•        Introduction

Sometimes you come across religious groups … technically I’m referring here to what are called ‘Christian Deviations’ … who might well talk about Jesus along with their own particular favourite messages or emphases, but that don’t accept the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They say all sorts of things that DO sound alright, but they sniff at the full deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And they might seem nice people.

They might sound quite enthusiastic about their own take on things.

And, wanting to be charitable you might find yourself thinking, well, you know … is it really all that important to make a big deal out of Jesus being real, fully paid up, utterly divine God in the flesh or can we just rub along with these nice seeming people who won’t have Jesus being God.

They might say instead that He is the Son of God … as if that were less.

They might say He is the Son of Man … as if the One Who sits on the throne of God in Daniel’s prophecy is less than God Himself.

Can’t we just ride the soft pedal to stay cool with these nice-seeming people, I mean, it’s hardly essential to salvation … is it?

Well, no you can’t and yes it is and Paul says some hugely encouraging and very inspiring things as he spells that out for us today in Colossians 1:19-20.

Colossians 1:19-20 “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 

20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, 

whether things on earth or things in heaven, 

by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Now, just a quick side note here as a slight warning about getting tied up with Evangelical rallying points that are not central to the Gospel, by which we live and die.

There is a great deal of noise in Evangelical circles currently about how wonderful the Trinity is.

The Bible doesn’t do that.

It emphasises the elements that get synthesised outside the Bible into what subsequent generations to the Biblical generations have dubbed as ‘the Trinity’ … and it is the components of that synthesis (one of which we are looking at here today) that we have clear Biblical mandate to be focusing on.

So what does our text have to tell us here about Jesus?

         •        1) Fulness

V. 19a “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him …”

            •          Pleased

εὐδοκέω (eudokeō) 'to delight'

Verb Aorist Active Indicative 3° Singular …  to be well pleased, delight
This is a fairly common word that occurs about 52 times in the New Testament and carries with it the idea that an initiative has been taken to fulfil a desire, plan or purpose.

The idea is that God thought well of the idea, approved it, took delight and was well pleased with it, that all the fulness of deity took residence in the incarnate Christ … He took great pleasure in that.

It’s more than ‘He was up for it’.

He delighted actively in initiating the incarnation.

            •          Fulness

And the incarnation … here’s where our intellectual capacity to completely understand what took place starts to run out and we’re left to trust and worship … the incarnation left Jesus (the eternal Word of God) no less God than when He set out from Heaven for earth. 

I know full well that a lot of commentators make a big thing here of the ‘fulness’ language of Gnosticism to seek to interpret this verse against its alleged context to create some understanding of what ‘the fulness’ that took up residency in Christ might mean.

It was a source of great excitement when I was in Bible College.

But the Gnostic writers that used that expression came in the next century, this language is not used as early as this to bring Gnostic background into this text reliably and the use of that alleged background relies on saying ‘this must be that later phenomenon occurring here before we have any other record of the use of that term’ … which to me seems a bit ‘iffy’ to start with.

David Pao helpfully points to parallels of this sort of language in the Wisdom tradition (which predates its use here) .

In the wisdom tradition, God’s act of ‘filling’ the earth signifies His dominion and authority.

So Pao writes: “Paul’s use of ‘in Him’ therefore emphasises again the supreme authority of Christ”

How’s that?

Because all the dominion and authority of God is localised in the incarnate Christ walking around healing the sick, raising the dead and turning back the forces of meteorological and cosmic chaos simply by His very own, self-initiated word of command.

As the old saying goes: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck … it’s probably a duck.

That might be a point to put to your friends from Christian Deviations that deny the full deity of Christ, but I’ll leave that up to you.

God was pleased to have all His fulness … dominion and authority … rest in Christ.

Rest?

Well, actually to DWELL in Him.

            •          Dwell

κατοικέω (katoikeō) 'to dwell'

The verb here is an aorist (active) Infinitive meaning to cause to live in, to dwell

As the old hymn by Thomas Pestel goes:

‘Behold the Great Redeemer makes

Himself a house of clay …’

Now, Pestel was no great friend of Biblical theology, but in that hymn he does seem to have got the point about Christmas!

The noun οἶκος (oikos) first meant 'house: home', a physical edifice; of royalty: palace; of deity: temple; by extension: family, lineage, people who live in or originated in a particular house.

And the verb κατοικέω (katoikeō) was to take up residence or to ‘en-house’ oneself.

The physical body of Christ, then, we are being told was the residence of someone much greater than Jesus of Nazareth.

The physical body of Jesus of Nazareth can be likened to His earthly house of clay … but there are limits to the metaphor.

When we die, title to our house passes to another as it is inherited or sold according to whatever we have put in our will.

As we know, this is only a metaphor, painting a picture with words that merely describes but doesn’t define the situation, because our Lord was raised and glorified physically after His sin-atoning death and has His house in Glory still.

And the point Paul first make in v. 19 about the Lord Jesus Christ … that all the fulness of God dwelt in Him in bodily form … take on a significance, actually a FUNCTION, in salvation in the sentence as Paul develops it here in v. 20.

         •        2) Reconciliation

V. 20a “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven”

            •          Reconciliation

David Pao (again) writes: “All fulness dwells in Christ, so that through Him universal reconciliation can be accomplished (v. 20)”

What happens in these two verses is that Paul raises the issue of all God’s fulness dwelling in Christ only to direct our attention immediately to His death.

In fact, that is the preceding context at the end of v. 18 as well as the following context in vv. 20 ff.

What Paul does here is to place the fulness of God dwelling in Christ at the centre of His atoning work, pouring out His soul in His mortal body to death on the cross, in order for it to be raised immortal from the grave IN ORDER to reconcile those of us previously alienated from God.

ἀποκαταλλάσσω (apokatallassō) 'to reconcile' … to reconcile, reunite 
to transfer from a certain state to another which is quite different;, hence, to reconcile, restore to favour.

The new creation referred to in v. 18 clearly becomes a necessity for human beings due to the rift between the Creator and His creation after Genesis 3.

The act of reconciliation points to the real restoration of the broken relationship.

The word group to which the word used here for ‘reconciliation’ belongs finds root in a Greek political background … used in the realm of diplomatic relations.

But Paul transforms this background, because instead of the guilty party in the relationship initiating reconciliation, Paul emphasises that it is God, the injured party, who took the initiative to restore the relationship while we were still sinners.

Equally striking is that in this reconciliation reparation for the offence is made by the injured party Himself … God in the flesh, at the Cross.

Can you see that the incarnation is crucial to both atonement and resurrection.

1 Peter 2:24 is such a crucial verse to know if we reconciled sinners are to live resiliently in Christ … get this … ““He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” 

And that’s the only way Peter is in a position to go on and say of us:

v. 25 “For “you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

So what Paul is showing in our text in Colossians 1:20 is that Christ’s exalted status as being the One in Whom all the fulness of deity dwelt bodily is utterly relevant, in fact necessary, for those who were once alienated from God, as it (as it were) enables Him to do what He did for us on the Cross … to bring about reconciliation for rebel sinners in two dimensions:

         •        Reconciliation to HIM

ἀποκαταλλάσσω (apokatallassō) … to reconcile, reunite to transfer from a certain state to another which is quite different; hence, to reconcile, restore to favour

Paul has been making very clear to us that Jesus is God in the flesh and as such He is offended by our sin and sinfulness.

But 

Ephesians 2:15-17  makes clear that by reconciling lost people to Himself, the Lord Jesus re-unites humanity (Jew and gentile in this context) in their relationship to Himself

“His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace,16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.”

How does that work?

By His sin-atoning death Jesus reconciles us to himself, but the big thing in our verses is that our reconciliation to God is actually THROUGH Him, Who is Himself God …

·      Reconciliation THROUGH Him

v. 20“And through him to reconcile to himself all things, 

whether things on earth or things in heaven, 

by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

We’re coming to peace and blood but first, look, the Cross and what was done there has not just personal but cosmic effects …

Jesus is at the Cross, by His sin-atoning death, undoing the alienation of the whole heavenly as well as earthly Creation and reconciled them to Him by His blood.

It’s a situation inaugurated that will be consummated at Christ’s return, but we see the effect of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God in healings, the stilling of storms, the driving out of demons and all the works of the Kingdom performed by Jesus and then His followers.

And this reconciliation, which involves the removal of a pre-existing hostility, brings peace.

         •        3) Peace

V. 20b “by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

            •          Blood

There is a long history of blood standing for the life in the dealings of God with His historic people.

So Leviticus 17:11 says: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”

Nothing too confusing there … if you lose just a litre and a half of your circulating blood you are pretty much at death’s door, and that doesn’t necessarily look like terribly much when it leaks onto many surfaces!

Your life runs out with it.

Now, the penalty of sin has been death from its very origin in humanity’s experience of it at the Fall in Genesis 3.

So the pouring out of blood is associated with the penalty of sin, and where a substitute has its blood poured out on your behalf, instead of you, in your place … which gets foreshadowed in the Old Testament’s sacrificial system pointing forward to so many of the aspects of Christ’s definitive sin-atoning death at the Cross.

The Leviticus sacrificial system was about reconciliation, producing peace with God where sin had disrupted the relationship, and now that is fulfilled in bringing God’s New Testament people definitive peace with God through His blood.

            •          Peace through blood

The disruption of relationship is the issue.

This is a key factor that we need to get through to our generation, it seems to me.

It is up to us to fix the way our generation is out of the loop so far as Biblical understanding is concerned.

The prevalence in our print and visual media of those who express the tenets of liberal ‘Christianity’ where universal acceptance of all of humanity by God regardless of life and faith is taken as read.

The very thought that anyone’s personal thoughts and actions could have alienated them from God and left them there without God and without hope is now looking perilously close to being dubbed ‘hate speech’ and found not only wicked but liable to prosecution.

But that’s what the Bible says.

Isaiah characterises the situation in his day and very much also in ours like this:

(Isaiah 59:1-3) “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save,
    nor his ear too dull to hear.
2 But your iniquities have separated
    you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
    so that he will not hear.
3 For your hands are stained with blood,
    your fingers with guilt.
Your lips have spoken falsely,
    and your tongue mutters wicked things.”

Well, there’s the balance, of course.

The message is one of hope and mercy and the willingness of God to give ear to people’s turning back to him.

But vv. 2-3 make it very clear what the obstacles to this will be …

Iniquities embraced not released.

These separate from God.

Hands stained with guilt as with shed blood.

Fingers similarly stained with gilt.

Lying lips and wicked tongues.

Areas of activity that are commonplace in our public life as a nation and private lives as individuals who condemn our leaders for those very same things.

There is a state of ALIENATION that exists between mankind in its state of nature and the one true, holy, Living God.

You can’t just bundle up to Him when you feel like it to make demands as if He owed you … we have by following our sinful human nature offended the Holy One and created a state of disruption in the way we relate to Him.

That is first base … the fundamental starting point of Christian faith.

Wouldn’t Isaiah 59 have made a great text for the King’s recent coronation?!

God is offended and distanced by following our human nature – ‘it’s only human nature’ is NO excuse for anything – but the reconciliation plan that He has put in place for us brings peace, and it does so through …

            •          His blood

It is HIS blood, His OWN blood, shed on the Cross.

HE effected the reconciliation when He was the party that had been alienated.

GOD paid the price to maintain his own perfect holiness by both executing the penalty that absolute justice required, and paying that penalty Himself … putting the sin of those who turn from serving sin to trust Him on the account of God in the flesh, Immanuel, God with us, and then transferring HIS record of lived human righteousness to our account in Heaven’s metaphorical bank, the Divine record, the Lamb’s Book of Life.

By His blood.

By this means He remains just but becomes the justifier of those who trust in Him.

His blood.

The blood represents the life laid down in sacrifice to bear the guilt that cripples me not just psychologically but in reality, to pay the penalty for my sin.

And it is because it was HIS blood that what shed, the salvation I could not effect myself can now be delivered by His grace, and because His justice was perfectly satisfied in this way I have nothing to fear in eternity.

If He is not God … the mechanism does not exist for Him to be this sinner’s Saviour.

         •        Conclusion

Ain’t this true: it is HARD to understand intellectually the Biblical truth of the Incarnation?

But it is on the fact that it was God in the flesh, having lived a perfect human life undergoing this Divine Exchange where He swaps our righteousness (which is thoroughly absent) with His lived righteousness (which is supremely present) that our salvation by God’s grace depends.

If He doesn’t pay the price for my rebellion against Him, then in the words of another old hymn written by a person whose theology was not entirely Biblical but IS spot on here (Cecil Francis Alexander): 

“There was no other good enough

To pay the price of sin;

He only could unlock the gate

Of heav’n, and let us in.

And if He was not God in the flesh, that gate on Heaven would swing open with no key I could fish out of MY pocket.

It simply wasn’t ever going to happen.

But with God, this impossible thing is made possible, ““by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

My friends, in times when Biblical essentials are under pressure in our society, and increasingly in our nation’s ethical core tenets and legal system, it is incumbent on us to cling to these essentials … not so much to strive for the upholding and assertion of them (it seems to me), but by embracing them openly and tightly, and by rejoicing in them with very great gladness, for everyone to see the liberation and the wholesomeness of our faith, as we place it in Him.