Alive Together with Him, Col, 1:13-15

End of the passage here this morning. Remember last week we brought up the point that these verses here that we're looking at are to bring us back to the place of where we were prior to the crucifixion as unbelievers and then bring us through to give us new insights into the meaning of the crucifixion and the resurrection. How we were co-crucified with Christ and co-resurrected with Christ. So once Paul completes this section, he's then going to switch back into a section with some very practical warnings, which we'll get into next week here. Alright, so as we look at this passage here, one of the things we're going to do is look at it, and I want us to look at it with some key questions in mind.

I've included these in your handout, and by the way, if you're joining us here this morning for the first time, this little thing in the corner is the page on your handout, so you can keep track with us, okay? All right. First question that's going to come up is, what real difference does it make whether I'm a believer or not? You know, it seems like I breathe the same air and wear the same clothes and drive the same cars and go on the same streets and work in the same places.

So what difference does it make? Another question, what does it mean for me to have forgiveness of sins? How forgiven is forgiven? I mean, when we talk about forgiven, are we talking forgiven or really, really, really forgiven? Am I locked into being a captive to something all my life? Or just how free am I? And finally, where do I put my hope and where is my focus in life?

Those are questions I think this passage hits head on. Let's take a look at it. One of the ways we're going to do that is we're going to break up each verse so that we look at each one one at a time. It gives us a little room on the slide and the screen to see things. So let's begin with the first verse.

He says there, when you were dead in your transgressions, he's taking them back to the time before they were believers, isn't he? He's taking back to the time before they'd become believers and before they had been spiritually transformed by their faith in Christ. This is a passage that has parallels to ones in Ephesians 2 that we've studied before.

Ephesians 2.1 says, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, or repeated similarly a few verses later, when we were dead in our transgressions.

And very similarly, when you were dead in your transgressions, the King James has similar to the Ephesians 2.5 passage there. What you see with the pluses there, Trespasses or transgressions, that's paroptima. It means falling alongside the path.

And then where sins is listed there in Ephesians 2.1, that's hamartia, missing the mark. Let's take a closer look at what those words mean. What are trespasses and sins? We looked at this when we were looking at Ephesians chapter 2, but I think it's worth revisiting here for a moment.

We said that trespasses are a falling off the path. and just so we don't get the idea that the falling off the path is this nice little flat path, and we've got this nice path, and we fall alongside, and it's just a minor little stumble, and we get back on the path.

The path is like this one you see on the side here in the picture. I'm going to make it a little bit bigger. This is not a minor falling off the path. That's the kind of falling off the path he's talking about. Falling off of the path that God has such that when you're off, it's a serious consequence. That's what he means by trespass. That's what he means by transgression.

It's a big word, not a little tiny one. Sins is the next one. Sins is missing the mark, and it has this idea. Mortal sins, mortally serious sins, spiritual moral failure, completely inconsistent with the righteous, holy, and glorious character of God. You see, an issue with trespasses and sins isn't just Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls. But instead, the issue is God's character. The issue is God's character. Falling far short of God's character, of absolute and total holiness. God's character is the standard, and not ours, not man's.

What this passage says is that the unbeliever is dead in his trespasses and sins. Death is separation. and the unbeliever is separated from God as evidenced by and continued in these trespasses and sins. So the unbeliever, using the term that we've talked about, position and condition, the unbeliever has a consistent position and condition.

How do you like that? Consistency sounds nice, doesn't it? Only it's consistently in the wrong place. Both the character from which sins spring, is contrary to God, separated from God, and the very acts that spring from that character are also in separation from God. Both.

We pictured it this way some weeks back when we were looking at it. The unbeliever is just walking in the trespasses and sins. Every step that he takes, one after the next, is constantly in these trespasses and sins. But the description of the unbeliever here is not done. He's not through. And he says, you are dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh.

So we have to ask the question, is Paul slipping back into his Jewish past? Is he getting Jewish again? Is he turning Jewish on us? Is Vernon about to spring on us some Jewish plot? Aha! I'll get them Jewish after all, right? No, not really. You can put your yarmulkes away.

Paul has said elsewhere, in Galatians 5.6, for in Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, they don't mean anything, but faith working through love. So that's not the issue. Farther on in Galatians, next chapter, 6.15, for neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Several passages there in Romans, and you have that in your handout to pursue on your own time.

Paul is clear here, physical circumcision is not suddenly being snuck back in is the issue. That's not the problem. The spiritual issue is at stake here, not the physical issue. When we say stake, we're not talking about this thing, too, by the way. Sorry to give that to you before lunchtime, that's unfair. Alright, the uncircumcision of your flesh.

Verse 11, which we already studied, makes clear that this refers to the status of the sin nature. The status of the sin nature. The sin nature is in full control of the unbeliever. the circumcision of the flesh, the sin nature for the believer is put out of commission, but not eradicated. We saw when we were studying Ephesians chapter 2, the law is put away, and the sin nature is put away.

Those are not eradicated, the believer is separated from them, but they are not eliminated and totally taken out. Okay. Now, it is the sin nature which is calling the shots in the unbeliever's life. Absolutely. Not only are trespasses and sins fully evident, but the sin nature is fully in operation and in full control. Okay? Now, how do we illustrate this? The sin nature is what generates the sins. You see, if we take a It's a legalistic and external approach. We say, ah, I'm not sinning, therefore I don't have a problem, right? Yes, there is still a problem, because you cannot repress that character.

See this wolf? You know why it displays wolf behavior? It's a wolf! Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Anyway. Crocodile. A crocodile displays crocodile behavior, because it's a crocodile by nature. A lion displays lion behavior because by nature it's a lion. Just like we saw the guy who got into the lion cage. What do you expect them to do? Be anything but lions? It's a good thing they were fed right before he stepped into the cage.

Now, there's one little comma there in our English translation, and that little tiny comma is a big divide. We want to take a look at that. It's a massive divide. It's a Grand Canyon, if you will. between the first half of the verse and the second half.

He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions. That divide is believing. Here the believer then, as he's writing to the believer, he says, you were dead, but now He made you alive. The difference is that little comma there makes the divide between those who believe and those who don't believe. Before you believed, you were this.

Now that you believe, He made you alive. He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions. Two things to recall about Jesus Christ and life. One is that we were made alive together with Him, and as we live now, it is by His life. By His life. Our life is not driven by anything. It is His life that is our purpose. Okay? It is His life that's our purpose.

Now, so what this passage is telling us here, and it will tell us in the next verse, is we have been crucified with Christ. The implication, and mentioned earlier in the prior passage, was that we were buried with Christ. That's implied, so we put dashes around that. And then, what we see in this very verse, we have been raised with Christ. Throughout the writings of Paul, all five of those teachings are brought forth. And so we see in this particular passage, two of them with the being buried implied and specifically mentioned just in prior verses. Okay.

One of the other things that we see is this passage we're looking at now has very close parallels with Ephesians 2.5 that we looked at. For example, you were dead in your transgressions. We were dead in our transgressions. Similar phrasing there.

And then the next part out of Colossians 2.13, He made you alive together, He made us alive together with Christ.

So it's that little part of Ephesians 2.5 that's sort of a summary of the truths that we see here in Colossians 2.13.

Alive with Christ and life from Christ. That's the key thing to recall as we look at this passage. We have been made alive with Christ because of God's doing. And from here on out, it is Christ's life continually that is our life. This passage here lays out that we've been made alive with Christ, but the key thing to remember is that it is Christ's continuing life in us and through us. that is pivotal here. We see that truth as we get into Colossians chapter 3.

We'll see it again as we get into Galatians 2.20 and John 10.28. Okay. Now, the last part of that is having forgiven us all our transgressions. Not only is every believer forgiven of every sin, past, present, and future, but the means to that forgiveness and its full extent are illustrated in the next verse. What does Paul do? He gives an illustration to explain what it means to be forgiven.

How did that come about? What's that talking about? What Paul is doing here is he's talking about some cultural background which the people that were getting this letter knew about very well. It turns out that military capture was one of, got to get the fingers out here, six ways. that someone in that culture could become a slave.

Is it approval of slavery? No, it is not. What Paul often does, he will use an illustration from the culture so that people understand what is being said. It does not mean that he approves of what the culture is doing. It's important to make that distinction.

What they would do is they would capture someone in a military capture, and then either sell those people back to the nation or people that they were taken from, or they would sometimes actually have slave traders ready in the lines right behind their military action, ready to take the number of slaves that were coming. Example, the Jews revolted against Romans 66 AD. Between then and 70 AD, the Romans captured different groups of Jews and in total took 130,000 Jews and sold them off to the slave traders to get sold out to the rest of the Roman Empire. That was an example of how this would take place.

Paul is using that practice, again it's not approval, it's an illustration, in order to demonstrate this idea of forgiveness here. The ransom price for which the captive was held had to be paid. When you paid the ransom price, it was said that you were redeemed, or when someone paid the ransom price, you were redeemed. Therefore, the price which must be paid was then forgiven. That's the word meanings that he's using there. So, if we take the analogy that he's drawing from here, those who don't believe remain as slaves.

If you look at that, this is clearly laid out in scripture, we saw it already In Colossians 1.13, they're under the domain of darkness. They have, as Romans and Titus make clear, a continuing presence and rule of the sin nature.

Those who don't believe are slaves to false gods, captive to them. They're slaves to the law. The law is a slave master. They're slaves to men. Slaves to the principle of death. And finally, slaves to the sins themselves. We have a modern term for this, it's called addictive behavior, right? Slaves to sins.

So, only those who believe that they need to be freed from the sins, alright, I'm captive, right? It's a recognition I need to be freed. And that the ransom price was paid by Christ by His death on the cross Those are the ones who take advantage of that payment and therefore have forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins isn't God saying, oh gee, I'm real sorry about that, we'll just let it go. Forgiveness of sins is no, the ransom price having been paid and we acknowledge it and recognize it.

Twice in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and then here in 7.23 Paul tells the Corinthians, you were bought with a price. You were slaves of all those slave masters that we talked about before. You were slaves, but you had been bought with a price. The price paid was Christ's death. We were saved in this way. We were slaves by capture, held captive until the ransom price was paid. Christ paid the price of ransom by his death on the cross.

Christ says in Mark 10.45, I came to be a ransom. I came to be that payment, is what he was saying.

Only those who believe take advantage of the ransom price having been paid. Is it paid for all? Yes. Only those who believe take advantage of it. Through belief they have been redeemed, that is, the ransom price is paid, accepted by the captive, and therefore taking full advantage of the ransom price having been paid. The forgiveness of sins, which otherwise held us captive and destined us as slaves, is given to us. So that's why Paul writes to both Ephesians and Colossians, in him we have the redemption, the ransom price paid, and the forgiveness of sins. Why? Because we said, I'll take that and walk out. I'll walk free. Here's the illustration. Pardon my compression here. Vern is under a massive IOU. Vern has become hopelessly in debt to the tune of, say, $10 billion. How would I get that far in debt? It's just buying stuff for my grandkids. I just love my grandkids. Can't help myself.

Okay. So now, recognizing there's simply no way out of paying out the $10 billion Now, a wonderful thing happens. A wealthy person graciously agrees to write a check to Vern for that $10 billion. Phew! Man! So he writes out a check. Here it is. Vern the debtor for an amount of $10 billion for payment of Vern's debt signed by Gracious. This Gracious person has written out the check.

I might say, I don't believe it. No, that can't be. impossible, and not recognize it, and remain under the debt. Or, I can take the check, sign it, turn it over as full payment, and I'm out from under it. That's the choice that is presented to every single person on planet Earth, isn't it? Christ has made the payment, He's written out the check, sufficient for every single person on planet Earth. He paid the price. It is only those who say, I believe it, take the check, sign it over, in full payment, they get to walk free.

They have forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins is central to the salvation of believers. Let's take a look at it, okay? Now, forgiveness of sins is laid out. This is part of the message when Peter is first speaking to the Gentiles for the first time. He says, those who believe have forgiveness of sins. It's the message we see here in Colossians 2, 13 and 14. Now, redemption includes that forgiveness of sins. The ransom price is paid through Christ's death on the cross. Those who believe and are therefore in Christ are said in Ephesians 1, 7 and Colossians 1, 14 to have forgiveness of sins. Because they, to use the analogy, they said sure, they signed the check, turned it in for full payment, done deal. The price is paid for all. The forgiveness of sins is for those who believe. They are redeemed.

That is why Paul writes to the Galatians to use one of the things to which people become enslaved. He says, we have been redeemed from the law. Unbelievers are still under it. We mentioned five different ways in previous weeks that unbelievers are still under it, but we have been redeemed from it.

Those who are justified are also forgiven of sins. We frequently talk about justification as being declared righteous, and that's the short version. But in truth, justification includes forgiveness of sins and redemption. In Romans 3, it says we've been justified through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. So forgiveness of sins is at the core of the understanding of redemption and of justification.

We are forgiven of sins because we have been redeemed, the price has been paid, we've accepted the payment, we walk scot-free, and God said, because that has happened, and you are now in Christ, and have His righteousness, I can declare you righteous.

And, add to that, we studied this when we were going through the early verses of Ephesians chapter 1, adoption of sons. That was a cultural custom in the Roman Empire. And that custom included forgiveness of all past debts. If you were adopted as a son in the Roman Empire, we think of adoptions for kids. In the Roman Empire, it was for adults. If you were adopted as a son in the Roman Empire, all past debts were completely forgiven. Why? You no longer have your history. completely forgiven because you now have the history of Jesus Christ. So forgiveness of sins is core to each of these biblical teachings.

Now, what is he going to do? He isn't going to just pass on that. He's going to illustrate it in the next verse. That's what we'll do here. Verse 14, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us. Now, the certificate of debt, chirographon, we're going to take a look at that in a minute. to this word decrees or dogma in the Greek, and we need to clarify something here. This is a dog. This dog is a mob, but this is not dogma. This is not what Paul means here. What he does mean is this.

Ephesians 2.15 is the only other place where we've seen this word And what was the word then? It was every individual point of the law who said that there were 613 laws in the Mosaic Law. 365 of those were things that you were absolutely not to do. Negative laws. Negative statements.

Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do this. Don't do that. Item by item by item. That's what this is. All the decrees of the law against you say, don't do this. Do that, and to the extent that you fail each one of those, the tally of debt, indebtedness, keeps increasing.

Now, let's look at this chirographon word here. Chirographon may sound like a combination between a chiropractor, a giraffe, and a phone. I don't know what that looks like, but that's not it. Chirographon is this. It's simply a written out IOU. These are the people involved.

This is the amount of money owed. In this case, this particular Karagrafon, the lady inherited, and that's something that's different from our culture, the lady inherited the debt from her father, owes 18,000 silver drachma. Now, how much money is that? Average wage for a worker in those days, about one drachma a day. You're looking at 18,000 days. She said, in order to pay that off, I'll be a weaver, and work around the house for 18,000 days. Basically, she wasn't going to pay it off. It was going to go to the next generation before it got paid off. This is a kairouga font. It's an aoyu. It's hopeless. She's never going to get out from underneath it.

Paul used this practice himself. Philemon 18 and 19. He's writing to Philemon, who by the way was a resident of Colossae. He says, if Onesimus, who was your slave, has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will repay it. That's a chirographon within the letter. This is a legally valid document. OK, if I, Leman, could hold it up and say, OK, here it is. You said it. You signed it.

Now, Philippians 4.18, which we studied last year, he says to the Philippians, I've received everything in full. That's a receipt, right? He included it in his letter to them. So basically, it was one of the ways of canceling a note, canceling an obligation was to write a receipt.

But there's another way, and that is to just put lines through it or Xs. And this is an example of one where they just scratched out a bunch of blotchy lines, and that meant that the IOU was canceled. Here's another one, ancient times. You can kind of see some cross-hatching marks here. Canceled out note. Hundreds of those are found from the documents of the New Testament times.

Here's another one where they put an X across the middle of it here. In the year 85 AD, the governor of Egypt, the Roman governor, in a proceeding, he says, let the chirographon be be crossed out, put an X across it, wipe it out, cut out the debt. Now, having cancelled out the certificate of debt, of decrees that were against us, you see, the law is going to go down and say you did this, you didn't do that, you did this, you didn't do that.

And you know if our consciences are all we have to work with, those will do the same thing too. Sitting there and condemning us point by point by point. We need to know folks, and this is more than just theological, This is personal. We need to know that Christ took those things on the cross. Don't we need to know that? We need to know that because if we sit down and think of, boy, the stuff I did, boy, the stuff I didn't do, it'll bury us. We need to know that that's completely done away with. It was nailed to the cross.

The Jews saw sins as debts. We see that in Matthew 6. I know there's some ladies that are involved in a Bible study where they're going through the book of Matthew. They saw sins and debts as basically equal. The sins were pictured as debts. The word for forgiving a debt and forgiving sins is the same word. Even that in Hebrew, hayav, the word for debtor, is the same word as a person who's guilty of sin. That's why you'll see what's often called the Lord's Prayer you know, forgive us our trespasses or forgive us our debts, you know, it'll be the same thing because in the Hebrew is the same word. And here we see, you know, if you forgive others their transgressions, again, this is coming out of, you know, Matthew. Repeated looking at transgressions and debts as equal.

Luke 11.4 is another instance if you want to look that up. The idea is, again, forgiving debts and forgiving sins was seen in the Jewish culture as the same. So when Paul says the certificate of debt was cancelled out, he's saying your sins are forgiven. The believer's sins are usually forgiven.

Usually this chirographon was handwritten. You typically wrote it yourself, or if you were illiterate, as at least one of those documents that I showed you, was an example of, then you'd have somebody else write it for you, and they would say, I so and so am writing this for so and so who is illiterate. And they would put that out there. But the typical thing, just like Paul did, and Philemon is to say, I, see he said, see I am writing this with my own hand.

Make the point of, I acknowledge the debt. So this Although the price was paid for every single person, it is applicable to those who believe. Why? Because they acknowledge the debt. This is considered a self-written document by default. The sins of those who acknowledge them and believe in Christ's death are full payment, fully forgiven. And what's more, as he says at the end of the verse, they're taken out of the way, wiped out of existence.

One of the things they could do with their documents in those days, that we have a hard time doing now, because the ink was not acid-based, it would sit on top of the paper rather than biting into the paper, and you could just wash it right off. So the debts were not only crossed off, at first they would cross them off, so they legally crossed off, and then they would wash the debt right off. Not on the page anymore, and that's the picture that Paul is using. So are you wondering about whether you're forgiven or not? Not only did God say, fully paid, He went and washed it all off on top of that, put it on the cross, posted it, done deal. All of what you are guilty of, folks, if you're a believer here this morning, it's gone.

It is crossed out, legally acknowledged as out of the way, and then erased. Why? Your history is not your history. Your history is the history of Jesus Christ, because you've been identified with Him, if you're a believer. Fully, fully forgiven. Completely forgiven.

Then it said, when he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, having made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through him. When the readers of the first century read these verses and got to this, they were shocked. You must be kidding me.

See, to them, the cross was absolutely the worst. It was saved and reserved only for the lowest of the low and the worst of the worst. And it was a horrible death. It was not something you'd want to watch. The death sometimes took days. People were suffocated to death. People oftentimes bled some, but they would go into wild shakings and shiverings because of exhaustion and lack of oxygen. It was repulsive and disgusting. It was so bad that the Roman judges and governors who pronounced sentence were allowed to use other words to describe it when they pronounced the sentence.

These verses, however, make Christ's death on the cross a victory. Wow, instead of Christ losing there on the cross, that's what the world looks at it as. Boy, this guy lost and he's being killed in the worst possible, most disgusting and repulsive way. That's his victory chariot. That's his victory chariot. And instead, the rulers and authorities that the Colossian false teachers were saying, those are the ones you have to pay attention to, they're the ones that get dragged along in the victory procession.

This rulers and authorities is a term that we see here, and we saw it previously in Colossians 1.16. Let's see, that was just after Ella was born. Okay. Anyway, here's the story.

You have the false teachers teaching the idea that you have this really good God and the really evil world in between the two, since a good God can't have anything intimate to do with an evil world. There was a long series of angels between them. And so the false teachers were saying, pay attention to these angels. You're supposed to worship them. You're supposed to give them lots of attention. There's a hierarchy. Learn their names. And lots of attention to these angels.

And what is Paul saying? No. No, that's not quite right. Instead, it's Jesus Christ is the one you pay attention to. And these ones that you've been told to pay attention to, They're the losers in the victory procession. They're the losers. Now, you might look at that and say, well, that's great, but I'm not being taught that in my culture.

What relevance does that have to me? The relevance is this. There is a tendency on our part as we look at things that the culture is teaching us, that the world is teaching us, to focus our attention on that. Oh, it's really important what happens here. It's really important what happens there. It's really important what my bank account says. It is so ultimately important who got elected this last week that I'm going to get distracted by that. He's saying, no, you need to understand what's first. Who's ahead? Jesus Christ is ahead. Your eternity will be radically changed by that. The last election won't change your eternity.

Don't get distracted by what's important or unimportant. Does it matter? Yes. But when you come to saying what's priority and what counts forever, it's very clear. Very clear. The triumph is through Him. The questions that we looked at here earlier, what real difference does it make? If I'm a believer, I'm made alive with Him. I have life instead of death. If I am a believer, my sins are forgiven, wiped out, crossed out, gone.

Whether it was something I did do or something I didn't do. And by the way, we'll put under that, anything done to you. Wiped out, gone. And there's some awful things that happen here on planet Earth. If you're a believer, you're taken care of. Forgiveness of sins means completely gone, wiped out, taken out of the way. The debt is fully paid. You're really forgiven, not just sort of.

One of the things that I think is key to look at is, scriptural oftentimes talk about there will be a judgment day for believers, and there will be. But you know that Jesus Christ is not waiting there saying, boy, I can't wait till Vernon walks through those gates, I'm going to fry him. No. Instead, you look at the last chapter of Revelation and some of the last words of Jesus Christ recorded in the entire Bible.

He says, I am coming and my reward is with me. What's he looking forward to, folks? He's not saying, I can't wait till I tear Vern up one side and down the other. He's saying, I would love to reward him. How can I reward you? See, that's what he's anticipating.

Forgiven is really forgiven. I'm free because He set me free. Scripture uses a word in some places, ex-agorazzo, taken out of the market. I'm no longer being passed back and forth as a slave to this and that. I'm completely set free in Jesus Christ. In Christ I am truly free.

And finally, where do I put my hope and where is my focus in life? I hope this last week that if you are in a position that you took the opportunity to vote, to study very carefully, to make wise choices, I'd encourage that. I hope that happens. If you have an opportunity the next time around, assuming the Lord leaves us here that long, do that. But our hope and our focus is ultimately in the Lord. Our hope and our focus is ultimately in the Lord.

There is no joy or disappointment in this last week's vote that can impact my eternity with Jesus Christ. There is nothing that was voted on one way or the other that will impact everything that God has put in place. My position is untouched. What he is predestined to be, that I be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, will remain. I am completely, totally forgiven. And he is eagerly looking forward to that day. He says, my reward is with me. He's not waiting to tear us up one side and down the other, because we're completely forgiven. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you. What marvelous things you've done. Lord, thank you for your marvelous forgiveness, Lord. Things that I've done, things that I should have done, you've paid the price for it all. And I just thank you so much for that. And what is so amazing is that after saving me and taking me out of that prison, you said, okay, now let's tell you It's going to take you eternity to know all the ways I've blessed you. How marvelous, Lord. Thank you. In Jesus' name, Amen.