The theme continues: God cannot do for us anything greater than which He has already done in Christ. When we were dead in our sins His Holy Spirit moved into our lives, cut into our sinful nature, and now continually seeks to render inoperative the power and energy of sin. Does that mean it is not possible to sin again? No, but it is possible not to sin. Because God has made us alive with and in Christ, and when His life pulses through our soul and spirit as we believe in Him then freedom from sin is/becomes possible in our life. From this point on Paul launches and linked this phenomenon into a graphic description of salvation, explaining that God has not only made us alive in Christ but He has cancelled the written code that was against us, nailing it to His cross, making it possible that whosoever believes in Christ is freed from sin and is saved! What a beautiful word pictures structured to give hope that enables us to work hard to resist sin and boost our chances of being saved in Christ Jesus. To get a better understanding of this: Let us take the first phrase: ‘cancelled the written code’. ‘Written code’ means a handwritten note. It is the Greek term for an IOU –an acknowledgement of a debt and recognition that payment is obligatory or compulsory, with certain penalties being required if payment is not made or met. The word translated ‘cancelled’ means to sponge or wipe off. This is what our Lord Jesus in Christ has done with all our sins because we cannot do it for ourselves due to the weakness that sin has rendered us. The written code that condemned us as a result of our sins has been sponged off by the blood of Christ that was poured out on the cross. Once we believe everything about Jesus Christ: His birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven, it is as if sin had never been or occurred in our life before. We then live our life in the sinless Life of our Lord Jesus Christ and thus become acceptable before God Almighty! This is why believe, trust, adhere, and rely in our Lord Jesus Christ is all about! You can now see why it is very important that we believe and trust in everything concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. But Paul uses one more word picture: ‘He took it away, nailing it to the cross.’ In ancient times the record of a debt, after it had been paid, would sometimes be nailed to a public notice board so that everyone could see that the matter was settled. Our Lord has taken away the debt of sin we owed and nailed it to the most public place in the universe –the cross; so that both the physical and spiritual could see as it serves ‘to whom it may concern’. When our Lord Jesus Christ cried ‘it is finished’ as seen in John 19:30. He meant that the work of our redemption and salvation was complete. The cancelled note hangs on the cross for all to see. This is why if you are able to live a sinless life to a very recognizable level here on earth, whoever that is spiritual will see it in you with a glance and the person will start looking at you with some kind of amazement as to asking in his or her mind: what kind of person is this but you will not know except you are spiritual too! This explains the reason why I will always tell you that some times, people see us in the public place and shout because once you attain this state of being, unseen beings as life guide always move along with you like bodyguards. Let us from hence try and be living a sinless life so that the Christ in us, as a part of God in our life right from birth will grow in the same proportion with our carnal bodily growth, this is the only time we can live a life of body and soul (spirit) together because the spirit is meant to guide and direct the body aright otherwise everything that you do in life will always be in error!

Now let us read Colossians 2:13-20; 13 And you who were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh (your sensuality, your sinful carnal nature), [God] brought to life together with [Christ], having [freely] forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the note (bond) with its legal decrees and demands which was in force and stood against us (hostile to us). This [note with its regulations, decrees, and demands] He set aside and cleared [a]completely out of our way by nailing it to [His] cross. 15 [God] disarmed the principalities and powers that were ranged against us and made a bold display and public example of them, in triumphing over them in Him and in it [the cross]. 16 Therefore let no one sit in judgment on you in matters of food and drink, or with regard to a feast day or a New Moon or a Sabbath. 17 Such [things] are only the shadow of things that are to come, and they have only a symbolic value. But the reality (the substance, the solid fact of what is foreshadowed, the body of it) belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one defraud you by acting as an umpire and declaring you unworthy and disqualifying you for the prize, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, taking his stand on visions [he claims] he has seen, vainly puffed up by his sensuous notions and inflated by his unspiritual thoughts and fleshly conceit, 19 And not holding fast to the Head, from Whom the entire body, supplied and knit together by means of its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. 20 If then you have died with Christ to material ways of looking at things and have escaped from the world’s crude and elemental notions and teachings of externalism, why do you live as if you still belong to the world? [Why do you submit to rules and regulations?—such as]

If I told you that I was going to go over to the cemetery and preach to the dead bodies there, you’d rightly think, “Reverend has lost it!” And yet really, that’s what we’re doing whenever we speak to lost people about the Savior because lost people are dead people who are already bound to end up at the cemetery, so wherever you meet with such people is likened that they are in the cemetery, ndi nwuru anwu na aga ije! Outside of Christ, people aren’t just spiritually misguided or weak or ignorant. They’re completely dead! They don’t just need to be persuaded to believe in Lord Jesus. They need the Holy Spirit to convict them of sin, righteousness, and judgment as seen in John 16:8-11 and they need God to make them alive from the dead. If someone has not been convicted of sin, righteousness and judgment by the Holy Spirit, the person cannot respond to the things of God no matter how you try to force the person instead, if you are not careful, evil inherent in the person will destroy you through the person! It is always risky to attempt to deliver or preach to people who are not yet convicted by the Holy Spirit of God. This is why God lamented through prophet Hosea saying that ‘His people are destroyed for lack of knowledge’! So, as someone has said, before we get people saved, we need to get them lost. If they do not see that they are hopelessly dead in their sins, they will not see their need for new life in Christ. If they think that they’re doing okay spiritually, they may welcome a little guidance or assistance with their problems, because solving their problems which they have discovered with the little spirituality in them that they cannot solve is the only thing they want you to give them a little guidance through Christ, and once that is done, they don’t want you to tell them any more thing about God or even if they appear to be listening, in reality they are not; because they won’t see their desperate need for a new life in Christ. So although lost people do not realize it, they have three crucial needs: (1) They are spiritually dead, alienated from God, so they need new life which Christ alone gives. (2) They are under God’s just condemnation because of their sin, so they need forgiveness from God that is only available through Christ. (3) They are living under Satan’s power and control, in his domain of darkness thus does not understands the things of God, so they need conviction, deliverance and victory over the forces of evil gripping and controlling them. In our text, Paul reminds the Colossians of these three great needs that God met for them in Christ. Paul is continuing to show the superiority of Christ over everything else, including the rules-keeping religion of the false teachers. Empty religion has no saving power, but Christ crucified and risen from the dead is all-powerful. Paul is showing that… Because Christ died and is risen, in Him we have new life, forgiveness of all our sins, and victory over the forces of evil. Verses 13-20 rest on the truth that Paul has just mentioned in verse 12: Baptism pictures our salvation, when we died with Christ and God raised us up with Him, when He raised Him from the dead. Through God’s grace in saving us, we are identified with Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection. 1. Because Christ died and is risen, in Him we have new life: Colossians 2:12-13a: “12 [Thus [g]you were circumcised when] you were buried with Him in [your] baptism, in which you were also raised with Him [[h]to a new life] through [your] faith in the working of God [[i]as displayed] when He raised Him up from the dead. 13 And you who were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh (your sensuality, your sinful carnal nature), [God] brought to life together with [Christ]”. There are three truths to grasp here: A. Apart from Christ, we were spiritually dead; Paul could have used less severe language than this if he had wanted to. He could have said, “When you were apart from Christ, He brought you near.” That’s certainly true! He could have said, “When you were alienated from Christ, He reconciled you to Himself.” That’s also true. But here also, in Eph. 2:1 Paul uses the word “dead” to describe our condition before we met Christ. Before Adam and Eve sinned, God told them that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die as seen in Gen. 2:17. Death in the Bible always means separation, not cessation. So when Adam and Eve sinned, they were instantly separated from God. Their bodies became subject to the process of illness and aging that ultimately resulted in physical death. When a person dies physically, his soul is separated from his body. To be spiritually dead means to be separated from the living God, the author and giver of all life. If we die physically while we are still spiritually dead, we will be eternally separated from God, under His wrath, which would be the most horrible existence imaginable for any person to be in. This is figure on a small scale with our little suffering here on earth where it can cease or end compared to eternal where suffering has no end. Nobody should think of inheriting eternal suffering oh but that is inevitable once we die physically while we are still spiritually dead, we will be eternally separated from God which amounts to eternal suffering! Let us try living God’s Word so that we will be saved and redeemed from our sins so that our sins do not separate us from God. Death is an ugly thing and we should not minimize the horror of that word. A dead body is foul and corrupt. If the Jews touched a dead body, they were ceremonially defiled as seen in Lev. 21:1-4. We embalm dead bodies and try to make them look as lifelike as possible, but the truth is, there is nothing pleasant about a dead body no matter how good embalmment makes it to look. Paul says here that we were spiritually dead, because of two causes (or in two spheres): transgressions, which refers to sins we have committed; and the uncircumcision of our flesh, which refers to the sinful nature that we inherited from Adam. When Adam sinned, his sin was imputed to the entire human race as seen in Rom. 5:12-21. That second phrase especially reminded the Gentile Colossians that before they met Christ, they “were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” as seen in Eph. 2:12. So apart from Christ, we had two serious problems: we were spiritually dead because of our sins, and because of our sin nature which we got at birth. We aren’t sinners because we sin; we sin because by nature we are sinners. Sometimes people say, “It’s unfair of God to impute Adam’s sin to the entire human race.” My reply is, first, a word of caution: It’s never right to accuse the Almighty God of unfairness because in all ramifications, He is a Just God! Second, do you think you would have done better than Adam in obeying God? If so, you have too high an estimate of your own moral ability! You have to be very careful of such mindset. These two aspects of sin, our actual sins that stem from our sin nature, mean that we had a very serious problem which we cannot handle on our own. Adding good deeds to our sinful nature cannot solve that problem. You can put a tuxedo (suit like dress) on a pig, but that pig will go right back to wallowing in the mud because it has a pig nature. You can dress a sinner in good deeds, but unless you change his heart, he will still go back to sinning because sin is in his nature. Also, in like manner all the good deeds in the world cannot eradicate the (sin) charges against us in God’s holy courtroom. And they (such good deeds) do not raise the dead sinner to spiritual life; which is life after death, the real life that our Lord Jesus came to gain for us by paying the required dept with His death on the cross. He, that is such a sinner requires or needs resurrection which Only Lord Jesus Christ Gives. Do you now see the importance of believing, trusting, relying in Jesus Christ as our Only Savior! Please develop the mindset of trusting in Jesus Christ. B. Christ’s resurrection is the basis for our resurrection because through faith we are in Him; In Colossians 2:12, Paul states that “12 [Thus [g]you were circumcised when] you were buried with Him in [your] baptism, in which you were also raised with Him [[h]to a new life] through [your] faith in the working of God [[i]as displayed] when He raised Him up from the dead.” But even our faith does not originate with us; it is God’s gift as seen in Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 1:29. So in verse 13, Paul attributes our new life totally to the making of God: “He made you alive together with Him.” The Puritan Thomas Goodwin used to say, “There are but two men standing before God: Adam and Christ. The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that there is need for reforms. But today many of these Roman Catholic Nonsense is almost everywhere with little or nobody to talk about them, no more Puritans and you remember that Igbos warned that whenever Error stays too long with man, it starts to be regarded as right! Let us be careful! And these two men (Adam and Christ Jesus) have all other men hanging at their girdles.” (Source unknown. By “girdles,” he meant “belts.”) Either you’re spiritually dead in Adam; or, because God made you alive, you’re in Christ. There are no other categories. If you’re in Christ, it’s God’s doing, since … C. Only God can raise the dead; “He made you alive together with Him” (Col. 2:13). Becoming a Christian isn’t a matter of deciding to turn over a new leaf as many think and practice which is why they do not see the dividends of salvation in their life in spite of their claims. It isn’t a self-improvement project or a resolution to try harder just as many people do every beginning of a year. No amount of persuasion can talk a spiritual corpse (dead person) into spiritual life, because dead sinners cannot understand God’s truth as seen in 1 Cor. 2:14 ’14But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him;’; John 8:43. They do not have spiritual ears to hear. No amount of efforts on the part of the corpse will bring about his own resurrection, because corpses aren’t able to do anything. God must impart new life, His Life to a dead sinner by His power to enable the sinner to be in Christ. There is an obvious difference between something lifeless and someone who is living. I learned this in what was the most fun job I’ve ever had—yes, even more fun than this job! The summer of 1970, said a narrator I worked as “Charlie Chaplin” at the Movieland Wax Museum near Knott’s Berry Farm in Southern California. Each day I would make myself up to look like Charlie Chaplin the famous English comic actor and filmmaker and then spend my day entertaining the guests. I would walk like Charlie, twirl my cane, and have my picture taken with everyone. But the most fun of the job was when I would stand in a frozen pose to look like one of the wax figures. People would touch my hand, thinking that they were touching a lifeless wax statue. But I would grab the person’s finger and as he frantically tried to pull away, I would suddenly talk to him. At that moment, he discovered the difference between what he had thought was a lifeless wax figure and a living one! One rather large woman was so stunned that she couldn’t scream. She just walked backwards away from me and plopped her 200+ pounds on top of a baby in a stroller behind her. When I reached out to try to help her off the screaming baby, the woman went hysterical! I had to make a fast exit and leave the poor mother to try to pry this woman off her squashed baby. There’s a huge difference between death and life. Spiritually, there’s a huge difference between dead religion and new life in the risen Savior. Do you have new life in Christ? Has God made you alive from the dead, so that you responded by saying, “Yes, Lord, I believe in You; I receive You as my Savior and Lord”? as see John 1:12-13 saying ’12But to as many as did receive and welcome Him, He gave the authority (power, privilege, right) to become the children of God, that is, to those who believe in (adhere to, trust in, and rely on) His name-13Who owe their birth neither to bloods nor to the will of the flesh [that of physical impulse] nor to the will of man [that of a natural father], but to God. [they are born of God!].) If you are not in this very word of God, then you may be just a good, religious person who is a walking spiritual corpse. You need life from God! Today in our generation, life in or from God comes by receive and welcome Him, believe in (adhere to, trust in, and rely on) His name; so that He give the authority (power, privilege, right) to become the children of God, to you! You may ask, “How can I know if I have spiritual life?” Well, how do you know if you’re alive physically this morning? I’m not sure about some of you, but most of you seem to have some signs of life! Your heart is beating, you’re breathing, you’re warm to the touch, you have an appetite. Spiritually, there are some vital signs. You have a heart for the things of God which used to bore you. You love Lord Jesus because He died for your sins. You have a hunger for God’s Word and zeal to practice it in your daily living. You struggle against sins that didn’t used to concern you trying to avoid sin in your everyday living on earth. You’re growing in the love of things of God. And, you experience the forgiveness of your sins. 2. Because Christ died and is risen, in Him we have forgiveness of all our sins: Colossians 2:13b-14: “having [freely] forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the note (bond) with its legal decrees and demands which was in force and stood against us (hostile to us). This [note with its regulations, decrees, and demands] He set aside and cleared [a]completely out of our way by nailing it to [His] cross”. J. B. Phillips paraphrases this, “He has forgiven you all your sins: Christ has utterly wiped out the damning evidence of broken laws and commandments which always hung over our heads, and has completely annulled it by nailing it over His own head on the cross.” Perhaps you’re thinking, “Wait a minute. In Colossians 1:14, Paul already said that in Christ we have the forgiveness of our sins. So why is he repeating it here?” The answer is, because it’s so wonderful that we need to hear it over and over again! Don’t ever get over the amazing truth that in Christ, you have forgiveness of all your transgressions! Note two things: A. To save us, God had to deal with the penalty for our sins in line with His righteousness and justice; God couldn’t just sweep our sins under the rug. The penalty had to be paid for. If God did not demand the full penalty for our sins, He would not be righteous and just. If He were not righteous and just, He would not be God. If a robber killed your mother to get a few bucks to support his drug habit and the judge said to the murderer, “I love you, man! Try not to do it again,” you’d rightly be outraged. That judge would be unrighteous and unjust. Justice requires that lawbreakers pay the penalty for their crimes. The Bible says that we all have sinned in Rom. 3:23 and that the wages of sin is death in Rom. 6:23. Thus we all deserve eternal separation from God. We all have what Paul here calls “the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which is hostile to us.” We come before the bench of God’s judgment as lawbreakers with thousands of counts against us! God cannot justly forgive us without the penalty being paid. But perhaps you’re thinking: “But I’m a good person. I’m not a terrorist or rapist or child molester! I’ve never been arrested. I go to Church and live a moral life. I don’t deserve death for my sins!” But if you’re thinking along those lines, you’re falling into the error that I mentioned earlier: You have too high a view of your own goodness and too low a view of God’s holiness and righteous requirements. When Paul mentions “the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us,” he’s referring to the commandments of God’s law. That law is against us and hostile to us because it justly condemns us because we’ve broken the law repeatedly. The first commandment is in Exod. 20:3, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Can you honestly say that you’ve always obeyed that commandment? Right now, does God rightly have priority over everything in your life? Are there not times when your desires are selected against God’s? What about the second commandment? Have you ever served an idol instead of God? You say, “Of course not! I’m not a primitive pagan!” Oh! But let me ask, how many hours a week do you spend watching godless TV shows or movies? Could your possessions or your career be ruling your life? (Luke 18:18-23)? Some even make an idol out of Lord Jesus. They set Him on the shelf and consult Him when they want something, but neglect Him the rest of the time. Do you have any idols? The third commandment is that we should not take the Lord’s name in vain. You say, “That’s one that I haven’t broken!” Really? Even many Christians exclaim, “O, Geez,” which is short for “Jesus,” or, “O my God!” Very few of us honestly can say that we’ve never taken the Lord’s name in vain. Every little thing you shout Jesus! That is taking His name in vain. The fourth commandment is to keep the Sabbath holy. You say, “Christians aren’t under that commandment, are we?” My understanding is that we are not under the Jewish Sabbath laws. But there is a New Testament command about not forsaking assembling with the Lord’s people in Heb. 10:25. And, Sunday is “the Lord’s Day” in Rev. 1:10, which implies that it’s not my day. I read recently that most Christians now think that if they go to Church twice a month, they’re committed. That strikes me as being half-committed! The fifth commandment is to honor our parents. Can anyone claim that you made it through childhood obeying that commandment? And it applies to us as adult children, too. The sixth commandment is that we should not murder. Most of us could claim that we’ve kept that one, until we read the Sermon on the Mount, where Lord Jesus says that if we’ve ever been wrongfully angry with someone, we’ve murdered him in God’s sight. The same applies to commandment seven, not to commit adultery. If you’ve ever lusted, you’re guilty according to Lord Jesus. Do you see how realistic we have to be when it concerns God’s word? Number eight commands us not to steal. That applies to cheating on your taxes! Moving right along, number nine is against bearing false witness. Have you always been truthful with all of these? And number ten is directed at our hearts, telling us not to covet anything not belonging to us. And you know that virtually everything in today’s living has one way or the other to do with covetousness, is it not? Lord Jesus summed up both tables of the law by saying that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (commands 1-4 compressed into 1) and to love our neighbor as ourselves (commands 5-10 compressed into 2). We all stand guilty of breaking every command many times over. That’s why we have a huge IOU against us. God’s law is hostile to us, because it condemns us all as guilty. So, how can we possibly escape the just condemnation of God’s holy law on us? B. On the cross, Christ completely paid the debt that we owe; Paul piles up terms to reinforce this wonderful truth. First, he says that God has “forgiven us all our transgressions.” “Forgiven” comes from the Greek word for “grace.” It means that God grants forgiveness as a free gift, not as payment to those who earn it. You can’t get forgiveness by doing penance or promising to try harder. It’s a free gift that you can only receive by God’s grace. Note also that God forgave all our transgressions. While we need to ask His forgiveness when we sin to restore fellowship with Him, once we have trusted in Christ we never need to ask forgiveness to restore our salvation. That transaction was taken care of once for all when we trusted in Lord Jesus Christ as our sin-bearer. Paul adds that God has canceled out or erased our IOU or certificate of debt. It’s gone! But how can God do that and still be just and righteous? The answer is, “He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). On the cross, Lord Jesus paid the penalty for every sinner who trusts in Him. As Paul put it (2 Cor. 5:21), “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” By Lord Jesus paying the penalty, God can be both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Lord Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). So the crucial question is, “Have you put your trust in Lord Jesus Christ and His death on the cross as the payment for all your sins?” If so, then your debt has been paid in full. But maybe you’re thinking, “I have trusted in Christ, but I still feel guilty sometimes. When I sin, even if I confess it and turn from it, it keeps coming back to haunt me. Is that guilt from God?” If you’ve truly trusted in Christ and repented of your sin, the answer is, no. Your guilt is from Satan, the accuser of the saints (Rev. 12:10; Zech. 3:1-5). Thus you need to know …

Col. 2:15: “15 [God] disarmed the principalities and powers that were ranged against us and made a bold display and public example of them, in triumphing over them in Him and in it [the cross].” “Through Him” could be translated, “through it,” that is, the cross. But either way, it refers to Christ crucified. God took what looked like Satan’s greatest moment of triumph, the death of the sinless Lord of glory, and turned it into Satan’s greatest defeat. On the cross, Lord Jesus accomplished perfect redemption for all of His people. We were captives in Satan’s domain of darkness, but through Lord Jesus’ death, God rescued us (Col. 1:13). When Paul speaks of God disarming the rulers and authorities, the picture is of a Roman general’s triumphal parade. The conquered foes were stripped of their armor and paraded in shame through the streets in chains. When Christ willingly gave His life on the cross to pay for our sins, Satan and his evil forces were stripped of their power over us. They can no longer rightfully accuse us, because Christ has paid the debt of our sin. They can no longer hold us captive through the fear of death, because Christ won the victory over Satan and over death on the cross. His victory was confirmed when God raised Him from the dead. And we who believe are raised with Him, seated in heaven with Him as seen in Eph. 2:6. So when the enemy accuses you, tell him to take it up with Lord Jesus and His shed blood. James 4:7 says, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Satan has no power over us because Lord Jesus died and was raised on our behalf. So our belief and trust in Christ is very important!

For the godly British pastor, William Sangster, the death and resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ filled him with hope, even as he faced his own death from a slow, degenerative muscular paralysis just shy of his sixtieth birthday. He devoted his fading energy to the cause of Christ, organizing prayer groups and writing articles and books as long as he could. Finally, his vocal cords were paralyzed and he could only move two of his fingers to scratch out written messages. On his final Easter morning just a few weeks before he died, he could not speak. But he wrote a letter to his daughter in which he said, “It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice with which to shout, ‘He is risen!’ But it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout.” Dead religion cannot give new life. It can’t forgive your sins. It can’t defeat the devil. The crucified and risen Savior can. Trust in Him and enjoy life, forgiveness, and victory! Brothers and Sisters thank God, “He is risen, He is risen, He is risen indeed”