Classic Sermon #6065: a Vital Faith

We are going to continue our study of the Epistle to the Colossians. Colossians 2:13, chapter 3, verse 4. We are studying this epistle and going through it part by part. It contains some precious teachings about the person of Jesus and the centrality of Jesus Christ, and the passage we are going to study today continues with the Christ-centered emphasis Paul gives this epistle. Colossians 2:13 says,

“…And you, being dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, forgiving you all your sins, canceling the record of the decrees that stood against us and was contrary to us, taking it out of the way and nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them on the cross. Therefore, let no one judge you in food or drink, or regarding feast days, a new moon, or Sabbath days, all of which are a shadow of what is to come.

But the body is Christ’s. Let no one deprive you of your reward by affecting humility and the worship of angels, intruding into things he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his own fleshly mind and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the growth that comes from God. Therefore, if you have died with Christ to the rudiments of the world, why, as though you were living in the world, do you submit to regulations such as: Do not handle, do not taste, do not even touch—in accordance with the commandments and doctrines of men—things which are all destroyed through use?

Such things indeed have a certain reputation for wisdom in self-imposed worship, humility, and harsh treatment of the body, but they are of no value against the appetites of the flesh. If, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things above, not on the things of the earth, because you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory…”

Brothers and sisters, as I think through this passage, I am thinking about what constitutes true holiness as Paul expresses it here. What constitutes true spirituality, true holiness—what does it consist of? And I am going to try to explain why I draw that thought from the passage we have just studied.

We talked about how Paul reminds us of the importance of never taking our eyes off Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the center; Jesus Christ is the foundation of our spiritual life. Paul warns us to beware of false doctrines, doctrines of men that sound very sophisticated and promise a great deal, yet when we compare them with what Christ offers, they fall far short. Paul warns us to remain established in what we have believed, in what we have received, and to remain firm upon the foundation of our faith.

Paul speaks to the Colossians and tells them: You are doing well. I rejoice to see you in the spirit, to see the firmness of your commitment to the Lord, the love among you and the unity among you, and the knowledge you possess as you grow in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not allow yourselves to be led away from that by those who come teaching things that turn the mind away from Jesus Christ, who is the center of everything else. Paul pleads with them to be rooted, he says, and built up in Jesus Christ, to be established in the faith, and not to depart from the way in which they received the Lord.

And we talked about the importance of steadfastness in the Christian life, of not being subject to every wind of doctrine, of not jumping from doctrine to doctrine, from church to church, from man to man, as though seeking in the things of the world what only Christ can give.

I was talking with a sister this week, and she said to me, “The thought that stayed with me from that sermon, the only thing that I…” she says, “that I was truly able to retain, was that no church is perfect.” And amen, that is a good thought to remember. No church is perfect, no pastor is perfect, no collection of men, no community of human beings is perfect. Our eyes must be fixed on Christ Jesus; our foundation must be Jesus Christ. Everything else is secondary, and the person who has had a true encounter with Jesus Christ and has founded his life upon him will not be easily moved. Yes, he may visit churches; yes, he may turn on a television program and listen to a preacher; yes, he may read different books and, as the Word says, he will test everything and hold fast to what is good. But the backbone of his spirituality will be Jesus Christ as revealed through the Word.

And the Christian feeds directly on that Word and is not very easily moved. He examines things very carefully. There is a call there from Paul to set our eyes on that sound doctrine, as the Apostle James says, and on that wisdom which comes from above. James speaks of the wisdom that is true spiritual wisdom, and he says, “…because the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, kind, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or hypocrisy…”

It is very different from that complex and luxuriant wisdom which promises a great deal but does not deliver enough. So this is a warning to put Christ first. And now Paul continues his meditation, going into greater detail and beginning to elaborate a little more on that false doctrine which is troubling the Colossians, disturbing them and drawing them away from that sound spirituality which they are following and from which they must not turn aside.

Here in these verses we have read, Paul explains why they must not allow themselves to be easily moved away from what they already possess and have received. Paul contrasts what Christ has done on the cross—the work Christ has completed, the different things Christ has done for the Colossians and for every believer, wonderful things, very real things, very profound things—with what that false doctrine promises, which is instead a shadow, a mirage, a fiction, something that mesmerizes for a moment, but when we approach it and try to touch it, we discover that it promises much but delivers very little compared with the solid and thoroughly consistent work Christ has accomplished.

Look at the first part. Paul first states what Christ has done and what Christ has accomplished for us. In verse 10 he says, “…you are complete in him…” Let us go back a little. You are complete in him; that is, you already possess all the attributes of perfection and of God through the person of Jesus Christ, because he possesses them. In him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and you have access to it.

Did you know that through Christ dwelling in your life, you have access to all the blessings and all the power of Jesus Christ? That is why Christ said in Matthew 28, “…all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth; therefore, go and preach the Gospel…” meaning: Just as I have it, you have it too; now go forth and fulfill what I command you. In other words, you are complete in Christ.

Second, in verse 11 Paul speaks of the transformation that has taken place, the spiritual transformation. Christ has freed us from slavery to sin. It says that we were circumcised with a circumcision not made by hands. Christ cast off from us the sinful body of the flesh. That does not mean we were made perfect; rather, the slavery under which we lived—without Christ, enslaved to sin and to the old nature—has now been cut away, and God has given us a new nature through his Spirit. The slavery of sin has now been broken in us.

In addition to that, verse 13 says that he gave us life, and that brings us into today’s reading. It says that when we were dead in sins, when we were immersed in our fallen nature, Christ came and made us alive together with him. He revived us, raised us to a new life, and forgave our sins through his death on the cross.

And in addition, Paul says in verse 14 that “…Christ canceled the record of the decrees that stood against us….” What does that mean? Before Christ, every human being—I put it this way—had an arrest warrant against him. There was an arrest warrant, an arrest warrant, a warrant for your arrest. Legally, every man and every woman was under God’s judgment, and there was an order of death. There was a document somewhere on which our sins were written, and those sins were being tabulated and recorded. And what Christ did through his death was to take that document which was in the divine file with our name on it, remove that arrest warrant, take it out of the way, as Paul says, and do you know what he did? He nailed it to the cross. It is a tremendously powerful image that Paul uses.

What did Paul mean by that? He was referring to what happened in those days when a person was crucified. What was placed at the top, on the upper part of the cross? The document stating why that person was being crucified was posted there, so that everyone who passed by would know: We are crucifying this man for being a thief, or a murderer, or a revolutionary against Rome.

You will remember that in the Gospels they placed this inscription over Christ: “This is the King of the Jews.” That was why they were crucifying him, because he was supposedly setting himself above Caesar. He was seditious. And so what Paul says is that Christ, there on the cross, posted all those arrest warrants that stood against us, against all humanity. He bore them on the cross, and he himself took upon himself the death and condemnation that we deserved, and there he canceled all of it. And now, when by faith we believe that this was a reality and appropriate that act of Jesus Christ for ourselves, we can have peace with God, and our criminal record, so to speak, is wiped clean in the sight of God.

And finally, there is another spiritual dimension which Paul goes on to consider in verse 15. It says, “…having disarmed the principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them on the cross….” Who are those principalities and powers? The forces of hell, the demonic powers that wield authority over the earth, that exert influence and govern governments, human institutions, and cultural and intellectual systems. And those demonic powers use all that machinery and all those mechanisms to enslave humanity and keep it captive. Through his work on the cross, through his life and through his death, Christ, it says, disarmed them. That is a very important word because it conveys the idea that he plundered them, like an army that enters a city, sacks it, and steals its wealth. Through his death, Christ plundered the kingdom of hell. And what did he snatch away from it? Of what did Christ strip Satan? Our souls, the control of our lives. Christ took away Satan’s power over us.

That is why you will remember that when we studied verse 13 of chapter 1, it said that Christ has delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. When Paul says that Christ disarmed the principalities and powers, he took away their ownership of the human race. Satan is no longer inevitably the king of this world unless we want him to be and allow him to be. No one has to live under Satan’s power now, because Christ has legally stripped him of his power; he plundered hell, and now, through a vital relationship with Christ, our lives are no longer under Satan’s control but under the control of Jesus Christ. He disarmed the principalities and powers.

It also says, “…he made a public spectacle of them….” This is a reference to when a Roman general celebrated a triumph. When a Roman general went to a foreign country and to war and defeated the enemy, he was allowed, as a public celebration upon returning with his army, to parade down the main street of Rome, bringing in chains the officers and soldiers who had been defeated. He displayed them publicly, and all the Roman people crowded around the streets, acclaiming the victor. And it was a disgrace for the defeated men—those officers and generals of the defeated army—to be dragged along in chains. And that is the image Paul uses here. He says, “…he made a public spectacle of them,” for Christ’s victory on the cross of Calvary over Satan was decisive, and he triumphed over them there on the cross…

And I was thinking about the irony that the cross, which was a symbol of shame and defeat—so much so that no Roman citizen could be crucified, because it was an indirect disgrace to Rome—that on that shameful cross, the one who was truly shamed was not Jesus Christ but Satan and the powers of hell. The shame belonged to Satan. That cross and that death there on the cross were Christ’s way of publicly displaying hell’s defeat. A wonderful thought.

Christ accomplished all of that on the cross; Christ accomplished all of that through his life. And then Paul makes that list of things; he is like a lawyer building his case for the Colossians. And so Paul says, look, Colossians—and he says to us, look, church—look at everything Christ has accomplished: he has given you life, forgiven your sins, removed the accusation that stood against you before God, delivered you from the wrath of God, disarmed the principalities and powers, removed Satan’s control over your lives, and forever defeated the powers of hell. And so, in light of all that, you cannot leave Christ and go chasing after human doctrines. That is the argument, which is why verse 16 contains the culmination and says:

“...therefore...” Why “therefore”? In light of everything I have just said, “...therefore let no one judge you...” And that is a very key word: let no one judge you—judge you—“...in food or drink, or with regard to a festival, a new moon, or Sabbath days...”

Why is the word “judge” important here? Because we have already been freed from judgment; Christ has already torn down everything that stood against us. Now, in Jesus Christ, there is no condemnation, and so you cannot submit yourselves once again to the judgment of a legalistic religion. Do you see? Paul is telling them: let us not allow ourselves to be judged by a condemning religion, by a legalistic religion, returning to the spiritual slavery from which you were delivered.

I was thinking about what the Epistle to the Galatians says. You can read it and find much more background for all of this. Paul is speaking to the Galatians—to this congregation in Galatia—who have also allowed themselves to be deceived and confused by people who came preaching a Judaizing, legalistic religion and wanted to put those Christians back under the law and its requirements. And Paul fires off a letter to correct that error, and in verse 8 of chapter 4 he says:

“...Formerly, you did not know God and served those who by nature, by definition, are not gods. But now, knowing God through Christ—or rather, being known by God, because we can never know God fully—how is it that you turn back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments to which you want to enslave yourselves once more? How can you leave that dead religion and experience the reality of God in your life, and then go back once more to a legalistic religion? Now you return,” verse 10 says, “to observing days, months, seasons, and years. I fear for you, lest I have labored in vain—lest I have preached a Gospel of liberation and joy in Jesus Christ and done so in vain, because here you are once again putting yourselves in the chains of a legalistic religion.” And so Paul says: therefore, do not allow yourselves to be judged by a ritualistic religion. That is the first thing: do not allow yourselves to be judged.

Second, he says, do not fall back into that ritualism of dates, foods, and drinks, because that does not compare with the real work, the inward work, that Christ has done in your hearts. For none of that religion—those doctrines that were beginning to make their way into Colossae—none of those things, Paul says, accomplish everything I have just listed for you that Christ accomplishes.

Paul tells them: be careful not to meddle. There it is in verse 18: “Let no one deprive you of your prize”—another key expression—“affecting humility and the worship of angels, meddling in what he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his own fleshly mind.”

Be careful not to get involved with lesser beings, because your prize is Christ Jesus. Be careful not to lose that great prize you have received in the person of Jesus Christ, because the Gospel—the center of the Gospel—is the person of Jesus. And if you begin dealing with those demigods and those angels—because that doctrine, that Colossian heresy, as the doctrine circulating at that time has been called, and Gnosticism, a doctrine that posed a very serious threat to Christianity during the first centuries of the Christian era, spoke, as I have told you before, of intermediary beings between almighty God and the human race. The Gnostics preached that those gods between heaven and earth had to be appeased and contacted, that people had to become involved with them, and that the doctrine and teaching offered by Gnosticism could guide people to other, higher spheres until they could reach the place where God was. It presented intermediaries, and so it appears that there was a worship of angels and other beings which contained something of Judaism, but which also seems to have included a mixture of occultism, like the New Age, for example, that we have today—very similar to this sort of thing.

And I was thinking, brothers and sisters, about this—and I say it with great respect and with a healthy disagreement, even as I express my respect for the Catholic religion—but I believe that if Paul today were to look at the devotion many of our Catholic brothers and sisters, in their sincere desire to please God, sometimes show toward the saints and Mary, and sometimes even toward angels—the Archangel Michael, for example, and other angels...

I wonder whether there is not a similarity here: that need human beings have always to find intermediary beings who will take them before God. It is as though we do not feel worthy enough to go directly to the Father, or we think that perhaps God is too busy and has too many cases up there that he is handling, and so he needs Christ, Mary, Saint Michael, or whoever it may be to help him administer the earth. And so we go to those intermediary beings, as it were, to use them as leverage to bring us before God. And I believe Paul would say: why would you allow yourselves to be deprived of the greatest prize you have, which is direct access to the person of Christ and, through him, directly to the Father?

As it says in Hebrews, “...having access to the throne of grace, let us draw near with confidence...” Do you understand? In other words, the idea is: why allow ourselves to be hoodwinked—not a very Cervantine expression—but why allow ourselves to be confused by getting involved with intermediary beings when Christ has already opened a completely unobstructed way for us to go directly to the throne of grace? Let us not get involved with those things. And you know, brother, Santería becomes an extremely complex system. Some saints specialize in thunder, other saints in rain, and others in crops; and there are saints who specialize in a particular illness, and so forth. It becomes a very complex kind of system. And that is also a kind of intellectual vanity in which people become involved, projecting things and inventing things, until a very elaborate system is created. And the devil has profited from that—profited enormously—with spiritism and so many other things we know about.

For they do not have the protection of the Spirit of God, even though they arise from a sincere spirituality, because these brothers and sisters truly want to please God through their spirituality, but they are doing so in an improper way. And I believe the Word of God would advise them not to allow themselves to be deceived in that manner.

And Paul speaks to them again: “...if you have died with Christ to the rudiments of the world, why, as though you were living in the world—verse 20—do you submit to precepts such as ‘Do not handle, do not taste, do not even touch’...?”

This is asceticism. In the first centuries of the church, after some time had passed and the church had declined somewhat in its vitality, asceticism came in. People would go off to caves to seek God more fully. In fact, I believe deeply in consecration, and I am not rejecting all of that entirely, but it became almost a neurosis, something compulsive, and came to have almost a life of its own. There were men who spent their entire lives atop an extremely tall pillar, living there on a tiny patch of ground, as though to multiply the flesh. And it reached such extremes that this is where the devotion to the Virgin Mary arose: because sex was bad, and if Mary was pure and was the mother of God, she could not have been the mother of other children, because there is an implicit rejection of sexuality in this. And perhaps this is also where the belief comes from that, for a person to be truly consecrated, he also had to be celibate.

I believe this tendency existed; it was a compulsion not to touch things that might cause harm, not to violate God’s will, not to offend God. It then became—and threatened to become once again—a legalistic and fearful religion, seeing the devil everywhere and seeing dangers everywhere.

Why, he says, do you get caught up in this business of not handling or tasting, when all those things perish through use? It is what Jesus Christ said: what you eat—if you will pardon the expression—goes into the latrine, he says; it is what comes out of the human heart that poisons people. Christ also had a sound understanding of what true spirituality was.

I always respect the Lord more and more because I see the straightforward, clear, simple way in which he viewed spiritual life. He was not calling us to a neurotic and fearful spirituality, but to a healthy spirituality.

Paul says, “...everything is a shadow of what is to come, but the body belongs to Christ...” What does that mean? It means that those rituals and human values are simply indirect projections; they are symbols, representations, shadows. But the body that casts the shadow—the solid thing, what is truly real—is Christ Jesus. And all those things are simply symbols of true spirituality.

As Hebrews tells us, the tabernacle was a symbol—the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. The sacrifices were symbols of what was to come, of Christ, who was the perfect sacrifice. All these things—circumcision was a symbol of something, but now Christ has made it real in our hearts. Circumcision in Judaism used to be something physical, but now, it says, Christ has made it a reality.

As I believe Ezekiel said, “I am going to circumcise their hearts,” and that is why Paul speaks of the circumcision Christ has performed in us. Christ accomplished the real thing; therefore, do not allow yourselves to be deceived by this whole system of symbols and things that are merely indirect projections.

So how can we apply all of this to our life as a church? I want to conclude here with a couple of ideas. What does everything Paul is saying tell us in the twentieth century? I would say first, brothers and sisters—and I am going to make the following assertion—that the primary thing Christ achieved on our behalf through his life, death, and resurrection is freedom. Christ obtained freedom for us: freedom from sin, freedom from death, freedom from Satan, as we have seen, freedom from the guilt we felt, freedom from the wrath of God, freedom from the yoke of the law. Christ freed us from all those things. Through his own person, Christ obtained liberation for all humanity.

And it is very important for us to remember that word, “freedom.” Our lives as individual Christians and as a church must reflect that value, that freedom Christ has obtained for us. And I want to elaborate on that thought a little.

In Galatians 5, verse 1, Paul says: “...Stand firm, therefore, in freedom”; in verse 3 he says, “For you, brothers and sisters, were called to freedom. Only do not use”—here there is a warning—“freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love...”

But there is an emphasis on freedom. And I believe, brothers and sisters, that our Christian life—again, I mean both as individuals and as a church—and, I believe, the very atmosphere of our family life, should reflect that freedom, that lightness of spirit possessed by someone who feels confident before his father, who feels approved by his father, who feels loved by his father. And I was thinking about the difference between a child who has grown up in a home with love, affirmation, acceptance, and approval of who he or she is—a child who grows up with a healthy view of himself or herself, with a proper self-image—and a child who has grown up in a repressive and condemning environment that fosters the formation of neurotic attitudes, where everything is bad, where who the child is receives no approval, and where no room is given for that child’s individuality to develop. Let us think of the child who has grown up in that home of freedom and acceptance, combined with wise discipline, and compare that child with the latter.

I am certain that if we compare those two children in their social behavior, we will clearly know which is which. For the child who has grown up with approval will be a lively child and will sometimes even be daring in the way he behaves, because he will be exploring, seeking options, and developing skills. He is confident and approaches people, and he allows people to approach him or her. But the child who has grown up under severe condemnation and in a repressive environment will be timid and will take care not to do anything that might bother people or anything of the sort, because children in their natural behavior are open and uninhibited in the way they conduct themselves. But the child who has grown up repressed grows up fearful and expects judgment and condemnation from others.

And I submit that for our consideration because our spirituality, as a church and as individuals, should also be something like that. There are churches and individuals who can be like the child who has lived under repression or like the child who has grown up under healthy discipline. And I believe that, as a church and as individuals, we must be careful not to become legalistic and condemning in our spirituality, because Christ has made us free; Christ has torn down that wall of condemnation that stood over us. We cannot see sin everywhere, nor should we be excessively preoccupied with sin, putting on a superficial, artificial, and ultimately neurotic holiness. Sometimes I am afraid that in our desire—often our desire—to be holy and to please God, there is a very fine line between a holiness that is beautiful and overflowing with vitality, joy, life, and light, and a holiness based instead on fear, repression, and judgment.

And Paul is calling the Colossians here and telling them, “Hey, look, the life to which Christ has called you is a life of freedom; it is a spontaneous life; it is a spirituality overflowing with joy and celebration because of what Christ has done.” There must be that balance in our lives. Brothers and sisters, I am not calling for licentiousness, as Paul warns in Galatians 1:13. Obviously, you know that I preach about holiness many times, but just as I preach about holiness, I also try to draw clear lines around what truly constitutes holiness. And today I want to emphasize the room we must give ourselves in that pursuit of holiness.

I once spoke to you about space and the importance of there being space in our dealings with our children and in our spiritual development. And I believe there must also be room in the spiritual life, in the pursuit of holiness, so that there may be freedom, life, and joy. A truly holy person knows how to laugh at himself and does not take himself too seriously. Sometimes we take our holiness so seriously that we bore everyone around us. And people are afraid of us; they are afraid to be honest with us and afraid to confide a weakness or a fear to us because they will feel judged and will say, “How can I approach that imposing hulk of a person? He is going to think I am ungodly if I confess a thought, a fall, a weakness, or a fear to him.”

And I believe that a truly spiritual and truly holy person is someone who does not take himself too seriously, do you understand? Someone who takes everything with a grain of salt, because he knows that it is by the grace of God that we are saved, not because of anything we have done, and that it is only by God’s mercy. In fact, as it says in Galatians itself: “My little children, if any of you should sin, you who are spiritual,” it says, “restore him in a spirit of gentleness, watching yourself, lest you commit the very same thing for which you are judging others.” And there is that expression often used in English: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” And that is what we must always be careful about, brothers and sisters.

And our spiritual life should reflect that sense of God’s grace. I believe that a truly spiritual person is able to converse with an unbeliever and speak in a wholesome way, and that unbeliever does not feel as though he is standing before a spiritual giant; he does not feel nervous or timid. No, this is a relaxed, wholesome person who knows how to laugh, who knows how to make a joke, and who knows how to enjoy life within the framework God has established. And I believe this is a person who proves attractive because of his spontaneous spirit and his confidence in the Lord’s grace.

The opposite is that artificial holiness, simply a garment that we put on over ourselves. It is a repressive holiness that leaves no room to breathe, to grow, or to make mistakes; that is easily scandalized; and that lives in continual fear of offending God rather than in a continual desire to please God. Do you see the difference? One is a shove from behind: fear. The other is a musical note that draws us toward our God and makes us want to please our Father, who has done so much for us.

And I believe that the health of our lives as a congregation, as individuals, and also as parents will depend on where we place the emphasis in our spirituality. In our desire to please God, let us be careful not to go over to the other side—to “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch,” to a compulsive, self-righteous life that does not please God and has nothing spiritual about it. They are simply, as it says here, human things, human inventions that people devise: whether someone wears a beard or does not wear a beard, wears sideburns or does not wear sideburns, wears a long garment or does not wear a long garment. These things, yes, as Paul says, look, truly have a certain reputation for wisdom. Fine, that is nice, that helps and is lovely, and it is perfectly fine for whoever wishes to practice it; but in reality, it does nothing to curb the sinful tendency within us.

Now, brothers and sisters, what am I saying? That a woman or a man should dress like just anybody? I do not believe that. I believe that Christians should also reflect, as the Word says, modesty in their clothing and everything else. But going from there to becoming compulsive, neurotic, and fearful—no, that is not from God. Rather, God wants a healthy spirituality, a healthy desire to please Him.

And I believe that this is what truly allows healthy holiness to be cultivated in the life of the church and in the life of the home. The external legalism of uniforms, long garments, and repressive morality has never created a saint. Quite the opposite: what we frequently see is that it leads to scandal and hypocrisy. In many of those repressive environments, things happen, brothers and sisters, that, if you lift the lid off the pot, there are crickets, worms, and everything else in there—everything except healthy spirituality.

That is what happened to the people of Israel. Whitewashed tombs: an entire legal and legalistic system of laws and prohibitions, but what was underneath? Spiritual death and a lack of sensitivity. The Son of God walked among them, and they could not see Him because they were too enamored of their precepts, principles, and artificial laws. And that is what happens when a repressive environment is created within a congregation or a family: the Spirit of God seems to be grieved and withdraws, and then Satan comes and produces precisely what that sensitivity is trying to escape. How strange the human mind is, and how strange human sensibilities are; but that is how it is, and sometimes we make victory easy for Satan.

Now, I say that where the genuine Spirit of Christ is, there is freedom, there is laughter, there is joyful music, there is festivity, there is fellowship, there is celebration among the brothers and sisters, there is joy—the joy of the Lord is present. Perfect love, it says, casts out fear. A holy life that pleases God is preached, yes; but if someone falls, the desire is to restore and lift up the fallen person, not to condemn him, not to pounce on him.

Brothers and sisters, I believe in a theology that sees the holiness of everything created and consecrates it all to the Lord; every thought, every impulse, as Paul says, it brings into submission to the person of Jesus Christ. Nature, art—consecrate everything to the Lord and give it back to the One who created it and gave it. And that is why I believe that a truly profound church will be a church that cultivates all those aspects of creation and submits them to the holiness God commands, rather than avoiding them, shutting the door on them, and hammering six nails into the door so the devil cannot get out. Because Satan has already been defeated. His claws were pulled out, his teeth were pulled out, and now everything belongs to Christ, we belong to Christ, and everything is subject to the Lord.

And then we can live and move in that freedom. And that, brothers and sisters—if you want to know what I think as a pastor, I will take this opportunity, because sometimes people wonder, “What does our pastor really think about this or that?”—is, I believe, to foster within us as a church, and in my own life, a complex spirituality that sometimes brings together the extremes of one kind of spirituality and another. Brothers and sisters, we are seeking a balance, and sometimes that will lead us to experiment, reach dead ends, have to backtrack a little, and keep searching; but I believe we will be enriched through that, rather than locking ourselves into a program we received from a denomination or a book or whatever it may be, and then following that road with no deviation, so that we cease to be creative and cease to listen to the voice of the Spirit of God.

A congregation that is truly creative will sometimes make certain mistakes and do certain things, but God will always be guiding it toward the course He wants it to follow. But I say, brothers and sisters, that sometimes it is good and lovely, out of all the very spiritual meetings held throughout the year, for us also to take one meeting to let our hair down and celebrate who you are as women, the beauty of the body, and the things God has given. I believe that has its own beauty, and perhaps someone would say, “A holy church would not do that.” But I believe it would, because a holy church recognizes the holiness of everything created and submits it all to the Father. And so I believe that has its place. I love it when we gather to celebrate together, eat together, enjoy ourselves, and laugh, because in all of that we are declaring the God who has made us free through Christ Jesus.

And that is what I mean. Here I am trying, in different ways, to point to that joyful, free spirit, to that balance between freedom, licentiousness, and repression to which God has called us. And that is what we, as a church and as individuals, must be seeking in our lives, brothers and sisters: a spirituality that glorifies God in the way God truly wants to be glorified, not Pharisaism.

Lastly, this passage has spoken deeply to me about the importance of avoiding dead religion, formal and formalistic religion. For Paul speaks here about leaving behind those things that are merely representative and going to that Christ who has done real things in the lives of the Colossians. We must avoid religion, brothers and sisters. I do not like people telling me that I am a religious person, because I am not religious. I love Christ Jesus and serve Him, and I have decided to give my life to Him, and I fight as hard as I can to do so; but I am not devoted to any religion, any man, or any system. I hope you are not either. Rather, we serve a living Christ; we serve a Christ who has worked in us, transformed us, and done beautiful things in us. Therefore, our spiritual life should not be religious, formal, and ritualistic, but fervent, vigorous, and full of vitality. It should project the energy of God moving within us; it should project the presence of the Spirit of God, who created from nothing all that exists, who brings change, transforms, heals, gives life to the dead, and strengthens our thoughts and our bodies. Our spiritual life should reflect that vigor.

Romans 12:11 speaks of our being fervent in spirit, and the idea of “fervent” in the original Greek is like a burning, red-hot coal—“aglow,” as they say in English—glowing like a red-hot coal. And Paul speaks to Timothy and says, “I advise you to fan into flame the gift that is in you.” There is an allusion there to fervor, and Timothy, as a pastor, is called to be continually blowing on it. The idea is to take a fan and blow on that fire so that it does not die, but is rekindled and rises up.

And you will remember that what fell upon the first disciples at Pentecost was not snowflakes; it was divided tongues as of fire, it says. And the Spirit of God moved in such a way that people thought they were crazy and drunk. There is a call to vitality in the Christian life. Biblical Christianity, I believe, is characterized by enthusiasm, fervor, intensity, and life. Our gatherings, brothers and sisters, and our life as a church should cultivate that fervor and project that joy, that intensity.

When we gather and sense that the Lord’s fire is dying down, we must make a decision as a church to fan that fire of God in our lives once again, because it is not a matter of God giving it only once. Rather, God interacts with us, and God expects that when you sense yourself becoming indifferent to the Word, when you come to church and your worship seems half-dead, when it has become ritualism, when you do not feel that God is speaking to you and placing new concerns in your life, and when you leave church exactly as you entered, alarms should begin sounding everywhere: “I must seek the fire of my Lord again.” And then you decide to spend some time fasting, or crying out to God, or asking Him, “Lord, is there some sin in me, or is there something suppressing Your Spirit? Or have I simply become indifferent? Have I lost my first love?” And we must seek again that fire, that enthusiasm, that joy, and that passionate love for our Lord. For the Christian life should never be ritualistic or formalistic. We should not be able simply to come here to church and leave as we entered; rather, we must sense that God has touched us and made an impact on us.

And I believe, brothers and sisters, in tears; I believe in weeping when it comes from a heart touched by God. I believe in the laughter that celebrates the presence of God in our lives. I believe in the cry that bursts forth in a “Hallelujah!”—in a “Glory to God!”—because we feel that God’s presence needs to be projected and expressed, since we feel it so deeply within us. And I believe in the fervor and vitality of the child of God. I believe that our gatherings should not be gatherings of the dead, but gatherings of people who have received life through Christ and are celebrating it. We have to cultivate that. We must ask the Lord to fill our lives with such enthusiasm, so that we will not be like those churches to which Christ said, “I have something against you: you have lost your first love, and you no longer worship me with the same spontaneity you once did. Your services and gatherings have now become ritualistic and formulaic.” And the Lord discerns that in our lives, brothers and sisters.

I always ask the Lord for this because I experience it often: the worries of life and the burdens of life tend to drain our vitality, and the threat will always be that—losing our way and doing things automatically, practicing a Sunday-only spirituality. We are Christians only when we are in church. But no: Christ has called us to a celebratory life, to a vital and joyful life, brothers and sisters, to a spontaneous life that is always examining and reexamining the foundations of its faith and raising them up again, fresh like bread straight from the oven, new, always discovering new things that the Lord brings us. That is the life to which God has called us. Let us not allow ourselves to be subjected to human laws or human systems; let us go to Christ Jesus, and may he renew our understanding day by day. God bless us.