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Well, this morning I’m going to preach on a Reformation theme, and I’m going to preach
from Colossians chapter 1.
Our focus will be on verses 19 and 20 of Colossians chapter 1, and you’ll find that on page 1168
in your Pew Bibles.
I’ll begin reading at verse 15 and read through verse 23 to fill out the context a bit, but
our focus will be on Colossians 1 verses 19 through 20.
St. Paul, the apostle, writing under the Spirit’s inspiration, says this about the Lord Jesus
Christ beginning at verse 15 of chapter 1.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
All things were created through Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
And He is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.
For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to
Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled
in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above
reproach before Him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting
from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation
under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of His Word.
Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, You are holy, You are loving, You are gracious,
You are righteous, You are awesome.
We praise You, O God, that You have revealed Yourself to us in the Scriptures.
We pray, O Lord, that You have revealed Jesus to us for the salvation of our souls.
And we thank You, Lord, that You have given us Your Word.
We would pray that by Your Spirit You would help us to understand this portion of Holy
Scripture and to see its relevance and its importance to our hearts and lives as believers
and to the Church of Jesus Christ today.
Lord, we ask that You would be with me and bless me with Your grace and strength and
power by Your Spirit to declare Your Word with clarity and power and faithfulness.
And Lord, help us to be diligent hearers of Your Word, read and proclaimed.
And help us, Lord, to receive these truths, and by the Spirit of God, may these truths
make an impact upon our lives and bear much spiritual fruit through us, we pray.
In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
You may be seated.
The title of my sermon this morning is The Reformation and the Reconciliation.
And if you have your sermon outline, you’ll see there’s four key words that I’d encourage
you to listen to if you find that to be helpful.
The words reformation, fullness, reconciliation, and grace.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as I’m sure many of you know, this Thursday is
an important day for those of us who are reformed and reformational Christians.
Now, you may be scratching your head and thinking, Thursday, isn’t that Halloween?
Is the pastor talking about Halloween?
No, friends, I’m not talking about the so-called Halloween holiday.
Instead, I’m talking about a much more important and significant day.
I’m talking about Reformation Day.
The day when we remember that time in church history when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses
to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, which is memorialized on that day, October 31st.
Dear ones, the Protestant Reformation was arguably one of the greatest moves of Almighty
God in the history of Christ’s church in this present New Covenant era of redemptive history.
Of course, there were numerous issues and corruptions in the medieval Roman Catholic
Church that gave rise to the Protestant Reformation.
But arguably, the greatest point of contention between Rome and the reformers was the question
of how a sinful person can be brought back into a right relationship with the infinitely
holy and righteous God of all creation.
The fundamental issue of the Reformation was this, how can a sinful man or woman, boy or
girl be just before an infinitely righteous God?
The Roman Church asserted and continues to assert even today in its official teachings
that we sinners are justified before God and saved by a combination of God’s grace on the
one hand and by grace-inspired good works on the other hand.
And so, therefore, Rome teaches that we sinners are justified by faith in Christ plus good
works.
Now again, to be fair to our Roman Catholic friends, they would say that these works by
which we merit heaven are grace-wrought and they flow to us from the cross of Jesus.
But nevertheless, they are works that we must cooperate with.
We must cooperate with the grace of God.
On the other hand, based upon the clear teachings of God’s word, the Bible, the reformers like
Martin Luther and John Calvin taught that we sinners are justified and saved by God’s
grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone and apart from good works.
Although it’s important to understand that the reformers certainly affirmed that true
faith in Jesus will produce a life of good works.
But good works don’t contribute to our salvation.
They are the result, the fruit and evidence of our salvation.
At the foundation of the debate between Rome and the reformers was a dispute on how to
understand the saving work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
You see, beloved, the Protestant Reformation was a rediscovery of the preeminence and all
sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ and a rediscovery of the perfection and completeness
of His saving work for us sinners.
So from a biblical and reformational perspective, Roman Catholic theology undermines the preeminence
and all sufficiency of Christ and the perfection of His saving work.
It does so by sneaking human works into the salvation process.
And that has the effect of giving us sinners a reason to boast before God.
In Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, Paul writes,
We have no reason to boast before God because our salvation is all by grace.
But in Catholic theology, there is, in fact, reason to boast.
At least that’s the logical implication of their position.
Now one reason I decided to preach from this particular passage of Colossians this morning
for this Reformation sermon is because in the letter of Colossians, St. Paul the apostle
is seeking to confront a heresy that was similar to Roman theology.
Not similar in the details, but similar in the sense that it was a heresy that undermined
the preeminence and all sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ and denied the perfection
and the absolute completeness of our Lord’s saving work.
Now the specific false teachings that threaten the Colossian church are kind of hard to pin
down.
We have to sort of infer what this heresy involved by reading Colossians carefully because
Paul doesn’t come right out and say, well, these are the specific errors of the heretics
that I’m refuting.
We have to glean that by studying this letter in context.
But the specific false teachings seem to have involved a strange mixture of pagan Greek
philosophy, extreme asceticism, and Jewish legalism, all of which ended up denigrating
the preeminence of Christ and the all sufficiency and the perfection of His saving work.
So as we begin to turn our attention to our passage for today, I want us to focus on the
reconciling work of Jesus Christ that Paul writes of in this passage, and I want us to
consider how our Lord’s work of reconciliation as explained in passages like this one, informed
and gave rise to that great move of God known as the Protestant Reformation.
And again, as our text for today says in verses 19 and 20, for in Him, in Christ, all
the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
And through Him, through Him as our mediator, through Him to reconcile to Himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.
Dear ones, we learn from this passage and from other passages in Scripture that our
Lord Jesus Christ is the one and only mediator between God and sinful humanity.
In fact, as the apostle Paul states elsewhere in 1 Timothy 2 verse 5, Paul writes, for there
is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
Even though this biblical truth of Christ’s sole mediatorship, even though this truth
is set before us so plainly in the Holy Scriptures, it’s amazing how many professing Christians
today do not seem to understand it or appreciate its implications.
And so, for example, think about it.
If Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the one and only and all-sufficient mediator, then
why would Christians need to look to marry His mother as another one who mediates God’s
grace to poor sinners who pray to her?
Some of our zealous Roman Catholic friends, for example, would even refer to Mary the
mother of Jesus as a mediatrix.
I believe that our Roman Catholic friends and others like them who advocate for the
practice of praying to Mary and the saints would no doubt be willing to acknowledge that
Jesus Christ is the mediator in a unique and ultimate sense.
We don’t want to, in criticizing Catholic theology, we don’t want to misrepresent it.
The Catholic Church does teach that Jesus is the mediator, that He’s the mediator in
a unique sense.
However, friends, does not the fact that Romanist piety advocates the offering up of prayers
and religious devotion to Mary and the saints, does this not reveal that Romanist teaching
blasphemously undermines and denies the sufficiency and perfection of Jesus Christ as the one
and only mediator that sinners like you and me need?
And does it not imply, does it not denigrate the perfection of His saving work?
But again, as our text for this Lord’s Day morning highlights, because of the fullness
that dwells in Christ, God the Father is able through Christ to reconcile all things to
Himself.
In other words, God does not need other mediators to assist His Son in bringing about the reconciliation
because Christ did that perfectly by virtue of who He is and also through His atoning
sacrifice on the cross of Calvary.
So let’s see what our passage has to teach us today about this.
And the first thing I want to point out from verse 19, notice beloved that all the fullness
dwells in Christ, all the fullness dwells in Christ.
It says for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
Now I need to clue you into the fact that in the original Greek the words of God is
not there in the original.
The original would read for in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.
Why does the ESV and other versions like it add the fullness of God?
Well that’s an inference from the context here.
But the point is that all the fullness dwells in Christ.
In terms of the context of this passage, one commentator reminds us of the context in these
words.
He says that Paul has ascribed unique supremacy to Jesus Christ.
He has affirmed Him to be image of God, Lord over creation, head of the church, indeed
preeminent in all things.
The preeminence of Christ is a major theme in this particular section of Colossians.
And this author goes on to say that verses 19 to 23 state the grounds on which such supremacy
is affirmed.
And notice it says that in Christ all the fullness was pleased to dwell.
The verb that is translated here as was pleased, the subject of this verb is uncertain.
And there’s debate among the scholars about what or who the subject is referring to.
Again to quote from Curtis Vaughan, some take it to be Christ, others construe the subject
to be fullness, the NIV understands the passage as affirming an action of God.
God willed that in Christ all fullness should dwell.
And I think that’s the correct view my friends.
So it was God’s will, it was God’s pleasure that all the fullness should dwell in the
incarnate Christ.
But what is this fullness that is being spoken of here?
The Greek for it is plei-roma.
The plei-roma dwells in him.
This is a word that’s not typical in Paul’s vocabulary.
And in fact, because of Paul’s use of this word fullness or plei-roma, some skeptical
scholars say, well, you know, Paul doesn’t use this term in his other writings, so maybe
he didn’t actually write Colossians.
But that’s really kind of a silly and speculative argument against Paul’s authorship of the
book of Colossians.
After all, Paul has probably borrowed this term from the Colossian heretics themselves.
And he is under the spirit’s inspiration using this term that they used and applying
it to Christ and to the orthodox apostolic understanding of the person of Christ.
Again, someone has said that some take this to be Christ in terms of the subject, some
take the subject to be Christ, others construe it to be fullness.
But again, it is God’s, it is the fullness of God that was pleased to dwell in him.
And this fullness, again to quote from Vaughan, the word seems to have been in current use
by the false teachers and was possibly, though not certainly, employed by them of the totality
of supernatural powers called eons that they believed were in control of men’s lives.
You see, these heretics seem to have believed that, you know, there was a series, a great
series of eons or intermediaries between the high God and his creation.
And Christ was but one of those eons, one of those intermediaries.
And so, however, Paul points out that Jesus Christ is not just one of many divine beings.
He’s not just one of many eons that exist as intermediaries between the creation and
God the creator.
He is the one and only mediator.
In contrast, Paul declares, in contrast to these eons that were promoted by this false
teaching, Paul points out that Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and the world
and all, not part of the attributes and activities of God, are centered in him.
So all the fullness dwells in him, the one and only mediator between God and his creation.
But what is meant by this fullness?
Well some have suggested that what he means is the fullness of righteousness, power and
blessing and so forth that God the father has conferred upon his son.
Others take it to mean the fullness of grace.
But I think the correct view is the fullness of deity.
Again, that is reflected in the ESV’s translation where it says, for in him, in Christ, all
the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
Understand though, my friends, and this is confirmed by the way when we compare scripture
with scripture.
Look again at verse 19.
It says, in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
Compare that to what Paul says in the next chapter, in chapter 2, verse 9, where Paul
writes this.
He says, for in him, the whole fullness, there’s that term, fullness again.
In Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
And so clearly, he is speaking of the fullness of the deity.
But even if he meant the fullness of grace, well, if that’s what this fullness is referring
to, how is it that Christ, the incarnate Lord, could embody the fullness of grace if he was
not himself fully divine?
And so these understandings of how to, these two views of the word fullness are both implying
the same thing.
What about the statements that all the fullness is made to dwell in Christ?
Well, the Greek term that is translated as dwell here suggests a permanent residence
as opposed to a mere temporary sojourn.
Someone might say, well, wait a minute.
Isn’t it true that as believers, God by his spirit dwells in us?
So what makes Jesus different from us?
It says all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him.
Well, doesn’t the Holy Spirit dwell in us as believers and in the church?
Well, the spirit does dwell in us.
But Paul is speaking of, he’s using this terminology to express the incarnation of Christ.
What Paul is saying here is that Christ is not just a God-endwelt man like you and I
as believers are.
He is rather the God-man.
He is the God-man.
The fullness dwells in him permanently for in the incarnation, the eternal Son of God,
the second person of the Holy Trinity, took upon himself our humanity, united to himself
a full human nature, body and soul so that he is not just a God-endwelt man, he is the
God-man, the word made flesh who came to dwell in our midst, Immanuel, God with us.
Now let’s think of the implications of that.
If the fullness of deity does in fact dwell in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and it
clearly does, Paul clearly affirms that in this passage throughout Colossians and indeed
throughout his writings.
If the fullness of deity dwells in our incarnate Lord and Savior, what are the implications
of that?
Well, first of all, the fullness of our worship belongs to him as a member of the Holy Trinity.
Christ is the eternal divine Son of God in the flesh.
He is the God-man and thus he is worthy of our worship.
He is worthy of our adoration.
He is worthy of our praise and we are not committing blasphemy.
We are not violating the first or the second commandment when we offer religious worship
to the Lord Jesus Christ because he is God in the flesh.
Another implication of the fullness of deity dwelling in Christ our incarnate Lord is that
the fullness of salvation is found in him and in him alone.
This was an implication that again was rediscovered in the Protestant Reformation.
It’s not that the church completely forgot about the gospel or forgot about the person
and work of Christ, but Christ was kind of put on the back burner and human works and
human doings were brought to the forefront.
But friends, if in Christ all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, if he is indeed
the God-man, then the fullness of eternal salvation is found in him and in him alone.
It’s not that, well, Jesus helps you save yourself, sort of like the, I know I’ve mentioned
this before, but some of you may remember that God is my co-pilot, the bumper sticker
that used to be popular.
I always kind of chuckle at that because if God is your co-pilot, who’s the pilot?
That means you’re the pilot, right?
That means you’re the one in charge.
Jesus Christ is not simply our co-pilot.
He’s not just someone who helps us by his grace to save ourselves or to merit his grace.
No.
The fullness of salvation is found in him and him alone.
Are you trusting him and him alone for your salvation?
Or are you trusting partially in Jesus, partially in Mary, partially in your works, your doings?
Certainly, if we trust Jesus as our savior, we’re going to want to follow him as our Lord.
We’re going to want to obey him.
But that’s the fruit of salvation.
The fullness of salvation is found in Christ and Christ alone for the fullness of deity
dwells in him and in him alone.
Another implication of the fullness of deity dwelling in Christ is that not only does he
deserve worship as God, not only is the fullness of salvation found in him, but brothers and
sisters in Christ, the fullness of all of the spiritual resources that we believers
need to live a faithful Christian life are also found in Christ.
And one of the effects of growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is
we grow in our understanding of who we are in Christ.
We grow in our identity in Christ.
And therefore, as we get to know who we are in Christ, we have an incentive and we have
the equipment, the spiritual equipment needed to follow him and to grow in him more and
more, dying unto sin more and more and living unto righteousness more and more.
And therefore, we have no excuse if we’re not taking advantage of the spiritual benefits
that are found in Christ and offered to us by faith through the word, through the sacraments
and through prayer.
So let us take advantage of the means of grace and let us recognize our identity in Christ
that we have all fullness in him and him alone.
And so we see that all the fullness of deity dwells in Christ and therefore he is a full,
complete, perfect, all-sufficient savior from sin.
But next, as we turn our attention to verse 20, notice that as Christ is the divine agent
of creation, so he is also the divine agent of redemption.
This is the second point on your sermon outline.
As Christ is the divine agent of creation, so he is also the divine agent of redemption.
As we’re told in verse 20, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether
on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
How do we have peace with God?
We have peace with God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
How is that peace made possible?
It’s made possible because of the blood that Christ shed on the cross of Calvary, fully
atoning, fully satisfying for all of the sins of all who would come to trust in him and
him alone for salvation.
Now Paul uses the term reconcile here.
Reconciliation is another very important salvation word in the Bible.
What is the meaning of reconcile?
Well as one commentator points out, the essential meaning is to change from enmity to friendship.
And this suggests the effecting in man of a condition of submission to and harmony with
God.
You see in Adam, we are out of harmony with God.
We are at enmity with God.
We are his sworn enemies.
But in Christ, by his grace, God befriends us.
We are reconciled.
We are brought back into a relationship of harmony with God our creator.
And so Paul says, through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or
in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Now I want to focus on the terminology here of all things.
What is Paul saying here?
Is Paul here teaching universalism, the doctrine that in the end everybody without exception
will be saved by Christ?
No doubt some have, I believe some Unitarian universalists and others who promote the doctrine,
the false doctrine of universalism would appeal to a passage like this and say, see in the
end no one is going to be inhabiting hell because God has reconciled all things, whether
on earth or in heaven to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross.
So what does Paul mean when he says that God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself
through Christ?
Again, is he teaching the doctrine of universal salvation?
Well, if Paul was teaching in this passage the doctrine of universal salvation, then
Paul would be contradicting his own writings.
And indeed, he would be contradicting many other scriptures, many other parts of God’s
which clearly teach that not all will be saved, but that tragically some will suffer eternal
damnation in hell for their unrepentant sin.
There’s many passages.
Paul mentions this, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 1 verses 6 through 10, if you want to read
that passage on your own.
And Jesus, of course, taught the doctrine of eternal punishment in passages like Matthew
25, verse 46.
So what does Paul mean when he says that through Christ all things are reconciled to God?
What are the all things?
What’s the all things that he’s referring to?
Well, friends, what Paul seems to be teaching here is that our Lord’s redemptive work on
the cross, which was done for the purpose of redeeming and saving God’s people, this
redemptive work has cosmic and eschatological implications, implications that will impact
the entire cosmos in the end.
As one commentator explains it, we should therefore understand this statement to be
a reference to the cosmic significance of Christ’s work, the thought being similar to
but not identical with that of Romans 8 verses 19 through 22, which talks about the creation
groaning until the redemption of the sons of God.
There is a general sense, the general sense is that the disorder that has characterized
creation will be done away and divine harmony will be restored.
Here perhaps the main idea is that all things eventually are to be decisively subdued to
God’s will and made to serve his purposes.
So again, it’s very important when we read scripture passages to look at the broader
context and the narrower context as well, and not just yank verses out of context.
Our universalist friends would take a passage like this and use it to support their false
doctrine, but they would be yanking God’s word, they would be mishandling God’s word
and yanking this passage out of its appropriate context.
Well, beloved in Christ, what our Savior did on the cross not only impacts our individual
lives as sinners who’ve been redeemed through his blood.
Praise God it does that.
It powerfully transforms and impacts our lives, for it is the blood of Jesus, his sacrifice
that has reconciled us to the Father, and it is his righteousness credited to us, imputed
to us, received by faith alone.
It is by that righteousness that we stand now and forever justified before God the Father.
And therefore, that is why we can rejoice in what Paul says in Romans 8 verse 1, there
is therefore now what?
No condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
So what Jesus did has powerful personal implications for you and for me as believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
But friends, what Jesus did on the cross also has cosmic significance, for it is because
of what our Lord Jesus did on the cross of Calvary and by his physical bodily resurrection
from the dead.
It is because of his cross and resurrection that all things will eventually be restored.
And the ultimate new heavens and new earth wherein righteousness dwells will be ushered
in at the end of this age when Jesus returns.
What Jesus did by his cross and resurrection has gotten things going towards that ultimate
end.
Every day that passes by is a day closer to the day when Jesus will return and usher in
the new heavens and the new earth.
Let us praise God for the mighty saving work of Jesus Christ.
For in him all the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell in bodily form for he is the God
man.
The fullness of grace is found in him.
The fullness of deity because the fullness of deity is found in him.
And thus the fullness of salvation is found in him.
And he is the one and only mediator between God and sinful humanity.
We don’t need a pope to get to God.
We don’t need Mary or the saints or their prayers or their merits or their intercessions
to get to God because we have Jesus Christ.
He is the sole all-sufficient Savior of sinners.
Is he your Savior?
You can even rest upon him as your Savior today.
And you can know the joy and peace of the Lord that Paul speaks of.
You’ll know at a personal level what Paul writes of in verse 20 that peace by the blood
of the cross.
For as it says, we have peace with God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, our Heavenly Father.
We thank you that the gospel is such good news because it proclaims an all-sufficient
Savior, a preeminent Savior, one who is perfect in his finished work.
Lord Jesus, when you cried, it is finished.
You meant what you said and you said what you meant.
And we can bank on it.
We can bank our eternity on that truth.
So help us, Lord, to rest not in what we do, but to rest in what you have done for
us.
And Lord, may we experience that fullness of joy, that joy inexpressible and filled
with glory.
May that joy flood our hearts because in your fullness and grace, we have experienced your
super abounding grace.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name, amen.
Let’s close our time together by rising and we’ll sing this great Reformation hymn, number
244, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.
Let’s rise and sing together, number 244.