Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2605
“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, has He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His Cross.” Colossians 2:13,14.
IT tends to excite gratitude in our hearts if we remember what the Lord has done for us. It is not wrong for us to think of all that we still need from God, but it would be exceedingly ungrateful if we were to forget what we have already received. By far the greater part of salvation is already ours and though, in some respects, we have not yet attained, neither are already perfect, yet in other respects we are complete in Christ Jesus. If we are truly believers in Christ, we are already saved—we are not merely in a salvable state, but we have really obtained salvation. In Christ we are delivered from the curse of the Law of God and we have an eternal inheritance already secured to us. I must not dwell on that blessed theme. I only mention it, in passing, to remind you that it encourages our gratitude if we remember what the Lord has done for us.
It also stimulates us to hope for more blessings in the future. It puts a keener edge upon our prayers and helps us to plead with greater confidence, for we feel that, inasmuch as God has already given us so much and done so much for us, He will perfect that which concerns us, and will not forget the work of His own hands. The remembrance of what the Lord has done for us is also quite sure to inflame our love. We cannot be cold-hearted if we continue to remember God’s goodness to us. We must be glad in the Lord and, with that gladness, there must come fervent love to Him who has worked all these things on our behalf and brought us into the blessed estate of those who are saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation!
This morning, [Sermon #1744, Volume 39—Where the “If Lies”] I talked to those who were seeking the Savior. They had their turn, then, so now I am going to speak to those who have found the Lord. Ah, dear Friends, how precious He is to you! I want you to see what He has done for you—what God the everlasting Father has done for you through Jesus Christ His Son—that you may come and sit at His feet in adoring love and feel your hearts burn within you as you meditate upon the riches of His amazing Grace. Our text speaks of two things which God has done for us through Christ Jesus. First, there is the removal of the death within us: “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, has He quickened together with Christ, having forgiven you all trespasses.” The second thing is the removal of the handwriting which was against us. This we have in the 14th verse. “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His Cross.”
Before I come to the subject of my discourse, I want every child of God whom I am addressing to feel, “The preacher’s talk is to be about me and about what Christ has done for me,” for, remember, dear Friends, that the work of Christ is as distinctly on behalf of each Believer as if he were the only object of Divine Love in the whole universe! And while it is true that Christ’s work concerns all His people—and it is a very great comfort that it is so—yet it is also true that it concerns each one of His people and it is all the property of each one. I want you, just now, to eat your own morsel, to claim your own portion and to take home to your own heart what God has given to you by a Covenant of salt, and so given it to you that it can never be taken from you!
I. First, then, the Lord has done this for all of us who believe in Him—HE HAS REMOVED OUR INWARD SPIRITUAL DEATH.
Turn to the text to see what this death was. “You being dead in your sins.” We were all, then—the regenerate as well as the rest of mankind—“dead in trespasses and sins.” What kind of death was this? Certainly it was not physical death. We lived, moved and had our being. We exercised our wills and did as we pleased in our enmity and opposition to God. The Lord does not treat men as if they were sticks and stones, nor does He ever regard them as such. They are alive, and when they sin, they sin most sadly of their own accord.
Neither was our death a mental death, for the ungodly can think as well as others, and they have all the powers of reason unless, indeed, they have dulled and destroyed them by certain forms of sin which produce that result. Alas, there are some of the most acute minds in the world that are not reconciled to God. The men are alive enough as to their minds, yet they are truly said to be dead! I could almost wish, for some people, that it wasa mental death rather than the kind of death they have, since now the quickness of their intellect only helps them to increase their guilt and to multiply the reasons for their condemnation.