Cited in sermons
Douglas Moo
51 sermons · All people cited
True Doctrine, Proper Conduct
Colossians 3:1–11 establishes that right belief and right conduct are inseparable: orthodoxy produces orthopraxy. Working through Paul's commands to seek the things above and to mortify sin, this exposition demonstrates that the theological incentives of union with Christ — past death to the old man, present hiddenness in God, and future appearance in glory — are the only sufficient foundation for holy living. The vice lists of verses 5–11, covering both sins of the flesh and sins of the tongue, are shown to flow from a disordered mind rather than a regenerate one, and behavior modification apart from the new birth is exposed as an inadequate remedy. The sermon closes with a call to look to Christ crucified as the only ground for both justification and transformed conduct.
The Finished Work of Christ
When Jesus declared 'It is finished' (John 19:30), he was not announcing defeat but uttering a triumphant cry of completion — the single Greek verb teleo carrying the force of a paid-in-full receipt. This sermon expounds the finished work of Christ under three headings: its fulfillment of all prior Scripture and typology, the glory it reveals in the Son's perfect filial obedience to the Father, and the comfort it secures for the church. That comfort is fourfold and concrete: the forgiveness of sins through Christ's blood, the imputation of his active obedience as the believer's righteousness, peace with God through justification by faith alone, and the purchased inheritance of eternal life — leaving the believer with no ground for despair and every ground for worship.
Idolatry and Its Effects, Part 2
Romans 1:18–32 presents a relentlessly bleak anatomy of human sin flowing from the root of idolatry — the suppression of God's self-revelation, the exchange of his glory for images, and his judicial abandonment of sinners to escalating depravity. This application sermon draws out three lines of response for the believer: sober caution against the idols of false religion, Mammon, and self; genuine concern for a world standing under God's wrath; and wholehearted worship and thanksgiving as those who have been justified by the blood of Christ. The antidote to every form of idolatry — including the most pernicious idol of self — is the cross, where Christ frees his people from self-devotion and calls them to live for him who died and rose again.
Idolatry and Its Effects, Part 1
Romans 1:18–32 presents the universal guilt of mankind not merely as a catalogue of vices but as the inevitable fruit of idolatry — the willful exchange of the glory of the incorruptible God for creaturely substitutes. The sermon traces four observations: the revelation of God's wrath against all ungodliness, the descent into idolatry, the unrighteous practices that flow from it, and the judicial giving-over of sinners by God himself. General revelation leaves every person without excuse, while only the special revelation of the gospel — the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith — supplies the redemption that natural knowledge cannot.
Christ Our Propitiation
Romans 3:25–26 stands at what Martin Luther called 'the chief point of the whole Bible,' and this sermon expounds why: the cross is not only a display of divine love but a vindication of divine righteousness. Two theological words — redemption and propitiation — carry the weight of the exposition: redemption addresses humanity's bondage; propitiation addresses humanity's liability to the wrath of God, which Christ exhausted in himself on behalf of his people. The sermon argues that God's justice and God's justifying mercy are not in tension but cohere perfectly at Calvary, and calls every hearer to rest that case not on moral performance but on faith alone in Christ alone.
The Christian Father
Colossians 3:21 delivers a single, pointed command to fathers: do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. This sermon exposits that verse within the broader household code of Colossians 3:18–4:1, arguing that redemption in Christ does not dissolve familial distinctions but rather furnishes the spiritual capacity to fulfill them rightly. Drawing on positive examples from Abraham and Joshua and the negative example of Eli, the sermon identifies specific forms of provocation — unrighteous anger, unbiblical discipline, favoritism, inconsistency, and gospel-less child-rearing — before turning to the positive exhortation of Ephesians 6:4. The sermon closes with five concrete duties of the Christian father: presence, provision, protection, prayer, and preaching sound doctrine in the home.
The God Who Justifies the Ungodly
Romans 4:5 declares that God justifies the ungodly — a statement that stands in apparent tension with Proverbs 17:15, which calls the one who justifies the wicked an abomination. This communion meditation resolves that tension by tracing the doctrine of imputation through three movements: Adam's sin imputed to his posterity, the sin of God's elect imputed to Christ, and Christ's righteousness imputed to believers. Far from promoting moral laxity, this forensic reality — that sinners are declared righteous on the sole ground of another's obedience and atoning death — is shown to be the very foundation of genuine sanctification and the most powerful incentive to holy living.
The Example of Abraham
Galatians 3:6–9 presents Abraham as Paul's decisive scriptural witness against the Judaizing demand for circumcision alongside faith. Drawing from Genesis 15:6, Paul demonstrates that Abraham's justification was by faith alone — faith as the instrument, not the ground, by which righteousness was reckoned to his account — and that this same faith-righteousness is the only basis on which anyone, Jew or Gentile, stands as a son of Abraham. The sermon works through four theological implications: imputed righteousness comes through faith alone, sonship to Abraham belongs only to the believing, Scripture itself preached the gospel to Abraham in advance, and the blessing of God falls exclusively on those who share Abraham's faith. Hearers are called to rest in the peace, gratitude, and humility that flow from justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and to guard against every system — ancient or modern — that supplements faith with human merit.
Exchanging the Truth of God
Romans 1:23–25 exposes the root sin beneath all human wickedness: the exchange of the glory of the incorruptible God for idols of every kind. Drawing on the biblical theology of idolatry from Genesis through the prophets, the sermon argues that what a person reveres, they come to resemble — either for ruin or restoration. Paul's catalogue of vices in Romans 1:24–32 is not the disease but the symptom; the disease is idolatry, the suppression of the knowledge of God and the worship of the creature. The sermon applies this to three pervasive modern idols — false religion, mammon, and self — and calls hearers to look to Christ as the only antidote to self-worship and its attendant degradation.
Introduction to Galatians
Paul's letter to the Galatians stands as a polemic defence of justification by faith alone — a truth so foundational that its corruption, however subtle, constitutes the destruction of the gospel itself. This introductory exposition surveys the authorship, dating, and destination of the epistle, arguing for the South Galatian theory and an early date of AD 48–49, while tracing the theological threads that run through the letter: the integrity of the gospel, justification sola fide, the atoning work of Christ, and Paul's apostolic authority. The Judaizing error that provoked Paul's letter is shown to be perennially recurring — in Roman Catholic merit theology, in the New Perspective on Paul, in Federal Vision, and in the subtler forms of works-righteousness embedded in church culture. Hearers are called to rest their entire standing before God on the imputed righteousness of Christ received through faith alone, and to contend earnestly for that doctrine as Paul did.
Greetings and Final Instructions
Colossians 4:7–18 closes Paul's letter not with abstraction but with names — real men whose faithfulness, failure, restoration, and apostasy illuminate the pastoral realities of gospel ministry. The passage reveals Paul not as a theology machine but as a suffering apostle sustained by the fellowship of Jewish and Gentile brothers alike, directing the advance of Christ's kingdom from a Roman prison cell. The sermon draws from each figure a single defining lesson — faithfulness, restoration, saving grace, apostasy, and strategic kingdom labor — while closing with an exhortation to guard against heresy by making much of the supremacy of Christ.
The Christian Father
Colossians 3:21 addresses fathers with a single prohibition — do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged — and the sermon expounds that verse alongside its Ephesians 6:4 parallel to give a full account of fatherly duty. The prohibition is explained through its result (discouragement, the breaking of a child's spirit) and its common causes: unrighteous anger, unbiblical discipline, ungodly inconsistency, and imbalance of law without gospel. The positive exhortation of Ephesians 6:4 is then opened through five practical commitments — presence, provision, protection, prayer, and preaching — each grounded in the father's identity as a new man in Christ whose grace-transformed heart drives active, loving involvement in his children's lives.
The Christ-Centered Orientation of the New Man
Colossians 3:15–17 presents the new man not as a moralist who earns standing before God by putting off vice and putting on virtue, but as one whose entire life is oriented around the person and work of Christ. The sermon argues that three Christ-centered realities define the new man: the peace of Christ, which is grounded in justification by faith alone and flows from the blood of Calvary; the word of Christ, which is to dwell richly in the heart both for personal transformation and mutual edification in the body; and the name of Christ, under which every word and deed is performed. The practical summons is to let the gospel — not personal performance — be the governing principle of the Christian life, so that the new man is known above all for making much of Christ crucified.
The Need for Biblical Mindedness
Colossians 3:1–4 grounds every practical exhortation in the chapter — about marriage, work, and social relations — in a prior command: set your mind on things above. This sermon argues that Christianity is fundamentally a religion of knowledge, that the image of God in man is expressed chiefly through rational thought, and that biblical mindedness is the necessary foundation for worship, sanctification, and faithful witness. The command to seek heavenly things is rooted in three theological realities — the believer's past death with Christ, present hiddenness in Christ, and future appearing with Christ in glory — and is pursued not through legalism, mysticism, or asceticism, but through prayerful study of Scripture.
The Redemptive Act of God
Colossians 2:13–15 sets out four distinct facets of God's one redemptive act accomplished through Christ: regeneration of the spiritually dead, forgiveness of all trespasses, cancellation of the debt of law-breaking, and disarming of demonic principalities and powers at the cross. The totality of this divine work leaves no room for human supplement — not asceticism, not mysticism, not legalism — because God in Christ has secured the salvation of his elect entirely and irrevocably. The sermon presses believers toward grounding their daily assurance not in personal performance but in these objective acts of God recorded in Scripture.
The Command to Walk in Christ
Colossians 2:6–7 presents what Paul considers the heart and substance of the entire epistle: a command to walk in Christ, grounded entirely in the prior reception of Christ by faith. This sermon works through three particulars of that command — the indicative basis (what God has already accomplished in salvation), the imperative itself (walking in Him), and the attendant circumstances (being rooted, built up, established in the faith, and abounding in thanksgiving). The believer's walk is not a self-generated moral effort but a response to sovereign grace, sustained by the same divine power that accomplished the initial rooting in Christ.
A Biblical View of Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is not merely a contested social policy but a divine ordinance rooted in the Noahic covenant, grounded in the doctrine of the imago Dei, and confirmed throughout the whole of Scripture into the New Testament. This sermon traces a biblical theology of capital punishment from Genesis 9 through the Mosaic law, the example of the apostle Paul before Festus, and the role of the civil magistrate in Romans 13:1–4. The argument is that nations and magistrates are in sin when they fail to execute murderers, because blood-guilt defiles the land, and that no ransom may substitute for the life of a murderer. Hearers are called to pray for civil rulers to wield the sword as God's ministers of wrath, and unbelievers are confronted with the reality that the death penalty is a foretaste of the eternal wrath that awaits the unrepentant.
A Biblical View of Homosexuality
Scripture condemns homosexuality not as a cultural accident or genetic condition but as a transgression of God's creational order, a sin judged in Sodom, legislated against in the Old Covenant, and confirmed in the New Testament. This sermon works through four biblical categories — creation, Sodom and Gomorrah, Mosaic legislation, and New Covenant confirmation — to establish that homosexuality is a moral offense against the triune God, not merely a violation of Jewish or sectarian code. The consistent refrain of Scripture is that this sin, like all sins catalogued in 1 Corinthians 6, is answered by a real Savior who washes, sanctifies, and justifies sinners — making a properly biblical view of homosexuality the only view that can offer genuine hope to those in bondage to it.
Paul's Conflict and Concern for the Colossians
Colossians 2:1–5 exposes both the nature of Paul's apostolic struggle and the objectives that drove it: he agonized in prayer for churches he had never visited because the stakes of false teaching are eternal. The sermon traces four objectives of Paul's conflict — that believers be encouraged in heart, united in love, assured in understanding, and consumed with Christ as the sole treasury of wisdom and knowledge — before turning to Paul's concern in verses 4–5, where persuasive words are shown to be the perennial weapon of heresy. The antidote is not rhetorical sophistication but deep, corporate rootedness in the person and sufficiency of Christ, which alone guards the church against the humanistic philosophy, legalism, mysticism, asceticism, and antinomianism Paul will address throughout the epistle.
Paul's Sufferings for Christ and the Church
Colossians 1:24 confronts the assumption — doctrinal or practical — that the Christian life is one of health, wealth, and prosperity. Paul's declaration that he rejoices in his sufferings for the church raises two difficult questions: what does it mean to fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, and why would any apostle rejoice in prison, beatings, and stonings? This exposition works through both questions, demolishing the Roman Catholic reading that Christ's atonement was incomplete, and arguing instead that Christ so identifies with His body that their sufferings are in some sense His own, and that Paul's willingness to absorb suffering on behalf of the church is the pattern of genuine Christian ministry and churchmanship.
From Alienation to Reconciliation
Colossians 1:21–23 sets before the reader a stark before-and-after portrait of what redemption accomplishes: sinners who were actively alienated from God and enemies in their minds, now reconciled through the physical death of Christ and destined to stand holy, blameless, and above reproach before the judgment seat. The passage distinguishes sharply between the reason for reconciliation and its purpose — God does not reconcile because we are holy, but in order to present us holy, grounding justification entirely in imputed righteousness rather than moral attainment. The sermon works through four movements in the text — the previous state of alienation, the present condition of reconciliation, the future destiny of vindication at judgment, and the present duty of grounded, steadfast perseverance in the faith — with the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints serving as the practical crown of the exposition.