Being Transformed

“If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees” (Colossians 2:20).
Audio Sermon: Colossians 2:16-23

This verse spawns three personal probing inquiries:

• Have I died with Christ?

• Have I identified the elementary principles of the world disfiguring my relationship with God?

• Have I described with precision the worldly decrees leading to my esteem for another god or other gods?

You are either alive to yourself or alive to Christ. If you are alive to Christ, then “you have died with Christ.” If you are alive to yourself, then your life is fleshly just like most of the folks with whom you work and play (Gal. 5:17, 25). The person who has died with Christ battles fleshly impulses, intemperance in all matters and selfishness. He identifies his primary perils as his earthly reliances, so he rejects half truths and worldly wisdom (Js. 3:17).

The elementary principles of the world coerce you to prop up your perception of yourself via the regard others have for you rather than according to Jesus’ standard. Consequently, throughout your life you are wearied by an unending performance as a stage actor in order to accrue their liking. A performance-based life is a penitentiary.

The worldly decrees lending to your appreciation for another god or other gods most likely have their genesis in your fear of the opinions your family and friends may form of you if you live a Christlike life. Have you made an idol of the perception you want others to have of you? When God establishes His covenant of grace in one’s heart, He severs that person’s bondage to this earthly life so that this life becomes merely a means to God’s eternal end. You begin to live as though your primary citizenship is in heaven so you cease practicing your atheistic and apostate religion (Phil. 3:20f.).

Christianity is not tame or docile - it is revolutionary. Biblical Christianity has such a penetrating influence upon its devotees that it requires dying with Christ to yourself, dying to worldly standards and dying to the opinions of those having no relationship with Jesus. If you have died with Christ, then you are no longer cheating His eyes of witnessing His likeness expressed through you to those having little interest in Him.

Perhaps you might be served heaven’s blessings by placing your mind and heart before several searching interrogatories:

• Have I exchanged my life for Jesus’ life?

• Have I exchanged my today for His eternity?

• Have I exchanged my casual address to Christianity for Jesus’ intentional purposed exacting Christianity?

• Am I comfortable with a life premised upon minimal biblical standards?

• Am I urgent about eternal matters?

Jesus says, “In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mk. 7:7).

SOLI DEO GLORIA!