I want us to stop and think about how blessed we are to have our salvation in Jesus Christ and to be completely forgiven of all our sins. This is not a claim that we make based on our works to try and earn salvation or what “we can do for God” but this is something that has been counted to us only by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God saw this pleasing and satisfying to himself that God the Father would set up the execution of His only Son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice for the sins of those who would trust in his redemptive nature: this is amazing and all together humbling when we who have cursed God in our lifestyles and abandoned his truth realize that His sovereign hand has reached out to rescue us from hell.
The seductive allure of the counterfeit has confounded men throughout the ages when discussing sin and redemption in the church. The church has tried to appease itself by “working hard” for God, rather than been completely satisfied in the Grace and Mercy that it our only hope.
From the beginning of the early church this heresy has been an underlined shadow in our theological and practical ministries that is choking the life out of local pastors, parishioners and people who are pursuing truth. Paul writes the book of Colossians because this heresy is running rampant among the believers in Colosse and the attack that is being presented is undermining the identity and sufficiency of Jesus Christ alone for the believer. Paul sets the record straight by making the main idea about this letter to be: “knowing the truth about the power of the gospel (death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) and the person of Christ (the deity and divine) is the believers (those who have trusted in Jesus Christ) best protection against the deception that we need “more” than Jesus to satisfy our needs (spiritual, physical, mind, body, and soul).
Colossians 1:13-14 “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
God’s grace and peace in a person’s life comes from knowing the power of the gospel. Money won’t do it, relationships with people won’t do it, degrees won’t do it and church won’t do it. The only thing that gives the soul any satisfaction is to know and experience God and all things in Him and Him alone. The reasons our churches are dying is because we have made works a claim of the gospel rather than Christ alone. Our justification before God was made whole the moment that Jesus Christ opened our eyes to see His truth and our sanctification was made whole the moment Jesus Christ called us to Himself in salvation and grace. We can never be loved by God anymore or any less at any point of our journey because we are not the determining factor in the relationship, Jesus Christ is.
God delivered us from the dominion of darkness and he is brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. God has literally transferred us by moving us from one place to another. He has taken us from Satan’s dark realm and placed us into the bright and hope filled light of Jesus Christ and Savior and Lord.
God’s work of redeeming a lost people (you and me), for which believers should be joyful and content about is pictured further through redemption and forgiveness. Jesus Christ has bought us back and set us free from sin, death, hell and the grave. To forgive someone means to ‘send away and to cancel”. Through Jesus Christ death and resurrection God has canceled the debt of sin because God the Father knew that we could never repay it, so now we are laid before the grace of God and have been adopted into the family of God because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In other wards: smoking, cussing, drinking, divorce, pre-martial sex, liberalism, hypocrisy, homosexuality, adultery, being a bad parent or bad spouse, murder, rape, stealing, lying, legalism are all sins that Jesus Christ died for that can be forgiven by God and DON’T DISQUALIFY A PERSON TO RECEIVE THE LOVE AND MERCY OF JESUS CHRIST.
Listen I am not saying that these things bring honor to God, we all have our personal sins and struggles, but what I am saying is that you can struggle with these sins and ALL sins and still have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ because your salvation and redemption is NOT BASED ON YOU, but rather based on what Jesus Christ did by dying on the cross for our sins. It’s not about works or “how good” you are. It’s only about accepting the free gift of Love and a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Will You Come To The Christ?
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