True spiritual growth hinges on understanding that God’s grace is a finished gift to be received rather than a religious performance to be achieved. Through the unbreakable power of divine reconciliation, the supreme Creator of all things radically rescues hostile hearts to present believers as holy and blameless in His sight.
Grace is not achieved, it is received. When we truly understand it, grace bears fruit and grows unstoppably into every part of life.
Key points
Understanding makes the difference. The gospel bears fruit from the day we truly understand grace. Like the good soil in the parable of the sower, understanding lets the word grow, as kudzu ran wild in rich soil.
We forget grace. Paul kept praying because we forget that grace qualifies us, not works. Like George Wilson refusing his pardon, grace means nothing unless we accept it.
God alone reconciles. God does all the reconciling, and enemies of God qualify. Apokatallasso means a complete, utterly unbreakable reconciliation.
Christ is supreme. Everything was created through and for Christ, yet God's fullness dwells in Him for one purpose: to reconcile us to Himself.
We receive; we don't give. Jesus gives His life to us. Steven once preached that we take one step and Jesus takes 99, but Jesus has taken every step. All that is left is to receive.
Key scriptures
Colossians 2:6–7: continue living in Christ as you received Him
Colossians 1:6: fruit since they truly understood grace
Matthew 13:18–23: the parable of the sower
Colossians 1:21–22: once enemies, now reconciled
Colossians 1:19–20: God's fullness in Christ to reconcile us
John 1:12: those who receive Him become God's children
Takeaways
Make the effort to understand grace, not just hear about it.
Stop trying to earn what has been given; accept the pardon.
It's one thing to hear about God's grace, but everything changes when you truly understand it. When grace takes hold of a heart, it bears fruit and grows unstoppably, touching your family, finances, friendships and future. Without understanding, what we hear is just seed on hard ground.
Grace is not achieved, it is received. God has done everything to reconcile us to Himself, and all that is left for us is to receive it, and then keep living in that same grace.
Key scriptures
Colossians 2:6–7: the anchor verses; just as you received Christ, continue to live in Him
Colossians 1:6: the gospel bearing fruit since the day they truly understood God's grace
Matthew 13:18–23: the parable of the sower explained
Colossians 1:9: Paul never stops praying for the Colossians
Colossians 1:21–22: once enemies, now reconciled, holy and free from accusation
Colossians 1:15–16: all things created through Christ and for Him
Colossians 1:19–20: God's fullness dwells in Christ so He might reconcile us
Colossians 1:29: Paul strenuously contends so believers understand grace (Amplified)
John 1:12: to all who received Him, He gave the right to become children of God
Truly understanding God's grace
Colossians 2:6 begins with "just as", pointing back to how we started. To continue well, we need to know what we started with. Add or remove even one degree from the gospel and, over time, we drift and our hearts grow cold.
Colossians 1:6 gives the secret: the gospel has been bearing fruit "since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace."
The parable of the sower
Paul echoes Jesus in Matthew 13. Seed falls on the path, rocky soil, weeds and good soil. The difference is understanding: the good soil is "someone who hears the word and understands it," and it produces 30, 60 or 100-fold.
"If you do not truly understand God's grace, then what you hear and what you read is nothing more than bird feed for hadedas."
The kudzu story
Kudzu was brought from East Asia to America to fight soil erosion, and it grew so fast it covered a house in 10 days. In East Asia the soil held it back; in rich, deep American soil it became unstoppable. Our lack of understanding is like poor soil that prevents growth. Grace sown into good soil takes over every part of life.
We forget grace
The Colossians already understood grace, yet Paul kept praying for them. Why? Because we forget.
Grace qualifies, rescues, transfers and redeems us. Qualification is the first domino: forget that you're qualified by grace and not by works, and the rest never falls.
George Wilson's pardon
In 1829 George Wilson was sentenced to hang, then received a presidential pardon from Andrew Jackson, and refused it. The Supreme Court ruled that a pardon is an act of grace that cannot be forced on a man.
"A pardon is impotent without acceptance."
"Grace is not achieved, it is received."
When we forget this, we try to earn what has been freely given, or we mix in self-effort and hustle, hoping God looks the other way.
Reconciled by God alone
Colossians 1:21–22 answers two questions:
Who does the reconciling? God, and God alone: "now He has reconciled you."
Who qualifies? Those alienated from God, enemies because of evil behaviour: devoted to sin, wicked, debauched, preeminently sinful.
"You don't understand what I've done" doesn't disqualify you. God knows, and you qualify. It isn't the person who cleaned up their act first, but the person who encountered the grace of God.
Apokatallasso
The Greek word for reconcile is apokatallasso. Steven's picture: a cat and a lasso. The prefix apo makes it the strongest form of the word, because our hearts are more like Scar in The Lion King than a fluffy cat.
"A once-and-for-all, never-seen-before, complete and utterly unbreakable reconciliation."
The supremacy of Christ
Everything was created through Christ and for Him: the highest mountains, like Mount Elbrus where Steven's friend nearly fell to his death, and the deepest ocean, Challenger Deep. Every drop, every atom, every throne and authority is His.
Yet God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Christ for one purpose: to reconcile us to Himself. Paul strenuously contended so that believers would lay hold of the full assurance of understanding grace and know Christ deeply.
We receive, we don't give
We often talk about giving our lives to Jesus, but Colossians 2:6 says "just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord." As Rory put it:
"We don't give our lives to Jesus. Jesus gives his life to us."
Steven shared that for years he preached "take one step and Jesus takes the other 99." But Jesus has taken the full hundredth step. There isn't even a step to take.
"All that is left to you and I is to receive."
The teaching closed with an invitation to receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour, His forgiveness and adoption into His family.
Takeaways
Make the effort to understand grace, not just hear about it: read, study and let the word be unpacked.
Remind yourself often that you are qualified by grace, not by works.
Stop trying to earn what has been given; accept the pardon.
When you feel too far gone, remember that God reconciles enemies, and you qualify.
Receive afresh today, and continue living in Christ just as you received Him.
Reflect and discuss
What kind of soil best describes your heart right now, and what might be preventing growth?
In what ways do you find yourself trying to earn God's grace?
Why do you think we so easily forget grace, even after we've understood it?
How does knowing God does all the reconciling change the way you approach Him after you've failed?
What would it look like for you to receive, rather than achieve, this week?
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Good morning. Grab your Bible. We are in Colossians chapter 2. Gone are the days where you used to hear the Bible open, pages turned. Trusting you're on your phone.
While you turn to Colossians chapter 2, just so we're clear, I'm in no ways wearing black to support the All Blacks. Just happens to be my favourite colour. Black and very, very off-white, my favourite colours. So Eugene, if you can stop inviting me to your undercover All Blacks supporters WhatsApp group, that'll be great. Just so happen to be wearing black.
All right. Colossians 2, I just want to read to you sort of the anchor verses that we're going to launch off today's sermon from. Chapter 2 and verse 6 says, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness."
Now, they say of this combination of verses, these two essentially are the pivot point for Paul's letter to the Colossians. And if you look at it, you can actually see he says, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus." So he's referencing a beginning point and a past. And then he says, "Now continue to live in him." And he says, "Rooted and built up, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, now go, overflowing with thankfulness. Now keep on keeping on."
So it's kind of important that we know what he means when he says "just as", because if over the next few weeks we look at this "continuing therefore", we kind of need to know what he's referring to. Because if we take what he's spoken about and you just add one little grain, or you take one little thing away, or you just divert by one degree, over time that one degree leaves you drifting from the very thing that you're supposed to be building your life on. And then in a few months', years' time you end up and you don't know why you drifted from God, why your heart's grown cold.
So it's important that we understand what he means when he says "just as". And for us to understand 2:6, we need to go back to 1:6. And that's where we're going to start and build our way through, make sure that we truly understand what he means when he says "just as".
So here's 1:6. "In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, just as..." There's our word. "...just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace." I want to mine this just a little. I'm going to do a little bit of Bible study here before we take another step, because it's important that you get this.
So, but take a look at it. He says a couple things here. Firstly, he says, "In the same way the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world." So he's saying to the Colossians, he says, "Listen, you've heard the gospel is bearing fruit. It's growing throughout the world."
"Something out there has caught my attention. I've seen it. God is busy out there. And in the same way, just as it's happening there, it's happening here among the church in Colossae." And then he explains the secret sauce. Why is the gospel bearing fruit and growing throughout the world? Well, he says it's been doing this since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace.
So, I want you to see this. It's very clear. You don't need a rocket scientist to see this. Essentially, he's saying, "Listen, there's one thing to hear God's grace. It's one thing to come to church. There's one thing to read your Bible, but to understand God's grace..." When that happens, everything changes. It's like it unlocks a power inside of you that bears fruit and grows throughout the world.
And so he says this has been happening among them since the day they heard it and truly understood God's grace. And he says this because he essentially is going to be asking you and I, do you truly understand God's grace?
You see, because you could have come this morning kicking and screaming. Maybe you came as a guest. Someone is getting baptised in your family and I've got to go and support them. I don't want to because I know church, church they want your money, and it's Bible bashing, and they disqualify you and they condemn you.
But is that truly God's grace, or is that you living underneath the weight of some man-made, legalistic, religious opinion? Or do you truly understand God's grace? The grace we read about in Scripture, the grace spoken about to the Colossian church over and over and over again. If not, don't take another step, because you're going to be taking one degree off and get yourself in the weeds before you know it.
So Paul says it's imperative not just that you hear it, but that you truly understand God's grace. And when he says this, he's actually plagiarising something that Jesus said. We're shamefully allowed to plagiarise Jesus left, right and centre. And he does it right here, because he's referring to something that Jesus preached when he walked the earth.
Now, if you're new to the Bible, you might not know this, but Jesus loved to speak in parables. A parable is almost like a picture story that makes a point, and it's a great way for both the educated and uneducated to understand what Jesus was saying and to remember it and to apply it. And so there's one point when he's talking about what Paul's getting at here, and that's in Matthew chapter 13.
In Matthew 13, he's telling the story. It's the parable of the sower. So this is a guy who would be sowing seed in his field, right? So in the ancient Near East, they didn't have the planting machinery. They would have a bag slung over their shoulder and they would walk and they'd sow the seed.
And Jesus says the sower sows a seed, and some of it, as he's sowing it, falls on the pathway. You know, if this is the pathway, it's hard soil. And as you can imagine, the seed falls there and before you know it, every hadeda and pigeon comes and just eats the thing. So it doesn't bear any fruit.
Then he's sowing seed and some of it falls among rocky soil, and because it's shallow it grows a little bit, but the sun scorches it and it withers. And then he's sowing seed and some of it falls among weeds, and the weeds throttle it and nothing grows. But then there is some good soil. And when that good soil falls, or when the seed falls on that good soil, he says it bears 30, 60 or 100-fold. Or in Paul's words, it is unceasingly fruitful and unstoppable in growth.
And then Jesus explains the parable. He says, "Okay, the seed that has been sown is the word of God, the gospel, the grace, the understanding of his word and his ways." And in verse 18 of Matthew 13, it says the following: "Listen then to what the parable of the sower means. When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed that was sown along the path."
And then right at the very end he closes, because he jumps to the good soil. He says, "But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it." See, when you understand it, it's no longer just a seed sown in soil. It produces a crop, yielding 100, 60 or 30 times what is sown.
So if you do not understand, if you do not truly understand God's grace, then what you hear and what you read is nothing more than bird feed for hadedas. But if you make the effort, if you spend the time, or if you allow us as preachers to unpack the word of God in a way that you understand it, it produces 30, 60, 100-fold.
So if you ever look at someone, you think, there's something about this guy. God's grace is upon him. I see it. It's evident in his finances, in his family. It's evident in the decisions that he makes. There's one reason why. It's because he understands God's grace.
There's one thing to apply to you. Do you truly understand God's grace? I'm labouring the point because it all hinges on you getting the weightiness of this one word of understanding.
I want to show you a little bit about what I've learned about the plant called kudzu. I don't know if you remember kudzu. I checked my calendar. I mentioned it the first time about four years ago. So if you went to high school in the Bluff, you probably wouldn't remember past four hours. So four years is a bit of a push.
So let me explain to you about kudzu. Kudzu is a vine. It's a grower. It's a runner. It's this hardy, arid type of a plant, and it's perfect for covering over, like, barren areas where there's soil erosion.
And the Americans found out about kudzu, which grows naturally in East Asia, and they thought, "Well, let's bring this thing. It looks like it doesn't need much watering or tending or anything like that. It can really solve our problems." And so they brought it across to America to deal with soil erosion.
And I've got a photo I want to show you of what happened after they planted kudzu. Yeah, those are people. No, just kidding. It could be, because kudzu grows a mile a month. Yeah. So fortunately, they didn't plant it next to an old age home, because then that might be people.
But I want to show you another photo of a house. Take a look at this. You know how long it took to grow over the house? 10 days. You go on business and you come home and it's like there is no home. 10 days, because it grows so fast.
Why on God's green earth would anyone take such a wild thing from East Asia and plant it in America? They're actually saying it's eating the south of America. Why would you do that? Well, simply because it didn't do this in East Asia. Why? Because the soil is different.
Take a look at what I found. In East Asia, the soil conditions played a major role in preventing its growth. Your lack of understanding, of mining God's word until you understand him and his ways and his word, your lack of understanding actually prevents growth. But the nutrient-rich, deep, undisturbed soil in the US ensured that kudzu became unceasingly fruitful and unstoppable in its growth.
Take a look at that house one more time. This is what Paul is saying. He's saying, "I want kudzu to be sown into the heart of the soil of your heart." Sorry, my caffeine just ran out. I want the gospel, an understanding of grace, to be sown into the soil of your heart. So that's what your heart, your hands, your home, your family, your finances, your future, your friendships look like, because grace has taken a hold of you.
True grace. Not your worldly, earthly, religious, ascetic grace. No, the true understanding of the grace of God.
And so what Paul does throughout this is he comes as a chief reminding officer. This is God's grace. This is God's grace. This is God's grace. But what's interesting is he says over here, right at the very end, he says, "In the same way the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the... just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood it."
So he's saying to the church in Colossae, he's saying, "You have truly understood God's grace." What a commendation, right? Which is why it's surprising that he says just after that in verse 9, he says, "For this reason," because you understood it, "since the day I've heard about you, I've not stopped praying for you." Now, why pray for the folks who already understand it? Simple. We forget.
We forget. I mean, Rory preached on this two weeks ago. That's 14 days. He preached on this very portion. And he said that grace applied does four remarkable things in your life. Number one, he said grace... Carl? He's forgotten.
See, we forget. 14 days. It's gone. And we put, like, hours and hours and hours into presenting the word. And Carl forgets. I pick on him because I could pick on anybody.
The four things: qualified, rescued, transferred, redeemed. But we forget. And the thing is, number one, the grace of God qualifies you. If you forget that you're qualified for God's grace based on grace, not based on works, if you forget, then there is no rescuing. There is no transferring and there is no redeeming.
It stops there. It's almost like the first one is a domino. If it doesn't fall over, nothing else falls over. And you stand there and you forget. Why? Because in each and every one of us lives a little George.
Yeah, George. Not George Papadopoulos, but George Wilson. George Wilson in 1829 committed a crime and was sentenced to be executed for the crime. He was sentenced to be hanged. Actually, the terminology was to be hanged by the neck until dead. And I don't say that to be crass. I say that because you need to understand the weightiness of the charge: hanged by the neck until dead.
Three weeks before he was supposed to be executed, out of the blue, he got a presidential pardon. President Andrew Jackson of America said, "You have a stay of execution. You've been pardoned." So George obviously refused to accept the pardon. Maybe he was a little Greek. Who knows? He said, "No, I'm not going to be pardoned. I'm going to be hanged from the neck until dead."
And the president was like, "Wait, what? I will sue you and insist that you be pardoned." So he took him to court and the president lost. And so he took him to another court, the higher court, and he lost again. And on the third time he went to the Supreme Court, and the chief justice says this about this pardon. He says, "A pardon is an act of grace."
"We have no power..." When he says "we", it's the royal "we". It's the American government. "We have no power to force it upon a man. Therefore, a pardon refused is a pardon rejected. A pardon is impotent..." This is a fruitful, or lack thereof, word. "A pardon is impotent without acceptance."
Why does Paul pray for the Colossians? Because you forget that grace is not achieved, it is received. And if at any time you forget that, you turn into a functioning mode. And when this pardon comes to set you free, you're like, "Oh, I don't deserve it. I haven't earned it. I'm not qualified." And therefore I don't get rescued, and I don't get transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, and I do not enjoy full redemption.
Redemption means nothing missing, nothing broken. And it all starts over here. Do you truly understand God's grace? And I want to ask you that today. Do you truly understand that God's grace is received?
Or have you mixed in a little bit of self-effort and man's wisdom and earthly, worldly wickedness, and you're trying to just hustle? Maybe the big guy upstairs will look the other way. If you do, you've forgotten grace, and you cannot say you truly understand God's grace.
So not only are we qualified and rescued and transferred and redeemed, he then goes on to talk about the supremacy of God in verse 15. We've actually entitled this series The Supremacy and Sufficiency of Christ. But I'm going to push pause on that. I want to jump ahead and then we'll come back to here, because there's another word that I want you to understand in the next portion that unlocks this supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. And we're going to do a little bit of Bible study on this one as well.
This is Colossians 1:21–22. It says, "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you..." That's the word we're going after, I want to unpack. "...reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation."
If you don't know the Bible whatsoever, if you really want to get into it and you're sort of going, "But this is weird. There's nothing like this that I've ever read before," let me show you how easy it is actually to access Scripture. Look at those two verses and ask this one question. We're talking about "reconciled". Okay, who does the reconciling? Look at it up on the board. Who does the reconciling? Carl?
Yes, God. God does the reconciling. Look, see there? "But now he has reconciled you." It doesn't say "now you", Carl. It says "now he", our heavenly Father. Okay, we are reconciled by God and God alone. Obvious, right?
Next question. Who qualifies for reconciling? Look at that verse. Those who are alienated from God, enemies because of their evil behaviour. So God comes and he does what not only you could not do, but you would not do, because that's grace. But who he does it to is even more mind-blowing.
He does it to those who are alienated from God, enemies in their minds because of their evil behaviour. Because of your, my evil. You want to know if you qualify for God's grace? Are you alienated from God? An enemy, that's hateful and hostile?
Evil behaviour. You know what this evil behaviour is? It's defined as the following four things. One, devoted to sin. That qualifies you to be reconciled. Wicked, debauched and preeminently sinful. Do you qualify?
See, because a lot of the time, because you do not truly understand God's grace, what is the one thing you always say? "No, you don't understand what I've done." Does it fit into the category of preeminently sinful, debauched, wicked, devoted to sin? Then God knows exactly what you've done. Congratulations. You qualify to be reconciled.
See, because here's the thing. If you truly understand God's grace, for you to go from alienated, an enemy to God, to be reconciled, that can only be done through grace. You've encountered grace when that happens. Actually, the power required to get you from being devoted to sin, preeminently wicked and debauched, to, what does it say there? Holy in his sight, without blemish, free from accusation. That does not come from human effort. That comes by grace and grace alone.
And if you hear and you do not truly understand God's grace, maybe you've heard other churches say, "No, no, no, no. You got to get your act together first. You got divorced, you're not welcome here. And if you're a smoker, we'll smell it on your breath and we'll send you outside with the devils, because you got to get your act together."
And if you read Colossians, it says, "No, no, hang on a second." It wasn't the guy who stopped smoking. It wasn't the guy who repaired his marriage. It wasn't the guy who stopped having an affair. It was the person that encountered the grace of God.
So how do we encounter this grace? Well, there's a word there that I've been trying to unpack for you. It's the word "reconcile". Now, for those of you who are new to church and new to Scripture, the Bible wasn't written in English or Afrikaans. It was actually written centuries ago in ancient Greek. It's called Koine Greek, and we translated it into English. And the Greek word for reconcile is apokatallasso.
And I don't say that to impress you. I say that to confess to you. When I was in Bible college, I didn't pay attention in my Greek or Hebrew class. I mean, this was back in the 1900s, right?
And I realised then already, I'm a Bluff boy through and through. I realised back then someone else is going to put a software program together, or an app, or AI is going to help a brother out. So I don't really need to pay attention, other than to just scrape through with my Greek marks, you know.
But I'm a pictures person, and sometimes there are some words like this one that stick out. Apokatallasso. It comes from the word katallasso. And in my mind as a pictures person, to reconcile, you've got a cat and you've got a lasso. And so you've got Fluffy over there, and you lasso Fluffy and you pull and he's like... and you reconcile. Yeah. I know you'll remember this forever. That's why I remember it forever.
Except the word isn't katallasso. It's apo-katallasso. Apo is the nth degree of the super mega ultra nth degree of any word. So if you want to take a word that is already strong and make it the strongest form of it, you add apo to katallasso. And Paul does this. Why? Because our heart's not like Fluffy.
Your, my heart is more like Scar in The Lion King, a feral mongrel of darkness. And so Paul uses this word apokatallasso, an unusually strong word, because he stuffs into this katallasso a whole dose of apo. Because that word is stuffed, filled with the all-conquering, demon-crushing, hell-defeating, life-changing, resurrecting, curse-breaking power, the grace of God. Because apokatallasso means, according to my software, to bring about a once-and-for-all, never-seen-before, complete and utterly unbreakable reconciliation.
A once-and-for-all, never-seen-before, complete and utterly unbreakable reconciliation. Do you truly understand God's grace? This is one word out of 1,285 words that Paul uses to try and explain to us the grace of God. And just this one word blows my mind.
Do you truly understand God's grace? I can help you figure out right now if you do or not. Have you been reconciled to God? If you have, which side of reconciliation do you live on? Do you live blameless, holy in his sight, free from accusation, or alienated from God?
"I can't go to church this week. I mean, you know what I've done. And I can't pray." And you don't even call him God or Jesus. You call him "the guy up there". You just do not truly understand the grace of God that comes in and takes you, this feral mongrel of darkness, and turns you into a son and daughter of the Most High.
Okay, let's get back to the part I skipped. Now that you understand, I want to bring it back to Colossians 1:15. It says, "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." And he's talking about the sufficiency and supremacy of Christ. He says, "For in him all things were created: things in heaven and things on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities..." Anything that keeps you addicted, that holds you bound. "...in him and through him. All things were created, and all things have been created through him and for him." Everything created.
Even Mount Elbrus. I don't know if you know Mount Elbrus. It's one of the Seven Summits that every serious mountain climber wants to climb, and it's in Mother Russia. I only know this because a friend of mine climbed it the other day. It's crazy. There is actually, it looks like a one-armed bandit at the very top.
He sent me a video standing at the top of one of the seven highest summits in the world. And there's this little, it's like a, you know, you take this video and he pulls it, and it goes from whatever, 10,982 to 10,983 on this little dial on the top of a mountain. Love it. Only Mother Russia would do something like that.
But I tell you the story because while he was on that mountain, summiting one of the seven highest peaks, eight people died during the time that he was there. He nearly died himself. He says how a part of the mountain gave way. He fell into a crevasse. Fortunately, he had his ice pick with him and he managed to slow himself enough. He fell about 10 metres, that's nearly as high as this roof, down into the crevasse.
And he said, but beneath him, while he's got his ice things stuck there, beneath him, he said, hundreds of metres of darkness. Mountains are majestic, but they are terrifying. Yet he created them. He owns them. Jesus Christ owns the highest mountain and the deepest ocean.
Challenger Deep, the deepest part that we've discovered in the ocean, is over 11 kilometres down in the Mariana Trench. You can take Mount Everest and plop it into Challenger Deep and you'll never see it again. So deep. The sea is his as well. Every drop of the 1,500 quintillion litres of ocean water is his.
Every drop, every atom, every stone, every mineral, every ore or piece of organic matter in heaven and earth is his. All things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or governments or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
And the Bible says in Colossians 1:19, it says actually he takes all of that, he pushes it apart, because he wants one thing and one thing only. "For God was pleased..." This is Colossians 1:19. "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him." Why? So that through him he might apokatallasso you to himself.
That is the grace of God. We can talk about the sun in the sky, a ball of nuclear fusion, created. Why? So that through him he can apokatallasso you. Who is this God? How do we even begin to truly understand God's grace?
I think Paul realised that somehow it's got to get through this thick skull and this hard heart. And so Paul says right after this in Colossians 1:29, he says, "To this end I strenuously contend..." and this is from the Amplified, "...so that you may lay hold of the riches that come from the full assurance of understanding grace, resulting in true and deeply intimate knowledge of Christ."
Paul gave himself, the word he uses, "I strenuously contend", to make sure that everyone who heard the gospel understood the grace of God. And that's all that he's been saying. He's been saying, "Just as you understood that, now from this point, move on into that." Which brings us back to where we started, Colossians 2:6. But before we get to that, I want to go back to where you started.
Carl, when did you give your life to Jesus? '91. Last week, I spoke to a guy who gave his life to Jesus in 1981. And I thought, yo, you're old. I gave my life to Jesus in 1987. Are there any other '87 babies here? Anyone who gave your life to Jesus in the '80s? Yeah. Ah, the twins. Anyone else in the back, in the 1900s?
Is there anyone here who gave your life to Jesus this year? There's a hand way back there. Beautiful. It's beautiful, but unbiblical.
I asked Rory the other day, "Okay, Rory, when did you give your life to Jesus?" And he said, "I didn't." Okay, put up the verse we're looking at, Colossians 2:6. He pointed to this and he says, "We don't give our lives to Jesus. Jesus gives his life to us." "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord..."
See, the Bible says in John 1:12, "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." Do you truly understand God's grace? This is a grace that qualifies you, rescues you, transfers you into the kingdom of light, adopts you into his family, redeems you, nothing missing, nothing broken. And it does it all through this power of reconciliation built into grace: apokatallasso.
So, and there's so much power embedded there that it doesn't matter if you're an enemy of God, alienated because of your evil behaviour, preeminently sinful, wicked, debauched. It doesn't matter. There's so much power in this grace that it transfers you and redeems you, and it leaves you holy in his sight, without blemish, free from accusation. And all of that as a gift.
All of that, contrary to what I have preached for the last 20 years, which has something of the "just take that one step and Jesus takes the other 99". No, I'm sorry. Not according to Colossians or John 1:12.
There isn't even a step to take. He has taken the full hundredth step. He has covered everything. He has done everything. All that is left to you and I is to receive.
Which begs the question, have you received the grace of God? If not, how about we do that now? Is there anyone here who says, "I would like to receive Jesus as my Lord and Saviour"? You can raise a hand. Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you.
Okay. But here's what happens. We're all going to pray this prayer. You're going to pray it after me. We're going to include those who are doing it for the very first time. Here's the prayer.
Lord Jesus, I receive you now. I receive you as Lord and Saviour. I receive your forgiveness. I receive your adoption into your family. Thank you that you've done it all. Thank you for your grace. I receive it all today. In Jesus' name. Amen.
