A Shadow of Things to Come
“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven all your trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross…..Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ”. Colossians 2:13-14;17
All people prior to coming to Christ in repentance of sin and belief in Him, are dead in their sins and come into this world under condemnation (John 3:18). Their hearts have not been circumcised by the cutting away of sin which prevails in every heart without Christ. A person lost in sin is spiritually dead. The soul of a person never dies as it separates from the body at death. The soul of the believer in Christ is taken into heaven to be with the Lord, but the soul of the unbeliever is delivered to hell where it is forever separated from the mercy of God. The unbeliever lives a life apart from God and remains so forever after death of the body. There is only one way to quicken or make alive a dead spirit and that is through Christ who takes away the guilt of sin and breaks its power over men and women who trust in Him.
When God forgives us our trespasses, what does He do with all of those sins? It is obvious that we are guilty. God has the proof of our guilt by comparing our lives with His word. He sees how we disobeyed His commandments, lived selfishly, fill with pride, stubbornly following our own desires, oblivious to Him and His word. We have no excuse for our sin. Guilty as charged. Our sin separates us from our Creator and must be removed before He will accept us. But how? When Jesus was nailed to the cross, so were our sins nailed with Him. When He shed His blood, those sins were covered completely by His blood. Blood is opaque. It can’t be seen through. When a person repents and turns from his or her sin and places faith in Christ, his or her sins can’t be seen by God. He only sees the blood, the scars, and the obedience of Jesus, His Son. God saves people for Jesus’ sake, not for ours. He saves sinners because they have trusted Christ’s blood sacrifice to cover their sins. A person’s works never enter the picture in salvation.
Jesus does not represent the unrepentant sinner before His Father. That defense is left to the sinner to represent himself or herself, having his or her sins exposed and will receive judgment from God. In choosing to be their own defense attorney, sinners find too late what a grievous error they had made. The Judge will declare them guilty, and the devil will remove them from the courtroom to serve their eternal sentence, remanding them to a place devoid of love, understanding, compassion, and freedom.
What a contrast between those who will stand in the great white throne judgment (Revelation 20:11) before Almighty God, and those who will stand at the judgment seat of Christ to receive their rewards for the life they lived for Christ (II Corinthians 5:10). When Jesus died on the cross, He destroyed the power of Satan to condemn those who trust in Christ. Satan, who has spent thousands of years walking about the earth searching for those whom he could devour (I Peter 5:8) and who is also known as the “prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2) was exposed for his evil doing by Christ as Christ hung on the cross, stripping away any authority Sata had to deceive and destroy men and women. There was now a remedy to cure the disease of sin, the super pandemic which Satan had spread like wildfire. Jesus’ triumph over sin and death was openly displayed for all the world to see and gave a mortal blow to Satan.
Paul urged fellow believers at Colossae to not let anyone try to impose keeping the ceremonial law as part of their salvation experience. Christ made folks free from bondage to the law and works. Christians were not to let others tell them what they could and couldn’t eat or drink, what days to observe as holy, the significance of the phases of the moon, or even of the sabbath. (I find it interesting that Paul mentions the sabbath because there are those Christians today who insist that we must follow the Jewish tradition of worshipping on the sabbath, that is, Saturday, but most believers worship on Sunday since it was the day that Christ arose.) Paul’s admonitions also apply to us today. We are not to go the way of legalism, a set of rules and regulations that some folks try to impress upon us. We are to follow the word of God and trust that He will lead us in the way that we should walk. All of these things that Paul wrote concerning life in Christ were types and shadows of Christ and the gospel. They were like the preface to a book which gives an indication of what is to come in the book, but it is not the book. Salvation is not found in the types and shadows, but in Christ Himself.