July 20, 2013

God’s Wisdom Is Transformational!

9th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/21/13
Colossians 1:21-29


God’s Wisdom Is Transformational!
I. It reconciled us.
II. It empowers us.


Transformations have a way of catching our eye. You notice when your neighbor gets their yard landscaped. What looked mundane now looks full of life. You notice when a longtime friend whom you haven’t seen for more than a year drops 50 pounds of weight. They look fabulous! You notice when a condemned building has been torn down and a beautifully designed, functional building has taken its place. It has a way of lifting the spirit of the entire neighborhood.

Do you suppose anyone noticed this morning as you walked into church that you have undergone a transformation? Did you notice that others have? Not likely.
That’s because we often forget that we’ve been transformed. We forget what we are by nature. We’re not all that concerned when we fall back into our old ways, even though we should be. Worse yet, we can easily become proud of what we’ve are and thoughtlessly despise others.

So let’s take this opportunity to review what our God has done for us. That’s what the Apostle Paul did for the Colossian Christians in these verses before us this morning. He wanted them to understand and appreciate what their God had done for them, the change he had made in their lives. He did so because Paul shared God’s saving wisdom with them. Our God has done that same thing for us. God’s wisdom is transformational! Join me in reviewing the impact God’s wisdom has had on us.

Part I.

Not knowing that there’s a problem can be debilitating. For instance, you are unaware that you have said or done something that has upset your good friend. It takes you a good deal of time to realize that your friend has distanced himself from you and you can’t figure out why. Meanwhile, you miss the many blessings that this friendship formerly brought to you.

Not knowing you have a health problem can be even worse. Finally seeing your doctor when the symptoms can no longer be ignored is not a wise option. His news for you might be very hard to accept.

The same is true for us in a spiritual way. By nature we have a problem, a deadly problem. Our sinful nature and our daily sins have driven us away from the only true God. He’s absolutely holy and cannot tolerate sin. In fact, sinfulness cannot enter into the presence of the holy God.

Paul told the Colossians that very thing with these words. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” Not exactly the politically correct thing to tell someone, is it? But no one would ever accuse the inspired Apostle Paul of being politically correct. He always told it like it is. The truth of the matter is that the Colossians and we were alienated from God. Forget the warm fuzzies. By nature we have no business thinking we’re anywhere close to God. These two parties—we and God—couldn’t be farther apart.

And then Paul uses fightin’ words—literally. He tells us we were God’s enemies as shown by our evil behavior. Isn’t he overstating the case? Not at all. You don’t have to embezzle money from senior citizens to be evil. You don’t have to be a member of the Chicago Mafia to be evil. Just act or speak or think or feel in a way that is against what God has said. A little lie. A little lust. A little discontent. That’s evil along with countless other sins. And every one of them is a frontal attack on the holiness, goodness and love of our God. Enemies of God. That’s what we are.

Thank goodness we know it! Now we know that we have a problem. We’re no longer in the dark. So, what are we going to do to solve our problem?

When Paul wrote these words there were religious teachers in and around Colosse who offered a solution. They combined all sorts of religious ideas to address the issue. They espoused living according to some of the laws in the Old Testament. It also seems as if they encouraged the people to a higher, more enlightened way of thinking about the divine being and their own morality. They encouraged the people to think differently about God and their problems would be solved. Sounds rather modern, doesn’t it? We hear the same spiritual garbage today.

So Paul reinforced what he had preached to them. “But now [God] has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—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.” The enemies reconciled and we had nothing to do with it. God did it all. He sacrificed Christ’s physical body on the cross. Our reconciliation with God isn’t a mental process that produces enlightened thinking. It isn’t slavish obedience to laws we can’t keep perfectly. It was the physical sacrifice of the sinless, holy body of Christ on Calvary’s cross.

And the results are transformational! We are “holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” You are holy by faith in Jesus, forgiven of all sins. No spiritual blemishes. You are the person God wants you to be, as beautiful as a bride is to her groom. No accusations, even. Nothing Satan says against you sticks. It’s as if God has coated you with spiritual Teflon. Did any of those truths occur to you about your fellow worshippers and yourself as you walked into those doors this morning? Probably not. But that’s the fact! God’s wisdom is transformational! It reconciled us.

So, do you feel transformed? Do you feel reconciled? At times, not so much. There’s the daily grind of living in this sinful world with all its problems. There seems to be an endless string of disappointments. And then the tragedies hit. Things go from bad to worse. We aren’t getting any breaks in life. We wonder what’s wrong. Maybe God is meting out a little of his anger. And then the guilt sets in. He has every right to be angry with me. There were countless times I didn’t live like his child. In fact, I knew it was wrong and I liked it. No wonder I’m a mess! No, we don’t feel so reconciled with God at times. Just the opposite. But our reconciliation isn’t based on our feelings or on what’s happening in our world. It’s based on what already happened in our world, the physical sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. “It is finished!” The work of reconciliation is over. We’ve been reconciled and his resurrection is the divine proof of it. We’ve been changed. Transformed by God’s wisdom.

Part II.

It changed his life. More than 2 years ago Craig Strohman watched as a young girl emerged from a small tent near a street corner in downtown Philadelphia. There were two feet of snow all around her and she looked hungry. Strohman vowed he would do something. Every Saturday since that day he has organized volunteers to feed the hungry of Philadelphia, nearly 500 at a time. Something happened in his life and now he lives for a cause.

That description certainly fit the Apostle Paul. You know his story. He worked night and day to wipe the name of Jesus from the earth. But the Lord appeared to him on his way to Damascus and changed Paul forever. Listen to Paul describe it, “I have become [the church’s] servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.” The mystery Paul refers to is the gospel—the good news of Jesus as our Savior from sin. Paul lived each day to spread that good news.

Even more so, he was willing to suffer for doing so. He states, “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” When Paul talks about what is lacking, he isn’t saying that the work of Jesus is incomplete. He’s referring to the fact that our connection with Christ will result in sufferings. Paul certainly faced them. More than once he was beaten and left for dead. But he was willing to suffer more if it meant that God’s people would benefit. What a transformation had occurred in Paul! All due to God’s wisdom. It empowered him.

And it does no less for us. Sharing the good news of Jesus as the Savior from sin. That’s what we’re all about. It’s the reason this congregation exists. It’s what we do every time we meet for worship and Bible study. It’s the commission Jesus gave to each one of us as one of his followers.

In fact, the wisdom of God even empowers us to suffer for the sake of Jesus. It’s not easy living as a Christian in our world. It never has been and it never will be. If it’s easy for you, then something is missing. You’re going to face criticism and opposition and hostility for standing up for the truth of Jesus. Be thankful if you aren’t physically harmed. And then do as Paul did—he wore each mark of persecution as a badge of honor and glory to Jesus.

That sounds crazy to our world. But God’s wisdom is transformational. It empowers Christians to proclaim God’s saving wisdom and to endure suffering for doing so.
By your baptism the power of Christ’s resurrection lives in you. Tap into it! Let it guide and strengthen you each day of your transformed life! Amen.