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Last updated on
March 28, 2005
Be What You Are
Delivered Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005
by Pastor Werner De Jong
Text: Colossians 2:12-15; 3:1-4
Main Idea: Easter reminds us that Christians are a forgiven people who have risen with Christ and are called to live in freedom.
Purpose: To encourage the listeners with the great implication of Easter for their Christian identity: they are free, forgiven people, new creations, who having risen with Christ are safe and secure in him. To challenge the listeners to consider the implications of Easter for their Christian living: God calls them to be in practice what they are in Christ, to seek the things that are above.
Introduction:
Easter is the greatest, most joyful day of the Christian calendar, for it reminds us that Jesus rose from the dead and defeated the power of death. Great texts like 1 Corinthians 15 reassure us that as believers in Jesus we too will share in his resurrection. Because death had no power over our Lord, it has no power over us. We are eternal creatures, with an eternal destiny. As we trust in Christ we are forever safe and secure, for no matter where our life journey takes us, we will ultimately arrive in the most beautiful of lands, into the full, heavenly glory of God's kingdom. One day we will enter into the home of our Lord and Saviour, gaze into his loving face, and live in peace forever.
But in the meanwhile the journey ahead of us may still be long, and it is often hard. This morning, therefore, I want to look at the implications of Easter, not so much for our eternal destiny, but for our daily living. What are the implications of Easter for our everyday lives as Christians? How does the resurrection of our Lord impact our lives as his disciples?
Today's Text: Today's sermon texts directly address these questions. They are taken from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Many people don't think of Colossians when they think of a traditional Easter text: what comes to mind first, of course, are the resurrection accounts in the gospels, and 1 Corinthians 15. But these texts from Colossians are vitally important to our understanding of the resurrection, precisely because they apply its meaning to our lives as followers of Jesus. Not only are we reminded of our glorious future, the hope laid up for us in heaven, but this heavenly hope is meant to influence our earthly living. In particular Paul, through his letter to the Colossians, speaks to us of two things, and we will look at these in turn: first, he refers to the resurrection to say something indispensable about our identity as followers of the risen Jesus, something which Christians may fail to fully grasp, and are worse off because of it; and second, after Paul establishes this identity, he urges his readers to be who they are. In other words, he charges us to live up to the new identity given us in Christ.
Who Jesus Is: What is this new identity? What does the resurrection of Jesus have to say about who we are as his followers? The best way to answer that question is first to consider what the resurrection says about who Jesus is. For as his followers, we derive our identity from him. Fortunately we don't have to look very hard to understand what the resurrection teaches us about Jesus. Paul directly addressed the question at the very beginning of his letter to the Romans when he wrote: "Jesus Christ our Lord was shown to be the Son of God when God powerfully raised him from the dead by means of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 1:4, NLT). In other words, the resurrection validates Jesus' claim to be the Son of God. People can make any claim they want for themselves, but the claim in itself doesn't prove the point. Jesus hasn't been the only person ever to claim divine status. Jesus called himself the Son of God. Others have said similar things. So how can we know Jesus was telling the truth and not simply under a great delusion? Because he rose from the dead. The resurrection means that God the Creator has affirmed that Jesus really was, all along, his Son. This is the primary implication of the resurrection–it certifies that Jesus is who he claims to be. Every other thing we can say about the resurrection flows from this claim. The resurrection therefore validates everything Jesus taught and did. We can place full faith in the teaching and actions of Jesus because he taught and acted as the true Son of God.
And what a glorious truth this is! For surely the very next thing to say is this: the resurrection means that God the Father has validated Jesus' work on the cross, when our Lord offered up his life for us. The resurrection declares that the cross was a victory, not a defeat. It is the resurrection that declares that our sins have surely been dealt with, for by raising his Son God the Father accepted the sacrifice which was offered up for us.
Who We Are in Christ: Now we are ready to answer our original question. What does the resurrection say about our identity as believers in Christ? First, it says that we are truly forgiven. Because of the achievement of Jesus, all our sins have been removed from us. This is the perspective which underlies our text in Colossians 2. Let me read it again: "when you were buried with Christ in baptism (a symbol of our faith), you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead (the great proclamation of the resurrection). And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross" (Col. 2:12-14).
Not only are we forgiven. Twice in this text Paul says something even more amazing about us. He says that we have been raised with Christ. Jesus has risen, and now we, through our faith, share the very life of our risen Lord. There is nothing more profound we can say about our identity than that. We have been raised to a new life, a life in Christ.
Through our faith in Jesus, therefore, we are truly new people. We are not only speaking in metaphors, something has changed about us. The deepest meaning of the resurrection has to do with new creation. In Christ we are new people, for through our faith in him we have been raised with him. This is a spiritual resurrection. There is also a physical resurrection. Christians who die in Christ will one day have their bodies raised physically, but even now, in the present, we have been given new life. God has created something new in us. Once our spirits were dead because of sin, but now through our faith in Christ God has made us alive together with our risen Lord. The life of our risen Lord becomes our life. What does this mean? It means that his righteousness becomes our righteousness. His standing before the Father becomes our standing before the Father. His victory over sin becomes our victory over sin. We are alive because our sins no longer have any power over us. God has forgiven all of them. The record of the wrongs we have committed has been cancelled by God. He took that record and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ's cross. When God looks upon us now he sees us as the people we truly are, the new creation he has made us: he sees us as he sees his Son. And the life of Jesus, the power of Jesus, the love of Jesus, are now in us, because we are in him, and these things are readily available for us to help us live the Christian life.
When we fail to grasp this truth we limit our effectiveness as followers of Jesus. When we fall back into old ways of thinking and try to serve God in our own strength, and fail to depend upon this new life within us, we limit our effectiveness as followers of Jesus. When we fail to trust in the absolute pardon Christ has won for our sins, and fall back into old ways of seeking to gain God's approval by obeying a set of commands, we limit our effectiveness as followers of Jesus. The root of these failures is the failure to recognize our new and true identity as those who have risen with Jesus to new life. It is a failure to grasp the implications of Easter for our everyday Christian living. Therefore as we live this new life we must always remember that we do it as free people. In Christ we have been set free from our sins, and from any obligation to obey a set of commands in order to earn God's approval. We don't have to save ourselves; as believers we have been saved by Christ. We are as free as a bird that has been set free from the cage it has lived in all of its life, and released into the wide open spaces of the world. The resurrection has opened for us the door to a whole new world, a world of freedom, and to a whole new way of being, to a world where the only law is the law of Christ's merciful love for us.
Be What You Are: This is the very truth the apostle Paul is trying to convey to his readers in the opening verse of chapter 3. He says to them, in essence, "be what you are." Listen to his words: "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things." In other words, since you have been raised with Christ, dare to live the new life. Be in reality the new people whom God has made you to be. Be in practice what you actually are in Christ. Don't be preoccupied any longer with the things of the old life, with earthly things, but by the power of Christ living within you orient your lives around the will of God. For as new people you are able to honour and please and glorify God.
While we live our lives on this earth we can successfully be about the business of heaven. For our Lord is seated at the right hand of God, which symbolizes the fact that Jesus has been exalted to the position of ultimate power and authority. As those who have been raised with Jesus, the tremendous truth is that we share his position. His authority becomes our authority. Jesus shares it with all those who are willing to do his will. Remember his final words to the disciples: "All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations....And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Mt. 28:18-20). As those who have risen to new life with Jesus our Lord, there is no challenge too great we cannot meet it, and there is no obstacle too great we cannot overcome it. This is possible not because of any innate strength we have in ourselves, but because we are in our risen Lord, and he is in us. We are new creations. If we humble ourselves and allow Jesus to work through us, there is no limit to what God can accomplish with our lives.
But there are two barriers which can prevent us from living this life. The first is a lack of faith. If we cannot by faith acknowledge our freedom in Christ, if we cannot in faith celebrate the fact that we are new people, fully forgiven, risen in Christ, who share in all the blessings of his risen life, then we cannot live up to the potential of our new identity.
The second barrier is fear. We may have the faith to recognize the potential of the Christian life, but fear prevents us from living it. In particular the fear we are speaking about is the fear of freedom. To understand Easter and live it, we must renounce our dread of newness and of freedom. The hardest thing for us to let go of is the concept that we do not have to earn God's favour. We often prefer the slavery of trying to make ourselves worthy of God to the freedom of trusting that Christ has already made us worthy. For to trust Christ means opening ourselves up to a whole new way of life, a life in which God is at the centre, and not we ourselves. As long as we continue to live the old life of insecurity and self-condemnation and feeling that we are not worthy of God, we ultimately remain in control of our lives. But to live the new life, the resurrected life, the new life of faith, requires trusting God and acknowledging that God is in control. We are afraid of the freedom of such a life, because it means following the leading of the Spirit, wherever the Spirit blows. There are no rules to guide us here, for the life of faith is not based upon allegiance to a set of rules. But we like rules, because seeking to follow them makes us feel like we are in charge. But the resurrected life is based entirely upon trust, trust in the mercy of God, and trust in the guidance of God's Spirit. Do we dare to follow the leading of the Spirit and walk through the door into the new world which lays beyond? A world in which we are forgiven and free, a world in which there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus?
Many people are afraid to walk through that door. For it takes greater courage, more energy and more self-sacrifice, to embrace the liberty of God than to remain under slavery to the law. Ancient Israel in the wilderness provides us with an example of this very thing. God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt through the power of his great strength, and God was guiding them to their new home. But then something happened. The people began to doubt God's goodness. They rebelled against Moses and insisted that they would rather return to slavery in Egypt, to the comfort of the miserable, old life they knew, rather than risk trusting God to care for them and to guide them into the promised land. Whenever we hear that story we think how foolish Israel was, but do we recognize that we may be doing the very same thing? Whenever we condemn ourselves, whenever we feel we are not worthy of God, whenever we base our opinion of ourselves on our ability to keep the law rather than on God's grace, we show our preference for the old life, and say, in effect, "I don't trust what Christ accomplished at the cross, I don't trust that I am a new creation and fully forgiven, I feel too insecure in this new world, I want to go back to Egypt."
This is a tragedy, for the truth is that in Christ we are loved, we are forgiven, we are free. The challenge of the Christian life is to embrace this freedom, to be who Christ has made us. Thomas Merton put it very well when he wrote: "We must dare to be saints by the power of God. We must dare to have a holy respect and reverence for ourselves, as we are redeemed and sanctified by the blood of Christ. We must have courage to grasp the great power that has been given to us, at the same time realizing that this power is always made perfect in weakness" (Seasons of Celebration, p. 148).
This is the way to reach our full potential in Christ. It begins with the recognition of our true identity, and once that it is established, it is followed by our courageous willingness to live up to who we are, to seek the things that are above, to orient our lives around God's will. But before we close, please notice that the order in which we place these things is all important. We are not called to live a certain way or to do certain things in order to establish or achieve a certain identity with God. That is the terrible and fatal mistake of legalism. The sinful voice of pride tempts us to live this way, saying, "you have it in you to earn God's favour." But when we place doing ahead of being, when we strive to do something in order to be something in God's eyes, then we fall into slavery. If we seek to live this way we will continue to experience chronic feelings of guilt. Because when we seek to live in our own strength, rather than depend on the life of our risen Lord in us, we will always fail to live up to God's standards. Then we will either we will succumb to guilt, or we will dismiss the Christian life as impossible idealism, saying, "it is impossible for anyone to put the things of heaven above the things of earth, it is impossible for anyone to obey God's will rather than their own."
But the message of the Bible is that it is not impossible, for Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and we share his resurrection life. We can therefore live lives that are pleasing to God. But the only way to do so is to place being ahead of doing. The only way to live the Christian life is if we first accept by faith our identity in Christ, and only then, with the sure assurance that we are forgiven and loved, proceed to seek to obey God by doing his will. One commentator offers us an interesting mountain climbing analogy to make this point. He suggests that being proceeds doing "as surely as the rope is made fast round a firm piece of rock for the climber's security before he has to apply himself to the struggle" (C.F.D. Moule, "The New Life in Colossians 3:1-17," Review and Expositor 70:481-493). This is a wonderful illustration. God in his grace has tethered us to Christ before he ever asks us to apply our freedom to help build his kingdom. Even if at times we let God down, we cannot fall off the face of the mountain, for we are tied to Christ, and Christ is seated above at the right hand of the Father. With Jesus as our sure security we can joyfully walk through the door into God's new world and climb any mountain with the full assurance of knowing that as we seek to live for God, we are already safe in God's hands. Paul highlights this security in a wonderful way in our text when he writes: "your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). In other words, we are doubly secure. For we are in Christ, and Christ is in the Father.
Conclusion: As we conclude, let us therefore rejoice in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. For it is the sign that Jesus is the Son of God. It represents his Father's acceptance and vindication of his work on the cross, which means that we are truly forgiven. We have been set free. We are a new creation, we are the people who share in the risen life of our Lord. For freedom Christ has set us free. Rejoice, rejoice with gladness and singing, and use your freedom to help bring the wonderful love and life of Jesus to others.