Joy in our salvation, the gift of our loving Father, provides the strength that we need as believers!
It was hard for the Jewish believers to grasp the freedom of grace without works. God is able to save all those who believe in the finished work of the Cross. Jesus is holy, harmless, undefiled, sinless He did not have to offer daily sacrifice for sins as did the high priests in Judaism. His sacrifice finished everything needed for salvation. This He did once as He offered up Himself. For the Mosaic Law picked human sinful men to offer sacrifice it was never intended for salvation only Christ could accomplish that.
Hebrews 7:26For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; 27 who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. 28 For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever.
The Apostles never realized that Christ would die and be resurrected.
Even after three years they did not perceive that all things written by the prophets concerning the Son of man would be finished in Him. That He would be crucified, would die and be resurrected was not understood. Only when Mary Magdalene went to anoint the body of Jesus and met Him as the risen Messiah did they begin to understand that this man, all God/all man, Jesus would bodily rise from the dead into the eternal. His Kingdom is forever. When Jesus appeared to Paul and revealed to him the fullness of the Gospel of Grace He sent Paul out to reveal it to mankind.
Jesus is the core of believers in Him we live.
Luke 18:31Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. 32 For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. 33 They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.” 34 But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.
Life in the flesh is in the blood but eternal life with God is only through the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus is now at the right hand of the Father.
We abide in a temple not made with human hands but by the very hand of God.
1 Corinthians 3:16 16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
A Prayer for Reconciliation
Where there is separation,
there is pain.
And where there is pain,
there is story.
And where there is story,
there is understanding,
and misunderstanding,
listening
and not listening.
May we—separated peoples, estranged strangers,
unfriended families, divided communities—
turn toward each other,
and turn toward our stories,
with understanding
and listening,
with argument and acceptance,
with challenge, change
and consolation.
Because if God is to be found,
God will be found
in the space
between.
Amen.
Pádraig Ó Tuama
Sabbath Moments
Colossians 1:9-14
9 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. The New King James Version
False teachers might have described God’s will as unknowable—or knowable only through secret rituals. Paul rejects this idea: Followers of Christ, filled with the knowledge of His will, can live in a manner pleasing to God because they know what matters to Him.
Paul prays that the Colossians will be filled with knowledge. This is the purpose of his ministry which is possible only because Christ Himself is the source of all wisdom and knowledge. The biblical conception of wisdom is oriented around God as the source of all wisdom; a wise person is a godly person. Wisdom refers to insight that comes from the Spirit. This stands in contrast to the mystery religions, which promoted insight through secret rituals
The purpose of having knowledge, wisdom, and insight is not to boast or brag, but to love God and others, thereby reflecting His image in the world. It refers to experiential knowledge, not just intellectual understanding. As believers trust and obey God’s will, they become more acquainted with God’s ways—and with God Himself.
As non-Jews (Gentiles), the Colossians would have been considered outsiders to God’s blessings, which were reserved for the people of Israel. However, the central truth of the gospel for Paul was that Christ’s death and resurrection brought salvation for all who believed, Jews and Gentiles alike. Throughout his letters, Paul conveys this central truth using different kinds of imagery.
Kingdom is the realm in which Christ reigns as King, where His sovereign rule is carried out.
The transfer from one realm to the other is accomplished by God: In His love and grace, He brings believers out of the domain of sin and death and moves them into the kingdom of His Son. The kingdom of God (or kingdom of heaven) is one of the most dominant themes in Jesus’ teaching ministry. In this verse, Paul indicates that God’s kingdom is not just about the future; in some sense, it must already be present, because God has delivered believers from darkness and transferred them into His kingdom. Just as Israel was enslaved in Egypt before being rescued by Yahweh, so the Colossian believers had been enslaved to the domain of sin and death before they responded in faith to God’s act of salvation in Christ. God’s forgiveness removes sin and provides reconciliation.
Forgiveness is an expression of God’s grace and love. Faithlife Study Bible
Paul’s chief concern is that the Colossians might have full knowledge of God’s will. The desire to serve God will be in vain without a proper understanding of the One we want to serve. Thus Paul prays that the Colossians might be filled with full knowledge that encompasses all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Wisdom is the practical outworking of knowledge and that knowledge cannot be separated from the spiritual understanding that comes through the discernment given by the Holy Spirit.
According to His glorious power means that believers are empowered not in proportion to their need but according to God’s strength. So then, Paul desires to see nothing less than the very power of God Himself at work in the Colossian believers. Believers can never be qualified on their own; instead God must make them sufficient through Jesus Christ. The tense of the verb points to “qualifying” as an act in the past rather than a process. Ordinarily to qualify for an event or a position, we have to prove ourselves. However the inheritance that believers receive is not one that they have earned but is based on being qualified by God.
God has liberated believers from the dominion of darkness. The apostle uses the common symbolism of light and darkness for good and evil, for God’s kingdom and Satan’s kingdom, that is found throughout the NT.
The Greek word redemption points naturally to the payment of a price or ransom for the release of a slave. The slavery from which believers are released is not physical but spiritual. They are freed from bondage to sin by forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus Christ. The NKJV Study Bible
Acts 26:18 to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.’
Ephesians 1:6–9 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace…
Ephesians 4:1–2 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,
Matthew 3:17 And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
No comments:
Post a Comment