Certificates of Sin
Colossians 2
Colossians 2
• Let us review where we are.
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Galatians is addressed to a church in heresy.
Ephesians, to a church surrounded by paganism.
Philippians, to a church under attack.
Colossians, to a church struggling with Christ.
• What we have learned:
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Salvation is through Christ alone.
Christ is all sufficient.
We must walk worthy of Christ.
Colossians chapter 2 focuses on Christ our
Redeemer.
Colossians 2
• The book of Colossians is very different from
most of his other writings.
– Scroggie says that Paul’s tone is anxious and
perturbed.
– He is wrestling with a different kind of heresy than
he has ever faced before.
– This heresy is so outside the realm of Greek and
Jewish thought as Paul knows it that he must be
inventive with his language. He uses 55 new
words, 34 of which show up nowhere else in the
New Testament.
Colossians 2
• Chapter 2 of the book of Colossians is
both rich and complicated.
• Paul’s writing is complicated to begin with:
in Chapter 2 of Colossians, he is going to
address what I like to call the heresy of
knowledge and challenge it with a clear
statement of Christology.
• The chapters relatively short, but is very
complicated.
Colossians 2
• Chapter 2 begins very similarly to
Galatians Chapter 3, except for the tone.
– Paul expresses his concern by using the word
struggle. Paul uses this word most often in
relation to his prayer life.
– Paul is struggling in spirit for Christians he
has never met.
– What does he pray for them?
Colossians 2
• Paul’s prayer
– He prays that they may be encouraged.
• Being a Christian is hard.
• Knowing that your faith is true and will be awarded
is important.
– He prays that the church will be bound in love.
• Look at Ephesians 2:19.
• Paul prays for the love of Christ to flow through the
church on a number of occasions.
Colossians 2
• Paul’s prayer
– Paul wants us to gain, to capture something.
What is it (verse two)?
– Why does Paul pray for the full assurance of
understanding? The Greek word for full
assurance is the root word for plethora.
– the word for knowledge here is σύνεσις,
synesis, the root for our word synthesis.
Colossians 2
• Paul’s prayer
– The final thing that he prays for is that we
would have knowledge of the mystery of God.
What is that mystery?
– He answers it in the last part of the verse.
• Now the chapter gets into the meat. I
suspect we are going to have to do this in
two sections.
– Verse six (a good verse to memorize) starts
us off. Walk in Christ.
Colossians 2
• Notice that Paul is addressing mature
Christians.
– They are rooted in Christ.
– They are established in the Faith
– They abound with the joy that comes from
that Faith.
• Verse 8 and verse 4 give the same
warning: do not let anyone cheat you from
your faith.
Colossians 2
• How can someone cheat us from our faith
in Christ?
– Philosophy. I am a doctor of philosophy,
which means I like nifty ideas. I must be on
guard that those ideas match the truth of
Christ.
– Notice that verse 8, “basic principles” is
repeated in verse 20.
– What are these basic principles?
Colossians 2
• To understand the structure of the chapter,
go to verse 8. Find the phrase “according to
Christ”.
• Paul is going to demonstrate to us what it
means to be in Christ. Seven times Paul tells
us what it means to be in Christ or with
Christ. (v 9)
– In Christ dwells the Godhead bodily. No
nonsense about a Spirit Christ in a physical
Christ. No nonsense about Christ being just a
man.
– He is the God-Man.
Colossians 2
• Verse 10: we are complete in Him.
• Verse 11: we are circumcised, that is put
off the body of sin. Paul addresses this to
outline his doctrine of circumcision.
• Verse 12: our old man is buried with
Christ, the new man risen with Him
through. . . What?
• Verse 13: alive and forgiven
Colossians 2
• Verse 14: there are dozens of interpretations
of this passage. Fortunately, they all lead up
to the same thing.
– The handwriting of requirement. The New
American Standard translates this as certificate of
debt. The Greek says the handwriting of
dogmasin, dogma. Somebody wrote out in long
hand the charges against us. And Hebrew
tradition, we would write out the debt ourselves
(Nehemiah 9:38)
Colossians 2
• Christ wiped out the hand writing against us.
– In some ancient scrolls, you could blot out the ink
that had been written, and write something else
over it. Modern technology can recover the
earlier draft.
– If you are using papyri or an animal skin, you
could scrape the ink off.
– In any case, Christ has removed the charges
against us.
– He has taken it away—it cannot be seen. It is
hidden.
Colossians 2
• Verses 14 and 15
– He nailed them to the Cross. Some
commentaries refer to a tradition of nailing a paid
debt to a house post. Other commentaries
dispute that.
– I think Paul is being allegorical here: as Christ
was nailed to the Cross and atoned for sins, so
our sins are nailed there as well.
• Verse 15 finishes the thought: Christ’s death
defeats Satan, makes a spectacle of him, and
shows Christ’s triumph.
Colossians 2
• We will finish here for now. Next week we
will finish Colossians 2.
• We will also start Philippians chapter 3.
• What should we learn from Colossians 2?
– Christ is all sufficient for us.
– We should walk in the doctrines of Christ.
– We should rejoice in the eternal triumph of the
Cross.