Category: Pastor Tim’s Blog

“He is the image of the invisible God…”  Colossians 1:1

It’s an amazing thing to watch your child or grandchild literally “morph” before your eyes into a person like you.  Your “spitting image,” as some might say.  Children mimic some of your facial expressions and your language (watch out!).  They look and sound like you over time.  But in other ways, determined by their DNA, they become just like you (and, for good or ill, act like you too).

One of the most staggering claims made concerning Jesus of Nazareth was this first statement in Colossians 1:15 “He is the image of the invisible God.”  We remember from the creation account in Genesis that mankind was made “in the image of God.”  Every person bears something of the characteristics of our Creator.  His image is stamped in us.

But Jesus bore this image of God in an unusual way.  This was more than just reproducing a few facial characteristics and vocal inflections.  Jesus was the “eikon” of God, the “exact representation of His being.”  The word “eikon” was a reference to a stamp used in transferring the image of an emperor onto coins.  Their “eikon,” or likeness, was seen in the coin.

In a much greater sense, the “likeness” of God was stamped on Jesus.  Jesus said to Phillip, one of His disciples, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father.”  When we see Jesus, we see the invisible God.  The more we learn of Jesus, the more we “see” Jesus with eyes of faith, the more we are seeing God.  How He responds to us.  How He cares for us.  How He thinks.  How deep is His love for us.   We see this clearly displayed in our Savior.

It can rightly be said that you will never know God until you know Him in the face of Jesus.  Jesus came to reveal God’s character, God’s likeness, and God’s love to us.  Without Jesus, we are left to grope in the darkness.

But in His face is the Light of Life!

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”  Colossians 1:15-20 ESV

For the most part, my memories of Christmas are tied to music.  I have shared with you before that George Fredrick Handel’s majestic oratorio, “The Messiah” filled our home as I grew up during Christmas and Easter seasons.  My Dad especially loved this music, and he had actually sung it in so many local churches and community chorales that he had memorized most of it!

Hearing that musical floods my soul with memories.  But so do many of the other carols we sing at Christmas.  Most Christmas music is rich in theological insight (well, maybe not “All I Want for Christmas is You”).  But you know what I mean.

Carols emphasize parts of the Biblical narratives of the birth and nature of Jesus that we otherwise may not think enough about.  No doubt, you have your favorites, as I do.  But some of the most important statements about the person and work of Jesus Christ were also hymns being sung by the early church

One such hymn is found in the Book of Colossians, Chapter 1.  It is theologically rich and meaningful as we peel back the layers of this text.  While the ESV does not, several translations set these six verses apart to emphasize it is being quoted from another source.  Paul was inspired to use hymns in what he was writing in the same way some preachers quote hymns or choruses today.

So, over the next few days as we continue our journey through Advent, why don’t you take some time to read and re-read these verses as an act of worship.  Think deeply about the words that describe Christ’s person (“the image of God,” “firstborn of all creation,” “creator of all things”) but also think about words that tell us what He did (“created all things,” “holds all things together,” “reconciler of all things”).

He is your Savior.  Your Sovereign.  Your Creator.  The head of the church.  The redeemer.

No wonder the carol asks,

“What Child is This?”

“When the fullness of time was fulfilled, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law that He might redeem those who are under the Law….” Galatians 4:4-5a

Jesus was sent on a mission. God did not randomly send His Son to earth to do good things and to help hurting people, though surely, He did those things. No, in His own words, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save those Who were lost.”

 Jesus was sent on a mission. His mission was unlike any other mission ever attempted before or sense. It involved the One Who was creator of all things to become One of those He had created as the crowning point of creation. To live in their skin, experience their limitations, endure their worst suffering, and to fulfill the demands of God placed on humanity by the Law.

Jesus was sent on a mission. The mission would involve not only becoming incarnate (enfleshed) in humanity, not only perfectly fulfilling the Law’s demands, but ultimately incurring the penalty of the Law we each were living under. The penalty of death.

Jesus was sent on a mission. The mission began, to our eyes, on Christmas in a rough wooden manger at Bethlehem. It ended thirty-three years later on a rough wooden cross outside of Jerusalem. He was both born, and crucified, “outside of the camp.” And ultimately, He emerged from a borrowed tomb on Easter morning, still fully human; still fully God, but now “the first fruits of those who would rise from the dead.”

Jesus was sent on a mission. A mission to redeem. A mission targeted…at you. His redemptive mission comes one step closer to fulfillment each time a lost life, a lost soul, turns to find life in Jesus Christ. By faith, His fulfillment of the Law is counted as yours. By faith, His death is considered your payment for the death penalty. By faith, His resurrection becomes yours as well.

Jesus was sent on a mission. A mission to bring a gift. The gift of eternal life. Have you met the Savior? Have you received His gift?

Prayer: Our God and Creator of the Heavens, and the Earth I come to you today with no gift in my hands. There is nothing I can bring to impress You, nothing I can give to purchase my own salvation. So, I come asking to receive the gift You gave as You sent Jesus on this Diving rescue mission. I receive Your gift, Your Son, Your Lamb as my substitute and my sacrifice. I have nothing to bring to receive this awesome gift so today, here in this Christmas season, I give you my heart. I turn from my own sin and unrighteousness to receive Your gift of eternal life. And I will continually bring You the gift of a thankful heart and a grateful obedience. Til He comes again for Me.

“For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a virgin, born under the Law.” Galatians 4:4

 A six-year old boy described Jesus as “God with skin.” His definition captures a huge theological truth in very simple terms. The eternal, immortal, invisible God became an occupant of our “skin;” our humanity. All that is true of humanity apart from sin was true of Jesus. He had a country of origin, a mother and (step) father who raised Him, a house He grew up in; He had friends, and siblings, and when He fell and skinned His knee of slammed His thumb with a hammer, He bled. He had blood, and hormones, and bad days. Just like you and me.

Jesus came through the birth canal of a teenaged, Galilean mother, who was already engaged to be married to a local craftsman-a carpenter named Joseph. Their life together was preoccupied with the enormously significant task of raising… God?

He grew up, as some of us did, on “the wrong side of the tracks.” He had no social standing, or any kind of advantageous childhood. And like us all, He was “born of a woman.” While no man’s DNA was involved in His Divine birth, Mary’s was. Some older theologians, attempting to soften this reality, believed Jesus passed through Mary’s body “like water through a pipe,” with neither the water nor the pipe being changed by its passage.

But that’s not what we understand this birth to be. Did Jesus have some of Mary’s physical features? We can’t know for sure, but it wouldn’t be a real birth nor a real pregnancy she endured if it were not at least possible.

We struggle more, I think, with the full humanity of Jesus than we do with His Divinity. We want to make Him “something other” than we are, and yet the further we push that line the less possible it would be for Him to be the sacrifice for our sin. He had to be fully human, yet at the same time fully Holy. Completely God. He was both. Not part of each. Fully both.

“In Jesus, the fullness of the godhead dwelt in bodily form,” we read in Colossians 1:27. A miracle beyond compare. A mystery beyond comprehension.

“Let all mortal flesh keep silence….” the old hymn says. Now we know why.

THE MYSTERY OF THE WORD MADE FLESH (Part 2)

 “…God sent forth His Son…” (Galatians 4:4)

 This, this is Christ the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing
Haste, haste to give Him praise
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

It matters that we believe correctly what the Bible teaches us about Jesus.  Getting this right is incredibly important, though fully understanding it is not possible.  There is a great deal of faith involved when we begin to gaze into this mystery.  And questions will always linger for our human minds.

God did not “create” Jesus at Christmas.  In the virgin Mary’s womb, God implanted Jesus’ body in cellular and then in embryonic form.  He did so without the aid of a man.  Of this, the writer of Hebrews quotes a Psalm which states “a body You have prepared for Me.”  It was the birth of this Divinely orchestrated body which we celebrate as a baby at Christmas.

Yet in Heaven, the Son had eternally existed.  There was never a time when the Son of God did not exist, and in fact scripture affirms that “the Lamb (Jesus) was slain before the foundation of the earth.”  Jesus existed in eternity past as the Second Person of the Trinity.

Though Jesus was “sent” by God, it is not the same sense in which we would “send” a child to their room.  Jesus fully entered into the plan of redemption, and His part of that plan was to come to earth and be incarnated in flesh and blood.  He came willingly.

He came to “tabernacle” (to dwell, to camp, to live) among us.  In fact, He picked the worst neighborhood, with the worst forms of violence, among the most oppressed of people, and “pitched His tent” right in the midst of it.  The Son was sent on a rescue mission by God.  It was not a vacation trip in which He expected to be coddled.  It was an eternal life-and-death attempt to redeem the souls of human beings lost in sin.

He “dwelt” (camped) in the midst of us and we “beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father” John’s Gospel tells us.  He was sent on mission in the same way that those who believe in Him are also “sent” on a mission:  to tell the world about Him!

This, this is Christ the King… the Babe, the son of Mary.

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a virgin, born under the Law.” (Galatians 4:4)

“King of kings yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood
Lord of Lords in human vesture…”
—Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent

Perhaps the greatest mystery in all of Scripture is the mystery of how God became flesh. Throughout the years, different theories have emerged from people wrestling with everything from the makeup of Christ’s material body to the question of how God could become man and yet remain… God? Tens of thousands of pages have been written trying to explain or understand this mystery.

But of this teaching of the Deity of Christ the Bible says little by way of explanation, though much by way of proclamation. Our text in Galatians 4:4 is one such place of proclamation. It tells us that Jesus was God’s Son SENT by Him to earth. And then, in the same sentence, it proclaims that Jesus was born of a WOMAN in the way every child is born.

One thing is clear. Jesus was the most completely unique person that ever lived. Though He took on flesh and bone and blood and skin and bore our weaknesses and our temptations, yet He lived without ever committing sin.

His Deity was not diminished in its capacity even though, as Philippians says, “He emptied Himself…” of the rights and privileges that should have been His. In that self-emptying He did not cease to be God, and in his humanity, He was fully a human being. He was always, fully, both.

The wonder of Christmas is to gaze again upon this mystery of God made flesh… this babe in a manger… this King Who caused the angels to bow…

…and worship Him.

“When the time was right, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman; born under the Law.”   Galatians 4:4 NLT

By now, you doubtless have finished up seconds… and thirds… of Thanksgiving meal. The pumpkins and fall decorations are now being tucked away to await the next arrival of autumn. And now, ON TO CHRISTMAS! Decorated homes and bright lights are beginning to dot our neighborhoods, and Christmas shopping lists are being made and checked off.

I’ve heard more than one person say, “I can’t wait for Christmas this year; it means we’re almost finished with 2020!” Maybe you have felt the same. It’s been a hard year… the hardest for many. And as much as I would wish turning the calendar from 2020 to 2021 means all of this difficulty would fade into history, I am doubtful it will.

The people alive when Jesus arrived in Bethlehem around 2,020 years ago were, like us, eager to see better days. Political unrest, riots in some areas and persecution in others, injustice, illness and poverty riddled their daily lives. Old men would gather and discuss in whispered tones about the coming one. Jewish synagogues were filled with conversations and questions about the arrival of Messiah.

They were expectant. And suffering. And weary. It was then that the Bible says, “When the time was right, God sent forth His Son….” When the time was right? What could that possibly mean? Was God oblivious to what was happening in the world? Didn’t He know people were hurting?

Or could we allow that God doesn’t see things as we see them? The prophets had promised for hundreds of years prior that “a child would be born” and “a light would shine forth in the darkness.” And now, “the time was right.” The darkness was now dark enough. Light was on its way!

God knows right where we are today. And no, He isn’t oblivious or calloused to our pain or our cries for help. In fact, it was in the midst of His people’s pain and hopelessness that our Lord first entered the world. Can we await expectantly in these dark days and believe that He will not leave us nor forsake us? Can we wait with hope in spite of the challenging days we are living in and believe that Light will come?

Perhaps we’ve never needed the hope of Christmas… or the promise of a Savior… more than now.