Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Each year, when the new year rolls around, along with it comes the ideas and feeling of a fresh start.

A time for change.

Opportunities to make changes in our own life for our own good, and if we are Christians, opportunities to make changes to better our relationships with Jesus and glorify God.

New years bring change.

So I have a question for you.

Newness is not an idea that is foreign to God.

Have you died yet?

This is a bit of a trick question.

I am not talking about a near death experience.

Have you died yet?

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If you have died with Christ.

As we begin this morning, we see Paul’s arguments regarding the false teachings and teachers coming to a climax.

This climax is also a launching point for what is coming next in the letter.

The thing that Paul is launching into is the desire that God has for all of His children.

That they would be conformed to be like Jesus.

Died with Christ.

Verse 20 begins - If with Christ you have died.

This is continuing to show the metaphor that Paul began earlier in the book.

The idea of death and new life through Jesus.

This is the first time in this book that it is explicitly stated as a connection of death and life.

Earlier it was implied through the picture of baptism, being buried with Christ and then raised with Him.

Death with Christ is an important theological reality for people who place their faith in Christ.

Death with Christ means death to the old self and old ways.

It means a change from the nature of sin that rules this world.

Death with Christ is truth and reality and gives hope to all who place their faith in Jesus.

is one place that describes what death with Christ means for us.

Ro.6:

This death specifically brings hope.

We were buried with him in order that we might walk in newness of life.

Some might say, why do I need this?

My life seems to be find right now.

I don’t need newness of life.

But the hope is not for this life alone but also for eternity.

Death with Christ in this life has more to do with a change of heart than a change of circumstances.

As Christians we know that we all struggle with sin, the fact that it is not completely dead in us, that we fail, that we have to continually as the Lord for forgiveness.

We all know what we look like on the inside, the private thoughts that enter into our minds.

None of us are perfect, many of the thoughts of our mind would embarrass and shame us if they were seen or spoken publicly.

This is the reality of our human condition, our fallen nature.

Paul frequently portrays the believer as one who has participated “with” Christ in the great inaugural events of the new covenant era.

This “with” must not be reduced simply to a comparison, as if Paul were saying that we died in the same way that Christ did.

Just as all humans were appointed by God to be “with” Adam in his sin, so he has appointed all humans (or all believers) to be “with” Christ in the events that reversed and more than canceled the effects of Adam’s sin

This is why we are to consider ourselves dead with Christ and dead to sin.

we Christians know that we struggle with sin, that it is not dead in us, that we fail, and continually come to the Lord Jesus and ask for forgiveness.

We Christians know what we are inside.

We know we are not perfect and that many of the thoughts of our mind would terribly embarrass and shame us if they were publicly spoken.

Such is the reality of our fallen selves.

Yet, we are to consider ourselves dead to sin.

We are to think of ourselves as dead to sin.

This is why we

It is only by a change of heart that we will be even remotely like Jesus.

Died to elemental forces.

The specific effects of this death that Paul is writing about here is death to the elemental forces of the world.

We first saw this phrase back in verse 8 when Paul initially introduced the main topic that was plaguing the Colossian church.

We looked then at what Paul was specifically referring to but by way of reminder.

We argued there that the phrase refers primarily to the basic “components” of the physical universe and, secondarily, to the spiritual forces often thought to be associated with those physical components.

components” of the physical universe and, secondarily, to the spiritual forces often thought to be associated with those physical components

To further clarify for us a bit what he is trying to say; when Paul is saying died to the elemental spirits or forces, it caries the idea of being separated from.

The preposition apo is used here and it is a preposition of separation.

Using the word to often makes us think of inclusion, when the intention is really one of separation.

If you have died with Christ, you have be brought away from the elemental forces of this world.

Many people in Paul’s day lived in fear of these “forces” and sought ways to live in harmony with them.

The sense of bondage to these powers appears to have been what made the false teachers’ program especially seductive.

Paul is therefore at pains to show that Christ’s victory over the spiritual beings that are included in the “elemental forces” was complete and final (vv.

14–15) and that people who are in union with Christ share in that victory.

We can understand from the text that what the false teachers were prescribing to combat the bondage was, the remedy for appeasing the elemental forces, was a set of rules and and practices causing people to abstain from bodily and social needs.

Paul is combatting this with the Colossians position in Christ.

Many people today also live in fear.

Today though it is not so much a religious fear as a fear of circumstance.

Fear that something will perhaps be taken away from them.

There is also a sense of bondage to indifference.

Many people today may think there is some sort of higher power but don’t pursue it any further than a thought.

We will see as we continue that Paul is saying that all of these rules that you are being told to follow are have no value in stopping the sin that is within.

Why live as though you belong to the world?

The argument that we are looking at here is in the form of an if then statement.

If this, then that.

Paul’s if statement, if you have died with Christ is now followed up by him asking another question.

Paul asks why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules?

Paul is not stating that believers are not in world, rather His point is that believers no longer count the world as their true home or as the place that determines who they are or how they are to live.

Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub.

Co., 2008), 234.

By dying with Christ, we have been set free from the elements of this world, and we no longer therefore “belong” to the world over which they rule.

How foolish, then, to continue to submit to the rules of this world!

His point, rather, is that believers no longer count the world as their true home or as the place that dictates who they are or how they are to live.

The verb Paul uses for submit to the regulations is a present passive verb.

It is present in the sense of this danger is current, and passive in the sense of you are allowing yourself to put into this position.

The word carries the sense of becoming regulated by rules or opinions that are handed down by some sort of authority.

Examples of the rules.

In verse 21 Paul gives some examples of some of these rules that were being imposed.

These are not likely the exact rules but are likely expressing the sense of the rules.

Do not handle - Do not taste - Do not touch.

Augustine thought of it as mockery, he wrote

Sure he used these words in mockery of those by whom he did not want his followers to be deceived and led astray.

Paul is drawing out the extremes of the false teachings with his phrase here.

It is as though the false teachers were telling the people, don’t even think about it or else you are not in a right relationship with God.

I don’t know about you but I know how impossible that is.

It is absurd to even think that these rules would be able to curb the desires of the flesh.

The truth about the “rules”.

Paul continues in 22-23 to show the truth about the rules.