Colossians 2:6-15 Progressive? Sanctification

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Good morning, church.

I'm Zach. I have no fancy education or degrees that would warrant your attention this morning, but I've been asked to share the Word of God, and I would argue that not only does the Word of God warrant your attention, but requires it.

Progressive Sanctification and the Question of Christian Change

So if you don't mind turning your Bible to Colossians chapter 2, that's where we're going to be spending our time this morning. It will be up on the screen. I'm going to try and advance the slides, but I've titled the message, Progressive Sanctification.

I put a question mark in there trying to emphasize a particular aspect of the phrase. What I was shooting for was progressive sanctification. Progressive? That's what we're looking for. So just to remind you what I mean by sanctification.

So I clicked it once. Let's see if anything happens. Click it again. Not yet. One more time. Maybe help up there. Could be a long morning. There's all six clicks. All right. So progressive sanctification.

So the idea of sanctification is in Scripture. It's the idea of holiness being set apart. And to be sanctified is to become more holy, to become more sanctified. And we see progressive sanctification is the idea that is not in Scripture per se.

You won't see those two English words next to each other in your Bible, but the idea is in there. And I'll use Wayne Grudem's definition of progressive sanctification. He describes it as a progressive work of God and man that makes us more and more free from sin and like Christ in our actual lives.

And so it was good that last week, if you were here, John McGuinness preached from Romans 6, and he talked about the idea of progressive sanctification. And I'll use it. I think it's in a lot of different places in the New Testament, but specifically we'll look at Romans 6 .20 because he did.

So in Romans 6 .20, it says, Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.

And as John, I think, rightly described, it's this idea that sin spirals. The more sin you do, the more lawlessness you partake in, the more it produces, the more sin that you have. Conversely, as it says, your members become slaves to righteousness, it leads to sanctification.

And so why...well, before I say that, this process is also illustrated in Wayne Grudem's book. Wayne Grudem is a current theologian, and he wrote a book called Systematic Theology, and this is the chart that he puts in there under the topic of progressive sanctification.

Starting on the far left, non-Christians, so all humans, slaves to sin. That's how we're born. Every single one of us, slaves to sin, and in the life of a Christian, there is a point of conversion, becoming Christian.

So that's where you accept what has been done for you on the cross. Every Christian has that point of conversion. And then for Christians, ultimately, we are still in our...currently, we are still in this flesh body.

We will put on immortality. We will put on a sanctified, perfect body in heaven, after death, or if Christ were to return. That's at the third point there, death. In between is what I want to talk about this morning, because it seems like there are some implications from this that may or may not be true, depending on what you're reading into, what you think is intended by this.

I think sometimes we think, I'll become a better Christian over time. If just enough time of coming to church, I'll become more like Christ. And so why do I want to talk about this? I think of things in my life that have shaken my faith the most.

It is this idea. Shaking my faith, I think I was born into a Catholic church. I'm at home, and we went to a Catholic church. I was like eight. So I've always had an idea of who there is a God. I've never been rattled on that idea.

From experience and from Scripture, I feel like I've never been shaken on the idea that we're all sinners. Every single human is a sinner, born that way. The idea that Christ paid the penalty for our sin, never been a problem.

So those haven't been a problem. But the idea of progressive sanctification has rattled me. And I'll say it this way, because if you picture God, creates the universe, God speaks it into existence, the entire universe that we still don't know the ends of.

And as we study any given intricacy of creation in science, it's infinite. In every direction, it appears. And so the God that does that, at conversion, comes to dwell within a human. They become a Christian, a new creation.

If Christianity is true, this idea, this notion, then we would expect, or I would expect, that person to be different than somebody who doesn't have the God of the universe living inside them. But if it's not true, Christianity is just an idea that man has created to either make sense of the world or to get man to conform to a certain way of behavior.

And some people do believe that. Then we would expect Christians and non-Christians to basically look the same. And I know a handful of people really well. I'm married to a sinner. I know her really well.

And I'll be honest, it's hard to see progressive sanctification. And I know that sounds damning to some people in my life, but what I'm preaching this morning is to myself, because I have one person in mind, and it's me.

This is what's rattled my faith. I don't see this progressive victory over sin in my life. Am I not expecting the right thing? And so I think Don has given the illustration before, and I think it's fair.

He said if any of us had our thought life put up on the screen as a live stream, it wouldn't be our best day. So what's going on? And just to be clear, Jesus doesn't draw the line. If you can just conform your external behavior to a certain pattern, that's it.

Like he says, if you think about you hate somebody in your heart, you've murdered. If you lust after a woman, you've committed adultery. So the line isn't just behavior. It's what's going on up here. So why don't we see change there?

So we'll go ahead and turn with me to Colossians. Let's see if I can get this slide to move. Colossians 2, 6 through 15. I feel like this passage has been helpful for me. So read along with me if you don't mind.

It says, Therefore, as you receive 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 whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you also received with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses. By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Let's pray. Father God in heaven, this morning we come together, we gather in the hopes of worshiping you in spirit and truth.

God, I pray that your word would penetrate our hearts. God, as we come in contact with it, it would produce change in life, that we'd be alive in you. God, come now, your Holy Spirit, to minister to us and help us to be conformed into your image.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So, back to the Grudem chart. Not trying to be super fancy, but the text kind of lends itself in a certain way. If we start on the left, when we're dead in our trespasses, the passage ends that way.

So we're going to work backwards through it. So the end of the passage starts with verses 13 through 15. We're going to work through it. Just because I think it kind of helps to make sense of that chart.

If you read verses 13 and 15, what we just did, we'll just kind of highlight some things as we work through it. It says, and you who were dead in your trespasses. We'll stop there. And you. Paul's writing a letter to the church.

He's writing to specific people. He's not writing a letter just to a blog post, just anybody who wants to hear it, here's something to hear about. He says, and you who were dead in your trespasses. Dead in your trespasses.

Trespasses against who? Family? Friends? Co-workers? Probably. But ultimately, who are our trespasses against? Who are our sins really against? God. Our trespasses are against God. And he goes on to say that in verse 14, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

So what are the legal demands of our sin, of our trespasses? The wages of sin is what? Death. Scripture says the wages of sin is death. So, we know after that is the judgment, and we have eternity in hell for those that are not in Christ.

And that's a difficult doctrine for a lot of folks. It doesn't seem quite proportional. I sin against my spouse, I sin against my kids, my co-workers. I get eternity in hell? It seems out of bounds. Maybe you don't struggle with that.

But I think it's a misunderstanding of the nature of sin and who it's against. Because God is perfect in all of his attributes. Infinite. His love, character, wisdom. He's created this paradigm that we live in.

We are the created. He's the creator. And the thing that gives us the most satisfaction is God. That's the solution. That's how he's created things. And if we put something else in there, we trespass against him, the sin against is infinite.

So, if that's truly valuable, if it has that much value, then the consequence, the payment, should be proportionate. So, I think if we understand that nature of our sin, then it makes a little bit more sense.

It says, God, in the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, the legal demands of our sin against God is eternity. But the good news, he set it aside. He nailed it to the cross. And so, he didn't just nail, generically, sins to the cross.

Not the idea just to get rid of sin. It was specific sins that were nailed to the cross. Your sins that were nailed to the cross. So, the idea is specific or definitive atonement. Christ died for your specific sins.

Nailed them to the cross. Because the accusers in this paradigm of how he set up the world, they are coming to him like, look, you set up this situation. They've broken your commands. Now, punish them.

He's punished. He's paid for it on the cross. Your specific sins have been paid for. He puts them to an open shame. They have nothing to bring against us. So, if we want to stand on our own, we can pay the penalty on our own.

There is that provision. You can pay it in eternity, or you can trust Christ's payment on the cross. And he triumphs over them. And so, I think it's kind of helpful before we go on. I did click it. So, the idea of this is the gospel that our sins have been paid for.

And we cannot add anything to it. And so, the extent that we get that wrong, it no longer is Christianity. We misapply it, we no longer have Christianity. And I think a helpful illustration might be the idea of the immune system.

Because I think we can somehow become immune. We get too familiar with the gospel. And so, the immune system, we all have one. The core function of the immune system is to separate self from unself. So, if non-self shows up in our bodies, our bodies defend.

Take it down, kill it, whatever it is, however your body wants to process it. That's a healthy immune system. It appears to be just infinitely complicated. The idea your body can even identify cells that aren't doing what they're supposed to.

They're self, but they're not doing it. They're cancerous. Your body can kill them. And we don't understand a lot of it. But a healthy immune system would identify something. So, the example of a bee sting.

Your body recognizes that venom, shows up. It's not self. It's a local event. Your body surrounds it, starts to process it, kill it. And your body has sent some, attacks it, a way of saying it, with different cytokines and different proteins to kill it, to denature it.

But the idea is, sometimes, the normal healthy flesh gets caught in the battle, like collateral damage. So, that happens in a bee sting, but it's localized. And in a couple days, it's okay. Your body has killed it, processed it, dealt with it, moved on.

It didn't create this big change. We have some friends. We got back from the mission field, had dinner with them a couple weeks ago, and he had just been stung, like, for the fourth time. And in his immune system, freaks out when it gets a bee sting.

Just goes like his whole body is on fire. It's not a local event. It's a systemic event. It goes everywhere. And he gave two injections with EpiPens. Pure adrenaline. It wasn't enough. He lost his airways constricted, had to be taken in an ambulance.

They gave him steroids. He survived, but he's in a very dangerous predicament because that one bee sting just set his body on fire, essentially destroying his flesh. The therapy that they've kind of identified is taking just a little bit of that bee sting venom and giving it to him.

They haven't started it, but that's the idea, because if he goes back to the missions field, they won't have that medical care to provide for him. So, if he gets stung, that'll be it. So, the idea would be just to give him a little bit of the protein or a little bit of whatever is in that bee sting, and his body can begin to learn how to process it so that it doesn't create this big event.

I think that's how we should be with the gospel. So often, we hear a little bit week after week. We just get used to it. I would argue our response should intensify. Like every bee sting that he gets, it gets to be worse for him, his flesh.

That's how we should respond to the gospel. With an increasing response, and it should affect everything. Our most vital parts of our body, the part of our flesh that we don't want it to affect, it shouldn't be this local event where we just kind of process it.

Maybe it hurts the flesh a little bit, but by next week, we don't even remember it happened. So, that's what I'm arguing is progressive sanctification. Coming back to the gospel and understanding what God has done for us.

Growing in our understanding, because when we first come to Christ, that conversion, we think that we understand our sin nature. But as you grow in Christianity, you come to a new understanding day after day of how depraved we really are, how sinful, and conversely, how perfect God is.

That's what I would argue is progressive sanctification. It's an understanding who we are and who God is. Let's keep moving through the passage. Verses 11 -12, if it'll click. There we go. It says, Because I knew it was here.

And what are we talking about with,. So, the idea of circumcision, maybe you're familiar with, is given to Abraham in the Old Testament. It's given as a sign. So, in the situation with Abraham, God calls him, and he has faith, Abraham does, and there's this small piece of skin that is removed as a sign.

It doesn't cost Abraham really anything, but it's meant as a sign. And it's a bit heavy lifting, but just so that we're clear on what is meant by circumcision, Romans does a pretty good job in verses 9 -12, if you want to read it on the screen.

It says, How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? So, this is the key part. Before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So, it was a sign. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that the righteousness would be counted to them, that's us, grafted into Abraham as well.

And to make him the father of the circumcised, who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. So, it's heavy lifting, and we're not going to go into all the details.

The point is that we have been circumcised as a sign, and this text also says, buried with him in baptism. So, Abraham, what was his faith in? Abraham's faith is trusting God would provide a way to reconcile himself, people, humans, to God.

What would he do about the sin problem? Abraham had faith that God would do that, and he gave him a sign of circumcision. Likewise, we were circumcised, does it say? No, verse 11, in him also you were circumcised.

It says we were baptized? No, buried with him. With him in baptism. And you were raised? How were you raised? With him through faith. So, this is an idea I want to keep coming back to this morning. In him and with him.

It's in almost every verse in this passage. In him and with him. And so the idea you were raised with him through faith, faith in what? Jesus Christ. That's what we want to be pointing back to. So, how are we raised?

If you want to stand on your own and be in yourself, I don't think you've got much to stand on, but if you're going to be in Christ, that's how you are raised, in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

So the idea, again, of circumcision, it's already been done. What is the circumcision of Christ? What is the sign? What is the flesh? It wasn't just a piece of skin. It was his entire body. Christ gave all of it.

His is the perfect sacrifice for us. So we've been, in a sense, by the circumcision of Christ. And so we believe, as Christians, the first sign of obedience, if this conversion has taken place, you follow Christ in this believer's baptism, we call it.

You identify with him. It's not that you die buried and are resurrected, but in him, your flesh dies and is buried, and you have faith that he will resurrect your body when you die. The whole notion is identity in Christ.

Another term for this, in him and with him, is union with Christ. I think you can answer the question, or ask the same question, are you a Christian? Are you in Christ? Same question. Are you in Christ?

If you have some notion of, I'm a Christian, I don't know what it is to be in Christ. That's something different. I don't know what that is. And it's not unique to Paul's gospel either. I mean, Paul's gospel.

His letter to Colossians. In John 15, we see John describes the gospel as that we should be abiding in Christ. This idea of abiding. He's the vine. We are the branches. Paul's letter to Galatians is that we should be walking in the Spirit, not according to the flesh.

So the Spirit's in us, walking according to the Spirit, or abiding in Christ. Union with Christ is what we're called to. The life of a Christian is not a call to conversion. The life of Christianity is a call to day by day, week by week, even minute by minute, union with Christ.

Living with him, day by day. Dale Abbey said it a couple weeks ago, we have this idea of a resume that we present if somebody asks you, are you a Christian, or are you in Christ? And the answer, oftentimes, we put together a resume of the things that we've done.

And again, I'm preaching to myself so often, the things that I do, that's what I think is sanctifying me, helping me become a better Christian. However we define that, being a better Christian. And so we list off all these things that we're doing, whether it's being a husband, a father, a mother, whatever service you think you're doing here at the church.

Identity in Christ is that piece of paper as your resume, the only identity you have is in Christ, that piece of paper that is soaked in Jesus' blood, so whatever you do on it is in Christ. If you don't have a resume that's soaked in Jesus' blood, you have trash.

You have nothing that's of any value of an eternal consequence. So we're going to keep coming back to this idea of identity with Christ, and I think it gets pretty significant in the previous verse. 9 and 10, it says, For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

So notice it says deity dwells bodily. Not just deity dwells bodily. It says the fullness of deity. Not just the fullness of deity, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. Can you picture it? Can you picture a human where the whole fullness of deity dwells?

It's hard, I don't know what you come up with. It's pretty challenging, but I encourage you to strain, to try to picture what that might be. This is really Paul piling onto a classic passage just prior to this letter in Colossians 1.

We'll read it together because it's probably one of the best parts of Scripture, describing this phenomenon of Jesus in bodily form. There's a bunch of he pronouns in this text, and I'm going to change them to Jesus.

I think that's effective. I mean, that's accurate. But just for effect, I'll substitute. So it's in verse 15. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Jesus all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through Jesus and for Jesus. And Jesus is before all things, and in Jesus all things hold together, and Jesus is the head of the body of the church. Jesus is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything Jesus might be preeminent.

For in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Jesus to reconcile to, it's a little weird, Jesus in all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of Jesus' cross.

We probably should have just read that and prayed and sung this morning. That's as good as it's going to get in terms of worshiping God and worshiping Jesus. I don't think anybody can read that passage and come away with this notion that Jesus is a good teacher.

I'm in agreement with Christianity, but this whole business about him being God, I think that's a little, you now have a new religion if you see that. But this again is Paul piling on this idea that the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

And here's where it gets, I think, remarkable. And you, you have been filled in him. All that, you have been filled in him. It's kind of clunky language. What does it mean to be filled in him? Some of the translations say completed in him, perfected in him.

I think they're all the similar idea, going back to what I said previously, that God has created us with a particular desire that can only be perfected in him. It's only in him. It says, for in him, the whole fullness, and you have been filled, how?

In him. I think, I don't know if it's me or our American culture or what it is, I think, so often I think about Christianity, things happen to me in independence. It's only in Christ, it's only with Christ, and it's only by Christ that this stuff happens, this transformation happens.

So you've been filled in him, that means you have been perfected in him. So the extent that you are in Christ, you are perfectly sanctified. To the extent you are in Christ, you are perfectly sanctified.

So you want to grow in sanctification, you want to progress? Work on growing into Christ. It says, probably doesn't need to be said, but it says, who is the head and rule of all authority? So sometimes you might feel like, well now, I'm in him, I have all this authority.

This is pertaining to the death, burial, and resurrection. We don't somehow now become God with this union. Hopefully that makes sense, but just to state it. And so this whole part right now, we've been working along this chart, has really been pushing in on the idea of conversion.

What It Means to Be in Christ

So then what should we do and what shouldn't we do? The previous verse says what we shouldn't do. Paul says, 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.

I read a bunch of commentaries, lots of different ideas of things that was going on at that time, at that church, useful, but I think we got plenty of ideas here at our time that are fundamentally, the wrong thing is not according to Christ.

So I teach middle school on Wednesday nights here at Recast and I'm always trying to press into them and discuss with them, who is Christ? What's supplanting Christ in your hearts? And I get some great answers.

One of them recently was we, these are sixth to eighth graders, he says, don't drink drugs. Yeah, that's fair, don't drink drugs. I appreciated the naivety of evil, I think we should all not be experts in evil and wickedness, but I think it, I just appreciate it, I think it's natural for us when we want to start looking at what's wrong, what's in place of Jesus in our hearts, how are we not in him?

We look way out there, because obviously middle schoolers probably aren't struggling with that too much. Probably a lot of people in this room aren't struggling with that. But what are we struggling with?

And that's where all these things come into play. I listened to a guy named Tim Keller and he quotes a bishop named William Temple. I say it that way just so you don't think that I'm reading William Temple and bishops, I just, I'm not that smart, I'm not doing that.

But he says it this way, and I think it's a useful tool, a diagnostic tool for what are those elemental spirits, what are these ideas that are not according to Christ, and he says it this way. He says your religion, your religion is what you do when you're alone, where your mind goes when you're alone.

Where does your mind habitually go when you're alone? And obviously we're so infrequently alone. We have our phones, we're constantly interacting with people, and we can be in a room like this and still be alone.

Your mind can be somewhere else right now. Where does your mind go when you're alone, where you don't have something that you're actively doing? As a diagnostic tool to what are these things that are not according to Christ?

I think the calling is to minute by minute union with Christ, and so I think this would be a helpful exercise to what are we putting in that place? What else are we doing? And so then what should we do?

Well, the beginning of the passage was six through seven. It says as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, what should you do? As you receive Christ, you should walk. How? In Him. Rooted and built up. How?

In Him. And established in the faith. Faith in what? The gospel. That Jesus died for your sins. And there's some parallelism there. It says as you receive Christ Jesus, just as you were taught. Do these things.

So it's not to grow in your sanctification, start coming to church every week. Sing spiritual songs. Another Bible study. Get involved in a small group. You can do all those things and not be a Christian.

You can. You're wasting everybody's time. If you want to conform your actions, your behavior, into what it looks like to be a Christian, you can do that with just discipline. It's not hard to do. It might be it's hard to do, but you're wasting your time and your eternity.

So it says just as you were taught and just as you received Christ Jesus, how did we receive Christ Jesus? Do you remember the tiring effort and the work and the discipline that went into receiving Christ?

No. It's a free gift. You can do it in your mind. It's the least amount of effort I think you can require of a human. To trust. To believe. So just as you did that, that's the effort of sanctification, is a trusting.

Trusting in what Jesus has done and what he will do in and through you. And here's where it gets a little bit tricky for us as Christians, maybe as humans. It says abound in thanksgiving. So he gives us something to do.

And throughout Colossians, he's going to continue to say put on meekness and gentleness. Put on. It says abound in thanksgiving. And so perhaps you're sitting there and you're like I want to be a Christian.

I want to look like to be a better Christian. I would be more thankful. So you set up a reminder on your phone two or three times a day. I'm just going to be more thankful. That would make you a better Christian, right?

It wouldn't. That's just conforming to a pattern of behavior. Being more thankful would be helpful to your mentality. I think the world has recognized that. Just being thankful gives you better mental health.

The world can do that. That's not magic. And it's this idea that we see fruits in the Bible, what it looks like to be a good Christian, kind of use that in quotes, and we want to add those to us. And so as an illustration, we have this nice bush beside our driveway, flowers, these nice pink flowers.

I'd like to have more of those bushes. I'd like to have a whole row of them outside my driveway, but I'm not good at that kind of stuff. I don't even know what kind of bush it is. But when we were in Indonesia, it's right on the equator.

It's like living in a greenhouse. Just stuff grows great. So we spent one year in one town, and I watched them take branches of a banana tree and just stick them in the ground. And within that year, those had grown and were producing bananas.

Like it's just really easy to reproduce stuff there. But Michigan, the climate is different. I don't think that would work. I didn't try it, but I didn't try it. I mean, I assumed it wouldn't work. But I saw online, I saw some video where they were like doing all this weird stuff where they're grafting a cactus and putting flowers like different, like roses and maybe not tulips, I don't know, whatever the other kind of flowers were.

So like in their living room, there'd be this cactus with bizarre flowers. Like that's pretty cool. And they would do it with potatoes too. Just put stuff in potatoes. And so I thought, hey, maybe I could do that with these bushes.

And so I, if you guys garden, you're like, you're an idiot. But honestly, I did a little research. That's like five minutes of a Google research. And I thought, look, I took three potatoes. Sounds absurd now.

Three potatoes out of the pantry, drilled holes in each one of them to cut nice full blooming branches off my bush, stuck them in the potatoes, stuck them in the ground. Four weeks later, big bushes, potato bushes.

And you guys probably saw where that was going. The idea, the illustration is we can't just take the fruit of thanksgiving and just patch it onto our dirty potato hearts. We're just gonna get more potatoes.

We gotta be growing in Christ. That's being connected, abiding in Christ, union with Christ, walking in the court of the Spirit. That's the only sanctification that's available. So progressive sanctification is not this idea of I gotta do more.

I need my, John said it last week, spiritual disciplines are useful. Prayer, studying the Word, they're useful. To what end? Are you adding them to your resume? Or are they helping you grow in your understanding what Christ did for you?

So here at Recast, we, well, I guess I'll stop there and mention that I think often most people here were not in the camp that you saw at the end of that chart. I'm probably just a couple tweaks away from being like Christ.

I don't think there was a lot of us here who felt like we had arrived. We were just almost perfect. Most of us weren't there. Maybe there's a handful, and that's a different person. But I'll say it this way.

I think if you're like me, we don't see this progress. And so I think our struggle is we don't recognize what has been happening. If you noticed in the beginning where we started, they said our sins were nailed.

All of our trespasses, it says. All of our trespasses were nailed, past tense. All of our sins had been forgiven. And so it's not that we're alive in Christ now, but that sin, at this point in time, where we're at in our conversion story, we still struggle with this sin nature.

And so you think about, well, whatever it was that happened to you 30 years ago or three years ago or whatever you did continues to be brought up in your mind. You're bringing it up, or maybe an accuser's bringing you up.

Those guys have been put to an open shame. You should be put to an open shame because that has no value. It's been paid for. The legal demands have been met. You are now alive in Christ. But I understand the power of guilt and shame.

And I don't want to diminish that, but you need to recognize who wrote this letter. This guy, his name was Paul, and he was a murderer. Who did he murder? Christians. Why did he murder Christians? Because they were Christians.

Maybe there's a handful of murderers in here, but it just feels like that might be worse than whatever we've done. It's hard to quantify or rank sins. It just seems like it'd be hard in your small group to kind of process the murder, right?

I don't want to diminish whatever sin you have. It's infinitely bad, but it's been paid for. And Paul is there boasting in Christ. Not in himself. He's boasting in Christ. So that's just a model for us to not be discouraged by our repeated failures because they can weigh us down.

We have life in Christ. And so the recast has this way we think Christians should be growing. We call it growing in faith, community, and service. You have to be careful because, again, we're so prone to want to do stuff that we think will conform to an image of what a Christian looks like.