A Word in Season: Translated (Colossians 1:13)

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We know what translation is, at least in the usual sense. It's bringing meaning from one language into another, interpreting by way of words what wouldn't otherwise have been understood.

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But there's another way to understand the language of translation, and that's to convey people, to relocate.

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And that's the sense in which it's used in Colossians chapter 1 and verse 13.

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The Apostle Paul there is giving thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us, conveyed us, into the kingdom of the

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Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

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Now in the Old Testament, when nations were taken into exile according to the policies of some of the great empires of the day, this is the kind of language that might have been used.

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They would take people up from the place in which they had been found, and they would translate them into a new environment.

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And that uprooting was intended to destabilize, to break them free from their old ways of life, and to settle them and to integrate them into a new way of life.

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It was an aggressive policy that was designed basically to, you might say,

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Babylonize people. Now this is the very opposite of that.

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This is not a cruel uprooting from a proper home and bringing somebody into slavery.

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This is a liberation from slavery and bringing people into a safe and a happy home.

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What God does through His Son, Jesus Christ, by the redemption that is in His blood, that forgiveness of sins by which we are no longer under the wrath of God but now brought into peace with Him, God Himself delivers us from the power of darkness and carries us up and over into the kingdom of the

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Son of His love. God finds us in the darkness of sin with all its attendant misery and sorrow.

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He looks upon us with pity and in an act of divine power unparalleled,

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He, by His grace, catches us, secures us, brings us, and puts us down and roots us in the kingdom of the

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Son of His love. And that contrast that Paul brings is there in his description of the two territories or the two kingdoms that he has in mind.

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On the one hand, there's the power or dominion of darkness. It's a phrase that conjures up everything that is involved in being under the power of the adversary, under the power of Satan, the evil one.

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He has no regard for us. He has no delight in us. He only wishes to destroy us and to trouble us.

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He is the cruelest and the most awful of masters. There is no love, mercy, pity, grace, kindness, or tenderness in His being whatsoever.

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And that's where, by nature, we were found. But God, who is rich in mercy because of the great love with which

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He has loved us, even when we were in that state, dead in our trespasses and sins and in the dominion of darkness,

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He has made us alive with Christ. It's similar language.

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It's the same kind of idea. It's the same notion of being picked up from one state and deposited in another.

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And the place in which God's people are put down to take root and to flourish and to prosper is the kingdom of the

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Son of His love. It's the place where Christ reigns. It's the place where God's mercy and favour is not just revealed, but experienced and enjoyed.

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And that's what we then testify to and properly reflect when we gather together on the

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Lord's day. It's what we testify to and properly reflect as we live for the praise of His glory in every day of the week.

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It's what we demonstrate when we hear His word as our King and our Saviour and the intention is that we should learn

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His will and do it. It's when we sing His praises. It's when we enjoy communion with Him.

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It's when we lift our hearts and our voices in prayer to the throne of grace. It's when we rely upon the ongoing effects of His final sacrifice and His ongoing intercession for us.

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What we do as God's people is a testimony that we are no longer in the dominion of darkness.

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We are now in the kingdom of the Son of God's love and that is our truly blessed environment and it is all because God, who is to be thanked and praised, has done this for us and translated us into the kingdom of the