Grace Community Bible Church Sermons

Charles Sebold: The Supremacy of Christ in Our Life

Colossians 2:1-3:5

1. The lordship of Christ controls what we know and understand (2:1-8)
1. All treasures of knowledge and wisdom are hidden in Christ
2. Christ is Lord over the knowledge and wisdom of this world
1. Our faith in Christ must include discipline and stability
2. If we have received Christ Jesus as Lord, we must walk in Him
1. We walk in deep-rooted faith
2. We walk with overflowing gratitude
2. The deity of Christ makes our freedom from sin possible (2:9,10)
1. God fills Christ, although He is a man
2. We are filled in Christ
3. God is supreme over every ruler and authority (e.g., sin, philosophies)
3. The death of Christ removes the “body of the flesh” (2:11,12)
1. Circumcision of God = removal of the sin nature that controls us
2. We are raised up with Him
4. The cross of Christ destroys the sin debt we owe to the Law (2:13-15)
1. While we were dead, God made us alive together with Christ
2. There was a “certificate of debt”
3. The certificate was canceled, destroyed, abolished
4. Thus Christ demonstrated His lordship over rulers/authorities (sin, human wisdom)
5. The substance of Christ gives us His heavenly perspective (2:16-3:2)
1. No authority may reinstate our debt
2. The substance, the body, the reality, is Christ!
1. We are not to be submitted to the decrees that put us back into debt to sin — arbitrary sacred/profane divisions — everything is sacred now
2. Things in the world will perish, how are they important to our holiness?
3. If we are raised with Christ, our eyes are on Him, on things that surround Him
1. We wrestle with holiness in spiritual ways
2. We do not wrestle with holiness in fleshly ways
6. The resurrection of Christ gives us His life in place of our own (3:3)
7. The return of Christ gives us a share in His glory (3:4)
8. Therefore: you are dead to sin (3:5)

• Christ is Lord; do not submit to the thinking of the world
• Our faith is in God-in-Christ and the fullness of His deity, not in our being good
• Our sinful nature and its authority over us died with Christ
• We are free from debt, and free from those who would enslave us again, because of the cross
• To see things from a human perspective is to accept another authority in our lives
• We may be dead to sin and alive in Christ, but we must believe God’s promise that this is true
• We look forward to the day when the truth — that we are holy in Christ — is revealed