The Gospel of Forgiveness. Colossians 2:11-15
This
is one of the most important passages in all of the Scripture emphasizing what we
have in Christ and all that God has provided for us in terms of the work of
Christ on the cross, and how this then impacts our individual spiritual life.
As we study this section there are different dimensions to what is said here
and the sentence which is not uncommon is a rather
lengthy one. In the Greek it begins in verse 11 and continues all the way down
through verse 15 as Paul piles up one significant complex thought upon another.
It challenges us to stop and really think about what he is saying here, how
these different clauses and phrases relate to each other, because as that is
developed and understood then we come to a greater understanding and
appreciation of everything that God has provided for us.
The
focus really in these verses and the ones that follow are on forgiveness, a key
topic in this section of Colossians, and the implications of it. Paul says, “in
Him.” So right away when we read that phrase we know that he is talking about
what we have in Christ. This phrase “in Him” is a typically Pauline expression,
one that emphasizes what Christians have in Christ by virtue of our
relationship with Him, our position in Him, which takes place when we are
identified with Him in His death, burial and resurrection at the instant of our
salvation. We know that what he is talking about here is the possession of
Christians after salvation, after our faith in Christ as savior.
Colossians 2:11 NASB
“and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands,
in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; [12]
having been buried with Him in baptism [by means of the Holy Spirit], in which
you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who
raised Him from the dead.”
These two verses focus our
attention on one aspect that occurs at the instant of salvation—what is
referred to as the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit when we are identified
with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection—and at that instant the
power of the sin nature in our life is broken. Prior to our salvation we are
under the tyranny or dominion of the sin nature, we are fallen, spiritually
dead, there is only one option and that is to live like a spiritually dead
person. But that is broken at the instant of salvation by virtue of our
position in Christ.
Paul then goes on to
explain what else goes on at the same time that this even called the baptism of
the Holy Spirit takes place. It is expressed in verse 13. The NASB uses “when.” It is not
really “when,” it is more of a concessive participle and translated “though you
were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh
[ref. to the sin nature], He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven
us all our transgressions.” That is the main focus, that this act of
regeneration when we are made alive again in Christ, when we move from being
spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. So what most of what Paul is
talking about in these verses really helps us to understand the dynamic of what
we realize in our experience at the instant that we trust in Christ as savior.
He makes us alive with Christ. This aspect of regeneration is something that is
distinct to the church age. That is not saying regeneration is unique to the
church age, but this aspect of it. The regeneration that was experienced in the
Old Testament does not have as many things that come with it as we experience
in the church age. There is a greater association of reality that we have in
Christ once that sin penalty was paid for at the cross.
Colossians 2:14 NASB
“having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us,
which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it
to the cross. [15] When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made
a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.”
As we look at this passage
(vv. 13-15) we see an emphasis on forgiveness, and there is the statement at
the end of verse 13 that He makes us alive because He had already graciously
cancelled all of our sins. That is the idea of forgiveness there. When did He
do that? “He cancelled out the certificate of debt … having nailed it to the
cross.” That last phrase that tells us when this occurred.
This is so important to understand. The implication of this is truly profound.
The word that is translated
“redemption” here in these passages is apolutrosis.
There is the root noun lutrosis; apo is a preposition added to it as a
prefix to give a different sense of meaning. It is important to understand that
this is a significant shift in meaning. The focus on the verb lutroo is on the ransom payment. The
word apolutrosis actually
emphasizes the realization of that payment. It is critical for us to understand
that when we talk about redemption and forgiveness that the Scriptures talk
about them in two different senses. One is an objective sense that is directed
toward God and the other is a subjective sense that relates to our personal
realization of forgiveness. It is important for us to understand that because
as we deal with people and we are expected to forgive them then both of these
senses apply. There is an objective sense in which we forgive others and then there
may not be a subjective sense, one that is realized in their experience in
terms of a change that comes about because of the fact that they are forgiven.
You can forgive someone and it doesn’t mean that they come back into your life
in the same way that you experienced it before.
When teaching on this
concept of forgiving one another (Ephesians 4:32) there always people who have
been severely wounded in life by other people who hear much more than you are
saying because they are coming at this from a somewhat wounded position and
they think that forgiving someone means eradicating all consequences in their
life and letting them come back into your life to do whatever damage and wreak
whatever havoc and damage they can numerous times and that forgiveness
basically means that you give them the power to constantly control your life in
some sort of destructive way. That is not true. Simple illustration: Let’s say
you own a business and you have an employee. You have a certain level of trust
with that employee but one day you discover that that employee has been
stealing money from you. You can objectively forgive that individual and then
you can fire that individual, all of which never violates the principle of
forgiveness. You have forgiven objectively from your mental attitude but there
are consequences for their breech of trust and so you are not going to put
yourself back into the kind of danger or vulnerability to their thievery that
was there initially. That does not conflict with forgiveness. Scripture clearly
recognizes these kinds of distinctions in the terminology that is used and in
the demonstrations that are given. So the idea that forgiven means that
everything goes back automatically to the way it may have been initially is not
a part of the meaning of the word to forgive, it simply means to cancel or
eradicate that debt, it does not in and of itself have anything to do
necessarily with consequences.
We have seen that Scripture
has four different categories of forgiveness. It is the first one that people
have a difficult time articulating and distinguishing from the second category
of forgiveness. The first category mentioned was a forgiveness that is directed
toward God where the justice of God cancels out the debt of sin. It is
objective in the sense that it is the work of Christ on the cross that is
directed toward the justice of God. In this sense it is similar to what Paul
speaks of in Romans chapter three as propitiation, i.e. the work of Christ on
the cross that satisfies the righteous and just demands of God, the demands of
the Supreme Court of heaven. Forgiveness overlaps in this sense with
propitiation; it is God’s directive. The justice of God cancels the debt of sin
because Christ’s payment for that debt on the cross. This is the idea that we
have in Colossians 2:13, 14 when it talks about the fact that He cancelled the
legal debt of our trespasses. That occurs prior to our personal regeneration or
faith in Christ. It is further clarified in v. 14 that this was done when He
nailed it to the cross. But that is only one of two aspects of forgiveness that
are spoken of in the Scriptures. In fact there are passages that talk about the
proclamation of the gospel as proclaiming the gospel of forgiveness. So the
question becomes if the people are forgiven when Christ paid the penalty on the
cross in what sense are we giving them the gospel to be forgiven? And to
understand that is to understand this distinction between the Godward aspect related to the objective payment of the penalty and
the personal application or realization of that in the life of the individual.
One of the first passages
to look at about this is Acts 13. The context is Paul’s first missionary
journey. The church had been founded in Antioch of Syria. This congregation,
primarily Gentile, has expanded and grown and now they are ready to send out a
missionary. So one of the leaders of the Jewish church (Barnabas) is in Antioch
and he realizes that the person that they need for this mission is Paul, so a
message is sent to Paul to come to Antioch. They are commissioned by the church
at Antioch to go out to the Gentiles and they leave on their first journey.
They arrived at Antioch in Pisidia and it was typical of Paul’s procedure to go
to the synagogue. He explains the Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Messiah. He
comes to a conclusion in Acts 13:38 NASB “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of
sins is proclaimed to you.” He doesn’t use the term “brethren,” he uses the
term “male brethren” because he is speaking to the men. The women on the other
side of the synagogue were just observers—typical of the synagogue at
that time. [14] “and through Him everyone who believes
is freed [justified] from all things, from which you could not be freed
[justified] through the Law of Moses.”
The Greek text divides
where they divide the verses and actually splits this in a manner that is
different from the English. The only thing that there is in verse 39 is the
phrase “by this one [Jesus] all who believe are justified.” The rest of the
verse is really in verse 38. Translation: “Therefore let it be known to you
male brothers that through this one [Jesus] forgiveness of sin is announced to
you and from all things that you were not able to be declared righteous by the
Law of Moses; by this one all who believe are declared righteous.”
The declaration of
righteousness or justification is something that does not occur until we
believe in Jesus as savior. So basically three things have to be fixed or
repaired in order for us to have eternal life and having guaranteed destiny in
heaven. The first problem has to do with the legal penalty of sin. The legal penalty which is assessed to the entire human race from the instant
that Adam sinned is the problem of the penalty of spiritual death.
Second, because we are all born in Adam’s fall we are born with the application
of that penalty, we are born spiritually dead. That is what Paul is emphasizing
in Colossians 2:12. Then the third problem is that we lack righteousness. Isaiah 64:6. So we have three problems: the legal penalty of
sin which has to be solved before the bar of God’s
justice. The second and third problems are part of our experience: we are
spiritually dead and we are unrighteousness, and we cannot have eternal life,
cannot come into the presence of God, cannot spend eternity with Him, unless we
move from spiritual death to spiritual life and unless we are righteous.
The first problem, the
problem of paying the legal penalty, is resolved at the cross. Jesus Christ
paid that penalty for every single human being on the cross. His death on the
cross is directed towards God’s justice, which is
propitiated and so that payment is made. But even though that payment is made
and we are in that sense forgiven (the penalty is wiped out) we are still
spiritually dead. It doesn’t change our experience, our status. We are still
spiritually dead and we are still unrighteous. It is only when we believe in
the gospel, when we trust in Christ as savior, that God imputes to us the perfect
righteousness of Christ and He regenerates us and makes us a new creature in
Christ. Then we have eternal life. So these are the two dimensions in relation
to Christ’s work on the cross: one in which He pays historically for our sin on
the cross and the other in that which is directly applied to our experience.
This is what Paul is announcing: “the forgiveness of sin.” It
has been paid for by Christ on the cross but they have to hear the
message of forgiveness so that they can make that objective payment a reality
in their own life.
The second passage that we
go to where we have the use of this phrase “forgiveness of sin” in relation to
the gospel is in Acts 26:18 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.” The actual speaker being quoted is the Lord Jesus
Christ. Paul is speaking but he is relating what Jesus Christ said to him when
Paul was saved on the road to Damascus. The context of Acts 26 is when he is
giving his legal defence before King Agrippa. He is giving a legal defence;
that is what it means to give an answer for the hope that is in you. It is to
provide an explanation why you are one who believes what we believe. Beginning
in Acts 26:15 Paul gets to the point where he describes his conversion on the
road to Damascus. He expresses here to Agrippa that when Jesus was speaking to
him He described Paul’s future mission as an apostle and that that mission was
for the purpose of opening the eyes (preaching the gospel) of the Gentiles with
the result that they would turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan
to God, with the further result “that they may receive forgiveness of sins and
an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.”
We might read that and say:
“Well I thought that I had forgiveness of sins because Christ paid the penalty
for sin on the cross.” And that is true; that is the objective payment which is the cancellation of the sin penalty. But it
doesn’t change the individual status of being spiritually dead or being
unrighteous. That comes only when the gospel is understood and believed. So the
apostle says that first of all his mission was to proclaim the gospel and that
the desired result of that was that when people heard it they would respond in
faith. As a result of that turning—the word “repent” [metanoeo] isn’t used here; the word is epitstrepho, which means simply that
aspect of turning from going in one direction mentally to going in another
direction—that they would receive forgiveness of sin, the application in
their experience of the reality of the payment of the sin penalty. So this
expresses the secondary aspect of forgiveness in relation to our experience.
To summarize: First of all,
in Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:14 we have the identical phraseology that it
is in Christ that we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin. Both of these
passages tell us that there is this close relationship or almost identification
between redemption and forgiveness of sin. But the forgiveness of sin that is
mentioned here is a forgiveness that is qualified by that opening phrase “in
Him.” This is really the second category of forgiveness that we have noted; the
realization in our experience of the fact that we are fully forgiven in Christ.
So the “in Him” tells us that this category of forgiveness that Paul speaks of
in these two verses is related to those who are in Christ, those who have
trusted in Christ as their savior. The second thing that reinforces that is the
word apolutrosis, which basically
means redemption or deliverance or a release, but it is a word that is only
used in relation to the personal experience, not the objective payment of the
redemption price. The basic idea in the word “redemption” is the payment of a
price. Forgiveness also has that idea, it is used in places like Matthew 18:32
where it describes the cancellation of a monetary debt.
But when we look a little
more into this passage and we realize that this word for redemption here isn’t
the more objective word group of lutroo
or agorazo it makes it very clear
for us. The word group lutroo or
the noun form lutrosis refers to
the objective payment of a ransom. Jesus used that word in 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 refers to the historical payment of the
penalty for sin on the cross. In 1 Timothy 2:5, 6 NASB “For there is one God, {and} one mediator also
between God and men, {the} man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a
ransom for all, the testimony {given} at the proper time.” Here another word is
used based on lutroo. It is antilutron, which also has to do with
the payment of a ransom, but that prefix anti
is indicating substitution. It is paying the penalty or the ransom for someone
else. “… who gave Himself a ransom,” a substitutionary
payment we might say. Those two words indicate that objective payment but the
word that we have in Colossians 1:14 and Ephesians 1:7 is a word that should be
translated “release.” It is the application of that. So we have the picture of
someone who is a captive or someone who is a slave in the slave market of sin
and the objective payment for that sin releases them from their imprisonment.
But they continue to stay there; they remain there as a slave. It is not until
they realize that they are free and step away from the slave market that they
have the personal experience of redemption—the actual release of the
captive or the slave, the realization in our own experience that we are truly
forgiven by God. It is the removal of all guilt because we
have been redeemed by Jesus Christ.
This is similar to what we
read in Scripture related to reconciliation. Reconciliation is another one of
those words that describes the transaction that occurred on the cross. It is
also a word that has economic implications. Romans 5:10 and 2 Corinthians 5:18
talk about reconciliation in this objective sense. Romans 5:10 NASB
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of
His Son [historically at the cross], much more, having been reconciled, we
shall be saved by His life.” 2 Corinthians 5:18 NASB “Now all
{these} things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and
gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” So we have the objective side at the
beginning of that verse but then as apostles and pastors and ambassadors for
Christ we have the ministry of reconciliation as we proclaim and explain the
gospel to others. [19] “namely, that God was in Christ
reconciling the world to Himself [historical], not counting their trespasses
against them, and [application] He has committed to us the word of
reconciliation.”
Colossians 1:20 ties this together as well. NASB “and through Him
to reconcile all things to Himself,”—the objective work of reconciliation
at the cross. 2 Corinthians 5:20 NASB “Therefore, we are ambassadors
for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on
behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
Then we have a forgiveness
that is positional in Christ. This is what we have when we trust Christ as
savior. It is ours, it is that realization that we are indeed free; the payment
has been made and we are fully forgiven in Christ.
We have an experiential
forgiveness every time we confess our sins and God forgives us of our sins and
cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Then we have the tough application
which is relational forgiveness when we forgive one another. This is
where we can forgive someone who has harmed or hurt us, or in some way violated
us, and it is objective. We are not going to harbor mental attitude sins—bitterness,
anger, resentment—toward that person; we forgive
them. Their problem is now between them and the Lord, it is not a problem we
are going to hold against them. Then there is a subjective realization of that
forgiveness in terms of that individual. We may never see that person again.
They may never come to any understanding of restoration of that relationship,
that is a different aspect than the objective aspect. That is in terms of our
own mental attitude releasing that person, not holding them accountable in
terms of our own resentment, anger or bitterness, but letting them go and
committing them to the justice of God to let God handle it and not for us to
continue to bring that up again.
Forgiveness is foundational
not only to understanding what we have in Christ but in terms of our
application of that in every relationship that we have.