![]() Be sure you see the connection between Colossians 2:14 and 15. But they are disarmed of the one weapon that can damn usthe weapon of unforgiven sin. How are they disarmed? How are they defeated? ![]() ![]() Have you ever wondered what the next verse, Colossians 2:15, means? Right after saying that God nailed the record of our debt to the Cross, Paul says, " disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him." This is a reference to the Devil and all his demonic hosts. Jesus had none (only the likeness of sinful flesh, not sinful flesh). Paul wrote in Romans 8:3, "By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh." Whose sin? Ours. That is the beautiful thing we call substitution. Whose sins were punished on the Cross? The sins of all who despair of saving themselves and trust in Christ alone. Instead of holding them up in front of your face and using them as the warrant to send you to hell, he put them in the palm of his Son's hand and nailed them to the Cross. Make sure you understand this most glorious of all truths: God took the record of all your sinsall your sexual failuresthat made you a debtor to wrath. God set aside this record of debt that stood against us, nailing it to the Cross. This he set aside, nailing it to the Cross." The clearest verses on this point are Colossians 2:13-14: "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. When we put our faith in him, we do not add to the sufficiency of what he accomplished in covering our sins and achieving the righteousness that counts as ours. The distinctive and crucial thing about Christian salvation is that Christ accomplished it decisively, outside of us and without our help. So God in his mercy provides a way out.Ĭhrist did something in history before we existed that obtained and guaranteed our rescue and the transformation of all who would come to trust in him. No one wants to meet the wrath of "the Lamb" when it comes ( Rev. His wrath is coming, and the salvation spoken of in Colossians 1-3 is the only rescue from it. The backdrop of Colossians 1-3 is Colossians 3:6: "On account of these the wrath of God is coming." Hanging over the whole world is the holy, just, unimpeachable anger of God at sin and rebellion. I want to help you deal with the guilt of failure so that Satan does not use it to produce another wasted life. But sooner or later, whether it's that sin or another, you are going to fall. Yes, I want you to have the joyful courage not to do the channel surfing. I want to take that weapon out of his hand. No way are you going to make any serious commitment of your life to Jesus Christ! You may as well get a good job so you can buy yourself a big widescreen and watch sex till you drop." ![]() encounterwhether on TV or in bedand told you: "See, you're a loser. It's that this morning Satan took your 2 A.M. What broke George Verwer's heart back in the 1980s, and breaks mine today, is not that you have sinned sexually. But mostly I want to take out of the Devil's hand the weapon that exploits your sin and makes your life a wasted, worldly success. My aim is not mainly to cure you of sexual misconduct. I have a passion that you do not waste your life. In their place, he gives you a happy, safe, secure, American life of superficial pleasures, until you die in your lakeside rocking chair. The tragedy is that Satan uses guilt from these failures to strip you of every radical dream you ever had or might have. The great tragedy is not masturbation or fornication or pornography. The problem is how to deal with failure so that it doesn't sweep away your whole life into wasted mediocrity with no impact for Christ. In other words, what seemed so tragic to George Verweras it does to meis that so many young people are being lost to the cause of Christ's mission because they are not taught how to deal with the guilt of sexual failure. A gnawing sense of guilt and unworthiness over sexual failure gradually gave way to spiritual powerlessness and the dead-end dream of middle-class security and comfort. Verwer's burden at that conference was the tragic number of young people who at one point in their lives dreamed of radical obedience to Jesus, but then faded away into useless American prosperity. The closest I have ever come in 26 years to being fired from my position as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church was in the mid-1980s, when I wrote an article for our church newsletter titled "Missions and Masturbation." I wrote the article after returning from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., with George Verwer, the head of Operation Mobilization.
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