Is Christ Enough for You?

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Colossians chapter 2.

And we are going to be looking today at verses 6 through 10.

Before we read I just want to make a couple of preliminary comments.

In fact I want to begin with a question actually.

Firstly, what is it that causes a person to turn away from Christ? What is it that motivates someone who has confessed, made an outward showing of belief and repentance, and maybe even throughout a period of time seem to have bore fruit in that faith and repentance? What is it that causes a person to turn? Well, perhaps it is because they think that they have found something better.

Maybe it is the fleeting pleasure of sin that has certainly caused many men to turn from Christ for a season of pleasure and some forbidden activity.

Maybe it is the promises of a false religion.

There are many people who have turned from Christ to worship other gods or to worship the God of Scripture in a way not commanded or not been to worship the God of Scripture as it were.

Sometimes people turn from Christ for the comfort of self-justification.

They don't need Christ because somehow they feel like they find salvation in themselves.

Whatever it is, a person allows Christ to be overshadowed and ultimately his beauty to be hidden.

Well, today as we continue our study of Colossians, what we are going to see is Paul is going to remind us that if we are truly to know salvation, if we are truly to be in Christ, what we must come to terms with is this, Christ must be enough.

Christ must be our all in all.

He must be our everything.

And if we are not satisfied in Him, we are then setting ourselves up to be tempted to be led astray.

With that in mind, let's stand together and read verses 6-10.

Now my intention is to get verses 6-10 preached through today, but I also have an escape route if I get caught in verse 7 to simply end there.

So my hope is to get through verse 10 because I do have a complete thought, but sometimes completed thoughts end up in two sermons.

Verse 6 begins like this, it says, Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

For in Him the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in Him who is the head of all rule and authority.

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word, and now as we seek to understand your word, I pray first and foremost, as always, that you would keep me from error.

For Lord, I am a fallible man, and I am capable of preaching error, and for the sake of your name, for the sake of my conscience, and for the sake of these people who will hear this sermon, I pray that you would protect me from error.

I pray, Lord, that you would also open the hearts of your people to understand the truth.

And Lord, for those who are here who do not yet know Christ, and in a group this big, there must be those, I pray, Lord, that they would see Christ today as wonderful, beautiful, merciful, winsome, and desirable.

And Lord, that they would turn from their sin, and in repentance and faith, that they would turn to Christ as Savior and Lord.

And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

I feel like I have a little bit of a hot mic today, so if I get too loud, I'm going to end up blowing your ears out, so I'm going to be careful.

We've come to a very important moment in our study of Colossians.

We have actually come to what is sometimes referred to as the therefore moment.

Now if you're familiar with Paul's letters, what you will find often in his letters is that he will begin by expressing great theological truths, and then at a certain point in the letter there will be a therefore moment where he takes all that he has taught up until that point and he says, and now do this, therefore this.

And we see this like in Romans chapter 12.

When you get to Romans 12, 1, we see that therefore moment, and we know that that doesn't just refer to the last few verses of chapter 11, or even to chapters 9, 10, and 11, which are all one unit in Romans, but it actually refers to everything Paul has said up until that point in Romans, because in chapter 12, verse 1, he is beginning there the application of doctrine.

He's given us 11 verses of doctrine, and now therefore here is the application.

Well we have a similar moment here in the book of Colossians.

In the verses preceding this, Paul has addressed all kinds of different things, chapter 1 included.

He's addressed his love for the Colossians, his prayer for the Colossians.

He has given them one of the most robust Christologies in all of sacred scripture.

In verses 15 to 20, he has expressed to them his desires for them and the things that he sees in them, and even expressed because of them a sense of rejoicing because they are standing firm in the faith.

He has said many, many good things about them.

And then he comes to verse 6 of chapter 2, and we see this word, therefore, based on all that we have heard, therefore now we come to this passage.

And some have even conjectured that chapter 2, verse 6 and 7 is the thesis of the entire book, and I'm inclined to agree at least to the idea.

I'm not sure that Paul thought of it in that term, and sometimes I think we overanalyze things at times and sort of maybe force ideas in, but to say if there's one thing in the letter that he really wanted to get across, that's what the thesis is.

I think there are several things he wants to get across, but this certainly is the point in the book that summarizes what Paul is after.

In fact, that's what Douglas Moo in his commentary on this passage says.

He says, Paul succinctly summarizes the basic response that he wants from his readers.

That's what verse 6 and 7 is.

It's what Paul wants from the Colossians.

And Brian Finlayson said this, he says, quote, Paul has argued for the lordship of Christ and of a believer's union with Christ through his indwelling presence.

That's the argument.

Now we are getting the application that goes along with that.

We come to the transitional moment where Paul is now going to say, now do this.

In fact, we need to understand, and most of you I think know this, but there is the difference between the indicative and the imperative, the indicative and the imperative.

When we talk about that, what we're saying is what something is versus what something should be.

And what we come to here, and I think I spelled imperative wrong, didn't I? I'm looking here.

E-R-A-T, yeah, I don't want that on the line.

Somebody's looking and saying, look at that guy, he can't even spell.

Okay, so we have an indicative and an imperative.

And what that means is an indicative is something that is, and an imperative is something that must be or something that should be.

It's the difference between indicating something that exists and commanding something that should exist.

And what we find is we're actually coming to the first imperative of the entire letter.

We've already gone through a chapter and a portion of the second chapter, and this is the first time where Paul is going to use a verb which has the imperative mood.

It's in the idea of the imperative command.

So I do think in that sense, this does lend weight to the idea that this is the thesis.

This is the idea.

This is what this is about.

And so we see that in verse 6.

So let's look together at verse 6.

It says, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, that's the whole sentence there, therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.

Now, the word received is the indicative.

That word is a verb, and it is in that form.

It is in the present active imperative, I'm sorry, excuse me, the aorist active indicative.

And what the aorist is in the Greek is the simple past tense.

Means it happened and it's done.

And so he says, you have received Christ.

That happened.

And he's saying just as you have received Christ.

Now what does he mean when he says you received Christ? Well he's talking about conversion.

He's talking about when you went from being Christ-less to Christ-filled.

When you went from being outside of Christ to being in Christ by virtue of having been adopted into the family of God.

He's talking about the moment where your life changed.

And let me say this about that.

If you believe that you are in Christ and your life hasn't changed, then there should be a giant question mark in your heart.

If there's no life change, then why would you think that Christ has been received by you? If there has been no change in your direction from when you didn't have Christ to when you supposedly now do have Christ, how can you think that you have Christ? Now I want you to consider this.

Why would I say when it says, therefore as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, that this is referring to our conversion? Well this is the language that scripture uses.

The language that scripture uses of conversion is receiving Christ.

One of the things we do is we use the word accept.

And I've never been a fan of that.

People say I accepted Jesus like they accepted the fact that they were, you know, had a diagnosis of some disease or something.

It's like I accepted it.

That is not the language of scripture.

Scripture never, in fact that's become the vernacular of the modern evangelist.

I've got to get people to accept Jesus.

Because we've treated Jesus somehow like he was a commodity to be sold.

And we're going to stand up before a group of people and sell Jesus like we sell any other wear.

And our goal is to get you to accept Jesus like you would accept some other sales pitch.

Well that's not what scripture tells us about Christ.

The word that's used is the word received.

And you say well what's the difference between the word accept and the word received? Well one difference is one's biblical.

So there.

But the other reason is Jesus is a person and we receive him as a person.

Not as an idea or as a doctrine but as a person.

And here's the verse that goes with this that's been on my mind as I was preparing for this is in John chapter 1.

In John chapter 1 verse 11 it says speaking of Jesus he came unto his own and his own received him not.

Have you ever been in a place where you weren't received? Have you ever gone to a place that didn't want you to be there? I have many many times walked in and felt very unwelcome and not well received.

Well that is what Jesus experienced among the Jewish people.

While many people wanted him to heal them, while many people wanted him to feed them, while many people wanted him to bring them blessings, when Jesus began to preach the truths of the kingdom the crowds scattered.

John chapter 6 Jesus starts out with thousands of people listening to him.

By the time he finishes his sermon he's only left with the twelve.

And he looks at them and he says are you going to leave too? And they said to who shall we go? You are the one who has the words of eternal life.

So we have Jesus being rejected when he preaches the truth he is rejected.

But praise God John 1 doesn't end with verse 11.

Because verse 11 says he came unto his own and his own received him not.

But and praise God for the but because when buts come into the scripture things change.

And that's what we see.

He came unto his own and his own received him not but to as many as received him who believed in his name he gave them the power to become the children of God.

By the way if you read that again what it says to as many as received him who believed in his name.

That's what it means to receive him.

That's the parallel to receive him is to believe in his name.

If you have believed in his name you have received him.

If you have not believed in his name you have not received him.

And so that's what it means when we go back to Colossians chapter 2 and it says just as you received Jesus.

He's saying just as you believed in his name.

Now I want to add one more thought before we move to the imperative because we're still on the indicative.

We're still on the what happened.

Remember this is Aristotles this happened and he says just as you received Jesus Christ the Lord.

Now I have to be careful with this because right now within reformed circles there's a big debate going on and it has reemerged out of the ether over the concept of lordship salvation.

There are some who are saying that's wrong.

We shouldn't believe in it and I don't want to get into the debate today over that but I know that it's out there because I have to deal with it but here's the thing.

The reason why the whole lordship debate started was because back in the middle part of the last century there arose a doctrine called the doctrine of the carnal Christian.

And the doctrine of the carnal Christian was the idea that you could receive Jesus as savior and not as lord and therefore he could be your savior and you continue to live your life in whatever sinful way you want as long as you say I believe in Jesus you're saved and then at some point after that you may have a moment where you recognize your need for him as lord and he becomes your lord and that was the doctrine of the carnal Christian and they based it upon what I would say is a misreading of 1 Corinthians 3 and it was the idea that you could have sort of a two class Christian structure.

You could have those who are in Christ but not submitted and those who are in Christ who are submitted and then you end up with this sort of carnal Christian and super Christian.

It's baloney.

I didn't even get the Greek word it's just baloney.

But out of that the response was the doctrine called lordship salvation.

Some writers took to write about it like Dr.

John MacArthur wrote the book The Gospel According to Jesus.

And the point was to say this when we come to Christ when Christ enters into us and we receive him by faith that he in fact does become in that moment the pursuit of our life.

He becomes the commander of our ship.

He becomes the lord of everything and we are called to submit to him though we do so imperfectly as Mike pointed out in our confession today our very confession indicated that we submit in an imperfect way because we're imperfect people and this is why Christ continues to be the mediator because we continue to need a mediator amen? But he says just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord or more specifically just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord that's how we received him.

When we came to Christ we didn't come to Christ just as Savior we came to Christ as Lord of all.

And this becomes important for the next part of the statement because in the very next part of the statement he's going to give the as and so part of this sentence and I'm always talking about the way language works and this is one of those times where the very first word in this sentence is actually not translated in the ESV.