The Life that Jesus Bought for You

We learned last week that this time in the church year is set aside to think focus on growth. The green you see here in the banners and my vestments is a reminder that after Jesus died, was raised, and the Holy Spirit came, the church entered a time of growth and expansion both in numbers of people being saved but also new spiritual heights, where the longing of the people of Israel had finally come to pass, and the Lord had come to live in the hearts and the very lives of his people. It’s a sweet time and it’s still in motion today. The kingdom of God is expanding in new kingdom outposts like this one where Christians are knit into the purposes of God by opening his Word together and gathering at the foot of the Cross to share in his body and blood, proclaiming his death until he comes again, being strengthened for life in a rebellious world. And in this way, the season of growth for the church, the expansion of the kingdom of God happens not only in physical space but also in our hearts. So it’s appropriate that one of the questions we’ll continue to hear in this season is: what does that look like? What does it look like for the kingdom of God to expand in my community, and in my heart, and in my life? Sometimes that answer is easy to hear. Sometimes the expansion of the kingdom of God in my heart means that I can have peace, knowing that God himself made peace with me at the cross. And sometimes for the kingdom of God to expand in my heart it means it’s time to examine and rework my priorities, that God is taking the legos of my heart that I’ve used to build for myself a new barn full of my favorite things and he reshapes our heart, as a master builder, into what it was made to be, a place for him, the God of goodness and mercy and love and justice, to take up residence. And so today our passages lead us to look at one of those things that God in his mercy calls us to examine in this season of growth. Today in our passages the Lord is calling us to rework our attachment to the things of this world. The world is always trying to work its way into our hearts. If we let it go, the world will completely fill up our heart, again, like a room of legos that’s assembled floor to ceiling into a solid plastic block. I’ve never opened a door to a room to be met with a solid room of legos up to the ceiling. But it doesn’t seem like it would be possible to get in to a room when it’s like that. So if the king is going to live in our heart, it can’t be full of stuff. We sure like to imagine what it would be like to have lives full of stuff though. 

And Ecclesiastes gives us that picture. There we see a picture of the excesses of Solomon’s kingdom. He set out on a test. Will deeply indulging in worldly things bring joy and meaning to life? The preacher of Ecclesiastes takes on what looks like an unholy experiment so that you don’t have to. Because he reports back. 

We see that he’s living like a Kardashian. He’s got the gold and the girls, wine, houses, vineyards, pools, herds and flocks, singers, a 200-million dollar ballroom. He has the quintessential human experience, if this world is all that there is. And even in blind excess, the preacher from Ecclesiastes can tell that it’s all vanity. It’s empty. It’s as useless as a room filled floor to ceiling with assembled legos. 

Solomon was indeed very wise to see the emptiness of earthly things. But he was Solomon and I am only me. What happens when we don’t have the wisdom of Solomon and we’re presented with great wealth? I imagine it’s very easy to look out over everything you have and rest and think you’re set, at least for a while. But surrounding yourself with nice things and great wealth brings danger. In verse 19 of our gospel, Jesus is probing the mind of someone in that situation, who says to themselves: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” 

I don’t think this is a tithing sermon. I think it’s a heart sermon. Jesus isn’t going to be much happier with the person who tithed and continued to wish every day they could have enough stuff to fill a second barn. We can send out our hearts to this or that thing and in the end we have nothing left for Jesus. That’s the problem here. It affects how we spend our money, but how we spend money is not the problem, it’s a symptom of a problem. It’s a pretty accurate tell of where the heart is. Where is your treasure? In our day and age, we might also ask, where is your attention? When every last bit of attention is extracted from our brains for various doom-scrolling, whether social media, or the news, it’s right to ask: Is God getting his fair share of our attention? How can we say that God is the Lord of our hearts when we don’t make space to think about him?

In our passage from Colossians, Paul begins his treatment of what we have put to death, what still needs to be put to death, and what we need to put on. He starts by listing the earthly things in us that we should put to death and those are “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry on account of these the wrath of God is coming.” So here Paul puts covetousness in its place. Covetousness, the constant desire for something that doesn’t belong to me, is idolatry. The old self is not what humanity was ever supposed to look like. It’s disordered. The list is expanded. We must put all of that away and he gives new things as well: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk, and lying to each other. 

As we move toward Christian maturity, we’ve put off the old self, and so we need to act like it by putting to death the disordered things that are bad for our soul. And not only have we put off the old self and need to start acting like it, we’ve also put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator and start acting like it.

This is a clothing metaphor. We’ve already put off the old self when we trusted in Christ. Our old identity is nailed to the Cross with Christ. But we still have spiritual work to do, work that is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit. There’s a difference here between “earning” and “effort,” as one theologian put it. Paul is not telling us to earn anything, but Scripture is requiring effort here. So our old identity in the world is done, but we need to start acting like it. And so we are to put to death those disordered pieces of our old identity that are still making a claim on us.

And we are united to Christ in his resurrection so we’ve also put on the new self and need to start acting like that, too. And we do that by putting on, in verse 12: “compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other,” He says: “as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” There’s more to put on: “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 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.” That room in our hearts full of legos doesn’t have room for all of this. We can’t wear our old clothes and our new clothes at the same time. But if the clothing metaphor and the lego metaphor aren’t hitting home for you. Here’s something for our pragmatic world. To put to death those earthly things and to put on our new identity, how about the word “prioritize”? Prioritize putting to death what is earthly. Prioritize putting on compassion and kindness and forgiveness. While it might seem impossible, have you ever tried? Have you ever made these things a priority? In this season of growth, that’s what we’re called to do, not as people earning, but as those putting in effort, engaging our imperfect will in response to the love that Jesus showed us on the cross and the new life he invites us to walk in at the resurrection. These things Paul calls us to put on are what that new life looks like. It’s OK if you’re not perfect. But it’s not OK, something’s wrong, to never try to live more like who we truly are in Christ. Paul gives us some things to try. And try we should.

If we find ourselves moving through a season where we have no desire to live this Christian life that Paul describes, perhaps we need to take some time and really focus on Jesus. What has he done for you? You can start, or start again, by looking at the Cross of Jesus. He didn’t sin. He wasn’t in danger of being punished. But he saw you and me in danger, doomed, and took the place of pain and shame and abandonment and wrath that we deserved. He strove to take our place so we could have his righteousness in the sight of God. In doing this, he made peace with God for sinners like us. And in communion, we remember his sacrificial death and partake in the moment of our salvation when we receive his body that was broken for us and his blood that was shed for us. As that moment of Jesus’ death meets our senses, the sacrifice of Jesus, the peace he made with God for us becomes tangible. And as the moment of our salvation comes to our minds, it moves to our hearts. If you want to respond to it and you don’t know how, you can rest peacefully and meditate on what Jesus accomplished for you. But he doesn’t leave us there. Just as death wasn’t the end of Jesus’ story, it’s not the end of our story with God. Jesus rose to new life and we rise to new life with him. And that new life, that heavenly life looks like what Paul tells us in Colossians. Are we going to walk around in the new heavens and the new earth coveting, angry, not forgiving? What kind of afterlife would that be? But in Jesus, heaven has broken into our life now. That eternal life we cherish is not just eternal existence, but real life. So let us live the life that Jesus bought for us on the Cross. It’s not just some requirement, but a benefit. We are now free to be able to be remembered not as obscene and immoral and slanderous, but as meek and patient and loving. So let us walk in this new life that Jesus bought for us on the Cross and find our treasure in him.