SET FREE BY THE CROSS

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 3, 2022 under 2022 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday message; April 3, 2022 from Colossians 2:11-15

Theme: A whole-hearted trust in the cross is our greatest defense against spiritual deception.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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When Paul wrote his letter to the believers in Colossae, he wrote to Christians that he had never met. But he was nevertheless very excited for them. He had heard about how the gospel had reached them, and how they had believed it, and how it had borne great fruit among them.

And he wrote his letter to them, in large part, in order to protect them. They faced a great challenge. They had come to faith in the midst of a city that was characterized by many false religions and paganistic practices. There were lots of misleading philosophies and false versions of ‘spirituality’ all around them. And to make matters even harder for them, there were some Jewish influences that were seeking to bring the members of the Colossian church under the oppressive rule of Judaistic traditions and religious regulations.

Paul wanted to make sure that they weren’t drawn away by these counterfeit forms of spirituality, and that they were kept strong and solid in a saving faith in Jesus Christ. In Chapter 2, he wrote and warned them;

For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (Colossians 2:1-10).

And dear brothers and sisters in Christ; the things that Paul was concerned about should also be a concern to us today. We too live in a cultural environment that is given over to all kinds of false religions, phony versions of spirituality, and ungodly philosophies. If we’re not careful, they have the potential of drawing us away from a sincere faith in Jesus. They don’t necessarily come knocking on our front door as often as they used to. They have newer and more effective means of making their way into our homes. Social media has made it possible for all kinds of anti-Christian forms of spirituality to influence people and bring them into bondage.

And there’s a basic way that the perpetrators of these dangerous forms of artificial spirituality seek to draw people away from the faith. They do it by making people feel that there’s something missing in their lives—a void in their inner being that leaves them dissatisfied and incomplete—something that a relationship with Jesus alone cannot bring about, and that only they can give.

That was the very same kind of problem that Paul was writing about. He wanted to protect the Colossian believers from falling victim to spiritual frauds and phony philosophies. He wanted to keep them free from bondage. He wanted to protect their faith in Jesus—and their confidence in how complete they already were in Him. And so, what he did was show them all that God had accomplished for them through the cross of Jesus Christ alone.

In Colossians 2:11-15, he told them;

In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it (vv. 11-15).

So; do you know how you can best be protected from the temptation to embrace a counterfeit? It’s by knowing what you’ve already got when you have the real thing. If you know—and are well convinced—of what the cross of Jesus Christ has fully accomplished for you, then you cannot be persuaded to forsake Him and embrace something less.

Let’s look carefully at those words from Paul in Colossians 2:11-15. Let’s grow in our appreciation of what we already have through the cross of Jesus. And let’s do so with a desire to protect ourselves from any false system of spirituality. As Paul shows us in this passage, a wholehearted trust in the cross is our greatest defense against spiritual deception.

Why would we want anything less than what we already have in Him?

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Now; what kinds of things has the cross already done for us? If we go back to these words from Paul, we find—first of all—that …

1. IT FREES US FROM BONDAGE TO THE FLESH.

When Paul speaks of ‘the flesh’ in this passage, he’s not speaking of our physical bodies—our skin and our bones. You can’t be freed from your own body, because that—by God’s design—is an inescapable part of you. Rather, what Paul is talking about is the principle of a sinful, fallen nature that made use of that body and caused us to sin with it. It’s that principle in us that keeps us from being able to obey God in our own power. It’s that dynamic at work in us that makes us sin, and that leads to death. It’s what makes us cry out in Romans 7:24: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Who can deliver us from it? Well; many false religious systems and phony spiritualities come along and tell you that they can do it. All you’ve got to do is follow their list of rituals and ceremonies, and abstain from the things that they tell you to abstain from, and embrace their philosophies, and do all their physical exercises that will free your spirit from the body, and then you’ll be delivered. But none of them can do what they claim. None of them can separate us from this principle of sin that works in us.

But God can. Paul tells us this about Jesus Christ in verse 11: “In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ …”

Think back to the Old Testament—and to the commandment that God first gave to Abraham about circumcision. It was a covenant symbol for the Jewish people. Every male child was to be circumcised. Circumcision itself, however, didn’t change their inner being. It was an outward act that symbolized something that God would do in the future—something that would be accomplished for us through the promised Messiah. It looked ahead to a spiritual circumcision—a spiritual ‘cutting away’—a circumcision that would be performed ‘without hands’. It would be a work by which God Himself would put away from us “the body of the sins of the flesh” (or as better ancient manuscripts have it, “the body of the flesh”)—that principle by which we were held prisoner to sin, and by which we could not please God. Through Christ, God severs us from that old principle and sets us free from it.

And how did God accomplish this for us? It was by our Lord’s death on the cross. Paul tells us, in verse 12, that it was by our being “buried with Him in baptism …” The baptism that Paul is speaking of is not the physical ceremony of baptism that we perform in church, but rather the spiritual baptism that the Holy Spirit performs when He places us in Christ. He causes us to be so completely identified with Jesus that His death on the cross becomes our death, and His resurrection becomes our resurrection. And so, in a very real sense, the ‘body of the flesh’—that inner principle—has been made to die with Jesus on the cross. We are now no longer under its dominion. We have been set free by Jesus’ cross; and we no longer have to obey it when it commands us to sin.

This is an amazing and liberating truth; and in Romans 6, the apostle Paul explains it to us in this way:

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:1-14).

So; when phony religions and false spiritualities come along—bringing you some practices and rituals and exercises that are supposed to free your spirit from bondage to the body—ignore them. They are trying to sell you something that they can’t give to you—and that, in fact, you already have completely in Christ. You have already been set free through faith in the cross of Jesus. By it, you have been crucified with Him; and it has now set you free from bondage to the principle of the flesh.

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Another blessing that the cross of Jesus gives us is that …

2. IT RESULTS IN A NEW LIFE FROM THE DEAD.

By faith in the cross, we have died and been buried with Jesus. But Jesus didn’t stay dead … and neither did we. In verses 12 to 13, Paul went on to speak of our having been ‘baptized’ into Christ, “in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him …”

Before you believed on Jesus, you were spiritually dead. Your body may have walked around on earth; but you had no life before God. Without your really knowing it, you were the plaything of the devil; and he led you around in such a way as to cause you to live in continual bondage to sin. Paul put it this way in Ephesians 2:1-3;

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others (Ephesians 2:1-3).

What a horrible condition we were in! But then comes two very precious words: “But God …”! Those two words make all the difference. Paul went on to say;

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (vv. 4-7).

In order for us to be raised in newness of life in Jesus’ resurrection, we first had to die in Jesus’ death on the cross. It was only by dying that we could be set free from the bondage of the body of the flesh. But now, having died with Jesus, God has raised us up with Him, and has made us to sit positionally—even right now—in a place of glory with Him at God’s right hand, and has destined us to share in His glory forever! This means that, right now—because of the cross of Jesus—you and I are living life on this earth as resurrected beings. We are alive from the dead. All of the past is gone; and we are now living a brand new life in Jesus. You don’t have to wait for eternal life in the future. You’re living it right now. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:17;

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

So; when phony religions and fake spiritualities try to persuade us that they have something to offer, just ignore them. None of them can do for us what we really need. None of them can make us alive from the dead. None of them can make us into resurrected beings who live brand new lives. None of them can seat us with Christ in the heavenly places. Only the cross of Jesus can give us that. And that’s what we already have in Him.

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A third blessing that we have through the cross of Jesus is that …

3. IT FORGIVES ALL TRANSGRESSIONS AGAINST GOD.

God doesn’t just cause you to die with Jesus to the bondage of the flesh, and bring you back to life with Jesus while still bearing all of the guilt of sin. As Paul goes on to say in verse 13, He has made you alive together with Jesus, “having forgiven you all trespasses …”

“Trespasses” are those times when we have crossed over the lines that God’s commandments have set for us, and when we have—as it were—stepped our toes into God’s ‘no trespassing’ zones. Those are sins against God; and they must be paid for. The Bible tells us in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death”. When we sin, a death must occur.

But Jesus’ death provides the complete payment for our sins. He had no sin of His own, and so was able to be a perfect Substitute for us;. He thus died on the cross in our place, so that now God is freely able to forgive us of all our trespasses. As the apostle Peter put it; Jesus is the one

… who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed (1 Peter 2:24).

And notice that Paul said that God forgives all our trespasses—not only the ones in the past, but also the ones in the future. I want to live faithfully for God; but I often fail. But when I stumble and fall, I am free to get right back up and resume walking with God again in the joy of His full and complete acceptance and love. I confess my sins and leave them behind; because they are already fully atoned for through the death of Jesus on the cross for me.

So; when those false religious systems and fake forms of spirituality come along and tell us that, in order to be forgiven by God, we must do some act of contrition, or some particular work of atonement, or some other act of penance, just ignore them. They’re offering something that they can’t provide—and that we already have completely through faith in the cross of Jesus.

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Now; Paul goes on to tell us another thing that the cross gives us; and that is that …

4. IT CANCELS ALL REQUIREMENTS AGAINST US.

The Bible tells us that “the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56). The law of God—written down in the form of rules and regulations that were passed on by Moses and that were summarized in the ten commandments—is good. God’s ordinances and commandments are holy; because they reflect who He is. But the problem was me. We could not keep them. We’d stumble and fall; and it became sin because we did what God said not to do. That law—good as it is—could only end up killing us.

But, dear brothers and sisters; Jesus died in our place on the cross. And now, because of the cross, that which is against us is now no longer against us. Paul said in verse 14 that God has provided us the forgiveness of all our trespasses through Christ; “having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” He placed us in Jesus; so that we died with Jesus in His crucifixion, and rose again with Him in His resurrection, and are forgiven of all sins by His atonement. And as a result, it’s as if He took the record book, opened up the ledger of our lives before Him, and wiped away all the written requirements that condemned us—because we could not keep them.

As Paul said in Romans 8;

For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:3-4).

So; when the fake spiritualities and religions come along and try to give us a burdensome set of rules and regulations to follow, let’s ignore them. They could not possibly give us greater rules and more holy regulations than God has already provided through laws and commandments. And we couldn’t keep them. But that handwriting of ordinances against us has already been wiped clean from our record and has been fully nailed to the cross as ‘paid in full’.

* * * * * * * * * *

And there’s one more blessing we have in the cross; and that’s that …

5. IT TRIUMPHS OVER THE FORCES THAT ACCUSE US.

The moment that our Lord hung on the cross and cried out, “It is finished!”; that’s when all the forces of hell cried out, “Nooooo—!!!!” This is because, as Paul says in verse 15, “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

The devil—the enemy of our souls—is a gangster. And these ‘principalities and powers’ are spiritual forces that are under his control. They are our real enemies. As Paul put it in Ephesians 6;

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).

The devil, as it tells us in Revelation 12:10, is the one who is “the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night”. But all his accusations have been stripped away. He has been disarmed—along with all his demonic forces—by the cross of Jesus. As Paul puts it in Romans 8:33-34;

Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us (Romans 8:33-34).

Now, it’s as if the devil and his wicked forces are put on display as conquered enemies in the triumph parade of Jesus Christ—with the cross of Jesus lifted high as the cause of their defeat. So; when false teachers and phony spiritual leaders come along to bring accusations against us for our faith in the cross, we can ignore them. They can’t bring an accusation against us any more than the devil can—and he’s already declared to be an utterly defeated enemy!

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So then; in this wonderful passage, Paul shows us that the greatest defense we can have against spiritual deception is to cling to the cross of Jesus. It has provided us with everything we need; and no other counterfeit can provide us with anything more than what we already have. The cross of Jesus has set us free from all bondage.

And what should we do about it? We really couldn’t summarize it any better than Paul

So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God. Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations—“Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory (Colossians 2:16-3:4).

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