Good Friday

Through Death (Colossians 1:13-22; 2:9-15)

When I entered seminary to prepare for pastoral leadership, I was asked to write the gospel in a sentence. With my Sunday School faith I wrote, “Jesus died for my sins.” As I said, it was a Sunday School kind of answer.

John 3:16 is often quoted as the gospel in  a sentence, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” The gospel or the good news is that God loves you and wants you to live with Him forever. But for seminary, something more was needed. Not everyone is satisfied with simple faith.

On Good Friday it is our custom to reflect upon the meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ. What is the meaning of His death for our lives? In the letter to the Colossians, we encounter a much grander presentation of the gospel. It is a gospel with cosmic proportions. If I were to put it into a sentence I’d say the good news according to Colossians is,

“God has mended all things, in relationship to Godself, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, thereby making all believers complete in Him.”

The key words in that statement need to be unpacked. Those key words are God, mended, and complete.

The apostle Paul is credited as the author of Colossians. Paul explains the good news about Jesus in terms of creation. The pronoun used to refer to God or God in Christ is used 35 times in these verses in Colossians. God is the main character in this message about Jesus.

And the message says that we were once held captive by darkness. Like Adam and Eve cast out of paradise, we were estranged from God, hostile in our minds toward God and doing evil deeds. God rescued us from the power of darkness.

In the cosmology of the Bible, darkness has symbolic meaning. It is that primordial nothingness, that sea of barren waste where no life can exist. The darkness does not wish to be ordered or controlled. It is by very nature chaos, disorder and lifelessness. Yet the darkness presents itself as liberty, freedom and autonomy. The voice of darkness says, “You don’t need to obey the commands of God. You can be your own God and do as you like.” Under the influence of darkness, we lived selfishly and sinfully, estranged from the source of life.

But God, in His perfect love, acted to rescue us from darkness by transferring us from the clutches of chaos and into a new life lived under the influence of Jesus Christ. Paul describes this new life in terms of circumcision. Circumcision is the sign in the flesh that one belongs to God and His chosen people, Israel. But Paul refers to circumcision only metaphorically when he says that we were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision. The sign that Christians belong to Christ is we live under the influence of Christ, free of darkness. We are empowered by God to throw off the fleshly desires that once led us into empty diversions.

How were we given this power? Through death. The death of Jesus upon the cross is the death of our former lives under the influence of darkness. In baptism we remember our death with Jesus. This leads us to the next key word in my gospel in a sentence, that is the word mend.

God has mended all things, in relationship to Godself, through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Paul uses the word reconciled instead of mended. To reconcile means to change the condition of a broken and constrained relationship back to one of harmony and peace. In other words, through the death of Jesus upon the cross, God has mended our relationship with God.  Our past lives lived estranged from God and in bondage to selfish impulses is nailed to the cross with Jesus. Our former life under the influence of darkness is crucified with Christ. Sin’s power over us is dead.

You may doubt this as you are aware of selfish and sinful impulses that continue to taunt you. But as far as God is concerned you are free. You only need to believe and live into that belief with greater trust.

Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, finally surrendered. Cut off from his chain of command, he carried on guerilla warfare in the Philippines. Leaflets were dropped announcing the end of hostilities, but he thought it a trick from the Americans. Onoda chose to continue the fight. In 1974 the Japanese government arranged for Onoda’s former commander to travel to the Philippians and convince him to surrender. When Onoda finally laid down his rifle, he wept uncontrollably. For 29 years he had needlessly battled a war that was already over. The gospel is a victory shout from the battlefield! Christ has won the war! Now is the end of hostilities! Come out of your foxholes and live in peace!

The result of this peace with God is the completion of our lives.

“God has mended all things, in relationship to Godself, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, thereby making all believers complete in Him.”

We are forgiven and freed from darkness. We are presented to God blameless and holy. No longer limited by darkness, our lives are now free to pursue fullness in life through our mended relationship with God. Paul said that God was pleased to reconcile all things to Himself by making peace through the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ. 

   Through the death of Jesus, we live in peace with God under the influence of love.

   Through the resurrection of Jesus we rise into new life, everlasting and complete.

   This new life lacks nothing good.

Life in Christ is a complete life, a satisfied life.

King David points to such a life when he wrote,

Thou preparest a table before me
    in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou anointest my head with oil;
    my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 23:5-6)

We were dead to God and lifeless in our bodies because of our estrangement from God, but now through God’s effort to rescue us, we are made alive through Jesus Christ. Whatever spiritual forces of darkness that once held influence over our hearts and minds, no longer has power. Christ has triumphed over them in His cross.

If you’ve felt powerless to change unhealthy habits, this is good news. The power that God exerted to raise Jesus from the dead is yours through faith! The victory of Jesus on the cross is our victory over anything that may limit our lives. Because a complete life is lived in reliance upon Jesus.

Today as we walk the Stations of the Cross and reflect on the passion of Christ, know that His suffering and death leads to your freedom and the fullness of life.