day and age, you never see the gas. It's got the rubber kind of cylinder around the gas thing, and then your gas tank, it goes in, and you have this rubber seal. Never see the gas. But in the 70s, I don't think it was that way.

They didn't care about all the fumes. somehow I was helping or filling something up and I got gas on all over my shirt. It was leaded, right? It was probably leaded, fully leaded. And I said, oh my shirt's wet, that's too bad. So we were driving home and then I started feeling very uncomfortable, just I thought I was going to die.

And do you know what was happening? Burning. Yes, it started to burn and burn and burn. I was screaming and my dad pulled over and what's the matter? So I had to take off that shirt and throw it aside like this guy did because I was burning up and then we maybe we found some water or something to get that gas off. That's terrible. We live in a day and age where things are nice and safe, and that's good. But the memories, right? The memories of doing dangerous things when we were kids.

I want to compare that ecteduomy, the putting off of one's clothes, to if you turn over to Colossians 3.10.

We're going to get there in a couple weeks, but it's the exact opposite. It's in 3.9, it says, since you have laid aside the old self, which we have covered, and put on the new self, who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him. So that put on the new self, that phrase put on, is enduo. And you can see it's to get into some clothing, or sink into some clothing, or to clothe oneself. So it's the exact opposite.

And that's going to be in Chapter 3 when we look at all the application that Paul will have for the Colossian believers. So there I have the visual of the new man being put on, the new man in Christ being put on to all of us by the putting on in Duo.

Everyone clear with that? Still like my graphics? Pretty good, huh? Okay, so I've got this enduo here. I tried to get a guy whose clothes was matching the clothes that we threw off in the other slide. I couldn't quite. So this guy, it's a plaid shirt, but it's not the right color. And so here he is dressed in the new self, the new man. He's enduoed these clothes.

He has them on and I just, up in the corner there, I have a A Merkur razor, that's the exact one I use. They're very good razors. But I just thought that this guy, he really needed a shave. Because he's ruining my presentation by shaving. He's just got to take care of that beard, actually. So that's all I did with that. What do you mean you chose that? You made that joke? No, I chose it for the clothes. I had to use this guy. Yeah, I had no choice because this was the closest pair of clothes to that other discarded pair of clothes.

In your stock in the razor company. Yeah, right. They're great razors, by the way. Merkur, German company. I bought one for my wife, I have one for myself. My wife says gold, gold plated, beautiful. We could do podcasts and raise money for razors. That's putting on in chapter 3, which we'll get to in more detail.

So we want to look at how we received the spiritual circumcision, and let's see, by means of baptism, that's how we received it. If you look into, oh, verse 12, buried with him in the, by the circumcision of Christ, in verse 11, the last phrase, buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God. And that baptism in verse 12 has a, it's like a preposition of means, so meaning that you were circumcised by means of the baptism is what I'm getting at, and what the Greek is getting at there. Verse 12, co-buried with him in the baptism, which you were also co-raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. And the baptism, we want to note that that has a definite article, so it's talking about a specific baptism, a spiritual baptism.

And what we're really talking about here is Romans 6, right? the exact same things as Romans 6. Parallel topics, parallel doctrine. I won't read Romans 6, but it explains it all there. So Paul is just mimicking what he told the Romans in Romans 6 here.

The word buried and raised in Greek have modifiers that render them both together with. And one of the things that always I wondered about was here at Holly Hills we always said co-buried and co-raised instead of just buried and raised with Christ. We always put this co on there and I just always wondered why that was. I kind of understood it because it's where buried with Christ, were raised with Christ, but in the Greek, it has these little prefixes that make it co-, you know, together with, and it's very clear in the Greek, and you don't always see it in the English.

So, and I kind of just learned that doing the study, and I was like, ah, that makes sense. Together with, is how we are doing this in the Greek. Now we have to look at what is the spiritual baptism, the baptism of Christ. And I've kind of mentioned it before, we're going to be studying the principles of Romans 6. So what is that? I could get that down, but we don't need that top line there.

But here's my second visual, which I did. And I went through this. And I like this visual. I kind of stole it from previous visuals of Hollyhoes, but I sort of modified it a bit. And so what I'm just throwing up here is the process of Romans 6, the spiritual baptism, the identification principle, the identification in Christ.

So there you are. You're saved, the moment of salvation. You're in Adam. At the moment of salvation, God retroactively places you, before the foundation of the world, into Christ, and into his death, burial, and resurrection. And how is that done, before the foundation of the world? Any thoughts about that? Being in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ? This might have been something your dad mentioned, Mel.

God sees all of time as just one bit. He created time, so it's his property. Yeah, he can go back and forth, and what you can't read on the top there is, it says, God does not account for time, only events and his purposes. So everything is, he's in the eternal present, and so the crucifixion of Christ, the actual thing is, in the present for him right now, it's really hard to think about. We can't really go there and explore it today, but that's sort of, because he's infinite, you know, he can do that.

He also places you in Adam, you were in Adam, when you're saved, back to the, as you see that ergo, back to the actual crucifixion of Christ. and you go down with Christ to burial, co-buried, you're resurrected with him again, and you come out in Christ with your new man, and you're raised, and that's why he's up top there, he's raised and ascended, and then when you walk, your walk, and it's not covered here in the text, but your walk is in Christ, or it should be, right?

It should be conditionally. But this is all positional truth. You've heard it 10,000 times here at Holly Hills. This is probably the 10,001st time. But it's good to hear, even every Sunday, isn't it? The word for baptism is from the root word baptizo. And it means to immerse. And when he immerses you into Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, it's permanent, isn't it? And it also means that you're permanently changed.

You know, my dad used to do that visual that he stopped doing because it made a mess of the white handkerchief. and you dip it in dye. But a white cotton handkerchief, if you dip it in blue dye, will so physically change that white cotton handkerchief. I mean, the dye seeds itself, fuses itself onto the little fibers of cotton. So you can never go back to a white handkerchief. You could try, but in bleach, but it's going to be a mess. It's not going to look the same as a pure white handkerchief.

So that's the idea. When I think of baptism, that's what I think about. And Verne had, he always used the example of iron, or when they made swords, you'd dip it, you'd baptize it into the plating, and then So it would come out with that nice plating, gold or silver plating that you can never separate that plating from your iron. So that's baptism.

I have here verse 11 through 12 is rendered, in whom you are circumcised by means of being co-buried with him in the baptism, that's an article, in which you were also raised with him through faith. And I've kind of melded 11 and 12 together. But we want to take a look at some easy, very easy Greek tenses and modes, or moods. Circumcised, co-buried, and co-raised, those three terms, are all aorist indicative, as you can see.

So aorist means each one of those things. being circumcised and co-buried and co-raised with Christ are reality, right? It's talking about the reality of these things happening. And then, oh I'm sorry, I get the aorist and the indicative mixed up, or reversed. So the aorist is the fact that it happened, right? Yes, the aorist is the fact that it happened. The indicative is the reality of it.

So, and the passive, of course, is the... Thanks, Roy. Yeah, it was done to you and you didn't do it. So the... I had this all figured out when I was putting this together. Now I'm all discombobulated. But it's the aorist. The aorist is the fact. of it, and the indicative is the reality of it happening. But all three are aorist indicative. Except for co-buried, because as we talked about, it's a participle, and it's within that participle of means, and that means that the circumcision is wrapped up in that being co-buried. So does that make sense, even though I reversed my aorist and my indicative? OK, one more helpful visual here. And this is Verne's. You can recognize this visual of the identification of truths as being Verne's.

So there we are, co-crucified with Christ, co-buried with him, co-raised, co-ascended and co-seated. And that golden circle is Christ and then there I am in Christ in each event in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. But what I didn't, what I learned putting this together is there's a lot of, in the New Testament, especially Paul, uses circumcision, the word circumcision. all the time. And so I'm always talking about physical circumcision, or one time he uses it, the circumcision of the heart. So I know what physical circumcision is. And here's a word of advice. When you're doing your own clip art and explaining circumcision, Do not Google circumcision clip art.

It's just not good. It's not pretty. Comes up with some medical journals. That's just, it's awful. It's indicative. Bob knows that. So I was like, whoa, I can't use those. That's a quiet word, too. Yeah. But the best visual I think I have is this one down here, that cut line.

And you can see it's, here's death, here's life, So you're buried in death with Christ. And there's your old nature. There's you being buried with Christ. And that old nature is, as we looked at in verse 11, it's cut away and it talks about circumcision. So there's your circumcision. And that visual of circumcision, same thing, is a good one. And it's pleasant to look at. So there you go, your old nature is cut away.

And that is the part in the lower left corner that I wasn't ever quite sure about. How did God separate the old nature from me? How was that done? I knew it was because I was identified in his death, but I never... When I discovered that the circumcision happened and it's related to the co-burial, that's what I learned. So this is all for me because this visual helps me probably the most.

Is that when the circumcision happened down when we are co-buried with Christ, by means of the co-burial of Christ. And I think I have this right, but I have the old nature, the man down there in jail, looks like he's in jail, but it's kind of true, right? He's condemned. The sin nature, the old nature is condemned, it's not forgiven. We are forgiven, but he's condemned. But he doesn't, he never really dies and goes to oblivion, does he?

He's always, we always can put him on like the, uh, dual mind or yeah, put, um, no, it's NGO, put them on like a set of clothes. Or we've also, my dad used to a lot, have the visual and, um, uh, another great, and I think of these, these, these graphs, these pictures worth a thousand words. I always think about, the Charlie Brown head, right?

And your soul and your spirit. And which side are you abiding on? Well, if you're abiding in Christ, you are in Christ and you're associated with your new nature, your new creation. But if you're abiding over in the sin nature, and it's where you abide is how he would explain it. So the old, let's see, I wanted to say one other thing about the old nature of being condemned. And you probably thought about it this way too.

The sin nature is a factory. Have you ever heard this or you've thought about this? It's like a widget factory. It produces sin. What comes out of that factory is widgets. So the factory is condemned and shut down. But you always have the widgets. So that's the difference between the sin nature and sins, plural. The sin nature is the factory of sin. The widgets are the product of sin, aren't they? And if Donald Trump could impose some tariffs on widgets, that would be wonderful. Has anyone heard that? The factory and the... Really?

Okay. And then another guy I was reading, Richeson, says the same thing. So it's kind of a good illustration. be perfect in reciting this, but the captain on a ship who's convicted of a crime which will be terminally punished when he gets ashore, but on the boat behind bars, but he's still shouting orders and the question is who's going to respond to the newly appointed interim captain or to this old guy back there? And then when we're talking about that, we're talking about your conditional state, right? Correct. How you are responding conditionally to all these positional truths, because Paul is really laying down the positional truth of identification with Christ.

Verse 12 has this phrase, you were co-buried with him in the baptism, you were co-raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead, and that in the working of God, I think one more Greek word for the day, before we leave the Greek words, is Energia, and that's working.

And I would have thought that working would be related to the Greek word for dynamite or dynamo. I would have thought that it would have the the D-Y-N kind of prefix to it, but it doesn't, it has, you can see the word energy in there. It's the working of God in all that identification. And it's interesting, that that word is only used in the New Testament as a supernatural working, so it's never used of any man, but it's from supernatural. It can be God, or I think it's used in reference to the devil at some point, but at least it's supernatural.

It's also an operation of God, And I really like that word because I always think of this, let me try and go back there, I always think of this, the identification truth and what he did on the cross for us as an operation, like a military operation. He had to place this into Christ, co-crucify us with him, co-bury us, we're raised, we're co-ascended, we're seated.

He also, he cut away the old sin nature, he recreated us in Christ. In this process, there's the new birth, isn't there? The new birth is all, that's an operation within this, what he did here at the cross. There's sanctification, that operation, glorification, redemption.

You see how much is going on and that just fascinates me about how many things went on at the cross. And they're all operations. like military operation or maybe a physical operation like a doctor would do? I have to point out that it's very encouraging to me that only God can do this. Right.

He's the only one that can cut away the old man because he says in Hebrews 4.12, the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword. and spirit, joints and marrow, is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of others. So God can do this. We can't do this. We can't separate the difference between soul and spirit, but God can. God can separate the old man and make us new. That's encouraging. I don't have to worry about it.

I don't have a $20 bill on me, but if I did, I would give it to you for that statement, because I have that written in my notes, Hebrews 4.12, and even though in Hebrews 4.12 it's the division of soul and spirit The piercing of those two is done by the Word of God, it says. But still, God can... And that's exactly what I was thinking. Only God can separate yourself from that nature, right? And cut it away and do that operation. So that's... Even though it's not quite a parallel verse, it's still the working of God, just as you said. So, yeah.

That's a $50.00. Andrew, we've got a responsibility here, though, if you look at verse 12, right? I mean, that responsibility is through the faith in this operation of God, right? I mean, we, you know, the truth of the scripture is there, but we've got to respond to that by believing it, right? Right, yeah. Right.

And maybe in Colossians 2.11, I'm looking for through faith in 2.11 there's not the word faith right so it's just it's just that he did it a fact that he did it right um and yes you're you're correct in hebrews 4.12 it's it's it's a it has the concept of faith in it but yeah still god did that back in or is able to do that in 4.12 right if you have faith and he'll do it, but boy, only he can know where the dividing line between soul and spirit is. It's really incredible. Okay, so, summing up.

Here's my little summation, and this kind of goes back to, Bob, you were talking about the Eastern mysticism things in your previous lesson, but the Gnostics were coming into Colossae, mixing eastern mysticism and theosophy with the mosaic requirements of the Jewish system, and physical circumcision. So not only were the Gnostics bringing in, because the Silk Road was going right around this area, Klossy, Laodicea, the Silk Road was bringing not only silk and spices, but these Buddhism and early Buddhism maybe, Hinduism because Bob you mentioned that, and all this kind of mishmash of things. But they also brought in for some reason the Mosaic requirements of circumcision. So Paul is addressing that in verse 11 and 12. It's similar to Acts 15 when certain men came down from Judea teaching unless you be circumcised according to the law of Moses. Same thing going on in Colossae.

Also similar to Galatians 2.3 and was it Mike who covered that just a few weeks ago right in the main service that Paul in Jerusalem brought Titus to demonstrate the fact that he was not physically circumcised, and Paul wasn't about to do that. And they got all bent out of shape about that, but Paul was saying, hey, Titus doesn't need to be physically circumcised. That was a Mosaic requirement. And here he says in 2.11 that In fact, you've been spiritually circumcised.

And doesn't that... a verse that came up for me was Romans 10, 4. And Christ is the end of the law, right? So all this mosaic stuff has run into its terminal point when Christ came and died on the cross. And it's so terminated that God even had the temple raised, destroyed. So there's no, at this point, with these Colossians, there's no Jewish system to adhere to. It's done, it's vanished. But yet, these people were still attaching the Mosaic system, legalizing, and that's what we're discussing today, is keeping ourselves and keeping the Colossians away from the legal system the legalistic system of Judaism.

I think it's parallel, I'm not really comparing these two sections exactly, but it's similar to Paul saying to the Galatians, are you made perfect or complete by the flesh? He says that right after, he says, O foolish Galatians, right? Are you now being perfected by the flesh? And this is the exact same problem that these Colossians are having.

And that's the reason for this, for Paul explaining the circumcision and the identification truths. Paul does not make an argument against the claims of the Gnostics and go into all of their philosophies. He only presents Christ in his fullness. And he comes out with that at verse 9. And so Paul presents Christ instead of doing a Socratic kind of argument against Gnosticism. So he presents Christ, he presents the fact that they are in him and they are completely full with his fullness, they are complete in Christ.

So yet Paul, in a sense, is saying, why do you want to be physically circumcised when you already have been circumcised with the circumcision made without hands? It's a spiritual circumcision. It's a greater circumcision. You should never want to go back to just the physical.

And that was just a sign that God gave to Abraham. It was just a tradition, wasn't it, that God wanted Abraham and the Jewish nation to kind of think about. And it's interesting to think that back then, when God told Abraham and gave him Moses, I guess you'd say, about circumcision. No, it was Abraham, wasn't it? It goes all the way back to Abraham and Isaac.

Back then, he had all this in mind, this circumcision, this cutting away of the old nature, and I never thought about that until this study either. That way back then, physical circumcision was just a pre-shadow of all of this that we're covering today. That's pretty amazing in God's foreknowledge and looking ahead.

So by means of spiritual baptism, Paul explains to them that they have been permanently immersed and placed forever in Christ, His death, burial, and His raising again. The identification truths, right? Their sin nature has been dealt with. I didn't want to change the whole point of my lesson today. Sin nature has been dealt with, it's been condemned, and it's been separated from these Colossian believers. But skipping to chapter 3 and verse 11, where Paul says there are neither circumcised nor uncircumcised, but Christ all in all. Christ is all in all, right?

And that really nicely ties into Colossians 2.9, that Christ has the fullness of God.

And 2.10, that you are complete in Christ. And there you have at chapter 3, verse 11, Christ is all in all. So it's just, it's only Christ that he's preaching to all this nonsense that the Gnostics are bringing. Yeah, Roy. The preeminence of Christ is here, isn't it? That He is preeminent in all things.

Versus the false teachers, that there's got to be somebody between us and God. Yeah. You can go directly to God and save your friends. We have that relationship. He is preeminent. And we are complete in Him. We have that relationship. We don't teach a doctrine, we teach a person. Right. And that's in Colossians 1, like 15, right? He's before all things and all things hold together. His pre-eminence.

The other thing that comes to mind, I don't know if we've mentioned it here, but it's the Spirit of God that identifies us with Him. We've all been baptized into Christ. And that operation, the Holy Spirit, on the basis of the Word of Christ, identifies us with Him in His resurrection. What a glorious thing that is. Oh yeah, yeah. That's amazing. And even though we've heard it, it's always amazing.

And here I have Romans 7.25, who shall deliver me from this body of death, and that of course is God, and I think God through the Lord Jesus Christ who delivered me from this ugly body of death. So, there you go. Any other questions or comments? Well, good. I'll close in prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this lesson today. As Roy said, getting to know the person of Christ and all that He's done and all that the Holy Spirit has done for us and we are complete in Him. Thank you for this day and the beautiful weather. Be with us as we go into the 10 a.m. study and be with us throughout this week. In Jesus name, Amen.