We are victors through Him

Colossians 1:21-22

“And you were once alienated and hostile in mind because of your evil actions. But now He has reconciled you by His physical body through His death, to present you holy, faultless and blameless before him.”

                As Christians our salvation depends on the fact that Jesus was in fact 100% man and 100% God at the same time and that he died a physical death for our sins and that he rose again on the third day. Without these truths we are still dead in our sins and we are to be pitted more than anyone else on the face of the earth to reference what Paul said. Recently I have been reading Breaking the Islam Code by J.D. Greear. He is a pastor of a church in Raleigh and lived in Southeast Asia for a while with a Muslim family and came to know the belief system and culture very well while he was there. In the book he is trying to get us, as Christians, to see the way that Muslims look at the Gospel and what their need really is and what they get hung up on in our gospel presentations. One thing that he said that really stood out to me was the fact that Muslims hold a very high view of God and they cannot believe that God would lower himself to actually be killed in the form of Jesus. They instead see God as being in control of everything, the one who is able to tell you whether or not you will go to heaven or hell when you die, but never one who will be the victim.

                His response in trying to get people to present the gospel to Muslims in a way in which they would understand it better was advocating that we talk about the fact that in the resurrection that Christ was in fact not the victim, but instead was the victor who conquered death, hell, and the grave. As I thought about this I began to think about how many times in our churches we have talked about the fact that God died for our sins, and how we are able to be forgiven of our sins if we place our faith in that work of Christ, but we just kind of tack the resurrection on the end as kind of a bonus. Don’t get me wrong, the cross is an extremely important part of the gospel, but I believe we, (myself included) could do a better job of talking about how even in that act and the resurrection that God was still in control and the victor. As one early church father (Irenaeus) put it when talking about the reason for Christ coming from heaven he said “That He might destroy sin, overcome death, and give life to man.” Did you see how he all of the language that he used there was language of a victor?

                In the section of scripture above from Colossians 1 we see that we are connected through Christ sacrifice for us and the victory that he won. Colossians doesn’t present Christ as someone who was killed and that was the end of it. No, Christ died so that we can be “present[ed] holy, faultless and blameless before Him.” The whole work that Christ did for us by coming to earth and dying for ours sins, and raising again was for us. To free us. To win the victory in the battle that we lose everyday on our own. We all fall victim to sin and the bondage that it can put on our lives, but through the work of Christ we can be set free from bondage to that sin in the fact that God has already lived a perfect life, and when we accept him and the victory that he won then we become one with Him. As it says in the beginning of those verses, “you were once alienated and hostile in mind because of your evil actions”. That is us, we were far away from God and we know it. We all know that we sin every day and we know that we need something or someone to come and pull us out of this dark pit of sin and slavery that we live in. Well the God news is that Jesus is that someone who came and defeated all of that for you. He literally overcame the world, death, and sin for you, and when you place your faith in Christ you are “reconciled” to him. That means that the big gap that was between you and God because of your sin has been filled by Jesus himself and what he has done for you, not anything you have done!

What a wonderful truth that we can take hold of and just soak in day in and day out. We have a God that loves us so much that he came to us when we were least desirable and conquered what we never could so that we could be brought back in to right relationship with God. With that kind of love poured over us on a daily basis we should want to lavish God with all that we can for him, and we should want to tell other people of the love that God has for them too if they just place their faith in him. So take hold of the truth that you are a victor with Christ.