The Rules are Never Enough

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When I was in high school and college, I used to take a week off from work every summer to go as a sponsor to kids’ camp. I know I’ve told you all that it’s really not my spiritual gift. It was more about I enjoyed the people I was working with in kids’ camp more than the kids sometimes.

But I’d go every year. The one thing I refused to do, though, was to ride the bus with everybody else. And somebody asked me one time, why do you always insist on driving your car out to camp?

And I said, it’s very simple. When I drive my own vehicle, I can pack as many cleaning supplies as I want. I’m a little bit of a germaphobe.

I always have been. I was worse back then before I had kids because kids, having your own kids in the house, like little filth machines, it makes you kind of get over some of that. But I was really bad back then.

And used to, some of my friends and I from the youth group would go the Sunday night, you know, we’d always go eat dinner on Sunday night after church. And then after dinner on the night before we left for kids camp, we would go to Walmart and buy all their cleaning supplies. I’m not exaggerating.

We would go buy all the Lysol that they had. And there were some people that thought I was crazy. And there were some of the men that thought, I want him in my cabin because they knew that it’d be an easier week for them because I’d be keeping the kids clean.

All right? I’m the only person I know who brought a mop and a vacuum to camp. One year I had to threaten a little second grader because he had somehow slipped by me all week and finally one of the other kids told me he had not been showering all week.

And I said, we’re not sending you home. I’m not going to shower him. That’s not happening.

But you’re getting in that shower one way or another. I forced him in there at mop point and said, you’re either going to be showered or you’re going to be mopped before we send you back to mama. The choice is yours.

There were always those kids, and I never understood it. there were always those kids who did not want to shower. And they thought, or didn’t want to wash their hands, or didn’t want to change clothes all week.

And you can imagine how that got to, well, you can imagine what that was like by the end of the week. There was a serious problem. One that contrary to what they thought could not be fixed by slapping on body spray.

That just does multiple days of not washing and not changing clothes. You can spray on body spray or you can spray on cologne or whatever you want. You are just trying to mask a deeper problem that is not going to go away, right?

Not going to go away until the underlying problem is dealt with. And this week as I was reading in Colossians, you’re probably wondering how did he get from there to there? As I was reading in the book of Colossians, Paul talks about the problem of our unrighteousness.

He talks about the problem of sin in the heart and talks about the way people would try to use rules and would try to use legalism to slap over the underlying problem of our sin. And the bottom line is you and I are born sinners. And we have this problem of this sin in our heart.

We have this wickedness in our hearts. even if we are outwardly well-behaved, we’ve talked about this some, even if we are outwardly well-behaved, I’ve lived a pretty quiet, boring life, and yet in my heart there are attitudes and there are thoughts that are sinful. They are in opposition to God.

We all have that. We all have this problem of sin. And just slapping an outward adherence to the rules, whatever those rules may be, over that sin nature is a lot like trying to put body spray over a child that hasn’t bathed in several days.

It does not address the problem. It doesn’t even really mask the problem. And so tonight I want to look at Colossians chapter 2 and see what Paul says about these rules and what they will and will not accomplish.

So we’re going to be in Colossians chapter 2. We’ve been working our way through Colossians on Sunday nights and we’re going to be in chapter 2. We’re going to start in verse 11 tonight.

Once you find it, once you’re there, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. And we’re going to read verses 11 through 23 tonight. Paul says, in him, that’s Jesus, 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.

So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or in 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, 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 and self-imposed religion, false humility and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. And you may be seated. So you see, He talks in there about the problem of our sin.

He talks about how we have this problem with the flesh. We have this wickedness that lives inside of us. And how people have recognized that and have tried to find ways to deal with that.

And what we often run to is the rules. Now some people may call it religion. Some people may call it legalism.

Some people may call it morality. but we run to those things to try to deal with this underlying problem of sin. We try to slap that over it and call it good.

But Paul makes it very clear throughout this passage, we do not become righteous by the rules, but by a relationship. It’s not our adherence to the rules that makes us righteous. And it never could.

It never could because we are only, when we follow God’s law, Not even to mention all the other rules that mankind slaps over it and puts in place. But when we follow God’s law, we say, well, I know I’ve sinned, but look, now I follow the Ten Commandments, I do all these things. We’re only doing what God says is the standard.

We don’t get extra credit for that. I mentioned Wednesday night, talking about the judge that was a member of our church in Seminole, and being able to point to him as kind of an object lesson and say, if I were to stand before that guy right there, accused of murder, would he let me off if in my defense I said, yeah, but look at all the other people I didn’t murder. I don’t get extra credit for that, right?

Just because I followed the law in all these other instances. The problem is I broke the law and need to be punished for it, need to pay for it. The same thing is true here.

Even if we do come along and at times we outwardly obey the law, we outwardly do the things that God requires, it doesn’t change the fact that we have broken God’s law. And inwardly, our hearts are in rebellion against God’s law. And so when so many people come to religion, and I’ll just do better and try harder, and they say, I’m going to use that to address the problem of wickedness within me, it just doesn’t cut it.

Genuine righteousness requires a drastic change in our circumstances. It requires that we as sinners, for something to actually fundamentally change, not just for something to be masked, not just for something to be covered over, but it requires a transformation. And Paul here in verse 11 and in the verses that follow, he compares it to circumcision.

Now, I’m not going to get too deep into that. We were studying through the book of Romans in our Bible class, my kids and I, we came to a verse about circumcision. Charla, I remember seeing her peek her head around the corner going, how’s he going to explain this one?

I explained it to the kids that it’s an operation that is performed on males, that in their day and age, as part of the Jewish religion, it was considered a mark of being part of God’s covenant because it was the removal of something that was considered unclean. And so when he says here, when he compares our need for righteousness, he compares it to circumcision, that was a surgical removal of something that is considered to be unclean. It’s not a coexistence with what’s unclean.

It’s not just calling it unclean. It is identifying that which is unclean in our lives and removing it. And by the way, the Bible talks at length about circumcision of the heart, including in this passage.

And the Bible uses that as a picture of what needs to happen in us. It’s not just a covering over of what we’ve done wrong. The Bible indicates we need to identify those things in our hearts that are sinful, and we need to go after them ruthlessly.

They need to be surgically removed. They need to be cut out at the root. We need a circumcision of the heart.

Now that’s a pretty drastic idea that we’re talking about. And he compares it, so this need for righteousness, he compares it to circumcision. He also compares it to dying and being raised to a whole new life.

I’d say that’s a pretty drastic change, right? If we were to die and then come back. That doesn’t happen every day.

That’s why it was so miraculous when Jesus did it. That’s why it was so miraculous when He did it Himself. That’s why it was so miraculous when He caused other people to do it.

And in verses 12-13, He compares the change in us, the change that needs to take place in us, to an actual resurrection. And He talks about us dying with Christ, with being buried in baptism and being raised to newness of life. That doesn’t mean that baptism does anything to save us.

Next week, we are going to baptize Ryan Brown. He is not in some state of limbo right now, waiting for the full salvation experience, okay? He made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ a while back.

And if that was sincere, he is already as saved as he’s ever going to be. The baptism does not save him. The baptism is a picture of him being buried with Christ, all right?

It’s a picture of what’s supposed to happen to us. The old man, the old person that we were before. is supposed to be dead now and raised in Jesus to walk in newness of life.

The change that takes place in us is supposed to be so drastic that it’s like the old person is gone and it’s a completely new person in our bodies. It’s also compared here in verse 14 to somebody receiving a pardon and their record being expunged. That word expunged is not one that I learned until a few years ago, but it means that the entire record is wiped clean.

See, a pardon just by itself doesn’t do that. A pardon says you’re guilty, and I’m acknowledging you’re guilty, and you’re acknowledging you’re guilty, but there’s no longer any legal consequence. An expungement removes it from the record.

It’s like it never even happened. And we see here in, let me turn back to verse 14 here, 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. It’s like God in Jesus Christ takes our criminal record and has it nailed to the cross where it’s punished in Him, it’s cleared from our record, and as far as God’s concerned, it’s like it never even happened.

So for us to really be righteous, it requires some dramatic things to happen. It requires a change of the heart. It requires a new direction in our lives.

All of this can only be brought about by Jesus Christ and what He did in being punished in our place so that that sin could be taken off of our account. So again, don’t think from that, oh, then I just need to really change direction and really try harder and really produce a change in my life. No, it’s something that only Jesus Christ can do.

The things he’s talking about, the circumcision of the heart, that’s not something we can do. Being raised to new life, that’s not something we can do. Being pardoned and expunged, that’s not something that we can do.

It is impossible to produce such a drastic inward change through good works or religious activities. And I feel like I talk about this a lot. But as we’re going through these as we’re going through passages like these that we’ve looked at in Colossians and several of the others that we’ve looked at in other services, that theme is repeated over and over.

And it’s for good reason because that was so difficult for them to understand in our day. And it seems to be the number one obstacle to the gospel in our day. We think about people that just don’t believe in God or don’t believe in Jesus.

There are far more people, at least in our part of the country, it seems like there are far more people who believe in God and believe in Jesus, but also believe they have to get to God through good works than just don’t believe in God or Jesus at all. The problem we are dealing with, at least in our immediate area, by and large, is not an anti-Christian worldview. It’s a worldview that has just enough Christianity that they think it’s important they try harder.

And if someday they can just try hard enough, they’ll get there. And that is the complete opposite of what the Bible teaches. As Paul points out in verses 16 and 17 that these religious activities, these good works, I mean they’re called good works for a reason.

They’re good to do. And there’s nothing wrong with religious activities like going to church and being baptized and giving money to the poor. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things.

But as far as they are something we attempt to try to make God love us more, Paul describes them as empty gestures. He says in verse 17 that they are a shadow. They’re a shadow of things to come.

Shadow really can’t do much of anything, right? I was out in the yard working yesterday, and it was actually kind of sunny. Wasn’t sure what that giant flaming ball was in the sky, right?

After the months we’ve had. It’s sunny, and I was out there working. My shadow was out there with me, right?

And my shadow looked like it was working just as hard as I was. Didn’t move a single tree limb, right? He says it’s a shadow.

These things are just an empty vapor. They’re just an empty gesture. All these adherences to the rules, because he talks about the religious feasts and festivals in verse 16.

He says they are a shadow. They’re really just something that’s there to point us to Jesus Christ. And one of the problems with trying to get to God through the rules, aside from the emptiness of it, aside from the fact that it doesn’t work, is that these rules and these rituals and thinking, I’m going to be good enough to get there. I’m going to work hard enough.

I’m going to try hard enough. The problem with that is it exalts us in our minds instead of exalting God. It gives us the glory.

And I think that’s why it’s so hard to let go of because we like to think that we contributed something. Do you ever feel bad when somebody gives you something for free, when they give you a gift? Kind of feel bad about how much they spent or, oh, you shouldn’t have done that.

And we’ve probably all felt that way. We like to think, well, I did something to earn this. We’re that way with God sometimes.

He tells us it’s a free gift and we can’t wrap our minds around it. God, let me give you something for it. Let me contribute something for it here.

But that’s not the way it works. And in verses 18 and 19, he talks about this being cheated of our reward and this false humility. These things, he says in verse 18, puff the people up in their fleshly minds.

When in verse 19, we’re supposed to grow with the increase that is from God. So where our salvation and growing closer to Him and this genuine righteousness that He creates in us is supposed to glorify God. When we try to come to God through our own good works and we try to say, God, I’ll just work harder, I’ll just do better, I’ll be a better person, then you’ll love me.

That builds us up in our minds. That exalts us. That gets us to the point where we say, hey, I’m a great person.

That gets us to that attitude that so many people point out about Christians that they just can’t stand, that they think we think we’re better than them. We should be the last ones to think that because we realize what God had to go through, what God the Father and God the Son both had to go through because of who we really are. And so these rules, they exalt us when we don’t deserve it.

And at best, they produce a temporary, superficial change without addressing the root problem of our unrighteousness. They don’t address the corruption of the heart. And so he says, why do you do this?

He asked them in verse 22. Why? Why would you want to mess around with these rules and this legalistic way?

You’re working so hard when Jesus has already taken care of this. See, where the rules can’t really produce the change that’s needed, Jesus is the only one who can. Where the rules can’t ever make us righteous in any sense of the word other than appearance, Jesus declares us righteous in a legal sense.

That’s where I talked about our record was nailed to the cross with him. He declares us righteous in a legal sense, and then he makes us righteous in a behavioral sense. Now, what I mean by that is there are a couple ways the Bible speaks of this righteousness.

The Bible describes how God calls us righteous at the time that we come to Jesus Christ. At the time we receive him, he says, you’re righteous. But then that’s a little bit of a paradox in our minds because then God begins to work in us and through the power of his Holy Spirit, he begins to change us and transform us and make us into what he wants us to be. And we could easily say, well, wait a minute, he said I was righteous over here, but now he’s working in me to make me righteous.

It’s because God said it from a legal standpoint, you’re righteous. There’s nothing I’m holding against you. Your record is clean.

And then he spends the rest of our lives teaching us how to act like it, Right? My children are mine. At the time of conception, they were mine.

Now I’ve got about 18 years to teach them how to act like it. Right? Act like us and not the wolves that everybody else is going to think raised you.

Right? Teaching you how to behave as my child. That’s what God does with us.

We are declared His. We are adopted in Christ at the moment that we receive Him. That sin is forgiven, and then God spends the rest of our lives teaching us how to act like his children.

And that’s why I draw the distinction between declaring us righteous in a legal sense and then making us righteous in a behavioral sense. Because when you look at all the things he says need to happen, Jesus is responsible for all of them. You go back to verse 11, and Jesus is responsible for the circumcision of the heart.

He talks about the circumcision of Christ. That means it’s Jesus who comes in and surgically removes from our hearts what doesn’t need to be there. He does that. We don’t.

The best we can contribute to that is to feebly ask Him, Lord, if you see anything there that doesn’t belong there, get rid of it. And ultimately, He’s the one that changes it. He’s the one who removes what doesn’t belong.

He’s the one that raises us to new life. I hate when the passage is divided on the page and I have to keep switching back and forth. He says we were buried with Him in whom we were raised with Him.

We were raised in Him. We were raised with Him. Any newness of life we have is a result of what He has done, not anything that we’ve done.

He is responsible for the newness of life. He forgives us and pardons us. When it talked about the wiping out of the handwriting of requirements, when it talks about being forgiven of trespasses, He is the one who did that.

That was accomplished precisely because Jesus Christ shed his blood as the full payment. Not because I contributed to it in some way. Not because I followed the rules.

Not because I checked all the religious boxes. In verse 15, it talks about him making a public spectacle of those ordinances, of those requirements. Jesus triumphed over the sin that held us captive.

Jesus had victory over it. Jesus accomplished in us what all of the religious activities in the world never could. When verse 17 says those things are a shadow, it says the substance is Jesus Christ. And the book of Hebrews, in one of my favorite passages, talks about this and describes the way that for centuries, the priests stood outside the tabernacle and then outside the temple, and just all day they were offering incense, and they were offering bulls, and they were offering goats, and they were offering doves and pigeons, and they were offering drink offerings and blood offerings and burnt offerings and grain offerings.

And they were all these offerings. And then he says, in one single act of sacrifice, Jesus Christ accomplished what all those offerings combined never ever could. You realize that?

In one act, he did for you what all the religious activities of all of mankind could never accomplish. He brought us into a right relationship with God where those things never could. Those things are the shadow and he is the instance, in verse 23, where these things have an appearance of wisdom.

These religious rituals, these rules, they have an appearance of wisdom. They seem to be like the right answer in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body. And by the way, there are still people that do these things.

Follow the rules. Well, you’ve got to deny yourself food. You’ve got to, you know, you’ve got to sleep outside on the cold, hard ground.

You’ve got to lie on a bed of nails. There’s a group of people, and I’m not making fun of them. It just amazes me the lengths that people will go to.

There’s a group of people in some of the rural communities of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Charlie and I visited one of their shrines on our honeymoon. I know I’m an exciting date, right?

But we had gone up from Santa Fe to Taos, and I said, there’s this little town here. I’ve heard about it. Let’s stop in there.

There’s a community of people that will meet secretly in the mountains, and they will whip themselves, and in some cases they will even have each other nail them to crosses in order to suffer as a penance for the sins that they’ve committed. Now when he says self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, talking about all these things that we think, if I just deny myself this, if I just try harder, if I just do this, God will love me. And he says in verse 23, these things indeed have an appearance of wisdom.

They seem like, yeah, that should work. But he says at the end of that verse, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. They don’t accomplish a thing.

Jesus Christ is the only one who can transform us from the inside out. And so Paul, that’s why he asks, starting in verse 20 and into verse 22, why would we want to come to God through our so-called righteousness and our rules and our outward behaviors? Why would we want to come to God offering Him this handful of garbage that we have to offer when we can instead come to Him clothed in the righteousness of Christ?

He says, if you’ve died with Christ, if you’re dead to all those things, why do you go on living as though you’re still subject to all these rules and all these regulations? Why do you subject yourselves to the traditions and doctrines of men? Now, I am not telling you, hey, we’re free in Christ. Go do whatever you want to do.

Paul straightens people out for that idea as well. I’m not saying there’s no right and wrong. I’m not saying there’s no such thing as sin.

The Bible makes it clear there are things that are displeasing to God, and we should avoid those things. But as Christians, we should avoid those things and seek the things that please God, not because we’re trying to earn His acceptance, but because we already have it in Jesus Christ, and because we love Him and we want to please Him. But when he’s talking here about the rules, he’s talking about that idea that just follow the laws, and God will love you.

And not just following the Ten Commandments. Follow what this guy says over here. See, he’s got it figured out.

You need to add this over here. It’s what the Pharisees were doing. They would add laws in addition to what God had said.

You can go to churches today where they will add rules for you. If you want to be burdened down with extra rules, boy, they’re happy to load you up. You can’t eat this.

You can’t eat that. You can’t say this. You have to carry this exact Bible.

You have to dress just this way. They will load you down with rules happily. And a lot of people are trusting in that.

And Paul says, if Jesus Christ has made all the change, these people in Colossae that were dealing with some of these teachers in their day, he says, if Jesus Christ has already done all that was necessary for you to be righteous before God, why would you want to go back to trying to do it your own way? Now, I bring you this tonight, first of all, because we’re working through the book of Colossians, and this is where we are. But also, not from a standpoint that I think anybody in here is trying to work their way to heaven.

From what I know of the people that are in this room, I don’t think that’s the case. But sometimes we do, in the back of our minds, get that idea. Maybe God likes me a little better because look at what I did.

That’s not how it works. Just because you came to church on Sunday night too, right? Surely you get extra credit for that.

Jesus has given you all the credit that you’re ever going to need and ever going to get. Now that doesn’t mean stay home either. I’m glad you’re here.

Talked about that this morning, the value of being involved in church. But sometimes we can get a little self-righteous. Sometimes I can get a little self-righteous in my attitude if I’m not careful.

And Paul here has given us an excellent reality check. Wait a minute, you can trust in what Jesus did to transform you, or you can trust in your efforts to try to just cover up. Which one are you going to pick?

Why in the world would I want to pick my efforts to cover up my unrighteousness when I can have what He did to transform it? And so my encouragement to you tonight is for us, to the extent that we do this, to stop treating Christianity like a list of rules and instead treat it like a life-changing encounter with a risen Savior who’s done everything possible, everything necessary for us to be reconciled to God. Because if we believe it and we live that way and that’s the picture we portray to the world, they will be a lot better off than if they think our message is just about rules.

Rules are never going to be enough to bring them into a relationship with God any more than they were with us. What they need is the relationship with God. And we need to live like that’s true.