Seeds for 1/26/2023 - Colossians 1:22
Scripture: “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, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.”
Observation: We could talk about the Christian theology here, which is a straight-forward assertion that Christ’s death atones for human sin, thereby reconciling us with God. Instead, let’s take the opportunity to make another observation, a literary one, that is related and underscores something important about the Gospel.
The first half of this sentence (verse 22) is a good example of how observing who is doing the action and who is receiving the action yields a foundational insight. We see that God is the one taking action and we are the ones reaping the benefits. He is the subject and we are the object. God has done the work of reconciliation—accomplished by Christ’s physical body through death. Because of what God has done, we are now “holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” We get that status because of what God has done, God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We have a response, but it is just that—responding to the God who makes the first move.
We must remain grounded in this truth, that Christian faith and the Gospel are not about what we have done to seek out God and make restitution or something like that. It is, at the ground floor, about God taking the initiative and reconciling us to Himself in and through Christ.
What a wondrous blessing to find that when we sense something is missing in our lives and go looking for God, in Jesus we find a God who didn’t wait to be sought after, but who came to this world in order to “seek and save the lost.”
Application: How tempting is it to focus on to what we are doing for God more than what God has done for us?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for making a way for reconciliation before I knew my need and before I was ready to seek you. 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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