In Colossians, Paul contends with a problem that continues to present itself in the church today—legalism. Legalism is still an issue because there are still those who teach that our effort to keep a list of rules is how it is that we live a holy life and please God. These people promote their rules, make it an obligation for others to follow them, and judge those who don’t measure up. Last week, we learned the following about promoters of legalism.

The old rituals of the Law that the Judaizers required people to keep were a shadow. Shadows do not exist in and of themselves. A shadow has reality only in that it points to the body that formed it. The reality that the Law pointed to and anticipated is Christ. Now that we have the real thing in Christ, why would we want to go back to the shadows?

They promote themselves.

They remain out of touch with Christ.

Legalists boast in their self-made religion. They boast in what they have accomplished. The Judaizers boasted in their humility, in their worship, and in their experiences. They had an inflated view of themselves with no basis for such an opinion. Their puffed up perspective was the product of their fleshly minds.

The most significant problem for legalists is that they are out of touch with Christ. They fail to recognize that it is only when we have a vital connection with Him and abide in Him that we will grow and have productive lives. They fail to recognize that as the Head of the body, it is Christ who provides all the body needs. It is Christ who produces the growth that comes from God.

It has been said that, "Some men become proud and insolent because they ride a fine horse, wear a feather in their hat or are dressed in a fine suit of clothes. Who does not see the folly of this? If there be any glory in such things, the glory belongs to the horse, the bird and the tailor." If there is any legitimate boast, it is not ours, but Christ’s. If there is to be any glory, it belongs to Christ, not us. We have no basis for boasting in ourselves.

Their rules have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body. Their rules look like they can help us be more acceptable to God, but they can’t.

Their rules don’t help people please God.

Human rules focus on temporal matters and they are destined to perish. Human rules only condemn and show us how we fail to measure up to God’s standards. They provide no help for us to obey them.

Last week, we considered Paul’s negative instruction in lieu of the threat of the legalistic Judaizers.

Stop allowing others to judge you based on your performance of rules.

Stop subjecting yourselves to useless, human rules.

This week, we are going to focus on Paul’s positive instruction.

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I experienced the frustration of having our van not start after the morning worship service. We tried everything we knew to do to get it started, but nothing worked. We tried jumping the battery. We tried cranking the ignition a few more times. Despite all the efforts made, we were unsuccessful and had to have the van towed.

When we called the mechanic to see what the problem was, we discovered there was absolutely nothing we could have done to start the van on our own. We learned that our focus when we were trying to start the van was on the wrong thing. The problem was with the security system. Because our focus was wrong, nothing we did was of any help to get the van started. In fact, there was absolutely nothing we could have done to get the van started ourselves. Only a certified mechanics can fix the security problem we had. We had to trust him to fix our van if we wanted to be able to drive it.

This reminds us of the struggles we can have in the Christian life. We tend to concentrate on all the wrong things. We focus on earthly things, trying to perform in such a way that God will be pleased with us. We submit to human rules and judge ourselves or others based on our performance. Instead, we should live our lives with our attention focused on Christ.

The life that pleases God is the result of what Christ has done. It is the result of our being identified with Him. Therefore, we need to seek after or continually focus on the things above—on those things true of us because we are in Christ and identified with Him.

Our being raised with Christ is not a reference to our future physical resurrection from the dead, but to a spiritual resurrection that occurred in the past. The moment we placed our faith in Christ, God, in His grace, identified each of us with Christ in resurrection. In God’s program, He always sees us in Christ; therefore, whatever Christ has done, is also done in the believer. Christ was resurrected from the dead. We too have been spiritually resurrected from the dead to a new life in Him. Having been identified with Christ in resurrection, newness of life which Christ’s resurrection obtained has been secured for us.

Christ is seated in heaven—His work is complete.

All that needs to be done is already accomplished for us.

Christ already did all that needs to be done to make us pleasing before God. Christ is seated at God’s right hand. His work is complete and has been accepted by the Father. Therefore, as those identified with Christ, believers are complete in Him and accepted by the Father in Him. Christ did it all, leaving nothing for us to handle.

It is because of our identification with Christ in resurrection that our lives are acceptable to God. A new, transformed life is the result of our being raised with Christ. It is our position in Him and not our performance that makes Christ-like living a reality.

Focus on heavenly reality—our position in Christ.

Being in Christ and identified with Him is what changes us for the better. Therefore, our position in Him needs to be what we focus on, not our performance.

Don’t focus on what’s happening on earth—our performance.

What did Paul mean when he tells us not to set our minds on earthly things? Many conclude that by earthly things Paul means temporal, material possessions, earthly honors, position, and advancement, or worldly pleasures. While it is true that our focus in life should not be on these things, that is not Paul’s point in this verse. In the context, "earthly things" refers back to the legalistic, ascetic regulations that the Judaizers promoted following the earthly principle that we can please God on our own by our efforts. The Judaizers thought the path to holiness is an issue of performing well enough to be acceptable to God. Paul directed the Colossians to focus their attention on Christ and their position in Him, not on their performance of the rules.

Not only are we identified with Christ in resurrection, but also in death. As believers, when Christ died, God counted us as having died with Him. By our identification with Christ in death, Paul has already shown us that our former relationship with the basic principles of the world has been severed.

The basic principles of the world are the man-made rules that the world system pressures us to live under, insisting that by our own best efforts to keep them, we can gain God’s approval. Being dead with Christ, we are dead to the principle of trying to perform well enough to please God.

Before we trusted Christ and were saved, we could do nothing in and of ourselves to avoid the allurements of sin because we were dead in sin and dead people can’t transform themselves. Now that we have trusted Christ and are identified with Him in death, we still don’t overcome sin and please God in and of ourselves. Dead people don’t perform. We can’t overcome sin’s allurement by following the world’s principle of trying to do it on our own. We are dead to sin, because we are identified with Christ in death. It is He who has separated us from the enslaving power of sin in our lives.

Our transformed life is the result of being linked with Christ in God.

We are transformed because we are hidden in Christ, not because of our performance in keeping a list of rules.

When people think of being hidden in Christ, they think of safety or security. We are hidden in Christ and He is seated in heaven. To have our lives hidden with Christ in God is to be in vital association with the One who is in heaven as a forerunner, guaranteeing our safe arrival. While being hidden in Christ does assure us of our security in Him, I think Paul had a different emphasis in mind.

Our new life is presently hidden with Christ. The natural eye can’t detect our transformation and scientific proofs cannot prove it. The spiritual realities we have from being united with Christ are accepted by faith and seen with the eyes of faith.

You won’t see the transformation that has taken place by looking in a mirror. A mirror does not reflect our transformation as we have not yet been glorified. As long as we are living on earth, a mirror won’t be able to reflect our total and glorious transformation as it is not something we will bring to pass by our performance, but something that Christ will do for all those who are in Him when He appears. Our complete and glorious transformation will not come about from looking at ourselves to bring it to pass, but will come when we look at Christ.

Our transformed, new life is the result of Christ’s life being lived out in and through us. He lives out His life in and through us as we abide in Him or depend on Him to transform us. Paul communicated this thought in Galatians 2:20—"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

The basis of our living to please God is our identification with Christ and sharing His life. Christ is our very life. Without Christ, "the life", there is no living. Christ produces new, transformed lives in us when we trust Him.

When He appears, we will appear with Him in glory

When Christ comes for us, it is then that our total, glorious transformation will be visible for all to see. When we get a full view of Christ, it will result in our being completely transformed to be like Him—He will bring our total, glorious transformation to pass.

If we think the "reveals" on all the home and body makeover shows that are on television these days are something special, wait until we see how incredible and indescribable it is when we our revealed with Christ in glory. The transformation that takes place on makeover shows is impressive, but it is nothing compared to the total, complete, glorious transformation that Christ will render in us.

1 John 3:2 gives us further description of what will happen. "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall b e like him, for we shall see him as he is." We don’t bring about transformation by our efforts. Our total transformation in Christ will be realized when we see Him.

Glory comes from our being in Him

not from our conformity to rules.

A day of glory awaits us. Our complete transformation in Christ will be evident in our immortal, incorruptible, glorified bodies that Christ will bring about when He is openly displayed for us to see and we appear with Him in glory. This glory does not come to pass because we somehow arrive by our conformity to earthly rules. Glory comes from the total transformation Christ accomplishes in us.

If you feel frustrated and are thinking about throwing in the towel because you never seem to be able to measure up, there is hope. Our hope is not in ourselves that maybe this time, we will be able to do better. Our hope is in Christ and the wonderful transformation He accomplishes both in the present and in the future in the lives of those who trust Him to live out His life in them.

I would like for us to consider two specific areas of application:

The first is in the area of our evangelistic ministry. Recently, I had a discussion on the topic of evangelism with a person whose ministry it is to train people to share their faith with others. We were talking about why it is that Christians do not witness more. During our conversation, my thoughts went to what we have been learning from Colossians. Why is it that we don’t share our faith more?

I believe a significant reason many of us don’t is that we think living the Christian life is a matter of performing well. We believe that salvation is by faith alone, but consciously or sub-consciously we think that living a holy life is a matter of how well we do. This has a negative impact on our ministry of the gospel in several ways:

First, if we try to evangelize in the flesh, by our best efforts, it will not be a very productive venture. We will quickly get frustrated and want to give up because evangelism is a spiritual ministry, not one we can do in the flesh.

Second, if we think of doing evangelism as one of our rules, it won’t help us evangelize. Our rule that we are supposed to evangelize will not provide the power to do so. To evangelize effectively, we need Christ’s enabling power.

Third, our efforts to try to please God by our performance do not attract the unsaved to us. They see our lives and only feel condemned. They consider how miserably they fall short of the rules they see us trying to live by. People aren’t attracted to rules keepers who don’t even do well themselves at keeping their own rules. People are attracted to those who are different because of the transformation Christ makes that keeping the rules can never accomplish.

Fourth, if we think we are pleasing God by what we do, how enthusiastic will we be about sharing what Christ has done and about our position in Him?

A second implication of this passage I would like us to consider is how we approach the time of communion. Each time we come to the Lord’s table, we are exhorted to participate in a worthy manner and make sure to confess any sin that is hindering our fellowship with the host of this observance who is Christ. I can think of many times in the past when I would feel bad at the time of communion. I would reflect on all the ways my life was not pleasing to God. I clearly remember confessing my sin and then thinking, "By next month, when we observe communion again, I will be doing better because I will try harder." Guess what happened the next month. The process repeated itself! If that has been your pattern in the past, may this observance of communion be different.

Instead of focusing on what you will do differently, focus on your position in Christ and all that He has done.

Did you notice Paul’s emphasis on the believer’s position in Christ from our being identified with Him? We are raised with Christ. We died with Christ.

We are hidden in Christ. We are glorified in Christ. Christ is our life.