Seeds for 3/2/2023 - Colossians 2:13b-14

Scripture: “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Observation: We’re seeing how these verses follow up Paul’s discussion about baptism, relating it to the work of Christ through the cross to accomplish “atonement,” dealing with human sin and addressing the human condition before God. The first sentence discusses our condition as being dead in sin and outside of God’s covenant. The second sentence discusses our condition before God in terms of a legal charge against us.

The image is a list of wrongs that condemns us on account of things we’ve done. This seems pretty unpopular today. Our concern with whether or not we feel good has in some respects overshadowed a honest appraisal of whether or not we are good, and if there’s a problem if we’re not. To be clear: therapy is important and I’m in no way downplaying it. Also, feelings matter and it’s a good thing to pay attention to having a healthy self-concept. Dealing with feelings in a healthy, thoughtful way is a good trend that I affirm.

And… we dare not view things singularly through a therapeutic lens. Evil is real. And as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out, “the line separating good and evil passes… through all human hearts.” Justice demands that evil be dealt with. But God’s desire is to destroy sin without destroying us. What to do when the charges are true? Paul says that God takes sin and wrongdoing seriously. The list of wrongs we have done tells a hard truth about us. But Jesus took that list and had it nailed to the cross with Him, cancelling the charges against us. As the old hymn says, “Jesus paid it all.”

Application: How might I need to be honest with myself and God about my sin? Is it hard or easy to believe that the cross of Jesus has cancelled my charges?

Prayer: Jesus, you have paid it all. All to you I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, you washed it white as snow. Keep me trusting in what you’ve done to reconcile me to the Father. Amen.

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“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)

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