What God Has Done For You

Colossians 1:12-14

Far too many Christians live in ignorance. It is not an intentional ignorance. It is not because they are not smart, or educated, or capable of understanding. It is generally because they become busy and preoccupied with life and end up ignoring the central truths of Christianity that should be their focus.

The fundamentals of our faith are not simply elementary teachings that we can do without. They are key foundational teachings that inform everything we do. We never advance beyond them. We never outgrow them.

These fundamental principles comprise our theology. Remember, as we have said before, everyone has a theology. Your understanding of God is your theology. And having a true theological understanding of God is essential to living a successful Christian life. For instance, your theology tells you who you are in Christ and what you have been given in Christ. Without knowing that, you will never live like who you are and use what you have been given, because you will be ignorant of these essential truths.

This is what I mean when I say that many Christians walk around in ignorance. And this kind of ignorance is deadly. It keeps us from walking in the truth of the New Covenant that Christ has established. It keeps us from walking in the power of the Spirit of God, who lives in us and desires to work through us.

As Christians, we need to understand clearly just what God has done for us through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross. We need to live our lives from that perspective. It can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Do you understand what God has done for you? Our text today reveals three areas of the work of Christ in which he did something specific for us. Let’s take a look at these three accomplishments of Christ on our behalf. Firstly, he has…

Our text says that we have been qualified by God to receive an eternal inheritance in the kingdom of light. What does it mean that we have been qualified? It sounds great! It’s absolutely wonderful to think that we have been qualified to be placed in the will. We have been made legitimate heirs of the kingdom. Only heirs receive an inheritance, and we have been placed on that list.

But how did God accomplish this? Just exactly how did he qualify us? What work did Christ do in our lives that made us worthy of this eternal inheritance?

14 in whom [Christ] we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:14 NIV)

The work Christ did for us can be summed up in the two words found in verse 14. The words are redemption and forgiveness. Indeed, what Christ did on the Cross can be summarized by these two words.

Redemption. What does it mean to have redemption? Well, the word redeem literally means to buy back. It means that we were bought back by God.

It reminds me of the old pawnshop. As a kid, I remember looking around inside a pawnshop in the city where I lived. It had all kinds of interesting stuff. There were watches, musical instruments, jewelry, and knives. What I learned was that most of these items once belonged to other people. In some cases, they sold them to the pawnshop. But in many cases, they had borrowed money from the pawnshop using these items as collateral. The deal was that they would come back in by a certain date and redeem the items by paying the pawnbroker. They would literally buy back the item they owned. If they did not do so, the item became the property of the pawnbroker.

I am reminded of a story about a gifted little boy who had carved a sailboat out of a single block of wood. He had spent a great deal of time and effort creating this masterpiece. And it was a wonderful piece of work. After he had finished, he decided to take it down to the stream to see if it would float and sail. And it did. But the current in that stream was strong and it caught the little sailboat and carried it downstream. The boy couldn’t keep up running along the bank of the stream, and soon the little boat was out of sight. He searched in vain until dark, but never found the boat. Then one afternoon as he was walking downtown, he saw the boat in the window of a pawnshop. Undoubtedly, someone had found the boat and sold it to the pawnbroker. He went inside and told the pawnbroker that he had made the boat, that he was its creator. The pawnbroker was not impressed and told the little boy that he would have to buy the boat if he wanted it. So the boy pulled out of his pocket several crumpled dollar bills and purchased the boat that he had built. As he walked away from the store, he spoke to the boat. He said, "Little boat, you are twice mine. I made you. And I bought you. You are twice mine."

Of course, you see where I am going. This is precisely what Jesus Christ did for us. He made us and he bought us. We are twice his. He redeemed us by paying the penalty for our sin on the Cross. He died there in our place. He took upon himself our sins. He was our substitute. He purchased our redemption by giving his life as a sacrifice.

Because of Christ’s redemptive work, we can now receive the forgiveness of our sins. Forgiveness, you see, does not mean that God ignores our sins. Forgiveness does not mean that he overlooks what we have done, as if we never sinned in the first place. He simply can’t do that. You see, God is perfect. He is perfectly loving, and he doesn’t want to punish our sins. But he is also perfectly just, and therefore must punish our sins. God must be perfectly just, because he is perfectly holy. His holiness and his justice require that sin be punished. To do less is impossible. He cannot deny his very essence.

No, forgiveness must be predicated upon redemption. Without redemption, there can be no forgiveness. God does not overlook our sins. God forgives them on the basis that Christ paid for them on the Cross. Our sins have been dealt with by the work of Christ.

The Key Truth of this section is this: We have been delivered from the penalty of sin. Because of what Christ did on the Cross, we no longer have to pay the penalty for our own sin. We are set free from the penalty and from the guilt of sin. We can breathe a big sigh of relief. The burden of sin has been lifted. We are no longer guilty before God. Christ has taken our guilt away. Praise be to God! But there is more. He has…

Not only has Christ qualified us for an eternal inheritance through his redemption and the forgiveness of our sins, he has also delivered us from the power of evil. Our text says that he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness.

Evil is real. If there was ever any doubt of this, the events of September 11 put an end to those doubts. On that dreadful day, we saw the manifestation of evil before our very eyes. The terrorists who killed thousands of people that day were evil men. This was not a political statement, it was evil incarnate.

And the one behind evil is real as well. Satan is real. There is a real kingdom of darkness. It is a kingdom that knows no geographic boundary. It is a kingdom that knows no ethnic boundary either. We have all been affected by this kingdom.

In fact, the Bible teaches us that we come into this world with an allegiance to this kingdom. We come into this world with a desire to sin. We are told in Romans that we are slaves to sin. Indeed, all of us have sinned. We have all partaken of the forbidden fruit and indulged our sinful desires. The extent to which we are bound by this kingdom is only revealed when we try to escape. All who try find themselves to be slaves. We find that we can’t escape. We are in bondage to sin.

But in Christ we can be delivered from the bondage to sin. We can be set free and rescued from the dominion of darkness. And that is precisely what Jesus Christ did for us. On the Cross, he not only paid the penalty for our sin but broke the power of sin over us.

The Key Truth of this section is: We have been delivered from the power of sin. Sin no longer controls us. We can now say no to sin and yes to God. This is an extremely powerful truth to understand.

Now this does not mean that we are free from the temptation to sin. All of us are tempted. But the Bible teaches that none of us are tempted beyond what we are able to bear, and that with the temptation God will make away to escape. In other words, we do not have to yield to temptation. We can say no to sin.

Because God has given us free will, you can still choose to sin. But you are no longer a slave to sin. It no longer has any control over you. You have been set free from its power.

So, what has God done for you? He has qualified you to receive an inheritance in his eternal kingdom. He has delivered you from the power of evil. But there’s more. He has…

We are now citizens of the kingdom of God. He delivered us from the dominion of darkness in order to bring us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. Our citizenship has been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of Christ.

This is an important truth. God brought us out in order to bring us in. God never does a half work. When he brought the children of Israel out of the Egyptian bondage, it was to bring them into the land of promise. He brought them out in order to bring them in. He did not deliver them from bondage in Egypt so they could wander around the desert, although that is what they did for forty years. But that was not God’s purpose. God’s purpose was to bring them into the land flowing with milk and honey–– the Promised Land. That was God’s purpose. He brought them out in order to bring them in. And that is what he does for us. He does not simply deliver us from evil; he also brings us into a place of purpose in his kingdom.

God gives us a new life that operates by new principles. These principles are called the New Covenant. God has replaced the old way of living, in which we attempted to earn God’s favor by keeping the law (something at which we failed miserably), with a new way of living, in which we rely on his power working within us. It is the way of faith. It is the way of utter and total dependence upon him.

Some have called this new way of living the exchanged life. It is described in Galatians 2:20:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The central principle of this passage is that the life we now live is not our own, but Christ’s. We live for him by allowing him to live in us and through us. It is called the exchanged life because we exchange our life for his. Now he lives in us. Now he lives through us. We draw upon his power, his grace, his love, his everything. We do not attempt to live in our own strength. We have seen the futility of that. Rather, we live in total dependence upon him by faith.

As we live by faith, we find that new kingdom principles are in operation now in our lives. We find that we are now given a foretaste of what is to come. We live in the already, but not yet. By that I mean that we are already in the kingdom, but we do not enjoy all that the kingdom will be in its fullness when Jesus returns.

The Key Truth in this section is: We are being delivered from the presence of sin. We have been delivered from the penalty of sin. We have been delivered from the power of sin. And we are being delivered from the presence of sin as our lives are being conformed to the image of Christ.

Of course, we still live in a world of sin. And we are not perfect yet, so we still continue to sin. So we have not yet been completely delivered from the presence of sin. As long as we live in this body and in this world, we will have to deal with sin. But one day Jesus will come again. When that happens, we will be glorified. We will receive a new glorified body. It will be an eternal body, fit for heaven. We will be transferred into the very presence of God, which means that we will be delivered from the very presence of sin. Then, we will experience the kingdom of God in its fullness.

Now, we only have a foretaste, but what a foretaste it is! As the old hymn, Blessed Assurance, says, "oh what a foretaste of glory divine." What God has given us here and now is wonderful. We experience his forgiveness and the power of his presence through his Holy Spirit. In fact, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit has been given to us as sort of a down payment.

Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13b-14 NIV)

The Holy Spirit has been given to us as a guarantee of our inheritance. In him, we experience something of the power of God. He gives us power to live. He gives us power to love. He gives us power to overcome. He gives us power to live like Christ. In fact, he is our power. The more we yield to his control, the more we succeed in following Christ.

So we have been qualified for an eternal inheritance. We have been delivered from the power of evil. We have been transferred into the kingdom of Christ. We have been delivered from the penalty of sin. We have been delivered from the power of sin. And we are being delivered from the very presence of sin. Just think of what awaits us in our heavenly kingdom.

What has God done for you? Great things already!

Copyright © 2002 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above copyright notice.

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