October (2 of 2): Small Group Discussion Guide
Hidden With Christ — The Glory of God’s Cruciform Love
This sermon from Colossians 3:1–17 calls us to trade performance-based religion for participation in God’s liberating love. Paul reminds us that our lives are hidden with Christ in God—we don’t climb our way up to God; God has already come down to us in Jesus. When sin is viewed as moral failure—a list of right and wrongs—it naturally produces comparison, competition, and shame. We start grading people (including ourselves) by performance: who’s “good,” who’s “bad,” who’s “trying harder,” who’s “failing again.” That lens always leads to judgment, because it centers on measurement instead of connectedness.
But when sin is understood as relational endangerment—anything that damages connection with God, others, or our true selves—it calls for compassion, not condemnation. The question shifts from “What rule did you break?” to “What pain, fear, or story led you to disconnect?” It moves us from policing behavior to pursuing understanding.
That perspective dismantles self-righteousness. Instead of thinking, “I’d never do that,” we begin to realize, “If I had their story, wounds, or loneliness, maybe I would.” And that recognition opens the door to empathy.
For ourselves, this shift frees us from self-contempt. Instead of shaming ourselves for failure, we start asking: “What was I protecting? What was I afraid to lose?” That question invites healing rather than punishment.
When sin is relational, the goal isn’t perfection—it’s restoration. The work isn’t to appear better, but to become more connected: to God, to others, and to the person you’re becoming in Christ.
God’s glory isn’t domination or revenge—it’s self-giving love revealed in Christ’s humility, the power that stooped to wash feet and bear evil in order to heal it. Sin, then, isn’t breaking rules but breaking relationship, and God’s wrath is love’s refusal to let it win. To live as God’s new creation means putting on compassion, humility, and mercy—allowing divine love to restore us to one another and to the image of Christ who is all, and in all.
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Resources
When in Romans by Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Recovering Paul’s Mother Tongue by Susan Grove Eastman
Pauline Dogmatics by Douglas A. Campbell
Sermon Video
Sermon Text
Colossians 3:1-10
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
Galatians 6:14-15
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world…what counts is the new creation.
Romans 7:18:b-20
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Sermon Quotes
“The gospel is not about human movement into blessedness; it is about God’s liberating invasion of the cosmos.” - Douglas Campbell
“We want a spirituality of success and ascent, not a spirituality of failure and descent. We want a spirituality of improvement, not a spirituality of transformation.The cross invites us to take the risk of losing our life so that we might truly find it (Mark 8:35)”. -David Benner
“God did not change his mind about us on account of the cross or on any other account. It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God’s side, by God’s initiative, from inside human flesh — the human flesh of the Jesus. The divine hostility, or wrath of God, has always been an aspect of his love. ” - Fleming Rutledge.
“The Lord of all creation kneels before his disciples to wash their feet. The One through whom all things were made takes the role of a slave. The power that spoke the universe into being stoops to serve his creatures. That is what divine majesty looks like. In that act, the majesty of God is revealed in humility.” - Fleming Rutledgw
“Paul’s gospel is a disclosure of a God whose power is the power of self-giving. The only omnipotence Paul knows is the omnipotence of cruciform love.” - Douglas Campbell •
“God’s wrath is not opposed to his love; it is the form his love takes when it is faced with evil.” - Fleming Rutledge
“At the heart of the universe is a play of love between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.” - Douglass Campbell
“An enemy is someone whose story you haven’t heard.” - Brian Zahnd
Discussion Questions
How is “self-improvement” often just another way of avoiding surrendering to God’s transforming and all-accepting love of our souls?
Is your spiritual life and freedom in Christ reduced to managing your flaws instead of being remade by grace?
How does it change your view of God to think of sin as something that endangers relationship rather than breaks rules? How might this perspective reshape the way you talk to yourself when you fall short?
A sinner is someone whose story you haven’t heard yet. If God’s wrath is love protecting connection, what does that tell us about what truly matters most to God?
What if true Christianity was not concerned about morality at all, but on the restoration and flourishing of our souls through relational connectedness?
