GOSPEL MEDITATION # 9

The Paradoxes of the Bible— Perfect-Sinners

Colossians 2:6-15 & 1 John 1:8-2:2

1. Find a quiet place, alone and apart from distractions.
2. Be comfortably alert, still and at peace.
3. Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer
4. Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself.
5. Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.
6. Reread it. From memory, determine the central points.
7. That we are sinners, that is, we have broken God’s commandments, is plain enough to nearly everyone.
8. Reading our passage in Colossians 2, we find that though we had been “dead in our trespasses,” God “made us alive.” The entire record of our sinning has been cancelled. These “he set aside nailing it to the cross.”
9. No good work can cancel sin; only the Holy God can do so. And He does so all at once, in a moment; every single transgression, trespass, and sinful act gone forgotten, buried. As Jesus was buried, along with Him, all our sin was buried too. We humans will never, on the planet at any rate, ever comprehend this awesome truth fully.
10. We live in time and space; the Triune God does not. We experience our sinfulness daily and thus need, and for our good health, both physical and spiritual, to have the refreshing that comes with confession and forgiveness.
11. John, the aged apostle, knew this to the core and gave us the wonderful words found in his first letter. 1 John 1:8-10 presents the fact that we sin though having been totally forgiven already. We do not hide the fact that we are yet sinners, but we confess it, to ourselves, others, and to God.
12. John writes that his readers do not sin. “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The “If” is a third class condition meaning that we most likely will sin.
13. But we do not despair. We have no righteousness of our own. It is Jesus who is righteous, and as our lawyer, advocate, counselor, we are in Him and totally forgiven.