Colossians 2

¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

I heard on the news last week that the national debt has now surpassed nineteen trillion dollars. If you would like a sobering visual depiction of what that means, go to https://www.usdebtclock.org and watch the big debt clock in real time. In the upper left hand corner you will see the main number in red under the heading “US National Debt.” You will see that it is over nineteen trillion, but what will strike you most is how quickly the number is growing. Off to the side of that big number you will see two other figures: “Debt Per Citizen” and “Debt Per Taxpayer.”

As an experiment, you might pull that up and see how long you can watch that top left-most square without becoming completely demoralized and depressed. It is demoralizing because the sheer speed with which that number is increasing every second raises the obvious question, “How on earth could such debt ever be paid off?”

It is an interesting thing, the debt clock. The two most interesting and unsettling things it reveals are (1) our corporate debt as a people, the debt that we all owe together as a country called the United States of America, and (2) what share of that debt each of us owes as individuals.

Take a look at that.

Just watch that number grow and grow and grow.

How could we ever begin to pay that off?

Now imagine with me another debt clock, a clock recording the debt that mankind owes God because of our sin both collectively and individually. The way this clock works is it records the growing penalty for mankind that increases every time you and I sin against the holiness of God. It is a debt because each and every sin requires a payment to atone for that sin, to make us right with God. So the greater the sin, the greater the sin debt, the greater the atonement that is needed to pay for the sins of humanity.

I am not, of course, suggesting that there is a literal sin debt clock in heaven, but I am saying that the image of a debt clock fits pretty well with what Paul said in Colossians 2.

¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

This is a most fascinating and a most provocative passage of scripture! It speaks not only to what God was doing in Christ on the cross for lost humanity, for you and for me, but also to the abiding reality of the cross for our lives today.

It has been suggested that there are clues in our text (i.e., verse 13 is “couched in the traditional style of preaching,” the use of the first person plural at the end of verse 13 as a possible congregational response to the first part of the verse, “the piling up of…participles” in verse 13, “the remarkably large number of uncommon words and expressions,” etc.) that suggest the presence here of elements that comprised a hymn or kind of responsive reading in the early Church.[1] In other words, we may be getting to hear in this passage a bit of what a “worship service” might have sounded like in the early Church. More important than that, if we have actual early Christian liturgical elements present in this text, we can see those aspects of the faith that were considered so crucial and foundational to the early Church that they were included in the Church’s life of worship.

God nailed the record of your sin debt to the cross and thereby pronounced that your debt has been paid and its penalties fully met and satisfied.

We begin with Paul’s metaphor of sin as a “record of debt.”

¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

First, we find in these verses a beautiful picture of the reality of conversion. Whereas we “were dead” now we have been “made alive together with Christ.” And how did that happen? It happened through the great gift of forgiveness that God has given us. And how did that happen? That happened because of a legal clearing of our “record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” Eduard Lohse has pointed to the Jewish framework of this image.

…Rabbi Akiba used to compare God to a shopkeeper who would lend money and goods and record all the amounts on a ledger. Whosever wished to borrow would come and borrow. Just as the shopkeeper got back what was his due through collectors, so too God, through the angels, demands of men what they owe him. Just judgment is rendered according to the record kept on the ledger…Therefore, in the prayer Abinu Malkenu God is addressed: “Our Father, our King, in your great mercy cancel all our debts.”…According to the view of Judaism, God cancels a debt only when the scales of merits and debts balance.[2]

This is most interesting and, practically speaking, most terrifying, for how can “the scales of merits and debts” be balanced when we are sinners whose sins are constantly increasing our debt? This “record of debt” (or “written code”) stands against us, condemning us. Clinton E. Arnold explains the background for this term.

The “written code” (cheirographon) was a note of indebtedness…One Jewish document well illustrates how it was used: “‘Let us find how we might be able to repay you.’ Without delay, I would bring before them the note (cheirographon) and read it granting cancellation.”[3]

Peter O’Brien has helpfully pointed out that the cheirographon refers to a record of debt “written in one’s own hand as a proof of obligation” and is “like an IOU” that contains “penalty clauses.”[4] What this means is now clear: there is a record of our sin debt that perpetually condemns us as unworthy of the grace of God. It records all of our violations against God’s holiness and majesty and glory. Each sin we commit therefore increases our debt for each sin needs an atoning payment to make us right again. The late New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce spoke of our text by referring to “a mountain of bankruptcy which those who had incurred it were bound to acknowledge but could never have any hope of discharging.”[5]

That is so very true: “a mountain of bankruptcy”! However, we now see the full implications of our text: there is something greater than the mountain of bankruptcy that stands against us, and that is God’s forgiveness of this debt.

¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Already in the Old Testament we find the beautiful truth that God is a God of forgiveness. For instance, we find this in Isaiah 43:

²⁵ I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

But what we find on this side of the cross is an explanation for how our transgressions are blotted out. They are blotted out because God has taken the record of our sin debt and nailed it to the cross in and through the crucifixion of Jesus, His only begotten Son, who serves as the payment for all of our debts. Christ’s payment brings satisfaction for our sin debt, for Christ’s payment was Himself. Christ paid our debt by taking our debt upon Himself and meeting its demands through His own perfect righteousness and obedience to the Father (2 Corinthians 5:21).

What an absolutely beautiful and staggering picture this is! Our debt has been nailed to the cross in Christ Jesus the Lord! This means our debt was met and wiped away. It has been canceled, to use Paul’s language, and the “legal demands” have now been satisfied! The punishment due us was fulfilled in Christ. The payment we owed has been paid. Christ has made satisfaction for us!

In nailing the record of your debt to the cross, God crushed and publicly shamed those who had been using this record to paralyze you with guilt and fear and the threat of punishment.

If Christ’s death on the cross freed us from our sins, it also served to shame those forces that had used our debt to harass and torment us.

¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

These rulers and authorities are the devil and his demonic hosts who ever and always harass humanity over our own unworthiness and over our own sinfulness. These are the “rulers and authorities” who F.F. Bruce called “those blackmailing powers that were holding it over men and women in order to command their allegiance.”[6] The devil and his minions are forever whispering in our ears, “You do not deserve forgiveness! Look at what you have done! Who are you to seek the favor of God?! Who do you think you are? You are condemned, damned, and doomed! Judgment awaits you!” And as they whisper or shout these accusations, they wave the record of your debt before your eyes, the indisputable proof that what they say is true, that you are indeed guilty. More than that, they use our sin debt to tell us that we are ultimately in their service, on their team, and should simply serve them as masters.

It is these “rulers and authorities” that Paul says God has “put…to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” That “in him” is key, for the “in him” is “in Christ!” Through the work of Christ on the cross, God has shamed the harassing tormentors of mankind by paying the debt that they have used to torment us. He has “put them to open shame” in fact, which is an image that comes from antiquity. R. Kent Hughes explains:

The image that Paul had in mind can be seen in Plutarch’s description of the three-day Triumph given the Roman General Aemilius Paulus upon his return from capturing Macedonia. Great scaffolds were erected in the forum and along the boulevards of Rome for spectator seating, and all of Rome turned out, dressed in festive white. On the first day, 259 chariots displayed in procession the statues, pictures, and colossal images taken from the enemy. On the second day, innumerable wagons bore the armor of the Macedonians. As Plutarch tells it:

…all newly polished and glittering; the pieces of which were piled up and arranged purposely with the greatest art, so as to seem to be tumbled in heaps carelessly and by chance: helmets were thrown upon shields, coats of mail upon graves; Cretan targets, and Thracian bucklers and quivers of arrows, lay huddled amongst horses’ bits, and through these there appeared the points of naked swords, intermixed with long Macedonian sarissas. All these arms were fastened together with just so much looseness that they struck against one another as they were drawn along, and made a harsh and alarming noise, so that, even as spoils of a conquered enemy they would not be held without dread.

            Following the wagons came 3,000 carrying the enemies’ silver in 750 vessels, followed by more treasure. On the third day came the captives, preceded by 120 sacrificial oxen with their horns gilded and their heads adorned with ribbons and garlands, next Macedonian gold, then the captured king’s chariot, crown, and armor. Then came the king’s servants, weeping, with hands outstretched, begging the crowds for mercy. Next came his children. Then King Perseus himself, clad entirely in black, followed by endless prisoners. Finally came the victorious general,

…seated on the chariot magnificently adorned, dressed in a robe of purple, interwoven with gold, and holding a laurel branch in his right hand. All the army, in like manner, with boughs of laurel in their hands, divided into their hands and companies, followed the chariot of their commander; some singing verses, according to the usual custom songs of triumph and the praise of Aemilius’s deeds.[7]

The fact that Paul is drawing on such an image is most comforting, for it shows us that whereas the devil and his demons would humiliate us, it is in fact they who have been humiliated at the cross and before the empty tomb. They have been defanged and declawed though not yet utterly destroyed. They yet murmur and harass, though the children of God are now free to see through their noise and clamoring. At Calvary, their stranglehold on mankind was broken and men and women are now free to be free! Their only weapon was your debt but the record of your debt has now been obliterated through the saving, forgiving, life-bringing blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus, who gave Himself on Calvary that we might be free.

You are now free to be free!

You no longer need to listen to the motley cries of the forces of hate that have held you in bondage for far too long! You can now silence the accusers by pointing them to Christ and saying, “He has taken my debt upon Himself and He has paid the price in full! I am free and forgiven because of what He has done for me!”

What an amazing, amazing thing grace is! What a wonder! What a joy to be forgiven!

The note has been paid.

The work of you hand condemned you

The work of Christ’s hands has saved you.

Come to the Jesus who has paid your debt and cast away its penalties! Come to Jesus and be free!

 

[1] Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon. Hermeneia. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1971), p.106.

[2] Eduard Lohse, p.108,110.

[3] Clinton E. Arnold, “Colossians.” Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Vol. 3. Clinton E. Arnold, gen. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan2002), p.386.

[4] Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon. Word Biblical Commentary. Vol.44. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2000), p.124-125.

[5] F.F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. The New International Commentary on the New Testamanet. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1984), p.109.

[6] F.F. Bruce, p.110.

[7] R. Kent Hughes, Colossians and Philemon. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p.79-80.