Colossians 1:11-20
As we approach Christmas Christians have much to be joyful about, for - like hostages rescued from captivity and emerging blinking into the daylight - we are people who have been transferred from the power of darkness into the inheritance of the saints who dwell in the light. And what is this light of which Paul speaks so eloquently in this beautiful poem? It is the light shed upon the world by the arrival in human history of someone who is the image of the invisible God, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. The astounding claim made by Paul is that Jesus, the child born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, is the person in, through and for whom all things were created. In other words, he is the being in whom all things hold together, none other than God himself. But this incredible and wonderful news is tinged with pathos, for God only became human in order to reconcile all things to himself by dying on a cross. The good news of Christmas is also an Easter story.
As we approach Christmas Christians have much to be joyful about, for - like hostages rescued from captivity and emerging blinking into the daylight - we are people who have been transferred from the power of darkness into the inheritance of the saints who dwell in the light. And what is this light of which Paul speaks so eloquently in this beautiful poem? It is the light shed upon the world by the arrival in human history of someone who is the image of the invisible God, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. The astounding claim made by Paul is that Jesus, the child born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, is the person in, through and for whom all things were created. In other words, he is the being in whom all things hold together, none other than God himself. But this incredible and wonderful news is tinged with pathos, for God only became human in order to reconcile all things to himself by dying on a cross. The good news of Christmas is also an Easter story.
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