Today we begin looking at some of the practical work that Jesus did on the cross for us. Our text for this week is Colossians2:13-15 where the Lord speaks to us of…
The Cancellation of the Cross
And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him (Colossians 2:13 NASB)
Those who do not know Jesus Christ as personal Savior are far worse off than they could ever imagine. We’re told that our condition was grave when the Holy Spirit began His work to make the objective work of Jesus our own subjective reality. We were dead in our transgressions. This death is a spiritual one. Current medicine wrestles to define death now that new technologies and quicker care are snatching people out of the jaws of death under certain conditions. God has no such problem to define our spiritual state. Spiritually dead is what we are without a personal saving faith in Christ. Just as Paul states as well in Ephesians 2:8, we have not a spark of spiritual life in us.
We are then if dead, helpless to bring spiritual life to ourselves. Common logic would conclude then that it is futile for man to attempt his own restoration or revival back to spiritual life. This should tell us as well how much involvement we are capable of in the salvation of our own soul. What can a dead person do? The Bible would say we are capable of nothing. Believer, you have nothing to boast of in the salvation of your own soul. We cannot even add a synergistic effort to our own salvation, to roughly quote one of my seminary professors, “we were not flailing away on the top of the water waiting to grab the life preserver thrown to us by Jesus in the boat. No, we were lying dead on the bottom of the lake where He went down to get us.”
Uncircumcision of the flesh would indicate we were out of the life giving covenant. We were dead because we had this foreskin of a spiritual nature. It had to undergo a spiritual excising…a removal, yet we were dead in it and could do nothing to remove it.
There is much mercy in this verse; in fact the whole passage we are looking at is filled with it. It speaks volumes of the heart of God and His power. But God. Oh what two wonderful words for the human ear to hear when we are in a condition of hopelessness and helplessness…but God. There is no greater ally on man’s behalf that an all powerful God who is merciful and willing to take pity on a hopeless and helpless humanity. What a wonderful God we worship.
What a miracle this is when the Lord performs spiritual CPR on a sinner. It is a known medical fact that the vast majority (over 95%) who are resuscitated from the brink of death often suffer great medical limitations for the rest of their lives. Not so for the sinner brought out of spiritual death. We are made alive together with Jesus, the resurrected living Christ…full of life…full of hope…filled with a future. Through Jesus, God cancelled our spiritual death certificate with which we were born. Is that not something to praise and worship Him for today?
