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Let's read now from the Epistle to the Colossians, chapter two, beginning in verse eight. Take heed, lest there shall be anyone that makes spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And in him you have been made full, who is the head of all principality and power, in whom you were also circumcised, with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ.
Some of you may have translations that at that point read, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh. You ought to notice that a better reading of the manuscript omits the word sins and simply reads, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ. Having been buried with him in baptism, wherein you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did he quicken together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.
Having put off from himself the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. So we come now to a very important passage in this epistle, and one which we shall find, I suspect, contains some difficulties, and we shall need patience with each other as we try to determine, with God's help, the meaning of the passage. There will come difficulties in the terms that Paul uses. I suspect even in such a common term as the word flesh in verse eleven when it comes to deciding what it means to put off the body of the flesh, we may find we have disagreements.
It is a notoriously difficult term, uh, to control. And secondly, we shall perhaps have some difficulty with concepts. What we shall find ourselves saying does it mean when in verse eleven we are told that we have been circumcised with the circumcision of Christ? What does that mean? And then towards the end of the chapter, we might have some difficulty and indeed disagreement in determining who is the subject of the many and important verbs that are there used. Who was it who quickened us, God the Father or God the Son?
Who was it that blotted out the bond written against us? Who was it that took it out of the way and nailed it to his cross? Was it God the Father or God the Son? Whose is the triumph in verse fifteen? Is it talking about our Lord stripping off from himself the principalities and powers, or is it is, is it God who does this thing? Perhaps you might eventually decide that in those final verses it comes to the same thing, whoever is the grammatical subject, be it God or be the Father or God the Son. But in any way, we shall need patience with each other and loving kindness, uh, where we find ourselves perhaps disagreeing or not yet understanding fully.
However, let us not allow the difficulties to obscure the main drift of the passage. And so, to start with, let's look once again at the, uh, thought flow of the epistle in its major parts and see what help we can derive from that. And the passage we now have to consider is the middle paragraph of this second section, this second movement of the, uh, epistle. And we noticed this morning that it is one in a row of paragraphs that are dealing with the question of wisdom, true and false, and in particular this paragraph, this paragraph two, is going to deal with the wisdom of God, the sublime and divine wisdom seen in the ways and means it used for our salvation and sanctification.
Secondly, let us, uh, help ourselves by contrasting this second paragraph in the second movement with the second paragraph in the first movement. And we shall notice, of course, at once that there are similarities. In both of these paragraphs, we have marvelous descriptions of Christ, and then descriptions of ourselves, our past and present. In the first section, it was Christ first and supreme, the great creator, redeemer, and reconciler. Now here it's going to be, in the second paragraph of movement two. it's going to be Christ sufficient and triumphant.
Whether it is God the Father who triumphs over the principalities and powers, or whether it is, uh, Christ, it comes to the same thing in the end, isn't it? Through Christ, God in his divine strategies has gained the triumph over the aforesaid principalities and powers. Christ then sufficient. You are complete in him, for in him dwells, dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. It is not merely that when he was on earth and suffered at Calvary, that the it pleased God that all the fullness should dwell in him. Now risen and in glory, he still has a human body.
Greek Gnosticism wouldn't thank you for saying that, would it? Nor would Christian Science and various other forms of Hinduism all around us nowadays. But you'll see it is the glorious fact that we're called upon to believe that our Lord, risen and now ascended has gone back to heaven with a real human body and has it still. And in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and in him you have been made full. But now let us notice the difference the- that occurs between these two paragraphs when they come to talk about ourselves, the believers, and what our needs were originally.
In the first section in chapter one, Paul describes our past in these terms, that we were alienated and enemies in our minds through our evil works. And therefore, what Christ had to do for us, what God had to do for us, was to reconcile us. And incidentally, let me now say, in answer to my own question of last week, that when the Bible talks of God reconciling us, it implies two things, not just one thing. It certainly implies that God had to change us and turn us from being enemies of God into, uh, friends and children of God.
Reconciling us had to change us, but there was more to the great work of Christ in reconciliation than just changing us. It had also to do with God. We'll see in the ancient Greek world, if you talked of reconciling Mr. Smith to Mr. Brown, you didn't mean that you changed Mr. Smith and stopped him being an enemy of Mr. Brown and made him a friend of Mr. Brown. You could mean that, of course, but you also meant that you had to do something for Mr. Brown. Because Mr. Brown, in this case, had a great cause against Mr.
Smith. Mr. Smith had offended him, dare, uh, uh, sinned against him, grievously sinned against him. Therefore, Mr. Brown have every reason for being wroth with Mr. Smith. If you're going to recognize, uh, reconcile Mr. Smith to Mr. Brown, you must do something for Mr. Brown. You must remove the cause of his just anger and wrath against Mr. Smith. So was it with us and God. It was not merely that Christ had to change us and stop us from being enemies to God. Our sins had enraged, uh, the divine majesty.
And the death of Christ had to do something for God to remove from him the cause of his wrath against us, and that Christ has done. Isn't it glorious to think about it and fills our hearts with thanksgiving? So we were then, however, to come back to the point, we were enemies, alienated from God, and enemies in our mind, and needed to be reconciled. Now, when you come to this paragraph, you notice the difference. You once, he says, and now he doesn't say enemies, but you once, this is chapter two verse thirteen, you once were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your heart.
And therefore, uh, uh, you, uh, needed now not so much reconciliation, you needed new life. And what God has done, so we are told here, he has quickened us, that is, he has given us new life. So we notice the difference. Therefore, we shall notice the difference of the terms that are used to describe the great work of Christ in this middle paragraph of the epistle. Now, the problem of giving us new life turns out to be a double problem.
Just let's have a look at, uh, that in a little detail. Two problems, then. We were dead through our trespasses and the uncircumcision of our flesh. And if God was going to give us, uh, uh, life, then problem one, number one was how to put off what Paul here describes as the body of the flesh, utterly unacceptable to God. How did you put it off? And you're going to s- we're going to see that the answer to that problem is given us in verse eleven.
in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh through the circumcision of Christ. That's how that problem was dealt with. How to put off the body of the flesh. Problem number two. How could God forgive us and give us new life? Against his doing so were two great powers that were contrary.
There were the powers that were against us. The great handwriting contained in ordinances. That was against us. Christ took it out of the way. Secondly, there were the principalities and powers. They were not only against us, but they were against God's forgiving us and giving us new life. And God had to deal with them. Two problems, therefore, and we're going to think about those problems and the answer that God has given to them.
So we come to the first one. How do you put off the body of the flesh? How do you get people to walk in Christ, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all well pleasing. Not merely to have forgiveness, but having forgiveness, to learn to walk to the glory of God. You will remember that that is a problem, uh, that was brought to Abraham's attention, and we read of it in Genesis chapter seventeen.
Said God to Abraham, Abraham, walk before me. I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be thou perfect. How could Abraham learn to walk before God and in this sense be perfect? One of the answers is given us in the picture language of Genesis in chapter seventeen. It is in that chapter that God introduced to Abraham the right of circumcision. And Abraham and his descendants were circumcised. And Abraham learned to walk before God and be perfect.
So we better turn aside just for a moment, hadn't we? To help ourselves come to understand eventually what the circumcision of Christ is and may mean for us. Let's briefly think how circumcision is used in the Old Testament. Used in a number of ways, is it not? And we shall need to pick the one that suits our particular context when we come to it. In Romans chapter four, Paul points out that circumcision had this function, amongst others.
It was an outward sign given as a seal of the righteousness which Abram had by faith. Abram was justified, says Paul, before he was circumcised. That's very important. Circumcision didn't gain him justification. He was justified by faith, but circumcision was then given him as an outward sign to be a seal of the righteousness which he had by faith. Then in Genesis seventeen, we discover that circumcision was to be practiced by all Abraham's physical descendants who were male, because it was an emblem of physical descent from Abraham.
Nations do have emblems. I'm trying to think, uh, what the emblem of Ireland is, if I... Who? A rose. He's not a hundred percent Irishman, I know that's a... It's a cloverleaf or something. No, isn't it? No, no. A shamrock. Yes, it's a shamrock. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And the Irish have a leek, don't they, or something? I don't know exactly what it is. Nations have these emblems, and Israel had the emblem of circumcision, denoting physical descent from Abraham, or else membership of that nation that was physically descended from. Then when you come on to Book of Deuteronomy, for instance, chapter ten verse sixteen, you will find that already in Old Testament times, circumcision is used as a metaphor, where God's people are told to circumcise their hearts.
Obviously a metaphor. They are no longer to be, uh, uh, a disobedient, uh, an obstinate. They are to show God a willing heart, ready to obey him. What the Bible calls a circumcised heart, it's using it simply as a metaphor. Then again, when we come to a passage like Romans chapter two verses twenty five to twenty nine, Paul points out that as well as being an outward sign, uh, or, or and a emblem of physical descent from Abraham, circumcision, even for the Jew, was meant to be a symbol, a cutting off of the flesh.
In other words, it was a symbol that declared, or should have declared, that the man who practiced circumcision was thereby saying that he was willing to keep God's holy law. So much so that if a man was circumcised as a Jew but had no intention of keeping God's law, it was a denial of the symbolism of his circumcision. Just as, for instance, a Christian who has got himself baptized but has no intention of leading a holy life is denying the very, eh, symbolism of the baptism he has undergone. But there are other passages in the New Testament where it seems to me that circumcision is employed by Christian writers as a type in which the cutting off of the literal flesh, a literal, uh, uh, flesh from the body, becomes a prototype of a spiritual circumcision, a profound operation performed
upon the believer who trusts the Lord Jesus and is united with him. That at least is what I'm going to submit to your judgment, and I speak as to wise men and women, you judge what I say. We come back then to the problem. How to put off the body of the flesh. Compared with that, Abraham's problem is a small problem indeed, wasn't it? Circumcision for him was the cutting off of a literal scrap of literal flesh. The problem with us was not how do you get rid of a literal piece, a little piece of flesh, but how do you get rid of the whole body of flesh?
You say, why would you need to get rid of it? Well, allow me to remind you of the terms in which God talked to Noah about his indignation and dissatisfaction with the people of Noah's day. Said God to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me. And had you been Noah, you might have said to His Divine Majesty, excuse me, what is it in particular that you don't like about my neighbor, Mr. Smith, or me either? Is it, uh, that little bit of pride I have, uh, or could it be that my tongue is unduly sharp?
What little bit of speck is there in me that, uh, annoys you? And God would have said, it isn't a question of one little speck. You are so far gone in your evil that I have determined to get rid of the whole lot of you. Not the bad part of you, but the whole lot. The end of all flesh is come before me. As we shall presently see, of course, that is the state of affairs that we illustrate with our baptism, isn't it? What was wrong with you? Well, when you get baptized, you declare to the world what was wrong with you.
For in baptism, you are buried, as the verse is going on to say. Can you remember the day you were baptized, uh, if I might recall it to you, supposing you have been baptized, and you jolly well know you ought to be anyway. Um, which part of you did they bury? The bad part, I suspect, and left the good part standing there on the shore, so to speak, and and buried the bad bit. They buried your pride, but they left your lovely, charming, gracious attitudes, didn't they? And your generosity. No, you say, not that I remember. I think when I was baptized, they they buried the whole lot of me. Good stuff they did. Yeah?
And herein is a vital part of God's diagnosis of our, of our, of our need and how his salvation is going to work. You see, so many unconverted folks, they look upon themselves as nice, red, rosy apples with, unfortunately, just a little speck here and there, you'll see. And so they think that Christ has come along to help them get rid of that little speck. And if only they could do a minor little operation by the help of the Lord and get rid of that speck, then what they'd have left is a nice red apple. That is wrong. That is perilously wrong assessment of the situation. The more you get down to that speck and follow it, you'll find it's gone to the core, and the core is rotten.
Salvation is not improving us, getting rid of the odd speck. God's judgment is this, the end of all flesh is come, and as in Noah's day, he commanded that the whole lot should be drowned, finished with. So in the cross of Christ, that is God's estimate of us. The whole must die. But then that's a problem, isn't it? If putting off the body of the flesh has got to be as drastic as that, well, what will survive it?
You know how it was done in Noah's day, don't you? God first issued his judgment that all flesh must be destroyed. His work of salvation showed his divine wisdom, for God provided an ark, and Noah, uh, was invited to come into the ark. And the technique was not that the ark should escape the judgment. The ark went through the judgment and came out the other side. For the ark was so constructed that Noah could be in the ark with his family, and the ark bear the judgment, the flood beneath and the storm from above, and come through the other side.
All the wisdom of our God in the greater thing. Let's not first underestimate the sorry condition we were in. God's judgment, the end of everything come. Get rid of them, bury them. How? For if God issues his judgment upon me, I shall disappear. How can you put off the body of the flesh and yet you, sir, survive? I take now, therefore, the answer, the circumcision of Christ, to be referring to this profound thing. That once upon a time, you sir, you madam, if I'm talking to a believer, you were, as the Bible puts it, in the flesh.
You had no other ground of your being. If God's judgment had been passed on you just as you were in the flesh, that wouldn't have been just the end of the flesh, that would have been the end of you. How could God execute his judgment and save you? And he united you with his son in Christ. And Christ went through the flood, died, and you died with him, and he was buried, and you were buried with him, and he was raised again. Oh, shout your hallelujahs.
And you were raised in him. And the great miracle that has taken place, that now, as Paul puts it in Romans chapter eight and verse nine, you are not in the flesh. How has it been altered, you say? Well, by the circumcision of Christ. You are in the Spirit. You are in Christ as the very ground of your being. Uh, if that is the true interpretation of it, at least you'll begin to see this, won't you?
That salvation could be in another, in no other than in Christ, could it? To be in Christ. If I talked, uh, stood here and talked about your being in the Mic- Archangel Michael, or even in Socrates, you would think I'd gone astray in the mind. How could you be in Socrates, or even in the Archbishop of Canterbury, or in Michael the Archangel, or in anybody else. No, and that's why Christ and only Christ could be your savior, because you can be in Christ.
All pray consider who he is, in all the wonder of his person, not just a man, but the great representative man, God incarnate, truly human, truly divine, and can take us up into himself. Just as we were his idea in creation and were made in that sense in him, so now in redemption, this great new thing in God's universe, we are put into Christ. Problem then, number one, the putting off of the body of the flesh.
Through the circumcision of Christ, cut the roots of our personality and transferred us from the flesh to the spirit, gave us life and standing in Christ. So that for the believer, the judgment is past, and he has come through the flood, as he signifies in his baptism, buried with Christ, raised with Christ. And mark it well, when you were buried with Christ, you were saying you deserve to perish. Christ died for you, and you died with him. When you rose from the water at your baptism, it wasn't just a promise that you were going to try and live better.
You were illustrating a great fact that God in Christ had quickened you, given you new life, given you the very life of the risen Son of God. So that problem dealt with that way. Let's look briefly at the second problem. How could God forgive us? And so give us. You being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you has he quickened, he's made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.
So we come to the problem, if we were dead through our trespasses, through our going against God's holy law, and we were dead, on death row, so to speak, simply waiting for the day of execution. No hope. How could God deliver us and give us new life? You say, well, if he's God, he doesn't have to ask anybody's permission, does he? He just says, oh, well, now let's forget it, this trespass of yours. I mean, it's a long time in the past now, so let's brush it under the carpet and forget it, and you can come out of your condemned cell.
I'll give you new life. Oh no, indeed, you can't. Why can't you? Why couldn't God do it? Well, there were two mighty forces against his so doing it. There was, do you see, the great bond. What is here called the bond written in ordinances that was contrary to us, that great handwriting. That was against us. And it is talking about the charge of God's holy law against us.
Let's take that difficulty first. It was contrary to you. How is it contrary? Well, we think of God's holy law and who it was that gave it. Well, you say it was God gave it. Yes, and how he gave it too. Look at that great public demonstration on Sinai, when the transcendent Lord came down onto our planet and his feet touched Sinai, and the whole mountain was ablaze with smoke from the presence of Almighty God. How could our little planet contain him? And gave his law. And here is the long, long list of our trespasses against that law.
How can God say, oh well, yes, I did come down to Sinai, that's true. That's a long while ago, you know, Moses was living then, and things have changed, and society has altered, you'll see, and we take a different view of things these days. Oh, let's forget all that old-fashioned stuff. Well, if God did it, don't go to heaven, because you'll get tired of heaven one day and say, that was a long time ago since you were up here. I think we'll turn you out now. How can God go against himself? He has no intention of going against himself. Forgiveness does not mean that God has grown easy on sin and has taken a more liberal view of it. Thank God he hasn't. For heaven will be heaven in all its glory because of God's eternal and undying hatred to sin.
The glory of Sinai was a real glory for which we do well to worship his divine majesty. God's protest against sin, God demand of holy living. How could he go against it? He's no intent of going against it. How then can he give us life? If our trespasses stand written in such great detail, and all the wonder of it now, listen to it. He took that bond, that terrible handwriting of all our trespasses, and he punished it out.
And he took it out of the way. But you say, God, what are you doing? Ha. And then he showed it to all the universe. He hammered it to the cross of Christ. Every trespass paid for and thus forgiven. All the universe will never forget Calvary. Our little planet has that unique honor that to all eternity it held up the standards of God's holiness, and heaven shall be heaven because of what Christ did at Calvary. Listen to the hammer nails.
It wasn't merely the sadism of rebellious men that drove the nails through the hand of Christ. The noise you hear is God himself hammering the list of our sins and his broken law to the cross of Christ, where it was paid in full. But it wasn't merely that the law, so to speak, our trespasses stood thus against us, and God had to find a way of forgiving us that upheld his law and maintained God's justice and has found it in Christ. It was that the principalities and powers were arranged against him.
You'll say the greatest of those principalities and powers is his, his satanic majesty, and of him we are told he is the accuser of the brethren. How should God shut his mouth? You say, well, just one dark night, squash him out. He's only a creature anyway. Who, if you were to question Mrs. Thatcher, she'd have ways of removing you. But I mean, uh, uh, Satan, I mean, and he's, he's, he's accusing of the Red Red. Squash him out, don't listen to him. Oh no, as we saw last week. On the question of using God's absolute power to get rid of him, for the charge had an element of truth in it.
God, you going to forgive this fallen human race? And what's this I hear about your raising them and putting them above angels? Oh no, you don't, God. Oh no, you don't. Look at their sins. You're going to throw me out of heaven because of my sin and then let them in? What about their sins? Oh, you can squash me out if you like, God, but what about your character? Your whole experiment with the human race, God, says Satan, afraid it's come unstuck, hasn't it?
And I've destroyed it for you, beyond your ability to repair it, because I tempted the man to sin, I gained him out of my side, his trespass is against your law, and your own very righteousness forbids your forgiving him. I defy you, says Satan, to to forgive him. And your whole experiment with humanity, forever a disaster. And they gathered around the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord, thinking it was the last thing, their last step in their victory, that fair flower of humanity now dying as a reputed sinner on the tree.
And God, ah, what a wisdom it was, for none of the princes of this world knew it, did they? Not old Caiaphas either, nor Herod, nor Pilate, nor his satanic majesty as well. Those great princes of this world, they didn't know the wisdom of God, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory, but in their ignorance and folly, they went and crucified him. And God raised him from the dead, and you with him. Every spirit opposition silenced eternally. Not by destroying them, but by the great answer of the cross of Christ.
What a magnificent salvation, isn't it? What oh. You see, says Paul, what no angel could have done for you. Where was Michael? Where was Gabriel when Jesus Christ hung spiked on a tree for your sin? No, he hung there solitary, your only savior, and he triumphed because he is God's son incarnate. Then let us take heed to the message as you have received Jesus Christ, your only hope, your only savior, well, find in him your everything for your sanctification, walk in him.
And now to our study group.
