Qualifications please.
Hope…there are two ways you can go with hope…the subjective meaning and the objective meaning. The subjective is when you are talking about your feeling of hope. For example, you might be thinking “I am hopeful that the Steelers will figure out their offense and stop losing this season, but Ben Roethlisberger is getting old and is moving like it.” (I was born and raised in Pittsburgh.) That’s subjective hope…the feeling…and, as you can see, it comes and goes. Objective hope is something that is located outside of you. It certainly influences your feelings, but it is not dependent on them at all. If anything is really going to be a real cause for hope then it must be something more concrete and solid. True hope. The Apostle Paul talks about it in Colossians 1…the hope laid up for us in heaven (v.5). It is the promise of eternal life with Jesus and it is located out of the reach of any threat that we could possibly imagine—no one and nothing can rob us of the reality of this hope. It is outside of us…it does not depend on us, rather we depend on it. True hope.
Sounds good, right? Hope that does not waver, does not change, that is dependable, solid, true. I want that. I need that. It’s that wonderful prayer for the 5th Sunday in Lent from the Book of Common Prayer - “that among the sundry and manifold changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord…” This world we live in is unpredictable…it changes all the time, and I need something solid. I need something I can depend on. But how do we get it? What are the qualifications one needs to receive such hope?
Have you ever been in a situation where you have felt unqualified? When Kate and I were first married, I had been working at the lowest rung in commercial real estate collecting data on buildings in the Pittsburgh area, then Kate got a job teaching French at a private school in Stamford, CT. I was clearly not passionate about my grunt work in commercial real estate, so we decided to make the move, and I’d find something once we got there. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but we had some connections through our friend’s church out there, and before I knew it, I was scheduled to go into Manhattan for a meeting with a relatively high up executive in the advertising industry. I sat down with this guy, and he started asking me questions about business and the New York corporate world and what I might want to do in it. I obviously killed it, got the job and made millions as a high-powered exec in New York. Wrong! I was completely out of my depth. I felt like Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (yes, I’m referencing it again!). His character Cole Trickle says, “I’m an idiot…I don’t have the vocabulary.” That was me; that’s what was going through my head in that office, and I could tell that this guy was quickly coming to the same conclusion. I was completely unqualified.
It’s one of our worst fears really isn’t it? Being found out? Being exposed for not having what it takes. Being exposed as unqualified. The writing is on the wall. You know the expression…it means this is not going to go well…judgment is coming. It’s actually from the book of Daniel chapter 5 when King Belshazzar of Babylon is throwing a party full of debauchery and idolatry and a hand appears and starts writing on the wall. The only one who can interpret it is Daniel, and he reads it for the king, and it says: “You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27). It’s the judgment that we all fear…that we would be weighed and measured and found wanting. The realization of being unqualified.
We fear that exposure because we know it’s ultimately true about us. Most of the time we’re like me in that office in Manhattan. Just think back to junior high when you were called out by Julie or Billy or whatever their name was for pegging your pants the wrong way, or wearing your hair the wrong way, or something devastating like that. All of sudden you felt so uncool, so exposed. The world never moves on from junior high and high school—the same terrible game of comparison and judgment keeps replaying itself in new areas of life. It is the entire basis for the tabloid industry, but I digress. Most of the time our fear of being unqualified is mainly focused on our immediate context, our horizontal relationships, but it is all just an echo of the real root problem, where all fears stem from…our relationship with God. Do we stack up in the eyes of our Creator? Will we be rejected when it really matters? Our consciences testify to us that we know we have already been weighed in the balances and found wanting. We do not qualify because of our sin…our inability to be good inside and out all the time. If it all depends on us we should not be welcomed into God’s family.
That fear was being preyed upon by some new teachers that had come into the church in Colossae. The church there was established by one of Paul’s students named Epaphras. He was the one who shared the gospel with these people, and he had reported to Paul about their faith and at the same time about some of the difficulties they were facing. We can infer from Paul’s letter and the issues he addresses that these teachers, who were probably Christians from other churches, had told the Colossians that Epaphras had not told them the full story…they needed something more in addition to Jesus to experience Christian “fullness.” A word Paul uses again and again in his letter.
These teachers told them they weren’t there yet. And the Colossians were susceptible to believe it because they were just like you and me. The Colossians had the same baseline fear that they could never really be qualified. They had the same predisposition to believe that they would always have to work a little bit harder to earn their way. They would always have to do just a little bit more before they could be accepted by God. It is the message of shame that comes from our brokenness…and we project it onto each other all of the time. Our fear of being judged leads us to compare ourselves to others constantly, junior high and high school!, always trying to justify ourselves. All it does is result in all of us feeling judged all of the time. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.
Now, as I said before, this IS actually the truth about us. Left to ourselves we do not and could never qualify. Remember what we said at the beginning? If our hope depended on us we would be in big trouble. It would not be hope at all. That’s what these teachers were leading the Colossians to believe whether they intended to or not, and like a moth to the flame we are always quick to go there. But thanks be to God our hope does not depend on us…it is outside of us, and we depend on it. Paul makes this crystal clear. He reassures the Colossians that Epaphras had taught them the whole Gospel. He did not hold anything back. Their hope and our hope that is laid up for us in heaven is in the fact that God has done the thing for us that we could never do for ourselves. As Paul says, “the Father has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (v. 12). We could never qualify ourselves, but God has qualified us.
How? By “delivering us from the domain of darkness and transferring us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (v. 13). Only God himself can save us from the domain of sin and death, the domain of judgment and comparison, the domain of junior high and high school for crying out loud…being weighed and found wanting. That’s what Jesus, God in the flesh, has done for the Colossians, for Paul, and for you and me. He has redeemed us. Redemption is a term used in relation to slavery. A redeemed slave is someone whose freedom has been purchased for them—it literally means “a buying back” or a repurchasing, the ransom has been paid. Jesus Christ, has bought us back from darkness, and he has guaranteed our inheritance as saints of light.
Paul expounds on this with “the forgiveness of sins”—this is how we have been bought back by our Creator God. This is how we have been set free from our bondage…free from our slavery—through the forgiveness of sins. Where we were once weighed and found wanting, now we are weighed and found qualified because of Jesus Christ. Our sins are forgiven and are no longer counted against us because he paid the price for them. We have redemption in Him. We don’t ever have to be afraid of being exposed ever again. Everything has already been exposed on that cross 2000 years ago. God knows all of it and bore all of it willingly for you, so that you might be set free.
This is objective hope…THE hope, and it is yours right now in Jesus Christ. You are “hearing” it right now…that is no mistake. God has brought you here today to hear it…whether it be the first time or the hundredth time. You can never hear it enough. Jesus Christ is our qualification, nothing else…certainly nothing more…there is nothing more. You cannot add anything to him. He is the only qualification. He is the hope we depend on.
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