A Public Disgrace

You may or may not have experienced (or at least witnessed) this in your life:

The scene is a public forum, whether one in which people are physically present or an online forum or a written publication.  Some person makes a series of accusations against another, or against a group of people.  In response to this, another or a group of others responds by revealing the accusations as false and the accuser(s) as the villains which in their heart-of-hearts they are.  OR, the accusations are dealt with.  And then, peace and prosperity - - -LIFE - - - are restored.

When you see or experience this type of thing today, it is a microcosm of what went on eons ago in Heaven, when we see Satan in the throne room of God the Father, accusing Job (Job 1:6-12), a man "upright in all his ways".  Satan has no new methods; he simply recycles his old ones.  Satan has always been the accuser of mankind and particularly of the "upright in heart".  It is his way of crowing about the fact that mankind "fell" in the Garden of Eden (as if he caused that to happen and is proud of his accomplishment).  He is not called the Accuser and the Destroyer, without reason.

Job is a "type" of the Christian, the true born-again Believer in Jesus Christ.

Today's text is Colossians 2:9-15.  Paul is describing Jesus Christ and emphasizing to believers in Jesus Christ how He not only triumphed over Satan for ever, but how he publicly disgraced him and his legions of demons.  Take a look.

9For in him all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form, 10and you have been filled in him, who is the head over every ruler and authority. 11In him you also were circumcised – not, however, with a circumcision performed by human hands, but by the removal of the fleshly body, that is, through the circumcision done by Christ. 12Having been buried with him in baptism, you also have been raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. 13And even though you were dead in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he nevertheless made you alive with him, having forgiven all your transgressions. 14He has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. 15Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Paul begins by affirming the different-ness of Jesus Christ (vs. 9-10).  Although Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of God, he is not merely one of the "sons of God" mentioned in Job 1.  He is THE Son of God, "the only begotten" Son of the Father (John 3:16).  In Him ALL the fullness of the Godhead dwells in human form.
In this capacity, He is the Head over all spiritual entities including, and especially Satan.  Jesus affirms this in Matthew 28:18, where He declares that ALL authority is given to Him.

Now, jump to verses 19-20 of Colossians 2.  Satan had brought against all humankind a "certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us", a debt we as sin-enslaved humans could not pay.
Mankind was not falsely accused by Satan.  We were guilty!

It has been said (anonymously): "He came to pay a debt He did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay."  Through His substitutionary work of death, burial and resurrection, our debt is now marked "Paid in Full"!  And, in so doing, he "disarmed" all the spiritual forces arrayed against God the Father and against us.  Not only did he yank their weapons away from them, as far as we, His children, are concerned (they no longer have power over us).  He made of our spiritual enemies a public disgrace!

Do you know what I love most about this passage?  The finality of it, the indisputable, irrefutable certainty that Jesus Christ has triumphed and that our salvation as Believers in Jesus Christ as Savior is secure!
1.  Our spirits have been permanently marked "circumcised". (The thought of trying to reattach a circumcised foreskin is totally abhorrent.  It might could be accomplished, but the result would be Frankensteinian....)
2.  Our sins have been buried, drowned, to use the water metaphor that exists in the baptismal rite.
ALL of our transgressions are forgiven.  ALL.
3.  We are ALREADY raised with Christ. Remember, there is no time with God.  He sees it all, past, present, future - - - accomplished.

What a cause for celebration!  No matter your spiritual battle today, Believer, you know for whom you fight. You know that He is the Victor.  You know that your enemy is already defeated (and he knows it as well).  "What's done is DONE!"  Hallelujah to the Name Above Every Name!

Oh Thou, to whose all-searching sight...
Oh Thou in whom my soul takes delight...
Thank you for the finality of my rescue, the totality of my redemption, the certainty of my cancelled debt.  The Accuser (that old serpent!) is defeated forever.  Jesus has overcome!  In His name I pray, amen.

He did it. He does it.

Have you ever wanted to be another ethnicity or nationality or even religion?  When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a nun when I grew up.  My mother told me that that would be a stretch since I was being raised in a Baptist family ... But, I was enraptured by that t.v. show, "The Flying Nun", which starred Sally Fields, whose considerable talents were severely underutilized in that series.  I just thought nuns were cool.  As I got older I realized that the nunnery, indeed, did not align with my faith beliefs and so abandoned that "calling".

As a young Baptist chickie, though, I also wished that I could have some Jewish blood flowing through my veins.  Understand that my immediate family is as "garden-variety" as you can get.  (One of these days I want to jump into the ancestry study thing; but, that is probably for my next decade of life, God willing.)

In Galatians 3 Paul talks to the Galatians about the spiritual parentage of  a Christian.  Who can become a child of God, through Jesus Christ?  Lineage was a big thing to Jews of that day.  It's easy to understand why.  For hundreds of years God had drilled into their culture the importance of keeping bloodlines pure.  By this time, a whole lot of "pollution" had occurred.  For example, the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom were characterized as "lost" because they had so intermarried with gentiles.  Now, here the Christian church fathers were proclaiming that this sect of Judaism, this Christianity, was not only for the Jews, but for all people.  Most of the Jews of that day weren't buying it, even some Jewish believers!

Well, they accepted it to a point.  They realized that they could not change the gentile converts' lineage.  But...they could do the next best thing!  They could force them to look and act like Jews by requiring their men to be circumcised and demanding that they keep the dictates of the Law.  I don't know that the gentile believers wanted to be "Jewish"; they were told by the false teachers they had to be... These well-meaning(?) Judaizers sold the Galatians a "bill of goods".  They were obviously quite successful at it, because Paul had to oppose the destructive trend very strongly in this letter.

Paul's point was that all believers in Jesus Christ are already "children of Abraham" (in effect "Jewish").  No amount of circumcision or law-keeping was going to make the Galatians "more Jewish" or "more Christian".  Christ Jesus had done all that needed to be done.  He finished it on the cross.  He did it.

7-8 Is it not obvious to you that persons who put their trust in Christ (not persons who put their trust in the law!) are like Abraham: children of faith? It was all laid out beforehand in Scripture that God would set things right with non-Jews by faith. Scripture anticipated this in the promise to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed in you.”

9-10 So those now who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham, who lived by faith—this is no new doctrine! And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: “Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law.”

11-12 The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: “The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that’s the real life.” Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping, a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping] continues to live by them.”

Galatians 3:7-12 (The Message)

In one of the Star Wars movies it was observed, "The Force is strong with that one."  Well, I'll tell you that one of the strongest forces in me is that I'm prone to keep the focus on MY ability to live for God. This is sin...sin that achieves the exact opposite of what my spirit desires.  We have got to realize that spiritual victory comes from embracing what God wants to do in and through us!  The shift in emphasis is world-changing!  It is not about I.  It is about He. (Mother will be proud; that's correct grammatical usage.)  He has already made those who have accepted Jesus Christ by faith to be His spiritual offspring: "children of Abraham".  When that instantaneous transaction and transformation occur, it is only the beginning of the life of faith, the walk of faith, the resplendent walk.

Get this:  the resplendent walk is not resplendent because you or I are resplendent.  The life of faith is resplendent because HE is resplendent, and that resplendence shines through us, (often in spite of us!) Growing in faith means growing in yieldedness to Him, in relationship with Him, nothing more.  As we surrender to Him, He produces the fruit of His righteousness (not ours) IN us.  He does it.

Father, I know that I am yours and that that eternal fact is not of my own doing.  You did it.  I still don't think that I fully understand either the miracle of my justification any more than I understand the process of sanctification.  Oh, I understand it academically.  It's the "letting you do your sanctifying work in me" part that I fail to comprehend in actual practice.  I pray for greater faith, deeper relationship so that You can do what You want to do, in me.  In Jesus' name, amen.