We Are Truly Forgiven. Colossians 1:14
Forgiveness today is a concept that
is often misunderstood. Frequently the gospel that Christians believe focuses
on the fact that we are forgiven of sin is often misrepresented, misunderstood.
The comment has been made by unbelievers that Christians
think that if they believe in Jesus they can do whatever they want to do, that
everything is just cleared off and everything is fine. Of course we know
that that is a misrepresentation of the gospel but it is one that is out there,
and not only outside of the church in terms of what some unbelievers think
about the Christian message but it is unfortunately inside the church. It is a
manifestation of, on one sense, the general licentiousness or antinomianism
that characterizes our culture and the drift of western civilization for the
last 150 years or so, but especially in the post-World War II era. We have seen
a move from the radical youth movements of the sixties on into the present which just do away with all traditional absolutes
and all traditional norms and standards, and anything goes because once you
remove an absolute authority from your thinking there is no God and you are not
answerable to a God. And if you are just the product of an accidental
electrical discharge on a piece of protoplasm then it really doesn’t matter
what we do. Values, norms and standards are great, nice, and are tradition but
they really don’t have anything to do with how we live on a normal basis. So we
have a cultural orientation, a cultural trend to this kind of antinomianism,
this kind of licentiousness that has impacted the way people think about right
and wrong and about any kind of eventual accountability to a higher authority
such as God.
There is this issue of forgiveness,
that somehow you just get away free with whatever it is that you do. In
Colossians chapter one Paul expresses his prayer for the Colossian believers
that they might grow spiritually, that they may be “be filled with the
knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you
will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.” There is not an antinomianism there.
Christianity isn’t saying we get forgiven by Jesus and
then we can just do whatever we want to; there is still an obligation and a
standard for the behavior of Christians because there is still accountability
even if we are forgiven by God. In verse 12 Paul says: “giving thanks to the
Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in
Light.” That focuses our attention on the future, that there is a future end
game, a destiny the church has in which there will be an evaluation at the
judgment seat of Christ to determine the role and responsibilities that we have
when Jesus comes and establishes His kingdom and on into eternity.
From that Paul thinks of that future
kingdom, and so he reminds his readers and us that what God is doing is
preparing us for that future role and responsibility; He is calling out a key
group of people that He is training and preparing for that future ministry in
the kingdom: “He rescued [past tense] us from the domain of darkness, and
transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.” The past tense relates to
the fact that he recognizes that both his audience and himself have trusted in
Christ as savior and therefore they have been transitioned from the authority
of the domain of Satan to this future role as members of His future kingdom. It
is not that the kingdom is now but that is what we are being called out for,
that ultimate role in the kingdom.
Having said that he comes back to
make an important statement: Colossians 1:14 NASB “in whom we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” There are some nuances here that are
really important to understand. In reading “in whom we have redemption” we immediately
think back to the cross. That is true, but the word “redemption” used here is
also a word that has a future orientation and fulfillment. Just as Paul talks
about our future inheritance in verse 12 and our future role in the kingdom in
verse 13 that is realized when redemption is realized as the second coming of
Christ.
Redemption, blood and forgiveness of
sins are all words that in everyday language today have been really perverted
and diluted so that they no longer carry the punch and the power that they had
in times past. For example, “redemption” is often thought of as just getting a
new opportunity in life, the opportunity to recover from sort of failure. But
the primary meaning of the word “redemption” in English reflects that of the
Greek of the New Testament, i.e. to pay a price. It is fundamentally an
economic term; it is a purchase concept. The next is the word “blood” which
carries a lot of confusion for a lot of people. The shedding of blood in
Scripture is a metaphor that is used for death. When we read about the blood of
Christ it is simply a metaphor for His death.
Then there is this next phrase, “the
forgiveness of sins” which for all practical purposes in English looks like it
explains what redemption is; it appears to be appositional. So people might ask
the question: how do we understand redemption as paying a price with
forgiveness? Forgiveness is usually thought of simply as letting someone off
who has done something they shouldn’t have done and letting them go without
consequences, so how does this relate to paying a price? Forgiveness means to
eradicate a debt. Redemption is the payment of a price that eradicates a debt,
and that is what forgiveness is.
But the forgiveness spoken of here
is not an economic forgiveness; it is forgiveness of sins. So we have to ask
these questions in a little more detail. First of all, in what way does
redemption equal forgiveness? To do that we have to answer the question: what
exactly does redemption mean? Then what exactly does forgiveness mean? And
then, does that mean that Christians get away with sin?
There are a couple of misconceptions
about redemption. For example, in the English dictionaries we have these kinds of
ideas represented: redemption means reform, to change your life, to repair a
situation, to have relationship restored, getting a new chance in life, to be
free from distress or to make a change for the better. Those are more and more
common ideas that people think of with the use of the word redemption.
Throughout history Satan has really attacked biblical truth from the very
beginning by attacking vocabulary. When he attacked Eve in the garden he said:
“Did God really say? Did God really mean what He said?” He is attacking
vocabulary, word meanings. So when we are communicating the gospel to people
who do not know the gospel we need to make sure that when we use words that we
know the meaning to that they understand the meaning. The English meanings that
do apply relate to purchasing something back, freeing someone from captivity by
the payment of a ransom price, to release someone from blame or debt, or to
free them from the eternal consequences of sin.
Forgiveness means the eradication of
the debt but it does not necessarily mean the removal of the consequences. Adam and Eve were both forgiven by God for their act of
disobedience but the consequences remained. Forgiveness also has a
subjective sense in terms of the mental attitude of a person and it means to
give up any sort of mental attitude sin for the one who has offended
us—to give up resentment, to give up any sort of revenge motivation or
any other kind of mental attitude sin such as bitterness, anger, etc. But we
have to understand that forgiveness does not necessarily include the removal of
negative consequences; that is something completely distinct. We may or may not
release a person from the consequences as well. God may or may not visit us
with the consequences of our sin, but that doesn’t mean that we just get off
free or get away with it.
In the phrase “we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins,” forgiveness of sins is appositional; it is explaining
a nuance of redemption. That redemption is speaking of this eradication of debt
against God. That brings up the idea of sin. We have the forgiveness of sins,
and a lot of people today don’t understand what sin is: it is something
extremely heinous (e.g. social sins), but I am a good person. A person has
murdered somebody, yet people say: Oh but he is a good person. He is not a good person, he has murdered
somebody. We have to understand that sin has to do with something that
is extremely profound; it is not just some narrow class of socially
unacceptable things. Sin relates to anything that violates the character of
God. This may be something relatively small and it may be something that is
relatively large. If we act upon arrogance or pride or self-absorption then we
are sinning. If we are boastful of our own abilities as opposed to God, then that
is sin. If we engage in mental attitude sins such as jealously, envy,
bitterness, anger, resentment, lust—sexual, materialism or
power—these are all sins. We all sin. It is
because there is sin and that sin is against God, not other people, there is a
debt that we have against the character of God. That debt has to be paid before
God then can have a relationship with us or we can have a relationship with
God.
There are two basic words in the
Greek that are translated to redeem, redemption, something of that order. There
are eight different words in the Greek, six are based
on the verb lutroo and two on the
root agorazo. By adding various
suffixes and prefixes Greek changes the meaning of a word ever so slightly, so
different aspects of the idea of redemption are emphasized. lutroo comes from the root
which has the idea of paying a price or freeing something. It is a
cognate to luo
which means to loose or release, and so the idea there is the payment of
a price to release something. agorazo
is from agora and is the word for
the market place, is the word for paying a price to buy something out of the
market. So there are these two groups which are very
descriptive words for understanding the transaction that occurs on the cross in
relation to redemption for sin.
Having said that about these two
different words and the ways that they look at redemption there is another way
to organize them, and that is related to the meaning or usage of these words.
The three words agorazo, lutron and antilutron are words that relate to the objective historical
payment of a price. That basically just means this is
what happened at the cross in 33 AD.
This is the objective payment of a penalty by Christ on the cross for our sins.
The three words lutrotes, apolutrosis, and exagorazo are words that don’t focus so much on the
objective payment of the price but on the subjective or experiential
application of that payment to the individual. For example, the objective
historical payment might relate to the payment of a price to purchase of a
slave in the slave market. The subjective application is when the slave is
released from his captivity or ownership. The subjective application is that
which takes place when a person believes. So there are these two different
aspects and this is really important to understand in terms of what the Bible
teaches about the forgiveness that God has given us for sin. There is a payment
paid that is objective and real and actual and occurs at the cross, but then
that payment has to be applied or experienced in the reality of each
individual’s life, and that occurs when a person believes. The two words lutroo and lutrosis can relate to either of the two categories, either
the objective or the subjective side.
The word that we have in Colossians
1:14—“in whom we have redemption”—is apolutrosis. It is not the word that relates to the
objective historical payment of a price, it is a word that relates to having
received the application of that payment. When we look at the context verse 13
says: “For He rescued [past event] us”—a past reality, aorist indicative
mood. This is the reality; we have been delivered from the power of darkness
and we have all been conveyed into the kingdom of the kingdom of His beloved
Son. Paul isn’t talking here about the objective payment for sin on the cross;
he is talking about the fact that we have all, by virtue of our faith in Jesus
Christ, experienced the application of that payment in our own personal lives.
He is reminding the Colossians that we have all received this payment. The
objective payment is expressed a couple of times in the New
Testament—Mark 10:45 NASB “For even the Son of Man did not
come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” That
is talking about the objective payment of the price. Jesus Christ paid for sin
on the cross. That means that sin is not an issue anymore, the payment is made
and it happened historically at the cross.
This relates to Old Testament
teaching, very clear in passages like Isaiah 53, that there had to be a
substitute payment made for our sin. We could not pay the debt ourselves so
someone else had to pay it. Isaiah 53:10 NASB “But the LORD
was pleased To crush Him, putting {Him} to grief; If
He would render Himself {as} a guilt offering…” It will pay a price for sin.
[11] “…He will bear their iniquities.” There is a real transaction that
occurred at the cross where sin is paid for objectively and historically.
Whether you believe in Jesus or not your sin is paid for. That doesn’t mean
that you automatically go to heaven. No, there is an objective payment on the
one hand but there has to be the subjective application on the other hand. The
word apolutrosis is used this way
numerous times, and by using the phrase “the application of” in front of
translation of “redemption” in these verses helps bring out this important
truth. Romans 3:24 NASB “being justified as a gift
by His grace through the application of redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” Justification
occurs only when the redemption has been applied in each person’s case. 1
Corinthians 1:30 NASB “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who
became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and the application
of redemption.” He is talking about what the Corinthians Christians had
experienced, not what they could experience if they trusted Christ but what
they already had experienced in terms of that redemption, the realization that
the price had been paid for their sin. Then the parallel verse, Colossians 1:14
NASB “in whom we have the application of redemption, the forgiveness
of sins.” When we realize we have truly been forgiven then that frees us from
guilt, from worry, concern about what might happen. It doesn’t mean that we are
off Scot-free because we know that there are still consequences for sin.
But apolutrosis
not only has this orientation towards the past in terms of when the objective
price was paid and its application in our life but it is also used in three
places with reference to a future realization and fulfillment. Romans 8:23 NASB
“And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the
Spirit [at salvation], even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting
eagerly for {our} adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” There the
focus is on the fact that we still live in a mortal corrupt body but we are
looking forward to the fact that at some time we will have a resurrection body.
It is looking forward to that which will come in the future at the Rapture for
church age believers. Ephesians 1:14 uses it in the same way. NASB “who is given as a
pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of {God’s own}
possession, to the praise of His glory.” Also Ephesians 4:30.
This word apolutrosis has the
idea, according to The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, of setting
free by a ransom, and it is used of prisoners of war, slaves, and criminals
condemned to death. It is the payment of that price so that they are
objectively set free.
Colossians 1:14
NASB “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” In
Christ we have the application of redemption through His blood. The payment
price was His death on the cross and that gives us forgiveness of sin. Peter
uses it this way when he is giving the gospel to the Gentiles in Acts 10:43 NASB
“Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who
believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.” This isn’t a forgiveness that
occurs objectively at the cross, it is the forgiveness that occurs at the
instant of salvation when the application of redemption occurs. In Acts 26:18
the apostle Paul is talking to King Agrippa and is describing what Jesus said
to him when he was saved and commissioned: NASB “to open their eyes
so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to
God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those
who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” Cf. Colossians 1:13, 14 where Paul
says the same thing. It is the application of redemption.
We have to recognize that there are
four sense of forgiveness. One is that objective forgiveness or cancellation of
the debt that occurred at the cross—Colossians 2:12-14, forensic
forgiveness. But the one we are talking about here is the second meaning,
forgiveness that is directed toward individuals or realized in our lives at the
moment we trust in Christ. It is related to the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness and justification and what we call positional forgiveness. After
we are saved we still commit sin so there has to be experiential
forgiveness—1 John 1:9. Then there is relational forgiveness when we are
to forgive one another as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us. It is that
second meaning of forgiveness directed to individuals realized when we trust in
Christ as our savior that Colossians 1:14 is talking about.
It means that the debt of sin, the guilt of sin, the burden of sin is truly
removed.
But how do we communicate that in a
licentious culture? In a licentious culture there is no sense of sin.
Everything is good; everything is fine. It still has to be communicated, but
they know that. The individual who is not a believer, who doesn’t believe in
God or any kind of absolutes, still says: “These Christians just think they can
get away with sin.” So at some level in that person’s soul there is a
realization that there is something that is wrong and something that is right
and it is not right to think you can just get away with it. Hebrews 12:5 NASB
“and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “MY SON, DO NOT
REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD….”
God is going to discipline us for sin. We are not going to lose salvation, the
sin has been forgiven and paid for by Christ on the cross but there are still
consequences. The point is that forgiveness means ultimately the forgiveness at
salvation is an eradication of the debt, spiritual death and the penalty of
spiritual death, which ultimately culminates in eternal condemnation. That is
eradicated so that we can have a relationship with God. However, the ongoing
consequences that come from sin are often ameliorated by God’s grace but that
doesn’t mean we get away Scot free. It doesn’t mean
that we don’t have to pay attention to is; it is not a
license to sin. 1 John 1:9 is not a license to sin but it is an opportunity to
recover so that we can continue to have a relationship with God.