We are continuing the series, "The Hope of Glory," smack dab in the middle of chapter 2. Now, to kind of set the stage, last week we looked at verses 8 through 15, and we recognized, and I admitted up front, there was just too much in those verses to unpack it all in one week. And so we worked our way through the first part of that passage and knew that we had left some of it for today. So before we jump into today's text, we want to remember where we were. Paul starts out in verse 8 warning them not to be taken captive to any sort of empty philosophy, anything that would lead them away from the truth of the gospel and the sufficiency of Christ. So he starts out with that negative warning, and then he flips the switch and he starts telling them why they don't have to look for anything outside of Jesus. And he starts regaling them with everything that they've received in Christ, specifically in their union with Christ. It's not an exhaustive list, but he hits on some of the major points. And so it's that unpacking, that bullet point that he's working through of the things we've received in union with Christ that we're picking up again this morning.
So if you look with me now, Colossians 2, we're going to start at verse 8 and read all the way to the end of verse 15, and we'll concentrate on the last part of the passage. Hear the word of the Lord. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you 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. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him, in Christ. God's holy word, may you write its truth upon our hearts.
Lord, In the same way that we were desperately needy for your Spirit to cause us to be born again, to make us alive in Christ, we are needy for your Spirit now to minister to us through your Word. Lord, we don't want to hope right now in sermon preparation. We don't want to hope in the ability of microphones to amplify sound. We don't want to hope in our ability to concentrate. We want to hope in the sweet sufficiency of your word, in the promise that your Spirit works and moves powerfully in the preaching of your word. We pray that in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.
Well, it was one of those weeks for me. We will have a little bit of a scaled-back PowerPoint for you this morning because I was watching Lincoln and Sadie while Hannah was out at the ladies' care group for our care group, and literally about 2 minutes before I was going to put Lincoln to bed, I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water, not knowing Sadie had brought her own cup of water into the living room. And taking my time drinking my water, I came back into the living room to find Lincoln celebrating at the coffee table, splashing in the water. He was excited. He had thrown all the water over the coffee table and over my computer. And so there was that moment of panic. I freaked out. I grabbed the computer. I tipped it upside down. I tried to vacuum it out, all to no avail. The computer was fried. 40% of the sermon already done was lost. So it was one of those weeks building up to this.
So when I prayed just a moment ago at the outset, that's something I want to hope in this morning, but we should always hope in, is not that our computer is going to sustain us, right? Not that the technology is going to be there so the PowerPoint works correctly. That we would hope in God's power to be present here right now.
Part of what we see in Colossians 2 is that we hope exclusively in Christ because we know, as Ephesians tells us, as Colossians tells us, as all the New Testament tells us, God meets every need we have, not just Sunday mornings, but every day through His Son Jesus Christ. Our spiritual needs are met there.
6 · Oswald narrows the focus to verses 13-14 and identifies the first benefit of union with Christ: believers have been made alive
This morning, as we look specifically at verses 13 and 14 of this passage, we continue to see the way that God fully meets our needs in our union with Christ. The next thing he shows us as he walks us through our union with Christ in verse 13 is that we have been made alive in Christ. He's been walking us through the infinite benefits of our union with Christ, but in order to set the stage for that, he wants us to truly appreciate it. So verse 13, he starts out giving us a really devastating indictment of our condition outside of union with Christ. Does that make sense? As he continues explaining our union, he pauses for a moment and takes us back before that union. In verse 13 he says, "And you," it's a plural, "you all who were dead in your trespasses, in the uncircumcision of your flesh." He describes unbelievers as dead in their trespasses.
7 · Oswald addresses the apparent tension between Paul's claim that unbelievers are dead and the observable reality that unbelievers often appear to be thriving
When we look around us, that doesn't necessarily seem to jive with reality. If you, if you look at unbelieving neighbors or coworkers or family members, most of them seem to be alive. Not only do they seem to be alive, a lot of them appear to be thriving, right? They have healthy bodies, flourishing families, Maybe their careers are going well. If you were to ask them, "How would you describe yourself?" you'd probably be a little taken aback if your neighbor said, "I feel like death." Right? It wouldn't be the pleasantry you'd expect in the exchange at the mailbox. It's the last thing you'd expect them to say. But in the category that matters more than any other category, Paul's assessment is tragically accurate. Outside of the saving grace of Christ, unbelievers are dead in the most devastatingly imaginable way. Spiritually. Spiritually, they are devoid of life. That is Paul's point. Not that they are merely sick, not that they're a little bit short of 100%, not that they're having an off day or an off month. No, he says they are dead.
8 · Oswald makes a doctrinal assertion about the nature of spiritual death: unbelievers are not only oblivious to their condition but utterly powerless to remedy it
You were dead before Christ. Before union with Christ, you were blind to Christ's beauty. You were deaf to the gospel's truth. You were as oblivious to your true state and plight as a corpse is to its own lack of life. Outside of salvation in Christ, people are, spiritually speaking, The walking dead. Spiritual zombies aren't just oblivious to their dead state, they're powerless. They're utterly impotent to change that state on their own.
9 · Oswald turns to Ephesians 2:1-3 as a parallel passage to Colossians 2:13, using Paul's language there to deepen the exposition
Ephesians 2 is very similar to Colossians 2. They mirror each other. So listen to how Ephesians 2 mirrors our text this morning. It starts out and says, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked." You were following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. Verse 2 captures the image really well. You were driven by the needs of your dead flesh. It's not this sense where we're being dragged along kicking and screaming. Paul lays it out in Ephesians and in Colossians. Before Christ, we lived in the passions of our flesh. We were driven by the desires of our dead hearts. He says in Ephesians 2, you carried out the desires of your body and mind. You did exactly what you wanted to be doing. But what you wanted to be doing, while it might have looked like life, was spiritual death. We were willing captives. It's brutally honest. It's a crushing assessment.
10 · Oswald completes the exegetical move from death to life, showing how Paul's description of spiritual death sets up the announcement that God made believers alive in Christ
But it sets the table for the announcement of Colossians 2:13. And you who were dead, God made alive. He made you alive together with Christ. Union with Christ brings with it the reality you've been made alive in Christ. What Paul's talking about is regeneration. The Spirit creating new life. Made spiritually alive with Jesus, the one that the Father made alive in every sense through the resurrection. He's carrying that image. Remember last week, last couple weeks, we've talked about that nature of of being baptized with Christ, right? That sense of dying with Him and being raised with Him. Paul's carrying forward that sense. God has made you alive in Christ in the same way He made Christ alive.
11 · Oswald makes a doctrinal assertion about the nature of regeneration: it is a sovereign act of God in which the spiritually dead person is totally passive
And our spiritual resurrection is like Christ's in that it's an action performed by the sovereign power of God. We were dead. That means you are totally and utterly passive in your own regeneration. Have you ever thought about regeneration that way? What Paul is saying here is that the active agent in your regeneration, in your heart coming to life, It's not you laying on the table spiritually dead and then zapping yourself to life. It's you laying on the table spiritually dead and God coming along and making you alive, taking the paddles of the Spirit, placing it on your chest, and creating life.
12 · Oswald explains the theological mechanism of regeneration: God implants new desires that were not present in the dead heart
Faith springs in our hearts because in regeneration God implants new desires that have never been there before. Ephesians 2 talks about doing the desires of our mind and our body and our dead flesh. Now we see desires through regeneration in Christ totally contrary to our previous impulses. God has made us alive. God alone. No assistance from our clinically dead hearts. Implants desires to love God, desires to worship God, desires to be made like Jesus.
13 · Oswald turns to Ezekiel 37:5-6 to illustrate the doctrine of regeneration
Ezekiel has that famous vision, right? The valley of dry bones. It's a perfect illustration for what Paul is talking about here. In Ezekiel 37, he has this vision before the Lord of this huge valley, and it's this This massive valley, and it's filled with bones. He goes on to say they're not just bones, they're dry bones. These are bones that have been long dead. This is what the Lord says, verse 5: Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD. The valley of dry bones will be made alive, and it will know that God was the one who did it. That's regeneration. That's being made alive in Christ. It's a miracle! A valley of death becomes a horde of Christ-consumed worshipers on mission for His glory and His kingdom.
14 · Oswald critiques the popular misunderstanding of 'born again' as a self-applied category or descriptor rather than a sovereign miracle of God
One of the typical ways of referring to that is being born again, right? That's what being born again is. It's a biblical term. It's a biblical concept. Unfortunately, today, unbiblical meaning has been placed into that idea. The idea of being born again sometimes gets treated more as just a description you give to yourself. Well, what does it mean to be born again? Well, it just means I classify myself as a born-again Christian, as this type of believer, right? It's just a description. That's what being born again is all about. You see that when Barna and Pew and these companies do polls and they go out and they poll people, they're looking for descriptors and categories. And so born again, according to that definition, is just a category in which to place people. It gets divorced from its real meaning. And so they accumulate their statistics and they conclude born again Christians, as they would describe it, get divorced, and incur debt at the same rates as non-Christians. They do all these things that non-Christians would do, but the category of born again does them at the same levels. A quarter of them, according to Barna, these described born again Christians, will go to heaven because they're good people. You start to see the problem. With the term. Barna says they consider themselves born again, if asked, because they made a decision or a commitment.
15 · Oswald asserts the biblical definition of 'born again' in polemical contrast to the popular misunderstanding
But Barna and its pollsters have the idea backwards. That's what Colossians 2 shows us. What makes someone born again? Because they fit a category? Because they self-describe that way? Because they know the insider language to use? No, a sovereign God has worked a miracle in their hearts. That's why they're born again. You're born again because God has turned a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. In the words of Colossians 2, you've had your heart circumcised by the Holy Spirit. You're born again because the Spirit has ripped the scales from your eyes, and for the first time you behold the soul-satisfying majesty and splendor and beauty, the eternal worth of Jesus Christ.
16 · Oswald draws the necessary implication of genuine regeneration: those truly born again will live differently—not perfectly, but on an unmistakable trajectory toward Christlikeness
When that happens, you can't help but look and behave differently than the spiritually dead people around you. That's not to say that Christians are perfect. Christians aren't perfect, but they are no longer enslaved. Christians aren't completely holy, but they are on an unmistakable trajectory towards Christlikeness because they've been born again. Not because they self-describe as born again, but because God has worked through the power of His Spirit a miracle and taken a dead heart an enslaved heart and made it alive and made it free.
17 · Oswald applies the doctrine of regeneration by asking the congregation whether they desire to see God work this miracle on a large scale—what he calls revival
The question then becomes, when we read the story of Ezekiel's vision in chapter 37 of that book, do we hunger to see something like that happen? Do we want to see dead bones come to life? Let's put it another way. Do you want to see revival? I don't mean revival here either in the popular sense. I don't mean revival in this idea like you might have people barking or uncontrollably laughing or convulsing because of the Spirit's power. That's not the heart of revival. I mean revival like Ezekiel envisioned it. I mean revival like Paul describes it here. The heart of revival— you know where revival starts? It starts with a miraculous, sovereign work of God upon a dead human heart. The spring of revival is regeneration.
18 · Oswald appeals to the theology of Jonathan Edwards and the First Great Awakening to establish that the heart of revival is regeneration and justification, not charismatic phenomena
Edwards and the other pastors and theologians of the First Great Awakening talked about the fact that they understood the power of regeneration and the reality of justification and saw that as the heart and spirit of revival. If you want to see revival happen, and you should want to see revival happen, if you want to see an outpouring of the Spirit and power, if you want to see the intensifying of our affections for Christ, people who love Christ more today than they did yesterday or last week or last year, if you want to see people who have an unquenchable thirst for communion with God, for knowing God and experiencing His reality and His life and His power, people who are being nourished by the Word of God, people who are experiencing remarkable growth in holiness, If we desire biblical notions of revival, we will treasure the God-induced miracle of regeneration. That's where it starts. That's where it begins. There's no revival without it.
19 · Oswald makes a series of doctrinal assertions about the absolute necessity of regeneration for every aspect of Christian life
And when you think about it, there's no spiritual growth without regeneration. There's no fellowship without regeneration. There's no worship without regeneration. There's no body of Christ, there's no people sitting in these seats without regeneration.
20 · Oswald applies the doctrine of God's sovereignty in regeneration to prayer
I want revival like Ezekiel pictures it. I want revival like Paul describes, the Spirit moving in power in these churches. Not necessarily a bunch of decisions or altar calls or Not people praying special prayers, but to see God sovereignly and powerfully and undeniably laying hold of people's hearts. Changing what they love and changing what they live for. Changing what they would die for. And because that's the way revival comes, comes, it means it's something we pray for, not something we manipulate. Desire for revival and recognition of God's sovereignty in regeneration, that He makes us alive in Christ, that should stir up prayerfulness. We're made alive because we are invaded by God's irresistible That should stoke the fire of prayerfulness. I want to see that happen. I want to see God here and present. And that happens initially as He lays hold of hearts. And so we cry out to God that He would do just that.
21 · Oswald turns to John 3 and the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus to make the critical point that religious people need regeneration as much as irreligious people
And here's the thing. Religious people, religious people need regeneration and revival as much as irreligious people. The first time we see the notion of being born again in Scripture, the first time those words are used, where is it? John 3. Born again. Jesus is talking to a man. Who is the man? It's Nicodemus. It's not coincidental that Nicodemus is a religious man, a spiritual leader, a leader of God's people, but one that Jesus informs needs to be born again. It means we can't assume that being baptized or a church member or a care group leader or a pastor automatically means you're redeemed. That you were regenerated. Any more than in Paul's day being circumcised guaranteed you were regenerated. Think of it this way, most of the brood of vipers that Jesus refers to in the Gospels, right, you know, the brood of vipers, the whitewashed tombs, they're religious people. Who are still spiritually dead. But God makes things that are dead alive in His Son.
22 · Oswald signals a shift from the first benefit of union with Christ (being made alive) to the second benefit (being made debt-free)
Next, as we continue working through that, He shows us that in union with His Son He makes us debt-free in Christ.
23 · Oswald uses the experience of financial debt—especially deep, crushing debt—to prepare the congregation to understand the spiritual debt metaphor in Colossians 2:14
Now, most people in this room are probably in some level of financial debt. For those of you who aren't, congratulations, that's a great place to be at. Completely outside of debt. But most of us probably have a mortgage or a car payment or school loans. Some of you might even have credit card debt. Some of you might have a combination of all of those. Whatever the level or the circumstances of that debt, there is a psychological cost to it, isn't there? Especially when you're really in debt. The Bible warns us about being deeply in debt. Part of the reason it warns us is because there is an unmistakable cost to us when we are deeply over our heads in debt. I was talking with a guy recently. He told me not only did they have a bunch of school loans for a degree he never finished and car payments and all that stuff, they had over $30,000 in credit card debt. And in talking with him, you could just sense the way he was oppressed by the debt. It just clung to him. Deep debt is a horrible feeling. It gnaws at you. You're trying to fall asleep at night, it keeps you awake. It can be this feeling you're trapped under the massive burden. You feel like you're not going to be able to get out. Even those people There's some who just try to ignore deep debt. This would have been one of those guys, the guy that was $30,000 in credit card debt. He basically admitted, "We just tried to ignore it for the longest time, but at the end of the day, there came a point where we had to face up to it." As the phrase goes, "Eventually you have to pay the piper." And so as much as he tried to ignore the debt, it still came knocking.
24 · Oswald begins the exposition of Colossians 2:14, explaining the Roman background of the 'record of debt' metaphor
Our union with Christ brings forgiveness, and that reality is possible, Paul shows us, because our debts are wiped clean in Christ. That's what verse 14 tells us happens. By God canceling the record of debt that stands against us with its legal demands, He sets it aside, Paul says. He nails it to the cross. Now, the imagery he uses is this idea of a record of debt. A record of debt. It's a Roman version of an IOU. It's a legal note, and it officially details all the liability and financial obligations that somebody owed. So it's this document that lists all the things that have been purchased on credit. That the person has to pay back.
25 · Oswald develops the cultural background of the IOU, explaining how it functioned in an honor-based culture where signing your name created a binding obligation
It wasn't that long ago, I mean, I don't know that most people use IOUs anymore. An IOU is really only effective when you have a culture that has a high honor system. So a couple hundred years ago, it wasn't uncommon for someone to lend something to someone else, and all they would require in return was an IOU. You'd write a slip of paper, "I went up to Joshua," "he gave me $1,000 for this, I owe him $1,000 and will pay by this date," and you would sign your name. And it was understood by writing that little piece of paper, the IOU was worth something. People would honor those IOUs. That's the practice similar to what Paul refers to. If you borrowed something, you wrote that note, you signed your name, you committed yourself to repay it.
26 · Oswald completes the exegetical move from Roman financial debt to spiritual debt
Colossians 2 has the same situation playing out, but here the debt is to God. Paul envisions every person signing an IOU to God, a record of debt because of the gift of life, because he's the Creator, because he's breathed life into us. The IOU signifies that we owe God Total allegiance, absolute obedience. But in the equation of Colossians 2, our sins, our trespasses, our moral failures, our rebellion, our ignoring of God, even our nature gives irrefutable evidence that we've failed to pay those debts.
27 · Oswald contrasts financial debt with spiritual debt to emphasize the magnitude and impossibility of the latter
But this kind of debt, it's not like a car payment. It's not like a home mortgage. With those kind of debts, there's light at the end of the tunnel, right? Even when you first get the home, there's still that image of 30 years from now when it will actually be your home and not your home and the bank's home. That's not what we see here, though. The debt we owe God stretches into eternity. It's infinitely beyond our grasp to pay down. It's like there's interest at a million percent that accrues every hour of every day.
28 · Oswald expounds Colossians 2:14's central image: God nails the debt to the cross
And this is where you see the awesome mercy and grace of God. Paul says that debt is erased. It's set aside. Every person in union with Christ, having placed their faith and trust in Jesus, doesn't merely have the debt set aside. Colossians 2 tells us God nails that debt to the cross. It's a reference to the way the Romans would nail a sign to the top of the cross. It didn't just happen to Jesus, it happened to all the criminals. You would nail a sign detailing the reason the person was being executed. The sign, you could say, listed the debt. It listed the sin or the trespass. That led to the judgment and led to the execution. It was nailed there. It hung over the person. They were paying the price now for that debt.
29 · Oswald makes the doctrinal assertion of penal substitution: the gospel's great exchange is that Christ takes our debt and penalty upon Himself at God's initiative, not ours
That's the gospel's great exchange. At God's initiative. Not because we come crawling on our knees asking for it. It. Remember before this? We're dead, happily pursuing the desires of our flesh, but at God's initiative, our debt and our sins are nailed to the cross. In nailing Jesus to the cross, God provides a total cancellation of our debt of obedience. Christ takes the debt and the penalty upon himself.
30 · Oswald quotes Horatio Spafford's hymn 'It Is Well With My Soul' to capture the complete cancellation of sin at the cross
I love the way Horatio Spafford's hymn says it: My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. The debt is gone.
31 · Oswald links the debt metaphor to the reality of forgiveness
Closely associated with the fact that we are debt-free in Christ is the reality that we are forgiven in Christ. Listen to verses 13 and 14 again: 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, The forgiveness comes by canceling the record of debt that stood against us. The reason Paul tells us the debt is canceled is because he wants us to know we're forgiven. He doesn't just want to say, "You're forgiven," right? He realizes there's a psychological price to debt. It looms over you. Not enough just to say, "You're forgiven." He wants to explain, "No, you're forgiven." The debt is gone. The situation is really like saying it's not just that you're no longer in debt. Forgiveness means it's like you were never in debt to begin with.
32 · Oswald uses the analogy of bankruptcy to illustrate the difference between human debt forgiveness (which carries lasting consequences) and divine forgiveness (which leaves no trace)
If a person's debts get too big, one of the things they'll often pursue is bankruptcy, right? So they go through the legal process of bankruptcy, and they have the debts set aside because they can't pay them. But there are still implications for bankruptcy. Your credit is still trashed for years to come. If you've got multiple cars, they might come in and repossess any cars you still have payments on, leaving you just one car for your family to use. There's all sorts of things that still happen even though the debt itself is wiped out. But that's not how God settles accounts. When He nails our sins to the cross, every bit of your sin, every trace is wiped clean. It's wiped off the account. As Isaiah put it, "Though your sins were as scarlet, you've been washed white as snow." That's the reality that happens in Christ.
33 · Oswald uses the nakedness of Adam and Eve to illustrate the shame and vulnerability of sin and debt
Part of the reason why Adam and Eve are condemned by their nakedness in the garden is because now that their eyes have been opened, now that they have sinned and disobeyed, there is a sense of their vulnerability before God. But not just their vulnerability, their vulnerability as those who are stained, who are carrying debts. I love how Ed Welch puts this. He has a book, it's a great book, When People Are Big and God Is Small. It's all about the fear of man. He says this: The gospel is the story of God covering his naked enemies. Think about that. The gospel is the story of God covering his naked enemies. Bringing them to the wedding feast and then marrying them rather than crushing them. King David, knowing about this good news, says, "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me." Psalm 139:1. God's gaze, Welch says, accursed to those who were naked. Was to David a blessing. It's a protection for those who have had their guilt atoned for and their sins covered, for those who through their union with Christ have been forgiven and made clean.
34 · Oswald introduces a pastoral paradox: God chooses not to remember our sins (Psalm 103:12), but believers should remember theirs
And here's an irony to hold on to: Just because God doesn't remember our sins any longer? That's one of the— I love that phrase from the Old Testament. He remembers our sins no more as far as the east is from the west. It's a long ways. So far has He removed our transgressions from us. God actively, the Bible says, chooses not to remember your sins. But here's the irony. Even though God doesn't remember our sins anymore, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't remember them anymore. Strange thought, right? I'm not talking about wallowing in guilt. Union with Christ means you shouldn't wallow in guilt anymore. I'm not talking about condemnation for past sins. Union with Christ means that condemnation has been put off. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who are united to the risen Christ. So what do I mean?
35 · Oswald answers the question raised in the previous unit: believers should remember their sins to produce proportional love for God
Paul isn't throwing the Colossians' sins back in their face. He doesn't want them to feel wretched in chapter 2. He's reminding them of their past sins, of their past sinfulness, of the fact that they were once dead so that they will have proportional love for the God who wiped those sins away. In the letter to the church in Corinth, he lists this litany of sinful practices, and he says to the church in Corinth, "And such were some of you." What's the next verse say? "So now feel terrible." No, he lists all these vices, tells Corinth, "And such were some of you, but you were washed in Jesus. You were cleansed. Colossians 2, Ephesians 2, you were dead, but you've been made alive. You had debts, but they've been forgiven. Remember those debts, not to wallow in them, but so that they stir up gratitude and love for God.
36 · Oswald transitions to the narrative of Luke 7:36-50, signaling that this story will illustrate the principle he has just established: that remembering one's sins produces proportional love for God
That's what gets played out for us in Luke chapter 7. Luke chapter 7 is a story about forgiveness.
37 · Oswald sets the scene of Luke 7:36-50, explaining the cultural context of reclining at table and establishing the key characters: Jesus, Simon the Pharisee, and the religious leaders
It's the story of Jesus reclining at the table with Simon the leper. Simon, Simon the Leper, is a Pharisee. It's the scene of Jesus. He's at this table. There's all sorts of religious leaders. And you have to know a little bit about something in that day and age. You sort of— when they say you reclined at the table, you really reclined at the table. It's not like our tables where we have nice chairs and you tuck your feet under and it's all elevated. The table's low to the floor and there's cushions. And so you would lean in towards the table. You walk on dirty roads with sandals, so you put your feet away from the table. You don't want your feet by the food. You recline. Recline at or towards the table. So Jesus is at this big table in Simon the leper's house, this Pharisee. He's there reclining at table with all these religious leaders, rabbis and scribes, but he's not there to affirm their superiority. He's not there for political maneuvering. He's not there to build up his political war chest, right? So he can march triumphantly into Jerusalem. He's there to confront their pride, to confront their hypocrisy and their self-righteousness, to confront their lack of love.
38 · Oswald narrates the entrance of the sinful woman and her scandalous act of worship: anointing Jesus' feet with oil, weeping, washing His feet with her tears and hair, and kissing them
As the scene unfolds, as they're reclining at the table, a woman enters. Luke describes her as a woman of the city, a sinner. It's a euphemism that probably means she's a prostitute. She sells her body for profit. This woman enters and these religious guests at the table are horrified. I mean, you can just kind of hear the conversation coming to a screeching halt when she comes into the room. And she kneels down and she begins to anoint Jesus' feet with oil. And then she starts weeping. And she takes her tears and she puts them on His feet. And she takes her hair and with her tears and oil mixed together, she washes His feet and she cleans His feet and she starts kissing His feet. Scandalous stuff. The other guests are shocked. Simon, sarcastically trying to break the tension, scoffs, "If Jesus is really a prophet, he would know who this woman is." Kind of sense the nervous laughter as people chuckle. If he knew who she was, he would never let her "Touch him."
39 · Oswald narrates Jesus' parable of the two debtors and its application
Jesus responds by asking Simon, "Who loves the moneylender more for having his debt forgiven? Who's more grateful for the moneylender for having the debt set aside? The guy who's in debt to the moneylender for 20 months' wages, or the guy who's in debt for 2 months' wages?" Who loves him more, Simon? Simon responds that obviously the one who had the larger debt forgiven has more gratitude, has more love. Jesus agrees, and he turns to the woman and he says to her, therefore I tell you, her sins "which are many, are forgiven." That's God. The prostitute is white as snow, clothed like a virgin. "For she has loved much," Jesus said. "But he who is forgiven little, loves little." He said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." In verse 50, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."
40 · Oswald synthesizes Colossians 2 and Luke 7 into a single controlling claim: the religious forget their debts and love Jesus little; the notorious sinner remembers her debts and loves Jesus much
The lesson of Colossians 2 and Luke 7 is this: The religious have little need for Jesus and no love for Him. They've forgotten their debts. They've failed to remember the price their sins require. But a woman whose sins are so notorious that everyone in the room immediately knows who she is humbly throws herself at the feet of the only one who can forgive her. She knows her only hope for mercy in that room or in all of life, is at the feet of Jesus. And so here the sinner becomes the recipient of grace. She hasn't forgotten her sins. She's weeping. She knows all too well the price her sins require. And it makes her desperate for Jesus. Makes her undone in love for Him.
41 · Oswald concludes by tying the sermon to the series title ('Captive to Christ') and issuing the final synthesis: those captive to Christ will embrace any humiliation, sacrifice, or cost because they love Jesus in proportion to their forgiveness
For those captive to Christ, it's the title of the last two messages. For those captive to Christ, there's no act too humiliating. There's no sacrifice too great. No cost too steep that they won't embrace it. Because they love Jesus in proportion to the amount they've been forgiven. Would you bow your heads?