Colossians 2:8-14
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
Amen, Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, we're continuing in the sermon series that we've been working on for the past month or so, talking about the symbols of the stained glass windows that we have lining our walls behind you, and then the big one, that's what we're going to finish with all the way in the back. These windows were put in in the 90s, and each one has a meaning and explanation, one that sometimes we don't know about and so each Sunday, we're taking a look at a couple of windows. Today, we are looking at two windows that you'll see right over there. Hopefully there is a slide with them on them too, so you can see them right up in front. So we have a scene window and a symbol window right back there, if you want to see them, are up here the window with the big tree on a rock that is the scene of Golgotha, the place where Jesus died on the cross. Golgotha means the place of the skull, which is, you know, where they killed people, the Romans, the other one, the symbol window is the cross with the crown of thorns around it. We all know what the cross symbolizes. It's the crucifixion of Jesus, but it's a specific color up there. It's the color black. They did this on purpose to show us that the cross isn't just a wooden object, but that all our sin is there paid for on the cross. The black color symbolizes that sin. This is actually very similar to the Luther Rose who has the He who has the cross black as well, to symbolize that the sin of the world is there on the cross. The other thing that you'll notice is that the crown of thorns is also the wrong color, right? It should be wood, it should be brown. It will not surprise you that this has symbolism too, because the crown of thorns is not just an instrument of torture, but the crown of the King of the universe, who was enthroned on the cross. And so it's not brown, but gold to show that the cross of Christ is the glory of the salvation of God and something that we celebrate rather than being sad about. And today, as we consider this symbol, what I'd like to do is look at a short passage of Colossians, chapter two, where it says and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with all its legal demands, this he set aside nailing it to the cross. The cross is the place where our sin was defeated. St Paul tells us that Jesus nailed our sin to the cross, the debt, our trespasses, all of that, all of the legal demands, nailed there. And this has a couple of implications. The first one that I want to talk about is that the cross is a triumph and not a thing of sadness. The Crucifixion is how Jesus disarmed the rulers and powers and authorities and destroyed the power of sin over us. His crucifixion means that sin and death were nailed to the cross for us, and we don't always think about the cross. Cross this way. Sometimes we think about the cross as just a declaration of judgment on the sinner. Now I know that this has been preached to me many times when I was growing up in the church. The idea behind that is you. You, especially on Good Friday, you all get together, and the pastor stands up and says, God had to do this for you. You made him. It was your sin. You ever heard that before? Yeah, and I think the idea is to to give us all of the fields right to be like, Oh no, I am a horrible sinner. This window reminds us that it is not just a thing that is there to cause us pain and repent, but the cross is primarily the triumph of Jesus Christ and the Bible talks about this all over the place. I've got a couple of places that I want to point out to you. John. The Gospel of John especially shows the cross of Jesus Christ as the place of his glory. John, chapter 13 is right at the beginning of Jesus's movement to the cross in Jerusalem, and he says this, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. It is during that moment of this beginning of the journey to the cross that he finally declares, now is the time for glory or elsewhere. St Paul says in First Corinthians, one, but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. But I think my favorite example of this comes from the Gospel of Mark. Is it on the way to Jerusalem, James and John come up to come up to Jesus, and they do that thing that happens in all the Gospels where they say, Master, we want you to do whatever we ask. And Jesus goes, What do you want? And they say, I want. We want to sit one on your right hand and one on your left when you come into your glory. And Jesus lets them know that they don't know what they're asking for. Because in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus comes into his glory, we read that he is crucified with two thieves, one on his right and one on his left, because that is the moment where Jesus was crowned king. That is the moment when he came into his glory. The throne was the cross, and it was his triumph, not a defeat. And we sang about that too, in the cross of Christ I glory towering over the wrecks of time, all the light of sacred story gathers round its head, sublime the cross we glory in, because this is where sin, death and the devil were defeated. What that means then is that we have some comfort that can come from the defeat of the trespasses, sin, death and the devil on the cross, means we don't have a debt to pay back to God. We actually don't owe God any amount of payment for what he has done for because what he did on the cross was take away the debt that we owed and instead nail it there. What does that mean? When Jesus nailed our debt to the cross, it means that God loves us for the sake of Christ, we don't have anything to pay back to him. We don't have to impress God by our works or our actions. We don't have to try to fill up some sort of empty Treasury or get God to love us. God does it because of Jesus.
That's what the black cross represents, right? Sin is there and not on us. We don't have to make up for it, or try to earn it back or get out of a hole we dug for ourselves. Jesus has done it, as Colossians says, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross, our God and King Jesus Christ paid for every sin you have committed and every sin you will commit, the cross is like a sin black hole, right? You know how black holes work. There's so so much gravity. There's so dense that not even light can escape it, and it all gets sucked in. That's the cross for our sin. There is no sin too powerful or too exciting or too scary to escape the cross. Jesus paid for it. There. He took everything so you don't need to impress God. You don't need to try and work your way towards his love. It has already been done for you. But that leads us to the third implication. If the cross is the defeat of sin in the world, it has been nailed there, it also means that sin has been defeated in your life, too. And so it gives us a new way to look at how we can live as Christians, because our service to God is not about paying a debt, because it is not about impressing God. It means that our our lives, our life of service in the world to serve each other. We don't have to impress God. We don't have to to do things that simply because we think he wants them. We do things to love and serve our neighbors. It isn't about earning because our sin has been atoned for. As St Paul says, We were buried with Christ and we were raised with Him, all of that is taken care of. So sin does not rule our lives. What it means then is, instead of serving under threat. We serve for the joy of helping one another. I have two cats. They're pretty great, but when I first got cats, I went about disciplining them the wrong way. Lots of people do this, you think you can tell cats what to do with a spray bottle, right? That's what that's what you do the first time. Until you realize how wrong you are. You go up the cats like, jump on the counter, and then you spray them. They're like, get out. They have no idea. They just know that somebody sprayed them because they're not they're not like dogs. You can't train them that way. And so what ended up happening is the cats would see me, and they would hop down, but as soon as I went away, they were back up on the counter, right or anything that I didn't want them to do. They were just scared of me not of doing the thing I didn't want them to do. And I realize you have to set up your house so the cats will naturally do the things you want them to do and not do the things you don't, because that's the only way to keep your your cats behaving, because they just don't listen. And I think the Christian life is actually a lot like that. Not that you are cats and don't listen, you're actually a whole lot better. But punishment isn't the way to love and serve. Hitting people every time they sin, like spraying the cats isn't the way to get us to be joyfully, loving and serving the way our Savior wants us to. It's only for the joy of Christ looking at the love he gives. Us that changes us, that motivates us and drives us to live as people who are not ruled by sin, but whose sin is nailed there to that cross. It's not guilt that drives us, but the Holy Spirit through Christ's sacrifice that causes us to love our neighbor and serve our God, and what that means when we look at the sin nailed to the cross is we don't have to look at it and say, Oh no, I'm so guilty. I better go out and do something. What we can say is, what a joy that Christ nailed our sin to the cross and gave me the freedom to love and serve my neighbor when he buried me with him and raised me to new life with him, so that I can live freed from sin, no longer bound by to love the way Christ has loved Me In Jesus name, amen. Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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