http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16984905/how-did-jesus-freely-live-a-scripted-life
Audio Transcript
This week we look at authenticity — living out the authentic life. Francisco, a 23-year-old from Mexico City, wants to embody the qualities of Romans 12:9–13 in his life over the next year. He asks for insights on living out this passage authentically, a life of genuine affection. That’s on Thursday.
But today we have a question about the life of Christ and his authenticity: “Hi, Pastor John! My name is Mark, and I have a question for you that I’m having trouble putting into words, but I’ll try my best. When I read the Bible, I keep coming back to something Jesus says at Passover as he’s looking toward the cross: ‘The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.’ That’s Matthew 26:24. I don’t quite understand how the cross can be both fully planned out and still come from Jesus’s totally willing heart. I believe he ‘gave himself as a ransom for all’ (1 Timothy 2:6). But when I think of actors following a script, it doesn’t feel like they’re acting freely or authentically — it’s someone else’s will, not their own. So, how can Jesus’s life and death be fully scripted out and authentically yielded at the same time?”
Well, I probably should make the problem more difficult before I make it less difficult. Not only is the life of Jesus fully scripted, but so is Judas’s — indeed, so is every person’s life fully scripted by God. We’re all living, acting, speaking, thinking, feeling according to God’s providence, God’s decree, God’s script.
When Jesus had been betrayed by Judas and arrested (let’s just take Judas as an example), Matthew writes in Matthew 26:56, “All this has taken place that the Scriptures” — the script — “of the prophets might be fulfilled.” And Jesus said to the disciples about Judas at the Last Supper, “I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me’” (John 13:18). So, everything is happening that night according to divine script.
Then there are the sweeping statements in the Bible that cover all people. Proverbs 16:1: “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” In other words, our hearts are indeed significant in shaping what we say, but the will of the Lord is decisive as to what comes out of our mouths. And Jeremiah says, “I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). And Proverbs 20:24 says, “A man’s steps are from the Lord; how then can man understand his way?”
So, we have good reason to believe that when Paul says in Ephesians 1:11, “[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will” — that’s the script — he means “all things,” including the words and deeds of every person. All persons are acting out, speaking a script ultimately written by God.
Addressing a Reasonable Question
Mark’s question to us is this: I don’t quite understand how the cross can be fully planned and still come from Jesus’s totally willing heart. He says, “When I think of actors following a script, it doesn’t feel like they’re acting freely or authentically — it’s someone else’s will, not their own.”
“We’re all living, acting, speaking, thinking, feeling according to God’s providence, God’s decree, God’s script.”
Now, that’s, of course, totally reasonable. That last question is totally reasonable. If you conceive of an actor reading a script and memorizing it and speaking it in a play, then, clearly, what he says is not necessarily his own. He’s an actor; he’s playacting. He’s letting himself be totally and consciously — that’s important — governed in what he says by memorizing and repeating a script. And that’s the danger of all analogies. Analogies are wonderful and they’re horrible, aren’t they? They’re just so illuminating and so confusing.
There are true things about the analogy between God’s detailed providence and the script of a play. There’s an analogy there, and there are true things. And there are wrong things in the analogy between God’s providence and the script of a play. What’s true about the analogy is that God does indeed write the script for everything that happens in the world, and he sees to it that everybody acts according to his script. That’s the meaning of divine providence. But what’s not true about the analogy is that, in reality, no human being can read the script of divine providence before it happens. Nobody is reading and memorizing the script of divine providence and then acting it out like in a play. The script is secret in every individual life, until it’s acted out — except for Jesus.
Jesus is divine. He is God. His mind and his will are totally one with the Father. Jesus was there in eternity past, sharing in the act of writing the script when it was written for him. He wrote it with the Father. So, unlike everyone else, he did know in detail what he was to do at every moment, because he himself planned to do it. And so, he did not act against his will when following the script. It’s his script.
The words in the garden, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done,” did not mean that God the Son was out of step with God the Father (Luke 22:42). It meant that the truly human nature of Jesus found the prospect of the crucifixion horrific and undesirable in itself, but the unity of the will between the Son and the Father prevailed. So, there’s no sense in which Jesus was following a script contrary to his ultimate desires. He wrote the script together with his Father. He loved the script, and he wholeheartedly acted the script from his whole soul, eternity to eternity.
Addressing a More Difficult Question
But Mark’s question to us is much more difficult when it comes to Judas and everybody else. We didn’t write the script of providence. We can’t read the script of providence before it is acted. We don’t know God’s detailed plans for us the rest of this afternoon or this evening or tomorrow morning, but we will all act and speak in perfect accord with the script of providence.
Now, to deal with this — I have maybe one minute left, which is why I wrote a 750-page book to answer this one-minute-long issue. And so, I feel just a little bit of comfort that if somebody finds this next minute inadequate, I can at least say, “Would you please consult my book Providence, which has 750 pages of defense and explanation of this doctrine?” So, I take some comfort in that.
The essential mystery regarding providence, the divine script, is how — that’s the key question. How does God govern all things in such a way that human choices are still blameworthy or praiseworthy — that is, humans are still real moral agents and are really accountable for our actions? That God governs the world this way is clearly revealed in Scripture. How he does it is not clearly revealed in Scripture. So, let me close with two verses for you to think about in this mystery.
Second Corinthians 8:16–17: “Thanks be to God, who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you. For . . . he is going to you of his own accord.” God put it in the heart of Titus to do something, and the result is that he’s doing it of his own accord. That’s the mystery.
You can see the same thing in Romans 6:17: “Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart.” So, Paul thanks God, not the Roman Christians, that they have become obedient from their own heart — authentic, real, heartfelt choosing and obedience. It is really their choice, and God is the one who ultimately brought it to pass.
Oh, there is so much more to say, but I end with this. John Piper owes — this is why I love this doctrine — we owe our eternal lives to the sovereign grace of God to overcome our sinful will and make us new creatures in Christ, who is at work in us to will and to do his good pleasure.
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What Does Piper Mean by ‘Satisfied’?
Audio Transcript
Welcome back on this Thursday. Well, if you were to sit down with John Piper’s collected works, his thirteen-volume collected works, published back in 2017, and if you read the entire thing, beginning to end, you’d come across the word satisfy or satisfied nearly 1,500 times. Satisfy, satisfied — those loaded terms are all over those works, and they’re all over your ministry, Pastor John. But we rarely, if ever, read a definition of what you mean by the term, leading to Ralph’s question today.
“Pastor John, hello to you! I thank God for your ministry in my life. I have read many of your books and listened to many of your messages, especially those on Christian Hedonism. That idea revolutionized my relationship with the Lord. You have spoken about being satisfied in God thousands and thousands of times in your life. But I cannot find any reference in your works to where you have defined that term. To you, what does it mean to be satisfied?”
This is good for me to be pressed to ponder a term that I ordinarily use, because I consider it self-explanatory. Sometimes those are the very terms that would be most fruitful to at least try to put into words, or to relate to real-life experiences, so that we don’t just speak with empty phrases. So, thank you for the question.
Satisfaction in Scripture
I think the first thing to say is that it doesn’t really matter very much what John Piper means by satisfaction, but it matters a lot — I mean, it’s hard to exaggerate how much it matters — what God means by it when his inspired spokesmen in the Bible use the word. For example:
Psalm 90:14: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
Psalm 63:5: “My soul will be satisfied [in the Lord] as with fat and rich food.”
Psalm 65:4: “We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!”
Psalm 103:5: “[The Lord] satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Psalm 107:9: “He satisfies the longing soul.”
Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Philippians 4:11–12: “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be [satisfied or] content.” I know how to abound, and I know how to be in need.
Hebrews 13:5: “Keep your life free from love of money, and be [satisfied] content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’”So, it’s not so much what I think satisfaction is that matters, but rather, What do texts like these mean? What did God intend when he called us in all those passages — and others — to be satisfied? What kind of experience are we talking about?
Let me try to get at what satisfaction in God, or satisfaction in all that God is for us, refers to.
Evil and Its Opposite
First, notice that the experience of satisfaction corresponds to desire and longing and yearning in the human heart. There would be no such thing as satisfaction if there were no such thing as desire. God created human beings as desire factories. Everybody has desires, longings, yearnings, wantings. God made us that way. Our problem as sinners is not that our desires are too strong, but that they are directed toward the wrong things.
That’s the essence of sin. That’s the essence of evil. Jeremiah 2:13: “My people have committed two evils.” What is that? Number one: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.” Number two: “[They have] hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
That’s evil. Evil is to turn away from being satisfied with God as your fountain. All our desires are designed by God to be Godward desires, to move toward the fountain of living water. Even when we desire earthly things like food or friendship or praise or beauty, all these things are tastes of God’s goodness and pointers to God as the final satisfaction.
God-Shaped Joy
So, the first thing I would say about the meaning of satisfaction in God is that it refers to the experience of having our desire — longing, yearning, wanting — filled. And filled means not too little and not too much. Satisfaction in God is the experience where God is enjoyed as the perfect fullness that corresponds to the God-shaped desires of our hearts.
Eternal Joy
Second, sometimes I use the phrase all-satisfying, like “the all-satisfying God.” And by this I mean that there are no desires that, in the end, God will not purify and satisfy with himself. Even sinful desires have some vestige of legitimacy. God will rescue that fragment of legitimacy and cleanse it of all that is destructive and fill it up in the age to come. When this sinful age is over and the kingdom has fully and manifestly come, there will be no unmet longings, no unfulfilled desires, no dissatisfaction.
Embattled Joy
Third, there are many mysteries about what our experience will be like when we are totally perfected in the age to come. But for now, I want to stress that to say, “Jesus is all-satisfying,” does not mean that when he becomes our satisfaction, our desiring ceases. That would be a mistake to say that our desiring ceases.
Jesus says in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Now, I don’t think he means that when we are born again and receive him by faith, we never desire him again. I don’t think he means that. I think he means that finding Jesus to be the bread and the water that our souls have always longed for means our quest is over. We no longer look for a better drink or a better food. We have found our all-satisfying treasure.
But in this sinful age — and I’m including myself now, as a sinner, as remaining corruption within me needs mortifying — in this sinful age, where the heart of faith is always embattled, our experience of the satisfaction of Christ will always be imperfect, fragmentary, ever-changing, renewable, greater and lesser.
“Our problem as sinners is not that our desires are too strong, but that they are directed toward the wrong things.”
Christ remains who he is, right? He doesn’t change. He remains who he is: all-satisfying. And our new birth with new spiritual taste buds that know he is the all-satisfying one remains attached to him. We don’t lose him and then find him, and lose him and then find him. He holds on to us. We do not run away after some new fountain or new bread. But for now, our experience is up and down. It won’t be like that in the age to come. But how will desire and satisfaction be related in the age to come? Frankly, I can’t answer that fully.
Dissatisfied Joy
Fourth and finally (and this is really important), the reality of love for other people, and especially compassion for those who suffer, demands that our satisfaction in this age of pain and sorrow be a dissatisfied satisfaction. Almost forty years ago, when I wrote the chapter on love in the book Desiring God, I said this: “The weeping of compassion is the weeping of joy” — or you could say, “the weeping of satisfaction” — “impeded [hindered] in the extension of itself to another” (125).
Now, that sounds paradoxical, “weeping satisfaction” — an odd phrase. But what it means is that when God grants me to know him as satisfying to my soul’s deepest needs, and then I look on a suffering person, my God-given satisfaction at that moment has in it the impulse to expand and include the other person in it. I want them in it. I want them to share it. Satisfaction in God is not indifferent to those who don’t share it. If we could, we would fold them into our satisfaction in God. But if we are hindered from that, it is our very joy, our very satisfaction, impeded in the extension of itself, that grieves. It is a peculiarly Christian form of dissatisfied satisfaction.
Four Facets of Satisfaction
Ralph, that’s my effort to clarify what I mean by “satisfaction in God.”
It is a filling up of God-given, God-shaped desires.
It will, in the end, leave no desire unfilled for God’s children forever.
For now, the satisfaction in God is embattled and variable, and desires must be rekindled.
For now, even the best experience of satisfaction in God is a dissatisfied satisfaction, when we are surrounded by the pain of those who don’t yet have it and the sorrows of this fallen world. -
The Stable Presence: Five Traits of Resilient Fathers
Fathers are called to provide for and protect their households. To do this well, they must be sober-minded and stable men who lead their families with gladness, fortitude, wisdom, and resilience.
To provide literally means “to see before.” Thus, a key element of provision is anticipation. A dad is responsible to anticipate the needs, threats, and temptations in his household. His goal is to have clarity about the issues facing his family, coupled with a readiness to act with wisdom to address them.
And he does not do so by himself. In seeking this clarity for the sake of provision, a father does well to remember that he has been given a helper precisely for this purpose. Together, they will see more than if they try to see alone. A faithful father welcomes the insights and wisdom of his wife concerning the needs of the family.
Fathers with Sober Minds
A common pitfall in a father’s leadership is defensiveness in response to his wife’s insights, comments, and encouragements to act. Say a mother sees a pattern of sin forming in her son’s life. She brings it to her husband’s attention, wanting him to do something about it. He gets defensive, or blows up, or shuts down, or shifts blame. All of these reactions display a lack of sober-mindedness.
This is true regardless of whether his wife brings the issue to his attention in a helpful way. Say that the sin in the kids has awakened fear in her. She knows that little sins, when left unchecked, become big sins. Little sinners, if left unchecked, grow up to be big sinners. And so, she brings this to her husband’s attention with some anxiety, agitation, and (perhaps) frustration that the sin has festered as long as it has.
Such situations call for stable sober-mindedness. At a basic level, sober-mindedness is the opposite of drunkenness (1 Thessalonians 5:6–8). Drunkenness refers to the physical, cognitive, and moral impairment caused by drinking too much alcohol. Drunkenness negatively affects one’s judgment, frequently leading to other sins. Those who are drunk don’t see clearly, nor do they stand firmly, nor do they act wisely.
Crucially, alcohol is not the only intoxicant. Passions too, whether ours or others, can cloud our judgment and hinder wise action. Under the influence of passions, we become reactive and tossed to and fro. Again, we get defensive, blow up, shut down, or shift blame.
“To be sober-minded is to see with clarity, stand with stability, and act with wisdom.”
Therefore, to be sober-minded is to see with clarity, stand with stability, and act with wisdom. Sober-minded men govern their own passions, and thus they are able to absorb and endure the passions, reactions, and agitations of others.
Making a Resilient Dad
Where does such sober-mindedness come from? In my own life, I frequently return to Colossians 3:12–17 as a way of building sober-minded resilience into my soul. So let us consider the passage, not merely as a word to all Christians, but as a word applied particularly to husbands and fathers.
CLOTHED IN VIRTUE
First, Paul calls his readers to clothe themselves with key virtues: “compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). All of these are vital for fathers as they seek to lead their homes. We are to clothe ourselves with these virtues “as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved.” In other words, these virtues flow from knowing ourselves to be loved by God and set apart for his service. Steady fathers are grounded in the love of their heavenly Father.
READY TO FORGIVE
Second, steady fathers bear with and readily forgive others (Colossians 3:13). They are long-suffering, and they keep short accounts. They don’t hold grudges or allow bitterness to fester. They either allow love to cover a multitude of sins, or they quickly act to address substantial sins and pursue forgiveness and reconciliation. The one thing that they don’t do is allow sins to pile up in their own hearts and their own households. And they act this way, fundamentally, because their Lord has freely forgiven them.
RULED BY PEACE
Third, steady fathers clothe themselves with love and let Christ’s peace rule in their hearts (Colossians 3:14–15). The peace of Christ is the root of Christian sober-mindedness. He is our peace. He is our stability. He is the sure and steadfast anchor of our souls. And a godly father who welcomes the peace of Christ in his heart is empowered to be a sober-minded anchor for his family. The peace of Christ enables him to be a spiritual harbor for them in the storms and trials of life.
STEEPED IN SCRIPTURE
Fourth, Christ’s peace reigns in our hearts when God’s word dwells in us richly (Colossians 3:16). Paul’s words press us to pursue a particular quality in our biblical meditation. The word must dwell richly in us; this implies a certain abundance and fullness of God’s word in our lives. This richness overflows from us, in both teaching and singing. Steady fathers have the word on their tongues; they are ready with wise biblical instruction, exhortation, and admonition for their families. More than that, “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” are the soundtrack of their lives. They love to sing God’s word back to him and over their families.
ALWAYS THANKFUL
Finally, steady fathers are grateful fathers. Three times in Colossians 3, Paul calls us to gratitude. “Be thankful” (Colossians 3:15). Sing “with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). Glad-hearted gratitude to God is the abundant overflow of a steady father. A steady father thanks God for all things, great and small. He is ever mindful of God’s many kindnesses to him, and he leads his family to the throne of grace with thanksgiving and adoration.
Sober-Mindedness in Action
So, returning to the original scenario, how might a Colossians 3 father both respond to his wife’s insight and lead in shepherding his son?
“Steady fathers are grounded in the love of their heavenly Father.”
First, a sober-minded father will not be threatened by the insights of his wife (even the agitated and anxious insights). Instead, he’ll receive his wife’s insights with humility, meekness, and gratitude. Because he is anchored in God’s love and Christ’s peace, he will be quick to listen and slow to speak, carefully evaluating the situation in light of God’s word.
Second, the dominant note that he’ll strike, whether she brought her concerns in a faithful way or a reactive way, is gratitude to God for her, and gratitude to her for her help. He is able to live with her in an understanding way and show honor to her as the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7). With God’s help, his sober-mindedness can act as an anchor for her, and together they can turn their attention to wisely shepherding their son.
Third, he’ll take the initiative in addressing the issue with his son. He’ll do so clothed with compassion and patience, bringing the same steady presence to bear in teaching and admonishing his son with all wisdom. Such wisdom will often take the form of anticipating and diffusing his son’s own defensiveness and blame-shifting with kindness, meekness, and manifest love. A steady father will both bear with the weaknesses of his son and insist that God’s word be obeyed in everything.
Finally, he will aim at forgiveness and reconciliation, first with God, and then within his family. God’s forgiveness in Christ is foundational, but it always spreads. A steady father leads in making sure that everyone in his home is keeping short accounts with each other, quickly confessing sin and sincerely offering forgiveness.
And he will do all of this in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him, clothed with the love of God that binds his family together in perfect harmony.
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How Did the Cross Disarm the Devil?
Audio Transcript
Good Monday morning, everyone. A big week ahead on the podcast: Next time, on Wednesday, we’re going to look at what we as Christians do with our disordered desires. We still have those disordered loves in us. So what do we do with them? That’s Wednesday. Friday, we look at whether or not we can become more holy if we treat our bodies more harshly — a key discussion on asceticism.
But first, the week starts as we look at the power of our adversary — the devil. The Bible tells us that Satan has been disarmed. So what did he get disarmed of? What powers did he have that he no longer possesses? That’s the question from a podcast listener named Dan, in Altoona, Iowa. “Pastor John, hello! Colossians 2:15 tells us our Savior Jesus Christ ‘disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them.’ Great text! But what is here meant by ‘disarmed’? Was there something they were wielding then that they do not wield now? If so, what is the weapon Paul speaks of here in this text?”
I love this question because I love the glorious truth, not only of Colossians 2:15, but the way verses 13 and 14 prepare for it and put a massive foundation under it. So let’s read the whole unit, and then I’ll give a couple answers to the question, In what sense did the death of Christ strip Satan and his demons of their weapons? Here are the verses:
You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses [how?] by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside [how?], nailing it to the cross. [And here comes the key verse we’re being asked about:] He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him [in Christ and in the cross]. (Colossians 2:13–15)
Forgiven and Made Alive
This is one of the greatest passages, I think, in the Bible about what really happened when Christ died. So let me describe six terrible and wonderful things in the order in which they happened in this text, and end by describing the glorious disarming of rulers and authorities.
1. Legally Condemned
We were dead in trespasses and sins. All human beings are spiritually dead and blind to the reality of the glory of Christ. We are as dead to spiritual truth as a human corpse is dead to being touched. Paul describes the legal nature of this condition in Colossians 2:14 with the phrase “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” In other words, we’re not only spiritually impervious to God’s touch, but we are legally condemned by the long record of sins that stood against us.
2. Debt Nailed
God took that long list, that record of sins, and put it in the hand of Christ, and drove a spike through it and through his hand so that he became a substitute for us, bearing the punishment for the record of our debts in his own death. He nailed it. The text says, “nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).
3. Debt Canceled
Then verse 14 makes explicit that this nailing of the record of our debt to the cross canceled — “canceling the record of our debt” (Colossians 2:14). It is canceled. The debt is canceled because the debt of punishment that we owed to the justice of God has been paid in the punishment of Christ on the cross.
4. Record Set Aside
Then Paul adds, “This he set aside” (Colossians 2:14). Literally, it says he “took it out of the midst” — very unusual thing to say. In other words, in the courtroom of heaven, where our record of debt guarantees our condemnation, nobody can find it. It’s taken. Where did it go? This was in the folder here just a minute ago. It’s taken out of the midst. It’s gone. “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).
5. Forgiven
Then he makes explicit that the effect of our sins being nailed, and the record of debt being taken out of the way, is that we’re forgiven (Colossians 2:13). He applies to us personally what Christ accomplished perfectly. When we are united to Christ by faith, his punishment becomes ours and his righteousness becomes ours, and God counts our sins against us no more.
6. Made Alive
Paul says in verse 13, therefore, “God made [you] alive together with him.” Because our sins are forgiven, he makes us eternally alive. Now, we’re no longer a corpse that can’t be touched by spiritual reality. We see Christ for who he is, and we are moved to prefer him and prize him and treasure him and love him and trust him above all things.
Devil Disarmed
And now, on the basis of those six terrible and glorious realities, we see in verse 15 that something amazing happened to the rulers and authorities, to Satan and his “cosmic powers . . . in the heavenly places,” as it says in Ephesians 6:12. This is Colossians 2:15: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” The word translated disarmed means literally stripped. It’s used one other place — namely, in Colossians 3:9, where the Christians are to strip off their old nature.
So, what we see first in verse 15 is that just when people thought Jesus was being stripped of his clothing, and shamed in nakedness at his final trial, and led in triumphal procession to Calvary, what was really happening was the reverse. Namely, Satan and his demonic forces were being stripped. They were being shamed. They were being led in triumphal procession. I’m going to mention two ways (there are more) that the achievement of the death of Jesus in verses 13 and 14 brings about this stripping (or this disarming) of Satan and his rulers.
No More Condemnation
First, we know from Revelation 12:10 that Satan, by the very meaning of his name, is the great accuser. Satan can do a lot of damage to us physically, emotionally, and relationally in this world, but he can only condemn us or damn us or bring us to eternal ruin in one way — namely, by a valid accusation of our sins before a holy God.
“The power to accuse God’s people successfully has been taken away.”
If he can do that, we’re done for. If he can make our sins stick in the courtroom of heaven as he accuses us before the judge of the universe, we’re doomed; we’re hopeless. And the point of verses 13 and 14 is that the record of debt that Satan could use to accuse us and condemn us has been nailed to the cross. The one damning weapon that he has — namely, unforgiven sin, with which he could accuse us — has been stripped out of his hands.
This is what Paul meant, I think, when he said in Romans 8:33–34, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died.” So, the first way that the demonic world was stripped and disarmed by the cross is that the power to accuse God’s people successfully has been taken away. That sin is already punished. It was nailed to the cross. We can’t be accused with it.
No More Fear of Death
And the second thing, the only other thing I’ll mention, is a glorious thing experientially now — namely, Satan was robbed. The powers and the rulers, the authorities, were robbed or stripped of their power to hold us in slavery to the fear of death. Now, I get that straight out of Hebrews 2:14, which is an absolutely amazing, wonderful verse
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood [that is, we’re human], he himself likewise partook of the same things [he became human], that through death he might destroy [nullify, abrogate, revoke, abolish] the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.
“When Christ died in our place, he took the sting out of death.”
When Christ died in our place, he took the sting out of death because he took sin out of death. He took condemnation out of death. And so he took fear out of death, which means that the second great weapon of the devil that was stripped from him is the power to hold us in bondage, which is what the next verse in Hebrews says: he held us in bondage through fear of death our whole life long (Hebrews 2:15).
He can’t do that anymore. He has been disarmed of the weapon of fear of dying, because the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, and all of it has been satisfied and punished on the cross.
Glories of the Cross
So, you can see why I love Colossians 2:13–15. The riches of these verses are infinite. I encourage you to spend hours pondering the glories of what God achieved for us on the cross, especially as it relates to the devil and the evil rulers and authorities — and I’ve only mentioned two. There are other ways that Satan has been stripped, but these two are wonderful. Power to condemn us with sin stripped. Power to terrify us with death stripped.
