Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. -Colossians 2:14-15
Christ triumphed over the principalities and powers of this word. Every Christian has been taught that. Even more, every Christian knows that the way he triumphed was through the cross. Jesus was killed on the cross, the powers of this world gained the upperhand–but they only gained the upperhand in the view of the world. To everyone except a small group of Jesus’ disciples, the principalities and powers had won. Jesus was killed. Their hopes of a new Israel were shattered.
Imagine that you were one of the disciples. (Don’t fool yourself into thinking you would’ve “figured” it out. That’s nothing more than spiritual pride–a spiritual pride masking spiritual ignorance.) You’ve followed a man from Galilee around, and this man has made spectacular claims about himself. A few days before his death, he had been welcomed into Jerusalem as a king. Then, he is arrested and crucified. Hung on a cross to die.
You had expected him to conquer, and he was conquered.
But the ways of this world aren’t the ways of God. The power of God doesn’t always manifest itself in the forms of the world’s power. Here’s a powerful passage from Kierkegaard:
This, then, is how it is with loftiness and lowliness. The true Christian’s abasement is not sheer abasement; it is only a depiction of loftiness, but a depiction in this world, where depiction must appear inversely as lowliness and absement. The star truly is high in the sky, is just as high in the sky although, seen in the sea, it seems to lie far under the earth. Likewise, to be a Christian is the highest elevation, even though in this world’s depiction it must appear as the deepest abasement….As soon as you take away the world, that muddy element that confuses with its depiction, as soon as the Christian dies, he is on high, where he already was before, but which could not be seen here by the world, no more than anyone who could not raise his head and thus could see only the star deep down at the bottom of the sea could have the idea that it actually is on high. –(Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, p. 198)
And this is what the passage from Colossians shows us. Jesus, as he hung on that cross, looked low in the world’s view, but was the most powerful anyone has ever been on the face of this earth. He triumphed over the powers of this world in the form of heaven’s power.
Yet, in two thousand years of Christianity, have Christians learned that? How often do we try to triumph over Satan using the powers of this world? We’ll defeat evil in the U.S. by getting control of the government, right?
Of course, I’m sure that, if Jesus had lived in a democracy like ours, he would have triumphed over the world by forming a first century Christian Coalition, or a first century Moral Majority.
Sure…
