DAY 3 — Wednesday
Day Three- Wednesday
Read Colossians 2:13-15
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." (2:14)
The word Paul uses for record of charges is worth knowing.
In the ancient world it described a handwritten note of debt. An IOU. A certificate you signed yourself, in your own handwriting, acknowledging what you owed.
So picture what that word suggests. A list. Handwritten. The kind of document a person couldn't deny, because the debt is spelled out in black and white.
Everything I've done that I'd never say out loud. Every person I've been careless with. The version of me that only my family sees on a bad day. Written out, itemized, signed.
And Paul says God canceled it. Then took it away. Then nailed it to a cross so nobody could ever produce it again.
Not reduced. Not refinanced. Not marked payment plan. Canceled.
Now stay with me, because verse fifteen does something most of us have never had explained, and once you see it you will never read Good Friday the same way.
"In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross."
That phrase, shamed them publicly by his victory, is one word in the original language. And it's a very specific word. It's the word for a Roman triumph.
Here's what that was. When a Roman general won a decisive war, Rome threw him a parade. He rode through the city while the whole town watched. And walking behind him, stripped of their armor and bound in chains, came the defeated enemy. On public display. Everyone could see exactly who had lost.
That's the word Paul chooses for the cross.
Now think about what the cross actually looked like that Friday. A man stripped. A man publicly displayed. A man in chains, being marched through a jeering city on his way to die.
From the outside, it looked like Jesus was walking in somebody else's parade.
And Paul says: no. That was his.
He wasn't the prisoner in that procession. He was the one leading it. What got stripped and displayed and marched through town in defeat was every power that ever had a claim on you. Including that handwritten list.
I want to be careful and clear here, because people ask what those "rulers and authorities" are. The Bible doesn't hand us a detailed map, and I'm not going to invent one. But at minimum, Paul is telling us this: whatever it is that accuses you, it lost. It has no legal standing left. Guilt can still talk. It cannot convict.
Shame is a liar operating without a license.
So if there is something you have been quietly paying on for years... something you bring up to yourself at two in the morning... I need you to know that the bill was canceled and the collector was marched through town in chains.
You are allowed to stop paying.
Sit with this: What is the one thing I keep making payments on that Jesus already canceled?
Pray: Jesus, I believe you canceled it. Help me stop picking it back up. Thank you that the cross was not your defeat. It was your parade.
Read Colossians 2:13-15
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." (2:14)
The word Paul uses for record of charges is worth knowing.
In the ancient world it described a handwritten note of debt. An IOU. A certificate you signed yourself, in your own handwriting, acknowledging what you owed.
So picture what that word suggests. A list. Handwritten. The kind of document a person couldn't deny, because the debt is spelled out in black and white.
Everything I've done that I'd never say out loud. Every person I've been careless with. The version of me that only my family sees on a bad day. Written out, itemized, signed.
And Paul says God canceled it. Then took it away. Then nailed it to a cross so nobody could ever produce it again.
Not reduced. Not refinanced. Not marked payment plan. Canceled.
Now stay with me, because verse fifteen does something most of us have never had explained, and once you see it you will never read Good Friday the same way.
"In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross."
That phrase, shamed them publicly by his victory, is one word in the original language. And it's a very specific word. It's the word for a Roman triumph.
Here's what that was. When a Roman general won a decisive war, Rome threw him a parade. He rode through the city while the whole town watched. And walking behind him, stripped of their armor and bound in chains, came the defeated enemy. On public display. Everyone could see exactly who had lost.
That's the word Paul chooses for the cross.
Now think about what the cross actually looked like that Friday. A man stripped. A man publicly displayed. A man in chains, being marched through a jeering city on his way to die.
From the outside, it looked like Jesus was walking in somebody else's parade.
And Paul says: no. That was his.
He wasn't the prisoner in that procession. He was the one leading it. What got stripped and displayed and marched through town in defeat was every power that ever had a claim on you. Including that handwritten list.
I want to be careful and clear here, because people ask what those "rulers and authorities" are. The Bible doesn't hand us a detailed map, and I'm not going to invent one. But at minimum, Paul is telling us this: whatever it is that accuses you, it lost. It has no legal standing left. Guilt can still talk. It cannot convict.
Shame is a liar operating without a license.
So if there is something you have been quietly paying on for years... something you bring up to yourself at two in the morning... I need you to know that the bill was canceled and the collector was marched through town in chains.
You are allowed to stop paying.
Sit with this: What is the one thing I keep making payments on that Jesus already canceled?
Pray: Jesus, I believe you canceled it. Help me stop picking it back up. Thank you that the cross was not your defeat. It was your parade.
Posted in Daily Devotional