Heavenly Father, we thank you for your living word. We thank you, Father God, that we have brothers and sisters in our small group in this Bible study in the church that we can run this race together. Help us, Lord, to be stronger because of our fellowship. We pray that our time in your word would sharpen us, encourage us, rebuke us, and that we may be built up as a result of our time.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Alright, so the text that we're looking at today in verse 9 through 15 in Colossians chapter 2, if you've done your study or did your homework before you came in, you should have been overwhelmed. Okay, so if you came here today not overwhelmed, it probably means that you maybe didn't put as much time, you didn't really dig as much as you should have because every single line in this text is so rich in theology.

I would say outside of Romans and the book of Hebrews, and not including the apocalyptic writing in the book of Revelation, Colossians is probably one of the richest in theology. And in this text in particular, in chapter 2, there's so much in here. We can probably just wrestle with this text just several months because every single line is so significant.

Now, I told you that in the beginning that the goal of our study is not for me to unpack everything and then present it to you and this is what this means, this is what that means. My goal is to guide you through so that you can learn how to do inductive Bible study on your own.

So my hope is that what I am highlighting will kind of point you to the right direction and that more deeper discussions will be happening in your small group and even by yourself and with your friends as well. We want to start with a hermeneutical principle and this was something that we did mention before but I wanted to highlight.

Scripture must interpret Scripture. When a particular word, phrase, or thought seems to be ambiguous, we must turn to other passages to help us interpret what is being said. Developing an important doctrine based upon one word or phrase or passage often leads to a misunderstanding and often heretical doctrines. So bad doctrine comes from certain passages where you're just kind of taking that passage out of context, out of context of that text and out of context of that culture, out of context of that person's writing.

So I'll give you an example in Colossians chapter 2, 11. It says, "And in him you were all circumcised with circumcision made without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." So that phrase, "removal of the body of the flesh," what does that mean?

So if you're not careful, you can add meaning to this text. Remember what was happening during this period? Remember we said in the beginning there's two false doctrines that was challenging the gospel in the earlier church? Remember what they were? The first were the Judaizers, right? They were basically adding Christ to Judaism.

You need to be a Jew, you need to be circumcised, you need to observe all the law, and then you need to worship Christ. You need to become a Jew before you become a Christian. So those were the Judaizers. So much of Paul's writings and Peter's writings deals with that false teaching.

What was the other side with the Gentiles? The Gnostics, right? And what was the false teaching of the Gnostics generally? Flesh is evil, right? Spirit is good. So they separated these two things. So one of the things that came out of that was because the flesh is evil, Jesus could not have come in the flesh, right?

So he only appeared in the flesh, or he wasn't really in the flesh, he really wasn't fully man. And then what came out of that was we were saved in our spirit and our flesh was separated, so we are saved in the spirit, but our flesh is condemned. So therefore you can do whatever you want with the flesh.

Okay, do you understand the logic? So the logic that they used was since our flesh is evil and it is condemned, what we do in the flesh doesn't matter because God condemned it and we're going to be saved in the spirit. And so 1 John deals with that, right?

If you live in the darkness, you say you have fellowship with God, you fool yourself, right? And then he talks about how he who declares Christ to have come in the flesh, he's the one who is born of God, because that was coming from false teaching of the Gnostics.

So when he says here that we've been circumcised without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, how do you think the Gnostics would have taken this? You see? Here it is right here, right? Paul says that our flesh is removed, so we can do whatever we want.

So at that time, my guess is the Gnostics would have taken this and run with it. And so we need to make sure that we understand what he means by this. And this is where the cross references come in and what has Paul said in the other passages in similar manner.

So again, if you can turn to Romans 6.6, and somebody way in the back, if you can just yell out, okay, or read it out for us, Romans 6.6 and somebody also back there Romans 7.24. Okay, so over there in 6.6, what is called the flesh? Our old self, right?

Okay Romans 7.24. Somebody? Okay, so here it calls the body of death. Colossians 5.24. If you're there, can you just read out for, and then somebody read Colossians 3.5 for us. Sorry, can you read that a little bit louder? Okay, so here it says flesh with passion and desires.

Okay Colossians 3.5. Alright so when you look at the way Paul has used the term flesh, when you look at the cross references, what is he referring to when he says he's put to death the body of the flesh? The sinful part of it, right? His sinful nature. So he's not saying physically he's put somebody to death.

Obviously that's not what he's talking about. Paul himself is still living. He's talking about the part of our body that causes us to sin, right? So we've, when it says in Corinthians 5.17 that if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed, behold a new has come.

What is the old that has passed? His old nature that bound him to sin and delivered us into a new self. That's why the term that Jesus uses is he needs to be born again, right? So do Christians have a sinful nature? Do Christians in, are we bound to sin?

Are we enslaved to sin? So do we have a sinful nature? We do not have a sinful nature, right? We are still in the flesh, but we have been delivered. We are no longer enslaved to sin, but we are enslaved to what? Righteousness, right? We are, we have been saved, we are being saved.

But at the core of who we are, we are now enslaved to righteousness. Okay? Now some of you guys are saying, "Well, I don't feel like it." If you have genuine faith, you cannot live in sin continually. Because the Holy Spirit will not allow you to. So as much as you may feel like you are struggling with sin, the Holy Spirit will not allow you to be in sin.

That's why it says in 1 John, when you, if you live in sin, you do not have fellowship with God. Right? You do not have fellowship with God. Because the Holy Spirit will not allow you to. The fact that there is a huge difference between someone who is struggling with sin and someone who is living in sin.

Someone who is living in sin is somebody, his nature is causing him to continue to sin. Right? Someone who has a, someone who has been delivered from that, he may be struggling with purity. He may be struggling with unrighteousness. But that struggle is there because the Holy Spirit is fighting you to come out of it.

Does that make any sense? And I've used this illustration many times before in a sermon. If you are a possum, you are not comfortable at night. During the day I mean. Right? So if by nature you are a creature of the night, if you happen to fall out of the tree because your tail was weak that day, and the first thing you're going to do is look for darkness.

Right? Now, is he walking? Is he functioning? Yes. But he doesn't belong there. He feels comfortable in darkness. Right? We're creatures of the day. If you turn off the light, what's the first thing that we try to do? Look for a flashlight. Unless we're sleeping. Right? We're looking for a flashlight because we need light to function.

So for Christians, our nature has changed so that we are creatures of the day now, not of the night. So we may stumble in darkness at times, but if you are, if you genuinely have faith, your faith will not allow you to feel comfortable in the darkness. Does that make sense?

So when he says we have removal of the body of the flesh, our sinful nature that causes us to long for darkness has been put away. Right? So that's why there's a difference between when somebody says, "I'm struggling with sin." There's a difference when somebody is struggling with sin who in words they're struggling, but in life they're not really struggling.

They feel very comfortable there. Right? They say, "Don't judge me. I feel comfortable. I don't want anybody calling me out on my sin." A Christian wants accountability. Right? A Christian wants accountability because you're longing to be in the light. Right? Alright. So when we're interpreting scripture, you have to make sure that your understanding of that text is helped or clarified by the rest of scripture.

You don't take that one verse, "Look what he said," and so you just dissect that like what he said. Right? And a lot of fights happen even between human beings like this. Right? You said this, but you know that's not what I meant. But you said this, you used this word, but I didn't mean that.

Right? And so if you start to argue with somebody because of a word that was said and you take that out of context, you're not having a discussion. Right? You're a lawyer trying to accuse that person based upon the words that were used. And that's not a good way to communicate.

Right? And it is not a good way to understand scripture. You have to understand it within the context of what he meant. Right? Okay. What are some repeated words or related words, okay, before we do anything else, so that we can see the thought flow? Okay. What's the first thing that comes up to you?

In him. Right? We see in him and in him and in him. Right? Or related words. Okay. Let's do this first. With him. With him. Raised him. Okay. Then with him. Tell me if I missed something. Through him. Did I miss anything? Okay. So it's clear. All throughout this text, through him, in him, of him, for him, like over and over again.

Right? So here we're talking about Jesus' identity and what he has done. Right? What did God accomplish through Jesus? That's the theme. Anything else that pops up? What are some other words? Okay. Circumcision. Circumcised, circumcision, circumcision. Okay. Anything else? Or uncircumcision? Where is that? Yeah, right there. Yep, thank you.

I feel like all the strength is on this side. It's very quiet on this side. Okay. What else? Huh? Having. Okay. Having been. Right? Having. Verse 10, did I miss it? Have been. Having. Okay. Having male. Having triumph. Okay. So what does this tell you? Right? Right. Something happened and it resulted in this.

Or as a result of this, this happened. Right? So it's giving you the reason behind what happened. Right? So if you were to just look at the words that's been repeated over, you can say that, again, how you may have outlined it may look different, but the outline here to me is this first section is what Jesus.

And then the second part of it all throughout this is how. Okay? Again, you don't have to outline it like that, but broadly just to kind of get to see the flow. It's for him, for in him, and in him, and in him, this happened, this happened, this happened.

Having been done this, having forgiven, having canceled. So if you look at the general flow of thought and you see the words that are repeated, right? What did Jesus do and how did he do it? Right? All right. So, if we were to go look at the outline, what did he do?

He begins by saying in verse 9, the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form. He starts by basically identifying Jesus, again, in his bodily form. It wasn't like Jesus in his manhood and then Jesus and his deity were two separate people. Right? Just as God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are three in one, Jesus' deity and his man, humanity, is one.

He says all of his deity, not parts of it, not just a reflection of it, but his full deity rested in his human form. Okay? Now, if that's confusing, it's because it is confusing. But that's how the Bible declared who Christ was. Just like the Trinity, there is a dual nature of Christ in his humanity and his deity.

Okay? Now, having said that, there's one thing that is here that the word is repeated and you probably didn't catch it in your translation, but the word fullness and the word complete has the same root word. Okay? Comes from the Greek word pleru. That's the verse that is used in Ephesians where it says to be filled with the Holy Spirit, right?

To full capacity. So, Jesus was full in his deity, in his bodily form. Right? So, you don't catch it in the English, but in the Greek, it's pretty clear that what he means by that is because he was full, he made you full. Okay? The English word used here is complete, but in the Greek, it's the same root word.

So, the reason why he starts with the word that Jesus is fullness is because ultimately he made you full and he is the head over all the rule and authority. Right? He was able to do that because there's nothing above him. And I've used his fullness and full. Right?

So, I know he's better than that one. Okay? Because, you know, the word complete is a very rich theological word in the New Testament. And the word that is used, not here, but used in other parts is the word teleos. You know, in 1 Corinthians 10, it says when the...

What's the word? Let me figure out. 1 Corinthians 1310. My mind went blank. When the perfect comes. Okay. When the perfect comes, the imperfect shall pass away. The word perfect there is teleos and it's talking about something that God started that's bringing onto logical conclusion. It may not be finished, but he's going to finish it.

That is not the word used here. Here it means to fill up something. Right? So, everything that we need for salvation has been made complete. We've been filled with him. Okay? Because he is fullness, is full deity, he is... There's no authority above him. He's able to make us full and complete.

He says, "You are also circumcised and circumcision made without hands." Right? So, remember we talked about in Colossians, there's two separate groups of people that he was concerned about. He had the Gnostics for the Gentiles. And where is Colossians? Remember? Geographically? Asia Minor. In Asia Minor, you have the seven churches, but there's also another church that's very prominent in the New Testament.

Galatians are in that area. Remember? Paul is writing to the Galatians because the Judaizers were having a huge impact in that area. Right? So, he's dealing with both. So, in one side he's dealing with the Gnostics, and then the other side he's dealing with the Judaizers. And so, he mentioned circumcision.

Circumcision to the Jews, what did it mean for them? It was their covenant symbol. Right? So, you couldn't be a child of God. You couldn't say you were a Jew unless you were circumcised. So, even if you were a foreigner who wanted to participate and be a part of the Jewish community, first thing they had to do was to be circumcised.

Right? Even their servants, even foreigners who came in who wanted to participate in society, they had to be circumcised. But he says, so circumcision was their symbol that they belonged to God. But he says, you were also circumcised with circumcision made without hands. In other words, Judaizers were probably telling the church, unless you get circumcised, you can't be a child of God.

And that's why he writes the Book of Galatians. Right? And so, they were probably being affected by the same group. And he says, to this Gentile church, you were circumcised, but not the kind of circumcised that they got. You got circumcised with circumcision without hands. Okay? And then, that's where he says, in the removal of the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

In other words, this is a spiritual circumcision. Right? And then he goes into explain how this happened. Having been buried with him in baptism. Let me stop right here. Okay? Within the next month or two, I'm probably going to revisit this issue of baptism. Some of you were here when I gave the sermon on baptism and why we don't baptize infants here, why we're a Baptist church.

And I want our whole church to understand why we're Baptists. It's not just my doctrine or doctrine of the leadership. We want you to be able to see from scripture why we don't baptize infants. The meaning behind baptism. People who baptize infants. I was baptized infant. My father was a Presbyterian.

So this is not to say like, oh, they don't know their Bible or, you know, they're bad people. It's just, biblically, I could not see what I was taught from the Bible. This is their go-to text. If you came from a Presbyterian church and you were baptized as an infant and you were told that, and you studied through and this is why we baptize infants, this is the go-to text.

And the way that this is interpreted, and again, I'm not going to go too deep into this because that's not my goal today. Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you are also raised up with him through the faith in the working of the dead, who raised you from the dead, right?

So he connects, they connect the circumcision without hands and then he jumps to how did this happen? By being buried with him in baptism. So people who baptize infants will say baptism is a replacement of circumcision in the new covenant. Have you ever heard that before? Okay. Maybe not.

Okay. Like I said, I'm not going to go too deep into this because I'm going to give a teaching on this at some point within a month or two. So based upon this text, and this is their go-to text, there is no other clearer text than this for them.

That circumcision without hands is baptism. Now the reason why that interpretation doesn't make any sense is because circumcision without hands is unseen and it doesn't make sense to replace the physical circumcision with a physical baptism. You understand what I'm saying? So baptism can't be a replacement because he said it is unseen.

So what is the unseen circumcision that Jesus is talking about? I'm hearing you but I'm not hearing you. Okay. It's hard to capture with one word but Jesus is referring to regeneration. He says in the prophecies that he was going to place the law where? In our hearts. How did he write his law in our hearts?

By the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is a symbol of the covenant in the New Testament. It doesn't make sense that he would replace the physical circumcision with a physical baptism and then to sprinkle a baby who has no idea what's going on and say now you've entered into this covenant relationship.

The reason why that happened in the Old Testament was because the Old Testament, the covenant people were a nation. And so being circumcised was a mark that you belonged to that nation. In the New Testament the kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. And so it is a spiritual symbol. It is an unseen symbol.

So it is the Holy Spirit. So when we get baptized all we're doing is symbolizing what is taking place spiritually. In the baptism we are buried with Christ, we are raised with him but the real symbol is the Holy Spirit that is unseen. Right? Okay. Now that's, I'm just going to leave it at that for now.

I'm going to go into a little bit more detail later on, like when I give a sermon on that. I just wanted to highlight this because we just happened to be in this text and this is an important text. When you are dead in your transgressions, so there's about four or five things he mentions here.

Right? When you are dead in your transgressions and uncircumcision of your flesh he made you alive. What does this passage remind you of? Romans 5.8. Right? God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners. In other words, Paul is saying you were dead. You didn't add to this.

Right? He didn't say that he made you alive because you responded and he saw who was going to respond and based upon those who took their first step he chose you. He said no. It was when you were dead in your transgressions. In other words, you played no part in this.

The reason why you were able to respond is because he was regenerating you. The reason why there was faith in you is because he was already calling you. He already elected you. He already chose you. Right? So the initiation, he didn't just throw out a net and saw who was going to respond.

He said you responded because he acted when you were dead in your transgression. Right? Having been forgiven of our transgressions. Because he initiated. There's no part of it. If you look at this whole salvation point, there's no part in here other than us responding in faith. And the reason why you have faith is because God put that there.

Having forgiven us through our transgression and having canceled out the certificate of death. The word certificate here basically means something written. Right? So this can be a some people will look at that and say talking about accounting. Right? Where you're like there's an accounting ledger of all your sins or it could be a legal document where legally you're declared a sinner and basically this consisting decree against us.

Right? So basically legally, legal standing before God whether it is accounting or whether it is a legal document, we stood condemned in the court of law. Right? In the heavenly court. And God sits on the throne and he sees if we're guilty and said every single one was guilty and according to this ledger, this was hostile toward us.

But he has taken it away having nailed it on the cross. He completely made us new. If you look at it here in verse 14, he says he has been he's forgiven us, he canceled our debt, he has taken it out, and he has nailed it to the cross.

Right? All of these things are different descriptions of what he did on the cross. When he had disarmed the rulers and authorities. Right? So who are the rulers and authorities that he's talking about? You can look at it in two ways. There is a physical and spiritual. Who are the physical authorities?

Romans, and then if you were a Jew, Pharisees. Right? Leaders of Israel. And those two institutions were persecuting. Right? And so if you happen to be a Jew, right, your whole history ever since the Assyrians have been oppressing you. And so in their mind they're waiting for the Messiah to come with authority to deliver them.

Right? And that's why they crucified Christ. Because when they realized that Jesus wasn't going to overthrow the Romans, they got disappointed and said that's not the Messiah we want. Right? I mean he has all the qualities of a Messiah, but the most important quality of delivering us from our enemies, and when he submitted himself to them and gave his life, he said that's not it.

He's not what we want. Right? So when he talks about the authority, he says you're waiting for authority to come and deliver you, he said Jesus has overcome the authorities. Because the authority that he's overcoming, right, which I'll explain in a little bit. So in a physical sense he's overcome, he's triumphed over them because he didn't knock them out of power, but Christianity is spreading like wildfire.

And it didn't happen the day he was crucified, but in 250 years Rome becomes a Christian nation. Right? Rome is completely converted to Christianity. It becomes the base of the gospel, eventually. And then the Judaizers, I mean the Jews basically get conquered by the Romans, they get destroyed, and then Christianity basically takes over that area.

So physically, the principalities, those who are in authority, they're overthrown. But obviously there's a deeper meaning than that. There's a spiritual battle going on. Those who had authority over them, the demonic powers, they're also triumphed and displayed. And they no longer have authority over us because he delivers us.

He made public display of them, having triumphed over them through him. One of the questions that came up was the word "through him." Can somebody with the NIV read that part again? Okay, so in the NIV it says "by the cross." Okay? NIV has gone a step further because that's not what the Greek text says.

The Greek text is "altos," which basically means "himself." So the NASB just left it alone. Or another way to translate it is "not himself, but itself." So NIV has gone the extra step and said, "Oh, this means the cross." So it could mean the cross. But the meaning behind that is not crystal clear, but most likely it's referring to the cross.

Most likely it's referring to the cross, the way he did it, because that's what he says previously. And all of this ultimately pointing to what Christ has done. Okay, like I said, there's so much in this text, and it's hard for me to just kind of linger on any one particular point, but every single one of these things are so rich.

And you'll see that everything that he says in every verse, Paul expands it, expounds on it in much more detail in some other part of Scripture. You could probably find at least a chapter on each one of these lines in the Book of Romans. Okay, so I'm going to leave it to you to take some time to discuss with your group, but the significance behind all of this is, again, that we've been delivered, that our sins have been forgiven, and if we didn't earn our salvation, you can't lose your salvation.

But all of this based upon if you have genuine faith. It doesn't require faith to come to church, right? Non-Christians can come to church. It doesn't require faith to be generous. Non-Christians are generous too. It doesn't require faith to be kind. There's plenty of non-Christians who are kind. It doesn't require faith to be disciplined.

Plenty of people are disciplined. It doesn't require faith to study the Bible, right? It doesn't. It doesn't require faith to be a Bible scholar. You can do all of that without faith. But true hope in Christ can only be had by faith. True hope, not wishful thinking. But true hope, true hope that changes our perspective on everything, that causes us to live for eternal values.

Only a person who genuinely believes that will pursue that. So people without faith can pursue church, be kind, study the Bible, maybe even teach the Bible, even lead small group without faith. But only those who have genuine faith are their sins truly forgiven. And those whose sins are forgiven have hope in Christ.

Now, none of this is new. You've heard this many, many times. But at the core of our connection to God is faith. All this was given to us. So superficially, if you don't have faith, you may look at that and say, "Great! Salvation is free. Jesus is awesome. I love the people at church.

Why not?" And you can do all that without faith. But only because it is a gift of God and everything hinges upon this faith. Because everything that he's talking about here, deliverance, forgiveness of sins, all authority under his power, hope in Christ, all of that was just given to us.

It was just given to us freely. But there's only one thing that causes us, there's only one door that causes us to tap into all of that. It's faith. So if this faith, that's why Jesus said, "If you have a faith of a mustard seed, you could move mountains." Because it's this faith that connects us to this God.

So the power is not in this faith, but the faith is the door that gets us to God. So if we don't have genuine faith, you can pretend. You can do Bible study. You can work hard. You can have fellowship in the church. You can be generous. You can be kind.

You can do all of that. But everything that Jesus is talking about here and having hope in Christ and being delivered from this bondage of sin, all of that is this faith. So how important is it that we have absolute assurance that we have this faith? I mean, it's crucial.

And I think that's where sometimes we miss the point in discipleship, in church, evangelism, and all of these things, because we've become good at doing church with very little faith to no faith. So as great as all of this is, the fundamental question that we have to ask ourselves is, do I have this faith that connects me to all this?

So the first question in our discussion, or at least the second question, let me start with this. No. Actually, let me just go through the questions. Can someone who has no evidence of circumcision of the heart claim assurance of salvation? Why or why not? That's pretty clear, right? What do you think is the practical amplification of salvation by faith versus salvation by works for those who truly believe?

We can automatically think, well, if you give salvation by faith and not by works, isn't that going to lead to lawlessness? I mean, it's given to you. I mean, you can't, you didn't earn your salvation, so you can't lose your salvation. So I can do whatever I want. I may feel guilty about it, but it doesn't affect my salvation.

Can that cause licentiousness in the church? Does it? So that's my question. And I'm going to give you the answer so you don't go off tangent and spend 30 minutes in wrong doctrine. It does not if you really believe. Yes. Because that's what, that's what is recited in the New Testament.

Right. So there's a difference between having no faith and having little faith. So disciples were constantly rebuked for having little faith. And so that little faith is what caused them, even in fear and they're running and denying Jesus, when all of those people, again, John 6, 66, when people turned away because they couldn't handle what Jesus was saying, Jesus turns around and says, "Are you going to leave to the disciples?

Where are we going to go? We don't understand you, but you have the words of truth." And so that little faith is what caused them to continue in their faith. So when we say, "I believe, help my unbelief," meaning I want greater faith. I do believe, but I want greater faith.

But that's a distinction between somebody who doesn't believe at all. Oh, so the question was, if faith is what causes us to be connected to this great God that we see here, like why do we pray, "I believe, but help my unbelief." Like, you know, it's like, "I don't believe, but help me to believe." You know what I mean?

So that was the question. So I think that's a very good question, right? Because it does make a, there is a distinction between having little faith versus having no faith. Third, in what way was the record of your sins hostile towards you? In what way have you been delivered from this hostility?

What is the, obviously the evidence is the Holy Spirit, but what is the evidence of the Holy Spirit tangibly in our life? Okay? Let me pray for us, and then I'll let you guys have time in your small group. Heavenly Father, we ask for your blessing over our time, and I pray for our small groups, Lord God, now that you would help us to be open and honest, help us to wrestle with the text that we've studied, and we ask, Lord God, that your word would bear deep roots in our lives, in our hearts, and help us to grow in appreciation of what you have done.

And all that is written here, Lord God, will not simply add more knowledge to our minds, but it would renew our hearts, Lord God, to know this is what you've done for us. You've delivered us while we were dead in our trespasses. You've canceled our debt. I pray, Father, that all of this would cause us to give our lives as a living sacrifice, which is a reasonable response that you ask.

We thank you in Jesus' name we pray, amen.