The Supremacy and Sufficiency of Jesus

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And we will begin. Let me pray.

Thank you again, Lord, for being near to us. You are near the brokenhearted. You are with the crushed in spirit. You are with us as we rejoice. You are with us as we weep. You are our everything. I pray, God, that you would center our minds, our hearts, and our wills on you.

Jesus, what you have done—help us to see you clearly. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen.

All right. Last week we looked at Colossians. We’ve been looking at Colossians, and from this text that we just read, Paul says, “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up, strengthened in faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

So we are encouraged to root our life in Jesus and to live our lives in Jesus—not just our minds, but everything. Everything that we do, say, speak, and think is to be energized by, influenced by, and led by Jesus.

Last week I did this little illustration here. It’s also on the screen, because my writing isn’t good. But let me do this with us together real quick—a quick review. You can listen to the sermon from last week if you want more details. I’m going to do it fast.

All right. So here is the gospel that Paul is laying out for us in Colossians thus far. When we look at the world, we see a lot of good and a lot of beauty. We also experience and see a lot of pain, a lot of dysfunction, and a lot of damage. And we find ourselves aching for a better world, longing for something better.

Just like hunger is a signal that food exists, or thirst and longing for water is a signal that water exists, in the Christian worldview we find that a better world did exist and may one day exist again.

It is a world in which humanity lived in close and loving connection with the planet, with creation—humanity cared for creation and creation cared for humanity. Humanity loved one another, served one another, lived in mutually interdependent, loving relationship. And most importantly, God, who made humanity and made the planet, walked in creation and walked with his people.

There was shalom—perfect, loving relationship between humanity and creation, humanity and humanity, and humanity and God.

So what went wrong? God was in charge, worshiped, and followed, and we were rooted in him, just as we read. But we decided, “No, I think it might be better if I was in charge.” Instead of caring for the planet, we exploited the planet. Instead of caring for one another, we abused one another and used one another.

And then we began to live in a fearful relationship with God. We lived in hostility toward God. That relationship was broken. And so we have a world that was designed for good—damaged, not destroyed—damaged by evil.

So what do we do? What does God do? Did he leave us abandoned? Did he leave us in this dysfunction, this impossible web of damage? No. He does something surprising.

He comes into the world he created—this world of dysfunction, damage, isolation, and division—and he dies for our sins. He rises from the dead. And when he does, we begin to learn to love again. We receive forgiveness. We receive healing.

Jesus comes and reminds us that we are designed for good, that this world is designed for good. He teaches us to love one another, to love God, to love creation. And then he sends us.

So this is restored for better. But we don’t just stay there. We are sent together for good.

This is a world damaged by evil. Jesus has come and formed a new humanity—a healed humanity, a forgiven humanity—whose heart of stone and self-centeredness has been reoriented. And we are sent out into the world, sent together to heal, sent together to participate in the healing and restoration that God is making possible through Jesus.

Now, why can’t we get from here to here and just skip the Jesus part? There are many reasons, but the world’s problems—the damage—is so deep and so complex that we will be overwhelmed. Our motivations and our hearts have to be healed, or else in trying to address the damage in this world, we will do more damage.

So we need the resources of Jesus. We need to be healed by Jesus. We need a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone. We need the resources of Jesus to do the work of Jesus.

And that is where we are in Colossians.

Last week we talked about how Paul is a servant of the gospel. He’s a servant of Jesus Christ, giving his life and reminding the Colossian church that we are sent together to heal. Jesus is supreme. Jesus is all-sufficient. And we, like Paul, should be servants—self-sacrificial servants—for the sake of the story that God is telling.

All right, that is review.

Where we are today in Colossians is that Paul is really a fan of the Christian church. They’re getting it—they get it. But he also realizes that the culture they live in, and teachers who are coming into the church, are distracting them. They have the potential to be distracted, especially from circle number three: what Jesus has done.

All of us, all of humanity, in our deepest longings desire to get back to the world designed for good—perfect peace, harmony, and love. We want to get back here, but we are always tempted away from going through the all-sufficient, all-supreme work of Jesus.

We are tempted to just try. And this is what the world is doing. We’re trying to heal ourselves. We’re trying to heal one another. We’re trying to heal the planet. We’re trying to work for justice. We’re trying to release the captives without being freed ourselves, without being restored and learning the way of Jesus. We’re trying to get here without going through Christ.

And this is Paul’s major concern in Colossians. He wants the Colossian church to remember who Jesus is, that his work is all-sufficient, that Jesus is all-supreme, and that anything introduced that takes away from Jesus’ work or adds to Jesus’ work will not result in healing, but will keep us trapped in the damaging cycle that brings more pain into the world.

So this is where Paul pivots in his letter. He’s going to address the philosophies, the human traditions, the things that wage war on the pure gospel and the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus. He wants to make sure the Colossians remember who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and how they are to respond to it.

If Jesus, in the purity of his all-supreme and all-sufficient healing work, is not kept at the center of our life and work, the damage spreads. No matter how good our intentions, no matter how diligent our efforts, we end up deepening the damage and widening the divide that exists between human beings.

So we have a danger as human beings and as Christians to get stuck kind of here. Jesus frees us from the damage that we have done to ourselves and to others, and that others have done to us. We have been very damaged by the dysfunction in this world. We’ve been betrayed. We’ve been hurt. We’ve been sinned against. We’re wounded, and we wound other people out of our woundedness.

This is a big mess, and Jesus has saved us from this mess. But as human beings, we’re constantly struggling with, “Is Jesus enough, or do I need something else?” We’re constantly wrestling with this tension.

Paul says, “I do what I don’t want to do, and I don’t do what I want to do.” There’s a struggle. And so Paul is saying, “Keep your eyes on Jesus.”

There are a couple of ways we miss the way of Jesus and get stuck. First, we may never enter into the work of participating with Jesus in the healing of the world. We get stuck here.

One way we get stuck is by becoming so focused on trying to heal ourselves apart from Jesus. We get stuck in a religious hamster wheel—religious traditions, religious practices. We add extra rules. We add extra requirements. And we become imprisoned and enslaved by religion, human traditions, and empty philosophies.

As a result, we never enter the world that needs healing. We miss partnering for peace, justice, and flourishing because we’re too busy trying to liberate ourselves. We’re caught up in religious practices and self-help routines, even to the point of harming our bodies, trying to liberate ourselves.

And so we never live into the joy, purpose, and security of true liberation. Paul is saying, “You’re free.” He’s been saying this the whole time in Colossians—you are free.

We’re kind of like a football team that becomes so obsessed with becoming the perfect football player, running the perfect play, becoming the perfect specimen, that we just run practices, study plays, study film, and scrimmage—but we never show up to the game.

We’re always saying, “We’re not ready to play yet. We need more preparation.” And so we never enter the season. Paul is saying, “You’ve got to compete. You’re sent together to heal the world.”

We become so obsessed with working out our own salvation that we miss the fact that Jesus has already freed us. We never live in the freedom and purpose for which we were called.

The second way we miss it is the opposite. We go full force trying to make the world a better place, but we do it without the healing and liberating resources of Jesus. We’re motivated to bring healing and hope to the world, but we do it without receiving healing ourselves, without sitting at the feet of Jesus, without his resources and posture.

What happens then is either we become exhausted by the work—because you cannot enter this work without the life-giving strength of Jesus—or we begin doing the work with the weapons of evil. We fight evil with evil. We fight power with power. We fight coercion with coercion. We fight hate with hate. We hate evil so much that we grow our hate.

Dallas Willard defines discipleship like this: discipleship is being with Jesus to learn from Jesus how to live like Jesus. If we’re going to be part of healing a broken and damaged world, we have to be with Jesus. Not just read books about Jesus. Not just listen to sermons or podcasts about Jesus. We have to be with Jesus.

If we don’t, we’ll try to heal the world using the world’s presuppositions and postures, and we will deepen the harm done by sin and death.

A classic example of this is the Crusades. Here’s a people who, before Christ, were warriors and conquerors. Then they become Christians and say, “Okay, now we’re warriors and crusaders for Jesus.”

So they still conquer lands and conquer people. Constantine reportedly had a vision with the phrase, “In this sign you will conquer.” They put crosses on their swords and shields and went out to crusade violently in the name of Jesus.

Another example is all the abuse and scandal we see in churches—successful churches. Willow Creek, Mars Hill, and many others. What has failed there is that they endeavored to grow the church using worldly systems and business principles based on hierarchy and authority, and they justified it by saying it was for the sake of growing the church.

What happens is that people are damaged. It’s a failure to allow the way of Jesus to inform how we pursue the kingdom of God. It leads to harm and abuse.

What’s happening is that we are doing for Jesus without learning from Jesus. We assume, “I’ll just do what I already do, and now I’ll do it for Jesus.” But Jesus wants to change everything about how we engage the world.

We don’t just need our “why” transformed—“I now live for Jesus.” We need our “how” transformed. How do I live for Jesus? How do I love? How do I pursue the world for Christ?

David Fitch, a theologian, says godly power works relationally among persons. There is a difference between worldly power and godly power. This is one way the church gets stuck: we baptize worldly systems and ways of occupying power with Christian language.

Godly power works relationally among persons. The power of God is not power over people, but power that comes alive among people as they submit to one another and learn to practice the ways of Jesus together.

There is a difference between power over and power with—a power that comes from living in loving, mutual submission to one another and submission to the presence and way of Jesus among us.

That changes everything.

To quote someone who I don’t know was a Christian or not—Jimi Hendrix—“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

We have to occupy power in the way of Jesus, and it is completely different.

So Paul recenters our calling on the person of Jesus. Chapter two, verses six and seven say this—and we’ve already read it, but it’s worth reemphasizing:

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

He’s saying, “Don’t forget Jesus.” Be with Jesus to learn from Jesus how to be like Jesus in every area of your life.

Verse eight: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”

Paul doesn’t spend much time on the error. He wants to hold up the true thing. He constantly highlights the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus—his life, death, and resurrection—so we can recognize what is false by keeping our eyes on what is true.

Verses nine and ten: “For in Christ all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.”

Did Jesus redeem a world damaged by evil through the foolishness of the cross? Was Jesus fully divine? Do we have our fullness, healing, and forgiveness in Jesus? The answer is yes.

So don’t forget it. He is the head over every power and authority. He is the path to healing and redemption.

Paul is bringing us back to this third circle and making sure we understand that God has entered our story, retold the story of damage, power, and distorted love, and shown us the way of God.

As one writer puts it, the cross is the moment when the living God deals with evil once and for all—not by standing aloof from it, but by taking it upon himself.

God assumes all that was damaged in humanity and creation and gives us healed humanity through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

You have all that you need in Jesus. The fullness of God dwelt in Jesus, and in Jesus, as you are in him, you receive the fullness of God. There is no area of your life untouched by the loving, liberating, healing rule of Jesus.

So don’t buy the lie that you need something else or that Jesus didn’t do enough.

Verses 11 and 12 explain this further:

“In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

Remember, I’ve done this before with you. When you place your faith and trust in Jesus, you are united with him. Where Jesus goes, you go. If Jesus dies, you die. If Jesus rises from the dead, you rise. If Jesus ascends to heaven, you ascend. This is your life in Christ.

The fullness of God dwells in Christ, and your fullness dwells in the fullness of Christ. You have access to God through Jesus—your healing.

Circumcision was a sign of belonging to God’s people. It was an outward, physical sign. But the prophets always said it wasn’t just your body that needed to be changed—it was your heart. Jeremiah said God would circumcise your heart, give you a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. He would change you from the inside out, at the level of your desires, motivations, postures, and ways.

So the old self—this way of living based on fear, power, control, and scarcity—was buried with Christ. It was killed with Christ. It was cut off, like the flesh in circumcision, and thrown away. It is no longer part of you.

You have a new self—a healed self—aligned with God’s loving and liberating rule. Now, sometimes it may not feel that way, but it is true. Sin no longer has authority over you. You don’t have to obey it. You’ve been freed.

Verse 13 says, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins.”

“He canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Imagine this as a ream of paper—maybe eighty times bigger—and this represents the record of all the ways you have failed to love: failed to love God, your spouse, your neighbor, your children; failed to care for creation; all the ways you’ve contributed to the pain of the world.

Paul says that record existed. And when Jesus died on the cross, he took that record, nailed it there, and left it. It’s done. It’s gone. It doesn’t count against you anymore. It no longer stands to condemn you.

He canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness.

I was listening to a podcast on Mother Teresa and was honestly discouraged to learn about some dysfunction in the Missionaries of Charity that I wasn’t aware of. I’ve used her as an example before, and like all of us, she had both virtues and imperfections.

What I didn’t realize was that the order believed they had to continue inflicting suffering on themselves in order to be forgiven. Every day, at least up to 2014, they would wear a spiked belt tightened for an hour. The tighter it was, the more forgiveness they believed they received. They would also beat themselves nightly with a corded rope.

Why? Because they believed the suffering of Christ was not sufficient.

They were right about one thing—they were in touch with their contribution to the damage of the world. But they had not received that Jesus had nailed it to the cross and that it no longer stood against them.

There is no need to beat yourself for what you’ve done. There is no need to wallow in guilt and shame. Receive forgiveness. When we don’t, we get stuck, and evil continues its work.

We need to receive the freedom, forgiveness, and healing of what God has done.

Then Paul gives another illustration. Not only is your personal debt forgiven, but he says the powers and authorities—the spiritual forces of this world, the evil systems that oppress and hold people down—have been disarmed.

“He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Theologians call this Christus Victor—Jesus is victorious. Paul is borrowing from a practice in the Roman Empire. When Rome defeated an enemy, they would take captive the generals and leaders and parade them through town after town. People would line the streets, mocking them and throwing garbage at them. The message was clear: Rome is superior.

Paul plays off that image and says Jesus has taken the powers and principalities, the evil forces of this world, and made a public spectacle of them—triumphing over them by what?

The cross.

This is where it departs from Rome. Rome conquers with the sword. Rome conquers with power, coercion, and violence. The cross flips this upside down. The power of the kingdom is different.

Jesus defeats the powers not with violence or domination, but through the cross. As Brueggemann says, “The cross marks the end of coercion as a visible strategy for God.”

The power of love overcomes the love of power in Jesus.

Paul has been holding up the all-sufficiency and supremacy of Jesus—what he has done for us and what he is doing in the world. Then, beginning in verse 19 and following, he outlines the danger.

There are human traditions. There is empty philosophy. There are people coming into the church claiming visions, new ideas about who God is and how he wants us to live. Paul says, “Don’t listen to them. They have lost connection with the head.”

Who is the head? Jesus.

They have lost connection with the head, “from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.”

What is Paul saying? These fancy teachings, convincing philosophies, human traditions, ascetic practices—beating yourself, tightening belts—they have the appearance of leading to righteousness, but they are disconnected from the head.

They are lifeless. They are apart from Jesus. If a body does not have a head, it has no life. It does not grow. It does not bear fruit.

So how do we evaluate what we’re being taught? Because there is so much information. So many teachers. YouTube, podcasts, books. Everyone telling us how to live, what to believe, what political party to affiliate with, what practices make a good Christian.

How do we determine whether something is from Jesus?

First, be with Jesus. Be with Jesus before you are with anyone else. Be with Jesus before you listen to that podcast. Be with Jesus before you read that book.

Read the Gospels often. Pay attention not only to what Jesus says, but how he interacts. What is his posture toward power? Toward the weak and vulnerable? Toward doubt and confusion?

Then, when you do read that book or listen to that podcast or get excited about a movement you think will change the world, pay attention to the fruit.

Empty philosophy and human tradition are disconnected from the head, so they will not bear the fruit of the kingdom.

What is the fruit of the kingdom?

Love.
Joy.
Peace.
Patience.
Kindness.
Goodness.
Gentleness.
Faithfulness.
Self-control.

Evaluate movements, programs, organizations—even those with Christian names—by their fruit. If they bear love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, they are likely connected to the head.

But if something claims love and is not gentle, claims truth but lacks faithfulness, claims justice but fosters division and hate, it is deepening the damage it claims to heal.

So I just want to call us—as Paul is calling us—to fix our attention on Jesus. And this is hard work. It requires discernment. Paul prayed at the beginning of his letter that we would have all spiritual wisdom and discernment.

Wisdom is doing the right thing in the right way. There are a lot of people trying to do the right thing, but not in the right way. It lacks wisdom. It is not connected to the head, and it bears the fruit of more dysfunction, more damage, and more division—inside and outside the church. And we pass on the wounding.

So let us have wisdom and discernment. Be with Jesus to learn from Jesus how to live like Jesus. Let us trust his all-sufficient work. Let us trust that there is nothing we can add to or subtract from what Jesus has done.

And let us receive our healing so that we can be agents of healing.

Let me pray for us.

Lord, I pray that as we go from this place, you would give us wisdom. Would you give us discernment? Would you give us the ability to see what we need to see?

There are so many versions of you, Jesus. There are so many theories and philosophies and movements based on you. I confess that I have been led astray many times, and I believe all of us have.

I ask, God, that the Foothills and Christians in this city—followers of Jesus in this world—would sit with you, learn from you, and live like you.

Help us, God. Forgive us for the ways we have not. Give us joy as we move forward.

In Jesus’ name, amen.