Certainties in the Pandemic - Colossians 2:9-15
Certainties in a Pandemic - Col 2:9-15
9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
We live in uncertain days, and we need a certainty which governments, stock exchanges, pundits and philosophers, and even doctors cannot provide. Indeed I cannot provide it either, but Jesus Christ can and does. I don’t have my head in the sand about how serious the situation is, in which we find ourselves, and I do not need to be a prophet to say that worse is yet to come.
Christians are not immune from bad stuff because they are believers. We may have changed lives, but we still can suffer from Covid-19, cancer, broken marriages, mental illness, bankruptcies and addictions.
But one thing we do need to know about our God, is that he is a loving, perfect and holy God, and that He is in control. I am not a spiritual quack who thinks he has a hotline to God and says that corona virus is ‘this’ or ‘that’ plague as prophesied in Revelation or Ezekiel or wherever. But in the New Testament we are warned to be ready for no matter what shows up: earthquakes, wars, famines, plagues – and not be deflected by worrying events. But the message is: “Be therefore ready …”
To be ready I believe, is to be confident in who our Lord Jesus Christ is and what he has done for us, so we can stand in these unprecedented days … and our chosen passage for today - Col 2:9-15 - tells us just that. And it reassures us about the most important thing of all – that we who have received Christ are ‘in’ Him, and we have been ‘made alive’ in Him.
The True Gospel
Now we come to our text. The reasons why we as Christians can have certainties are given in seven verses of pure theology vv9-15, stated as bald truths. And none of these truths, not one, is going to be changed or taken away by the corona virus, by shutdowns, by the unprecedented changes which are sweeping through the world at the moment.
In these seven verses Paul brings us seven truths about who Christ is and what he has done:
· Truth 1 v9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, Paul emphasises first - Who Christ is. Christ is fully divine but also fully human. He is a wonder to the entire spiritual universe. That God sent his only divine Son into the world to be born into a carpenter’s family in Galilee 2,000 years ago is part of the gospel. Unless Jesus were divine we would have no hope – no other offering would be sufficient to pay the price for our sins. When God created the universe – the divine Son of God, our Lord Jesus was there. Nothing is outside his creative control, including the corona virus. He is the Lord and the giver of life.
· Truth 2 v10 and you have been filled in him. We who have received Christ, we are indwelt by him. He lives in us today - It’s a promise! “Christ in you the hope of glory.”
· Truth 3 v10b who is the head of all rule and authority. Christ is above all things both material and spiritual in the universe. There is no spiritual power or force outside his control. There is no demonic power or human power or natural phenomenon above him.
· Truth 4 v11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ – The flesh, our sinful nature is also defeated. Christ has done all these things for us. We don’t need circumcision because Christ has been circumcised for us. That is completed. We need no added extras for our salvation.
· Truth 5 v12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made us alive together with him – We died with Christ and so we are also raised with him, symbolised in our baptism. We identify not just with Jesus’ death but also with his resurrection. Thus we are alive with Christ, and no-one can take this eternal life from us.
· Truth 6 having forgiven us all our trespasses, v14 by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross – The reason we can be made alive is because Jesus has taken all of our sins at the cross, but Christ’s righteousness which makes us alive. We need have no fear that our sins are not forgiven. The gospel is outrageous in its generosity. Do not believe the lies of the Devil that you are not good enough, or that you have not done enough to have your sins forgiven or to have eternal life. It is finished.
· Truth 7 v15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him – And finally … just to reassure us, Jesus has dealt with all the demonic powers that hold so many in fear and who bring in the false teaching claiming an authority over us which they don’t have.
If you are not sure of your status as a Christian, you become a Christian, when you repent and believe that Jesus Christ died in your place on the cross for your sins and that he was raised to life on the 3rd day to justify us - to declare us righteous before God. And doing this you receive Christ and these seven great truths set out in vv9-15. It is a beautiful thing … it is the gospel.
There is a huge temptation to add to Christian teaching because it seems too simple to self-important people and spiritual experts, yet this passage shows this simple gospel also has great depth. The gospel is outrageously free, it really is very, very, good news. One of the problems for Christians is that they don’t understand how good the good is. Or I might add, how dire is our state without it.
So, do we just sit at home and feel smug in our freely given heavenly status and theological understanding? No, we are to “walk in Him” as it says in v6 and the rest of the Letter to the Colossians talks about this.
As a nation and as a local church community, we have just set out on this new COVID chapter of national life, a wild journey we do not want to be on. We are stuck in this boat, we want to get off and we cannot. It is dark outside, the waves are huge and we can hear the pessimistic comments of our fellow passengers in the dark. We do not know when we will reach the far shore and we cannot even see our destination. The national navigator is doing her best but neither she nor anyone else has experienced this before, there are no reliable charts. But in the darkness there is another figure. He is walking alongside us on the water, above the turmoil of wind, above the viruses and waves, we may cry out in fear, he isn’t a ghost of our imaginations but the Lord himself, who says to us: “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”
Jesus will come alongside, get into our boat, he will bring our boat through the storm and we will reach the shore. And as we live through a shared common experience we will look back and see that the Lord was walking with us, alongside the boat all the time, and we never knew it.