Skip to main content

Fully Delivered

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness"
(Colossians 1:13a)
Matthew Henry gets us to the point quickly :
[Jesus] has saved us from the dominion of sin, which is darkness (1 John. 1:6), from the dominion of Satan, who is the prince of darkness (Ephesians 6:12), and from the damnation of hell, which is utter darkness (Matthew. 25:30)
This deliverance" is not merely cosmetic. It is the ultimate rescue operation. The word "delivered" literally means deliverance from danger. What is the danger we face if are under the domain of darkness?

It is certainly the danger of the enslavement under dark Satanic powers. Before we were followers of Jesus our all lives worshipped Satan. Like hostages suffering from Stockholm syndrome we honoured Satan with sin and all kinds of shameful deeds of darkness. Demons and other satanic powers were our masters, even if we were unaware.

But it was much worse. The bigger danger we faced is that we were under the wrath and judgement of God. Lost in our eternal state of damnation we faced an angry God against us. It is a fearful thing to be in the hands of an angry God. Because God is a consuming fire! Like a man seating on time bomb waiting to explode with no rescuer in sight, we could not deliver ourselves from the guilt and penalty of sin!

And then entered our heavenly champion - Jesus our Christus Victor. He lived a sinless life, died on a brutal and shameful death on the cross and rose victoriously to life from the dead. Through that he rescued all who follow him from death, sin, hell and Satan!

That means then that in Christ we are perfectly secure from the devil's dominion. Lucifer may cause us trouble from time to time, but he can't harm. We are held secure from his power and slavery.

Because of Jesus all who are truly his can now sing with Charles Wesley :

Death, hell, and sin are now subdued;
All grace is now to sinners given;
And lo, I plead the atoning blood,
And in Thy right I claim Thy Heaven!

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pornography as Occultism

There is a kind of helplessness that a man engaged in pornography exhibits. He often speaks of it in terms of a “struggle” or an “addiction.” Now both of those terms are accurate, I believe, but they distance a person from his sin in a soul-decaying manner. Pornography is not just an addiction; it is occultism. The man who sits upstairs viewing pornography while his wife chauffeurs the kids to soccer practice is not some unusual “pervert”; he is (like his forefather Adam) seeking the mystery of the universe apart from Christ. That’s the reason the one picture, stored in his memory, of that naked woman will never be enough for him. He will never be able to be satisfied because he will never be able to get an image naked enough. I say pornography is occultism because I believe the draw toward it is more than biological (though that is strong). The satanic powers understand that “the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). They understand that the pornographic ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

The Wound of Sin

Bless the Lord, O my soul, that when you were playing with the bait, unaware of the hook like so many others, He opened your eyes—allowing you to see your folly and danger so that you might flee from it. And now, be careful that you do not grasp at any of the devil's temptations, lest he ensnare you with his hook. For though you may be restored by grace, it will not be without a wound—just as a fish sometimes escapes the hook but swims away injured. That wound may bring sorrow and take long to heal. And you have already known this to be true. THOMAS BOSTON  ( Source : The Art of Man-Fishing) A sobering truth from Thomas Boston. Sin always damages. God always restores His children when we fall but it is never without the wounds. We often carry the scars of our sins. This is another m reason for us to avoid sin altogether. Sometimes in our presumption of His grace, we tend to be antinomian. Boston is warning that such an attitude is foolish since sin always damages. It always leaves ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Pussy Riot as the Messenger

I have always thought there was something uneasy, or something not quite right about Pussy Riot and the western media reaction to it. It was not just the desecration of the Orthodox Church Cathedral. I could not placed my finger on it until I read this assessment by Vadim Nikitin : How many fans of Pussy Riot’s zany “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s erudite and moving closing statement were equally thrilled by her participation, naked and heavily pregnant, in a public orgy at a Moscow museum in 2008? That performance, by the radical art group Voina (Russian for “war”), was meant to illustrate how Russians were abused by their government. Voina had previously set fire to a police car and drew obscene images on a St. Petersburg drawbridge. Stunts like that would get you arrested just about anywhere, not just in authoritarian Russia. But Pussy Riot and its comrades at Voina come as a full package: You can’t have the fun, pro-democrac...
2 comments
KEEP READING →