Christ in Colossians | Alive in Christ – Colossians 2:6-15
Christ comes before all. Period. Paul’s message to the church in Colossae remains steadfast that Christ establishes Himself as the superior and true King over all who is worthy of our praise. There is no limit to the sovereignty of Christ and therefore, there should be no limit to what we may before Him. Furthermore, we lay ourselves before the King, no out of fear that He will smite us if we don’t but rather that Jesus is a loving God who desires to rescue and save mankind. This differs from the other religions of Paul’s day (and ours today as well) in that we cannot seek to earn God’s love. God lavishes His love upon us as His dearly beloved creation. We cannot truly find life until we come face to face and bow before the source of all life. With Jesus established on the throne, He offers us something nothing else can; freedom from our sin and life everlasting. When we align our lives to the fact that Jesus is Lord and preeminent over all, we come alive to Christ and out to death the desire and sin of our past.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 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, 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. 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.”
Colossians 2:6-15 ESV
The Allure of Self-Indulgence
With Christ as preeminent over all creation, the dark spiritual forces of this world seek to distract mankind away from the truth and reality of Christ’s sovereign reign. Hence, the warning from Paul to the Colossians church is to be cautious of philosophy, empty deceit, and the elemental spirits of the world. The idea behind philosophy seeks to discover meaning in life. So many schools of thought attempt to derive this meaning apart from the originator of all creation, the Lord God Almighty. They titilate the human ego by putting us in the place of preeminence that we are the centerpiece and focus of the universe. Our puffed up sense of importance attempts to dethrone God who has no intention of being dethroned and we fall even deeper into our sin through our arrogance and separation from God.
As scripture discusses circumscision and baptism, it drives at the fundamental solution to our problem of sin; our flesh must be trimmed back and out to death so that we might come alive to the fullness of God. Baptism and circumscision display our relationship and covenant with The Lord. We were once a people dead in our sin who lay before the Holy of Holies, in rejection of our self, in order that we might find the trueness of life in Jesus Christ. Acknowledging Christ as preeminent is not about putting Christ on the throne but more acknowledges that He is already there. We need a Savior to rescue us from our sin and selfish desire that leads to our death and destruction and rebels against a perfect God. Thus, we establish our life on the foundation of a selfless King who died on our behalf before the foundations of the world so that we could be with Him.
Canceling the Record of Debt
Yet, beyond the problems of hollow philosophy that titilates the senses, the larger problem for mankind stems from our sin. Sin makes us debtors to our spiritual condition as we separate ourselves from the fullnesss of God’s glory and presence. The temptation of Christians is to downplay the effect that our sin has had in our lives. We celebrate the cross but fear engaging with what drove Christ to die there. For some it’s an arrogance of thinking that our sin just isn’t that bad and that we can pursue God while simultaneously indulging in our fleshly desire. Nothing could be further from the truth. Christ is preeminent and will refuse to peacefully coexist with that which drove us away. For others we refuse to engage our sin out of fear that God will see our filth and push us away. God, ruling over all things, including knowledge and knows the intimate details of our life yet still bids us to come closer to Him. Jesus looks to bring us alive by allowing us the opportunity to lay ourselves dead and take the eternal consequences of our sin upon Himself on the cross.
As Christ is preeminent over all creation, all substance, and all being, our very source of life is rooted in the King of King’s reign on the throne. By our own actions, we achieved death. By Jesus’ we are gifted life by grace. We lay our lives down before the King as those who have come alive through the fullness of Jesus’s actions. Christ taking the punishment of our sin is only the beginning though. It would have been enough to bear our punishments and set us as morally neutral in the world. Yet, this is only half of Christ’s saving grace in the world. Having put to death the flesh, Christ establishes our life in the glory and grace of His presence. We lay bare before the throne, but we are uplifted by the hand of God who claims us and calls us his own. Nothing can stand against the power of Christ to reigns preeminent over all creation. He is the first and the focus of all creation and He is a loving Savior who draws us into deeper relationship with Him.
