Rescued

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

RESCUED

Col 1:9-14

9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 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.

NIV

It is time to think about being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that we may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father. We can see the reason, for this, but let’s first deal with being strengthened. We still have to connect this strengthening to living a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God. It would seem right we would need his mighty power in order to do all that, although we also considered it is the work of the Spirit within us. Yet when we add in the reason of being rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves, we see the work of the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit at work in unison within and for our lives. Yes, it is the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. He did that through his Son coming to die on the cross for us, to satisfy His own need to justice. There is no question we were once lost in the dominion of darkness. Having known real darkness in the physical sense, complete darkness without a shred of light, as if being blind, we can understand the spiritual darkness we were in before we were rescued by God and brought into the kingdom of light. How we managed to survive in that darkness still baffles us. How we were not completely destroyed has to be due to the hand of God in his providence keeping us safe until we were rescued, knowing in advance we would respond to his offer to come out of that darkness into His light. We still need endurance and patience in this life although he has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. In some sense, we have received that inheritance as we have already begun our eternal life. In the other sense, we are still captive, so to speak, in this corruptible physical body and must endure its death in order to enjoy its resurrection into a glorified condition. In that sense we need that patience, but with joyfully giving thanks to the Father. We always have the knowledge that we have been rescued from our darkness, our blindness, and we are now living in the light, seeing the truth and understanding someday we will be in glory with our Lord. However, our joyful thanking the Father is also for our present life, living in the light, but also having been redeemed, and our sins are forgiven. God will never bring up our sins to us ever again. That is what forgiveness is all about. We are not held accountable to our sins, they are forgiven. This means not only all our past sins but the ones we still struggle with and the ones we are going to struggle with. Because we do still live in this corruptible body, it will get caught up in some form of corruption which is sin. So then we could say we still live in this sinful body, although we make every effort, at least we think we do, not to commit some sin, we still fail to be perfect. So we need that strengthening by his mighty power and endurance and patience as we continue to walk in the light because we have been rescued.