who Jesus is

Every once in a while Paul comes out with some BIG statement about something.

These few verses are a BIG statement by Paul about who Jesus is,

what His identity & job is in the whole scheme of things,

& what the results of all that mean to us & our connection with God.

Paul wrote this in a letter to the followers of Jesus who were living in Colossae.

Read this more than once.

Let it sink in that because of Jesus God doesn't see us a sinful people.

He sees us as holy & blameless.

I don't think I've ever felt holy, let alone blameless.

Read it, absorb it, believe it.

Colossians 1

15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

  He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,

16 for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.

He made the things we can see and the things we can't see:

such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.

  Everything was created through him and for him.

17 He existed before anything else,

  and he holds all creation together.

18 Christ is also the head of the church,

  which is his body.

He is the beginning,

  supreme over all who rise from the dead.

  So he is first in everything.

19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ,

20 and through him God reconciled everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross.

  21 This includes you who were once far away from God.

You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.

22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body.

As a result, he has brought you into his own presence,

and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

  23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it.

Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News.