God’s People, Transferred into the Kingdom of Christ

Colossae was a city where idol worship and philosophy were tangled together, and false teachers had come in among the church there, putting works ahead of faith and enlightenment ahead of the cross of Jesus Christ. To this church, whose people he had never met, the apostle Paul writes from prison. He opens by saying that he became an apostle not by his own will but by God’s choosing.

The dominion of trespasses is the power of sin, of death and of Satan. Satan seeks to blind people’s minds and hide the light of Christ, yet he cannot hold that light back. Every person is born a slave of Satan, but the moment someone hears the gospel and receives it, they are transferred into the Kingdom of his beloved Son. The salvation God’s people have received is unlike the blessings of this world, and it cannot be traded for anything in the world.

Christians do not live the life of faith in order to gain the world’s blessings; the salvation God has given is already enough on its own. Those who have learned the Word must pass it on to the next person exactly as they were taught it, and only when the life of the one who brings it is pure does that Word become grace. Salvation is not something another keeps safe on their behalf; it is something the faithful hold fast by fighting for it in Christ.