In his letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul—who had never met the Colossians yet glowed with affection for them—shared what his prayer had been for them:
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:9-14 ESV).1
His prayer overflows with sweetness and encouragement for the Colossians and richly spills over to contemporary readers alike. He reminds the Colossians and us that we may “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord”, bear fruit in him, and even be strengthened “according to his glorious might”! (Col 1:10-11). What I find to be especially arresting about Paul’s prayer is his succinct description of the Triune God’s work of redemption. With the work of the Father in view, he writes, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:13-14). The beauty of this redemption and the resurrection life it imparts is worthy of our reflection.
As such, this article will investigate the anthropological transformation that transpires when God the Father transfers sinners from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of Christ. I will accomplish this by surveying the depravity of man, the delight of the Savior to deliver needy sinners, and the blood-bought, secure destiny of the redeemed.
I. The Depravity of Man
Mankind’s Fallen Condition
To begin, we will consider the depravity of mankind. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, they marred their unique responsibilities as bearers of God’s image (Gen 3:1-6). They became sinners; they forfeited their perfection. The curse of their maker was laid upon them (Gen 3:16-19). Though they had obtained the ability to know good and evil, they were confined to only practice evil continually (Gen 6:5). On top of all of this, for the labors of their sin they had merited themselves only death (Gen 2:17; Rom 6:23).
They, being our first parents, are the tainted fountainhead from which the rest of humanity flows. As a result, we have all inherited their sin and curse. We are all fallen human beings and share their condition. Heath Lambert diagnoses our state when he writes:
God’s image is marred in fallen human beings. We see that the image is broken in all the ways we fail to represent him as we should. We demonstrate that God’s image is broken in us every time we do not think as we should, obey as we should, love God and others as we should, or care for the creation in the way we should. In short, we see the defacing of God’s image in all those places where sin distorts how we were created to function.2
Significantly, though they had marred the image of God, they had not lost it entirely. God, in accordance with his tremendous grace, killed an animal and clothed Adam and Eve in its skin (Gen 3:20). In doing so, he extended mercy to them and gave them hope that through their offspring and according to his word, they would be restored as perfect image bearers (Gen 3:15).
In the meantime, they were ejected from the garden and forced to bear the consequences of their disobedience (Gen 3:23-24). Louis Berkhof comments the following about their condition at this dreary moment:
The immediate concomitant of the first sin, and therefore hardly a result of it in the strict sense of the word, was the total depravity of human nature. The contagion of his sin at once spread through the entire man, leaving no part of his nature untouched, but vitiating every power and faculty of body and soul…totally depravity here does not mean that human nature was at once as thoroughly depraved as it could possibly become. In the will this depravity manifested itself as spiritual inability.3
The Bondage of the Will
This spiritual inability is chiefly manifest in the inability to choose good or know God of one’s own accord. In this sense, the will of any and all persons are bound to sin by merit of their total depravity. For all but Christ, this is a universal inheritance from our first parents (1 Pet 2:22; 2 Cor 5:21).
Despite this fact, many will argue today that the will is free and is still able to choose good, by virtue of prevenient grace or by a rejection of total depravity. The foolishness of this claim can be seen in Jesus’s response to the rich, young ruler: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mk 10:18). The axe is further buried by the words of the apostle Paul: “as it is written: none is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12).
Paul states that the reason for this bondage of the will to evil is because we are naturally dead to God. To the Ephesians he writes, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience…” (Eph 2:1-2). Sinners are spiritually dead to God and are therefore bound to sin, they are “slaves of sin” (Rom 6:20).
Responding to those who would—despite all the evidence—oppose the doctrine of total depravity, John Calvin writes,
Since, then, the Schoolmen have erred by misinterpreting this particular Scripture [namely, Romans 7], we need to stop any longer to consider their idle fantasies. Rather, we should accept Christ’s words, that ‘whoever commits sin is a slave of sin’ (John 8:34). Now we are all slaves of sin by nature, so it follows that we are under sin’s yoke. Furthermore, if everyone is held fast by slavery to sin, the will, which is the chief agency of sin, must be tightly restrained and shackled by sin’s bonds.4
Calvin’s words ought to be heeded. It is evident that by virtue of their sin, Adam and Eve’s image bearing was marred, their perfection was lost, they spiritually died, and their wills were bound to only do evil continually. To assert any other position is to make light of their rebellion against God and to degrade the richness of the Triune God’s redemption in Christ, which is the subject of the next section.
II. The Delight of the Savior
The Father’s Design to Deliver Sinners
Second—returning to Colossians 1:13-14—it will be seen that, despite the total depravity of humanity, it was the Father’s will to deliver “us from the domain of darkness” and transfer us “to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” It is remarkable in the extreme that the redemption of mankind was initiated, carried out, and accomplished at the initiation of God the Father. Truly, it is the unique divine appropriation of the Father that he be “the initiator of every divine action”.5
This beautiful truth conveyed by to the Colossians is an open window to the resplendent heart of God. Peering through it we find the sweet aroma of grace and the manifest and inexhaustible riches of the Father’s love for us in Christ. Indeed, it is because of his initiating love for sinners that the Triune God undertook to redeem totally depraved sinners. This plan had its climax at the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is by his death and imperishable resurrection life that sinners may be loosed from the shackles of sin and made alive to God. This is all according to the Father’s initiating love and not merited in the least by the sinners whom it redeems. Sinclair Ferguson says it well when he writes, “It is because God (the Father) loves you that the Son died for you.”6
The Father’s Call to Freedom in the Son
The love of the Father is manifest in the Son and communicated by the Spirit (Rom 5:5). The Triune God’s love for us despite our radical departure from holiness is mind blowing. His love for us warms our affections for him who loved us first (1 Jn 4:19). Said differently, we receive the love of our Creator in Christ; it is his affection for us which causes us to draw near to him. This reversal is a beautiful reclamation of that which was lost in the Garden. There, God “drove out the man” (Gen 3:24); here, God invites us to come so that we may find rest in Christ (Mt 11:28-29). God is always better—infinitely more good, more gloriously rich in grace—than our finite minds could ever dare hope.
It is the Father’s call to freedom in the Son. Sinners who have been regenerated by God will respond to this call with ubiquitous acceptance. This is because they are transformed creatures. Paul declares, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17).
This transformation includes new life: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…” (Eph 2:4-5). Even the image of God is being restored in Christ Jesus, Christians are given and then commanded “to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24).
The redemption is so complete that it extends even to our depraved wills. Paul states that,
We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the dead he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus…sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (Rom 6:6-11, 14).
Sin no longer reigns over Christians because they have been joined to Christ’s resurrection life. In sum, the Christian has been regenerated, transformed, forgiven, restored, and freed from the chains of sin—all according to the initiating love of the Father in the Son by the Spirit. This is true freedom (Jn 8:36).
Daniel Bush and Noel Due capture the magnitude of the transformation well when they write:
We weren’t sons and daughters of God but were sons and daughters of disobedience under wrath. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:4–5). It has been said that mercy means you don’t get what you deserve, and grace that you freely get what you’ve never earned. And so in becoming objects of God’s redeeming mercy and grace in faith we experience in our hearts “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge (Eph 3:19).7
Growth in Obedience
If anyone has been a Christian for any considerable length of time, they know that—although they have been freed from Sin and have been made a new creature in Christ—they still wrestle with sin. Specifically, they feel the urge to sin because, though they are truly redeemed, they are not yet completely redeemed.
Paul declares, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). We have died with Christ, his life is ours, but we still live “in the flesh”. Consequently, we must learn, with the help of the Spirit, to obey and grow in obedience (Phil 2:13). Far from being a drudgery, John writes that this is how we love God: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn 5:3).
We not only wrestle with the remnants of our old nature, but we also war against Satan and his demons whose aim is to sideline us, tempt us, destroy us, accuse us, and make us doubt the unwavering affection of our gracious God. Peter warns us, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8).
The weapons for our battle with our old nature and Satan are not of the flesh—they are not tools that we wield in isolation from God (2 Cor 10:4-5). Rather, we defend ourselves and do battle by looking to Christ Jesus who has victoriously conquered for us. In doing so, we are equipped with his strength, his impenetrable righteousness, and his Holy Spirit. Paul writes,
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm (Eph 6:10-13).
The command is to be strong in Christ, to put on his armor, and to stand firm in him. It is only then that the evil forces of Satan will be thwarted and turn tail to run (Jas 4:7). We cannot be strong in our own strength or in our own wisdom. We need Christ to redeem us, to keep us, and to train us in righteousness.
Owen Strachan demonstrates that we may even learn how to fight sin by analyzing the sin of our first parents. He writes,
The tree and its fruit were not ugly or off-putting. Made by Yahweh, the tree’s branches teemed with delicious and appealing food. The gifts of God will not seem gross to us even as we partake of them—in truth, misuse them—in a sinful way. Up to the moment we consume them, they will delight us, dazzle us, even intoxicate us. We must learn from this text, and mark it carefully for our own spiritual battles, our own encounters with temptation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not evil itself. It did not have a discomfiting smell or a disgusting appearance. It was sensorily appealing and aesthetically stimulating. But enjoying its fruit was evil—the very height of evil.8
Strachan observes that we must not only mortify overtly sinful acts, but we must also put sins to death which are a misuse of the good gifts of God. Additionally, this example exhibits how one might learn about the nature of temptation from the Scripture and be on guard against Satan’s devices.
Union and the Preservation of Freedom in the Spirit
Not only is the Christian granted the testimony of Scripture and the amour of God to help them fight, they have also been granted the Holy Spirit. On the night before he was crucified, Jesus told his disciples that he would send more help to them. He said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (Jn 14:16-17).
The gift of the Holy Spirit is hard to overstate. The Spirit unifies us to Christ and confers on us the blessings of salvation, one of which being a divine, indwelling person to help us fight sin:
The consequences of this union are all the blessings of salvation. To focus on one aspect, Christians are to consider themselves dead to sin and alive unto Christ (Rom 6:1–14). As for the aspect of mortification, Paul personifies sin: it is an active agent, seizes opportunity, produces coveting and death, springs to life, and performs evil deeds (Rom 7:7–25). The solution to such aggressive, life-destroying sin must be seen not just as a power but as a holy, divine person who counteracts such sin and enables believers to mortify it.9
This is a tremendous boon for the saint! Not only have they been redeemed but God promises to never leave them in their fight against the flesh and Satan. In fact, Paul writes that saints have been “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph 1:13-14). Until the Lord takes us home, we have the Helper to aid us in our walk with Christ. He delights in us just as the Father does and offers our souls much consolation by his presence.
The Unfailing Mercy of the Son
That being said, perfection should not be our standard or expectation for ourselves. James writes that “we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man…” (Jas 3:2). Since the only perfect man who ever lived is Jesus Christ, it is safe to assume that everyone is included in this statement. Even after being redeemed, we are inclined to sin.
We must not think in those moments that God is unwilling to forgive us. John states in his first epistle that, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn 2:1-2). Christ is our perfect high priest who always stands to make intercession for us to the Father and who sympathizes with our weaknesses (Heb 7:25; 4:15-16).
Charles Ross reveals the mediating heart of Christ well when he writes,
I hear some say, ‘Alas! I feel that I am in the world, not only because of the sins of others, but because I sin myself; because I have ‘a body of death’ within me, and often it breaks out in word and action’. Yes, indeed, but Jesus loves his own that are in the world still; he sees and knows all the sin and imperfection that you have to contend against, and yet he loves his own notwithstanding… [he] looks down upon them with ever watchful eye. This is the comfort of the Christian’s heart and the balm of his sorrow; and I call upon his own to lay hold of it, to keep it, and not to let Satan deprive you of it.10
The unfailing mercy of the Son in the midst of our milquetoast efforts to subdue sin are a tremendous comfort to the believer. As Ross states, it is the balm of our sorrow. This does not excuse the Christian from killing sin, but is meant as motivation to persevere in our obedience to God. After all, it is in seeing God’s greatness that:
the enmity and opposition of the heart, may remain in its full strength, and the will remain inflexible; whereas, one glimpse of the moral and spiritual glory of God, and supreme amiableness of Jesus Christ, shining into the heart, overcomes and abolishes this opposition, and inclines the soul to Christ, as it were, by an omnipotent power.11
In summary, the more that we see the work of God on our behalf to redeem us from our total depravity, the more we will be encouraged by his greatness. The Father has initiated a glorious plan of redemption for his saints and he deserves all the glory.
III. The Destiny of the Redeemed
Since the Spirit has been promised as a seal of our inheritance, we trust that God will not only help us now but that he will also bring us home to himself. Graeme Goldsworthy notes that the Christian’s response to the question, “Am I saved?”, should be, “‘I have been saved; I am being saved; and I will be saved.’ This is only another way of saying ‘I have reached the end; I am reaching the end; I will reach the end.’ This simple response embraces the heart of the New Testament perspective of the gospel and eschatology.”12 The Christians steadfast hope is that the good news of the gospel endures until the end. Their Redeemer will not abandon them.
This surety is guaranteed by the Spirit who is the seal of our inheritance. Allison and Köstenberger write, “As the Spirit of glory, he is the one who will bring them to glory by accomplishing their glorification. When Christ is revealed in glory, so also will Christians be revealed in glory because of the Spirit of glory resting on them now…”13
Forever in the Kingdom
In revelation 19:11-21 there is a gripping description of Christ the King of kings and Lord of lords, riding upon the clouds with his heavenly host. His objective is to disband and utterly destroy the rebellion that has conspired against him and his eternal kingdom. This he does handily, forever defeating his foes with the strength of his army and the sword that came from his mouth (Rev 19:20-21).
This victory at last destroys the tempter who enticed Adam and Eve into sinning. The corrupter, the “deceiver of the whole world”, is destroyed (Rev 12:9). Then that which was lost in the garden will be fully restored. This is described in Revelation 21 when the Holy City, the new Jerusalem comes “down out of heave from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2). John records hearing these glorious words,
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev 21:3-4).
In this glorious place God is making all things new—and we ourselves will participate (Rev 21:5). This will be perfection at last, but it will be even better than that. Anthony Hoekema writes,
The perfection of the image of God in man is intimately connected with the glorification of Christ. Since Christ and his people are one, his people will also share in his glorification. The final perfection of the image, therefore, will not only be brought about by Christ; it will also be patterned after Christ. In the life to come we shall “bear the likeness of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49).14
In glory, believers will be remade after the pattern of Christ. The dark days of our depravity will likely be a dim memory, if remembered at all. Regardless, the saints will ever praise their God who has delivered them from the domain of darkness and transferred them to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col 1:13). Forevermore, the saints of God will be plunging “further up and further in”15 to the manifold beauty of God and the richness of his grace to the glory of God the Father (1 Cor 15:24).
Conclusion
In this article, I have investigated the anthropological transformation that transpires when God the Father transfers sinners from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of Christ. I have undertaken this effort by surveying the depravity of man, the delight of the Savior to deliver sinners, and by considering the eternal destiny of the redeemed.
- The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016). ↩︎
- Heath Lambert, A Theology of Biblical Counseling (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2016), 188-189. ↩︎
- Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 225–226. Emphasis mine. ↩︎
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Transl. from the first French edition of 1541 by Robert White (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2014), 65. ↩︎
- Ryan Rippee, That God May Be All in All (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 17. ↩︎
- Sinclair Ferguson, Lessons from the Upper Room: The Heart of the Savior (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2021), 172. Emphasis original. ↩︎
- Daniel Bush and Noel S. Due, Embracing God as Father: Christian Identity in the Family of God (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014). ↩︎
- Owen Strachan, Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind (Ross-shire: Mentor, 2019), 67. Emphasis mine. ↩︎
- Gregg Allison and Andreas J. Köstenberger, The Holy Spirit, ed. Nathan A Finn, Christopher W. Morgan, and David S. Dockery (B&H Academic, 2020), 375. ↩︎
- Charles Ross, The Inner Sanctuary: An Exposition of John 13-17 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2016), 7. ↩︎
- Jonathan Edwards, “True Grace, Distinguished from the Experience of Devils,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 25, Sermons and Discourses, 1743-1758, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 635. Cited in Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 98. ↩︎
- Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 92. ↩︎
- Allison and Köstenberger, 459. ↩︎
- Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 92. ↩︎
- C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York, NY; Collier Books, 1956), 172. ↩︎
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