Good Morning Friends,
“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity
lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the
head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the
putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of
men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in
baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised
him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of
your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our
sins.” (Colossians 2:9-13)
You have been given fullness in Christ.
Without Christ, life is meaningless and has no purpose. With Christ, God has
provided you with the fundamental things that make life worth living. In Him
there is a reason to live, there is help for the present, there is hope for the
future, there is direction, there is purpose. That’s full life, and it's only
found in Christ.
You were circumcised in Christ. For the Jew,
physical circumcision identified him as a part of God’s family. In Christ, it
is a spiritual circumcision that identifies us as His. It has meaning far beyond
anything physical. He has overcome our sinful nature, overpowering it by
placing His own nature within us by His Spirit. He is the mark that we are God’s.
You were buried with Christ. The true power
of Christ was revealed, not in life, but in His death, and in His conquering of
death through the resurrection. We share in that power. We participate in His
death and picture that in our baptism. We also participate in His life and His power.
Christ forgave our sins. Without Christ there
was nothing we could do about our sins. They controlled us and we could not
overcome them. We couldn’t pay for them, we couldn’t hide them, we couldn’t even
stop doing them. Christ dealt with our sins for us and offered forgiveness to
us as His gift.
How could Christ do all that? There’s only one
way: in Him was all the fullness of Deity. Only God could do the things that
Jesus did -- and He was -- and is -- God!
His, by Grace,
Steve
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