The Dimensions of Jesus
Amos 8:1-12; Ps 52; Col 1:15-29; Luke 10:38-42 St Matthew’s Guildford 20/7/95
Introduction https://youtube.com/watch?v=riPpz51zijU&si=sFECESMayNngtHKB
Working with our Lectionary readings, the warnings throughout Amos (cf. 8:1-12) are frequently accompanied by anguished prophetic cries, “Sovereign LORD, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob/Israel survive? He is so small!” (Amos 7:2, 5); then Psalm 52 mocks the ungodly wealthy man who will be brought low by God; “Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin.” (v.5). (Think in our day of proud billionaires and technocrats.) Finally, many of us, particularly those engaged in housework, are likely sympathetic to Martha’s complaining to Jesus. Which recalls that of Israel murmuring 14x to her Saviour-God in the wilderness (Ex 5:1-22 etc.; Jude 5). Such complaints about the Lord’s “favouritism” to the younger sister Mary, draw out a rebuke from Jesus to over industrious people who are always too busy to meditate on Himself , ““Martha, Martha,” [the Lord answered,] “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”” (Luke 10:41-42). Matha thought she was sovereign over her own household, but our Colossians reading presents a perspective in which Jesus is Lord of the entire cosmos. The present-day Western Church’s estimation of Christ is way too small.
Exposition
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
The description of the human Jesus as “the image of the invisible God” points us beyond Adam and Eve in Eden (Gen 1:26-28) to the grandeur of Christ as the original template for creation (Rom 5:14; Heb 1:1-3). Paul expounds this vision by saying that whatever can be seen or unseen (e.g. the angelic world) was made by God the Father in the power of his Spirit (Gen 1:1ff.) not only through Jesus as the everlasting Word of God, [Jews, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc., believe such things, ] (John 1:1ff) but made for Christ (cf. 1 Cor 8:6). To live for Jesus is to have one’s total identity shaped by devotion to the Son of God (e.g. “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). I was listening to a presentation by an American missionary to the Muslims recently, a man who, like Paul (2 Cor 11:24ff.), has been beaten to unconsciousness by angry mobs’ multiple times, yet he kept on saying the followers of Muhammed are his “favourite people”. Why? Because so many are consistent disciples of their prophet fasting a month each year and praying five times daily. (Unlike many Christians, there is nothing secret about Islamic devotion! E.g. prayer rooms in airports) Our discipleship must exceed those who are following a false prophet originally made to worship Jesus (John 4:42). We are called to live out a righteousness exceeding that of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.
In saying “in him all things hold together” Paul presents a tremendous vision of the “cosmic Christ”. In preaching to the philosophers at Athens the apostle testifies, “‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ [As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.”] (Acts 17:28). Likewise, the author to Hebrews exclaims, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Heb 1:3). As an old saying puts it: ‘The world minus Jesus = nothing, Jesus minus the world = Jesus!’
18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
In the New Testament the resurrected Jesus is the summit, pinnacle and Leader, not only of God’s original creation, but of his new creation. As Head over the Church [(not a Primate or Pope)] he is “the beginning” the arche/ἀρχή source, origin, ruling power with supremacy over all that has been made in him. The apostle goes on to teach that all things are reconciled to God through the blood of the cross. This does not make common sense. To be “reconciled” means that two parties in [enmity/odds/] hostile to one another have been brought together in a holy unity. Everywhere the word is used in the New Testament it is presented as an action already achieved in Jesus atoning sacrifice (Rom 5:10). Christ’s final cry from the cross, “It is finished.” (John 19:30) does not mean, “my life is over,” but that the work my Father sent me into the world to accomplish has been fully achieved. It is a triumphant cry of victory. As I get older I am more convinced that when I go to be with the Lord this will be the testimony of my life. This week I received news that an MRI show I have small vessel disease in the brain. All glory be to God through such news for Christ’s sake. What will it be your valediction? Stop living by sight and start living by faith (2 Cor 5:7). Getting back to the world scale of things, do the combatants of the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, Myanmar…. live in this truth of accomplished reconciliation? Do the Aboriginal folk you know live as though we whites are forgiven people? (a few of the most mature do) Do Christians from different denominational and spiritual flavours, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Reformed, Anabaptist ….live as the one loving undivided family of God! Thank God as worldly pressures on the Church intensify our unity in Christ is expanding e.g. my previously Greek Orthodox GP who hated Catholics.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
We were all once mentally alienated and enemies of God, even if he was never our enemy [but our true Father (“wrath of the Father” is a non-biblical expression)], such enmity is for the friends and followers of Jesus a past state. This complete reconciliation was achieved by Jesus’ physical death on the cross. Jesus “became flesh” (John 1:14; Rom 8:3) for us. Which I, [and many others], take to mean that the Lord [assumed/]took up into himself a fallen nature to take it away through perfect sinless substitutionary living-and-dying for us. This makes us “holy”, set apart to God for a special purpose, “without blemish”, that is, counted faultless in God’s sight, and “free from accusation”, invulnerable before the Accuser (Zech 3:1-5; Rev 12:10) i.e. Satan has nothing to charge us with (Rom 8:33-34) because the blood of Jesus eternally pleads for our mercy before the throne of God (Gen 4:10; Heb 7:25; 12:24). A plea which God the Father the Judge of all cannot deny (Gen 18:25; Rom 3:5-6; 1 Pet 1:17).
Paul injects a note of practical realism, “23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.” The dynamic of our hope, which is sure and certain (Heb 6:19) and “set out in the gospel” is proportional to the Jesus of the Gospel. If our vision of Jesus is too small, our hope of eternal life is degraded. This is the major problem in the Western Church today. Paul goes on to outline why the church as we know it, not the Church in Myanmar which I visit, or the Church in Iran or other persecuted churches, is weak.
24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people.
Paul’s personal sufferings in the cause of Christian ministry do not add to the effectiveness of all sufficient sacrifice of the cross (e.g. Heb 10:10), but explains that in the days between Jesus’ departure to heaven and his return, the people of God must concretely express in the world the afflictions of Christ for every passing generation. This message of redemptive suffering for lost and hurting people is an integral dimension of the mystery previously hidden but now revealed in Scripture [to the apostles and prophets (Eph 2:20; 3:5)] for every baptised Christian.
27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. 29 To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.
(Back in 1994 in Argentina the Japanese apostle-evangelist Paul Ariga spoke these words Christ in you, the hope of glory over me prophetically.)
In these few words Paul sums up his apostolic ministry. He starts with the fact of the “glorious riches” and assured hope we share in God’s Son. Then progresses to the proclamation of Christ, crucified and risen, whose call has authorised him to warn and teach the Church in order that she will be ready as a mature Bride (Eph 5:26) for her returning Bridegroom. Which is easier to do, to warn or to teach? Obviously, teaching is the easier, and warning the more difficult, because warnings, which began before the Fall, “”but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eat of it you shall surely die,”” (Gen 2:17) are likely to be rejected by immature consciences. There are huge differences in the responses of those who “consciences have been seared by a hot iron”, to quote 2 Tim 4:2, and those whose consciences are cleansed from guilt and shame by the blood of the cross (Heb 9:14). The former squirm, resist and react, the latter, however uncomfortably, submit to the testimony of the Word of God. We must note that Paul teaches and warns “with all wisdom”, that is, the wisdom of Christ crucified and glorified (1 Cor 1:24). Are you, the people of St Matthew’s Guildford, a progressively more teachable group of people,[“through teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16)] increasingly open to the Spirit of God telling you that you are doing something offensive to him in his preaching about Jesus. For example, what proportion of the congregation in this parish, has prayed for the sermon they will hear today? E.g. at the earlier pre-service prayer time.
Application and Conclusion
Last Sunday in preaching at St Marks Bassendean on the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus I touched on the word he received from the Lord, “This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”” (Acts 9:15-16). Few of us are likely to die as martyrs in the traditional sense, but in the accurate biblical meaning of “martyr” simply means someone who suffers for the cause of testifying/bearing witness to Christ. There are many martyrs across the world, including some here, martyrdom is an essential dimension of what it means to follow Jesus “ everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12). Not following some cut-down size of Jesus but the Jesus of whom Paul speaks so majestically in Colossians. One of my favourite passages from Scripture is Revelation 19, where on the threshold of the preparation and presentation of the Bride of Christ/Church to her returning Lord, John hears the angel speak, “I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony/ of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.”” (v.10) Literally, “the μαρτυρίαν/martyrian of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy”. By this stage of reading the book of Revelation (how many hear have read it through? How many times?) all readers have been strengthened to be martyrs of Christ to the glory of God. May it be so with us also.