Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Colossians 2:9-10;

Good morning - please open your Bibles with me to Colossians 2. It is an extreme joy to be back with you this morning.

Kyle did a great job last week - but there is something about the mandate to preaching that makes it odd to be in the church that God has entrusted you with and to not be the one preaching.

As you are turning in your Bibles or navigating on your phones let me again take a moment to thank all of you for affording me the opportunity to attend the Shepherd’s Conference last week the learning I received there will he me I become a more faithful and capable pastor and teacher of the Word for you.

Let’s read our passage for this morning.

We’re going to back up a little bit because in order to fully understand the entirety of the text for today we need to see that the thought process in this mornings passage is really a continuation of statements that Paul started making in verse 9.

The NASB translation of these verses really puts it into focus for us

Paul is driving home the point that it is in Christ that first all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form - the very God who could not be contained within a temple built by human hands - a lavish, extravagant temple built by Solomon - dwelt in the frail, limited body of a human being.

And it is the complete nature of God - all of His nature is found in Him.

It is interesting that anytime we look to anything else we end up worshipping something else as God.

Sex, money, science - none of these are God.

Paul is making it clear for us that the entire fullness of Deity and therefore the only true object of our worship is found in Christ.

And then he says that in Him we have been made complete - or another way to say this is that we have been completely filled.

Some of you may have seen this illustration before but if I were to get in my car and drive to the Pacific Ocean and take a mason jar and dip it into the ocean would I have the entire fullness of the ocean in the jar?

No.

But if I take that jar and throw it as far as I can into the sea (really that’s more for dramatic affect because it’s way cooler to throw the jar out into the ocean than it is to simply drop it into the surf) and it is swallowed below the surface of the sea it is completely filled with the ocean - the jar ceases to exist outside of the ocean and when we receive Christ Jesus as Lord and are made complete in Him we cease to exist outside of Him.

Paul goes on to say that we have been circumcised in Him.

A quick background on circumcision - circumcision was given to Abraham in Genesis 17 as a sign of the covenant that had already been struck between them by God’s sovereign action in Genesis 15.

Basically God tells Abraham that in order for his offspring to be considered a part of the covenant that they would have to be circumcised.

It was a physical demonstration of their submission to God.

Throughout the history of the nation of Israel boys had been circumcised in accordance with this command.

After Christ’s death and resurrection, when the Gospel was taken to the Gentile nations a controversy arose as to whether or not someone had to be circumcised to be saved.

It is evident by it’s inclusion in our passage today that there may have been some misguided teaching regarding circumcision taking place in Colossae.

What Circumcision is Paul Talking About?

Colossians 2:11; Galatians 5:6; Romans 9:6; Deuteronomy 10:16; Deuteronomy 30:6; Romans 2:28-29; Philippians 3:3; Galatians 5:19-21; 2 Corinthians 5:17

Paul is not making the case that we have to be circumcised to be saved.

Paul is not making the case that we have to be circumcised to be saved.

- Galatians 5:6

This would have caused two problems for Paul - the first is that it would have supported the claims of his opponents that you do have to be circumcised and Paul would have played right into their hand.

The second is that Paul is not even really referring to the physical act of circumcision here.

He is giving an example of a spiritual reality that took on the form of human tradition and was perverted.

The Jews believed that they were God’s special people not because they had been chosen out by Him but because they followed in the traditions that had been handed down through the centuries - one of these primarily being circumcision.

Romans 9:6 though demonstrates that all those who had been physically circumcised were not necessarily a part of the spiritual nation of Israel.

The concept of circumcision being more about the spiritual condition of the man rather than the physical is not simply a New Testament concept.

In his great final message to the people of Israel contained in the book of Deuteronomy Moses mentions the reality that circumcision is more about the heart.

In Deuteronomy 10:16 he says

Then again later in Deuteronomy 30:6

And in Romans 2:28-29 Paul makes clear that it is the one who is circumcised in their heart - by the Spirit not the letter - is the one who is the actual Jew.

Finally - he applies this to all believers in Philippians 3:3

Paul is elevating the concept of circumcision from the physical realm to the spiritual.

Paul is elevating the concept of circumcision from the physical realm to the spiritual.

Isn’t it fascinating that whenever we try to add anything to Christ we always add something temporal or physical.

Whether it is the Judaizers with circumcision, the Roman Catholics with penance, the Prosperity Gospel with your best life now or the Social Justice advocates looking for reparations we humans always try to add something to Christ that is about the here and now.

That is about making our life now more palatable or more acceptable to us now.

But Paul rips us out of that realm and places us squarely in the spiritual.

So if it isn’t a physical circumcision - and incidentally it wont be a physical baptism that he is pointing to either - what is Paul getting at here?

How is it that we as believers have been circumcised in Him with a circumcision not done with human hands.

As we have already said this is a spiritual reality and it is one that Paul explains in the next two phrases.

The first being “by putting off the body of the flesh”.

Throughout Scripture the flesh is referred to as the seat of our sinful nature.

In Galatians 5 Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruits of the Spirit.

The flesh is represented in Scripture as being in complete opposition to the Spirit of God and also the new nature of the Christian.

Here Paul is saying that if we have shared in His death (the circumcision of Christ) then we have had the body of flesh meaning our sinful nature taken away.

This is not to say or infer in any way that we are able to achieve some sort of sinless perfection this side of the Heaven -

Luther said it best when he said “simul justus et peccator”

Simul justus et peccator

- that Christian believers are at the same time both righteous and a sinner.

But what this does mean is that if you are a believer and have placed your trust in Christ that your propensity for living in a state of sin is removed.

It means that your nature - what you are known for will no longer be sinful but righteous.

It means that you will no longer practice open, rebellious sin and that you will desire to come under the instructions of Scripture and live your life in accordance to what God has commanded.

And if anything in your life doesn’t conform to those commands you will seek ways to repent of that lifestyle and change it.

Paul gives a good demonstration of the struggle that we as Christians have in Romans 7 and for sake of time I will let you take a look at that chapter during your quiet times this week - but to the church in Corinth he wrote this in 2 Corinthians 5:17

We have a new nature in Him and we are no longer held captive by the sinful, fleshly nature that once ruled our life.

What does Baptism Have to do with It?

Colossians 2:12-13b; Romans 5:18-19; Romans 6:6; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 2:11-12

Paul moves on to a discussion of baptism to demonstrate another spiritual way in which we have been regenerated and associated with Christ.

Some have used this passage to suggest some form of baptismal regeneration - that you aren’t actually saved until you have been baptized.

That something happens during that event that makes you spiritually right with God.

But Paul is not, and I am not, suggesting that here.

That would be to simply supplant one tradition with another that amounts to nothing more than a work performed by us to achieve our own salvation.

In verses 12 and 13 Paul is going to transition his metaphors for the Christian from those of being found in Christ to now being associated with Him and in so doing he is going to give us a picture of the spiritual regeneration and life of the believer.

Now that may sound confusing because I have just made the case that what Paul is not getting at here is baptismal regeneration and he is not.

The picture that he is going to provide for us is not so much associated with the act of baptism - as important as that is for the Christian - as it is a picture of who we are associated with.

Throughout Paul’s writings there is one theme that is continuously present - that his new life in Christ wrought in him an entirely new identity and a new association.

This is most clearly brought out in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul establishes the idea that because of his sin and the resulting corruption of human nature, all humans are found in Adam before regeneration and then those who are regenerated are now found in Christ.

And so here in Colossians Paul continues to make the case that there is no where else that salvation can be found - no other association is necessary for us to be redeemed except to be associated with Christ.

And he says that we are associated with Him in three ways

The first is that we are buried with Him.

Baptism in this verse is incidental in the same way that circumcision is incidental in verse 11.

In both usages they are a reference to the death of Christ so they are not incidental in that way - only that the acts of circumcision and baptism are not the main point of the passage or verse.

They are important in the sense that just as in circumcision our fleshly nature is removed from us, in this baptism we are seen as having spiritually participated in Christ’s death and thus had to be buried with Christ in the grave.

This is most clearly seen in Romans 6:6

But Paul also alludes to this reality in the Christian life in Galatians 2:20

It is our sinful nature that is buried with Him as that is why Christ was crucified to

But just as Christ did not stay in the grave but was raised from the dead we also have been raised with Him into the new life that is the promise of salvation.

It is through faith in the the working of God.

This is an important distinction to make here - that it is through faith.

There are some circles of Christianity that are minimizing this notion of faith in the life of a believer - and in a sense they are right because the picture of faith that they are giving surely should be minimized.

The reason is that the faith that they are talking about is the “You’ve just got to believe brother” or “You just have to take it on faith sister” - where faith is characterized more as a blind hope than what the Bible’s description of faith is.

The word for faith here is pisitis and in the 236 times in the New Testament that it is translated as faith never once does it operate on the premise of blind hope.

Pistis - it was used to denote “confidence”, “trustworthiness” or as a guarantee in the sense of a pledge or an oath.

Pistis - it was used to denote “confidence”, “trustworthiness” or as a guarantee in the sense of a pledge or an oath.

It is this faith that we share with the believers in Colossae and down throughout history that God is faithful to His promises and that He has raised us from the dead along with Christ.

We can have assurance that “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

And it is amazing that He has made us alive with Him.

Here, Paul returns us to our state before our regeneration into Christ - he says that we were dead in our trespasses and in the uncircumcision of our flesh.

In Ephesians 2 Paul says that we were dead in our trespasses and sins and that we lived according to our fleshly desires.

And then He makes that great statement that even in it’s brevity is one of the most beautiful in all of Scripture - “But God”.

Here in our passage he is slightly more understated even if he uses more words as he writes that God made us alive together with Him.