People of God, we return again this morning to Paul's letter to the Colossians. Return there in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 1. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians chapter 1. Where we will give our attention to verses 21 to 23 in particular. This text comes on the heels of that very high doctrine we considered last time for verses 15 to 20. That doctrine, that truth that is denied by every other religion and spirituality in the world, that Jesus Christ is God eternal, the creator of all things and Lord of creation. And that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, God come in the flesh, a God-man to redeem a people and to be Lord of his church, his body. profound and great truth that has been set before us. These Christ's supreme credentials testify to his unique authority, ability, and right to accomplish the redemption for which he came, a redemption that includes the entirety of the creation. And this universal redemption required of him one particular obedient act within history and that act was an act that only Christ was sufficient for and so he came in the flesh Paul writes in verses 19 and 20 God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things by making peace through Christ's blood shed on the cross well this high doctrine comes to the saints who continue like you and I today continue to struggle with the toil and difficulties of this life Life is often hard and we, like the Colossians, can be tempted to look elsewhere. To look for something more. To be the ground of our comfort and the source of our strength as we continue day by day. Therefore, Paul does not leave us to construe Christ's credentials as doctrine that's high in the sky that's out there somewhere that has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with us. Paul reminds us that Christ's unique sufficiency is important here and now for us today. And Paul will have us live knowing Christ's sufficiency for us. Which he tells us in two parts. First, that Christ accomplished our redemption. And that Christ anchors our perseverance through this life. Hear now the word of God from Colossians chapter 1. I will begin reading at verse 15, starting with this high doctrine and concluding with our text, verses 21 to 23. Hear now God's Word. He, speaking of Christ, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together, and he is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your mind as shown by your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you wholly in his sight without blemish and free from accusation. If you continue in the faith, established and firm, not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. Here ends the reading of God's Word. May He bless it to us today. Well, Paul begins in verse 21 by reminding the Colossians that it isn't just other people that need Christ. Each of them needed Christ. Each of us needs Christ. we need Christ because we have a condition with which we have been born. And we can live knowing Christ's efficiency for us only when we remember that he has accomplished our reconciliation, that he's overcome this need. We need to be reconciled because like all men, each of us were once separated from God. Now, this separation is more profound than being lost, children. It's not like God lost track of us, like a parent might lose track of a child in a busy store. It's not that we lost track of God, we let go of His hand and just forgot that He was there. Now, this separation is more profound, more deep, and it's based on a deep opposition that works both ways between God and man. Paul begins in verse 21 by telling us that you were alienated from God. You had been pushed away from God. Now this is not how man's relationship with God was established. Young people, you know the Catechism, Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer six, where we rightly confess that God created man good and in his image, that is, in true righteousness and holiness. And why did he create man this way? So that he might truly know God as Creator. That he might love Him with all his heart. And he might live with Him in eternal happiness for His praise and glory. That's how God made man. That's why God made man that way. So what happened that God has alienated us? That He pushed us away? God drove each and every one of us away when he drove Adam away from his presence out of the garden. He drove us away because in Adam and in ourselves we declared war on him. We would have it our way, not his way. We opposed him. We shook our fists. We became his enemies. And so when Paul says you were enemies in your minds, he is saying that our opposition to God is something that was in our inmost intentions and thoughts. It's born from within. In our inmost being, we were hostile toward God. We received His good gifts, but without any gratitude. We thought we deserved them. We thought we had earned them by the sweat of our brow or the sharpness of our intellect, perhaps the money in our pockets. We thought it was ours to be had. We reveled in the gifts rather than in the giver. In fact, we reveled in ourselves. This inner root found expression in outward fruit, Paul writes. Evil behavior. As Jesus explained in Matthew 15, he says, The things that come out of the mouth come from the heart. And these are what make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts. Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander, to name a few. The list could go on. The point is, we commit sin, we act sinfully because in our nature we were conceived and born sinful. This relationship is better revealed in the translation I read to you from the NIV verse 21 which is found in the footnote where Paul writes, Once you were alienated from God and enemies in your minds as shown by your evil behavior. The translation as it stands makes it sound like we sinned first and became sinful. No, we're sinful, therefore we sin. And Paul opens up here in applying this high doctrine by reminding us of our roots, where we came from. Not like we do to bolster our pride in our family or in our education or in something about ourselves, but to remind us and to humble us. To remind us how each of us entered this world, alienated from God, his enemies. With King David we must confess from Psalm 51 as we did this morning, Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Even though this word comes to the saints, it comes to you today, this is something that we can never forget. Where we came from. Because as soon as we do, we forget what Christ has had to do to rescue us from it. It's only when we know our sin and misery that we can look for this rescue if we've not enjoyed it already, or that we can look to this rescue and draw encouragement from the good news of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, which is where Paul moves next. He continues in verse 22 with one of these great gospel but nows. I don't know about you, but I love running across a but now in the New Testament. But now, though all that is true, but now He has reconciled you. God has acted to overcome the separation, to restore the relationship. It is He, Paul says in verse 13, who rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. God acted. And how did God act to accomplish this redemption? well first of all we need to know that he acted alone of his own initiative he acted not because we asked him to he acted not because we deserved that he would act Paul tells us in Ephesians 1 that he acted in accordance with his pleasure and will he had his own reasons, his own motivation, his own purposes and when he acted he did not act halfway he did not meet us in the middle rather he came all the way from the glories of heaven to this corrupt and fallen world he came to accomplish our redemption in the person of Jesus Christ the God man and it was by his physical body through death that he reconciled us this body of Christ this body of his flesh is not to be confused with the spiritual body for which he came, for which he came to save. But we can't miss the significance that God eternal came as a man, fully a man, body and soul. And he remains a man, body and soul, just like you and me, except for sin. The lengths to which God had to go to reconcile a people to himself. He had to do so because we are sinners. We've earned the wages of sin. We've earned the death that we face. We've earned all the misery that attends it along the way. And God does not withhold these wages unless they're paid in full. Unless they're satisfied either by ourselves or by another. That's the deal. The truth is, as Paul has already made clear, and we need to always remember, we cannot pay the debt. It increases every day. There's no way we can pay our own debt. And there's no other creature that can give its life for ours. Even all those thousands and thousands, perhaps millions of sacrifices in the Old Testament. As the author of Hebrews says, the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins. It's impossible. They pointed to our need. They pointed to another. Man must pay. Man must pay and the one who can pay must be sinless. And more than that, in order to bear the weight of God's eternal anger against sin and to release others from it, he must also be true God. And that is why Jesus Christ is who He is. That's why he came as he came. Because those unique credentials belong to him alone and he alone could satisfy what we need to reconcile us to God. Christ came into this world knowingly to suffer the consequences for sin. Sin that was not his own. In the flesh he experienced human suffering. He experienced life as you and I know it. He knew hunger and poverty and exhaustion and pain. He knew temptation and distress and sorrow and grief. There's nothing you have or will ever experience that he has not experienced, that he has not already carried, for which he does not have compassion. The Lord Jesus Christ is the God-man who knows us, who knows you. Most importantly, Christ came to suffer the consequences of sin, the ultimate consequences of sin, so that his people would never have to. He came and took to himself our sins, so that God would pour his wrath out on him and treat him as his enemy. He came to die on a cross, a cursed death, that God would turn His face away from Him and be alienated from Him. Christ endured that for us that we might never have to face it. All this He did so that you and I and all who trust in Christ to save us from the wrath of God against sin would be reconciled to God through Him. We would be brought close, so near that we would be adopted as children, so loved that we would be heirs of an inheritance that is yet to be made ours. Christ's sufficiency for us is first of all marked by the fact that he accomplished our reconciliation. Now in the last half of verse 22, Paul shifts our attention. From the past, from what Christ has already accomplished, beyond the present in which we already enjoy reconciliation to God in Christ, to the future to the end to the last day and for what lie ahead until that day between now and whenever that day will be Paul would have us remember that Christ's efficiency for us continues he anchors our perseverance to the end we've been reconciled to God we've been made right with God we've been redeemed from this world and yet we still live in it and the road is hard and the way is troubled and we're called upon to persevere our new status which is ours through faith in Christ is not an end in itself we need to understand this people of God we can get caught in this it's not an end in itself nor was this ever God's intention Rather, it is the necessary precondition for what God has purposed to do with reconciled sinners. There is something more. There is a greater purpose. According to verse 22, God has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death in order to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation. God's greater purpose for reconciling you is to present you in his sight, to bring you face to face before him at the judgment seat at the end of time. Not only justified, credited with the righteousness of Christ, which is yours already, but also entirely sanctified in the fullness of your being, body and spirit, transformed and fully conformed to Christ. In the final judgment, God's purpose is to present the saints holy, without blemish, and free from accusation. And this has always been his purpose. As Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1, God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world. Why? To be holy and blameless in his sight. This is Christ's greater purpose, Revealed with the metaphor of marriage in Ephesians chapter 5 where we read that Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Why? To make her holy. Cleansing her by the washing with water through the word and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless. You see, God has determined that on judgment day the saints will be holy. cleansed from all sin and dedicated entirely to God and His service. But until that day, though we are saints, holy ones, we continue to be sinners. We will be, without blemish, without any fault or defect, perfect. But until that day, though we bear the righteousness of Christ, sin continues to cling to us and to ensnare us and we will be free from accusation above reproach fully integrated in our character and in our conduct no longer able to contemplate or to commit sin not even an option but until that day though we have been declared righteous in Christ we continue to think and to do unrighteous things you see we must live out our days in this tension between who we are already in Christ and who we have yet to become in glory that's why as we read from Galatians today we have this struggle within us between the spirit and the flesh this is the Christian life the unbelievers life is not full of this tension they have no hope of glory They have no expectation of being right with God now. They are free to do as they want until the day of judgment comes. But we live with this tension. And in verse 23, Paul sets forth one condition that must be met in order for us to enjoy the fullness of this salvation in Christ. One condition. All this will be yours, he says, if you continue. if you persevere in the faith. And it's in light of this condition that Paul will warn the Colossians in chapter 2, don't let anyone disqualify you for the prize. If you continue. If you persevere. So we have to ask the question, what's it mean to persevere in the faith? I know from experience and from the experience of others that this is a struggle. And it's a struggle when we have our eye in the wrong place. The NIV emphasizes our experience of faith. If you continue in your faith, what Calvin would call assurance of faith. Young people, you know Heidelberg question and answer 21. I know you do. What is true faith? As you're rattling off the answer in your head, And I just want you to pay attention to one thing. We know that it includes a deep-rooted assurance. But that's not all it is. And the condition set before us here is more substantial than how we feel, how assured we feel. Assurance waxes and wanes. It comes and it goes. We may be confident today and desperate tomorrow. And often it's because of the circumstances in life to which we give our attention, to which we give our focus. The reason our assurance can wax and wane is because we can lose sight of the one objective and particular truth that serves as the ground for all assurance. This one objective truth can get crowded out by all the noise of this world. Our own struggles with sin, the temptations of Satan, all this noise can draw us away from the one thing that can serve to ground our assurance. And that is that out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. To persevere in the faith has to do with that fact more than it has to do with how we feel on any given day. So although this perseverance will always include some measure of insurance, a measure determined by how much we keep our eye on that truth, this perseverance is not about maintaining a feeling. It's not about turning in on ourselves and trying to doctor ourselves up or amp ourselves up or convince ourselves that all is well. To turn within is to turn to quicksand, to turn to darkness. Rather, this perseverance is about turning outside of ourselves, away from ourselves, to the true and rock-solid anchor for our perseverance. Using architectural terms, Paul explains it this way. To persevere in the faith is to remain established and firm, not moved. To stay where you are. Don't be stepping off over here someplace, or there someplace, and don't let anyone move you. Like a house anchored to bedrock is not swept away by the flood, those who persevere in the faith who cling to this foundation of the work of Christ on your behalf will not be swept away by the storms of this life. Whether they be generated from within, by sin, from without, by Satan, or by the noise of the world, you'll not be moved. To persevere in the faith is to remain where God has established you, anchored to, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. That's what Paul says. Established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. And so we must ask, what is the gospel? How would you answer that question? What is the gospel? I've heard surveys, not from this church, but from Christians around this country, what is the gospel? It's amazing. It's not about you. What is the gospel? Here you go. The gospel is the good news about what Jesus Christ has already done to accomplish your reconciliation. The good news of what Jesus Christ has already done to accomplish your reconciliation. Paul sums it up most clearly in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. There he says, What I received I passed on to you as of first importance. This is the most important thing. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. That he was buried. That he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And that he appeared to witnesses who could testify about God that God had raised him from the dead. The gospel is this one particular, objective, historical truth. And Paul closes out verse 23, reminding the Colossians of three things that set this gospel of Jesus Christ apart from every other so-called gospel you may hear. And there is no shortage. There is no shortage of gospels to be offered to you today. But this gospel, first of all, is the very gospel which they had already heard. He said, you've heard it. This letter isn't news to you. I'm only telling you what you already know. And I pray to God this morning that for many of you, this is all things you already know. It doesn't mean you don't need to hear it. Secondly, this is the one and the same gospel that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. Now, Paul's point here is that this gospel that the Colossians had heard is the very same gospel that has been heard and believed throughout the world. The same gospel you've heard. The same gospel you've believed. The same gospel is to be preached everywhere. As the ESV translated, in all creation under heaven. Remember what Paul said in verse 6. He said, all over the world, this gospel is bearing fruit and growing. this gospel just as it was in Colossae just as it is in Escondido just as it is around the world and lastly this is the gospel of which Paul had become a servant a slave he said of which Epaphras had become a fellow slave and of which every faithful minister in Christ is a slave we are bound to bring you this gospel that you might know the truth of your need and the wonder of God's rescue that this gospel proclaims to you. And what is the hope that is held out in this gospel? Well, the hope of this gospel is that future reality for which our reconciliation was accomplished. That which God has purposed for us. And this too is summarized in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Paul writes, Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits from among those who have fallen asleep. In Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own turn. Christ is the firstfruits, and then when he comes, those who belong to him. The hope held out in the gospel is this hope, the promise of our own bodily resurrection on the last day, when we will be presented before the face of God, Holy, without blemish, free from accusation. Our hope is not a disembodied existence floating around in heaven. Our hope is not an angelic invisibility. Our hope is a bodily resurrection in which our being has been transformed to conform to the status we have in Christ. That's the hope held out in the Gospel. And why did Paul have to remind the Corinthians of these things? Just as he had to remind the Colossians of these things? Why does he have to remind us of these things? Well, he writes in Corinthians 15, I want to remind you of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand, or from the words of our text, on which you were established and firm and not moved. By this gospel you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. In the words of our text, if you continue in the faith. Otherwise, you will have believed in vain. Otherwise, you will find yourself disqualified. You'll be disqualified because you've trusted in a falsehood. You've trusted in an untruth. there are no alternatives and no add-ons to persevering in the faith no matter what others may offer you no matter what others may show you or tell you there are no shortcuts to glory no back door no alternate route and there are no checklists to follow to climb a ladder no secret rights to follow to gain secret entrance to persevere in the faith is to cling to Jesus Christ alone. Who is revealed in the apostolic gospel alone. Who is alone our hope of glory. Only Christ. And Christ alone is sufficient for us. He alone accomplished our redemption, our reconciliation. He alone anchors our perseverance. That's what's for us in this text today, people. It's just this rock-solid confidence to which we can stand firm all the days of our lives, no matter the circumstances that come. And how better can we respond to Christ's efficiency for us than with this doxology from Jude 24. to Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy. To the only God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority through Jesus Christ, our Lord, through before all ages, now and forevermore. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, we are reminded this morning of how much we need the good news of the Gospel. We are reminded this morning of our nature from conception as children of Adam, born as your enemies apart from you. And that, Lord, apart from your grace and mercy to us, we would remain in that situation. We would remain there until the day of judgment in which we would bear the full price. That we would bear your wrath eternally and be shunned from your presence forever. But we thank you, Father, for the reminder again today that Jesus Christ, your only begotten Son, has come in the flesh to take up our place and to satisfy your wrath to become your enemy, that we might become your children. We thank you that he has accomplished our reconciliation. And we thank you, Father, that as we wait for the day when the fullness of his salvation will be revealed in us, when you have had your way in us to make us holy, blameless, and free from accusation, that until that day we will walk in the knowledge and in the assurance that is grounded on Christ alone. That by your grace we will persevere in this faith. That we will remain established and firm, unmoved, unshaken from the hope that is held out for us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Father, that you've not left us to ourselves, but have given us all that we need for life and for godliness on the way. We thank you in Christ's name. Amen.