Rescued!
Colossians 1:12-14
In early April 2026, U.S. forces conducted a daring, two-day operation to rescue two Air Force crew members from the 494th Fighter Squadron whose F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over western Iran. They rescued pilot quickly in the daylight. But the weapons systems officer had to evade capture for 36–48 hours in the Zagros Mountains before being extracted. Navy SEAL Team 6 and other special operations forces executed a nighttime rescue, utilizing MH-6 Little Bird helicopters and MC-130J aircraft. The CIA conducted a deception campaign to confuse Iranian forces regarding the officer’s location, while A-10 Warthogs provided air cover. They successfully rescued the airman and treated him for injuries. It was an amazing rescue story.
Even more amazing is the story of our rescue from sin, because the Lord rescues not those who were on His side, but He rescues His enemies and those who rebelled against His rightful authority. Paul writes in Colossians 1:21-22,
21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight– (Col 1:21-22 NKJV)
God rescues His enemies. He saves rebellious sinners. He delivers the undeserving. Think about the rescue stories in the Bible. The Lord rescued Noah and the remnant of the human family from the flood even though “… the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Gen. 6:5). Through Joseph, the LORD rescued the sons of Jacob from famine even though they had treacherously sold their brother into slavery and lied to their father (Gen. 50:20). The LORD rescued the Hebrews from their slavery in Egypt and brought them into the promised land even though they were a stiff-necked and rebellious people (Ex. 32:9; 33:3, 5; Deu. 9:6, 13, 10:16; 31:27). The book of Judges gives countless examples of the Lord rescuing the stubborn Israelites that continually fell into the bondage of neighboring nations because of their idolatry (Jdg. 2:19). This is the nature of our God, “The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.” (Psa. 103:8).
But the greatest rescue story is when God sent His Son Jesus Christ to rescue sinners at the price of His blood. The Apostle Paul personally experienced his own rescue story when the risen Lord Jesus confronted Saul of Taurus on the road to Damascus. Later, Paul described his conversion to King Agrippa in Acts 26. Listen to his testimony:
9 “Indeed, I myself thought I must do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 This I also did in Jerusalem, and many of the saints I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. 11 And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities. 12 While thus occupied, as I journeyed to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, 13 at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. 14 And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 16 But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. 17 I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, 18 to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.’ “ (Acts 26:9-18).
Paul exuded thanksgiving to God because he knew that the Lord Jesus Christ had rescued him that day on the road to Damascus. He didn’t deserve deliverance. He wasn’t worthy of being rescued. But God stopped Saul in his tracks and saved him by grace. It’s no wonder then, as Paul opens his letter to the Colossian church, that he gives thanks for the work of the gospel of Jesus Christ to rescue sinners. In 1 Timothy 1:15, Paul writes, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”
In Colossians 1, Paul is writing to the church about what he prays for them. He prays unceasingly that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will (Col. 1:9) so that they would, “walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him,” (Col. 1:10). We saw last time that Paul gave four aspects of a worthy walk that pleases the Lord: bearing fruit, growing in th knowledge of God, being strengthened for endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks. One aspect of pleasing the Lord is “giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light,” (Col. 1:12).
So today, I want us to see that Paul gives three powerful reasons for us to give thanks to God for our rescue: because the Father has qualified us, delivered us, and redeemed us. First, we see that …
1. God has qualified us
We give thanks to God the Father because He “has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light” (Col. 1:12). The word “qualified” means to make adequate, sufficient, or competent. The only other New Testament use of this word is in 2 Corinthians 3 where Paul explains how God made him competent for the ministry:
5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Cor. 3:5-6).
It’s the same idea with our qualification to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints. We are not qualified or sufficient in ourselves. God qualified us. This is a point-in-time, completed action by God. The Father has made us fit for future glory. William MacDonald comments, “When God saves someone, He instantly bestows on that person fitness for heaven. That fitness is Christ. Nothing can improve on that. Not even a long life of obedience and service here on earth makes a person more fit for heaven than he was the day he was saved. Our title to glory is found in His blood.”[1] In Romans 8, Paul shows that we have been qualified for inheritance because the Father has adopted those who are in Christ as children of God:
15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs–heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. (Rom. 8:15-17).
What exactly has God qualified us for? Paul says the Father “qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.” The ideas of “partakers” and “inheritance” regularly occur together in the Old Testament, referring to portions of the Promised Land that each tribe and family inherited (Num. 18:20; Deut. 32:9; Ps. 16:5). Just as God’s people in the old covenant had an earthly inheritance of land, Christians have a spiritual inheritance in Christ. The emphasis here is not just our future inheritance (Paul talks about that in Col. 3:24), but our present inheritance or possessions in Christ. Acts 26:18 uses almost the same phrase when Jesus commissions Paul “to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.” In Ephesians Paul refers to “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18). When Jesus taught about the sheep-goat judgment in Matthew 25, referred to the kingdom of God as the object of our inheritance, “Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’” (Matt. 25:34).
Christ with His eternal kingdom is our inheritance as those who are saints by faith in Jesus. His is a kingdom of light. In the Bible, light represents illumination, exposure, purity, goodness, truth, and life (cf. Gen. 1:2-3; Mat. 4:15-16; Eph. 5:9-17; Ps. 119:105; John 3:19-21; 8:12). Jesus Christ Himself is the light of the world (John 1:4; 8:12; 9:5; Rev. 21:23). I love the way the old Irish hymn expresses our thanks to God for our inheritance in Christ:
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
Christ Himself is our light, our inheritance, and our treasure. This leads us to ask, how has the Father qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light?
That is what Paul shows us in Colossians 1:13-14. We see that God has qualified us because …
2. God has delivered us
“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,” (Col. 1:13).
The word “delivered” means rescued by being snatched from danger, evil, or an enemy. Darkness is scripture is the opposite of light, symbolizing ignorance, falsehood, delusion, sin, and Satan. At the moment of salvation God, Himself rescued us from sin, death, and hell. The power of darkness is the dominion of Satan. Remember what the Lord said to Paul in Acts 26:18, when he commissioned him to go to the Gentiles with the gospel message, “to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”
Before we heard the gospel message and by God’s grace believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we were, as Paul says in Ephesians 2,
… dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. (Eph. 2:2-3).
God didn’t rescue us because we were good or deserving of it. We were spiritually dead, disobedient, wicked, and by nature children of wrath. Aren’t you glad that the Lord didn’t leave us under the power of Satan and in the darkness of our own sin? He rescued us! How did God do it? Paul explains it in Colossians 2,
13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. (Col. 2:13-15).
Through the cross of Jesus Christ, God rescued us when we were His enemies. God disarmed the demonic powers and triumphed over sin and death through Christ’s death and resurrection. Charles Wesley captured it well in one of our favorite hymns, “And Can It Be?”
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Is that your testimony too? Was there a day when Christ rescued you from the power of darkness?
But there’s more! God not only rescued us from something, He delivered us to something. Look at Colossians 1:13 again, “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” The verb “conveyed” literally means to transfer from one place to another. In the ancient world, when one empire won a victory over another, it was the custom to take the population of the defeated country and transfer it lock, stock and barrel to the conqueror’s land.[2] In the Old Testament, the people of the northern kingdom of Israel were taken away to Assyria, and the people of the southern kingdom of Judah were taken away to Babylon. Paul says that God has transferred the Christian to His own kingdom—but no longer as enemies, but as citizens of heaven and children of the light. This great transfer occurred the moment we believed in Jesus!
As believers in Christ, we have been rescued from the tyranny of Satan’s darkness and rule into the kingdom of light, which is the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, the place where God’s love abides. This is not just a future hope, but this is our present reality. We have already been brought into the kingdom. F.F. Bruce explains it like this, “that which in its fullness lies ahead of them has already become effective in them”[3]
We have a new king—Jesus Christ—He rules and reigns in our lives because we are in His kingdom. And because He is the Son of the Father’s love, Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom of love. It’s what characterizes all who are children of God.
Finally, we joyfully give thanks to the Father because …
3. God has redeemed us
Colossians 1:13 said that the Father has rescued us by delivering us from the power of darkness and transferring us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Now in Colossians 1:14, Paul turns to describe the work of the Son, saying, “in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col. 1:14).
The word “redemption” means complete freedom and release based on the payment of a price. The cost for our freedom from sin was the price of Jesus’ death on the cross. “Redemption (apolutrósis) refers supremely to the work of Christ on our behalf, whereby He purchases us, He ransoms us, at the price of His own life, securing our deliverance from the bondage and condemnation of sin.”[4]
We read in 1 Peter 1, “18 knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (1 Pet. 1:18-19). We have been bought by the blood of Christ, set free from our bondage to sin and Satan.
This redemption means the forgiveness of our sins. The word “forgiveness” here means release from a debt. Until your sins were forgiven you owed a debt you could not pay. But with forgiveness came complete freedom and release. Paul says to give thanks because in Jesus we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. We possess redemption and forgiveness as an on-going reality in our lives. Charles Wesley expressed praise for our redemption and forgiveness in his hymn, “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing”:
He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean;
His blood availed for me.
In another hymn, Phillip Bliss calls us sing of Christ,
Sing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,
With His blood, He purchased me.
On the cross, He sealed my pardon,
Paid the debt, and made me free.
If you have Christ as your redeemer, you have been rescued! Set free and forgiven! Fully and freely by God’s grace through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Does the reality of these blessings cause you to joyfully give thanks to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? He has qualified and made fit us for heaven. Thank Him. He has delivered us from Satan’s kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His Son of love. Thank Him. We have been redeemed by the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and our sins have been forgiven. Tell the Lord, “Thank You.”
Has God rescued you? Have you trusted Him for your soul’s salvation and have you experienced the change that only Christ can bring?
Once as Dr. Harry Ironside preached in a certain place, he noticed a man in the crowd writing on a card, which he presently handed to the speaker. The man was Arthur Lewis, an agnostic lecturer, and he proposed a challenge to Dr. Ironside to debate the subject “Agnosticism versus Christianity,” and offered to pay all the expenses involved in the debate.
Dr. Ironside read the card aloud to the audience and then said, “I accept your challenge on these conditions: “First, that you promise to bring with you on the platform one man who was once an outcast, a slave to sinful habits, but who heard you or some other infidel lecture on agnosticism and was helped by it and cast away his sins and became a new man and is today a respected member of society, all because of your unbelief.
“Second, that you agree to bring with you one woman who was once lost to all purity and goodness, but who can now testify that agnosticism came to her while deep in sin and implanted in her poor heart a hatred of impurity and a love of holiness, causing her to become chaste and upright, all through a disbelief in the bible.”
“Now sir,” he continued, “if you will agree, I promise to be there with one hundred such men and woman, once just such lost souls, who heard the Gospel of the grace of God, believe it and have found new life and joy in Jesus Christ our Savior. Will you accept my terms?”
As might be expected, the atheist could only walk away in silence. Only the grace of God in Christ can transform a sinner into a saint. Only God through Christ can rescue people under the power of darkness. He has done it for me. His grace has qualified me, delivered me, and redeemed me. That’s my rescue story. Is it yours?
[1] William McDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary: Colossians, quoted on https://www.preceptaustin.org/colossians_111-16#1:12.
[2] William Barclay, Daily Study Bible: Colossians, https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/dsb/colossians-1.html.
[3] F.F. Bruce, NICNT, p. 52, quoted by Phil Newton, http://archive.southwoodsbc.org/sermons/colossians_01.13-14.php.
[4] Ligon Duncan, Redemption, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/redemption/.
