[bobthecockroach]

Colossians 1 1 This letter is from Paul, chosen by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy. 2 It is written to God's holy people in the city of Colosse, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our Father give you grace and peace. 3 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 for we have heard that you trust in Christ Jesus and that you love all of God's people. 5 You do this because you are looking forward to the joys of heaven--as you have been ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News. 6 This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is changing lives everywhere, just as it changed yours that very first day you heard and understood the truth about God's great kindness to sinners. 7 Epaphras, our much loved co-worker, was the one who brought you the Good News. He is Christ's faithful servant, and he is helping us in your place. 8 He is the one who told us about the great love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you. 9 So we have continued praying for you ever since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you a complete understanding of what he wants to do in your lives, and we ask him to make you wise with spiritual wisdom. 10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and you will continually do good, kind things for others. All the while, you will learn to know God better and better. 11 We also pray that you will be strengthened with his glorious power so that you will have all the patience and endurance you need. May you be filled with joy, 12 always thanking the Father, who has enabled you to share the inheritance that belongs to God's holy people, who live in the light. 13 For he has rescued us from the one who rules in the kingdom of darkness, and he has brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. 14 God has purchased our freedom with his blood and has forgiven all our sins. 15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation. 16 Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see--kings, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities. Everything has been created through him and for him. 17 He existed before everything else began, and he holds all creation together. 18 Christ is the head of the church, which is his body. He is the first of all who will rise from the dead, so he is first in everything. 19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, 20 and by him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of his blood on the cross. 21 This includes you who were once so far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions, 22 yet now he has brought you back as his friends. He has done this through his death on the cross in his own human body. As a result, he has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. 23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand in it firmly. Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed by God to proclaim it. 24 I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am completing what remains of Christ's sufferings for his body, the church. 25 God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his message in all its fullness to you Gentiles. 26 This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to his own holy people. 27 For it has pleased God to tell his people that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. For this is the secret: Christ lives in you, and this is your assurance that you will share in his glory. 28 So everywhere we go, we tell everyone about Christ. We warn them and teach them with all the wisdom God has given us, for we want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ. 29 I work very hard at this, as I depend on Christ's mighty power that works within me.

There is sort of a backwards development in this chapter about reconciliation. In his prayer in verses 3-6, Paul talks about the fruit of the Gospel message. It is hope in God's promises that inspires the Colossian believers to love each other. It is the Gospel that changes their lives. In verses 9 and 10, Paul talks about having an understanding of God's will and spiritual wisdom. He also talks about getting to know God more and more. The two are related. We must seek God if we want to find Him. Later on in God's Word, we see that it is only through the hope of the Gospel that we can approach God. Hebrews 10:19 tells us that "we can boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus." Verses 11-14 deal with things God does for us. In verse 11, we see that He supplies the patience and endurance necessary to live the Christian life and seek Him. In 12-14, we see our salvation presented as God rescuing us from darkness by purchasing us with His Son's blood. He has also given us, as a bonus, an inheritance with Christ. In verses 15-20, the image of reconciliation begins to take shape. Jesus stands at the forefront of all things as the visible image of God and as our Savior. He holds all creation together and reconciles all creation to God. He brings order to a chaotic world. The death of Jesus sets right (at least in the long run) that which was messed up by the curse. In verses 21 and 22, the reconciliation becomes personal. It knows no limits. It reaches the wholly evil and makes them wholly good before God. By our sin, we made ourselves enemies of God, but Jesus brings us to God as friends and presents us blameless before the throne. In verse 23, we see our responsibility in this reconciliation. Hold fast to our faith. Jesus died to make a connection between us and God, and we should not do anything to sever that connection. In verse 27, we see the ultimate form of reconciliation. It is this reconciliation that produces the hope of our salvation that produces the effects mentioned earlier. It is this reconciliation that allows us to seek God. This reconciliation is Christ in us. Christ does not only bring us to God; He brings Himself to God in us. We can, therefore, know for certain that we will be accepted by God. Christ is in us, and God will certainly accept Christ. That is why Christ in us is the ultimate assurance of salvation. Jesus could do no more to reconcile us to God. Finally, in verse 28-29, we are given the future of reconcilation. It is now our responsibility to bring people to God so that God may dwell in them and they may know the hope we have. Just as Jesus reached out to us to present us blameless before God, we are to reach out to others. We then train them so that they too may be presented blameless before God.