The Triumph of the Cross - Colossians 2:13-15

0:59For the Greeks, when they look at the cross, when Paul is preaching Christ crucified, they see it as foolishness. They see it as folly to think that the leader of someone's religion, the person that you're claiming is your eternal king, you've just allowed to be executed. They see the cross as foolishness. But Paul says this. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. That's what the cross is to those who are believers. The Jews might see it as a stumbling block. The Greeks might see it as foolishness. But to believers, to Christians, we see it as the wisdom of God and the power of God.

1:52For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians. Well, in our text today, we're going to get a chance to see why the cross is the wisdom of God. Why is it the power of God? We're going to examine the triumph of the cross. And as we do, I want you to notice three stunning achievements of the cross. Three stunning achievements that Christ accomplished on the cross: life, forgiveness, and victory. Life for dead sinners, forgiveness of hopeless debtors, and victory over all authorities. Listen as I read the text. You can follow along. Colossians 2, verse 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 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

3:21This is an amazing passage. Pray with me as we get ready to study it. Father, I pray that as we come to this text, this stunning passage about the things that were accomplished on the cross, I pray that we would be stunned. I pray that we would be amazed at your wisdom and your power. I pray that you would help us understand the ins and outs of this passage as we seek to understand what you were doing when Christ was crucified and how that applies to us and all of these things and how we can live in response. I pray that you'd help us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

4:09Well, the first stunning achievement of the cross is life for dead sinners. Life for dead sinners. Look at verse 13. And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him. He starts this verse with, With kind of an interjection, he points at them almost and says, and you. So he's been talking about all that Christ has done, but he's just getting the point across that this includes you. He's writing to the Colossians. We saw this in chapter 1, verse 21. After Paul had talked about the glories of Christ, saying he's first over everything, like we read this morning in the scripture reading. Paul turns to the Colossians and says, And you, who are alienated, he has reconciled. So now he's doing the same thing. He's pausing to say, this is how it impacts you. This is something that Christ has done for you. And as he does so, he's going to sound like he's repeating some of the same phrases that we studied the last time we looked at Colossians. Last time he talked about how we were spiritually baptized, how we were spiritually circumcised in Christ. And what that means for us is that when we became believers, we died and were buried and rose again with Christ to new life.

5:36Today, he's going to use some of those same words that we were dead. He's going to talk about circumcision, but he's actually not talking about the same thing. So we need to be careful not to mix the pictures that Paul is using. Last time he talked about how when we became Christians, we died to our old self. It's a word picture. Time, he's talking about how before we were Christians, we were dead in our trespasses. You see the difference? Last time it was something that happened to us when we became a believer. Now he's using that picture of deadness to talk about what it was like before we became a believer. We were dead in our trespasses. Verse 13: And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. Before we became believers, we were totally dead. In Ephesians 2, verse 12, Paul says the same thing. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

6:52Unbelievers are dead men walking, they have no hope. They're without God. Maybe that's some of you today. Well, in our verse in Colossians 2, verse 13, he says that this is for two reasons. The reason why we're dead is because of two things. First, because of our trespasses, and second, because of our uncircumcision. Our trespasses and our uncircumcision. So, first, their trespasses, their sins, are standing in the way of them being able to. Know God. It's like a mountain of debt, all the sins that we've committed that separate us from God, cut us off from his presence. So they're dead. But they're also dead in the uncircumcision of their flesh. What does that mean? The uncircumcision of their flesh. It means that since they were Gentiles and since God's people were Jews, that formerly they had no hope of being part of God's people. That mountain of debt, their trespasses, stood between them and God, and they couldn't expect for that to be removed. They weren't part of God's people. They were uncircumcised. They were Gentiles, not Jews. And so they were dead. But in spite of these things, God has done something stunning. He's done something spectacular. He says, and you who are dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him.

8:34God made alive together with him. The Colossians were dead. They had no hope. They are completely cut off from being part of God's people. And yet, God stepped in and made them alive. Paul will go on to say that this is because of the forgiveness that they have in Christ, because of the cross that Christ died. On. This is why they can have life. But notice that there's only two options, just the same as for you today. There's only two options, either dead or alive.

9:13In the Nazi concentration camps, the inmates had to wear these badges, these triangle badges, and they had different colors for different codes and of what their offense was in the concentration camp. But there were only two options. You either had a badge or you didn't. You either were an inmate or you weren't. And Paul is saying that the Colossians have one of two name tags. You're either dead in your trespasses or you're alive in Christ. Those are the only two options. If they are not alive in Christ, then they're still dead in their trespasses. And for those of them who have trusted in Christ, who have become believers, it's like they've taken off their old name tag, dead in my trespasses, and put on the new one, alive in Christ. They've changed. And the same is true for us today.

10:10If you are not alive in Christ, if you've never trusted in him, then you are still dead in your trespasses. You don't have forgiveness. And if you're not dead in your trespasses, if you have become a believer, then what that means is you're alive in Christ. And this is actually the main point. Of what Paul is saying, that believers who have trusted in Christ, they are alive in Christ. And the reason why he's emphasizing it is because he doesn't want them to be tricked. Remember, all along in this letter, we've seen that these other teachers are telling them they need other stuff. But he's saying, no, you have everything you need in Christ. We are alive in Christ.

10:53We can be encouraged as we remember what God has done. And we can be steadfast in the faith as we remember to have confidence in God's promises. He made us alive, even though we used to be completely cut off. The same thing applies to us as it did to the Colossians, that we were dead in our trespasses because of our sins and because of our uncircumcision. We weren't part of God's people, but God has sidestepped both of those things if you're a Christian today and freely given us life. This is the first stunning achievement of the cross. The second is forgiveness. Forgiveness of hopeless debtors. Remember, this is related to the first point, because the only reason why we have life is because we've been forgiven.

11:50Forgiveness of hopeless debtors. Look at verse 13 again. And you who are dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him. Having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Having forgiven us all of our trespasses, that's what happened when we became a believer. All of our trespasses were forgiven. All of our trespasses were forgiven. All of the trespasses that had separated us between separated us from God, that had stood as a mountain between us and God, all of those are forgiven. We have no more sin associated with our name. All of it's been cleared. So now today, when we stand before God in prayer, there's nothing hindering that relationship. Or in the future, when we stand before God face to face, there's not going to be anything between us. We're not going to have a beef with God. All of that's been cleared away.

13:03There's nothing that we need to sort through first before we can know God, if we're believers. We don't need to spend a month getting right before God. We are right before God if we've been forgiven. And as believers, we can still get that wretched feeling in our gut when we know we've been sinning. I know that you have felt that. I felt that. When we know that we're in a habit of sin. And we're trying to get out of it.

13:32We can cry out like David did in Psalm 51, if you remember that psalm. David certainly felt wretched. He's remembering in that psalm his adultery. He's remembering his deception. He's remembering his betrayal. But most of all, he remembered that when he committed all these sins, he wasn't just doing it against God's image-bearers, other men and women. No, when he did these sins, he did it against God himself. And so he's begging God to be forgiven, to be cleansed, and to be washed. He's begging God to blot out his transgressions so that they're never remembered. And we can pray the same thing as believers.

14:17Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer to pray to forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our debts. And we know that he's faithful to do it. But the question is: how is this possible? How can God just forgive us all of our debts? How can he erase them? Look at verse 14. By canceling the record of debt that stood against us. By canceling the record of debt that stood against us. So we had a record of debt. And if you're an unbeliever, you still have a record of debt between you and God. We all had a record of debt. Every time we sin in our Words or in our thoughts while we're thinking, in our actions, every time we send, it added to this record of debt, this mountain of debt. And I don't know about you, but my record of debt was extremely long, hideously long, insurmountably long, and yet God has canceled it, completely erased it.

15:29He's blotted it out so that no one can read it. No one can know what was on my record of debt. Kids, you may not know this, but before we were born, there was no such thing as a computer at some point, or a smartphone. They used to use this ancient machine called a typewriter. And if you made a mistake on a typewriter, if I understand right, from history books, you had to go over it with correction tape so that you could type over it again. Now we can just press backspace, right? When we make a mistake, it's way more convenient. Well, as for our record of debt, when we become Christians, when we trust in Christ, it's like God presses backspace over the entire thing.

16:25So now, if Satan wanted to come and make an accusation against you, As a person of God, as a man of God, a woman of God, if Satan wants to come and make an accusation, God can hold up a pristine white record of debt, or a record of no debt. There's nothing there because all of your trespasses have been canceled. Paul says in verse 14 that this record of debt had legal demands. It was associated with laws, and the Old Testament for the Jew had all those laws. They had broken all those laws. And elsewhere we hear that even the Gentiles, the people who weren't the people of God, they have laws written on their hearts, written into their conscience, that they know they've broken. They've broken God's laws. And just like if we broke our nation's laws, we would have a record of debt against us with our nation. In the same way, since we've broken God's laws, we have this record of debt. It's all been recorded.

17:31Well, how did he cancel this? Verse 14, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. That's a triumph, right? God took your record and he nailed it to the cross. That's why he could backspace over the whole thing. That's why he could cancel all of your record of debt. He nailed it to the cross. When Christ died, our record of debt died right along with him. It's gone. Our sin was removed. And God had always spoken of this throughout the Old Testament. From the very beginning, he offered forgiveness and grace to his people. When he spoke to Moses, like we sang this morning, when Moses got to see the back of God and God is declaring his name to Moses, he said that he is a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. So God is a forgiving God, but in the same sentence, part of his name, in the same sentence, God says to Moses that he will by no means clear the guilty. So the question is, how is this possible?

18:57How can God be someone who's forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty? What does that mean? In Psalm 32, it says that our sin can be forgiven. And in Psalm 103, it says that our sin can be separated as far from us as East is from the West. How is this possible? We get a hint in the book of Isaiah. God says that he is going to lay on this suffering servant our iniquities, that by his wounds we will be. Healed. But it isn't until after Christ came that this mystery was fully revealed. That because of what Christ did on the cross, God can be just in the justifier. God can be fair and just, but he can also be forgiving in the justifier. In our text today, we see that it's because of the cross. God can cancel our sin as if it never happened because of what Jesus did on the cross.

19:59And it's a dramatic word picture, isn't it? You can almost close your eyes and just picture your record of debt being nailed to the cross next to Jesus. It's a picture of complete forgiveness. Total forgiveness. Every sin that you've ever committed. We see this truth in the parables, a lot of them that Jesus gave. One of them, you remember from Luke 18, has these two men that come and they're standing there praying to the Lord. It's one of my favorite parables. And one of them is a Pharisee and one of them is a tax collector. So you have what, in the world's eyes, might be seen the most righteous of all righteous men, and maybe the most unrighteous of all unrighteous men. And they're standing there praying to the Lord. And the Pharisee says this, listen to this, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust. Adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I get. So he's thinking, you know, I do all these great things. I'm not like that man.

21:11God, you surely must be pleased in me. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus says that it was this man who went down to his house justified. And so it's not that we do these deeds to start to mark one thing off of our certificate of debt at a time. We can't fast and say, oh, that takes care of that one. We can't give money to the church and say, oh, that takes care of that one. No, that's not how it works. That's how the Pharisee was thinking. Instead, we need to think like this poor, miserable sinner who is just pleading to God for mercy. It's by grace. That's the only way that our certificate of debt, our record of debt, can be cleared. And this is not just a clean slate to start over with. It's not like when we become a believer, we get our record of debt erased, but then every time we sin, we've got to work on erasing that one again and again and again. It's not just a clean slate. When I was a teenager, I hit a cop with my car, like a fender bender, and I was a very nice teenager.

22:30In fact, when I hit the cops, I was literally on my way early in the morning to go mow a widow's yard. So I had the most innocent of motives, but they didn't care. I was surrounded by police cars, and they were very strict with me. But at the end of the day, I got to do defensive driving, and it was completely taken off my record. So now, when somebody looks at my record, they don't see cop hitter.

23:00It's just clear, right? It's cleared, it's gone. But that record could be messed up again if I kept hitting cops, right? That record isn't permanently clear. It's not like they gave me forgiveness for life. But not so with our forgiveness that we have in Christ. When we're forgiven, when he nailed that record to the cross, the Colossians received a permanent, complete forgiveness. Totally gone forever. They can't mess it up again. And the same is true of you if you're in Christ. No longer can the voice of the accuser stand up before God. No longer can anyone point at you and say that you're disqualified from heaven.

23:48Nobody can stand in the heavenly court and hold up your hideously long record of debt against God because that record has been complete. Erased. It's gone forever, canceled, blotted out. Forever. This truth should increase our love for Christ. Another story that Christ told whenever he was on earth was when he was eating at a Pharisee's house. This Pharisee had invited him over, and he's reclining there, and all of a sudden, this woman comes in, and it says she was a woman of the city, a sinner, and she's weeping because of the love that she has for Christ. And she's washing his feet with her own tears. That's how much she's weeping.

24:43And the Pharisees, when they were looking at this, they thought this. This is what the passage says. If this man were a prophet speaking about Jesus, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. Well, Jesus certainly did know. He wasn't a dummy. He knew who this woman was. But when he spoke to the Pharisees about it, the story that he told them was: he said, pretend, or not pretend, let's say that there is this moneylender. And this moneylender forgave two men of their debts. And one of them owed 500 denarii, and the other one only owed 50. And so one. The one that was owed 50, he was forgiven a big debt, but one was forgiven like a lifelong, insurmountable debt. And Jesus said, Which one of these two men is going to love the moneylender more? And the Pharisee answered correctly. He said, The one with the larger debt. That's the one who's going to love the moneylender more. And Jesus said, He who is forgiven little loves little. Well, when we look at our text in Colossians and we read about how our record is completely canceled, gone forever, we should love and not a little. We should realize that if we've been forgiven much, we should love much.

26:18Well, the final stunning achievement of the cross was victory. Victory over all authorities. Verse 15. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. He disarmed the rulers and authorities. The rulers and authorities, it sounds like he could be talking about the Jewish leaders, the Jewish rulers who accused Jesus and had him executed, or the authorities, the Roman authorities like Pontius Pilate. Who gave permission for him to die? And he might be mentioning those, but usually when Paul sticks these two terms together, rulers and authorities, he's talking about evil angels, wicked angels, demons, referring to the hierarchy that exists among them, rulers and authorities. These rulers and authorities have worked against Jesus. They stood against his mission. And really, throughout all of human history, they have stood against God and tried to thwart his purposes to no avail. But during the life of Jesus, when we read the gospel accounts, we see that they were everywhere, and everyone knew it. Everyone could point to someone and say, that person is demon-possessed. It was obvious, it was clear, and they were everywhere wreaking havoc, shouting out to Jesus, ridiculing him. Satan himself showed up and tempted Jesus. So there was all this demonic activity when Jesus was on earth.

28:02And just when they might have thought that they have dramatically and permanently succeeded, just when these evil rulers are seeing the Messiah that God sent to save his people, when they see that he is being killed by those people and hanging on a tree, just when they think they might be succeeding, at that moment, they saw their downfall. That's what happened at the cross. Cross. Instead of success, they were disarmed. They have lost all their power to stand against God's people. When Jesus died on the cross, he disarmed the enemy. He stripped them of all of their weapons. They can't fight against us now. They are disarmed. They can't accuse the Colossian church, saying that they're disqualified. And the Colossians don't need to turn to angels or demons to discover more truth, like Paul has mentioned earlier. They don't need any of that stuff. They've got all they need in Christ. If Christ is the one who disarmed these rulers and authorities, then it's silly to say that we need to go to these rulers and authorities to try and find out something else, to try and find a higher knowledge. No, we have everything we need in Christ. He's the one who disarmed them. It says in verse 15, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame. He humiliated them at the cross. When we think about the shame of the cross, we often think of the shame that Jesus underwent, that he's being spit on and mocked and beaten. They're pulling out his beard. They're making fun of him, saying, Look, if you're who you say you are, then save yourself. Come down from the cross.

29:58But after the cross, God's people knew the truth, that the true shame belongs to God's enemies. They're the ones who were humiliated at the cross. This is made even more clear by the next phrase. He put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. By triumphing over them in him. This is the idea of a public triumphal march, like when a conqueror would go out to another nation and conquer that nation. He would bring back the people of that nation and march them on parade through his city. And everyone could look at those people and say, those are the losers. Those are the people who lost. How humiliating. That's what Christ did to those who opposed him on the cross. It's in an unexpected way. Right when they think they might have won, they received the death blow. They received humiliation. And so when the Gentiles look at the cross and they see foolishness, when the Jews look at the cross and they see a stumbling block, something that they can't get past, as believers, we get to look at the cross and see the power and wisdom of God, the power to completely disarm those evil spirits.

31:26And so what does this mean for us? This last part that we've studied, this kind of seems like a faraway story, like some cosmic battle between Christ and the angels that doesn't involve us. And we know Christ won anyway, so we don't need to worry about it. That's what it can feel like. But it meant something for the Colossians. Paul's writing it for a reason. For the Colossians, it meant that they don't need to dabble in any of this other occult stuff. They don't need to mess with other angels and demons. They don't need to observe rituals that they've prescribed.

32:08They don't need a special level of knowledge outside of what we have in God's Word. They have everything they need in Christ. And the same is true for us today. We have all we need in Christ. He is the victor. He is the leader of this triumphal march. It looked as if the death blow was dealt to Jesus on the cross. But he rose again. The true death blow was dealt to God's enemies. The true death blow was dealt to our certificate of debt that opposed us. The true death blow was dealt to the mountain of trespasses that separated us from God.

33:04Though the wrong seems off so strong, God is the ruler yet. This is his world. And even though those wicked forces seem like they had won the day, God was still the ruler. He's the one in charge. And he was accomplishing something stunning at the cross. For some of you in this room, you already knew all of this. You knew that you should be dead in your trespasses, but you're alive now. You knew that you have been fully pardoned of all your debts, given a clear record. You knew that Christ won the victory over all rulers and authorities.

33:48And you knew that all of this was accomplished at the cross. So why do we need to dwell on these things? Why is it important for us to study this passage? Well, the Colossians knew these things too. Paul makes it clear in the first chapter that they knew about the cross, they knew the gospel, and yet Paul is still needing to remind them of these things. In fact, he's writing this letter as someone who's desperate to see maturity, desperate to remind them of these things. You see, as Christians, it's so easy for us to forget these things. It's so easy to sit even in church or stand in church as we sing. About the cross and just let our minds wander. It happens to all of us.

34:36And we can take lightly those things that used to be so precious to us: that Christ died on the cross and we received a full pardon. But I think that when we study texts like this and we take the time to pause and truly be stunned and amazed at the glorious achievement that Christ accomplished on the cross, I think that that causes us to let our minds wander a little bit less when we're singing in church.

35:10To not be able to quickly move past the cross saying, oh, I've heard about that a thousand times. But to pause again and just marvel at this greatest victory of all time. And we need to remember that these realities are for us. Remember, Paul has stopped and pointed at the Colossians and said, You, you who have been forgiven, these are realities that happened to them. And I don't think he's trying by any means to look at what Christ has accomplished and then help them turn it into something self-centered and make the cross all about them. That's not what he's doing. But he is pausing to say that though they were spiritually dead, though they were dead in their sins and trespasses, God's death. Made them alive. He's pausing to say, this happened to you. This is a reality that happened to you. And we need to pause and remember that as believers, these are past events. These are true realities for any of us who are believers in this room. So be encouraged as you dwell on these things. When your past sins loom large in your heart, remember the triumph of the cross. Let's pray.

36:32Father, it is truly stunning. It is truly amazing all that you accomplished on the cross when Christ died for us. To think that we had this infinitely long record of debt that stood against us that you just canceled and wiped away. You blotted out forever so that there's not a sin associated with us. So we can stand before you, perfect. To think that all of these wicked powers that the world is so scared of, that even we tremble to speak of, to think that you not only beat them, but you humiliated them. You made them look like fools for all of eternity through what you accomplished on the cross. I pray, Lord, that we would be amazed at these things, that we'd be amazed at the wisdom of the cross and the power.

37:31Of the cross, where you displayed your wisdom and your power. And I pray, Lord, for any unbelievers in here who are still wearing the name tag of dead and their trespasses, who have no hope and are without God, I pray, Lord, that today you would change their hearts. I pray that today they would talk to somebody about becoming a believer, of trusting in you. I pray, Lord, that even today they would change from being dead in their trespasses to alive in Christ and enjoy perfect and total and complete forgiveness forever. In Jesus' name, amen.