And he is the head of the body, the church. Colossians1:18
Paul is addressing the Colossian heretics... and this short sentence is a very very powerful statement:
The heretics wanted to reduce Jesus to the status of a guru or wise teacher. They implied that there was life in rituals, traditions and philosophical privileged information passed around among the "enlightened" with winks and secret handshakes...
They used an addition-subtraction theology: they implied that you needed Jesus+... (Jesus+traditions, Jesus+rituals, Jesus+knowledge etc.) Pretty soon the traditions, rituals and knowledge would subtract Jesus from the picture. So you added something and subtracted Jesus.
Paul is incredibly direct: We can't be distracted or side-tracked. We have to keep the main thing the main thing! Jesus is the head of the church and the church is a body. A headless body is a lifeless body.
When the church loses focus on Jesus, when He is not the head of the body, we land ourselves in trouble.
This has been true throughout history and it is true today.
Without Jesus, the church is a headless, lifeless body.
(Tomorrow we will look at His qualifications to be the head of the church.)
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
