The gospel is best understood in terms of those two most important words: for you.
Part of Paul's objective as he writes to the Colossian church is to dispel them of any notion that something other than Christ is responsible for their eternal standing. This is why the bulk of his letter places such unassailable emphasis on the person and work of the Christ of God, in whom "all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Col. 1:19) and by whose blood the world was reconciled. But before the apostle can leave this thought to directly address the issues of syncretism and asceticism that were gaining ground among the Colossian believers, he takes a moment to reinforce the gospel on a personal level (Col. 1:21–23).
Setting aside the doctrinal overtones of the previous section (Col. 1:15–20), Paul personalizes what he has been talking about at length so far — namely, "the word of the truth, the gospel" (Col. 1:5). Rather than letting this word stay in the realm of dogma or on the shelf of doctrine, where the profits are real albeit scarce, Paul brings the good news down to the level of individual sinners, which, of course, is where it is meant to reside. After all, the gospel, properly understood, isn't an academic treatise; it's a story about how Jesus of Nazareth has accomplished your redemption through the cross and the empty tomb (1 Cor. 15:1–4). It is a story rooted in who God is that has subsequently been revealed to us through the incarnate Word. "The story of grace," Horatius Bonar once wrote, "has not only been told in words, but embodied in a person" (101). But as Paul seems to suggest, it is also a story that becomes our story.
We ought not to speak of the gospel only in reference to some such doctrine or creed of the church, however critical those may be. Rather, the gospel is best understood in terms of those two most important words: for you. While the gospel is certainly not about you, it is definitely for you. It is a story about what the Christ of God did not merely for a nameless mass of faces but precisely for you and all your baggage. "When Christ died," echoes C. S. Lewis, "He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world" (168). Your "record of debt" was nailed to the cross along with the Lord himself (Col. 2:14). Accordingly, the word of God's gospel is one that ought to occupy all our attention, especially since the story it tells is the one God uses to rewrite yours and mine.
The gospel is a story about how enemies are restored.
To begin, Paul succinctly outlines the awful and unsavory history of the Colossians themselves (Col. 1:21). They were "alienated" and estranged from God, far removed from his favor. They were his enemies, "doing evil deeds," which is suggestive of an ongoing and active participation in rebellion, offering us a piercing and unflattering picture of what it means to be a sinner. Sin is animus toward truth; it is separation from and conflict with God himself. Sin is hopelessness. Sin, as Paul will clarify elsewhere, is death (Eph. 2:1–2). Death, to be more specific, is not only sin's "wage" (Rom. 6:23), but it's only reality. Those who are "alienated and hostile" toward God are cut off from him, from hope and from life itself (Eph. 2:12). This is the reality Paul so bluntly says was true of the Colossians. "This was you," he declares. "This was what you once were." Part of the reason why the gospel is so frequently refused and rejected is because no one is eager to admit this truth about themselves. But as unflattering as this picture is, there's no denying its accuracy. This was all of us.
The gospel isn't good news until you accept the bad news, which says that you are an enemy of God, estranged from your Maker.
The gospel will remain a meaningless and lifeless story until you recognize your alienation from God. In other words, the gospel isn't good news until you accept the bad news, which says that you are an enemy of God, estranged from your Maker. You are without hope and dead in sin. But that's only the first half of the story — the rest of the story tells us how Christ died precisely for those who are dead. In a miracle that can only be explained by sheer grace, the very one against whom we rebelled reconciles us to himself by sacrificing himself for rebels. "The contrast between what they once were (Col. 1:21) and the position they now enjoy (Col. 1:22)," R. C. Lucas comments, "is painted in such vivid colours, that it looks very much as if the apostle wishes to give the Colossians a new appreciation of the full extent of Christ's reconciling work for them" (59).
This was the story of the Colossians (Col. 1:21–22), just as it was the story of the Ephesians (Eph. 2:13–16) and the Romans (Rom. 5:6–8). All of this is just to say that this is your story, too. You who had no business communing with God almighty due to your hostility and rebellion are the very ones who've been reconciled by the Son of God, who lays his life down on the altar of the cross, where all of your sins demand to be paid for. Those who are far off are brought near and adopted as his own. God in Christ rewrites your story so that you who were once an enemy of God are restored to him and embraced in his unmerited favor.
The gospel is a story about how sinners are made holy.
Paul presses this matter even further when he says that Christ presents us as pure, spotless, and free from fault in and because of him (Col. 1:22). The apostle's compelling word picture centers around the term "present" (paristēmi), which is a legal term referring to when someone is "placed beside someone else," evoking the scene of a criminal being brought before a Judge for examination. Based on Paul's diagnosis (Col. 1:21), this court hearing would not go well for us. God the Father would hold us in contempt and rightfully pronounce our condemnation. But before that verdict can be handed down, Christ "presents" his death and resurrection so that he can "present you [as] holy." "Brought before the divine Judge," R. C. Lucas continues, "the now reconciled Christian is found to be without reproach, stain, or fault. Despite past estrangement, it is possible for the new believer immediately to live his life in God's presence" (62).
You who are "in Christ" are found to be "blameless and above reproach" before heaven's Magistrate not because you are but because Christ is the one advocating on your behalf "before him." Like a lawyer presenting his case, Christ "presents" his "body of flesh," showing the whole court what he did in his death and resurrection. He submits his wounds as his testimony to secure your release. Instead of hearing a verdict of condemnation, we hear a verdict that declares us "Justified" and "Acquitted." We are made righteous because we are "hidden" in his righteousness alone (Col. 3:3). He presents you as holy because he makes you holy. This is where so many church folks stumble, mainly because they've determined that if only "enough" spiritual grit and fortitude are applied, we can make holiness happen. The posture of some "holy rollers" assumes that once we've been found in Christ by faith, we are, likewise, obliged to make every effort to increase in holiness.
Nothing but the work of Jesus can make you clean, spotless, and new, which is what he does through his death and resurrection.
What often happens, however, is that we become so enamored by how spiritual this sounds that we forget the fact that the gospel isn't about how God empowers or energizes us with just the right amount of grace so that we can "be holy as he is holy." Holiness, after all, isn't a carrot dangling at the end of the stick of religious effort. Holiness is a gift given to us in the gospel, which gives us Christ. Nothing but the work of Jesus can make you clean, spotless, and new, which is what he does through his death and resurrection. No amount of religious exertion or spiritual contrition can do it. The Lord alone takes those who are riddled and racked with sin and cleans them up (Zech. 3:1–5). He takes the "filthy garments" of sin off your back and drapes his "garments of salvation" over your shoulders (Isa. 61:10). Only the holy Christ can make you holy.
The gospel is a story about how failures are given assurance.
But how can we be sure that this story continues to apply to us? Well, Paul explains that, too, when he writes, "If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister" (Col. 1:23). This turn of phrase is far too swiftly misunderstood, the culprit being that two-letter word "if," which seems to imply some sort of condition that threatens to undo what was previously explained. That's how it sounds, at least.
"Here's the work of Christ for you, but only if you're faithful," Paul seems to say, "only if your faithfulness stays at a certain level." If this were the case, Paul would effectively sabotage his own message. In so doing, the essence of the good news would be forfeited. "If grace is subverted by works," Charles C. Bing says, "the gospel is subverted. And if the gospel is subverted, hope or assurance is subverted. If assurance is subverted, the very foundation and motivation for faith toward God and love toward others is subverted" (81). To use one of the apostle's formulas, By no means!
Paul's "if" is not inserted to make the Colossians doubt what the gospel tells them. On the contrary, his objective is to bring to bear the gospel so that they might be imbued with the "full assurance" freely offered in and through Christ. Accordingly, he does not make what Christ did dependent upon them, as if its validity hangs on their reciprocation. Rather, he tells them how they can be sure that this message is for them. The believers in Colossae could be confident of the gospel story — and their place in it — so long as they "continued" hearing it. Only by "not shifting" away from the gospel could they cultivate a faith that is "stable and steadfast." The certainty of faith is nurtured as the good news of Christ alone is put on repeat. Faith that is steady and constant is a byproduct of lingering on that which we "have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel" (Col. 1:5). It comes from "hearing again" the "hope of the gospel that you heard [before]" (Col. 1:23).
Part of what it means to be "in Christ" is to be content with hearing the story of what Christ did for you over and over again.
An ecclesiological tendency to which many succumb is to move on from the gospel too quickly. There is a faulty perception that views the gospel as nothing more than an evangelistic script by which the unregenerated are proselytized. This, to be sure, is more than a little false. God's gospel is God's ordained means by which his church is built and strengthened. His good news is for sinners because sinners are all that there are. Indeed, part of what it means to be "in Christ" is to be content with hearing the story of what Christ did for you over and over again. "To move from the gospel," R. C. Lucas explains, "is to move from the foundations on which Christ has built his church, and therefore to lose Christian' stability'" (62). When the church diverts its attention from the very story upon which it was established, it replaces a foundation of stone with sand.
"To continue in the faith," Lucas concludes, "is to be content with the gospel that first saved and delivered us from spiritual death and estrangement with God and brought us straightaway to live in his presence, at peace with him. It is to base our lives and our teaching upon the apostolic doctrines of grace. It is for those whose confidence that they are reconciled is in Christ's work for us, not in Christ's work in us. It is to be unmoved and immoveable in the face of strong winds of new doctrine, not just when people would deny the apostolic gospel but when, more subtly, they would improve upon it" (63).
It is only the persistent and constant proclamation of the gospel that gives us assurance and keeps us from swerving. "On this," R. C. H. Lenski attests, "the Colossians were founded as a foundation is laid on solid rock" (71). No matter how much baggage or wreckage has been accumulated, the extent of our sin is of little concern to him, whose grace is as vast and fathomless as the ocean. God is still in the business of rewriting sinners' stories. To do so, he uses the same story he has always used, that old, old story of Jesus and his love.
