Sermon text: Colossians 2:6–15
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The average American household this year is living in a debt of $15,566. The total combined debt load of American families in our country exceeds $18 trillion. The country itself is $37 trillion in debt. That’s a lot of money. In both cases, debt is a very large and heavy burden to lift and to carry.
Studies have shown that those suffering from debt may experience a combination of shame and depression, frustration, anger, and anxiety. In other words, debt is, generally speaking, a rather bad thing to be in. Yet, generally speaking, most of us endure it. It’s hard to focus on anything else if debt is breathing down your back. Imagine a time when you were weighed down with debt. It looked hopeless. And then somebody came along and paid the debt. No strings attached, to set you free from that great burden.
The Epistle and the gospel lesson for this morning, the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, both speak of debt. And of course, we know it’s not financial debt. Colossians 2:6 and following. And in the giving of the Lord’s Prayer, we turn our attention to a different kind of debt: to a spiritual debt, the debt of sin, the debt of trespass. Both speak of this greater debt, and of the spiritual debt that we find ourselves in.
Now, if you have a debt problem materially, with dollars and cents in this world — well, maybe a debt counselor might be helpful. Although, in my experience, these kinds of counselors usually give you one piece of advice for everybody: work more, spend less, just do it. End of advice. It’s hard and practical advice. And some might hear it as bad news, as the law. And of course, it is. Work hard, spend less, and just do it. Sounds easy, but the law is never easy to fulfill for sinners such as us.
This morning, Jesus and the word of God bring you the good news that your debt before God has been paid. It’s been blotted out. It’s been set aside, and it’s been nailed to the cross. And now you are free to live in freedom. Yet, that becomes rather hard for sinful human beings to do. We sometimes seem to like our prisons of debt and the law. The world is filled with various religions that feed on that desire.
But God has set you free. He has blotted out the debt of your sin through the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And so now you are free to live in Him.
This morning’s lesson begins with verse six. I’m going to do something kind of unusual for me — I’m preaching, so it might not go so well. I’m going to go verse by verse and give you a little bit of an exposition on each one until the Bible reading is done with us this morning.
Our lesson this morning begins with verse six, which says, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.” In this verse, Paul establishes the result of the person and work of Christ before he establishes our need for the person and work of Christ. The argument goes like this: since the debt of our sin has been paid by Christ, we are free to live in freedom in Him — in Christ. The Greek word peripateo means to walk. It’s an idiom for to live. To walk in Christ is to live in Christ. To walk in Christ is to live as Christ. Also notice, the text says — and I have emphasized that little preposition, two-letter word — in Christ. To walk in Christ means to live our lives in Him. You might remember last week’s sermon where I made a quick, short, blunt statement that said, “Your life is not yours. It belongs to Christ. He has redeemed it for you.” For believers were baptized into Christ; therefore they belong in Christ and to Christ. We are either children of the heavenly Father, as Luther rightly observed, or we are children of this world and the devil.
Verse seven: “So walk in him” — there’s that little preposition again, in him — “rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” The verbs in the sentence describe what it is like to walk in Christ and to be as Christ is. When we are living the life of faith, we are by nature rooted and built up in Christ. We’re grounded in the faith, and thus we abound in thanksgiving for our status as being debt-free from sin, death, and the power of the devil. We are grounded in faith and abound in thanksgiving. That’s where we belong.
Verse eight: “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.” Verse eight in our reading this morning is pivotal. It’s foundational for the presenting of the contrast between focusing on the work of Christ, who has paid our debt of sin, and focusing on philosophy and empty deceits and human traditions and the spirit of the world to get you delivered from your sin as well. The competing worldviews offer a completely different way of thinking and dealing with spiritual death. And it is almost always a form of works righteousness, an anthropocentric — that is, man-centered — remedy for our debt before God.
Standing contrary to this, Paul introduces verse 9 and verse 10: “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.” In other words, Christ is fully human perfectly and fully divine perfectly. And as such He’s the only one that can pay your debt and mine and pay for the sins of the world. He’s more than a physical and temporal freedom debt counselor. He is first and foremost the spiritual freedom that we need in light of our captivity to sin, death, and the power of death.
Thus in verse 11: “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.” The phrase “by putting off the body of the flesh” does not mean that Christians do not sin. We sin as often and as easily as any pagan does. It means that Christ is at work through the Spirit and the means of grace, forgiving our sins and sanctifying us. Sanctification is the opposite side of the coin of the doctrine of justification. In the doctrine of justification, we are declared just, whole, blameless before God. We have had our sins paid for. In sanctification, we go forward in this life in Christ, living as true Christians, struggling against the old sinful nature and sin, death, and the power of the devil. This absolution and life are a direct result of baptism, faith, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Thus verse 12: “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.” Here we see that God has accepted the payment of Christ’s person and work on the cross, and has fully paid our debt. The resurrection is the receipt for the payment. We owe the debt, but Jesus submitted His life for ours. That the record of debt against us has been blotted out is clearly demonstrated by the fact that Christ rose on the third day, lives, and reigns in heaven. The resurrection shows the entire debt has been settled. We also have been raised through faith in Jesus Christ. The debt’s been paid for all men and applied to all of those who come to faith in Jesus Christ. We are no longer dead in our trespasses and sins. As Ephesians 2:1 says, the crucifixion and the resurrection are the blotting out of our sin.
Verse 13: “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.” You were dead. Nekros is the Greek word: dead, dead, death. This verse describes how deadly the debt of sin actually is. It requires the ultimate payment for you and from you — but for the fact that Christ took your place. Though physically alive in this world, the debt of sin hangs over all who are not in Christ. The debt must be dealt with. For Romans says, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Verse 14: “By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” This verse is sort of rich with imagery. I’m going to give you a sample of that. The Greek word used here is exaleipho, and it’s translated “canceling” in this case. But the Greek word for canceling appears five times in the New Testament. And in the other four times, it’s translated in the English Standard Version as “blotted out” or “wiped away.” And that would be a better translation here than “canceling.” See, “canceling,” the English word “canceling,” could mislead people to believe that the debt wasn’t paid — just sort of canceled. “Don’t worry about it. You don’t owe me anything.” God never said that. He never said that. He applied the debt of our sin to His Son Jesus Christ. He who knew no sin became our sin for us.
The verse also uses this phrase, “by canceling the record of debt.” The record of debt, in the Greek: the reference is a technical word for a certificate that’s written out by hand of an indebted obligation. It is similar to our understanding of an IOU that one person writes out and signs and gives to another person. The idea here is that we have personally signed away our lives in debt to God by our persistent sinning. The record stands against us. It brings to mind the court setting of the ancient world: the day in which Paul and the other disciples were frequently brought before a tribunal. There, the accused would be put in the middle of the room, and with them all evidence against them. And then the judges encircled the accused, and the prosecution began. When you remove the record of the debt, all charges go away.
So picture a list of your sins in the middle of the room, standing before you. And now Christ comes in and takes the record of your debt away. And the only thing that’s left is: not guilty. That’s the image that the record of debt conjures up in the Greek and Hebrew mind when they read that first letter to the Colossians.
If you want to see an example of it, you can see it in the second half of verse 14: “Then he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” In the Greek, the phrase there literally means “to take out of the middle.” That’s where the charges were always laid and the evidence always put. Once it’s out of the middle, it’s no longer the focus of any attention. And it cannot be used as evidence against the debtor, because the debt has been paid. And how was it paid? By nailing it to the cross. It’s a rich image: nailing that record of debt to the cross. But since there’s no actual document that gets nailed to the cross with Jesus — of our sins, of our debts — we’re forced to ask the question of whether it’s simply a metaphor, or whether some real record of sin exists in some form or fashion and that it was nailed to the cross.
We know that Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross, and that 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us God made Christ to be sin for us. When Jesus took our sins, He became the record of debt in the middle of the hearing, the trial against us. Our sin, written in our own hand, written on Jesus, condemning Him to death by being nailed to the cross. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Remember verse 12: “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.” Jesus, as our record of debt, was nailed to the cross. He died. But on the third day, He rose again. What was not raised was another record of debt. It was blotted out. It was taken away. It was canceled.
The cancellation frees the children of God to walk in the life of Jesus Christ. No matter what twists or turns life takes, you belong to Christ. He does take care of you. He does comfort you. He does watch over you. Thus to walk, or to live in Christ, is to trust and be rooted in Him, always looking to Him in good times and in bad. Since He has paid our debt, we know that life comes from Him alone. We live — that is, we are established in the true Christian faith. We forgive the debts of those who trespass against us: the gospel reading, Luke 11:4. Because to walk, or to live in Christ, is to forgive each other and to forgive the debts of those who have wronged us. This is God’s gift of a forgiving spirit. Since He has paid our debt, we speak His word of forgiveness to the world. And in so doing, we abound in joy and thanksgiving. To walk, or to live in Christ, means to be thankful. And thankfulness is a gift of God implanted in the hearts and minds of His own children. The Spirit works thanksgiving in our lives because our debt has been paid. We are living in freedom. The burden of the debt is lifted off our shoulders, and it’s a whole new world, a whole new life. Your debts have been canceled by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You are debt-free before God. Even if your neighbor holds a grudge against you, your sins are forgiven. So confess your sins to God, for He is faithful and just, and He forgives our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
Our debts have been canceled by Jesus’s death and resurrection. So go forth from this place and live debt-free before God. Amen.
May this peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.