Our Constant Star: Day 18

Read & Journal

Today, read Colossians 1:15-20, focusing especially on verses 18-20. Ask yourself: 

• What does this passage, especially verses 18-20, teach us about Jesus? Add any theological truths, qualities or characteristics you discover to the list in your journal. 

• What do verses 18-20 reveal about why Jesus came to live among us? Explain it in your own words. 

• Consider the word “reconciled” in verse 20. What does it mean for creation that God reconciled everything to himself through Jesus?

• What does it mean for you that God reconciled everything to himself through Jesus? 

• Thinking back to what we learned about biblical peace earlier this week, what does it mean to say that Jesus “made peace” through his blood on the cross (v. 20)? Explain in your own words. 

• What words, phrases or ideas from the third verse of “O Savior of Our Fallen Race” do you note  in today’s reading? 

• Reread verses 15-20, focusing on this passage as a hymn of praise to Jesus for what he has done to save us from our sin. What words or phrases ignite your joy? What truths cause you to praise Jesus? Record your response as a prayer. 

Ponder

Image of the invisible God. 

Creator of all that exists. 

Divine, before all things, eternally existent. 

The list of words, phrases and theological truths we could glean from Colossians 1:5-17 could go on and on, but the hymnist put it simply in “O Savior of Our Fallen Race” put it simply: 

For from the Father's throne You came,

His banished children to reclaim. 

From eternity and fully divine, Jesus is one with the Father. This is the Savior who has come into the world to rescue us. He who knew no sin, he who deserves glory and honor, set aside his rights as the Son of God and became like us so that he could save us from our sin. He who the earth and sea and sky revere—not to mention the angels—set aside his privileges as God to put on flesh. He who deserves a throne came to earth as a baby so that he could buy us back, redeem us, reclaim us, from the sin that entraps us. 

But there’s even more, as verses 18-20, tell us. God’s fullness resides in Jesus. As Max Anders says, “He is the full embodiment of God’s attributes and saving grace” (Anders). Because of this, through Jesus, God is able to reconcile all the things that our sinfulness has destroyed to himself. Creation is beautiful, but it groans for reconciliation (Rom. 8:22), that what sin has broken would be made whole. We who are sinners by choice and by our sinful, fallen nature can be brought back into relationship with our Father. Hostility is gone. The war is over. When “we were yet sinners” (Rom. 5:8), God moved toward us, ending the war and making peace through Jesus’ blood on the cross. Before we could recognize the prison our sin held us in, when we were powerless to cross the chasm our sin had created between us and God the Father, Jesus did all that was necessary to reconcile us. 

We were the enemies, but now we’re heirs. 

We were separated, but now we’re together. 

We were estranged, but now we’re home. 

And because of all of this, because of all that Jesus has done, we can sing with the hymnist again: 

And we are jubilant today,

For You have washed our guilt away.

Source: Max Anders, Galatians-Colossians, vol. 8, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 284.