Making Peace

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

MAKING PEACE

Col 1:15-20

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

NIV

What we want to connect to this continuing thought is what he sort of finished with his preceding thought (13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins) which is really all one complete concept, yet we have to parcel it out a little in order to ponder all the aspects of the truth. What we have to remember is that Paul is talking about the Son of God, Christ Jesus as being the image of invisible God. Although he makes the statement that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation, we do not think Paul was saying Jesus was actually born, as though he did not exist until he was born, for we are confident Paul is aware of the infinite triune God who has always been. However, we also should understand the culture and time in which Paul lived with all the influences of the Roman-Greco cultures and multiplicities of mystical gods that existed. There were plenty of various philosophies and religious persuasions that came from both the Romans and the Greeks. Paul was making the point that Jesus came before all of them, and in fact, they were created by him. It did not matter how powerful or what kind of authority a ruler on earth had, no matter how much power any one throne had in a country, they were all created by Jesus and he created them for himself. All mankind belongs to Christ, we are not our own, despite what anyone might think, as far as being their own person. Jesus created all things, including us, and he is before us and everything is held together by him. What this means in this crazed culture with its man-centered ideas about climate change, is that Jesus holds the whole of everything together, including the climate. All of heaven and earth were created by him and are being held or controlled by him. They stand in him. Paul moves specifically into the relationship of the church, which is us, believers. Jesus is our head, what rules the rest of our body. He is the ultimate authority over the movement of the church, as our head, our brain is the ultimate authority over these fingers moving over the keys of the computer. Jesus does not exist for us, but we exist for him and all our movements, that is how we live, where we live, how we work, where we work, how we church, where we church, in other words, every aspect of our lives, our goals, aspirations, desires should be influenced by our head, Jesus. He must have absolute supremacy over all things, including us. Now, Paul makes all that perfectly clear for this the one reason that it is Jesus who reconciled himself to his creation. This was the plan from before the creation of time. We would be brought back into fellowship with God by Christ, by the shedding of his blood. It is his act of reconciling himself to his creation, we are saved as we believe in him and his action, his work on the cross for our redemption and his forgiveness of our sin so that he is at peace with us and we are at peace with him. We have to understand that we cannot make peace with God, it is Jesus who is making the peace.