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, not moved 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. Colossians1:21-23
Today is the start of Lent.
For the last few days we have reflected on the identity of Christ:
- That He reveals the fullness of God
- Creation is _through_ Him and _for_ Him and sustained _by_ Him.
- He is the head of the Church
- by virtue of His victory over death He has supremacy
- He has achieved reconciliation for us.
If this is who Jesus is, Paul now describes what this means to us:
- We were far from God and enemies with Him because of our sin
- But we have been reconciled and completely forgiven
This is the free gift that God gives us - but paradoxically the free gift costs us everything. When we discover that we find new life in Christ, we give our lives to Him. We invite Him to be the Lord of our lives. We ask Him to be our God and we commit to follow Him.
This is what Paul is talking about in v.23: we need to CONTINUE (The Greek word can mean "stay", "remain", "continue" or "persist") in our faith, established, firm and unmoved from HOPE.
The Gospel is free but not cheap - when we embrace the HOPE of the gospel of Christ's love for us it will transform us. We will be changed and we will want to change.
That's what Lent is about - in the early church it was a season of training and learning for new converts who wanted to be baptised. They fasted, prayed and dedicated themselves to learning about the One who saved them.
Lent is about looking forward to the gospel message of Easter and beginning a process by which we dedicate ourselves afresh to CONTINUE in the faith: established, firm and immovably built on the hope of the gospel!
I will be sending you a document about Lent...
---
--------------------------
Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
