The Gospel: The Answer to Legalism, Part 1

Notes
Transcript
On June 11, 2001, Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection. If you’re old enough you remember that name. Timothy McVeigh was the mastermind behind the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. That bombing killed 168 people, 19 of them children in a daycare center in the building, and injured 684 other people.
What you might not know are the details of his execution - in particular, the poem he chose as his final statement. He recited a poem by William Ernest Henley who lived in the 19th century. The poem is called Invictus. This is what it says (it should be on your screen if you want to read along and not just listen):
“Out of the night that covers me // Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may // For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance // I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance // My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears // Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years // Finds and will find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate // how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”
[Quoted in Swindoll, The Grace Awakening, p14]
McVeigh was in good company when he used this poem. Nelson Mandela recited this poem to other prisoners at Robben Island. American prisoners of war in Vietnam read this poem to each other. The line from the poem “bloody, but unbowed” was the headline on the front page of a British newspaper the day after the 2005 London subway bombings. John Lewis, civil rights activist and congressman, used this poem for inspiration as a teenager. Winston Churchill too used this poem when addressing the House of Commons during World War II. He said, “We are still the masters of our fate. We still are captains of our souls.”
The poem has appeared in literature and movies over the last 100 years. The last two lines were quoted in the movie Casablanca in 1942. Star Trek: Renegades opens with this poem being recited by Lexxa Singh. In fact, the 2009 movie Invictus starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman was named after the poem and included a reading of the poem.
You get the point. Obviously this poem stirs hearts. It ignites the flames of passion and inspiration. It’s an anthem to humanity’s ability to rise above adversity and conquer. Or at least that’s one way of looking at it. I don’t think the poem is really about those things at all.
Chuck Swindoll agrees with me. Actually, to put it accurately, I agree with Chuck Swindoll. Reading his book Grace Awakening clued me into this poem and what it is really saying. This is what Swindoll says about the poem:
“[This poem] makes you want to get at it, to dig in deeper and try harder, right? After all, if you and I have souls that are unconquerable, the sky’s the limit…[These words] sound so right, so inspiring…[But] what seems so right is, in fact, heresy - the one I consider the most dangerous heresy on earth. What is it? The emphasis on what we do for God, instead of what God does for us.” [Swindoll, p. 15]
That poem may sound inspiring, and it may be used during college graduation speeches all across our country year after year, but what William Ernest Henley was aiming at was expressing his complete self-sufficiency and his total lack of any need for divine grace. In fact, Henley seems eager to meet his Maker at the end of his life and show him how he did it without any help. And what he did during this life, he expects he will do in the next. He expects that when he closes his eyes in this world and opens them in eternity, he will either make it into heaven by his own sheer willpower, or split hell wide open and show Satan who’s boss.
Fortunately for you and I, we know better. We know there is a way to heaven, there is a path to being right with God, and we know - or at least I pray we do - that the path there is paved not by our good works or our ingenuity or our sweat or our efforts; it is paved by grace and covered by faith. How can we resist this “do it yourself salvation”, which is everywhere in our culture today? Colossians 2:8-15 shows us four ways.

#1: We can resist “do it yourself” salvation because we are complete in Christ

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. 9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;

The apostle Paul here in verse 9 makes one of the most stunning statements in the whole Bible. What statement is that? He writes, “For in Him” - that is, in Christ - “all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form”. What does that mean? Well, he’s talking about the incarnation. The eternal Son of God taking on a human body and a human nature. “The word became flesh, and dwelt among us”, is what the apostle John had to say about the incarnation. But statement of Paul’s is even more stunning that. He’s saying all the fullness of Deity - meaning absolutely all that God is has taken up residence in the human body of Jesus of Nazareth. Not just a part of God. Not just some of His attributes. Not just His miracle working power or His compassion and grace and love. No, all of Him. The entirety of God’s nature --- all the fullness of Deity — has come to dwell bodily in the person of Jesus Christ.
Now I use the New American Standard translation. I like it, but I’m not a slave to it, and sometimes other translations say it in ways that are more accurate and more understandable. That’s the case here. I like what the Christian Standard Bible says:

9 For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ,

“The entire fullness of God’s nature”. I like what one author said about this. He paraphrased it this way: “For just what God is, that is exactly what Christ is.” [Louw-Nida] Another author said this: “Christ is not a second, different Deity: he is the embodiment and full expression of the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” [N.T. Wright, TNCT, p108] “The entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ” - note the verb tense. It doesn’t say “the entire fullness of God’s nature once dwelt bodily in Christ”. It doesn’t say “the entire fullness of God’s nature used to dwell bodily in Jesus Christ when he walked on this earth. No, what does it say? “The entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ” — present tense, even now, still. Even now, in heaven, Jesus is still fully human, fully God.
That’s amazing enough, but it gets even more amazing. According to verse 10, because we apparently share in that fullness that dwells in Christ. Look at verses 9-10 together: “The entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ” - verse 9 - now look at verse 10, “and you have been filled by Him.” Note carefully the logic because this is absolutely breathtaking. All the fullness of God lives in Christ, in His body. We’ve got that by now, I hope. Now if that’s true that all the fullness of God dwells in Christ, and if it’s true that that same Christ dwells in us - “Christ in you, the hope of glory”, as Paul said in chapter one - if that’s true, Paul is saying that that same fullness of God that dwells in Christ also dwells in us. Translation? If you’ve trusted in Jesus, you are one with Him. You are full of God in Christ!
Now this is heavy and deep theology, right? So why does Paul bring it up? Why does it matter? It matters because of “do it yourself salvation.” You don’t need to rely on your own willpower and strength and grit. The suggestion that you could save yourself in that manner is a lie anyway. “By the works of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight”, Romans 3:20. You have all you need within yourself - not because you are enough in yourself, but because Christ is in you, and He is enough!
The Colossians were being tempted with their own version of this “do it yourself theology”. There were false teachers among them who were spreading this spiritually toxic message. Jesus wasn’t enough, they were saying. Start with Jesus, but you’ve got to do more. Obey the law of Moses. Make sure you observe all the sacred festivals and important religious days. Don’t forget to worship the angels, too.
Jesus is good and all that, but He’s not enough. That’s why Paul warns them in verse 8: “See to it”, he says - “beware — watch out — be viligant — be on the lookout” - for what? “That no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col. 2:8 NASB).
By the way, this is how you recognize a cult. In fact, this is the theological foundation for every single cult that has ever seen the light of day. Jesus plus something else. The gospel plus something else. Faith plus something else. Grace plus something else. The Mormons have the OT and the NT and the Book of Mormon and you need to believe all three. The Jehovah’s Witnesses want you to know that it’s faith and works - faith and obedience that saves you, not faith alone. It’s always “Jesus plus something”, isn’t it?
How to recognize false teaching
Grace plus something
Faith plus something
Gospel plus something
Jesus plus something
We have our own version of this, too. Believe in Jesus plus say all the right things. Make sure you sound spiritual. Talk about how much you pray and how often God speaks to you; make sure people know just how spiritual you are. Jesus plus something. Believe in Jesus, yeah, but also make sure you keep a clean house. Cleanliness is next to godliness and all that. Believe in Jesus, yeah, but make sure your kids are never out of line. It is in our spiritual DNA to add to the gospel, but Chuck Swindoll is right: that really is heresy, and heresy of the worst sort. The Bible is clear that Jesus is all you need, and not only is He all you need - He is within you, you are full of Him, and you don’t need to add to Him.
We can resist do it yourself salvation because we are complete in Christ.

#2: We can resist “do it yourself” salvation because we have been made new in Christ

and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions

When I was five years old, I was baptized for the first time. I was one of those multiple baptisms people. I was baptized at the age of five. Then again at the age of eight when I had doubts about my salvation. The pastor who counseled me suggested that might help. It didn’t. I recommitted my life to Christ again at age 14 and then again at age 18. But then when I was 25, I was actually born again. Made new. Converted. I knew it because that’s when, for the first time, my life actually changed. I began to have feelings of affection for Christ. I wanted to live for Him. I wanted holiness. I wanted to serve Him. Other things weren’t as important to me as they had been before. New things were now that weren’t important before.
And so, when I was 25, I was baptized again. Now, would I do it again? That’s the question I was asked. We were attending a church in DC at the time. They had a huge baptism party on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, games, food, baptizing people by the dozens in the water as cruise ships and tankers passed under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge just to our south. The answer I gave was this: It’s true I’ve been baptized twice already in my life, but now Christ really lives in me, and now I really want to live for Him, and so now, and only now, am I ready to be baptized, because I know now what it means. It’s a picture of new life - dying with Christ, going down with Him in the grave, leaving my old self there; coming back up out of the grave into new life with Christ, this time as a new man. That’s what baptism meant. That’s what had happened in my life. And that’s why I wanted to be baptized a third time.
Now that’s the background we need to understand what Paul’s about to do here in this next section. Paul gets pretty wordy, with long sentences and lots of explanations because this same new life was welling up inside of him and bursting out and he could barely contain his excitement and that shows in his writings.
So, what’s the second reason why we can resist do it yourself salvation? Because we’ve been made new in Christ. “And in Him”, Paul writes in verse 11, “in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made with hands”. Now circumcision was the OT sign that you belonged to God. It was kind of like being baptized. Being circumcised didn’t do anything to you. Baptism itself doesn’t do anything to you. They are outward signs of an inner change of life, right?
It’s kind of like those “I’ve been vaccinated” pins they give you. The pin doesn’t vaccinate you, right? It might prick your skin if you put it on too carelessly and in that sense I guess you could say the pin might vaccinate you. But the pin doesn’t stimulate your immune system to mount a defense to COVID19. Of course not. How silly would it be to think that it did? No. What is the pin? What purpose does it serve? It is a visible sign of something that has happened invisibly inside you. It’s an outward symbol, for all to see, of an inward change that has taken place. That’s what circumcision was. That’s what baptism is.
Some scholars think the false teachers were telling the Colossians that if they weren’t already circumcised, they had to be circumcised. Paul is saying, “No, that’s ridiculous. Why would you need to be circumcised now? Christ has come and fulfilled the law. Circumcision was only a signpost; it was a shadow, pointing to something greater. Now, through Him, and in Him, you have the reality that circumcision symbolizes. Only this time, it’s, as Paul says, “a circumcision made without hands” - a spiritual circumcision. You have been changed; your heart is new; you have a new nature. You don’t need to be physically circumcised; in Christ you have all you need, including the reality that circumcision is supposed to be a symbol of. New life. Commitment to God. Love for Christ. A changed heart.
By the way, how does this change happen? Well, Paul tells us in verse 12. Two things have taken place. We’ve died with Christ to our old life. That’s why he says “having been buried with Him in baptism.” But we’ve also been raised up again to new life. So he goes on to say, “having been buried with Him in baptism in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God.” Two things: Dead to sin. Raised to new life with Christ. Now how does this happen? Paul says, “through faith”. Faith in what? Faith in whom? “through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead” (Col. 2:12 NASB).
How many of you are coffee drinkers? I definitely am. Talk about being a different person - I’m a different person after coffee than I am before. Now how many of you like to put cream in your coffee? So, you’re making your coffee. You’ve got your cup. It’s scalding hot, with steam rising off of it. You’ve also got your cream. You could do something to the cream or to the coffee without also doing the same thing to the other. You could pour out the coffee and keep the cream. Two separate substances.
Now, once you add your cream to your coffee, you no longer have two separate substances. Once you add cream to the coffee, you’ve got one substance. You can’t separate the two. And, what you do to one, you do to the other. You pour out your coffee? You pour out the cream with it. You microwave your coffee after a few minutes? Both the coffee and the cream get hotter. The point is this: what you do to the one, you do the other. What’s true of one is true of the other.
Now here’s the relevance. When you trusted in Christ, when you placed faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead, when you believed in Jesus and were born again, you became one with Christ. Welded together with Him for eternity. You might be able to develop some process for separating coffee and cream once they’ve been added together. You’re never severing yourself from Christ. He’ll never sever Himself from you.
The “so what” of union with Christ:
What is true of Him is true of you
Christ died >> the “old you” died
Christ was raised >> the “new you” came alive
Now here’s the so-what of that. The so-what is just that. We’re one with Christ. So what? What difference does it make? The difference it makes is this: What is true of Him becomes true of you. Christ died? In God’s eyes, so did you. You’re dead to sin. The old you is really and truly dead. Christ was raised? So were you. Raised to new life.
And so what Paul saying to the Colossians is, “Look, you guys are being sold a bunch of lies. These teachers are telling you you have to follow certain rules and regulations if you really want to change your life. This is how he expressed it later on in this chapter:

20 If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: 21 “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”? 22 All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up; they are human commands and doctrines. 23 Although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self-made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self-indulgence.,

In other words, self-effort doesn’t save you, self-effort doesn’t make you right with God, and self-effort most definitely won’t actually change you from the inside out the same way Christ can. How many diets fail? How many New Years’ Resolutions do we make and not keep? How many times in the last six months have I planned to exercise and start dieting and yet here I am, not having succeeded yet? We fail to change because we fail to recognize all that we have, and all that we are, in Christ. We are new in Him. The old Dustin is gone. He only has as much power over me as I want to give him. I want to learn how to really be the man that I am in Christ. I’m not perfect. I fail very often. But my failure and yours don’t mean none of this is true. It is. And it is the third reason why we can resist do it yourself salvation. We are new in Christ.
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#3: We can resist “do it yourself” salvation because we have been forgiven in Christ

14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

I don’t know if any of you watch the TV show called The Bachelor. I don’t, but if you do, you might be aware of something that happened recently on that show. Apparently the show had its first season with a black man as the star, the guy, you know the one who all the girls want to be with and at the end he decides which one he’s going to choose. And he announces his choice, of course, on live national television, but they also broadcast the conversations the guy has with the girls he didn’t choose. He usually tells them why it didn’t work out.
This time, when the guy, whose name is Matt James, sat down with contestant Rachael Kirkconnell, the reason it didn’t work out was a bit different than previous episodes. The reason James didn’t choose Kirkconnell to be his mate is familiar to us by now. Some photos of her surfaced where she was at a party celebrating the Old South - the time of plantations and slavery and all that. No now matter what you think about that kind of party, the point I want to make is how cancel culture is making forgiveness a thing of the past.
Rachael Kirkconnell was confronted on national television with a copy of the photo that surfaced of her at this party. When asked what she saw when she looked at the picture, she said, “I see this person living in this ignorance, without thinking who it might be hurting.”
Now we can all agree that racism is evil. It is real. There’s no excuse for it. It is immensely hurtful and harmful. It shrivels our own souls even as it dehumanizes the object of racism. But you know what’s equally true? We won’t make progress in race relations by using the tactic of public shame. She was publicly shamed. It was intentional. Shaming her was the goal. After being confronted with the photo, with tears streaming down her face, the whole nation watching, she tried to express remorse, but we all know that Rachael Kirkconnell, no matter what she does, or how she changes, no matter how seriously and sincerely she repents, there will be no forgiveness for her from our culture. She’s done, cancelled. [https://www.npr.org/2021/03/16/977841254/the-bachelors-cluelessness-about-race-comes-to-a-head-in-season-finale, accessed March 27, 2021]
Church, aren’t you thankful for a God who cancels sin, without cancelling the sinner? We don’t deserve forgiveness. We actually do deserve to be cancelled, not by the world but by the only One who has the power to actually do so, God, the Judge of all the earth. But our God in Christ forgives us by grace! And he does it by cancelling the sin rather than the sinner. Look at verse 14 with me and see the beauty of the gospel. The last part of verse 13 tells us God has forgiven not just some but all of our transgressions and then tells us how He has done that: “Having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us.” The picture here is of charges made against us of crimes committed. Violations of God’s law. Sin is real. All of us stand guilty. That’s the certificate of debt. It haunts us. Paul says these charges are “against us”, and “hostile to us”.
I cannot express the meaning of verse 14 any better than this from NT scholar N.T. Wright:
Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary c. Already Free from the Law’s Demands (2:13–15)

Jesus was sent to the Roman tribunal after being deemed worthy of death by a Jewish court, which had declared (whatever we make of the details) that he was guilty according to the law. Pilate, echoing that verdict but giving it a new twist, put on the cross the sign that read ‘The King of the Jews’. But Paul, looking at the cross, saw there instead the titulus that expressed the charge against all Jesus’ people, the written code that stood over against them, disqualifying them from the life of the new age. And it was God, not Pilate, who put it there.

We can resist do it yourself salvation - indeed, we must resist do it yourself salvation, because our sin has been forgiven in Christ.
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#4: We can resist “do it yourself” salvation because our enemy has been defeated in Christ

15 When He had adisarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

Lastly, we can resist do it yourself salvation because our enemy has been defeated in Christ. There’s one more thing that happened on the cross that makes do it yourself salvation unnecessary. He has defeated our enemy. Specifically, Paul says Christ “disarmed the rulers and authorities”. Rulers and authorities are angelic powers. There is an unseen spiritual realm, and in that unseen spiritual realm, an unseen spiritual battle rages. But that battle is part of a war that has already been won. Not only did Jesus disarm the demonic powers by His death and resurrection. He humiliated them, “made a public display of them”, verse 15 says.
Now why is this important? It’s important because when it comes to demons and spiritual warfare and the unseen spiritual realm, we tend to make one of two mistakes. We either don’t think about it as much as we should or even at all. But then there’s also the other extreme, which is the problem the Colossians had. They thought about it too much. It’s another way the false teachers were getting to them. They were being encouraged to worship these angelic figures. If you want proof of that, see verse 18 of this same chapter.
Angel worship. We can relate to it. We all know some folks who seem very interested in the angelic world. Preoccupied, even - to the point that the angels become more fascinating than God Himself. Or maybe there’s a fascination with the demonic or an unhealthy fear of the demonic. We should have a healthy and sober recognition that demons are real. But not an obsession or preoccupation. And again, Christ is the answer. Paul is saying, “Look, guys, you don’t understand what happened on the cross. When Jesus died and rose again, one of the things that happened was He defeated the demonic powers. Why would you worship these demonic powers when their death sentence is already pronounced? Why would you obsess over these beings when they’ve been disarmed? Why would you fear these creatures when God at the cross triumphed over them, making a public spectacle of them? Demons have no authority over you, church. And they have no real power over you. We can resist do it yourself salvation because our enemy has been defeated.
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Conclusion and call for response

Paul began this passage with a pastor’s heart. He said, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.” He took it for granted that some of the Colossians had been taken captive by ways of thinking that had them enslaved and in bondage. I take it for granted that some of you this morning listening to this sermon may have been taken captive by the kind of do it yourself mentality that God’s word warns us about here.
You see, we tend to think people with do it yourself mentalities about God and salvation just have different opinions. God, however, says they’re in bondage. God doesn’t want you to live that way. God wants us free. Some of you are not free, though.
Some of you aren’t free, though. Maybe you’re not free because you’ve never really trusted Christ as your Savior. You think God is angry with you. He’s not. He just wants you to come home to Him and be free. He wants to bring you into His family and introduce you to His Son and to satisfy you and fill you full with Him. He wants you to be made new in Him. He wants you to be forgiven. None of that is available to you by self-effort. All of it is available to you by faith. Lean on Christ, rest your hope on Him, come to Him and find satisfaction in Him.
Others of you might not be free, not because you haven’t trusted Christ, but because you have and yet you struggle to really believe that all of this the Bible has shown us today is true of you. You can see how it can be true for others. But you struggle to believe it’s true for you. But if you’ve trusted in Jesus as your Savior, Christ is in you, and you are in Him, and all that’s left is for you to recognize it and live it. Ask God to help you really believe these things and to really experience them. We can resist do it yourself salvation because we are complete in Christ, we are made new in Christ, we are forgiven in Christ, and our enemy has been defeated.
When Timothy McVeigh was asked if he believed in life after death, he said he didn’t know for sure, but if there was, no matter what it was, he would “improvise, adapt and overcome.” He said, “If there a hell, then I’ll be in good company with a lot of fighter pilots who also had to bomb innocents to win the war.” [Wikipedia.org, “Timothy McVeigh”, accessed March 27, 2021] How much better it would have been for him and the world who was watching him before his death if he had given up the idol of self and self-effort and instead trusted in the God who wanted to fill Him, make Him new, and forgive him. Then, Timothy McVeigh’s last words might not have been the words of William Ernest Henley. They might have been closer to the words of Augustus Toplady, the hymnwriter: “The terrors of law and of God // with me can have nothing to do;
My Savior’s obedience in blood hide all my transgressions from view.”

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