Seeds for 1/20/2023 - Colossians 1:18
Scripture: “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.”
Observation: We are in the middle of truly one of the magnificent passages about the supremacy of Jesus in the whole New Testament (verses 15-20) . We’ve seen the past few days how Paul establishes Jesus’ greatness in relationship to the cosmic work of creation. Now he shifts gears, tightening his focus from the creation to the church, the people of God.
Jesus is: (1) “head of the body, the church” and (2) “the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead.” Why—what’s the purpose? “So that in everything He might have the supremacy.” What’s Paul talking about?
Paul knew, like a good Pharisee, that there would one day be a resurrection of the dead and all would stand before God for judgment. Those whom God deemed righteous would be resurrected to eternal life. Paul didn’t know until his Jesus encounter on the Damascus road that that understanding was mostly right, but incomplete. Once Paul was able to recognize what God was doing, working out his experience of the risen Jesus together with the Hebrew Scriptures, he connected the theological dots that One was raised from the dead right in the middle of history, and that He would be the the beginning of a new creation: “the firstborn from among the dead.” As such, He can share the victory over death and eternal life that He has with all who put their faith in Him.
So Jesus is the One who is at the beginning of the first creation and the new creation. God’s Love was exalted in Christ—lifted up—on the cross and His Life was exalted in Christ—raised up—in the resurrection. He is the supreme source of our life and being and is exalted above all else.
Application: Sometimes we find that we believe good things about Jesus, but have we exalted Him above all else? Do we daily depend on Him as the source of our life?
Prayer: Lord, be exalted in my life above all else. Holy Spirit, please make it so. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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