Resurrection Sunday is a week away. I want to think about Christ Jesus in the days leading up to it, perhaps not in the way we usually think during this time of year, but instead about grace, and love and abundance. I want to begin with the description of Christ Jesus in Colossians 1, what may be the most profound and concentrated passage of doctrine about the Son of God in all of Scripture. (Read 1:13-20]
“For by him [Jesus] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” [vs 16-17 NIV]
Paul’s purpose for writing this letter was to refute the false doctrines that were beginning to invade the church, which acknowledged Jesus as a “prominent emissary” in salvation, but not the “preeminent author and finisher of salvation.”
Even in our modern-day churches, there are some who deny the deity of Jesus. You cannot deny Jesus’ deity and still have salvation because everything hinges on the truth that Jesus is divine, the second person of the Triune Godhead, fully God and fully man.
I may not understand how that is, but it stands true as the foundation of salvation. No man, no angel, no emissary, nothing apart from God Himself could save us. It doesn’t matter what else we may all have in common (faith, good works, love, etc), if we do not have the deity, the divine nature of Christ in common, then we have no common ground on which to stand.
