December 27, 2011 … God Becomes Visible

Passage of the Day: Colossians 1: 15 [see highlight verse in bold/underlined in the context of the entire passage] … 15 He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, …

My Journal for Today: Today’s highlight passage to the Colossians (and to all believers) from Paul states, “He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God.” And Hebrews 1: 3 states, “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.” And Jesus Himself declared (in John 14: 9), “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” This was true for all those men and women who were blessed to see the live Jesus as He walked the earth. When they saw Jesus, they saw God. And I have a tendency to think that those folks who lived and walked and saw Jesus, had an advantage over those before Him and we who come later. However, as John MacArthur rightfully points out, Christ has been the “image of God” from all eternity, not just from the time of His incarnation, that event of all times which we have just celebrated at Christmas and during the Advent Season.

As the God-Man, however, Jesus presented all mankind with an exact human “eikon” (Greek for “likeness” from which we get our English word “icon”) in the flesh of the invisible God. For a season of time He was the invisible God in visible humanity. And now we know that Christ’s claim that He was/is, in the flesh, the “I AM” of the Old Testament (see John 8: 58) was true. Jesus of Nazareth was/is God in the flesh, which Paul often, and forcefully, proclaimed, as he did in today’s text (see also Col. 2: 9 and Titus 2: 13). And that is the image that we, as Christians should reflect as we aspire/attempt to walk in Christlikeness [see and remember Eph. 4: 1-2 and Phil. 2: 5 cited earlier this month]. When Christ commanded us to shine His light through our good (i.e., Godly) works (as He did in Matt. 5: 16), we need to look no further than to the God-Man model of Jesus Christ to see what kind of light we should be shining into this sin-darkened world so that the lost as well as sinful Christians can see Christ in our lives, glorifying the Father in Heaven.

What about you? Will you join me this day, tomorrow, and into the New Year with the goal of shining the Light of Christ in what we think, say, and do? And to that end, stay tuned as we finish our December study of Christ so that we can be brighter lights in the New Year.

My Prayer Today: O, Lord, shine Your Light through me. Amen