The Reconciling God

Reading: Colossians 1.15-27
When someone wrongs us, our sense of justice springs into action. A relationship has been harmed - perhaps even broken. Something must be done about it.

If a child is physically hurt, it's amazing what will bring them relief for their pain. Often a kiss makes things better. At other times, a physical "band-aid" is needed.

But in the issues of adult life, it is no simple matter of "kiss and make up", to "forgive and forget". That is to take the wound too lightly. Robert Walmsley, the hymn writer, suggested that [God's] "love only waits to forgive and forget". But is that too simple, too glib? Doesn't justice come into it somewhere? If justice doesn't matter to God, we are in a bad way!

The God of love is a holy and just God. True love seeks justice as well as comfort. He is a reconciling God - his love and justice belong together.

God Incarnate

It's important to understand this when we think of the cross of Christ. We can think of Jesus as a great man who fell victim to human jealousy, anger and evil - but in the end, God raised him to life. No, that's not it! Or we may go further and suggest that Jesus was a great man who fell victim to divine wrath on behalf of humankind - not a very loving God to inflict that on anyone! That idea misses the mark too!

What does Paul say about Christ in today's reading? "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 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. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Col. 1.15-17).

The statements before are wrong, not because they don't have elements of truth, but because they miss the truth of who Jesus was and is. He was truly and fully God incarnate - God the Son who humbled himself and became a human being.

Listen again. He is "the image of the invisible God". No, God isn't a human being or like a human being, but we have been made "in the image and likeness of God" (Gen. 1.26). Of all creatures, only human beings are, in a sense, "god-like". The "image" has been broken and distorted, but not destroyed.

When God entered human history, he "made himself nothing and taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Phil. 2.7). In Jesus Christ, the invisible God is made visible. In becoming a human being, he emptied himself and took human limitations, as Charles Wesley put it,

He is "the firstborn over all creation". This doesn't mean that he was created first, as the Jehovah's Witnesses suggest, but that he is the rightful heir over all things. This is made clear in verses 16 and 17 - "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. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Gal. 1.16,17).

The Son was part of the Godhead from all eternity, was involved in the creation of the physical universe and continues to be the one through whom it all hangs together. Little wonder his disciples said when he spoke the word to still a raging storm, "What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!" (Mt. 8.27).

The Reconciler

"For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 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" (vv. 19-20).

The coming of Jesus was the incarnation - the coming of God-in-the-flesh. He came to reconcile humankind back to God through the cost of his own blood.

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of  your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel" (vv. 20-23a).

"Once you were alienated… now he has reconciled you…" God hasn't turned a blind eye to human sin. Sin is serious and has deadly consequences. "The wages of sin is death…" (Rom. 6.23). That sounds ominous enough, but it is the result of something far more serious - the breakdown of our relationship with God. Knowing and loving God is basic and vital to our humanity. Rejection, disobedience and unbelief separate us from God, our source of life. We do all sorts of things to fill the gap, but our life is diminished and withered, despite appearances. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that apart from God's grace we "were dead in transgressions and sins" (Eph. 2.1). In the present passage he says we were "alienated from God and enemies in our minds because of our evil behaviour" (Col. 1.21). Our whole mind-set - and therefore our actions - show us up as "enemies of God".

Something had to be done. No "band-aid" solutions would do. It wasn't a time to "kiss and make up". A wrong had to be righted. The penalty for wrong-doing had to be paid.

"Reconciliation" translates a strong word referring to a transfer or exchange. It is an exchange of Christ's obedience for our disobedience, Christ's life given for our brokenness and death, Christ's peace instead of our enmity and hostility.

In Romans, Paul writes of the whole of creation affected because of the Fall. It "has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (Rom. 8.19-22). In our present passage, Paul sees the reconciliation, not just of human beings, but of the whole creation.

Christ in You

The possibility of reconciliation is offered to everyone without exception. Christ died for all. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says that, because Christ died for all, it has changed the way he regards everyone (2 Cor. 5.16). No longer can he have the ordinary "worldly point of view" about anybody. Don't we tend to sum people up and write them off? "He doesn't have skills in this area or that…" "She's just hopeless at…" But Paul concludes, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" (v. 17).

Don't be limited by what you see! In Christ, a new creation! Pray for and look for that potential to be realised. Be aware that whenever you criticise someone else's rough edges, you expose your own rough edges to public scrutiny!

The secret is the new creation "in Christ", or, as Paul puts it in our present reading, "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1.27). The response is to accept what God has done for us in Christ - "if you continue in your faith…" (v. 23a).

To refer back to 2 Corinthians 5 again - "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5.19-21).


© Peter J. Blackburn, Home Hill Church, 11 July 2004
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New International Version, © International Bible Society, 1984.

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