Christ Preeminent (Part Four): Rescued and Redeemed

Transcript

JRNT 26
July 23, 2023
Preeminent Christ (Part Four): Rescued and Redeemed
Colossians 1:13-14
Jesse Randolph

Well, there are some exceptions to this rule, but I am generally not a big fan of using too many personal stories in my preaching. I've just seen it overused and I've seen it abused in too many circumstances. I hold the conviction that who you came to hear from this morning is God through His Word, not a few funny stories from a man wearing a suit. But as I just noted there are some exceptions to the rule. There are times when something happens in a preacher's own life or his own week that ties so neatly to the text, he'll be preaching that Sunday, that it would almost be a case of homiletical malpractice if he were not to share it and that's where we are this morning. I have a story to tell you and I'm going to tell it because of how neatly I believe it ties to the text that we will be in here today.

So, here's the story. My two older kids, Emerson and Amelia, are here from out of town this week, they are here from California. Emerson is my first-born son, he's the guy with the real poufy hair in the front row and sitting next to him is my favorite daughter, our only daughter, Amelia. Emerson and Amelia have this one-week dead period from all the sports and activities they are engaged in back in California, and that's allowed them to get out here this week to spend some time with the entire family here in Nebraska. They flew in this past Wednesday night and of course we rolled out the red carpet for them as they arrived. We took them to Lincoln's finest dining establishment, Culver's, (it's a well-trained church, I love it). I then spent most of Thursday sermon-prepping, we had a family meal together on Thursday night, and then Thursday night around 9 p.m. everything came crashing down, at least for me, as I was hit with the most violent combination of shakes and shivers and chills and other flu-like symptoms that I think I've ever experienced. I was convulsing, my teeth were chattering immediately, my color left me. I was just immediately really, really sick. Then my sickness carried over into Friday and it carried over into yesterday, Saturday, and all the while my wife, Jenna, was picking up the slack—taking all the kids on outings, getting the kids where they needed to go, feeding them, eating meals with them—while I was just the guy in bed, lying there with no energy, battery totally depleted, all trading between sleeping and shivering and honestly, sulking about all that I was missing out on. That's really the heart of the matter. As I lay under those covers listening to the voices of my family kind of murmuring out there in the living area, knowing I was unable to join them, I had these feelings of frustration and these real feelings of anger. I was talking to myself, muttering under my breath in that frenzied, scatterbrained sense that you have whenever you are feverish. I was mumbling to myself. These kids are only here for a week, we only have them here for a week, we only have x-number of days together, and now I'm getting sick? Though I never brought the name of God into any of my complaints, at least directly, the subtle, insinuating accusation that was underlying each of my gripes and my complaints there in my period of mourning on 74th Street was, Really, God? Then sometime yesterday mid-morning as whatever this bug is was sort of working its way out of my system, it struck me. I've been tasked with preaching a text this weekend which completely eliminates as options for me any sulking or brooding or feeling sorry for myself that I had been engaged in, in my bed there.

So that's my story, and that's going to bring us to the text of Scripture that we'll be in this morning. Turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles to Colossians 1. We're going to pick it up with the very last word of Colossians 1:11, this is where we left off last week, and into verses 12-14. We are as followers of Christ to be, picking it up in verse 11, “joyously giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light, for He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” So as I lay there in bed these past few days, feeling very uncomfortable, feeling very sorry for myself, these words that I will now be preaching to you were vying for my attention. That I, like any Christian, have been qualified by God to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. That I, like any Christian, have been rescued by God from the domain of darkness, as it says in verse 13. That I, like any Christian, have been transferred to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom I have redemption and forgiveness of my sins. Those are some perspective-shifting truths, are they not? Not only for me, but for you and for any follower of Jesus Christ who is plodding along on this admittedly bumpy road to glory, as we recall and as we rejoice in the fact that we have been qualified, that we have been rescued and that we have been transferred. Those three verbs—qualified, rescued and transferred—are going to form the three points for this morning's sermon.

Point #1 is this, God Has Qualified Us. That's our first point his morning, God Has Qualified Us. Now by way of background and review last week as we jumped back into our Sunday morning study of Colossians, we were in Colossians 1:9-12 you recall, and that section, you may remember, was this prayer that Paul was praying for the Colossian church. It was a prayer whose central focus was instructing and urging these early Colossian believers to be walking worthy of the Lord and there we saw from Paul's model prayer for the Colossian believers that we are to be, as Christians, walking worthy in reliance upon prayer, walking worthy in seeking the Lord's will, walking worthy in pleasing the Lord, walking worthy in bearing good fruit, walking worthy in increasing in the knowledge of God, walking worthy in relying upon the strength of the Lord, walking worthy in demonstrating steadfastness and patience, and then last, eighth, was walking worthy in joyously giving thanks. Those were the subjects of Paul's prayer there for the Colossians. Not only were those the subjects of his prayer, though, those are the marks of any Christian who seeks to faithfully live for, serve and honor Christ, as we seek to walk worthy.

Now, as tends to be the case whenever you preach an 8-point sermon, as I tried to do last week, when you get to point #8 you become more mindful of how much time has gone by, you become more mindful of how much time is remaining on the clock, you become more mindful of the children's workers who are looking at their watches and are going to give me a look when they leave this morning. That final point, the eighth point, gets short shrift and less than the full treatment it deserves. So, I fear that might have happened last week as I worked through and developed each of the first seven points and left myself only a very short time to get to the eighth point, which is that we are to walk worthy by joyously giving thanks. What we're going to do this morning as we round off that final point from last Sunday, point 8, is see that it actually perfectly lays the groundwork for the thoughts that Paul is going to develop in verses 13-14.

Let's go back to verse 12, and really back to the end of verse 11 where it says, and we've already read this, that we as Christians are to be “joyously giving thanks to the Father.” Now those words don't stand in isolation, do they. No, they don't. That is not some form of neutered command that is devoid of any context or background. Rather, Paul tells the Colossians, and by extension us, that we are to be joyously giving thanks, and that is because the Father has qualified us, God has qualified us. He hasn't just qualified us for anything. No, He has qualified us for what? It says, “to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” Though we weren't deserving, though we weren't worthy, though we weren't good, though we weren't in our own right qualified, God made us qualified, God made us fit, God made us, as some of the older translations put it, meet, and why? Why did He make us fit? Why did He qualify us? So that, verse 12, we could be “qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”

Now in our day and in our context that word inheritance refers to something someone promises someone else when they die, whether that be cash or land or jewelry or any other items of value. The person who is given the inheritance, they are known as the beneficiary. Though they may have some legal right or claim to that inheritance right away, that is before the person who gave them the inheritance dies, they are not going to come into full possession of that inheritance until something in the future happens, namely the death of the benefactor. Well, as Paul wrote the Colossians here, he was pointing out the fact here in verse 12 that we, too, as Christians have an inheritance. But what we have is an altogether different type of inheritance. Ours is a heavenly inheritance, an eternal inheritance, a divine inheritance, that is one that has been bestowed upon us directly by God the Father. Our inheritance isn't and can't be measured on scales, it can't be weighted based on the number of zeros that you attach to the end of it. No, our inheritance, because of its source being God the Father, is of inestimable value in worth. But how? And why? And what? What did we do to receive this inheritance, an inheritance of such unsurpassing value and worth? Well, we did nothing. We did nothing at all. Rather, in our old life as sons of Adam, as unbelievers, before we came to Christ, we weren't fit or qualified to share in any inheritance from God. No matter how cleaned up or polished or spit-shined we were on the outside, we were still on the inside whitewashed tombs. No matter how sparkling and put together we were on the outside, we were on the inside still lifeless and dead spiritual corpses. We were dead men walking, doing the devil's bidding. The only inheritance that we were qualified for in our own right, because Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death,” was an eternity spent in hell, an eternity facing eternal conscious torment from the thrice-holy God we had sinned against. “But God,” Ephesians 2:4, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” Not because of us, but in spite of us, God worked in our hearts. Because of the richness of His mercy and because of His great love, He saw fit to save our souls and rescue us from the flames of hell. But not only that, He saw fit, as the text here says today, “to qualify us.” For what? “To share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” He not only refrained from dropping His divine gavel of justice on our heads, He brought us into His family. He gave us a seat at His table. But how? On what basis? Well, our natural fleshly instinct is to think it must have had something to do with us, God must have looked down the corridors of time and seen that we would eventually choose Him. He must have looked ahead and seen how useful we would one day be to be His ambassadors in this fallen world. But that's not at all what the Bible teaches. The Bible says nothing about us who are qualified as choosing God. No one actually chooses God, He chose us. Nor is a person qualified by their good deeds or their church attendance or their memorization of Bible verses or their being the best-behaved sibling in the family or being the most giving and charitable member of their community. No, a person is qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints in light by Whom? God the Father. By what? The blood of Jesus Christ which was shed according to God the Father's perfect plans and will. As one commentator put it, our title to glory is found in His blood.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ here this morning, meaning if you have placed your faith in His death, burial and resurrection, you already hold that title deed to glory in your hand. See, undergirding this whole idea of having been qualified is the Christian doctrine of justification which says that it is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone that a person is once and forever given a right standing before God. Such a person has glory to look forward to in the future and such a person definitely is being sanctified in this life, but it is all rooted in the fact that God first declared them justified. Romans 5:1, “Therefore having been justified by faith,” having been justified by faith, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is done. It is finished. It has already taken place. There is nothing to add. There is nothing to do. There is no sacrament to partake in. There is no aisle to walk. There is no prayer to pray. It's done, if you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Bringing it back to Colossians, our text goes on to say that ours is not only an inheritance, but also an inheritance that we possess along with all the saints, it says. The holy ones, that's the meaning there, those who have been saved, those who have been set apart. That's a reference to all followers of Christ of all generations who are described here as being “in light.” So along with all the saints who have gone before us and all those who will come after us, we have the privilege of being in communion with and having the ability to worship the God who is known as the God of light. I John 1:5 says, “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.” We have been saved by the blood of the Son of God who is the Light of the world, we see that in John 8:12. We have been “called out of darkness into His marvelous light,” says I Peter 2:9. In the future we're going to spend our eternity in a place that will be full of light, Revelation 22:5 says, “And there will no longer be any night.” This is in the eternal state, “they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun because the Lord God will illumine them. And they will reign forever and ever.” All of this, the concept of the light, being in the light, reaping the blessings of being children of light is in contrast to those who are in the domain of darkness, which we're going to see in verse 13.

Knowing this, that God has qualified us to share in this type of eternal inheritance with the saints in light, what that ought to do is provoke in us what we see described at the end of verse 11 and into verse 12, “joyously giving thanks,” as we consider the glorious inheritance that awaits us for which as an act of divine grace we have been qualified, or made fit, made meet. This ought to spur in us, fuel in us a spirit of genuine gratitude and regular thanksgiving, indeed joyous thanksgiving, not only in thought and word but in deed and in behavior. You see, complaining about the weather, whether it be the triple digit heat we're going to have in a couple of days or the subzero temperatures that we're going to have in a few months, makes zero sense when measured in comparison to what we will one day come into possession of—our eternal inheritance—and what we already possess today. Complaining about the busyness of whatever season of life we find ourselves in makes zero sense when we think of the eternal inheritance that awaits us and what we already possess today. Or for me, these last few days grumbling about lying on my sickbed makes zero sense in comparison to the eternal inheritance that awaits and what I already possess today. See, the Christian life should not be one of glum sulking or grim endurance. Not at all. It should be one, it ought to be one, it must be one of joyful thanksgiving. I Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances.” Philippians 4:6, “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice.” I Thessalonians 5:16, “Rejoice always.” We're to be joyful in our thanksgiving, not only when the good times are rolling, not only when we feel at our best, not only when we feel like it, but even when, and I'll say it this way because the Scripture absolutely supports this, especially in seasons of hardship and suffering. Consider just a few passages of Scripture here which support this idea of being joyful in our thanksgiving in seasons of distress and worry and anxiety and all of it. II Corinthians 7:4, Paul says, “I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction.” I Thessalonians 1:6 says, “You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the Word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit.” James 1:2, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials.” Or I Peter 4:12-13 says, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you, but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exaltation.” Or finally consider the example of Jesus Himself who in Hebrews 12:2 is described as “For the joy set before Him, enduring the cross.”

See, joyful thanksgiving ought to be the habitual practice in the life of the believer, not because we prefer trials, not because we enjoy grief or worry or stress, not because we enjoy not feeling well. No. But because of what God has already done for us and provided for us in saving us. He has given us a right standing before Him because of Christ. He has justified us, He has redeemed us, He has saved us, He has “qualified us,” verse 12, “to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” That inheritance, by the way, I Peter 1:4 says, “is imperishable and unfading and undefiled and is reserved in heaven for us.” He has given us the right to be called children of God and heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, as we see in Romans 8:16-17. He has promised that He is preparing a place for us in John 14:2. Remembering all of this—our position, our standing, our citizenship, our inheritance, our future home—our charge is straightforward, and it is simple, even if it's not always practically easy to live out. We are to be joyously giving thanks.

With that we move into our next verse, verse 13, and we're given a contrast here. Look what it says in verse 13, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness.” That brings us to our second point this morning, God Has Rescued Us. God Has Qualified Us and God Has Rescued Us. He has “rescued us from the domain of darkness,” it says. Now that word rescued can also be translated delivered, liberated, emancipated. The word really speaks of the miserable state out of which not only the Colossian Christians, but all Christians of all generations have been rescued. Note first that it was God Himself who rescued us, “He rescued us.” That makes it abundantly clear that we didn't claw our way out of our predicament, we didn't take a step toward God first, we didn't meet Him in the middle, we didn't meet Him halfway. It wasn't half God and half us. No, we were completely and totally dead spiritually. It's Ephesians 2:1-2, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” When we came into this world and breathed God's air for the very first time and the doctor did the whole slap on the backside (I'm not sure if they still do that), we were already dead-on arrival. We were, as Ephesians 2:3 puts it, “by nature children of wrath.” As the weeks and the years and the months rolled on, as we moved from laying there to crawling to walking, from cooing to crying to demanding, we racked up more and more sin against God. His wrath toward us in our sinful condition was stored up, and we couldn't dig ourselves out of the hole that we had gotten ourselves into. We had no chance, we had no help, we needed to be rescued. But it wasn't going to be six ways or seven secrets or twelve steps that were going to get us out of the hole that we dug ourselves into. No, who we needed help from was God Himself, the very God whom we had sinned against, the very God whose wrath and judgment we faced. We needed divine deliverance. For all of us who have trusted in Jesus Christ, divine deliverance is what we have received when He rescued us from the domain of darkness.

Now let's camp out on those words, “the domain of darkness.” just for a bit because to appreciate the glorious brightness of the future eternal inheritance that awaits us, we need to have a firm grasp on how deep and awful the pit of sin that we once wallowed in was. See, in our former unregenerate state we lived in and functioned in what Paul here calls the domain of darkness. We may have enjoyed abundant possessions, we may have been afforded all sorts of amazing experiences, we may have had it all from the world's perspective, but the reality is we were in a state of spiritual gloom. We were under the power of Satan. We were habitually engaged in various deeds of darkness. In fact, flip over with me to Colossians 3 and we're going to see what some of those deeds of darkness were. Look at Colossians 3:5, he says, “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry.” Those are some of the deeds of darkness that we were engaged in. We were sons of disobedience as Colossians 3:6 says. We were children of the devil as I John 3:10 says. We were in the dark spiritually, we were under the powers of darkness. Darkness is what we knew. We were worldly creatures who were wallowing in filth. That was our ethic, that was our standard, that was our rule. We were not only not in the light, but we were also opposed to the light. We were not only in the condition of being without God, but we were also against God. Sin held sway over us, it had authority over us, we were slaves to our sin, we were on the road to hell, the road to eternal destruction, to eternal separation from God. We were walking, to borrow loosely from Psalm 23 here, in the shadow of death. Because of how depraved we were, we loved it. John 3:19, “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.” But then when He saved us, when He justified us, God rescued us. He rescued us, verse 13, from this domain of darkness, meaning for we who have trusted in Christ we are no longer under the jurisdiction of darkness. Darkness no longer has sway or authority over us. Darkness' license has been revoked from our lives. Death no longer has its sting and darkness no longer has its sway. We are now not only saints in light, but we are children of light and now we live and walk with the Spirit's help accordingly. Consider just these verses, in fact you can flip over with me to Ephesians 5, which gives us more color and detail about what it means to walk as a child of light. Look at Ephesians 5:7, it says, “Therefore do not be partakers with them,” referring to the sons of disobedience in the previous verse, “for you were formerly darkness but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness but instead even expose them, for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.” Or go back to Romans 13, a few pages to the left, Romans 13. Another example of what it means to walk as children of light. Pick it up in Romans 13:12, it says, “The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore, let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.”

So, back to Colossians 1, by rescuing us, God has rescued us from the desperate and dark clutches of Satan. He has rescued us from the realm of moral darkness. But He has nevertheless left us in the world, a world that is marked by its darkness. He has left us, II Corinthians 4:6, to “give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” He has left us, I Peter 2:9, “in this dark world to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Well, we can only do that and be those faithful light bearers to shine the light of the Gospel for others to see if we ourselves aren't blurring the lines between light and darkness in our own lives. We can only do this and serve as these faithful ambassadors, these faithful light bearers if we are committed as believers to continually turn away from darkness and to continually walk as children of light. We can only do this if we remember, as Ephesians 6:11 says, that we are called to “put on the full armor of God so that we will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” We can only do this if we refuse to be half-Christians with one foot in the faith and one foot in the world.

J. C. Ryle wrote of this phenomenon, that of the halfway Christian, what he called the almost Christian back in the late 1800s. He put it this way.

There are many whom I must call “almost Christians,” for I know no other expression in the Bible, which so exactly describes their state. They have many things about them which are right, good and praiseworthy in the sight of God.
They are regular and moral in their lives. They are free from glaring outward sins. They keep up many decent and proper habits. They appear to love the
preaching of the Gospel. They are not offended at the truth as it is in Jesus, however plainly it may be spoken. They have no objection to religious company, religious books, and religious talk. They agree to all you say when you speak to them about their souls. And all this is well. But still there is no movement in the hearts of these people that even a microscope can detect. They are like those who
stand still. Weeks after weeks, years after years roll over their heads, and they are just where they were. They sit under our pulpits. They approve of our sermons. And yet, like Pharaoh’s lean cows, they are nothing the better, apparently, for all they receive. There is always the same regularity about them, the same constant attendance on means of grace, the same wishing and hoping, the same way of talking about religion, but there is nothing more. There is no going forward in their Christianity. There is no life, and heart, and reality in it. Their souls seem to be at a deadlock. And all this is sadly wrong.

I wonder if we have some almost Christians, some halfway Christians in the auditorium here this morning. You act as though you are in the light, you speak as though you are in the light, you show up for church each Sunday as though you are in the light. You play the part, you play it well, so much so that anybody who spends time around you just assume that you are in the light. But when you get really honest, when you evaluate your track record of what your life has looked like since you made that profession of faith at whatever age you made that profession, what you see in the rearview is an unmistakable wake of darkness, evil deeds, wicked thoughts, sinful pursuits, ungodly desires, ungodly motives. If that describes you this morning, what you are hopefully coming face to face with here today is that at best you are an almost Christian. But almost Christians aren't Christians at all. That was J. C. Ryle's point there, you are either in the light or you are in the darkness. You are either a child of God or you are a child of the devil. Make sure before you leave here this morning you know whose father is yours. Make sure you know before you leave here today that though a sinner is saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, one of the clearest evidences that the salvation a person professes is real is that their lives are not marked by darkness, they are marked by light. They are able to see the sin which remains, and they hate it, they want nothing more to do with it, they want to root it out. They are able with the Spirit's help to identify that sin that still clings and to mortify the desires of the flesh. They are able to say no to the things which would not honor God their Father. They are able to turn away from the things which would bring shame to the name of Jesus Christ the Savior. They are able to reject things which would outrage the Spirit who lives within them.

Are you still gripped by the dark powers and the forces of this world? Do you still find yourself enjoying the darkness and reveling in the darkness though you call yourself a child of light? Are you an almost Christian? Are you a halfway Christian? I can assure you that it's only the all-in Christian, not the halfway Christian, that is going to enjoy the glories of heaven.

We have seen that God Has Qualified Us, point one; we've seen that God Has Rescued Us; now point three, we're going to see that God Has Transferred Us. That's our third point for this morning. Not only has God rescued us from the domain of darkness, in addition here in verse 13, second half of it, He has transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Now that word transferred is a term that was used in days that the Bible was being breathed out by Spirit-moved men to refer to a geographic transfer of a people group from one land to another, like when the Israelites were taken captive by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, the people were transferred, they were reestablished in that new land. Well, for us as Christians, we have not been transferred in this sense, from one piece of land to another, we have experienced a far more profound transfer than that. We have been transferred from darkness to light, from the dominion and the domain and the realm of Satan to what it says here in verse 13, “to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”

Now that language, the kingdom of His beloved Son, that steers us into some deep theological waters because we have a whole bunch of Christians these days and theological camps out there today who believe and would say that we are living in the kingdom right now. Kingdom Now theology is very clearly on the rise in our day, it's on the upswing, it's what is popular out there, which is why you'll hear Christian voices in churches, at coffee shops, in musical lyrics talking about building the kingdom or advancing the kingdom or living today as kingdom citizens. Well, whatever theological tribe they come from, you can see how someone who is quite loose with their use of kingdom language would come to a passage here like Colossians 1:13 and say, Aha, see? We are living in the kingdom today. It's right there. It says God has transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Well, hang on a second. Not so fast. There are several reasons why what Paul says here, when he says that God has transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, does not necessitate the conclusion that we are living in the kingdom today or that we are advancing the kingdom through the church or that we are building the kingdom through our families. Instead, this text very much allows for what we would hold to in our church which is that the kingdom which will be physical and material and here on earth, which will be fixed in duration of 1000 years, which will be ushered in by a certain specific event, the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, is yet future.

Though it will one day come, the kingdom hasn't come. It's a future kingdom. This passage, Colossians 1:13, in no way undermines that conclusion. Here's why, I'm going to give you four reasons. First, we need to go back to what we've already seen in Colossians 1:12, it gives us context here where we've seen that as believers, we've been given an inheritance. God has “qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light,” it says. What is an inheritance but something you can look forward to but that you do not possess in its fullness today. Right? The beneficiary of a $1 million earthly inheritance does not have $1 million in their bank account today. That doesn't make them any less a beneficiary, but they can't yet call themselves or act as though they are millionaires. No, an inheritance of any kind, though it has present day realities attached to it such as being able to call yourself a beneficiary and being able to say you have this inheritance to look forward to, it is necessarily future oriented. So it is with the coming kingdom of Christ which He will usher in at His Second Coming. We live today looking forward to His coming kingdom, but His kingdom hasn't come. Contextually verse 12 in its reference here to our inheritance necessarily informs what Paul says in verse 13 about being transferred to the kingdom of His beloved Son.

Second, we have to appreciate, again in context here, the contrast that Paul is drawing. He is intentionally using contrasting language. The kingdom of His beloved Son right here in verse 13 is contrasted against what? What we see earlier in verse 13, the domain of darkness. See, in our old life before God qualified us, before He rescued us, before He transferred us, we were subjects in this domain of darkness, you could even say in this kingdom of darkness whose ruler, of course, was Satan. But now having been rescued, having been qualified, having been transferred, we have a new ruler, a new master, a new King whose kingdom is yet future but whose transformative power in transferring us from one domain to another is obvious.

Third, that word transferred, the verb transferred there in the Greek, it's in the aorist tense. An aorist verb is always referring to a one-time occurrence of a particular event or occasion. That's in contrast to a present tense which talks about something that is continued or repeated. Now in most cases an aorist verb will look backwards and refer to singular past tense events, but there are cases in which the aorist is futuristic in its aspect, meaning an aorist verb such as this one when it speaks of being transferred can be used in a futuristic sense to emphasize the certainty of that future event as though it has already happened. That interpretation would actually make a great deal of sense here, considering again what we just saw back in verse 12 about this inheritance. Paul has this idea of inheritance on his mind as he speaks of this coming kingdom. Again, an inheritance speaks to a settled and certain future event which a person lives in light of today. So it is with the kingdom. The kingdom of Christ is a future kingdom and Paul's words here, as he notes that God has transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, that is future oriented.

Fourth and last, a futuristic view of the kingdom is supported by this language here when we consider how comparable other language is used elsewhere. There is comparable use of similar language in other passages. Think about what Paul says in Romans 8:30, where he says, “Those whom He justified He also glorified.” Are we justified today? We sure are if we have trusted in Jesus Christ. Are we glorified today? No, we aren't, but it is a settled fact that we will one day be glorified so Paul uses a verb form there in Romans 8:30 to describe something that hasn't yet happened as already happening because it is so sure to happen. Or think about Philippians 3:20, it says, “For our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Are we in heaven yet? I hope not. No, we're not. Are we confident that we are going to be in heaven one day? Yes, we are if we have believed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, Paul could rightly say in Philippians 3:20 that our citizenship, as in our future citizenship, is in heaven, just as he could use the word glorified in Romans 8:30 though we haven't yet come into our glorified state, just as he could use the word kingdom here in Colossians 1:13 though that kingdom hasn't come.

So, as believers we look forward to a future kingdom ruled and reigned over by our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We aren't living in the kingdom today, but we do have a present-day relationship to that future kingdom even before it arrives. It's part of our inheritance, it's part of our transfer, it's part of our salvation. We aren't currently reigning with Jesus, but we will one day reign with Him. That's a reason to praise Him, for fitting us and qualifying us for our inheritance, for rescuing us from the domain of darkness and transferring us into the kingdom of which we are assured it is coming, where we will one day rule and reign with our Savior. By the way, the Savior here at the end of verse 13 is called “His beloved Son,” meaning God's beloved Son. In the Greek it literally reads the Son of His love. It just means that He is the object of the Father's love, God the Son is the object of God the Father's love, which we see in places like Matthew 3:17 where God the Father audibly says, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

Now after noting that we have been transferred, and that we have this future kingdom to look forward to, a kingdom which will be ruled and reigned over and mediated by God's beloved Son, we turn to verse 14 where we see one more set of truths about Jesus Christ the Son of God. Actually, before we look at verse 14, I want to preface the time that we spend in that verse, those few words there, by noting that as we get into verse 14 and really the rest of Colossians 1, we're going to be stepping into some of the deepest Christological waters in all of Scripture. In fact, let's look ahead a bit to get a sense of the waterfall of Christological truths that we're going to be bathing under for the next several weeks. Look at verse 15, it says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation.” That's not, as the Jehovah's Witnesses would like to say, a statement of Christ being created or being lesser than God. That's actually, as we're going to see next week, a statement about His preeminence, which is the theme of the entire book of Colossians. Look at verse 16, “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him.” Paul couldn't have said it more clearly, that Christ is the Creator. This is a clear statement of His deity and a clear representation of His divine power. Then verse 17, “He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.” He is the sustainer, in other words. Our entire world is being held together right now because of Christ. Every atom and molecule in the universe is under the sovereign control of Christ. Every drop of sweat that bead on our brow, every wrinkle of worry that eventually burrows itself into our forehead, every tear that we cry, every breath that we take is under the sovereign rule of Christ. This brings to mind the words of John Newton who once said, “How unspeakably wonderful to know that all our concerns are held in hands that bled for us.” Keep reading, look at verse 18, “He is also the head of the body, the church.” Sorry, Rome. It's not the Vatican's church, it's not Peter's church, it's not Mary's church, it is Christ's church. Later in verse 18, “And He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. First place, again Christ is preeminent.” Verse 19, “For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him.” Again, a statement of His deity. A cross reference is Colossians 2:9, “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.” Last verse 20, “And through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross.” He is the Savior, He is the Lamb, He is the One who reconciles all things to Himself. All this to say when we come upon verse 14 here, we're embarking upon a section of Colossians which ought to bring about in all of us such a great awe for Christ, about Christ, such a great reverence for Christ, such a great love for Christ that we can't help but center our lives around Him and proclaim to others the message of hope that is found in His name.

I'm getting ahead of myself because here in verse 14 we're introduced to two specific aspects of the Lord's saving work in the lives of His followers—redemption and forgiveness. Look at verse 14, “In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The whom here is a reference clearly to Jesus Christ. It is in Christ and through Christ and through Christ alone that we have redemption and forgiveness of sins. Let's take those two terms individually though they are unquestionably related.

Redemption. Now redemption, the Greek term means to deliver by payment of a ransom or to rescue by ransom. In its original context the word was used to refer to freeing slaves from bondage, to pay their market price, to purchase their freedom. Here in Colossians the word redemption refers to Christ freeing believing sinners from their slavery to sin by purchasing them from the slave market of sin. He bought them, He paid for them, He freed them, He gave His life as we see elsewhere in Scripture as a ransom. Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. Or I Timothy 2:5-6 says, “For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus who gave Himself as a ransom for all.” The Lord Jesus Christ, in other words, put a price tag on us and though the purchase price for our redemption isn't specified here in the verses we are in today, it is most certainly specified in other passages of Scripture where we see the price of our redemption. Ephesians 1:7, see if you pick up on the theme here. “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.” Ephesians 2:13, “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.” I Peter 1:18-19, “You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood as a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” Christ shed His own precious blood to purchase us, to ransom us, to redeem us; and it is because of His willingness to do so, it's because of Christ's atoning death, the holy dying for the unholy, the righteous dying for the unrighteous, the light of the world dying for those whose foolish hearts were darkened, that God could and did deliver us from the power and authority of sin and rescue us from the domain of darkness, to qualify us to share in this inheritance with the saints in light and to transfer us into the kingdom of His beloved Son. Knowing this, knowing that we have been purchased at such a tremendous cost, knowing that we have been bought at a price, it should be so clear to us that we no longer belong to ourselves. That's just what I Corinthians 6:19-20 says. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.” He redeemed us, He freed us, He emancipated us. The shackles and chains of our slavery to sin have been broken and now we have to live like it, not as darkness dwellers but as redeemed saints. I'm always cautious when I quote C. S. Lewis, you can ask me about that later, but he said this once, and it strikes at this point that we're not to be like the ignorant child who wants to go on making mudpies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. Don't be a slum-dwelling darkness dweller if you are a follower of Christ. Don't be in the domain of darkness, instead be in the light, the holiday at the sea.

The other term here in verse 14 is forgiveness. Not only has He redeemed us, but He has also granted us forgiveness of our sins. This means that God has canceled the debt which our sins incurred when the Lord Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sin on the cross. Flip over with me to Colossians 2:14, please. Actually, we'll start in verse 13, Colossians 2:13 says “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” That debt, that sin debt never needs to be paid again. Not through purgatory, not through confession, not through penance, not through good deeds. No, that account has been settled and closed. The sin debt has been expunged. All of our sins have been pardoned and forgiven. And get this, God has not only forgiven our sins, but He has also sent those sins away. In fact, that's the meaning of the word forgiveness, to send away from. For the one who has been forgiven God has removed their sins from them. Psalm 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Or Micah 7:19 says, “Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Just think about that for a second. God created this inhabitable planet for us to live on. He formed us in our mother's womb. He provided us with food and shelter and clothing, and through His hidden hand of providence and protection He gave us life and then He preserved our lives. He bore patiently with us as we continually sinned against Him. He watched as we regularly rebelled against Him and turned away from Him and brought shame and dishonor to His name. Not only that, because He knows all things from eternity past, He knew that we would rebel against Him in the way that we did and sin against Him and blaspheme His name in each of the ways that we did long before we ever did so. But in spite of all that He sent His Son, His beloved Son, the One with whom He had enjoyed perfect triune fellowship from eternity past, into this world to rescue and save and redeem undeserving and lawless rebels like us. Why? Because He loved us. For what purpose? To wipe our sin debt clean, to grant us a righteous and worthy standing before Him so that we might be able to one day stand in His holy presence and to enjoy fellowship and eternal life with Him forever. Our sins at one time presented this barrier between us and this holy God. Isaiah 59:2 says, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” But now because of Christ and because of God's great love for us those sins have been remitted, they have been removed, atoned for, sent away, forgiven. That wall of hostility that once existed between us and God has now been torn down. By His death, by His resurrection Jesus Christ paid the penalty for all sin. He paid sin's penalty by shedding His own blood so that now we, once children of the devil, can now call ourselves children of God. And we, once headed for hell, can now say with confidence we are headed to heaven. And we, though we once loved sin, now hate sin. And so that we, once ignoring the Lord and even hating the Lord, now love Him and seek Him and walk with Him and seek to honor Him and live for Him.

What we've embarked on this morning has been a dive into some glorious truths about our qualification, our rescue, our transfer, our redemption, our forgiveness. But please don't miss this and don't forget this. While these are incredible, glorious truths to consider, we cannot leave them in the realm of intellectual contemplation and mental assent. These truths must at some point move into our hearts and lead us to action. When we really consider and meditate on what is being said here about the great weight and debt of our sin, the domain of darkness that we once lived in, the redemption and forgiveness that we have received through the shed blood of Christ, how can we not, going back to verses 11-12, be regularly and joyously giving thanks to the Father? How can we not as believers seek and strive to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord? God didn't rescue us from the domain of darkness for us to simply wander aimlessly or to stagnate, or in my case to moan and grumble the last couple of days, or to walk back into darkness. No, we are children of light, and we are to act accordingly. I John 1:6-7 says, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” God has not only given us this charge to live in this new manner as new creatures in Christ, but He has also given us the means to do so. In fact, turn with me if you would, one final verse, to Ephesians 6. Look at Ephesians 6, we'll pick it up in verse 10. It says, “Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything to stand firm.”

As we wrap up, the final charge, borrowing from Ephesians 6 here, is to stand firm, to stand firm knowing that you have been qualified by God, if you are a believer this morning, to share in the inheritance with the saints in light; knowing that you have been rescued from the domain of darkness; and knowing that you have been transferred to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom you have redemption and the forgiveness of your sins.

Let's pray. Gracious God, thank You again this morning for another chance to open Your Word to hear from You through the pages of Scripture. Thank You for everybody here, for their attentiveness, for their faithfulness, for their desire to honor You and serve You with their lives. God, I pray for those in the room who truly know You as Savior and Lord, that this would be a message of encouragement to know that they have been qualified and to remember that they have been rescued and to revel in the fact that they have been transferred into the kingdom of Your beloved Son. For those who may not know You this morning, if they are open in their rebellion or deceived in their beliefs, I pray that today would be the day that the scales would fall off their eyes, that they would truly turn to You, Lord Jesus, as Savior and Lord, that they would be transferred, that they would be rescued and they would be qualified as we who believe already are. We thank You for Your Word, we thank You for its precious truths. We simply ask that You would go before us the rest of this day and that we would honor You with our lives. In Jesus' name, amen.