Colossians 1:13-14 - Redemption Is An Operation of God

Well, we are in the book of Colossians and meandering our way through it. See, I may need some glasses for this little print here. So let's pray and we'll get started. Lord, thank you so much for the service already today and Sunday school class classes.

And Lord, we ask you to bless this session. May your Holy Spirit be our teacher. Thank you for this wonderful book you've given us with your words that are life to us and Lord use it to energize us today.

And we ask it in Jesus name, amen. Well, we had been talking about what it means to be translated, if you remember. And so we're gonna sort of finish up that a little bit, although we're pretty much done with it.

But let's go to Colossians chapter one.

And find my verse here.

I think we're still in 13.

So Colossians 1 .13, okay.

So let's read that together and we'll get into verse 14 in a little bit today. The verse 13 says, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

And we spent a good amount of time talking about what it means to be delivered from the power of darkness. Most people in the world are not aware that they're bound by the power of darkness, but they certainly are until Jesus sets them free.

And then the second part talks about a little, starts to talk about how he does this. How does he set his sheep free from the power of darkness? Well, he translates us into the kingdom of his dear son.

And that word translate comes from some Greek root words, which means to stand amidst. So that's a great meaning of it. He stands amidst, in the midst of us and changes us. But it has a lot of meanings in the English word itself, to remove something or change it from one place or state or form to another.

So in this process of changing us, from the old man being all we are, to where we are a new man and the old man is still there, but we consider him crucified, right? That's a big change. That is a huge change.

And I think that we ended up last time talking a little bit about how this same word for translate is used by Jesus. When he talks about, through prayer and fasting, he had sent his disciples out to heal and so forth.

They had a problem with a certain demon they couldn't get out. And he said, this kind of comes out only by prayer and fasting. But right after that, he said, have faith. And he said, if a man has faith, he can say to this mountain, be removed and be cast into the sea and it shall be done.

Well, that word removed is translate. It's the same word in the Greek. So now you think about the miraculous event that would be to see a person look at a mountain in front of maybe a crowd of people and say, be removed and just throw it into the sea and it goes.

Now that's never happened in 2000 years, even though Jesus said, if you had faith like he has, you could do that. But we have to remember, the Bible says that faith has, sorry, that Jesus has grace without measure.

And it says, we have it by measure. I remember brother Otis saying that so many times. You guys remember saying, we have faith by, I mean, grace by measure and Jesus has it without measure. So if you had faith without measure, you could do that, but it hasn't been done in 2000 years of Christian history.

So what does that tell us? We have grace by measure, right? Not told, not without measure like Jesus. But the point is the same power that could do that, which is the power of Jesus Christ, all of the fullness of the Godhead bodily, which this book of Colossians, which we're studying is the place that says that.

Only that kind of power can translate us. It's the same thing as the word remove with the mountain. It's like removing us from the power of darkness and moving us over into the light of Jesus's kingdom.

That takes more power than moving that mountain. So if you can even contemplate the moving of a mountain like that, the miraculous power that it takes, it took more power than that to save you or me. One soul, it took more power than that.

And so that's kind of what, this is where Christianity is so fouled up in these last days. And these last days where almost every great denomination has turned full circle from God being God to humanism and Arminianism and man being in control of everything and the church controlling this.

And the church will tell you, here's the five things you got to do to be saved. And all these different things where they try to take salvation into the hands of man. And yet not one of them has moved a mountain into the ocean yet.

And yet they claim they can save a soul through their little mechanisms, their little prayer formulas, their liturgical devices, whatever. And every church almost that we see today is guilty of it now.

And so yet the Bible teaches us again and again that the salvation of a soul, the translating of a human being from the powers of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son is a great miracle that only God can do.

It has nothing to do with humanism. It has nothing to do with man's religion. It has only to do with God and that person. So let me see if I can prove that to you again today as we seem to think we have to continually be proving.

But we speak not just to you in this small room or to you in a little bit larger room out there, but we speak to a large group of people, thanks to God opening up this thing called Tradeway, where we have hundreds of thousands of people that this little church can influence.

So out there, I'll bet there are a few people that don't know what I'm about to teach today. And for you, as the Apostle Paul said, let me remind you, brothers. So I'm gonna remind you of some things.

All right, so let's see.

Let me get some of this paper out of the way here. All right, so in Colossians 1 .13, it says, he has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of his dear son. He had to stand amidst us, which is the root meaning of this idea, in order to do it.

He had to be personally right there with the individual. If you picture us as the mountain that has to miraculously be moved from where it is to another place, he had to be standing with us to do it, or within us, actually, to do it.

That's the first root meaning of the word here. So with that in mind, let's look at, I want you to jump forward to chapter two of Colossians,.

Just for a minute.

I know we'll cover this when we get to it, but chapter two, verse eight, it just gives us some, actually, if you think, obviously, this is a letter. And so Paul gives this idea of this translation. And as he continues to write the same letter, there are no chapter divisions, of course, he's just fleshing out the same idea when we get into chapter two.

And I want you to see how he proves that this is a miracle. The saving of a soul is a miracle that only God can do. And no man can do anything, have anything to do with it, other than the person who's being saved.

And the person who is being saved is a part of it, and I'll show you how. You might say, wait a minute, that's salvation by works, but I'm not talking about that, obviously, but he is a part of it, or how can he be saved, right?

He is, if Jesus is standing in the midst of this person, then the person is there too, would you agree with that? Okay, so watch this. And some of you have heard some of these verses in a different context, but I couldn't resist bringing them in here, because Paul's going to, when we get to chapter two, he's going to bring these ideas in.

So look at chapter two, verse eight. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. Now, isn't it interesting that right here in the midst of this, he warns us to be careful of being spoiled by philosophies and traditions of men when they tell you how they think salvation works.

Right in the midst of this is a warning that the world is going to teach a different Jesus, a different spirit, and a different gospel, and Paul said, but they're not real. They're not the gospel at all.

They're not the true Jesus. They're an idol, a false idol, and it's not the Holy Spirit. It's demonic, unclean spirits mimicking the Holy Spirit, which is happening in many, many churches across this country today, and who knows, in other parts of the world.

So Paul warns us about that. Don't let men spoil you with their philosophy and their vain deceit after traditions. I am always amazed, and I'm sure Dave, you, and I know Ben and different folks in the room.

I know Mr. Music likes to study. I can't go around this church. Almost everybody in this church is a student of the Bible, and it's sort of a different way than the modern American Christian is, if you know what I'm saying.

You're in the word, right? So have you looked at commentaries and noticed how many times they say things that are not right? It's not in the Bible. It's not in that context, or it's out of context, and they just say, well, here's what this means.

That is no different than the group 300 years before Jesus came that morphed into the Pharisees when he was born, and the ones who were responsible for killing him when he died, they started teaching from Targums, which were just their idea of what the Bible meant.

They weren't letting people read the Bible, and it's still happening today. I go on YouTube and listen to what some of these guys will talk, debate about theological things, and I am just amazed at how they will cheat on the 10 rules of Bible interpretation in order to win a point or to make a point, and so it's everywhere.

You have men everywhere who are spoiling people with their own philosophy, and their thoughts about what they think maybe it means and not sticking with the context and the 10 rules of the Bible interpretation, so it's gonna get worse, Jesus said in the last days with many, many false prophets and so forth, so anything preached other than salvation by free grace is false and vain and purely the tradition of men according to how the world works and not having anything to do with Christ, and that's what Paul is saying here.

After the rudiments of the world and not after Christ. It cannot be both. You cannot have a worldly concept of how church works or how the gospel works and have it be after Christ as well. They contradict, they can't go together.

Now look at Colossians chapter two, verse nine. After the warning, he says, for in Christ. Now look, look at what he's doing. It is a foreview of the modern church. Paul is prophetically speaking here.

He's saying, look, there's gonna come a day when you go to church, you're gonna get a concoction of many, many humanistic ideas mixed in with a little bit of Bible, and you're gonna be confused as to why that differs from what the church down the street is teaching in their concoction of many, many different humanistic things that are mixed with a little bit of Bible, and then over at that church and that church and that church and you're gonna just be confused if you just listen to what people say.

Whereas if you get into this book and you learn the 10 rules of Bible interpretation and you tell yourself, I will not cheat, even if it means I gotta change something I've believed my whole life, and then you get in this book yourself and hopefully get in a church where they're all with you in the book and where you're allowed to correct each other if someone's wrong.

I mean, that's the situation you want, right? So, but in most churches, it's not that way. You don't, you're not allowed to go in and change anything. It's been taught in the seminary that that preacher went to, and you're not changing it because they're like schoolboys on the playground and there's peer pressure.

And so we're battling against all this. And Paul says, here, you've got all of this, all of this concoction of just theological mess, a cesspool of stuff that a little bit of truth is floated in, and you gotta swim through that to get to that little bit of truth in most churches today.

And I'm not saying we're the only right church. I mean, God's got 7 ,000 right churches somewhere probably. I'm not concerned about that. I'm just concerned about that this church remains the pillar of the truth.

That's all I care about, because that's our ministry. Right here, this church needs to be the pillar of the truth. Now look what he says. As soon as he says, you've got all of this cesspool of stuff that you've got to swim through to get to this little bit of truth, the very next verse says, but in Christ dwelleth all of the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

So Jesus is all in all, he is God, and he doesn't stop there. Look at verse 10. You, Christian brother and sister, are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power, so you don't need the cesspool.

You just need to get out of the pool and walk over to your Bible and pick it up and find Jesus in every chapter of the book and see Jesus in every scripture in the Bible where it's speaking of him or picturing him or allegorically teaching about him and listen to what he is telling you and me.

And when we do that, we are complete. And the Greek word for complete is pleiroo, which means to make replete. Now I don't know about you, but I don't use that word much. So what does replete mean? Fully or abundantly provided or filled.

Fully or abundantly provided with or filled. So this word says we are fully and abundantly provided for by Jesus only. We don't need anything else. We don't need any other religiosity to make us be complete.

Now, it can mean to cram full, like a net full of fish, you know, a fisherman would have. It could be leveled up like a big, I don't know, that you put weed in or something and you fill it all the way to the top and level it off to be completely furnished.

And so the Bible says we're complete in Jesus. We don't need the religious stuff added to it. And the more of that you have, the less you will see the simplicity of the true gospel of Christ and of Jesus himself.

So this is what our brother is saying. So let's see here. I missed something here. So we've got that. So think about this now.

Look at for in him, okay.

In verse nine, for in him dwelleth all of the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Now in verse 10, look at this. With regard to this being complete or mature or all that you need to have is in Christ with that idea, look at verse 10.

And you are complete in Christ, which is the head of all principality and power. Now that little word complete, if you actually look at the Greek, it's got that little prefix that we've talked about, sum, which means together with, whatever the next word is.

And that is in this Greek. And so it means you're complete together with Christ. So there is your role. You've got to be with, he stands with you, but you've got to walk with him. And when you do, you're complete.

Now with regard to salvation, there is no other salvation than in Christ. You can't add to that or take it away. But Dave was talking about your walk a little bit today.

At Sunday school.

The walk is important, isn't it? Because that's our light and witness to the world is how they see us walking. And with regard to that, only when we're in Christ or together with Christ, do we walk right and we are complete as God wants the human to be.

Now, the second thing I see, so obviously you see the only way we can be saved and then walk right and be a complete whole Christian person like Jesus and God intended us to be when he created us is to be together with Christ.

Now, the second thing is, look at verse 11. In whom also you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands and putting off the body of sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. And what's interesting about that is if you look at the Greek, it's the concept of co-circumcision.

In other words, when God changes your heart, which is something only he can do, you are circumcised together with Christ being with you when this happens. So it's purely a spiritual idea that can only happen with Christ.

And then the next thing that we see is a co-death and burial. Look at verse 12, the first part. Buried with him in baptism. Now, it's very interesting to look at the Greek there because it is literally like math and it is literally telling us that when Jesus Christ died, you died with him in Christ.

You were crucified in Christ. And here it's teaching us that you were co-buried. The little word sum is in there, co-buried. So you were buried with him. When he was placed in the grave, you were placed in there with him.

Now, none of these things are things we could do or that a church could do to us or that religious could make happen to us. This is all just me and Jesus and you and Jesus. You see my point? It's me with Jesus, me and Jesus together doing these things me and Jesus together being complete.

Me together with Jesus being complete.

Is a better way to say it.

Me together with Jesus dying to the old man. Me together with Jesus, that old man being buried forever. And me together with Jesus, as we're about to see in a moment. Look at second half of verse 12. Wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who has raised him from the dead.

So now Jesus and me together being resurrected to new life. None of this is humanistic. None of this is mannish. This is all God working on me and me being with him when he does it. And you didn't have a thing to do with it, which means the church can't have anything to do with it other than preaching the gospel so that people wouldn't hear the water of the word, right?

That's it.

So it's purely a divine thing, this translation that we've been studying. All right, now, as we continue to look at this, we are risen, a co-resurrection, the second part of verse 12. Wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation.

Now, I want you to notice something. That doesn't say faith in the operation of God, does it? And see, this is where other modern translations, every one of them will say in right there, except the King James.

And the Greek says of. So the King James is the only accurate translation of any of these verses. And there are a number of them, at least a handful, at least five or so verses in the Bible that talk about by faith of Christ.

This is talking about by faith of the operation of God, things like this, where it says it's faith of God or Christ rather than in God or Christ. There's a vast difference. Now, there are places where it talks about having faith in Jesus, I understand that.

And that's important because that's us responding, okay? But you've also got to be given the gift, which you can't do by God. When he translated us, one of the things he did when he made us a new man or woman or boy or girl is he gave us Jesus's faith, which is the kind of faith that can walk on water.

It's not just your human belief that saved you. That didn't save you at all. It came alongside Jesus's faith, yes. But that's an effect of the salvation of the cause. People don't understand that. Charles Spurgeon did, but modern Christians very few understand it.

But here we are risen together with him by faith of the operation of God who raised Jesus from the dead. Now, it's kind of interesting. We're gonna come back to this operation of God in a minute. But when we look at this, we see the cause of the co-resurrection.

What is it that caused Jesus and us to be brought forth from that grave? Us unto new life. Us from the darkness of that grave to the light of Jesus's eternal kingdom. What is it that caused that? Well, it is whatever caused this also brought us to having forgiveness.

Because without this, we have no forgiveness. So whatever caused this brought us to being forgiven of our sins and saved. So we need to look a little deeper. Wherein also you are risen with him through faith of the operation of God who has raised him from the dead.

And you being dead in your sins and uncircumcision of your flesh, has he quickened together with him having forgiven you all trespasses. That quickened together with him is where you were co-resurrected.

You were brought to life when Jesus was brought to life. 2000 years ago. So what did you have to do with it? Nothing, Jesus blessed nothing. But let's go back to this concept of the operation of God for a moment because this is the cause of the resurrection.

It is the cause of the resurrection of Christ. It's the cause of you becoming a new person, of you being born again. And that is the ultimate important thing in our lives because none of the rest of it matters if we're lost forever, if we're in the kingdom of darkness forever.

So what caused it? Well, it's this thing called the operation of God. Now the root word here for operation is energia. I'm trying to say it in a way where maybe you could think of an English word that sounds close to it.

Energia.

Energia.

Sounds like energy, doesn't it? And in the Greek, it means efficiency and or energy. All right, so this energy that comes from God, the Bible calls it the operation of God or the energy of God is what brought Jesus forth from the grave and what changes your life.

Okay, so now it's interesting when you look at the phraseology here where it says through faith of the operation of God, not in, but of. Well, the word faith here in the Greek is in the genitive voice and that tells us a lot mathematically.

It means that it is the faith which comes from the operation of God and not vice versa. So when you look at the operation of God, the word faith is in the genitive case, which I said voice, I meant case, but this expresses ownership.

If you look at genitive in English, what you see is it means like possessive, like that car is mine. So it's a possessive word. Genitive means possessive. It means more than that in the Greek, but in English, that's kind of the way we understand it.

So when we look at this, what it means is that faith is the possession of the operation of God. In other words, it's the operation of God that caused it. So when it tells us to have this faith of the operation of God, it's not telling us to have faith in the operation of God.

It's telling us that the operation of God on our life brought faith to us. Jesus' faith, not ours. It was part of the operation of God when he did the heart transplant on our hearts. He gave us a new heart, right?

But part of that, he gave us 33 things. One of them is the faith of Jesus, and you see it here in the Greek because it is a result of the operation of God, and it is the faith that came from that. The faith of the operation of God means the faith came out from it to us.

Now, you won't get that if you just read it in English, but it's quite important. And verse 13 says, "'In you being dead in your sins "'and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, "'hath he quickened together with Christ, "'having forgiven you all trespasses.'".

So now you can see that forgiveness is tied to this very act. So this operation of God, an operation that God did to us that no man can do, that no church can do, that no religion can do, then you can mess up the religion as complex as you wanna make it be.

You gotta worship on Saturday. I was reading stuff about that today. When is the Sabbath, Saturday or Sunday? You can just argue about all that stuff you want all your whole life. It won't help one bit with regard to salvation because salvation is an operation that God did on you personally and has nothing to do with any other human that ever existed in the world.

So it's an operation he did. And part of the operation was he gave you the faith of Christ. I mean, we see it everywhere in Ephesians 2 .8, by grace are you saved through faith, not of yourselves, not human.

It's a divine act in Philippians 3 .9. And he found, and to be found in Christ, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, not in Christ, but through Jesus' faith being given to us, the righteousness, which is of God by faith.

Ephesians 3 .11, according to the eternal purpose, which he purposed in Christ Jesus, our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him, not in him.

Isn't that something?

So this operation of God, the faith came out from it. When he operated on us, he put faith in us, not faith that we worked up from our brains. That's human belief. He put a divine faith within us, Jesus' faith.

Galatians 2 .16, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ, not in Christ, by Jesus' faith. That's what justifies us.

Why?

Because when this operation takes place and he places the faith of Christ in us, we now have forgiveness. That's our justification. So knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ.

There's the effect. Now, our human belief, here's Jesus' belief, strike it, and you put your belief in there, and it starts vibrating at the same frequency. So there's our part, there's our belief. It comes alongside the salvation, just like getting baptized, just like doing good works, just like everything else that happens in our life, just like typing a testimony, a light to the world.

Our belief comes alongside it as well, but it doesn't save us. It is a result of the salvation. So being justified by the works of the law, but not by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ, even then, even we believed in Christ.

Now look at this, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ. So what is it that justified you? Your worked up belief from your brain, or the faith Jesus put in you that was his faith? Which one justified you?

The faith of Christ justified you. The belief is very important, but you can't count on it. Your belief in my human fleshly belief is up and down one day and the next, depending on whether God answered our favorite prayer or not.

But then we get mad at him if he doesn't. Aren't you glad you're not saved by that belief? Because then you'd have to join Church of Christ or Pentecostals or Methodists and lose your salvation. Now, every time you turn around, but when you understand that your salvation didn't come by belief in Christ, it came by Christ's faith being given to you as a gift, the faith of Christ is what justified us.

That we are justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Do you remember when they asked Jesus, what works must we do to work the works of God?

What was his answer? This is the work that you do, that you believe in him who sent me. So believing is a work. So how can you be saved by human belief if it says you're not saved by the works of the law, shall no flesh be justified?

How could you be saved by human belief if Jesus said human belief is a work? So you can't be. You can only be saved by the operation of God and the faith that comes into you through that operation when God did that to you or to me.

Verse 20 says, I am crucified with Christ, this is still in Galatians chapter two, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me in the life, now you're there though, aren't you? You're there, but Christ is living in you and that's really your real life now.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the son of God,.

Or what does it say?

Faith of the son of God. So I live by holding Jesus' hand moment by moment throughout the day and being connected to his faith which was given to me when I got saved, but it's like paying attention to it while I'm holding his hand and walking and that's the walk that I must walk.

So the life that I live, my physical walk, if you wanna learn to, like you said in your study, keep the commandments or automatically please the Lord, walk in a good way. The only way to do it is this second part of verse 20, in the life which I now live in the flesh, see that's the problem is our flesh, isn't it?

But not if you walk this way, the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God, not my own faith, by his faith who loved me and gave himself for me. I mean, I wish every Christian in every church could just get ahold of this, the operation of God.

So let me see, I'm about out of time here, but let's just see what's next here. So verse 13, who has, I'm back in Colossians 1 now, where I'm supposed to be, thank you very much. He's back, Colossians 1 13, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

Do you see what a miracle this translation is? If you go like this, I'll move to the next verse. All right, look at verse 14, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

So once he does this operation on our hearts and he translates us into the kingdom of his sons, it's all passive, it means someone bigger than you did this to you, it's not something you did, not something I did, something God did to us.

But when he does this, now we are in Christ because remember, one of the things is the co-death, the co-burial, the co-resurrection, but also we are baptized into Christ. There is a baptism where Jesus or the Holy Spirit, I should say, places us within Christ.

We are part of him, we're connected to him. And also because of that, we're connected to the father and to each other as Christians. So now that we're connected with him, we are in Christ. And so now it says, we've been translated into the kingdom of his dear son in whom, so now we're in Christ, in whom we have redemption.

Through his blood, plus nothing else,.

Even the forgiveness of sin. So now this all brings us to how do we get forgiven? How do we stand as forgiven? Like you said in Sunday school, positionally, the father sees us as never sin, never will sin, never have sin, we're perfect in the father's eyes.

So, well, we have two things that happen now that we're in Christ. We have redemption and we have forgiveness. And the forgiveness comes with it. The forgiveness comes with the redemption. Now, this is interesting and we may not have time to flesh this out, I just mentioned it and let you think about it this week.

But the Greek word for redemption here in verse 14 of Colossians chapter one is not redemption. There is a different word for redemption. The actual Greek word here is apollutroses. That's a mouthful.

And the reason it's a long word is because it's two little words connected together in the Greek as so often happens. And one of the little words means in full and the other one means ransom. So this is the word that's normally translated ransom in the English Bible.

So it's a little different than redemption. Redemption means to be set free by paying a price. And that's another wonderful thing that God gave us one of the 33 things when he saved us, when he operated on us.

But this one is different because this one means ransom, but it's got the little Greek word added to it. It's not just being ransomed, you were ransomed in full. It's like saying paid in full. Your sin debt was totally paid, never has to be touched again.

It's done.

It is finished. That's what Jesus meant. One of the things he meant when he said, it is finished, it's paid in full. So this little word for ransom in full is an interesting word that we'll pick up on next Sunday.

But let me just give you a foreview of this little word for forgiveness. And if you thought the other one was a long word, you should see this one. Afiemi, a little easier to say, I guess. But guess what that means in Greek for forgiveness.

So let's think about this, okay? God performed an operation on you. He gave you a heart transplant. He then gave you 33 things. The Holy Spirit gave you 33 things or more in an instant of time, all at once.

One of which was the faith of Christ, which saves you, which justifies you. It makes you just as if you've never sinned in God the Father's eyes. And so this great operation takes place. And then you're in Christ.

And because you're in Christ, you have redemption. But really it means ransom, which means somebody bigger and wealthier than you paid the price to set you free from someone who had captured you, whose name was Satan.

Someone bigger and richer than you paid the price it took to ransom you from the powers of darkness. And that's one of the greatest things that happened when you were translated, you were set free. But you know what this word, what comes next with this ransom is the word forgiveness.