Preeminent in Our Change

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Now, our focus over the last several weeks has been on the preeminence of Christ. Now, that means His position of prominence, His sovereignty, His lordship. And through all of this, we’ve seen that we can’t overstate His importance, and we cannot give Him too much glory. As we’ve worked our way through Colossians chapter 1, we’ve seen how Jesus has been at the center of the Father’s eternal plans.

We’ve read about His power as the creator and the sustainer of the whole universe. We’ve learned about His role as the one and only undisputed head of the church. And this chapter highlights His preeminence in some pretty big areas.

But it would be a mistake to look at this and to conclude that the preeminence of Christ is just an abstract theological truth that has nothing to do with our everyday lives. It’d be a mistake to think this only applies to big things without making a difference in our lives. See, today in this same chapter, we’re going to see how God’s Word describes the total spiritual transformation that takes place within individuals just like you and me, and how Jesus is at the very heart of that process.

Now, even when it comes to changing us, even when it comes to changing our lives, Christ is preeminent in all things. if you haven’t already please go with me to Colossians chapter 1 grab your Bible grab a device with a Bible app share with somebody whatever you need to do to get God’s word in front of you you’ll find Colossians about three quarters of the way through your Bible just after Ephesians and Philippians and right before 1st and 2nd Thessalonians page 1862 as Ken says Colossians 1, 21 through 23 says, Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds, expressed in your evil actions, but now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him. If, indeed, you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard.

This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it. Now the Colossians had to contend with all kinds of false teachings in their town. Some people inside and outside the church were looking for new experiences and philosophies that could bring them closer to God.

They were looking for spiritual transformation without Jesus Christ. And so the Apostle Paul explained that we can only be transformed and we can only grow closer to God because of Jesus Christ, because he’s preeminent. He rules over the whole process. Now, to illustrate the unparalleled power of Jesus to transform lives, Paul reminded them of where they had started.

Now he goes back to verse 21 and it says, once you were alienated and hostile in your minds. Now they may have been part of the church for years, many of them. And they may have spent a big chunk of their lives assimilating into this Christian environment, but that didn’t entitle them to take credit for their own spiritual growth.

He reminded them that they didn’t start out as godly people. So instead of being self-righteous and thinking that they didn’t need Jesus, the Colossians needed to remember that they once were alienated toward God and filled with hostility toward Him. There was a time when they too were distant from God.

Now, alienation from God means that they were estranged from Him and that His ways were foreign to them. They didn’t want anything to do with God. Now, for this, think about a picky child.

I may or may not have some of those. When you introduce a new food to them, and it’s not a dessert, is there a difference? It’s something foreign to them.

Do they typically just dive right in? No. No, more likely they push it away.

They’re not interested. It’s something foreign. They’re not interested.

That’s how our human nature reacts to God. We push him away. He’s foreign.

And in our sin, he’s uncomfortable. So we do our best to keep him at arm’s length. Now, hostility, though, that goes a step further.

Their hostility meant that they hated God and they saw him as an enemy. As far as they were concerned, they were at war against him. It’s part of our human nature to be hostile toward God and toward the things of God.

The book of James even says, Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. This means that when we attach our heart to the sinful things of this world, we position ourselves as the enemies of God.

Now, God is a loving God. He created us to love Him and to be loved by Him. He created a perfect paradise here on earth so that we could live there in perfect harmony both with Him and with one another.

And instead, mankind rejected both God and His gifts. By our sin, what we did was we committed treason and we launched into open rebellion against this loving King. We positioned ourselves as the enemies of God and the relationship has been one of hostility ever since.

Some of the Colossians might have asked though, when were we alienated from God? When were we hostile? So Paul pointed out the evidence from their own lives.

See, our attitudes will invariably show up in our actions. Jesus taught that the condition of the heart, the condition of our heart is the source of our behavior. He said this, the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.

A good person produces good things from his storeroom of good, and an evil person produces evil things from his storeroom of evil. So Paul led them back to the evidence. Verse 21 says, Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds, expressed in your evil actions.

Their alienation and hostility toward God showed up in their actions. They hated God, and they demonstrated that hatred by sinning and by taking delight in their sin. They loved it.

Elsewhere, in the book of Titus, Paul wrote about what it looks like when our hostility toward God shows up in our actions. He described our sinful human nature as being foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another. It’s pretty bleak, isn’t it?

The Bible’s clear that wicked actions come from wicked hearts that have rejected God. Another way to say that is we sin because we’re sinners. So even though Paul was writing to and about the church at Colossae, this could easily describe our human nature today.

This is who we are. We’re all born with a heart problem. We’re all born with a heart problem.

We’re all born with hearts that reject God. And our hostility toward God shows up in our actions. It doesn’t matter whether we’ve lived quiet lives or if we’ve lived wild ones.

It’s the same thing. It’s irrelevant whether our sin has been open or discreet, whether it’s been small or spectacular. The reality is that we have all sinned.

God’s Word tells us all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. At the age of five, I realized that I was a sinner, even as a child. Yes, I was a sinner.

Now, outwardly, my biggest problem was probably disobeying my parents. But there was a deeper issue. See, I have this human nature that even then really enjoyed it when I’d get by with something I wasn’t supposed to do.

Anybody else have that same human nature? It wasn’t just a problem with my behavior. It was a problem with my heart.

My heart, even then, was far from God. We all start in that same place. Our hearts are far from God.

Our minds side with sin and against God, and our actions reveal the darkness within us. But folks, just because we start there doesn’t mean we have to stay there. We can leave that place of separation from God, but there’s only one way out.

And the answer is not to straighten up our lives, and try to earn God’s acceptance by doing better. The answer is not found in an old religious ritual or a new philosophy. Our separation from God can only be solved by Jesus Christ. So after Paul described their hopeless separation from God in verse 21, he wrote to them in verse 22 and said, But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death.

Now he’s reconciled you. For the people at Colossae, something had changed that would allow them now to have a relationship with God. See, Jesus Christ had reconciled them to God.

They couldn’t, we couldn’t do a thing to make ourselves acceptable to God. And you know what, we weren’t inclined to seek a relationship with Him even if we could. But Jesus did what was necessary.

He did what we could never do so that we could be reconciled to the Father. He paid the full price. for our sins and he bore the entire punishment for the sin that separated us from God.

How did he do that? Verse 22 explains it. It says, but now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death.

Because the people at Colossae were so interested in Gnostic heresies that turned Jesus into some spiritual emanation, a little bit like a ghost, Paul told them that our reconciliation required the death of Jesus in his physical body. See, the Gnostics didn’t believe he had a physical body. But the problem is you can’t nail a ghost to the cross and spirits don’t bleed.

A sacrifice required blood. And that’s why in the words of the Apostle John the word became flesh and dwelt among us. See, God the Son became a man so that he could be the ultimate sacrifice, be the perfect sacrifice and the ultimate payment for our sins.

In that physical body, he was nailed to the cross. He was punished in our place, and he paid the full price for our sins. We could never do anything to overcome our separation from God.

But on the cross, Jesus overcame that separation and transformed our relationship with God. But you see, there’s more to this spiritual transformation that he’s talking about than just ending our separation from God. Because of what Jesus Christ did, the Colossians were in a totally different situation in verse 22 than they had been in verse 21.

In verse 22, Paul said that Jesus had reconciled them to God for a purpose. That was to present you holy and faultless and blameless before him. It says that because of Christ, we are presented to God as holy.

Do you know that? If you’re in Christ, God sees you as holy this morning. In this context, holiness means that we’re set apart to belong to God.

We’re reserved for him. It’s kind of like when they’ll put a reserve sign on a row of seats at a funeral. We all know that that means those seats are set apart for the use of the family. Those seats belong to them.

So when the Bible says that we’re presented holy because of Jesus, it means that God has declared us to be His. We belong to Him. Holiness, in this sense, means that Jesus has transformed us from being God’s enemies to being God’s children.

I think that’s one of the most incredible truths in Scripture. When we received Christ as our Savior, God adopts us into his family. John 1.

12 says, But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be the children of God, to those who believe in his name. God operates like the father in the story of the prodigal son. See, the prodigal son realized that he’d sinned against his father.

He treated his father like an enemy. He had no right to return to his father. He was unfit even to step foot on his father’s property.

His only hope was that his father might be gracious enough to hire him on as a servant, even though he didn’t even deserve that. But the Bible says the father saw him from far away, and he ran to him, and he welcomed him back as a son. And that’s what God does for us.

See, because of Jesus, the father takes enemies, And he reclassifies them not just as servants, but as sons and daughters. And now the scriptures call us holy just because we’re his. But Jesus also transforms us into something faultless and blameless, as it says in verse 22.

The word that’s been translated as faultless is something of a legal term. It means that we’re free from accusation. See, Jesus paid, because Jesus paid for our sins in full on the cross, we can approach the father through him and when we come to the father through faith in jesus the father issues us a full and unconditional pardon a total pardon see god looks at all the crimes we will have ever committed against him and he just blots them out because of jesus the father no longer finds any fault with us and he declares us to be not guilty and and and folks to understand this word, what it means?

We’re not just not guilty. We are not chargeable in the courtroom of God’s justice. The idea of being faultless means there’s no longer any accusation that can be brought against us in God’s courtroom because Jesus already bore the penalty for our crimes in full.

There’s nothing left to charge us with. Now the word that’s been translated as blameless refers to something that has no defects or blemishes. Because of what Jesus did to reconcile us to God, believers no longer bear any defect or blemish in God’s eyes.

The ravages of sin are no longer what characterize us. All of our evil choices and all the times that we’ve let him down, those things are no longer what define us in God’s eyes. 2 Corinthians says, he made the one who did not know sin, that’s Jesus, the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In him we might become the righteousness of God. Our sins were paid for by Jesus, and we received his righteousness in return so that he could present us to the Father pure and spotless in him. That’s incredible.

But as incredible as all of that is, the transforming work of Jesus isn’t just a one-time event either. Because of Jesus, the power of God is continually at work within believers to make us more like Jesus. So Paul told the church at Philippi, I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

This ongoing transformation is so important. Just like verse 21 tells us that a life characterized by sin is evidence of our separation from God, verse 23 teaches that a life characterized by the work of God is evidence of our reconciliation to God. It says, If indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard.

Our growing faith and continuing walk with Jesus are evidence that we belong to him. it’s just like the apostle john wrote everyone who’s been born of god conquers the world and this is the victory that overcomes the world that has conquered the world our faith it’s our faith in him that conquers this this unshakable overcoming faith nurtured by god demonstrates that we belong to him now we need to be careful with this verse it does not teach that our salvation is dependent on our performance it does not teach that salvation can be lost unless we meet some vague standard of groundedness and steadfastness. See, the Bible, when it’s read in context, is emphatic that we do not receive or retain salvation because of our performance.

Instead, this verse deals with evidence. Who are the ones that have been reconciled, been made holy and faultless and blameless? He says, you’ll know them when you see them continuing in the gospel.

How can I know that I’ve been saved? Well, he’ll preserve you and he’ll empower you to persevere in the faith. To know you’ve really been saved, you’ll see the evidence of his work in your life.

What Paul was saying to the Colossians was that if Jesus Christ has transformed you, you won’t abandon him or the hope that you have in his death and resurrection. Excuse me. It’s not saying we’ll never have questions.

It’s not saying you’ll never struggle with your faith. What it is saying is that those who’ve been genuinely born again by faith, faith in Christ, they won’t just toss him aside to look for hope elsewhere. They’ll continue with him.

See, even in their day, even in the early church they dealt with this, some people just walked away from the faith. They didn’t just lay out of church for a while. They abandoned Jesus Christ altogether.

Some of them went back to pagan gods. Some of them embraced Gnostic teachings, thinking they would find some other way to God that didn’t involve Jesus. And some of them were just lured away by the siren song of sin.

And John said that that was evidence that they never belonged to Jesus in the first place. He wrote in 1 John, They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.

However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belongs to us. See, those who desert Jesus Christ and abandon his gospel are just showing evidence that they never really had him. A few of Jesus’ parables describe people who professed faith without genuinely possessing faith.

So this isn’t saying that your salvation depends on your continued performance. It’s teaching that our continuing steadfast faith in Jesus Christ is evidence of the work that he’s doing in us. Those who’ve really trusted in Christ will see the evidence as he transforms our lives and strengthens our faith in him.

And then Paul provided them with this dramatic example of how Jesus transforms life and how the evidence of his work is apparent when he does it. Verse 23 says, This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it. Now, I can’t help but think that Paul was drawing their attention to how Jesus had transformed his own life.

See, as the gospel went out to the nations, Paul at first resisted it. But in the end, even he was captivated by the message of Jesus Christ. Just think about who Paul was before Jesus. When he described the ugliness of sin, it wasn’t just something he understood in theory.

He had lived. He had lived the ugliness of sin. He had been a Pharisee.

He had been a Pharisee, someone who strived to keep God’s law outwardly, but whose heart was diseased by pride and self-righteousness. Outwardly, he was good, but inwardly, his heart was just as rebellious as anybody else’s. And when Jesus came along to fulfill God’s word and God’s promises, Paul despised him for it.

Saul, as Paul was known at the time, encouraged a mob to torture and kill a man whose only crime was following Jesus Christ. And then Saul set out on a campaign of terror and murder against any Christian he could find until one day when Jesus invaded his life. And once he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul was never the same again. His life was completely transformed.

He went from being one of the greatest persecutors of the church in history to being one of the greatest proclaimers of the gospel in history. That transformation didn’t happen because Paul was great. It didn’t happen because he committed to clean up his act.

It happened because of Jesus Christ. See, through his encounter with Jesus, Paul stopped trusting in his own self-righteous efforts to try to earn God’s acceptance. And he started trusting instead completely in the risen Savior that he had formerly despised. Jesus saved him.

Jesus finally brought him the peace with God that he was looking for, and Jesus transformed him into an entirely different kind of man, there’s the evidence that it was real. So you can’t fake the transforming power of Jesus Christ in the life of a sinner, and you can’t hide it either. So let me ask you this morning, where does the evidence point in your life? As you listen to the Bible’s description of the evidence of separation and the evidence of reconciliation, does the evidence in your life point to separation from God or does it indicate that you’ve been reconciled to him?

Now that’s not something I can answer for you necessarily. That’s something you need to deal with God about on your own. The Bible tells us test yourselves and see if you are in the faith.

Examine yourselves. So this morning, have you trusted in Jesus Christ alone to save you and reconcile you to God? Have you trusted in him alone to do this?

Have you trusted in him to make you holy before God or are you’re still trying to earn God’s acceptance on your own? Do you see the evidence of His work in your life? If you’ve never trusted Him as your Savior, if the evidence shows that you’re distant and separated from God this morning, you need to know Jesus alone can reconcile you to God today.

You’ll need to acknowledge your sin against God as the whole reason why you need a Savior in the first place. And then you need to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross as the payment for your sins and that He rose again from the dead. You need to trust in Him as your one and only Savior.

And if you believe this, if you believe that He is, then you can ask God for forgiveness. And He’ll forgive you. He’ll forgive your sins because Jesus Christ has already paid for them.

Because of what Jesus did, you can have forgiveness of sin. You can have eternal life. You can have peace with God and a home with Him in heaven.

you can be reconciled to God this morning. You can see the start of the transformation within that only Jesus Christ can bring about. Again, not because you started out good, not because you started out close to God, not because you’re trying to do better, but because Jesus Christ bled and died to pay for your sins.

Because Jesus Christ offers you salvation. Because Jesus can reconcile you. He can present you holy and faultless and blameless before the Father.

and He can transform you from where you started out to who God wants you to be. But it requires that we trust in Him and Him alone.