Accepting the gospel of Christ brings us joy. This daily devotional looks at how the gospel centers around Christ and His Sacrifice.
Nuggets
- The gospel is built around Christ and our acceptance of it.
- Christ is pivotal to the gospel because He is holding it together.
- God put the gospel into place at the appropriate time.
Devotions in the Joy in the Gospel series
We cannot miss the fact that the gospel is about one thing – Jesus, the Son of God, is the Sacrifice to save us from our sins.
Let's Put It into Context
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
The Centrality of Christ
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through him and for him” (Col. 1: 15-16 CSB)
The gospel is built around Christ and our acceptance of it.
We say a lot of times that we were created in the image of God. But what does that mean, especially since He is invisible and none of us have that superpower to see Him?
Glossary
Watson got deep real fast. He wrote, “But there is a great difference between man made ‘in,’ ‘after,’ or ‘according to’ God’s image, and Christ ‘the image’ itself.”
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Behrends expanded that to say that likeness means a facsimile. An image is an exact duplicate.
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We were talking about Christ being the light in the last devotion. But that doesn’t make us shadows of Him.
That may have been true in the Old Testament, but it isn’t any more. “Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the reality itself of those things, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year” (Heb. 10: 1 CSB).
Watson stressed that we are similar to Christ but not the same. He is divine; we aren’t. He is perfect; we are far from it.
Christ is the representative of who God wants us to be. He has God’s nature, while we are still working on it.
Okay. I have to process this. I have always heard Christ is the firstborn. But Behrends threw a wrench into the thinking.
Behrends wrote, “The emphasis must be put upon both adjectives, ‘firstborn.’ The primacy of Jesus Christ in the creation is the primacy of birth. He alone is born, not made; all other things are made, not born; and there is a very marked distinction between these two.”
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I get the Jesus wasn’t made part. It is the He was born part that gets me. I always have heard that Jesus is God, so He has always been, just as God is eternal.
Let me see if I can summarize how Behrends explained that and hook it to my thoughts. As firstborn, Jesus is an extension of God.
Jesus is also inseparable because their natures are one and the same. Behrends said that is where He gets the name Eternal Word of God (Jn. 1: 1). He wrote, “Even so is Christ the first born of creation as holding in His living thought all the realms and ages. Thus far the essential majesty of the Divine Christ.”
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Thomas told us that firstborn is meant to tell us Jesus’ age, the continuance of the legacy of God, and His jurisdiction.
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God said from the very beginning that Jesus was present at creation. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. …’” (Gen. 1: 26 ESV).
Jesus was more than just a sounding board. He played an actual part in creation. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (Jn. 1: 3 ESV).
We aren’t talking about Jesus having His assignments and God doing the rest. We are talking all things — seen and unseen — all the way up to the big things like governments and principles.
Maclaren reminded us that we have likenesses of royalty and prominent people on our coins. God, on the other hand, is not visible to us. In a way, that makes Him unapproachable.
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We can see God through Jesus. He shows us Who God is because He is the same.
The through Him is very important. Maclaren said it makes a clear distinction between the Creator and the creation. Being firstborn removes Jesus from the chance of being confused as one of us.
Paul’s point was Jesus was around before anything else was created. He wasn’t an adolescent growing up. He was completely God.
Watson argued that this defeats Atheism, Deism, and Unitarianism. It shows there is a God, He does take part in His creation, and He is a Trinity.
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God created us for the purpose of worshiping Him. We can only do this by accepting the gospel of the Christ.
The Position of Christ
“He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything” (Col. 1: 17-18 CSB)
Christ is pivotal to the gospel because He is holding it together.
I’ve heard Jesus described as the glue that held all things together. He includes us in that linkage.
We are reconciled to Christ in all things when we ABCD. That was why He became the Sacrifice — to shed His blood so that we might be saved.
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Jesus is the head of the church.
- “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (Eph. 1: 22 NIV).
- “God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church” (Eph. 1: 22 NLT).
Yeah, I put the same verse from two different translations for a reason.
Jesus is “… head over everything for the church” (Eph. 1: 22 NIV). He is the one Who is calling the shots, not us.
But that is okay. It is “… for the benefit of the church” (Eph. 1: 22 NLT). It isn’t to pull us down to a bad place. It is to raise us up.
Where is our faith? We’ve described it before as beliefs, a.k.a., the assent of the mind.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Our mind is in our heads. Watson wrote, “The head is where most of the vital functions are which impart energy through the system, and diffuse pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow. So Christ transmits whatever supplies are required for the Church’s welfare; through Him the whole body increases with the increase of God.”
Jesus is Head over that.
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Christ is the beginning. He not only was around for the beginning, but He also is the beginning of the church. If He wouldn’t have agreed to be the Sacrifice, there would be no church.
The Mission of Christ
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Col. 1: 19-20 CSB)
God put the gospel into place at the appropriate time.
When we have a kid, do we want the kid to be exactly like us? Or are we hoping for anything but?
Jesus was just like God. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (Col. 1: 19 CSB) meant that Jesus possessed all of God’s attributes.
To read a devotion in the Finding Our Center series, click on the button below.
Maclaren said it wasn’t only that Jesus just possessed these attributes. He had them in abundance. He would always have them because they dwell within Him.
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Donne took it another way. He felt that the fullness meant that our sin was full up. That also meant that God’s anger was full up.
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I can see that, too. We don’t really know what God’s thought process was for picking that time — except to say it was the right time.
It could have been the right time for a multitude of reasons. We just know that God knew best.
Donne made a great point. God couldn’t just forgive us of our sins. He needed Jesus’ blood to be spilled before He could. Donne called that the “… incomprehensibleness of man’s sin …”
It was Jesus’ mission to reconcile man from this unfashionable amount and degree of sin back to God.
But wait a second. What is this “… whether things on earth or things in heaven …” (Col. 1: 20 CSB) part?
Barlow thought that, not only was Jesus reconciling sinful people on earth back to God, but He was also reconciling sinless and unfallen creatures back to him.
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I, for one, didn’t think there were any sinful and unfallen creatures besides the angels. So, what does that mean?
Donne felt it did mean “Angels, who were confirmed in perfect holiness and blessedness.”
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But Donne go further than that. He wrote, “But the most proper and literal meaning is that all things in heaven and earth be reconciled to God; i.e., His glory, to a fitter disposition to glorify Him, by being reconciled to one another in Christ; that in Him, as Head of the Church, they in heaven and we on earth be united together as one body in the communion of saints (Ephesians 1:10).
Let’s check out Eohesians 1: 10. “And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ — everything in heaven and on earth” (Eph. 1: 10 NLT).
All we do know for sure is that Jesus is the only pure One who can make the sacrifice. We definitely can’t. One day, we will all be united.
God was pleased with the Sacrifice.
Making the Connections
I love what Behrends said. He wrote, “Between us and God there are no hierarchies of principalities and powers, no army of saints and martyrs. The way is clear through Christ. There is but one Mediator. Just as the head interprets, gathers up, and responds to the multitudinous demands of the body that are telegraphed along the nervous filaments of sensation, so also does Christ, as the Head of His Church, interpret her needs and respond to her prayers.”
We don’t have to go to the Pastor Joey-types first. We can pray straight to God.
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How Do We Apply This?
We have to remember we have an almighty, sympathizing, everlasting Savior.
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Jesus is the center of the gospel. We have to accept Him as God’s Son.
Father God. We accept Jesus as our Savior and Lord. We thank You for loving us enough to send Him to be a sacrifice for our sins. Amen.
What do you think?
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