Debt Free
(Colossians 2: 6-15)
One of my favorite movies is the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou? If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching just for the great Depression Era music. The underlying premise is that Ulysses “Everett” McGill escapes from a prison farm in Mississippi with two other convicts named Pete and Delmar telling them that they are going to retrieve some money Everett had stolen which led to his incarceration. During their journey they came upon a camp meeting where a preacher was waist deep in the water baptizing people who had accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Delmar O’Donnell, played by Tim Blake, gets in line and is baptized and when he emerges from the water he exclaims: “Come on in boys, the water is fine!” He then goes on to explain to Pete and Everett that all of his sins have been washed away, as that’s what the preacher told him, including that Piggly Wiggly robbery in Yazoo City. Everett, a con man, played by George Clooney, is a bit more skeptical and scoffs at Delmar’s simple-mindedness implying that if such a forgiveness exists, there has to be more to it, and besides, the State of Mississippi is not that forgiving.
But it is that simple. Through the cross of Christ our debt has been paid, forgiven, wiped clean. And that’s what the Apostle Paul is talking about in our scripture reading for this morning. It’s just that simple. No questions asked, no strings attached.
In his letter to the Colossian church the apostle says: So live in Christ Jesus the Lord in the same way as you received him. Essentially what he is saying is that because you have confessed your sins and sought his forgiveness, He has forgiven you and accepted you with no questions asked and no strings attached. You are now debt free. He tells them to be rooted and built up in Jesus, to be established in faith, and overflow with thanksgiving just as you were taught. This is a pretty important statement indicating that their being debt free comes with a changed lifestyle and a new path to walk. What Paul is saying is that we are not obligated to do anything in exchange for our salvation but because we have this new freedom from our past, we should become rooted in the Good News building ourselves up to be stronger, mature, and Christlike. We must become established in the faith as it becomes our bedrock, our foundation upon which we build our new life. And, our thanksgiving should be overflowing, not something that we should keep to ourselves. It should be so abundant that we actively look for ways to share our new-found freedom with anyone who will listen. He then admonishes us to see to it that nobody enslaves us with philosophy and foolish deception, which conform to human traditions and the way the world thinks and acts rather than Christ. You see, I think that’s a significant point that Paul is making. He’s telling his readers to stick to the simplicity of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Don’t let anyone else try to add to it with some fancy deep-thinking philosophy or deceptive teaching. You can almost hear Paul warning them and us that there will be some bad experiences with organized religion being visited upon spiritual seekers by charlatans who try to make the Gospel mysterious and complicated. It’s not, but our Christian history is replete with subtle and not so subtle examples of un-Christlike rules, regulations, and ceremonies which impede the pathway to Jesus and the better life he offers. Paul is warning us against a teaching that tries to supplement the gospel with various practices that were intended to make salvation in Christ more effective and complete, such as ritual observances, visionary experiences, and human do’s and don’ts. To Paul, these new teachings are foolish deceptions showing that it is useless for restraining sinfulness and he affirms that Christ is fully sufficient for human salvation. No more and no less.
He goes on to tell them that they have been filled by Him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. There is no one higher than Jesus Christ and those of us who believe and understand that pose a problem for earthly leaders who demand allegiance and fealty to them above all else to the point where they either try to ban religious freedom altogether or co-opt it to suit their own agendas, like Christian Nationalism for example. If you don’t believe me, I have two books in my office that detail the efforts Adolph Hitler, and the Nazi Party employed to co-opt the German Christian church leading up to World War Two.
One of the rituals the early church tried to institute was the Jewish practice of male circumcision, but Paul insists that such a practice is no longer necessary or relevant. He tells his readers that they were circumcised through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He says: You were buried with him through baptism and raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. God has now made you alive with Christ and has forgiven all the things you have done wrong. Paul says: He destroyed the record of the debt we owed, with its requirements that worked against us. He cancelled it by nailing it to the cross. We are debt free.
Baptized believers can now participate in the results of Christ’s death and resurrection which is God’s gracious blessings of spiritual life, freedom from condemnation, and victory over enslaving powers. This grace of God does not work by removing moral requirements from our pathway, we still have an obligation and duty to obey the law, but by cancelling our debt and transforming us from within, we become the kind of people who actually fulfill God’s highest expectations without having to be threatened or made to against our will. His will becomes our will.
Receiving Christ as Lord of your life is the beginning of life with Christ. But you must continue to follow his leadership by being rooted, built up, and strengthened in the faith. Christ wants to guide you and help you with your daily problems to help keep you on the path of righteousness. As we are fond of saying: it gives us the peace that passes all understanding. We know this to be true because when we look around us, we see people who are searching for something to give their lives a boost as they don’t seem content within themselves. They can’t put their finger on it, and it takes on the shape of a strange and often hard-to-identify inner vacuum that gives them an uneasy sense of incompleteness. Christ can lift that vacuum making them a new person, equipped for life and satisfied in God, yet for the skeptical world out there, the Ulysses Everett McGills, it seems too easy, too simple. There must be more to it. Maybe if there were some additional rules, regulations, and requirements they could wrap their heads around it.
This is what separates us from the non-believers, the skeptics, and those who think there should be more to it. When we remember that our old sinful life is dead and buried with Christ, it gives us a powerful motive to resist the sin that presents itself to us in many shapes and forms on an almost daily basis. Remember what we talked about last week. Evil hates goodness and works tirelessly to undermine all we do in the name of Jesus Christ. Evil celebrates when we stumble and fall because it gives talking points to the unbelievers. God does not take us out of the world or make us robots. We still feel like sinning, and sometimes we will sin. The difference is that before we were saved, we were slaves to sinful nature, but now we are free to live for Christ. So, not wanting the desires of our past to come back to power again, we can consciously choose to treat our desires as if they were dead, and if we refuse to let evil breathe new life into those desires, we can continue to enjoy our wonderful, debt-free life with Jesus Christ, no questions asked and no strings attached.
Let us pray.
We are God’s people, the chosen of the Lord, born of the Spirit, established by the Word. Yes, we are God’s people and because we are his beloved children, like a loving parent, He has forgiven us our trespasses and to Him there are as if they never happened. Our past sins are not only forgiven, but they are also forgotten. The weight of our guilt and shame has been lifted from our shoulders and we carry it no more. Oh, what freedom we enjoy and our thankfulness overflows and may it overflow in ways that positively impact the lives of others so that they too will want the peace and serenity we enjoy. With Christ as our cornerstone, we can stand strong in Christ living our lives transparently as we walk heart to heart and hand in hand. This we pray, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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Debt Free
By canceling our debt and transforming us from within we become the kind of people who actually fulfill God’s highest expectations.