1^st Sunday in Lent – February 21, 2010

Colossians 2:¹³ When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴ having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Some years ago, a man approached a pastor and pointed out an apparent contradiction in the Bible. He argued: “When God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit, he said, ‘The day you eat of it you will surely die.’ Adam ate from it. But he didn’t die on the day he ate it. In fact, he didn’t die for another 900 years! So the Bible is obviously wrong.”

The pastor pointed out that Adam did, indeed, die on the very day he took the forbidden fruit. But it was a much more horrible death than mere physical death. As soon as Adam desired to be like God, he died to God. That inward death led to the actual sin of reaching out and taking the forbidden fruit. This death is also seen in Adam’s fear of being in the presence of God. That is why he hid in the garden. Furthermore, man and woman covered their nakedness because now they knew how their sin-darkened hearts were capable of abusing God’s good gifts. All of these were signs of inner death. To be sure, physical death and everlasting death in hell would follow. It is this downward spiral of death that our Savior suffered and died to reverse.

But before you and I can truly appreciate what Christ has done, we must remember our original condition. That’s where our lesson begins: “When you were dead in your sins.” As was the case with Adam, God identifies our sins as the outward symptom of inner death. Each time we lay claim to that self-perceived right to do what God forbids, we imitate Adam in his rebellion and stand with him under God’s wrath. And we know how it is that God expects us to live because of “the written code, with its regulations.” This written code can be found in the Ten Commandments; and just how does God see us through them?

Does he see people constantly fretting about the loss of money, love the possession of it, and only trust that all is well if we have enough of it? Does he see people who hold friendships, relatives, human intelligence, or our own wants higher than our Maker’s? Does he find people who use his name to pray, praise him to others, and to give thanks for his daily mercies, or have we misused God’s name? Do we come to church ready to listen - or with the expectation that if we “sit on a pew” for an hour God owes us something? When we have seen someone in need, have we ever crossed to the other side of the road? Have we always loved our spouses and kept ourselves pure of unholy desires? Have we ever laid claim to those things that are not rightfully ours? Relished telling a lie about someone? Or in telling the truth about someone, delighted in how it made us look better by comparison? Just how do our consciences measure up against God’s “written code, with its regulations”?

It is no use comforting ourselves by saying, “Everybody’s doing it.” That ignores God’s holiness and justice which cannot permit anyone unholy into heaven. There is no comfort in the appearance of innocence. Just because a baby cannot clench his fist or hasn’t mastered speech to the point where he can speak defiantly doesn’t mean he is not self-absorbed. There isn’t even any comfort in acts of charity, because without God’s pardon and if it is not done out of love for Christ, they are only done in the interest of self-defense or self-promotion or both.

What’s more, the problem doesn’t lie merely in what we have done wrong—or not done right. It goes much deeper. St. Paul describes it as “the uncircumcision of your sinful nature.” Circumcision was that ritual operation in which a piece of flesh was cut from the male anatomy. It was usually done eight days after birth. It demonstrated the cutting away of sin long before rebellion was evident in a child’s actions. But why would God command that such a thing be done to bring people into his covenant family? After all, cutting off that piece of flesh wouldn’t stop them from sinning anymore than cutting off a person’s hands would stop them from greed. But circumcision was God’s way of saying that all of these sins begin at conception, just as David confessed “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).

This is what we do in our confession of sin! We do not begin with what we have done wrong, as damnable as those sins are, we begin with who we are: “Merciful Father, I confess that I am by nature sinful . . .” Everywhere in Scripture God tells us that we are born dead in sin, dead to God, and walking the road to everlasting death in hell. So in order to deal with our sin, God had to deal with this inner death. Listen to how he did just that. “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”

God, who breathed the breath of life into lifeless clay, has breathed life into the “walking dead.” Only now, the breath that gives us life is the gospel of Christ crucified! The “written code, with its regulations” stood against us because it demanded a perfection no human being could achieve. It exposes us in the court of the holy, all-knowing and just God for what we really are. Our consciences testify to what the verdict of the Almighty should rightfully be: “Guilty on all counts!” But that’s not what the judge says, instead we hear that he “canceled the written code, with its regulations.” But how can that be?

“He took it away, nailing it to the cross.” This is what passion of our Savior, the Lenten season, the Holy Scripture is all about! As we hear our dear Savior cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), we know very well why. It was so that God would not forsake those whom he ought to forsake. The people of Israel complained against God’s grace and were bitten by venomous snakes. Many died. When they confessed the evil of their ways, God commanded Moses to lift up a bronze snake on a pole. Anyone who was bitten could look up to the bronze snake and, trusting in God’s promise, be saved from death. Even so, with Jesus raised up on the cross, you and I, who were dead in sin, can look up in faith to Jesus on the cross and cross over from death to spiritual life. The apostle says that the law code that was against us was nailed to the cross with Jesus. It was cancelled. It was taken out of the courtroom. Therefore, we are declared not guilty.

But at what a cost! The Father’s unfathomable love paid a horrible price for our new life! Let’s use an illustration to drive it home. Imagine the setting of a town in the Pennsylvania mountains. A man who worked in a rail yard had a grandson who loved trains. One day this grandpa let the boy come to work with him. The day went along as normal until late in the afternoon a passenger train was descending a mountain and lost its brakes. As it gathered speed, the grandfather had to make a quick decision. If the train stayed on its track, the speed of the train would surely make it jump the track, resulting in the death of most, if not all, of the passengers. There was only one other option. When the train reached the bottom of the mountain, he could switch it to a track that was long enough to let the train come to a gradual stop. But when he looked up, he was startled to find his grandson playing on that track. His attempts to get his grandson’s attention were drowned out. As the runaway train neared the bottom of the mountain, he could delay the decision no longer: would he risk the lives of a train full of strangers or sacrifice the life of the grandson he loved? With a heavy heart, he pulled the lever, switched the tracks, and the boy died. But the strangers were spared.

Every illustration falters. Unlike the strangers on the train, God knew us only too well. He knew how much we hated him by nature. That God would make a conscious decision to let his sinless Son die in the place of those who never wanted him in the first place is unfathomable love. That God’s Son willingly went to his death an innocent man is amazing grace!

That amazing grace enables Paul to say, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” With these words, Paul pictures a victory parade after a Roman military campaign. The streets of the victors would be filled with cheering spectators. The enemy soldiers would be stripped, bound, and marched down Main Street prodded by the victors’ spears. They were a public laughingstock. Finally, at the end of the march, the enemy soldiers were put to death.

The point Paul is making is that Christ stripped our enemies of their armor when he canceled the written code with his perfect life and paid for our sins with his death and resurrection. You see, the devil only speaks the truth when he can give us a guilty conscience: “You are a sinner. And God cannot let sinners into heaven.” But Jesus disarmed the powers of darkness when he died innocently. He prayed from the cross that God would forgive his enemies. How could the Father deny the prayer of the only One who did not deserve to die? In that act, the great accuser is stripped of his accusation and, therefore, his deadliest weapon.

Furthermore, Jesus’ cross made a public spectacle of all our spiritual enemies. At the hour of his death, there was an earthquake that opened the graves of many of the saints that had died earlier. They came out of their graves. Alive! This was a prelude to the fact that those who held us captive were no longer our captors. Three days later we would see this more clearly when Jesus’ body would rise without seeing decay. On the Last Day, we will see the ultimate result when all who have crossed over from death to life, when all who have been brought to faith and believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior, will arise to the new paradise, the home of righteousness.

So, are we dead or alive? In reality, it is better for us to make a statement than to ask the question, and the statement we can make is: “We were dead, but Christ has made us alive.” All because of Christ crucified, who has taken us from death to life! Amen.