Here is another in my series on Colossians. This one points out that there is no middle ground when it comes to God: you are either on His side or not. It also explores the terminology of us being “enemies of God”. I thought it was a pretty powerful sermon.
Standard disclaimer: this is the first draft, so there may be typos and things that were cut out in the presentation.
Col 1:21-23
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation- 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
NIV
A line drawn in the sand.
I’m sure that you can picture the scene. The speaker gets up and speaks to the colonists all gathered together in the middle of the town square. He tells all the townspeople that they have to make a decision: they will either be loyal to the King and Parliament or they will side with the Patriots. He takes out his saber and draws a line in the sand telling the people that they have to choose a side: they can either side with the patriots or the crown. They can choose either side, but they can not sit out of the fight, they have to pick one or the other.
In another century it was the War Between the States that required people to choose a side, especially in border states like Kentucky. Those caught in the middle had to choose whether they were going to sympathize with the South or the North, and often the decision they made determined whether or not their house was burned to the ground. A friend was telling me about his great-grandmother who had two sons, one who fought for the North, one for the South. When soldiers would ride up and demand to know where her sympathies were she would pull out the tintype of whichever son was on the right side.
Even in our own day we see occasions where the choice has to be made as to which side to be on. In the rousing speech that President Bush made after September 11th he pretty much told the world that they would have to choose whether to support the United States or to support the terrorist. He drew a line in the sand saying, “You are either for us or against us.” He was making it very clear that in the global war on terror there could be no neutral countries: you were either fighting to end terrorism or working to help terrorism. In a sense he was drawing a line in the sand and challenging the nations of the world to get on one side or the other.
In today’s scripture we see the same line drawn in the sand on a cosmic scale. Essentially God has drawn a line right down the middle of the universe and said to every created being: “You are either for me or against me.” The choice is simple and clear: you are either on God’s side or you are opposed to him. According to the bible there are only two spiritual states that you can be in: God’s side or the devil’s side.
Oh, but this is not what the world would have us believe. The world teaches us that there are many spiritual choices and our Age of Tolerance insists that the highest thought that we can have is that all choices are equally valid. The world sees the spiritual battle more like a pie chart with a multitude of different areas that we can all be safely reside in, with all choices leading to safety in the end. If you ask someone what heaven is like they will tell you that it is whatever you want it to be. Most people honestly think that there will be one heaven for Christians, another for Muslims, another for Buddhists, nothing for atheists, and for those who worship the Great Chicken God there will be an eternal Coop in the Sky. Instead of a line in the sand there are many lines going to many different places depending on what you want it to be. The world teaches that truth is relative and that reality depends on the observer: it’s a “both/and” kind of world where two people with radically different views can both be right.
But the bible describes the universe in “either/or” terms: you are either on God’s side, or you are not. Jesus describes two gates that lead to two roads that lead to two destinations: eternal life or eternal death. Jesus said, in Matthew 12:30 “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” He describes the final judgment as being a time when the Shepherd will stand with his rod in hand, dividing all the world into two camps: you will either be a sheep or a goat. In the end every single person will either have their name in the Lamb’s Book of Life or not, they will enter into eternal life or eternal death, they will go to Heaven or Hell. There is no third way, there is no other name under heaven by which a man can be saved, there are no other options.
The world might not like this kind of rhetoric, but in light of the bible, it only makes sense. There are many people who believe in multiple gods: the Hindus have millions of gods in their religion. People in general like to have choices, which is why Speedway offers a dozen different kinds of soda in their fountains. If it were true that there were many different kinds of gods then it would make sense that there would be many different kinds of ways to be saved. But if the bible is true, this can not be. The bible says clearly that there is only one God, the God of the bible. And when you really think about it, that only makes sense. If there was more than one god then those gods would not be supreme, it would mean that there are other gods above them, all leading to the one Creator God. So, there is one God, the God of the bible, and he offers us only one name under heaven by which we can be saved: His one and only Son Jesus Christ.
Thus, it all boils down to this: we are either saved by Jesus Christ or we are not. The line is drawn in the sand of the universe and we have to determine which side we are going to be on: God’s side, or the side of the enemy of God.
Now, here’s the thing. The bible is very clear that if you are not saved by Jesus Christ that you are an enemy of God. Did you hear that? It says that you are an ENEMY of God. That sounds pretty harsh, doesn’t it? In fact, if you are here today and you are not a Christian you might take offense at that terminology. Most agnostics and atheists would insist that they don’t hate God or anything, they just haven’t chosen to make God their savior. They would swear that they are neutral towards God, not hostile.
But that’s not the way that the bible sees it. Consider our scripture today: 21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. Every single one of us, before we were saved, were “alienated from God” and were “enemies in your minds” of God. That sounds very extreme, but in biblical terms we are either friends of God or enemies of God; we are either reconciled to God or we are alienated from God. Unless we are saved by Jesus, we are enemies of God: listen to these verses that describe our condition in this way:
Eph 2:12
12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.
Paul, writing to the Ephesians says that when we were separate from Christ we were without hope and without God.
John 3:19-21
19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
John speaks of those who love the darkness of sin and evil. Those who do evil are not just apathetic towards God, described here as the light: it says that they HATE the light.
John 15:18-19
18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
Here Jesus is telling the disciples that if the world hates them for their faith in Jesus it is only because the world HATES Jesus. The world does not just have a differing opinion of Jesus, it actually HATES him: it’s either love Jesus or hate him.
John 15:24-25
24 If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’
Again Jesus describes the two sides: those who have rejected Jesus have hated both him and the father, and for no reason.
And lest you think that these feelings only go one-way, the bible shows that God does not like the evil-doer either:
Psalm 5: 5 The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.
To sum it up: anyone who has not been reconciled to God through Jesus hates God and God hates them. “How can that be,” you might exclaim “God is a God of love, he wouldn’t consider us his enemies.” Well, here’s the thing: the reason that we are enemies of God is for one reason and one reason only: because of our sins.
It’s not that God hates us: of course he loves us, he created us. But he can not stand our sin, it is a loathsome thing to him and because of it we are in a state of war with God. When we sin against God we are stepping across to the side of the line in the sand that is opposed to God. Since God is so perfect and holy he can not stand to be in our presence when we are steeped in sin, and when we sin we are making ourselves enemies of God.
Imagine if your beloved dog came home after being missing for a week. No doubt you would want to pet it and hug it, glad that it is safe and sound. However, imagine that your dog came home after being missing for a week and you quickly discovered that during its week of freedom it lived in a garbage dump and had somehow tangled with a skunk and reeked to the high heavens. You might love your dog and be glad that it is back home, but the smell would be enough for you to push it away.
In the same way, God loves us and wants us to be with him forever, but our sins are like a horrible stench that God can not stand. So long as we are covered by our sins we are enemies of God. Verse 21 shows us why we were alienated from God and enemies of him: because of our evil behavior. It’s not that God doesn’t love us, it’s that he can’t stand our sin.
Now, here is the exciting part of the Gospel story. Even though we are enemies with God, he provided a way for us to be reconciled to him. The world reconciled means that we have been brought back into friendship with God. How can we be brought back into a friendship with God? Well, if it was our sin that was keeping us from God then it stands to reason that we will have to have that sin removed in order for us to be able to come into his presence. To use my illustration of your dog who ran into the skunk: the dog can not come back into the house until someone goes out and gives the dog a bath, cleaning him up enough to be able for us to stand to be in his presence.
In our case, it is our sin that stinks, so someone has to come and wash us clean of our sins so that we can come before a holy God who can not stand sin. That person was Jesus Christ, who came to the earth to take our place on the cross, paying for our sins so that we can come before God as sinless creatures. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation-
Our sins make us enemies of Christ, but Jesus offers us the option of letting him take all of our sins to the cross, nailing them there with his physical body. All of our sins: past, present and future; taking them away once and for all. To stick with my military analogy, we can go from being enemies of God to enlisting in his service. When we enlist in God’s service through Jesus he presents us to God completely free of sin: without blemish and free from accusation. When God comes to review those who are his side he sees us as perfect, sinless creatures. Not because we have lived perfect lives, but because Jesus bore our sins to the cross and paid the penalty that we owe.
Earlier when I said that those who are in their sins hate God and God hates them I mentioned that you probably recoil at the thought of that, since God is love. Yet God hates sin: this is how God shows his love for us. Not by ignoring our sin or compromising his holiness, but by sending Jesus to remove our sins if we were willing to enlist on his side. Everyone’s favorite verse, John 3:16, tells us that God so LOVED the world that he sent Jesus to die on the cross so that we would not have to perish but could have eternal life. If God had not sent Jesus every single human who ever lived would have to be sent to hell, but God loved us enough to give us another option.
1 John 4:8-10
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God hates sin, but he loves us enough to send his son to die for us. And notice the order here: it’s not that we first loved God, no, he loved us first and proved it by sending Jesus.
When people think of hell they complain that God is a wrathful God. Well, in a way he is: God is completely wrathful against sin and evil and will one day destroy all sin. Anyone who has sin in their life will be sent to hell because God can not stand sin. Yes, he hates sin. But he loves us, so he sent Jesus so that our sin could be removed so that we could live forever.
When we were in our sins we were enemies of God. But God loves us enough that he sent Jesus to remove our sins long before we ever asked him to: Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We did not earn God’s love by our good behavior: no, Christ died for us when we were still sinners.
Jesus is our peacemaker: we could not come to God because our sins made us his enemy. God would not come to us because our sins were so loathsome to him. We were at a stalemate. And then Jesus stepped in, taking away our sins so that we could be brought together with God. Ephesian 2:14-16 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
So, the line is drawn in the sand. If you are still in your sins, you are an enemy of God. The only way you can be saved is by enlisting in God’s army through faith in Jesus Christ.
But there is one more thing. Remember, there are only two options that you have in this spiritual war: you are either on God’s side or you are not. Everyone one of us begins on the other side from God, since we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Some of us obey the plan of salvation and enlist in God’s side by allowing Jesus to take their sins to the cross. In doing so you cross from the side of God’s enemies to become a friend of God.
So, where are you if you go AWOL? AWOL is a military term that means “Absent Without Leave.” It is used to describe a person who has deserted an army and it is a very serious crime in the military. There are few things that are worse than being a deserter. Once you are enlisted in an army you are expected to stick with that army until you are honorably discharged; deserting the army once you enlist is a kind of treason. If you enlist in the U.S. Army, especially in wartime, and then leave the army you are basically making yourself an enemy of the United States.
What, then, do you think happens to a person who has left the army of the devil and enlisted in the army of God, if they then go AWOL, abandoning their faith and returning back to the sin that once made them an enemy of God? What side of the line in the sand are they on?
There are many people who will tell you that once you are enlisted in God’s army that you can never go AWOL. But the bible does not support this. Just the opposite, really. If we have had our sins removed by Jesus it is a MUCH greater offense to return back to those sins than to have had the sins in the first place. If we go AWOL from God’s army by returning to our sin it is like our skunky dog getting a bath and then going outside and rolling in the mud.
Listen carefully to our scripture today, especially verse 23: 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation- 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.
We have been reconciled to God through Christ IF you continue in your faith. Remember, there are not three options, there are only two. If you are enlisted in God’s army and then leave, your only choice is to step back across that line to the devil’s side. This should NEVER happen; it should horrify us to think about returning to a life of sin if we have truly understood that the Son of God died on the cross to take away our sins in the first place. It would be better if we had never enlisted in God’s army than to go AWOL.
Hebrews 6:4-6
4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6 if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
And yet this happens frequently: people who once stated that they believed in Jesus, who confessed his name, who claimed to have repented of their sins, who have been baptized in his name: these same people who have enlisted in God’s army go AWOL by returning to a life of sin and rebellion against God.
If you are one of these people, a backslider who has tasted the goodness of God and then returned to your sin, let me tell you what side of the line you are on: the wrong side.
Paul in this passage of Colossians describes the line in the sand and makes it clear that there are only two sides to this line: God’s side and the devil’s side.
If you have never made Jesus your Lord and Savior then you are on the wrong side. You are an enemy of God because of your sin and you will never be able to stand in the presence of God in your current state. That means that when God returns to bring everything into his will you will be discarded because of your sins.
However, God loved the world enough that he made a way for our sins to be removed so that we could live with him forever as a sinless, unblemished creation. He sent Jesus to the earth to die on the cross for our sins. When we enlist in God’s army through our baptism in Jesus Christ he makes peace between us and God by presenting us to God as a sinless creature.
You are either on God’s side or you are his enemy. You are either for him or against him. If you once made a decision for Christ but are living a life of sin then you are an AWOL Christian. There is still time for you to come back to God, confessing your sins and repenting of them. 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
So, where are you today? The line is drawn through eternity. Jesus has made it possible for you to be on God’s side by taking your sins to the cross. Have you enlisted in God’s side? Are you still an enemy of God? Are you AWOL by going back to your sins? Only you and God know the answer to this question, and only you can make things right today. But make sure that before you leave this world and it’s too late that you know for sure that you are on God’s side.
Here’s how you can be sure:
Believe
Confess
Repent
Be baptized
Continue in the faith.
