Resources For "Enough" From Each Harderwyk Preacher
I. New For This Week
BibleProject Overview of Colossians - CLICK HERE for their helpful online video.
All Four Rooms: Reading Colossians Through Paul's Eyes - CLICK HERE for a blog post by Pastor Bill about Paul's nuanced view of reality and how it affects our own ability to read Colossians with understanding.
Celebration Sermon Outline - CLICK HERE for this Sunday's Sermon Outline.
II. From NT Wright in his commentary Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary on Colossians 1:15-23
Jesus and God
Paul, then, does not in this poem abandon the Jewish doctrines of monotheism and election. He redefines them. But what, in that case, is he asserting about Jesus, in particular when he calls him ‘the image of God’ (v. 15)? There has been considerable debate about this from the first Christian centuries up to the present, and the answer offered below is an attempt to hold together the strong points of the various parties in the debate.
(a) The actual reference of verse 15 is clearly the man Jesus, who is now exalted. Paul uses the present tense (‘is’) to refer to him as having taken the place of world sovereignty marked out for humanity (‘the image of God’) from the beginning (cf. Eph. 1:20–23).
(b) The logic of the hymn (creation—new creation) indicates also a reference to the exalted Jesus as the Father’s agent in creation. The one through whom the world was made has now become, as a human being, the one through whom the world is ruled by the saving love of God. The poem refers to the exalted man, but identifies him with the pre-existent Lord.
(c) There is therefore no suggestion that Jesus pre-existed in human form: merely that it was utterly appropriate for him, as the pre-existent one, to become man. The language Paul uses to refer to him before his human conception and birth is often borrowed from his later human life, just as we say ‘the Queen was born in 1926’, not meaning that she was then already Queen, but that the person we now know as Queen was born that year. Thus 2 Corinthians 8:9, ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor’: not that the pre-existent one was already Jesus, the Messiah, but that the person we now know as Jesus, the Messiah, is to be identified as God’s pre-existent agent.
(d) Paul’s Jewish background supplied him with the categories for this breath-taking idea, but (as usual) he reworked them. Some Jews regarded ‘Wisdom’ or the Mosaic Law as quasi-divine pre-existent entities, not thereby compromising monotheism but expressing, in a figure of speech, certain aspects of God’s character. Paul, likewise remaining an emphatic monotheist, applies these themes to Jesus, and can actually state (v. 19; 2:9) that all the divine fullness dwells in him. ‘Jesus’ and ‘God’ do not, though, mean the same thing: Paul regularly distinguishes God as ‘Father’ and Jesus as ‘Son’ or ‘Lord’. But Jesus is not a second God. His death (v. 20) is the achievement of God himself. Paul regarded Jesus as identical with one who was, and always had been, fully divine, and yet who could be distinguished in thought from the Father. The pre-existent Lord of the world becomes Lord of the church (1:18–20) in order to become Lord, fully, of the world which he has made but which has rebelled against him.
(e) The Colossians (this is the point of this theology in its context) have thus given their allegiance not to one cult-figure among others, but to the divine Lord through whom the world was made. The redemption achieved in Christ is indeed the new Genesis: the church really is the new humanity (3:10–11). The Jews learnt more fully who their God was when he redeemed them from Egypt (see Exod. 3:1–17; 6:1–8); the world may now learn through the gospel the full truth about the God who made it. The ‘exodus’ ideas of 1:12–14 thus belong exactly where they are in relation to the poem. The incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus were self-revealing, self-fulfilling actions which the one creator God was pleased to undertake (cf. 2 Cor. 5:19 with Col. 1:19–20). The poem leaves the church, and the world, not just with a picture of the exalted Christ, but with a vision of the gracious, loving and beckoning creator-redeemer God."
III. Ongoing Resources
1) Spiritual Formation Resources Page - CLICK HERE - This is still a work in progress, but be a part as we look to build
2) Scotty Smith’s Heavenward Daily Prayers - CLICK HERE - to see the daily prayer blog of Scotty Smith. You will see an option to have them delivered to your email inbox each day as well.
3) Simple Lectio Divina Overview - CLICK HERE - for a simple introduction of the spiritual practice of a more personal way of experience the Word through contemplation and reflection.
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