Monday, December 22

Scripture: Colossians 1:15-20

[15] Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,[a]

[16] for through him God created everything

in the heavenly realms and on earth.

He made the things we can see

and the things we can’t see—

such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.

Everything was created through him and for him.

[17] He existed before anything else,

and he holds all creation together.

[18] Christ is also the head of the church,

which is his body.

He is the beginning,

supreme over all who rise from the dead.[b]

So he is first in everything.

[19] For God in all his fullness

was pleased to live in Christ,

[20] and through him God reconciled

everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth

by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Some thoughts

The passage you just read is one of the most complete and profound summaries of understanding who Jesus is in all Scripture. Many of the early Christian debates as to the identity of Christ focused on this passage. Pair this Colossians passage with the Annunciation we spoke of yesterday, and you have quite a discussion! Jesus is the invisible God made visible in human flesh. How often has that happened? Once. God determined that this was the best way to solve our sin-separation problem. Give the people God in human flesh whom they could see, hear, and touch. As the second member of the Trinity, the Son has never not existed. We have trouble grasping that truth. Put another way, He existed when nothing else did. He is God’s agent of creation in all realms of the heavens as well as the earth. For example, He knows every square inch of the universe – if you even measure it that way and understands everything about it. Everything was created through Him and for Him. He understands how it was made and what its purpose is. He is the creator of matter. He is also the one who holds all creation together. His holding things together is more significant than gravity, which he invented. Such a lofty Being is beyond human ability to comprehend or even relate to. God is the only uncreated Being to exist.

So, the Incarnation of the Son was God’s solution. The Son took on human flesh as a fully human God-man. God in human form was someone to whom human beings could relate. Jesus walked on this earth and interacted with people. The other miraculoustruth is that Jesus is alive forever and relates to people today.

It is through the incarnate Son that God is reconciling everything to Himself. How does this happen? The concluding sentence of this passage answers that question very clearly – by the shed blood of Christ on the cross.

(I am indebted to Carl Gallups’ book Gods of the Final Kingdom for some of the following insights.) The eternal second member of the Trinity, Jesus, was born as a human being and appeared in human form (Philippians 2:7). All human beings have a sin nature; Jesus does not. A phrase associated with the Savior is the “only begotten Son of God” (John 3:16). That phrase means “one of a kind,” mongenés in Greek. Only begotten means “there are no other humans like this person.”

We move next to Gabriel’s visit to Mary. Words are so important. His words were “TheHoly Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The Holy Spirit in overshadowing Mary, would generate within her womb the conception of Jesus miraculously. This was not a normal sperm-and-egg pregnancy. The wording here is the very same concept expressed in Genesis 1:2. The Spirit was hovering over (overshadowing) the face of the waters. God spoke creation into being. God’s overshadowing power brought the Son into the form of a human. This doe not mean that the Son had not previously existed. Remember what you just read in Colossians. He had not previously existed in the form of a human.

Simply by His Word, God created and placed this human embryo in the womb of Mary, a one-of-a-kind miracle. You may recall that an unborn baby’s blood is separate from its mother’s. Its DNA is different. Its life is totally separate from the mother’s. Neither Joseph’s nor Mary’s blood was involved in the creation of the embryo that was Jesus. So, there is none of the “fallen nature” of humans being passed into the embryo. While nutrition passes from the mother to the baby through the placenta, the circulatory systems are entirely separate. The carbon dioxide and waste from the baby are passed back through the placenta and disposed of in the mother’s system. In summary, the blood, DNA, and the body of the baby are entirely and uniquely different from the mother’s. The Spirit of God, divinity, and the “seed of the woman,” humanity, produced the holy, sinless offspring of May, the incarnate Son of God, the Savior of the world. One additional observation. The blood of Christ shed on the cross was holy and pure, the blood of this sinless Redeemer. The Father could accept the blood of His Son as atonement for our sin because it was God’s own blood, the perfect sacrifice. Notice reconciliation comes through shed blood, as this passage of Colossians concludes. Therefore, it never needs to be repeated. Another implication of the significance and importance of recognizing the divine conception of Jesus, is that the birth of the babe in the manger is deceptive in its simplicity and overwhelmingly profound and transformational in its Christology.

Prayer:

O God, who has proven Thy love for mankind by sending us Jesus Christ our Lord, and hast illumined our human life by the radiance of His presence, I give Thee thank for this Thy greatest gift. For His willingness to take the form a human:

For His willingness to leave the glories of heaven:

For His great love for a broken and fallen creation:

For my Lord’s days upon earth:

For the wonder of the Incarnation:

For His obedience unto death:

For His triumph over death:

For the presence of His Spirit with me now:

I thank thee O God.

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I commit all by ways unto Thee. May this day be for me a day to reflect my love to the Savior. May all my walk and conversation be such as becometh the gospel of Christ. Amen (A Diary of Private Prayer, 29, adapted)