Colossians 3:11 –
¹¹ Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Good morning, Grace Church! I am pleased to serve you this morning through God’s word. May it do the work that God intends and may it bring about a greater joy in Jesus. We are continuing our journey with the Colossian believers through Paul’s letter to them. He addresses a heart issue with our verse this morning. I say it’s a heart issue because otherwise we are left with a list of bad things not to do, which we heard last week and a list after verse 11 of good things we need to do which will simply frustrate us when we fail do them. Not surprisingly, God is always after the heart first before the things we see on the outside. 

Proverbs 4:23 – “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

1 Samuel 16:7 -“For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

Matthew 15:18-19 – “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart… For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”

Luke 6:45 -“The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good… for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

Jonathan Edwards: “The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to manifest Himself in the heart of the saint, working as a principle of divine life.”

Martin Luther: “It is the heart that makes a theologian.”

From the heart springs idols – those created things in which we seek our hope, joy, significance, and security – but only Jesus Christ can sustain our souls. Oh, that the Spirit would do heart work today in us to kill idols.

My aim this morning: To remind us to keep our identity in Jesus Christ because He has made us a new creation. That we would be a unified church because the same Christ is our foundation, hope, and treasure. That we experience lasting joy because Christ is all and in all.

Let me ask you to consider a question: What defines you? If I were to ask you on a normal day, who are you or tell me about yourself? How would you answer? You may answer:

I am a husband. I am a mom. I am retired. I am an athlete. I am from a small town. I am conservative. I am happy. I am lonely. I am healthy. I am weird. 

These are all labels, identities, categories that naturally become the guidance to our hope, joy, significance and security. The problem is not the categories themselves, but that they reign in our hearts and minds. They become idols.

Paul is telling the Colossians believers: there is something deeper about you that what the world can see, what the world elevates. Your deepest identity is not what you do, what you have or don’t have. It’s not what people think about you. Your identity is found in Jesus Christ, the Supreme King and Savior. 

With that, let’s walk through Paul’s words in verse 11.

1. Where? Here.

Paul starts with a word, “Here.” Where is here, Paul?

Paul is moving from the individual talked about in verse 10 to the gathering of Jesus followers in verse 11. Here is both the new self, each follower of Jesus, but also the new community that God has created through Christ. Notice, Paul doesn’t say “over there.” It’s here: the place where people have put off the old self. Here, where people have put on the new self. Here in each of you and as a result, here in this local church. There is a miracle of unitedness that doesn’t happen in the world, it happens in the unity of the gathering of a bunch of new creations in this new community that God purchased with His Son’s blood. 

Before Paul gets into what relationships look like later in this letter for blood-bought saints, he addresses the new identity that we have here, inside our heart and within this gathering. In verse 10, Paul says, “…you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

In the phrase, ‘after the image of its creator’, Paul is drawing a connection from Genesis 1:27 where it is said that God created Adam in His own image. The first Adam is regarded as the old man or old self who should be put off and discarded, because now we are being renewed, we are created after the imageof the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Elsewhere, Paul wrote that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. We are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus. We are a new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 

In the Gospel of John, we hear the words we must be born again, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 

So in this letter to the Colossians, Paul is not describing self-improvement. He is describing a new creation. There is a death to one man and a birth of a new man.

In Galatians 2, Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

The old self dies and therefore, I no longer live, but Jesus lives in me. I don’t live a life by trying harder to be like Jesus, I live only because Jesus lives in me. Colossians 1:27 – “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 3:4 – “Christ who is your life…” Every believer has Christ living in them. The Holy Spirit stirs our hearts to treasure Jesus because Jesus is life. We have springs of living water in us because Jesus is life in us. Paul said we are dead in our trespasses and sins, but we were made alive together with Christ. Old self: dead. New self: Christ. 

So, Paul takes that truth into verse 11 to dismantle labels that don’t/shouldn’t reign in our new self and then connecting it the whole gathering of Jesus people. The same Christ who lives in me, lives in you! We have one LORD. We have one FAITH. Galatians 3, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. ²⁷ For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” 

There would be much to work through in those verses, but I’ll simply say: we belong to Christ and therefore we belong to each other – what a miracle of grace! So Paul takes the categories of people and dismantles their authority in the following list because of Jesus who is our new identity.  

2. Christ is our new identity

Paul lists off labels: Greek and Jew. (ethnicity)

Circumcised and uncircumcised. (religious)

Barbarian and Scythian. (culture)

Slave and free. (social)

None of these were small differences. They were deeply rooted all around the church back then…though we use different labels today, they all essentially fall into these categories of ethnicity, religion, culture, or society. Back then, a Jewish person might have viewed the Greek as spiritually inferior. The Greek would have looked at the barbarian as uncultured and crude. A free person would have looked down upon the slave. Society builds walls and we love them. We decorate them with our ideologies, self-proclamations, self-worth. But when Christ comes, something greater happens. It’s not that differences no longer exist, they just no longer define worth and status in God’s kingdom. In the Church we aim for unity. We say ‘unity’ not ‘uniformity’ because the gospel doesn’t erase personality, background, ethnicity, culture, or history – it just changes what is at the center, what sits on the throne of authority. We may have many relationships and fall within many categories, but one relationship defines all the others: we must proclaim to ourselves “I belong to Jesus and all other labels submit to Him.” Paul presents every earthly distinction people use to determine value, privilege, and significance and shows their weakness in the light of Jesus. How? Jesus brought the only solution to our division from God and divisions between one another. Jesus brought peace by the blood of His cross (Col. 1:20).

Jesus does not just bring peace…He is our peace. Peace is a harmony, quietness, rest which is possible because through Jesus we enter God’s rest, we are restored to Him and others through Jesus.

Before this salvation, sin separated us from God (Isaiah 59:2; Romans 3:23; Ephesians 4:18). But when Jesus died, He paid the full penalty for our sins. He was “pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him” (Isaiah 53:5; Colossians 1:20). Only through a relationship with the risen Christ can peace with God be achieved and maintained. To the Thessalonians, Paul called Jesus “the Lord of peace” who gives “peace at all times and in every way” (2 Thessalonians 3:16). Jesus Himself told His disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27).

Jesus fulfills the OT prophets who said that the Christ would come to be our “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6) who would “proclaim peace to the nations” (Zechariah 9:10). At the time of Christ’s birth, the angels proclaimed, ““Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). In Him, we have “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” to guard our hearts and minds (Philippians 4:7). Jesus came to bring peace on earth and called His followers to seek peace in the earth: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sonsof God.” (Matt. 5:9). By knowing Jesus and making the effort for peace in His name, by His truth, we reflect Jesus to those around us, showing Jesus makes the only difference in a world that lives by fighting and dividing.

As Paul presents these labels and saying there is none of that here, he is stating that the work of Jesus on the cross is the common ground of salvation for both Jew and Gentile. Therefore, there is no longer any dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. Jesus broke that wall down.

Paul likely wrote these words while the physical wall separating Jew and Gentile in the Temple still stood in Jerusalem. Every Gentile knew there was a barrier they could not cross. Yet Paul declares that in Christ the greater, truer barrier had already fallen. A decade after he penned these words, history caught up with what Christ had already accomplished when the Romans destroyed the Temple. Prior to the sacrifice of Christ, Jews alone could be washed and purified to enter God’s holy Temple. Today, those of all races can enter into the presence of God by means of the blood of Jesus and the washing of regeneration of the Spirit. The sacrifice of Christ removes religious and cultural barriers. All those who place their faith in Jesus are considered one with equal access to the throne of God. This is what Paul means in Colossians as he states, there is no longer Jew or Greek, circumcised or not, slave or free…we are all one in Christ! Jesus brought peace between us and God and amongst us because Jesus is Himself peace. In Christ, former enemies become one family, built together into God’s dwelling place. That is why Paul can say in Colossians 3:11, “Christ is all, and in all.” Our old identities no longer define us. Our unity is not found in ethnicity, status, or background, but in our shared life in Christ.

Again, friends, Paul is not denying reality, but he is redefining identity. The problem was not the categories, but treasuring them over Jesus. Today we use different labels: Blue collar or white collar. Athlete or theatre student. Republican or Democrat. Single or married. Some that don’t combat another, but all still create value: parent, grandparent, widow, homeschooler, college graduate. None of these disappear, they simply need to stop ruling our view of one another in Christ. This is how we live out the reality of verse 17: We do all things in the name of our Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through Him. 

Jews remains Jews, Greeks remain Greeks, men remain men, women remain women. Social distinctions still exist – there are rich and poor. What no longer exists is the advantage attached to them in God’s Kingdom. Our standing before the LORD is determined entirely by our union with Jesus by faith. The ground is level at Calvary. If Christ has removed every lesser identity, then what remains? Paul answers with four words that summarize the Christian life: Christ is all.

3. Christ is all

Paul has not said, “Jesus is really important.” He is not an addition to life, He is life. He is the foundation, the fuel for the new self, and the pursuit of our days.

Already Paul has given us this earlier in the letter: “we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰ so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; ¹¹ being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. ¹³ He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. ¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. ²¹ And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²² he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him… Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

Christ is all because He is our greatest need. Christianity is not about getting something from God like a better marriage, better friends, circumstances, or future. Those can be some benefits, but they aren’t all guaranteed nor are they the goal itself. Christianity is primarily about getting Jesus – who saves us from our sins and the wrath of God that we deserve. It is about going from death to life, being in a kingdom of darkness and death to getting placed in the Kingdom of the Beloved Son in light and life. We get a relationship with the One who created us, knit us together, redeemed us. Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1-3). God brings us to Himself by the power of the Holy Spirit through His Son Jesus. The treasure of Christianity is Christ Himself. He is the way, the truth, the life.  

Jesus is our greatest need, but also what our hearts long for – He is our joy. Joy is the settled delight and gladness of heart that comes from abiding in Christ, experiencing His love, and walking in His grace, regardless of your circumstances.

Everybody wants joy. God created us to pursue it. The question is not “do you want it?” – the question is “where are you looking for it?” We chase joy in things that cannot deliver the joy that Jesus gives: approval, comfort, success, money, control, relationships, entertainment. These can be good gifts, but they make for terrible gods. 

I’m thankful for Lewis with the idea of pursuing joy and his work, Surprised by Joy. Lewis describes joy as a deep, unsatisfied longing that is more precious than having the thing longed for. Unlike happiness or pleasure, Joy carries an ache, almost like a beautiful grief, because it points beyond itself to something greater. Those who experience it always desire it again and would not trade it for every earthly pleasure. Yet, unlike pleasure, Joy cannot be produced or controlled. It comes as a gift, awakening a longing that nothing in this world can fully satisfy. He connects joy to a German phrase translated, “a holy longing.” Lewis writes later, “Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of no value at all.” (Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life, p. 269). What he was calling joy was in fact not the end in itself, but a kind of sign pointing toward the end. He concludes by saying, “I had hoped that the heart of reality might be of such a kind that we can best symbolize it as a place…Instead, I found it to be a Person” (p. 282). 

The things is, good gifts cannot carry the weight of our soul…but Jesus can. They point us to the source of life and that joy – in the person of Jesus Christ.

Psalm 16:11 “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Not a little joy, not temporal joy – fullness of joy, friends. There is a deep satisfaction as we treasure Jesus above all else, when we rightly rest in Him for our hope, joy, significance and security. This treasure cannot be taken away; Christ is ours and we are Christ’s. Christ isn’t only above His church as Lord. He is also present within His people.

4. Christ is in all

Not only is Jesus above all, but He lives in all people. I’ve touched on this already, but the same Jesus that is life in me, is life in you brothers and sisters. We see the greatness of Christ as He is supreme, but there is a comfort of Christ that is just as important. Christ is in His people. Whether you have been following Jesus for 50 years or whether you came to faith yesterday, whether you are feeling strong in Christ or whether you are praying for Christ to hold fast because you can’t any longer – Christ dwells with the same supernatural power. 

Christ is with you in ordinary moments. I think our hearts long for extraordinary moments where we sense the Lord’s presence and feel His power mightily at work. We can pray for those moments, but often the Christian life is ordinary. So, friends, Christ dwells in you while you wash dishes, while you drive to work, changing a diaper, grocery shopping on a busy Saturday, serving without anyone taking notice. Christ is with you, in you, giving you life. 

So even in “ordinary” days, Christ is in it and with you. 

Even more, Christ is with you in the burdens you carry. Some of us have come here this morning carrying weights. I’m not talking about sin, I’m talking about sufferings, burdens that no one but the Lord knows about. You’ve come here because you need refuge. Christ is the refuge. Psalm 62:8 has become a favorite verse of mine in the past couple years: “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”

Christ is with you as you watch your marriage fall apart. Christ is with you while you watch a child walk away from Jesus. Christ is with you in the diagnosis you’re waiting to hear. Christ is with you while you feel overwhelmed by loneliness. Christ is with you in grief unexplained. 

The comfort here is not “You will not feel hurt or pain.” The promise is you are not alone in it. Christ dwells in you. Additionally, we are called to bear one another burdens, weep with those who weep. May this gathering of Grace Church be a place where we walk with one another with Christ-filled hearts and peace. 

The last part of Christ being in all is a small reflection on the Sunday gathering. The gathering this morning matters. Not only does it matter for your life now, but this is practice for eternity. In Revelation 7, we see what we are practicing for, “…behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, ¹⁰ and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” ¹¹ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” 

Every tribe, every language, every nation, standing before the one Savior King. This is the hope of glory – to see and savor Jesus Christ face-to-face in perfection, eyes undimmed, no presence and power of sin, but glory!

I think this also makes the Church difficult at times. Here’s what I mean. We have a sense of what heaven may be like, we think about life without all the brokenness. Sometimes we experience the reality that we still live in a sin-sick world. It impacts this gathering. It impacts us God’s people. This is also why we must continue to press on toward the prize that is ours in Christ Jesus. We know what church should be, we experience moments of heaven on a Sunday or in our living room with a few other believers. Then our sin, flesh, the Enemy gets in and wrecks it. We don’t deny it, but our response is to proclaim and remind ourselves of the gospel. We remind ourselves that Christ will build His Church. We kill the old self with humility before Jesus and one another knowing that this shadow will disappear. These are the things that angels long to look at Peter said, where rulers and authorities in the heavenly places are seeing the manifold wisdom of God – they are learning about His great redemption through individuals being redeemed and the gathering of all of those together in community sustained by grace. Someday the reality will be glory, death will be dead, and the gathering will be prefect before King Jesus forever. 

So, this practice for things to come – the gathering of God’s redeemed people in joy – is for our good and the glory of our Redeemer. Across the world, different cultures and languages gathering separately, while someday heaven will contain all of them. Unity will be perfect and even in glory our differences will remain to bring glory to God. Christ will gather the nations around His throne as a transformed, glorified, joy-filled family. 

Until then…

The church becomes a place where we repent often. We forgive quickly. We eat together, we worship together, we pray together, we rejoice and bear burdens, we disagree and reconcile. This isn’t because we are alike, but because Christ has saved us, dwells in us, and the Spirit makes us more into the image of the Beloved Son. When we know the gospel, we think of others before ourselves at the foot of the cross and the throne of grace. 

So What?

Grace Church, don’t ask good gifts to carry the weight of your soul. They were never meant to. Christ can. So, Grace Church, let me bring us back to the question we began with.

What defines you?

If Christ is all and Christ is in all, then the truest thing about every believer in this room is not your success or failure, your politics or personality, your past or your present, your suffering or your strength. The truest thing about you is that you belong to Jesus, and Jesus belongs to you.

And if that is true of me, and it is true of you, then it changes the way we walk through those doors every Sunday. We don’t gather as under some political leaning, young and old, wealthy and struggling, lifelong believers and new Christians. We gather first as people who have been rescued by the same Savior, filled by the same Spirit, and welcomed by the same Father.

That means this church will never be held together by preferences, personalities, ministries, or traditions. Those things may be gifts, but they cannot bear the weight of holding a church together. Only Christ can.

Before you leave today, ask the Spirit to reveal what label you’ve been clinging to most tightly. Maybe success. Maybe politics. Maybe family. Maybe your failures. Maybe your suffering. Whatever has become larger than Christ in your heart needs to come down from the throne, because only Christ can carry the weight of your soul.

When Christ is our treasure, we don’t have to protect our labels. We don’t have to compete for significance. We don’t have to demand our own way. Because if Christ has already declared you accepted, you no longer have to spend your life proving yourself. We are free to repent, free to forgive, free to serve, free to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, because our life is hidden with Christ. Church, let’s become the kind of people who make much of Jesus together. May people leave this place saying not, “What an impressive church,” or, “What wonderful people,” but, “What a glorious Savior.”

Because one day faith will become sight. The church gathered here will join all believers throughout all time gathered around the throne. Every tribe, every tongue, every nation will sing with one voice, and no earthly label will matter except this: we belong to the Victorious Lamb who was slain. Until that day, let us treasure Christ together, because Christ is all, and Christ is in all.