Of all the ways that Paul presents Jesus’ atonement, he devotes most of his attention to Jesus being presented as the Colossians reconciliation. Colossians 1:19-22 states:

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him….

Grudem defines reconciliation as “the removal of enmity and the restoration of fellowship between two parties.”[1] It is through Christ that the relationship that God once had with humanity in the Garden of Eden is restored.

Paul tells the Colossians that they were alienated. MacArthur explains that “Apallotrioo (alienated) means ‘estranged,’ ‘cut off,’ or ‘separated.’ Before their reconciliation, the Colossians were completely estranged from God.”[2] There was no relationship between them and God. As we’ve already seen, this wasn’t an estrangement in which God was simply ignoring them though. Instead, they were cut off from God and under His wrath.

This estrangement went two ways though. Paul continues to write that the Colossians were “hostile in mind” (Col 1:21). Stott says, “True, we were ‘God’s enemies,’ hostile to him in our hearts. But the ‘enmity’ was on both sides. The wall or barrier between God and us was constituted by our rebellion against him and by his wrath upon us on account of our rebellion.”[3] The Colossians’ estrangement from God was their choice as they were hostile towards God and chose to do “evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). God in his righteousness could not be in their presence because of their sin and had to separate himself from them.

Paul shows the Colossians are no longer estranged from God though. The relationship has been restored, and it is Jesus who reconciles them by “making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20).  Jesus “has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death” (Col. 1:21). Reconciliation happens by the blood of Jesus on the cross. Hendriksen explains what this reconciliation means:

Through the blood of the Son of God’s love peace had been made. He, meaning this Son of God’s love, in his body of flesh (that was the sphere of the reconciliation), and through his death (that was the instrument) had brought about a return to the proper relation between the Colossians and their God. A return, not as if there had been a time, many, many years ago, when these Colossians had been Christians, but rather in this sense, that the establishment of peace between the Father-heart of God and the soul of the sinner is for the latter a going back to the state of rectitude in which God originally created man.[4]

Jesus pays the penalty for their sin and cleanses them from it, allowing the Colossians to have the close, intimate relationship that man once had with God.

In this passage, Paul also speaks of Jesus’ reconciliation of all of creation. This isn’t reconciliation in the same sense that is spoken of for the Colossians. Paul isn’t presenting a doctrine of universalism. Instead, Paul is referencing back to the preeminence of Christ in creation that is stated in verse 16 as Paul says, “For by him 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 him and for him.” MacArthur clarifies that “there is a sense in which even fallen angels and unredeemed men will be reconciled to God for judgment – but only in the sense of submitting to Him for final sentencing. Their relationship to Him will change from that of enemies to that of the judged.”[5] Paul is speaking of a reconciliation that brings all things under the rule of Jesus Christ.

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[1] Grudem, Systematic Theology, 1253.

[2] MacArthur Jr., Colossians and Philemon, 60.

[3] Stott, The Cross of Christ, 197-198.

[4] Hendriksen, Phillippians / Colossians / Philemon, 83.

[5] MacArthur Jr., Colossians and Philemon, 59.

In the same way that Paul presents Jesus as their propitiation, he presents to the Colossians that Jesus is their expiation. On the Day of Atonement after the high priest had sacrificed the goat and sprinkled its blood on the mercy seat as Israel’s propitiation, he performed a ceremony with another goat:

And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness (Lev. 16:21-22).

Whereas the first goat paid for the sins of the people, the second goat actually removed those sins from the people. This cleansing from their sin is what we call expiation.

Paul reminds the Colossians that they were “doing evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). The Colossians are reminded of their “old self with its evil practice” (Col 3:9, NASB). They were a people that were marred by their sin, but Paul also reminds them of the expiation of Jesus. Jesus “has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (Col 1:22). Through the cross of Christ, their sins are “set aside” (Col 2:14), and they are presented to God as holy. This is only possible because Jesus acted as their expiation, cleansing them from the filth of their sin.

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, it is clear that he wants them see that Jesus is their propitiation. Wayne Grudem defines propitiation as “a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath to the end and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor.”[1] This is a concept that would have been familiar to Paul’s Jewish readers in Colossae. Every year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would offer a goat as a sacrifice for the sins of the people in order to deter the wrath of God.[2]

Paul clearly shows the Colossians that they were under the wrath of God because of their sin. Paul tells them to “put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Col. 3:5-6). The earthly things that are in them, their sin, will lead to nothing more than the wrath of God. Wright clarifies:

Destruction, indeed, will be the result for those who disregard the warning: because of these, the wrath of God is coming. It is not the case that God happens to dislike this sort of behavior and so has decided as it were arbitrarily, to punish it. On the contrary. ‘The wrath of God’, it hardly needs saying, is not a malicious or capricious anger, but the necessary reaction of true holiness, justice and goodness to wickedness, exploitation and evil of every kind.[3]

Paul wants the Colossians to know that their sin will lead to the wrath of God. On the other hand, Paul doesn’t simply present the wrath of God. He also presents Jesus as their propitiation.

Paul tells them that God the Father is “making peace by the blood of [Jesus’] cross” (Col. 1:20). In the same way that a goat’s blood was offered on the Day of Atonement for the sins of Israel to hold back the wrath of God, it is that Jesus’ blood is offered on the Colossians part to bring peace with God. Unlike the goat’s blood though, Jesus’ sacrifice was done once and for all “by canceling the record of debt…nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). It is through the cross that Jesus becomes a propitiation for the Colossians taking the wrath of God upon himself.

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[1] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1995), 1252.

[2] Lev. 16:8-9, 15

[3] Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 135.

Paul also connects Jesus’ work on the cross as a victory over sin and the rulers of this world. “Christ was victorious over evil powers in his death, resurrection and ascension. In recent years this emphasis has been particularly associated with the Swedish theologian Gustav Aulén, whose own position has become known as Christus Victor, after the book of the same name.”[1]

Paul presents Jesus as the Colossians’ Christus Victor in his letter when he states that “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” (Col. 2:14-15). In one single act on the cross, Jesus took the penalty for the Colossians’ sin and a conquered its power. John Stott makes the connection in these verses for us in his foundational book The Cross of Christ:

Paul here brings together two different aspects of the saving work of Christ’s cross, namely the forgiveness of our sins and the cosmic overthrow of the principalities and powers. He illustrates the freeness and graciousness of God’s forgiveness (charizomai) from the ancient custom of canceling debts. ‘The written code with its regulations, that was against us’ can hardly be a reference to the law itself, since Paul regarded it as ‘holy, righteous and good’ (Rom. 7:12); it must rather refer to the broken law, which on that account was ‘against us and stood opposed to us’ with its judgment.…God frees us from our bankruptcy only by paying our debts on Christ’s cross. More than that He has ‘not only canceled the debt, but also destroyed the document on which it was recorded’.

Paul now moves from the forgiveness of our sins to the conquest of the evil powers…[I]t is surely significant that Paul brackets what Christ did to the ceirographon (canceling and removing it) with what he did to the principalities and powers (disarming and conquering them). The bond he nailed to the cross; the powers he defeated by the cross. It does not seem necessary to insist on the latter being any more literal than the former. The important point is that both happened together.[2]

Paul wanted the Colossians to see that Jesus’ death wasn’t only substitionary death on their behalf to pay their debt, but that his death was also victorious. Through Jesus’ victory on the cross, they now had victory over the power of sin and the rulers and authorities of this world.

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[1] Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Crossway Books, 2007), 139.

[2] Stott, The Cross of Christ, 233-234.

Paul presents Jesus to the Colossians as their penal substitutionary atonement. Being unable to take care of the penalty of their sins, Jesus substituted himself on the cross for them. Paul writes to the Colossians: “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). The Colossians were in debt and deserved the penalty of death and hell.

The New American Standard translation of the Bible says that the certificate of debt was “hostile to us” (Col. 2:14, NASB). “The certificate was hostile to us, that is, it was enough to condemn us to judgment and hell, because ‘cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them’ (Gal. 3:10).”[1] But this debt was set aside when God took out the Colossians’ punishment in Jesus on the cross, thereby making him their penal substitutionary atonement. “As our substitute Christ did for us what we could never do for ourselves: he bore our sin and judgment.”[2]

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[1] MacArthur Jr., Colossians and Philemon, 112.

[2] John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 276.

While Paul clearly articulates the deity of Jesus, he doesn’t shy away from focusing on Jesus’ humanity. In Colossians 2:9, Paul makes the second of his statements about Jesus having all the fullness of deity dwell in Him, but Paul doesn’t end there. Within the same sentence, Paul uses one simple word that could seemingly be completely contradictory or at least paradoxical. Paul states that in Jesus “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” [emphasis added]. Paul is stating that Jesus is fully God while also being fully human.

Paul uses the word “bodily” (soma) in his statement to combat the thought that Jesus was simply a spirit that appeared to be human. This can be seen in Paul’s previous statement in Colossians that this body was a “body of flesh” (Col. 1:22). The Complete Word Study Dictionary explains that “in Col. 1:22 the expression ‘in the body of his flesh [sarx]’ means in his body incarnate, flesh that forms an organized whole. This is the antithesis of he psuche… , the soul … , and to pneuma … , the spirit … ; or where soma, psuche and pneuma make a peripharasis for the whole man.”[1] Jesus was God incarnate.

Paul also emphasized this fact in the references to Jesus’ death. Jesus is “the firstborn from the dead” [emphasis added] (Col. 1:18). Jesus reconciles all things “making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:19). “He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death” (Col. 1:22). We have “been buried with him in baptism” (Col. 2:12). Since God is immortal, these references to Jesus’ death can only be attributed to the fact that Jesus was human.

Now Paul isn’t simply saying in these passages that God simply put on a suit of flesh and walked around on earth for a little over 30 years and then removed it. He is saying that Jesus is 100% human. To every extent that we are human, Jesus is. These can be known from Paul’s statement that the Colossians are “reconciled in [Jesus’] body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (Col. 1:22). The only way that Jesus could have completely reconciled them was if he was completely human. The early church fathers made this clear in their defense against Apollinarianism at the Council of Constantinople.  Fred Sanders explains:

Behind the rejection of Apollinarianism was a vision of salvation represented by the soteriological axiom: ‘What is not assumed is not healed.’ This axiom, articulated by Gregory of Nazianzus (who chaired part of the proceedings), presupposes that the Son of God saved humanity by ‘taking on’ or ‘assuming’ human nature into union with himself. Everything in human nature needs to be saved, so everything must be taken into union with Christ. In this light if Christ had no human soul, the human soul is left unredeemed.[2]

So when Paul says that we are “reconciled in his body of flesh” (Col. 1:22), this is only possible if Jesus is fully human. If any part of Jesus is less than human, then humanity could not be completely reconciled with God.

As you turn the pages of the letter to the Colossians, you can see that Paul wanted the readers to know that Jesus was fully human. This was not in contradiction to Jesus’ deity but in addition to it. In Jesus, “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). Jesus was both fully God and fully man.

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[1] Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Wordstudy Dictionary: New Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1992), 1356.

[2] Scott Horrell et al., Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology (B&H Academic, 2007), 20.

So where does our journey begin?  Jesus.  It all starts with Jesus.  He is the creator of all things.  He is ruler over everything.  He holds everything together by His power.  He came to earth; humbly born of a teenage virgin girl in a dirty barn in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago.  He lived a perfect life by the power of the Holy Spirit.   He was betrayed by one of His closest pupils.  He was beaten to a bloody pulp and died a brutal death on a wooden cross for our sins.

It is in the work of Jesus on the cross that our relationship with God the Father is reconciled. Because of the sin of our father Adam, we were separated from God.  In our sin, we ran as far away from God as possible.  Before Jesus, we were viewed as sick-wicked-evil-despicable-depraved-sinful people.  God the Father was ready to pour His wrath out on us.

But God, in His grace, came after us.  He pulled us out of our sin and placed us in Christ Jesus.  For those whom God has called to Himself we are now viewed “in Christ.”  We are now “holy and blameless and above reproach before him.”[i] God the Father no longer sees us.  Instead he sees his Son Jesus Christ.

This happens in what Martin Luther called the great exchange.  On the cross, Jesus took our sin upon himself, and in exchange he gave us his righteousness.  The Apostle Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”[ii] In Jesus, our sin has been exchanged for His righteousness.

But it’s not just about the removal of our sins; everything we do as Christians is “in Christ.”  We are sanctified in Christ.[iii] We serve in Christ.[iv] We are redeemed in Christ.[v] We are made alive in Christ.[vi] We are no longer condemned in Christ.[vii] We are one body of believers in Christ.[viii] We are a new creation in Christ.[ix] We are reconciled to God in Christ.[x] We have freedom in Christ.[xi] We are spiritually blessed in Christ.[xii] We are created for good works in Christ.[xiii] We are encouraged in Christ.[xiv] We become mature in Christ.[xv] We are strengthened by grace in Christ.[xvi] Even our physical death is in Christ[xvii] (and this is just the short list).

If you have put your faith in Him, you are now in Christ.  We no longer have our old sinful identity.  We have His!  We have received His righteousness as our own.   We now have a loving relationship with God the Father by the blood of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Spend this week focusing on your new identity in Christ Jesus.

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[i] Colossians 1:22

[ii] (ESV)

[iii] 1 Corinthians 1:2

[iv] Romans 16:3, 9

[v] Romans 3:24

[vi] Romans 6:11, 1 Corinthians 15:22

[vii] Romans 8:11

[viii] Romans 12:5

[ix] 2 Corinthians 5:17

[x] 2 Corinthians 5:19

[xi] Galatians 2:4

[xii] Ephesians 1:3

[xiii] Ephesians 2:10

[xiv] Philippians 2:1

[xv] Colossians 1:28

[xvi] 2 Timothy 2:1

[xvii] 1 Corinthians 15:18, 1 Thessalonians 4:16

We ended yesterday with the following definition to answer the questions, “What is a Disciple of Jesus?”

A disciple is someone who is on the path to becoming like Jesus by the grace of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.  As the disciple becomes more like Jesus, they find their identity in Jesus and image Him by worshiping God with all their lives, living in gospel community with other disciples, and going on mission to make more disciples of Jesus.

Let me break down this definition a little bit more.  As the lead singer of Aerosmith, Steven Tyler, sings in his song Amazing, “Life’s a journey, not a destination.”[i] Being a disciple of Jesus has no ultimate connotation that you have arrived in any way.  You see in the Apostle John’s gospel that those who were called disciples were simply on the path to being made into the image of Jesus.  Some only took a few steps, whereas some followed Jesus to their death.  The reality is that being a disciple of Jesus means that you are on the path, following Jesus.

Now like most journeys, there are going to be points of interest along the way (salvation, joining a church, special callings in your life, etc.), but these aren’t the ultimate focus.  The ultimate focus of a disciple is Jesus himself.  A disciple isn’t marked by their experience, knowledge, actions, or expertise.  A disciple is marked by whom they are following.  For a Christian, that is Jesus himself.  Our ultimate goal is to be transformed into the image of Christ.

This isn’t by any merit of our own.  The fact that we are disciples of Jesus is strictly by the grace of God.  It is through the blood of Christ that we are called to be His disciples.  You see this over and over again in the gospels when Jesus called his disciples: they were not called base on merit.  There was simply Jesus’ call into their lives to “follow me.”[ii]

Our growth and progress as we follow Jesus is also nothing for us to boast in either. Sanctification doesn’t happen because of our own will, but by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Apostle Peter encourages some exiles of gospel in 1 Peter 1:1-2 by telling them:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you.[iii]

We are called by the grace of God and sanctified by the Holy Spirit to become more and more like the Son of God…Jesus.  This is what it means to be a disciple.

My definition of a disciple ends with the sentence,  “As the disciple becomes more like Jesus, they find their identity in Jesus and image Him by worshiping God with all their lives, living in gospel community with other disciples, and going on mission to make more disciples of Jesus.” 

As a disciple is being transformed into the image of Christ, there are some clear areas in the life that will be transformed.  Disciples will begin to find their identity in Jesus, worship Jesus with all their life, live in community, and be on mission to make more disciples of Jesus.  That is the out powering from who the disciple is.  These are the actions of a disciple. Over the next few weeks we’ll focus on each one of these more.  Until then, I pray that you grow in your walk with Jesus.

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[i] Aerosmith, Amazing (Geffen, 2001).

[ii] Matthew 4:19, Matthew 8:22, Mark 1:17, Mark 2:14, Luke 1:3, Luke 5:27, John 1:43

[iii] (ESV)