Redeemed to Serve the King
Getting Rid of Guilt
Guilt has plagued the human race since Adam and Eve fell in sin. From that day forward, we have been looking for ways to cover up or otherwise get rid of guilt. The oldest method is the one that Adam and Eve utilized, cover up your sin and casually pretend that there’s no problem. But facing the holy God while wearing fig leaves is like attending a formal wedding in your underwear. You are neither comfortable or inconspicuous!
The second-oldest method is blame shifting. We see that in the garden as well. When God confronted Adam with his sin, Adam blamed both his wife and God by saying (Gen. 3:12), “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” As a parent, it seems like kids come equipped with this technique in their arsenal, ready to deploy at the first twinge of guilt. And we don't grow out of it, we all have a tendency to blame others whether it is the pedestrian while we are driving or the driver when we are a pedestrian.
Another tactic is to rationalize our sin: “Speed limits are just arbitrary social constricts and everyone knows that you can go 10 over because everyone does it.” Sometimes we rationalize by blaming our circumstances: “What else could I have done in that situation?”
Another common method is not to deny or cover but to attack those who accuse you of wrongdoing: “Look who’s talking! You’ve got a lot of nerve to talk to me about that when you __________." Sometimes, we can even attack or accuse God, claiming that he is unfair or unloving or is against everything and just doesn't like anyone to have any fun.
Still, others deal with guilt by comparing themselves to others who are worse than they are: “Sure, I get angry, but it's not like I'm a terrorist. I just yell sometimes to let off steam, I'm not blowing up innocent people!” Often this approach is coupled with balancing out their guilt by saying, "Sure I might tell a few little white-lies every now and again, but who doesn't. I mean I'm basically a good person."
A seemingly newer and more brazen approach is to just deny guilt by claiming that there is no such thing as right or wrong. "Since we are just evolved animals we should just do whatever makes us feel good and ignore the stodgy religious establishment who thinks that we should feel guilty all the time so we will give them money to make God happy. I'm a good person! I shouldn’t have these bad thoughts about myself! I just need to focus on building my self-esteem.”
You can probably come up with other creative ways to deal with guilt, but the amazing thing is that in spite of all our many approaches to rid ourselves of guilt, it still lingers as a problem for the human race. We can push it down, ignore it, or deny it, but it keeps gnawing at our soul. Even if you have a conscience that has been seared to the point that it no longer feels guilt, there is still the reality that when we die we will stand before the righteous Judge of all the earth.
How Can I Really be Forgiven by God?
So the question that is burning deep in the hearts and minds of every man woman and child is, “How can I really be forgiven by God?” Because we have all sinned, the opposite of guilt is not innocence. That ship has sailed. The counter to our guilt is forgiveness. How can I know that when I stand before God, he won't count my sins against me? It is important that we answer that question by exploring what God has revealed in His Word, not by how our society may conceive Him to be.
Our culture commonly views God as a relic. A senile old man who is out of touch with reality. He's judgmental and crude, but you just get used to it and tune him out after a while. Others see him as a big hippie in the sky who may have opinions but wouldn't judge anyone because that would bristle against his expression of love. If that’s how God really is, then we don’t need to worry about our sins and we can shrug off our guilt feelings. But, if God is holy and will dole out his wrath against all sin, then our guilt is real and must be dealt with God’s way. Since we’ve all sinned many times and in many ways, we all need to understand clearly, “How can I really be forgiven by God?”
How amazing that we are asking this question in the text on the second Sunday of Advent when our focus is on John the Baptizer who joyfully exclaimed, "Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." Let's look at this question deeper from our text today in Colossians 1:13-14.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
To remind you of the context, he’s sharing the content of his prayer for these relatively new believers whom he had not seen. He prays that they would be filled with a knowledge of and passion for God so that they would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. And he prays that they would be strengthened to endure hardships with thanksgiving because the Father has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. Our verses tonight sum up the greatest of those blessings, that in Christ the Father has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to Christ’s kingdom, where we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So, the solution to guilt is to be forgiven by God.
The Dark Condition
To be forgiven by God we must see our hopeless condition and trust in God’s perfect solution. Our condition is that if we are not in the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, we are under the authority (“domain”) of darkness, helpless to rescue ourselves. God’s only solution involves redemption, the forgiveness of sins, which we obtain through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Col. 1:4; Acts 26:18). Colossians 1:13: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son." Clearly, Paul saw only two possibilities: either we are in the kingdom of God’s beloved Son or we are under the authority of darkness. There is no middle ground. If we are not in the kingdom of God’s Son, we are under the authority of darkness.
Do you remember what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus? In Acts 26:15-18, Paul relates the Lord’s words:
"'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'"
Note all the parallels between the Lord’s words to Paul at his conversion and Paul’s words to the Colossians in our text. In both texts, the Gentiles move from darkness to light. In Acts, God opens their eyes so that they turn from darkness to light. In Colossians, God rescues them from darkness and transfers them into the realm of light. In both texts, there is mention of forgiveness of sins and an inheritance that the Gentiles receive in Christ. But the point both in Acts 26 and in Colossians 1 is that there are two and only two possibilities: either a person is under Satan’s domain of darkness, or he is in the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no middle ground.
Realm of Darkness
“Darkness” or skotos in the Greek, can be used to refer to at least three different realities. First, it can refer to spiritual ignorance. In Ephesians 4:18, Paul says that the Gentiles are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.” In a similar way, he says of the unbelieving in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Just as blind people are in total darkness and cannot do anything to see, so spiritually blind people are unable to see the light of the gospel, unless God opens their blind eyes.
Darkness also pictures sin. John 3:19-20 states, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” In Romans 13:12, Paul writes, “Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” He goes on to mention the sins of drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, and strife.
But even worse than those, is darkness' relationship to the malevolent being behind the pervasive spiritual ignorance and sin. In our text today we see darkness as representative of Satan’s domain. In Ephesians 6:12, just before exhorting us to put on the full armor of God, Paul explained, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” We live in a world temporarily given over to Satan, where spiritual and moral darkness prevail.
So, the picture of the world apart from Jesus Christ is desperate and hopeless. Unbelievers are spiritually ignorant and excluded from the life of God because of the hardness of their hearts. They love their sin and do not want to come to the light, where their evil deeds would be exposed. And, they’re under the domination of the “world forces of this darkness,” headed by Satan himself.
And the startling thing is that there is no middle ground! People are either in the kingdom of Jesus Christ, under His lordship, or they are in Satan’s domain of darkness, under his authority. We’re talking about relatively nice, good people. Many of them are faithful to their spouses, love their children, hold down responsible jobs. They’re good neighbors, good students, good citizens. They’re not law-breakers. In fact, many of them are church members, but they’re in Satan’s domain of darkness!
You may be wondering why I’m emphasizing this so heavily. The reason is, unless we diagnose the problem correctly, we will apply inadequate solutions. If the relatively “good” people in the world do not see their true condition as God’s Word describes it, they will be content to go on living as they do, not realizing how eternally perilous their situation really is. They’ll think, “Sure, we’ve got a few problems, but with a little counseling, some psychological techniques, and maybe some prescribed medications to help, we’ll be okay.” They won’t see their need for the gospel.
But their desperate condition requires more than some self-help techniques, including a self-help “Jesus” who is their life-coach in the sky. He will get you through your problems by helping you build your self-esteem. But all of the self-help approaches do not diagnose the problem deeply enough. The biblical diagnosis is that if we are not under the lordship of Jesus Christ, we are in Satan’s domain of darkness. So, what is required? To move from the authority of darkness to the kingdom of God’s Son, God must rescue us and transfer us to that radically different kingdom.
The Kingdom of God
The kingdom of God’s beloved Son is the reign of Jesus Christ as Lord. I believe there is a future kingdom when Jesus will return and reign on earth on the throne of David in fulfillment of God’s many promises to Israel (2 Samuel 7:12-13; Daniel 7:13-14). But here, Paul is talking about the present form of Christ’s kingdom, this is the paradox or balancing act of the already, but not yet. Jesus is king over all who have submitted to His rightful lordship. However, this world is still under the authority of darkness until that day when Jesus finally puts an end to Satan's crooked stewardship of the throne that Jesus in his mercy has let him control. Why does he wait? Because he is not willing that any should perish but that all would come to repentance.
I highlight this because I do not want you to think of Satan as on equal footing with Jesus. Satan is a created being with limitations. He is powerful, no doubt, but don't for a moment think that there is some spiritual battle going on heaven between God and Satan. The battle is over, and the victory was won at the cross.
Notice that this kingdom move is not completed with a U-haul. It is God that delivers us. For God to rescue us implies that we cannot rescue ourselves. Our spiritual blindness combined with the powerful enemy over the realm of darkness renders us spiritually helpless to pull off our own rescue. In fact, until the Lord opens our eyes, we don’t even know that we need rescuing (Acts 26:18)! God alone has the power to overcome the evil prince of darkness and pull off such a rescue.
Have you ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? It's a weird psychological condition where some kidnapping victims begin to sympathize with and even defend their captors. I think this gives us a pretty good idea of the spiritual reality at work in the lives of those that have not been rescued and transferred to the Kingdom of God. Imagine being kidnapped and taken blindfolded to a location where you are totally lost, so that if you escaped, you wouldn’t know which way go. You are kept chained to a wall in some bare room and blindfolded for days, no contact with family or friends, following the instructions of your captors in fear of your life.
Isn’t that just like many who are held hostage by the devil to do his will? They’re lost and blinded, enslaved to sin, free only to do what he wants them to do. They cannot follow God because they’re chained by their sins. Those chains of sin often alienate them from family and friends as relationships are strained and severed. They’re miserable, unable to live as God created them to live. And yet, when you talk to them about Christ and the freedom He offers, they defend their evil captor in spite of the misery he has brought them!
Spiritually, salvation is not a human operation. We cannot rescue lost sinners. They can’t rescue themselves. Only God can rescue them. Just as he rescued his children from Egypt. Simply put, salvation is from the Lord. It is not due to self-effort and it is not even a joint-effort. It is God’s doing. C. H. Spurgeon often made this point in his sermons, he said,
“I must say … that the doctrine which leaves salvation to the creature, and tells him that it depends upon himself, is the exaltation of the flesh, and a dishonoring of God. But that which puts in God’s hand man, fallen man, and tells man that though he has destroyed himself, yet his salvation must be of God, that doctrine humbles man in the very dust, and then he is just in the right place to receive the grace and mercy of God.”
When God opens the eyes of sinners to see their desperate condition and that He alone can save them, all that they can do is to cry out to Him for mercy.
Redemption
To be forgiven by God, we must trust in God's perfect solution, redemption, the forgiveness of sins. When we hear the word redemption, we immediately think in religious terms. It has become the primary definition in the dictionary. However, Paul's readers in Colossae would have heard it in a very different way. This term, apolutrosis, is the combination of two words apo (Out of) and lutron. Jesus uses that word Lutron one time in the gospels when he said in Matthew 20:28, "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." This was historically applied to the release of prisoners of war by the paying of a ransom or to the freeing of a slave through paying a price. John Stott says:
“In the Old Testament property, animals, persons and the nation were all ‘redeemed’ by the payment of a price... In all these cases of ‘redemption’ there was a decisive and costly intervention. Somebody paid the price necessary to free property from mortgage, animals from slaughter, and persons from slavery, even death."
Redemption for an Unfaithful Bride
Whenever I hear the word redeem, my mind immediately jumps to the story of the prophet Hosea and his adulterous wife Gomer. One day, God told Hosea to marry a woman of ill repute. I'm sure that Hosea probably had some different ideas and hopes for marriage. But, he awakened from his marriage vows to emptiness and abandonment. His beloved was going off with other men. He couldn't even be sure the children she bore were his. Hosea was broken-hearted and betrayed. Hosea is a picture of the faithful love of God contrasted with our faithless idolatry.
In Hosea chapter 3, we see Hosea and Gomer for the last time. She has run off and lives now with a paramour, a "significant other." So Hosea is free, right? Now he can get a divorce. She has ended the marriage once and for all. She has another man. Hosea is free. Right? Wrong! God would not give up on us, and he aims for Hosea to symbolize his undying love to his wife of harlotry. Hosea 3:1:
"The Lord said to me, 'Go again and love a woman who is beloved of a paramour and is an adulteress; even as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.' So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley."
When you think a moment on what God asked Hosea to do here, you get a glimpse into what God's love for us in our wretchedness is like.
She had been faithless all along, and finally, she had gone off with another man. Hosea could have had her stoned by law, just like we stand condemned by law. But God commands him to love her. "Go again, love her." And not just to go and get her and love her, but to even be willing to pay this "significant other" for her. If that was not almost an emotional impossibility, Hosea could not afford it. If he could have, he probably would have paid cash. But he couldn't. So he paid half in cash and half in barley. And the total amounted to what Exodus 21:32 says a female slave costs. Gomer had sunk to the lowest possible level. And God says to Hosea, "Get her back, whatever it costs, get her back."
The reason God could expect that of Hosea is that he aims to do just that with us. In 1 Peter 2:10, Peter applies the promises of Hosea 2:23 to the church. So this is a word of God for us today. When Hosea bought Gomer back, when he redeemed her, he did so with 15 shekels of silver and 5 bushels of barley (Hosea 3:2). When God redeemed us, He paid the ultimate price with the blood of His Son (1 Peter 1:18-19).
Gomer did not deserve to be redeemed. Her behavior did not merit such mercy. Israel did not deserve God's faithful betrothal. Their unfaithfulness did not merit such mercy. You and I do not deserve salvation. Our sin does not merit such mercy. But, even when we are faithless, He will remain faithful. This is the message of the whole Bible. At a manger in Bethlehem, God entered the slave market where all of us were putting ourselves up for auction, prostituting ourselves and our humanity to a lesser life. But on the cross, Jesus paid the full price for our freedom.
The Forgiveness of Sins
He bought us back. In him, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Paul uses the word forgiveness only twice in his writings, here and in Ephesians in almost the exact same statement. I believe he uses it here because Jesus used it with Paul that day on the Damascus Road (Acts 26:18). I think those words stuck with him. Forgiveness means a complete pardon and release from debt. In the case of our sins, God not only buys us back at the slave auction with the precious blood of his son, but he also forgives our sins that got us there in the first place.
Redemption and forgiveness are both in Christ (Colossians 1:14). They are only found in his kingdom, in his sacrifice, in his person. In Christ, we receive those benefits which He obtained when He died and rose again. We can’t do anything to earn God’s redemption and forgiveness. We can’t do penance or build up merit to qualify for these blessings. Christ did it all. Believing in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross is the only way to know that God has forgiven all your sins.
What Comes Next?
So the final question is now that we have been transferred into a new kingdom and have been freed from our old slavemaster, what does life look like? I hope for Hosea's sake that when he lovingly bought Gomer back from the paramour that she turned to him with love and never returned to her sin and they lived happily ever after. However, I know that is not the way that we react to God upon being freed from darkness and sin.
We are like the Israelites wandering in the Egyptian desert grumbling about being freed from Egypt. Not realizing that freedom from Egypt is freedom to God. We have become used to the little comforts of Egypt and can't even imagine the glories of freedom to worship our God. Paul talks in Romans 6 about being freed from slavery to sin and now being slaves of God to righteousness. This is sanctification. This is walking worthy of the Lord that we discussed last week. We have a new master and he is infinitely glorious and good and when we see that and all our worldly masters fade from our mind then we will naturally worship and obey the object of our affection.
So the first thing we become after being freed from darkness and forgiven of our sins is worshipers!
God is after worship. He is not after begrudging submission. This transformation will not be complete in this life. But the commands of God lead us to life and joy and how He designed the universe to be so that we worship Him, love Him and love his Law. It’s why David, in Psalm 119, just bursts out in the longest song in the history of the world about how good the Law is. He’s delighting in it, it’s like honey on his lips. He loves the Law. David loves the Law because he knows that in the Law is good because it proceeds from the nature and character of God. He understands that God’s commands are trying to line us up with how He designed things to be, for our joy and for His worship. And those two things are not at odds with one another. They actually work together.
So, God frees us from darkness so we see him in the light. And a heart that sees God is set free to be obedient, to walk in joy, to love the Law and commands of God, to make us obedient. So we don’t go, “Let me do these things so I’ll love God.” We get to know the character and nature of God, and in so doing we’re transformed and begin to do good deeds.
So don't go read Christian books about you but read Christian books about God. So instead of "You’re Best Life Now", read something like "Seeing and Savoring Jesus." Instead of reading books that are focused on unlocking the secrets to happiness, get out of that track and buy books about God, buy books about His nature, buy books about His character, buy books about His holiness, buy older books and get to know the character and nature of God. That’s going to do more to transform your heart and mind than a billion books on why you’re so great or seven steps to get more out of this life. You can get more out of this life and infinitely more in the life to come by seeing and savoring the Creator of all things.
Finally, what do you call a resident of a country whose citizenship is elsewhere? That’s us. We still reside here in this dark world, but we have been made citizens of a new kingdom.
We are called to be Ambassadors. 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 says:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
With your new kingdom citizenship and redeemed forgiveness, worship God and be an ambassador for God, calling others to worship Jesus with you.