ASSURANCE OF SALVATION

COMPLETE SALVATION

Paul wrote to the Christians in Colossae because there were people in the church who were teaching a very diminished ‘gospel’ that shrank both the identity of Jesus Christ and the salvation he established through his sin-bearing death. This shrinking resulted not from any subtraction, but from additions – that to know God you needed Jesus PLUS additional knowledge, and that to be saved you needed Jesus PLUS your own actions of various kinds.

Because of these two Jesus PLUS perspectives, Paul gives us in his letter to the Colossians fourteen different titles or descriptions of the person of Christ, and eighteen different aspects of the salvation we have in Christ.

In addressing the reduction of the person of Christ, Paul included the truth that in Jesus Christ lives all the fullness of God, and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (1:19, 2:3, 9). As Jesus himself said: ‘If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well … Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’ – John 14:7, 9. (For more on Paul’s exposure of this aspect of the false teaching look at this study .)

In addressing the reduction of salvation, Paul included the following facts that are true for everyone who has received the Lord Jesus Christ:

God has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light – 1:12.

God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his Son – 1:13.

In Christ we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins – 1:14.

God has reconciled us to himself, making peace through Christ’s blood – 1:20.

In this act of reconciliation, God presents us holy in his sight, without blemish, and free from condemnation – 1:22.

We are complete in Christ – 2:10 (KJV).

God has made us alive in Christ – 2:13.

God forgave us all our sins – 2:13.

God cancelled the record of everything the law held against us, nailing it to the cross – 2:14.

We died, in the death of Christ for us – 2:20; 3:3.

Our life is now hidden with Christ in God – 3:3.

On the basis of these truths about the person of Christ and the salvation we have in Christ, Paul urges us:

‘So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness’ – 2:6, 7.

‘See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ’ – 2:8.

‘…do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’ – 2:16, 17.

‘Do not let anyone …disqualify you for the prize’ – 2:18.

‘Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules …’ – 2:20.

Did you notice what the false teaching was doing? In 1:12 Paul affirmed that God has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. In 2:18, because of the diminished ‘gospel’ that was being promoted, Paul had to tell the Colossians to not let anyone disqualify them. The ‘Jesus PLUS’ message was effectively undoing the Gospel, robbing the death of Christ of its power and its permanence, undermining the believers’ trust in Christ and his sin-bearing death.

Paul, as the sixteenth reformers did later, called Christian believers back to the simple, but secure truth: that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Never by Christ PLUS.