Colossians 2:6 - Walking In Him By Faith

Prayer and Introduction to Colossians 2:6

All right, well let's pray and we'll get started. Lord, thank you so much for the services already. Sunday school lesson, Dave was so great today and thank you for our other classes and thank you Lord for the singing and for your spirit being within us and among us today and we ask you to bless the rest of the service, amen.

All right, we're in Colossians chapter two and we have already kind of gone over verse five, we're going verse by verse through the book of Colossians. Last time we kind of talked about verse five a little bit where Paul said he was with this church in spirit and we talked about what that meant, that he could be with them in spirit.

He was overjoyed about the order that they had in their church and the steadfastness of faith that they have into Christ. I thought it was interesting last week that the little word in, in verse five, steadfastness of your faith in Christ, in Greek there are a couple of words for in, in English not so much, but in Greek, in means in but ice is a little different and this word is ice and it doesn't mean just in, it means into which is a little different and it's kind of interesting to contemplate the fact that once we're born again, as we grow, we have to be steadfast, which is something that's immovable, into Christ, which is something that's moving.

So we're moving into more and more, being more and more like Christ. That's what we talked about last time. That's in verse five. We talked a little bit about the difference between the soul and the spirit, some of that good stuff.

You can go back and listen to the archive.

If you want to hear that.

The fact that he rejoiced in their order, just talked about they had a church that was in order, which tells us that churches can be out of order. Men can often try to worship God man's way rather than God's way.

And that's what that's talking about. So we talked about that. So that brings us to verse six. So if you would look at that with me, Colossians chapter two, verse six, this is an amazing thing to contemplate this morning.

Walking in Christ by Faith, Not by Performance

As you have therefore received Christ, Jesus, the Lord, so walk ye in him. Now I want you to notice something. It doesn't say you can receive Jesus. It doesn't say you can receive Christ. It says you receive Christ Jesus, who is Lord.

So when you receive him, you're receiving him as Lord, Lord of your life, your boss, rather than you being boss, right? I mean, that's who you receive. If you're receiving a different Jesus than that, it's an idol.

It's not the real Jesus. I mean, you're either receiving him as the Lord who frees you from every other Lord, including Satan, the world, and the flesh, and all of that. And he sets you free from all of that, and he becomes your Lord.

He even sets you free from self, which is the worst God you have. And he sets you free from that. And that's all buried, buried right there within three or four words.

So that's cool.

But the real gist of this is as you received him so well, you were able to walk in him. And people miss that. They don't get grace. They don't understand that God doesn't love us because, oh, by the way, Dave Huber hit this really nicely in Sunday School today.

God doesn't love us more because we're doing great things. But the point in Dave's Sunday School lesson, he was talking about the walls of Jericho, all they did was walk around it for, what, seven days?

And God broke it down. So if they were thinking they were gonna get to do something great, they really were doing something that quite seemed silly to them probably. And you brought that out really well.

And so it's a wonderful thought. Well, with this concept of walking for him, boy, the Christian church today gets this wrong. So, but it has through 2 ,000 years of history, often it gets it wrong. As you read about people who would flog themselves because they had sinned or something like that, all through Christian history, people have felt, and this is a very prideful way to think, that God's pleasure with us has to do with us and our performance.

Now, if anyone in here is a parent, then you know that's not true. Your kids disobey and they obey. They're not just obedient. They disobey and they obey, probably in that order. But you don't love them less when they disobey.

In fact, the more you love them, the more you try to correct that. But you don't love them less and neither does God. I mean, of all parents, look at our father in heaven. So what does it mean when it says, as you received him?

In other words, the same way you got saved, walk that way. What does that mean? Well, let's turn over to another book here that'll give us some light on this. Turn to Galatians chapter three, the whole chapter.

I mentioned it last Sunday. But if you're busy as I am, you probably didn't take a look at it, which is good because it would have messed up my sermon today because I'm gonna spend some time here. Galatians chapter three, verse one.

Look how it starts. Oh, foolish Galatians. And when you realize that the whole chapter, if not most of the book of Galatians, is written to a group of people who had been sold on a lie by false teachers who came into the church privily, an old English word for secretly.

In other words, they thought they were good people. They thought they were great teachers. And they came in as new people and said, hey, let me have a class. And they let them have a class. And they started teaching false doctrine.

And they began to say that, yes, it's very important to know Jesus and to receive Jesus as your Lord, but you also need the laws of Moses. You need to be circumcised. You need to keep the law. You need to worship on the Sabbath on Saturday rather than on the Lord's Day on Sunday.

The other Christian churches are doing, you need to switch back to Saturday. And all of these, and then there's certain holidays you can keep and others you shouldn't keep. And all of this legalistic garbage, and they bought into it.

And the first thing Paul says to him in the book, the letter that he wrote to him, is he called them foolish because they bought into it. Well, so here's the problem. They, that you walk the same way you got saved.

They're thinking that you get by the flesh. You walk by being good, trying to be good, trying to do good, trying not to do bad. You know, the worst thing you can do if you want to not do bad is think about not doing bad.

Just don't go there, okay, because it won't work. So what is the right way? How do you walk the same way you got saved? Well, let's see what God says through the mouth of Paul. "'Oh, foolish ones, who hath bewitched you?'.

We talked about that a little bit last time. That's a frightening word, because that means that what false teachers do is they have demonic power and they're teaching doctrines of demons, Paul said, in other place, in another place.

They're teaching doctrines that demons invented, and they give the teacher power to look like a godly, Holy Ghost-filled person. When it's not the Holy Ghost, it's a different spirit. It's an unclean spirit teaching these things, and so they've been bewitched by the teacher and by the false doctrine, and here they are.

And so you have been bewitched that you would not obey the truth. Now, it's English, it's English. It's interesting that in English, often when you see the word obey, and you go back and you look at the Greek, it's the same word for faith.

It's pisteo, or some form of that Greek word. It's in the 1611 King James, it'll often put obey, because it's so interesting to think about how people were in 1611, born-again Christians, who didn't have all the distractions and certainly weren't like America, the church that thinks she's rich and doing great, when really she's naked and poor and hungry.

To them, trusting brought the obedience. Don't you think that's what James says it's supposed to be that way, the book of James, right? So to them, trusting the Lord meant you have obedience in your life.

So sometimes the word is used interchangeably with trust in the English 1611 version. If you're gonna write a modern version, you wouldn't be able to put obey there, you'd have to put trust, because they're not the same now, are they?

But they sort of should be, and this begins to show how that works. So they were not able to believe the truth or obey the truth because they had been bewitched, for whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you.

So Paul is saying, look, I preached Christ crucified to you, and you've been bewitched and you're trusting something else. So even before he really gets into what he's going to say to them, he spelled it out in one verse.

He said, look, you've been bewitched into believing that the way you walk has something to do with your fleshly effort to do something grand for God, when in reality, what I preached to you was Christ crucified and what he's saying is that's how you walk.

You have to understand that from God, the Father's viewpoint who is not in time or space, who sees the end from the beginning, that he's already seen all of your sins placed into Christ the day he died on the cross.

And also your sins and your old man were in him when he died already in our past. What's passed to us is now to the Father and it's already happened to us. And then when he was buried, your sins and your old man were buried and dead having been crucified.

And then when he came out of the grave three days later, you were still in him and in Christ, you rose as a new man or woman, and you walk in that new man. So he said it in one verse, didn't he? You think, you're believing the legalizers, you're just gonna try to do better.

And I preached to you Christ crucified. Well, that sets it up quite well. Verse two says, this only would I learn of you. Did you receive the spirit? Did you get like when you got saved in the Holy Spirit and dwelt your body, did that happen because you did some good works?

What's the answer? Absolutely not, everyone knows that didn't happen. That was a miraculous thing than when the Holy Spirit entered our bodies. That was being born again, which the baby has nothing to do with his own birth.

The parent does it all, God did this to us. So no, we didn't receive the spirit by works of the law. We received him by the hearing of faith. Are you so foolish? Verse three says, having begun in the spirit, you're now made perfect or mature or complete in the flesh.

You see what he's battling against? He's battling against this idea that you can get saved by faith. And then you have to have a legal system to follow to be good. You have to have a set of rules to follow to be good.

So many churches and denominations fall into that in every false religion the world does. All the other religions besides biblical Christianity follow that, it's called a stairway to heaven. You build your own stairway to heaven, but you're worshiping an idol, not the God of the Bible.

Because the God of the Bible says, I died in your place. Your sins were in my body when I died for you. They were in my body when I was buried. They were in me when I rose. And you're a risen person and the old man accomplishes nothing.

And yet we build cults and religions and even denominations around doing stuff for God. And we get so busy, we don't have any time for our family. That's why this church doesn't have a lot of programs.

I mean, we got one of the greatest programs in town, which is our school. Monday school, Tuesday school, Wednesday school, and so forth. But we don't have to feel like we have something going on every night of the week and you gotta be here because you would have no family time.

Charlotte and I experienced that when this church started because this church was started by a legalistic preacher. You guys went to one and you know what I'm talking about. It just wears you out. It just wears you out.

It's not how the Lord meant for us to walk. But he's telling us here how we are supposed to walk. So, verse three, are you so foolish that having begun in the spirit, you're gonna now make yourself a perfect Christian by doing things in the flesh?

Have you suffered so many things in vain, if not, if yet in vain? Paul's saying, look, I spent the time to teach you how to be saved, teach you how to walk. And now you've let two or three false teachers come in or maybe one and totally turn you the other direction.

Have we done all this in vain? And I think Paul is, I don't think Paul believes that, but I think he's just throwing it out there to get them to think. He therefore that ministereth to you in the spirit and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?

Obviously, it's all done by faith. Even as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness, that's called positional righteousness. And when God counts you as righteous because of your faith in Christ, that's called imputation.

It's like an accounting term. God took your sins from your entire lifespan, placed and put them in Jesus's account and he died for them. And then he took Jesus's righteousness and perfection and goodness and put it in you, in your account.

And that's how the father sees you every minute of every day. And there is nothing you can do to make the father love you one iota less and you can't imagine how much he loves you. I mean, if you knew how much he loved you, he could probably love you way less and still love you more than you've ever loved anybody.

But he doesn't love you less because of anything that you do. And I'm talking to born again people though. Born again people, which is who most of the Bible talks about in two. Most of the Bible doesn't talk to the world at large.

It speaks to us on how to deal with the world at large. But this one is to us and it says, you're not loved by God because of anything you did. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.

Verse seven says, know you therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. In the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles even through faith, preach before the gospel of Abraham saying, indeed shall all nations be blessed.

So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. We are saved because of the Abrahamic covenant. And that covenant was made between the father and Jesus. And he goes on and explains this in a minute.

We'll see that. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. For it is written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

So you would have to keep every single jot and tittle of the law to make it to heaven based on the law. And no one can do that. So no one's ever been saved by the law, not even in the days of Moses. They were by the Abrahamic covenant, the faith, 400 and something, maybe 50 years or some odd prior to the life of Moses, that covenant was made with Abraham and Moses can't supersede that.

So the law was there just to show us the need for grace, to show us the need for Jesus Christ who would come from their viewpoint and die for them in the future. And we look back at the same cross they look forward to.

So you're cursed if you bring in legalism. Now there are two kinds of legalism and this whole passage and what we're reading in Colossians, we'll see it in a minute. I don't know if we'll get to it today, but as we go on past verse six in Colossians, we're gonna see in detail the second form of legalism.

The first form of legalism is you get saved by doing works. Well, that's a lie and we all know that, but so did these people in the church at Galatia knew that you didn't get saved that way. Where they were wrong is they thought you grew that way, that you got better by being in the law and in the flesh.

They were wrong about that. They would all say, we're not legalist because we believe in salvation by faith. They would all say that, you remember that, Paul? They would say, we're not legalist, we believe in salvation by faith alone.

But they missed the kind of legalism Paul's talking about in Galatians three, which is the kind of legalism that supposedly helps you grow to be stronger, which is by doing works of the flesh. They were legalist because that's what they were doing.

And they didn't even understand this form of legalism, but they were in the midst of it. So verse 10 says, you can't be saved and you can't grow by the law unless you kept every detail of it and no one can except Jesus, and he already did.

He already kept the law for us. Verse 11 says, but that no man is justified by the law and the sight of God, it is evident. How can we have so many friends going to so many churches and denominations that teach that you are justified by doing stuff?

Or you stay saved by doing stuff? Or any form of that? And this is so clear. No man is justified by the law and the sight of God, but it is evident for the just shall live by faith and the law is not faith.

See, I mean, how can God make this more clear? There's other places where Paul talks about this and says, okay, if it's grace, it's not law. By definition, it's not law. And if it's law, it's not grace by definition.

So you can't have grace and law mix for salvation. And now what we're learning today is we can't have it mix for our walk either. All right, so the law is not faith, but the man that does them shall live in him.

So if you are gonna live by works, you gotta live in every single bit of the law. You have to live in it all the time and never mess up. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse in our place.

For it is written, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. And so Jesus lived a perfect life under the law and never broke it. But at the end of his earthly life, God the Father put all of our sins on him.

Not that he ever sinned, but he carried all of our sins on him. And he hung on that tree and he was cursed for our sins. He literally experienced hell while he was on the cross. And he experienced separation from God while he was on the cross for us.

And I don't know if we'll ever know what that means or how that felt or what that was like or anything about it really, other than that he did it for us and for the Father. Why did he do it? Verse 14 says that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the spirit.

Through faith.

So that tells us why Jesus did that. It doesn't tell us what it was like, but it tells us why he did it. Now, think about that. Jesus suffered, you remember in the garden how he asked God if there is a way to do it, make another way for me to save my people rather than to go through what I'm about to go through.

He was not afraid of the cross. He was afraid of your sins. He was afraid of my sins being put in him because he was without, he was holy. He was without sin. He did not want the wretchedness of us on his body and in his body if God could make another way to save us.

And God said, and then he ended the prayer with nevertheless, thy will be done, right? And so the Father let him make it clear by silence that day. Silence, there's not another way. And he began to sweat blood through the pores of his forehead and who knows, maybe his whole body because he was in such intense struggle with your sins and my sins going to be in his body.

And because of it, he knew the Father is not in the presence of sin. He would be separated from God. Now you're gonna let him go through that and then come back 2 ,000 years later and say, but I gotta try really hard to save myself and stay saved.

And you're spitting in his face when you do that, preachers out there who teach this garbage. You're spitting in his face and saying that your blood is not sufficient to save every elect person from all ages of human history.

Your blood is not sufficient. We have to try and help you. And there is no worse doctrine than that, especially if you're with regard to salvation working that way, where you have to do work to be saved.

But most of our false denominations around here that I know of and that I've read of in the whole world, they really are saying to stay saved, you have to do that. Well, that's just as bad as far as blasphemy goes because what you're saying then is, okay, if you don't, you lose your salvation.

And Hebrews chapter six says, the only way you could get saved again is to re-crucify Christ, which puts him to open shame, which is blasphemy. I mean, we don't understand how bad, bad doctrine is. We talk about it.

We struggle with our friends at Christmas that have it. And we do not understand it is actually blasphemy because it takes away from the crucifixion and the finished work of Christ that he did for the whole world.

And we have to be careful not to let that pass in conversation and say nothing about it. Especially, it's okay if it's just you and that person and you don't wanna get in a stupid argument where they're not listening anyway.

That's one thing. But if there's three teenagers standing around and hear that person say the false stuff, you need to correct it. And I was looking at Tyler. He's done this in high school and in college, the college arena.

And we all need to take that stand. If we don't, I think we'll answer for it, for being a mealy-mouthed, weak Christian who just didn't wanna ruffle the other person's feathers. We can't be that way.

I mean, there are Christians by the thousands, read Fox's Book of Martyrs, who have died for this belief, not counting our Savior. The person who gave you your first printed Bible was burned at the stake for giving you a Bible in English.

Burned at the stake, slowly, with a small fire. And here we are, we let people say these false things around us and we just walk away. You can't, you know, it's okay if you just don't wanna be in an argument.

But if there are other people they're influencing, you have to correct it. You must shut, Paul said, I will shut their mouths. Not physically, but with correct doctrine. And so this is serious stuff, serious stuff.

Christ redeemed us from the curse by being made a curse for us. Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. Why did he do it? So that the blessing of Abraham might come to us and we will be saved by faith, not by works.

Brethren, I speak after the manner of men. Though it be a man's covenant, talking about the Abrahamic covenant, yet if it, well, now he's actually using a human covenant as an analogy. Though men make a covenant together, even if it's just men doing it, then though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man can disannul it or add to it.

So like if two, especially in the Old Testament days when a covenant meant something, it was a blood covenant, they didn't have to sign a contract. They just made a promise to each other and they put some dead animals and walked around them and said, if I don't keep my covenant, may I be like that dead animal?

So they kept their word. And that kind of covenant, even though it was between men, 400 years of time passing or 2 ,800 years of time passing does not disannul the covenant. So when Abraham fell asleep and the father made a covenant with Jesus on our behalf, 400 years before the law, when the law came, it did not disannul that because that was by grace.

Abraham believed God and God counted to him as righteousness. You can't remove, nothing removes that. The law never removed it and people get so confused on that. They wanna get back into the law. Every generation does this.

And it's happening around us, even in a little Mahalia and I'm sure here, where people wanna reintroduce law, which is the lesser, which is really just a picture. One of the things it is, it's an allegory or a picture of Jesus dying for us and of grace and they wanna put that back in it.

They wanna go from the better back to the lesser. It just makes no sense whatsoever. And now to Abraham, this is very interesting in verse 16. Now to Abraham in his seed where the promise is made. Now I wanna show you how the Holy Spirit shows us how important it is to be correct with our words, even with our grammar.

Like is this singular or plural? We need to know that. Is this word singular or plural? Because here it says the covenant was made to Abraham or it's spoken to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made.

He did not say to his seeds, plural, as if it were to many people, but as to one person and that one person is Christ. So that promise was not made to me and you, it was made to Jesus. And the promise was that our people, when they come to you by faith for salvation, they will be saved forever.

And that was a promise the father made to Jesus, not to you, but we get the benefit of it. What happened here was this was not really made primarily to us, it was made to Jesus. And then when we are born again and the Holy Spirit places us into Christ, that's called spirit baptism.

And you're placed into Christ and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you. At that moment, you become one. And when you're in Christ, that covenant becomes unto you. Now it's a covenant between the father and you and Christ.

Got that out of order, but you see what I'm saying, to Christ and to us who are in him. So it is a promise that nothing moving forward in all of God's history, however many ages we have, the Bible says there's age into age after that thousand year millennial kingdom, there's more of them.

Nothing will ever change this covenant of grace. You cannot introduce works into it, they don't mix. Works of the law, which relates to the flesh, the law relates to the flesh and to the physical and grace relates to the spiritual realms and to that world, it's a higher plane.

You can't go back to the lower plane. You can't mix them. So he speaks of the fact that specifically the Abrahamic covenant was to Jesus. In verse 17 says, in this I say, that the covenant that was confirmed before by God and Christ before the law, some 430 years before the law, cannot disannul that it should make the promise of no effect.

So nothing ever changes the covenant of grace. It is the preeminent covenant ever made. For if the inheritance be of the law, now it's speaking of your inheritance, what you received because you were born again.

Now you're children of the king. What is your inheritance? You are a co-heir, not co-heir, which is joint heir. There's a difference. You're a, I was thinking of what Otis was teaching about that. You are a joint heir with Christ, which means everything that is his, all of that is yours.

So look at when it speaks of that, it says if your intents were of the law, it can't be by the promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise. You see, Paul is using reasoning and logic in scripture, Old Testament scripture to prove his point.

So it's not by the law at all. Wherefore then serveth the law? Why is it, oh foolish Galatians, that you've gone back now and you're starting to worship on Saturday again and you're starting to have certain holidays and you're giving up other holidays and you're eating certain meats and not eating certain meats.

Why are you doing that foolish Galatians? Why do you serve the law? It was to show us that we need grace, but it was only added to whom the promise was made.

That's Jesus.

And it was ordained by angels in the hand or messengers in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises? God forbid. For if there had been a law given that could save your life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

But the scripture is concluded all under sin. No one has kept the law. All are concluded to be under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed, which was Jesus being born into the world where we think about it during the Christmas season.

The Law as a Schoolmaster and the New Identity in Christ

Now look at this. Wherefore, the law was our school master. Now here's a wonderful allegory. If you picture a king and he has several children and he has a lot of servants. And so he set up a school with one of the wisest men in the kingdom to be the teacher for his servant's kids.

But he puts his kids in that same school. And so the king's children are in school under the same school master as the servants. Now, let me explain something here. The law is represented by this allegory.

What is clearly teaching is that the servants represent people that are not his children. Would you agree with that? Not the king's children. So let's just say lost people. And the king puts his children in there when they're a little bitty.

And they get taught by the same school master. But there comes a day when the king's children come of age and they no longer go to school with the servant's kids. They rule the kingdom. And Paul goes into this beautiful allegory and says, it's like the king's kids go to the same school.

Wherefore, the law was our school master to bring us to Christ, this is verse 24, that we might be justified by faith. You're not justified by the law. You're not made righteous in God's sight by the law.

You're made righteous by faith. But you needed the law before that to show you that you needed faith in Christ because you weren't succeeding at keeping the law. I remember the day I got saved. I was 24 in my car driving to work one day.

And the Holy Spirit made it clear to me that I had not been a good boss of my life. I didn't have anything particular going bad in my life. I didn't have terrible things happening. I wasn't scared of anything.

None of that stuff had anything to do with it. It was just my spiritual birthday. And the Holy Spirit was told by the Father, get in that car, I see it's moving too fast, but get in that with David and wake him up.

He certainly doesn't need to be sleeping going that fast. But anyway, wake him up, reveal me to him, and that's what happened. And I came home a different man that night. But that had nothing to do with works of the law.

For you are all children of God, how? By faith in Christ Jesus. Now that is ein, which means in, which means faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, that's not talking about water baptism.

That is a spiritual baptism, which at the moment of your spiritual birthday, when the Holy Spirit wakes you up, he does about 33 things to you in a nanosecond of time. And one of the things he does is he places you into Christ.

That word baptize is, I think, bad for English because it's not a translation, it's transliteration. From baptizo, which to them means to immerse, to us it means get in the water. It doesn't mean get in the water.

We have a baptistry back here if you're a visitor. But it doesn't mean get in the water. It means to be immersed into something. So this is talking about the Holy Spirit, when he saves you, he immerses you into Christ and Christ into you and makes you one together.

And your old man is slain and your new man arises and begins to have to grow. And it doesn't grow by works of the law. It grows by faith, by knowing Jesus better every day, holding his hand everywhere you go.

And reading his words so he can talk to you and praying so that you can talk to him so that we can reason together. Because the only way we can reason together is if we're both talking. And he is not gonna talk to you outside of this, no matter what the Charismatics and Pentecostals say.

He is not talking to you outside of this and the Holy Spirit can enlighten you on this. But this is how God speaks in the church age. Spent 40 years studying that, didn't I, Katie and Jenny? My favorite topic.

So, you're all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been immersed, is a better translation if you wanna mark that in your Bible, as many of you have been surrounded by, placed into, is a really good translation, placed into Christ, have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew, when you get saved, there's neither Jew nor Gentile. There's not black, white, yellow, red, races is nothing because we're all made of a new race. There's neither bond nor free. And, ladies, there's neither male nor female.

Because God loves each the same when you're in Christ. For you're all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Jesus's, then are you Abraham's seed.

Do you see it?

Then are you Abraham's seed. And heirs according to the promise. In the very next verse of the next chapter, which I'm like, Ben, sometimes I think, I wish that placed up into the, into this chapter, it says, chapter four, verse one, now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from the servant, though he's actually Lord of all.