http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15168932/fathers-aim-at-trusting-obedient-happy-children

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. As you page through the new APJ book, you’ll see some of the ways we’ve talked about election and predestination over the years. The fallout of this doctrine of God’s sovereignty over who is saved in the end leads to many, many questions about whether this is fair or unfair and whether election excuses the non-elect from their unbelief. You’ll see those themes compiled on pages 355–64.

We’re right back into this theme today in an email question from a listener named John. “Hello, Pastor John! I have often heard nonbelievers blaming God for not electing them and giving them a new heart to have faith. How can I persuade them that it is not God’s fault but their own unbelief? My friend’s son professed to be a Christian and even evangelized people and led people to God. But later, while in college, he realized he was not a true believer and left the faith. He now blames God for not electing him. How would you counsel this young man?”

Well, let me clarify immediately that I do agree with the premise that there is such a thing as unconditional election by God — namely, that everyone whom God decisively saves, whom he brings out of darkness to light, brings out of the bondage of sin and unbelief, he does not decide to do that on the spur of the moment, as though there were no plan. Rather, he saves in accordance with his infinite wisdom and plan, which he has had in mind forever. Ephesians 1:4 says, “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world.” So, when he saved me, he saved me according to an electing plan.

Physically Free, Morally Bound

So, the question being asked is this: Why are people whom God does not save according to his purpose and plan nevertheless accountable? That is, they are not able to relieve themselves of the responsibility to believe and trust God because God has not planned to save them.

“God has his wise and holy reasons for why he does not overcome the rebellion of everyone.”

Now, I think a helpful place to begin in talking about the accountability of people to embrace and treasure the truth of God that they have access to is to distinguish two kinds of inability, because the kind of objection we’re dealing with here is that someone is saying, “I am required to believe, but I don’t have the ability to believe. And not having the ability to believe means I’m not responsible to believe.” These two kinds of inability that I’m talking about are moral inability and physical inability.

Physical inability is when you’re required to do something, but you do not have the physical ability to do it. For example, you’re chained to a pillar in a burning house, and you’re commanded to realize there’s a fire and to get out, but the chains physically keep you from moving. So, in that case, we would say that you are not accountable for remaining in the house. You may have wanted with every will in you to move and get out, but you were physically unable.

But there’s another kind of inability, which we call moral inability. You’re not physically limited or restrained, but your moral preferences — what you experience as good and bad, pleasing and displeasing, desirable and undesirable — are so strong in one direction that you may be unable to act contrary to those preferences. So, this time, you may be in the burning house, and you are not physically restrained at all, but you love what you’re doing in this house at this moment. You love it so much, you prefer it so much, you desire it so much, you find it so pleasing that you will not even believe every credible testimony that the house is on fire and you must get out, and you die.

So, you are physically free, but you are morally bound. You are in bondage to act according to those overpowering desires and die.

God’s Sovereign Grace

Now, I think the Bible teaches that if you are not free in the physical sense, you are not responsible to act according to the truth. You are physically unable to see or do (Romans 1:18–23, if we had time to talk about it — I’ll let you look it up). But if you are not free in the moral sense because your desires are so corrupt and so contrary to truth, you are nevertheless responsible to act according to the truth (Romans 2:4–5). Responsibility to forsake sin and trust Christ is not nullified because of our sinful desires, because they’re so strong that we are morally unable to turn away from sin.

In election, God freely chose, graciously chose, to set people free from this bondage of moral inability — to set people free from loving evil so much that they are morally unable to choose the good. None of us would be saved if God had not done this for us. The final and decisive answer to why I or you believed in Jesus and were set free from our bondage to the love of self and sin is the sovereign grace of God. As the apostle Paul said, God made us alive when we were dead (Ephesians 2:5). God granted us to believe (Philippians 1:29). God overcame our hardness against him (Ephesians 4:18). God gave us the ability to see the glory of Christ and the true and desirable Christ hanging on the cross (2 Corinthians 4:6).

“You cannot use non-election as an excuse for loving the dark more than the light.”

He does this for millions of people, and it is owing to nothing in us. It is free. God has his wise and holy reasons for why he does not overcome the rebellion of everyone. The fact that God does — in his mercy and the freedom of his grace — overcome the sinful corruption and rebellion and resistance of many does not mean he’s obliged to do it for anybody. Nobody deserves it, and nobody has a right to complain if he does not do it for them.

Final Verdict

So, let’s imagine a person coming to me as a pastor and saying to me, “Pastor, I believe that God has not loved me and has not set me free from my sin and my unbelief because I am not elect. And therefore, I believe God is to be blamed. He’s guilty of evil.” I would say to him, “How do you know that you are not among the elect?”

Now, perhaps he would say, “Because he hasn’t taken away my rebellion,” to which I would say, “But that does not prove you’re not elect, because he might take away that rebellion in the next hour or the next day or year. So really, how do you know that you are not elect?”

“Well,” he might say, “maybe I don’t know for sure I’m not elect, but if I’m not elect, then I’m not responsible to believe,” to which I would say, “Why don’t you believe and receive Jesus right now? You can’t say it’s because you’re not elect — you don’t know that. And you can’t know that ever, till the day you die. You can never say with any authority, ‘I’m not elect.’ You don’t know. But you can know that you are elect because only the elect receive Jesus. So, tell me right now, why don’t you believe and so prove that you are elect?”

Now, I don’t know what he’s going to say at this point. He might be honest and say, “Because I don’t find him very attractive. I don’t find Jesus compelling.” Or “I don’t find his way of life that he requires of me to be desirable.” Or “I don’t like Christians.” Or “I don’t think the Bible is true.”

I will say, “That’s right. That’s right. And if those are your last words, they will be your condemnation at the last day — not the fact that you are not elect. That fact will not enter into your judgment at all. You were presented with Christ — the most valuable, beautiful person in the universe — and you did not find him to be true or desirable. That will be the case against you at the last day. You cannot use non-election as an excuse for loving the dark more than the light. You will be self-condemned.”

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.