Reconcile

“and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood of His cross.”

Here is the crux of the matter. Peace with God comes at the most costly price – the death of the Lord Jesus in the midst of such suffering as He bore the penalty for our personal sin. His blood was spilt so we would never have to suffer the guilt, blame and eternal punishment for our crimes. The shed blood satisfied the demands of the law of God, that sinful people could be free to be righteous and perfect before God. The perfect Saviour, Jesus, pays the ultimate price for our failure and loss. Such is the love of the holy God. Jesus died and made the peace between the holy God and our sinful selves. He paid the price that the law of God required for the penalty of our sin. There is no peace with God apart from this.

We are alienated from God and dead in trespasses and sins, yet we can be made alive again and we can be reconciled to God through what Jesus did for us. This is the greatest deed anyone has ever done for anyone else! We can never really take it in, because it is just too great and too amazing. The fact that Jesus did what He did is beyond our human comprehension and we can only try to think of it and remember Him and be so thankful. It is indeed, love poured out and the greatest expression of love there has ever been or will be.

God the Father has sent the Son to be a reconciliation for us and to redeem us from sin. We can enjoy the peace of God because of this and soon we will enjoy that peace continually and deeply in the kingdom.

But more. Jesus reconciled all things to God, in heaven and on earth. The whole creation is groaning, waiting for the final consummation of the kingdom of God so that it will also be delivered from the bondage of death. The whole of the created order waits to be released from the bonds of sin and be at peace. The end of the striving for existence and significance, is the beginning of a kingdom where justice and peace reign.

“That the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.”

Romans 8:21-22

Jesus brings peace to us on earth and also brings peace in heaven. Bringing peace in heaven involves the keeping of the holy angels beyond the possibility of falling or failing and being free totally for the cloying power and effect of sin. Some of the angels fell and became evil, and those who remain are now made righteous and cannot fall. They do not need forgiveness, since they never rebelled, but the death of Jesus also reconciled their situation to God and secured their eternal state before God.

God becomes our Father rather than our judge and we rejoice in him and His provision for us.

Fulness

“For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him;”

Not only does the Lord Jesus have the preeminence in all things but He is the fullness of God and the fullness of God dwells in Him. The fullness of God is all righteousness, power, authority, wisdom and every spiritual blessing, and so it abides in our Saviour Christ. God gives this position to the Son that the glory of God might be revealed to us and all the created order, in this world and other worlds. The whole of heaven will bow to the Son and He will reign for ever and ever. The people of God will reign with Him in all glory and power and dominion. This is the Lord we serve and the future of the saints of God.

All our righteousness and our future blessings depend on Christ. We look to Him only and see the fullness of the Father God and rejoice that we belong to Him. Only in Him are we safe and secure and in faith we trust in Him to bring us safely home to heaven and lead us through this tempestuous life to the safe haven of our spiritual home.

“I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 15:5

Without the power of God in our lives we will remain impotent to serve the Lord and will not persevere to the end of our lives with The Lord. We will eventually fall away and cease from our spiritual life and become darkened once more. Beloved, how much we need the Lord and how great is our dependence on Him. Let us strive to enter into the joy of walking with Him every day and keeping our pathway pure and right with God.

If we should detract from the Lord Jesus and fail to see and render to Him His due place in our lives, we undermine our salvation and detract from the truth of God. This is not a feature in the life of the true believer, and so we give Him all the glory due to Him and stick closely to His word and not the word of another.

Those who love the Lord are humble and walk that way with Him. We will bring many to righteousness by our quiet and godly living and in the way we interact with others.

“True instruction was in his mouth, and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with Me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity.”

Malachi 2:6

We emulate the pattern of the Lord Jesus and how He conducted Himself as He walked this sinful world. We also should be like Him, and know Him as our close companion, that we might please Him and honour Him for who He is.

Preeminence

“And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and firstborn from among the dead, so that in all things He may have preeminence.”

In all things, our Lord Jesus Christ has the preeminent place. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and no one can overtake Him or displace Him. The Lord of love is still on the throne and always will be. We can be full of confidence that he will overcome all evil finally and forever, and bring His waiting people home to heaven to fulfil all things and finalise the kingdom of God.

The people of God are the Church of God, the group of people who belong to Him because of what he has done for them. They have believed in Him and put all their trust in what He did on the cross and are forgiven and justified by His mercy and grace alone. The Church are the redeemed people of God, bought out of the sinful way of life by the precious blood of Christ and made right with God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the head of that Church, which is His body, and He will bring His people out of this world and out of the grave and into the life eternal with Him forever. Christ alone has the authority over the church and He decides our lives and future according to His tender mercies and glorious power.

Christ Jesus is the first fruits from the dead, for He has risen to bring about the kingdom of God and show that He is the Lord of life and all the Church. He is not just the first from the dead, but is the one who raises people from the dead, as He did when He was here on earth. If Jesus had not been raised then neither would these people have been raised. He raised Himself to restore all things which were lost when humankind fell in the garden and lost their standing with God. Jesus was the commencement of the kingdom of God and so is the beginning of that mighty body of believers and kingdom of saints.

He raised people by His mighty power and gave life to dead bodies, and so is the Lord of physical life. He is also the Lord of spiritual life and is the one who gives life to the soul and raises the soul to a resurrection of faith and love in Him. The supremacy in all things belong to Christ because he has made all things and upholds all things. He also restores the things that have fallen away and subjects them to His authority. All honour is due to Him.

Before

“He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.”

When there was no world, no universe and no human life, there was the Lord Jesus Christ, in the bosom of the Father, the Eternal Son of the only God, the Creator of all things. 

His existence is before time – in eternity and forever settled. He has no beginning and has no end. He is the second person of the godhead and is the Saviour of our world. He made all things that exist and upholds them all by the word of His mouth. He holds all this together and all things exist and consist because of Him. He is the great Creator and nothing exists in earth, heaven or eternity that He did not make. 

He creates by the word He speaks. What He wills into being, exists and lives. 

This is the God we believe in and serve. He is the high and exalted one, far above all and the only God that exists. Yet, in such humility, has humbled himself to associate with us in our misery and grief and deliver us from the powers of darkness and bring us into the kingdom of the Son. 

“God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, who, when he had by himself purified us of our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high…”

Hebrews 1:1-3

Jesus is the invisible God, made visible in human flesh and has become our Saviour and Lord. He has kept us in His love by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the blood shed for us on Calvary’s cross. He is able to save the least and the lowest, and though the eternal God, loves sinners and eats with them. He is the humble Lord with the most loving heart, that rules the universe, heaven and all powers, with no harshness or vindictiveness. This is the God we serve… 

Dominion

“For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him.”

Again the Apostle Paul reiterates the depths of the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ. All things were created in Him according to His express authority – things that are material and things that are spiritual. The visible things that we see in the physical world, and the things that are invisible to us, the thrones and power and dominion and authority in the heavenly realms, are all created by Christ, and according to His purposes. He has created all the things and they are for Himself. He alone is the maker and sustainer of the worlds, the seen world and the unseen world.

authority – things that are material and things that are spiritual. The visible things that we see in the physical world, and the things that are invisible to us, the thrones and power and dominion and authority in the heavenly realms, are all created by Christ, and according to His purposes. He has created all the things and they are for Himself. He alone is the maker and sustainer of the worlds, the seen world and the unseen world.

Many are foolish and do not even see the work of Christ in the beauty of the revealed created order. They imagine it was all an event that happened for no reason and came from a chance beginning, from a state of nothing – it just happened. This is illogical and foolish to think that something that exists can come out of nothing! Christ has always been there as the eternal Son, but many seek to deny His existence and so make up stories about the way things are and how they came about in the past. We must not be duped by it and led away into the realms of the unreasonable and illogical. 

If we cannot believe what we see as being from Christ and God, then what about what we don’t see. Many have a vested interest in unbelief in the unseen world of the Spirit so that they can escape the authority of the Lord over them and their lives. They explain away the created order as a happy accident, and that the spiritual realm is just fairy tales. Everyone knows that that is not true, but the desire to escape the over-arching authority of God, causes many to swallow falsehood and lies and irrational thinking. 

“…Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,”

Romans 1:21-22

Romans chapter one explains the reasoning behind the mind of God against those who try to explain Him away and escape the logic of His reason. We become foolish when we refuse to believe what God clearly tells us and what we know as the witness in our own hearts. 

All things were made for the glory of the Lord Jesus, including us, but we have become so foolish that we refuse Him. We refuse His authority over us and become ungrateful for His blessings in our lives and descend into unbelief. Our hearts harden and we refuse the message of God and become people without God and without hope in this world. 

“See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the Earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven,”

Hebrews 12:25

Beloved, do not even listen to the lies in your own heart. Trust the Word of God and the power of reason He has given you. Do not pander to your own agenda of refusal, and seek the Lord today. The Lord Jesus will have all the pre-eminence as He is the Lord of everything that exists. This is good for us, for He is also the Lord of love and seeks to bring us into His kingdom, if we would believe. If only we could see Him as He truly is, and we can, for He is revealed here, in this verse in all His splendour and glory. Jesus, who is over all thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities and orchestrates the whole of history for the glory of the Father and the salvation of His people. We rejoice to know Him, who we love, for He has first loved us and given Himself for us. He is willing to bless us and shower us with all spiritual blessings, if we would but come to Him and give ourselves to Him. 

Firstborn

“Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

The Lord Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. He is the image of God revealed to us in human flesh. He came to rescue us from a dying world and set us free from the tyranny of sin. He shows us God because He is in all His being God, but also revealed in the mortal flesh that He forever bears on our behalf. He shows us the character of God and the being of God in His majesty, power and revealed dignity in the God/man. We see God in the flesh and we see the thoughts and deeds and speech of God as Jesus walked this world and interacted with us. He is Emmanuel “God with us.”

He is the uncreated one and so is the firstborn of the creation, His existence is before time and has always been. He is the eternal Son of the Father. He was there at the creation of the world, indeed is called the Creator who is to be forever praised. Everything that exists is His and has been made by Him, and all things have their being to serve and worship Him. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made.”

John 1:1-3

Jesus is the eternal word and is exalted high above all the creation as its Lord and God. We worship Him as such and love Him with all our minds and hearts and souls. There is no other response that we can give to such a one as He, who has shown us the way to God and how to walk worthy of the Lord. 

Jesus is also the firstborn of the dead. He has been raised for our justification and the proof that He is who He says He is. One day we also will rise, because He is risen for us. He lives forever as the Lord of life and the conqueror of all death. 

“And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood;”

Revelation 1:5

The Lord Jesus comes first in all things, for He has humbled Himself and become obedient to God the Father, even to the death He suffered on the cross. He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. 

Bright

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

Bi-Polar illness is a debilitating mind illness that is affecting more and more people. Schools and all kinds and Universities are struggling to keep up with the needs required by the sufferers. This is most especially seen in Art Collages and Music Colleges, as it appears to favour the minds of creative types. 

Bi-Polar disorder is a label that is put on people who suffer particularly. It is a pattern of thoughts, feelings, ideas, and negativity that render the sufferer unable to cope with the simplest things in life. It breaks relationships and locks the person in the prison of their own mind. Drugs help for a short time, but sufferers find themselves taking increasingly more, and changing medications often. This is a clue that there is more to this than meets the eye.

It is also an empowering and positive illness that makes the sufferer productive and sharp in their mind functioning. It can bring good feelings and a lot of positivity to life and allow the sufferer of depression to have reprieve from that debilitating illness. 

The illness is a series of recognizable stages and a predictable set of signposts, that can be identified, and therapies applied to relieve the pain and suffering. 

As an illness, it is therefore not necessarily hereditary. The illness can be understood, and sufferers learn to control their own symptoms and enable them to have a productive and worthwhile life. 

This illness applies to the genius set of skills, and the symptoms are present in many people who are universally recognised as high achievers. The illness is often triggered by a massive trauma in the life of the person, though some can have this latent in their character and it never becomes a problem. It can also be triggered by drug abuse. 

A high achieving person who is frustrated and disappointed with life, will manifest symptoms of Bi-Polar illness as a result. A person who is kept back, under-provided for and abused, will have to suffer this illness. The high achieving person who is not permitted to blossom and work at their comfortable level and rate, will become a sufferer. This is due to the nature of the illness and the character of the sufferer.

This is the reason why our young people are failing and falling into mind illnesses, and Bi-Polar is on the increase. If it was purely hereditary, then there would be no measurable change in the occurrence of the illness. It thrives on neglect, because we are not providing for our brightest people in our society. I would like to carry out research to clearly identify these stages of illness and the signposts of recovery identified. The stages would correlate with a depressive phase, and the signposts with the recovery to a happy life. 

The illness is a personal one and requires personal help and tuition so the sufferer can “learn” their illness and make a recovery. Put simply, Bi-Polar illness is curable and can even be a personal blessing to the sufferer and would facilitate massive social improvement, as it would inform other areas of mind study and perhaps even Ai.

Redemption

“In whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins;”

In the Lord Jesus Christ we receive all the blessings of God, because we are redeemed people. In our natural state we are dead in sin and slaves to its in-dwelling and influence in our lives and souls. It keeps us dead to God and living under the condemnation of the death of our soul, the second death. It is like being a slave locked up indefinitely, with no freedom and no rights. We cannot free our own soul because it is dead to God and without the working of the Holy Spirit in our minds and hearts, we have no desire for God.

“For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.”

Galatians 3:10-11

Christ came to redeem us from this curse, which is the curse of the holy law of God who cannot look on unrighteousness and we are therefore outcasts and rejected from the coming kingdom. We live our days under the fear of death and the condemnation of eternal punishment. Jesus came into this world as our Saviour and paid the dreadful price of our unrighteousness, so that we could be set free from this spiritual slavery.

He can really set us free! He is our loving Saviour and will be the Lord of our lives to guide us and keep us for eternity. The cost to set us free was huge- the death of our Saviour, but He rose again for our sake. He can forgive the sin which holds us in the slavery and set us free from it totally. We can have the victory through Christ who died and rose again, and forever lives for us. It is a real freedom and we can now chose not to sin rather than be its slave.

“Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don’t be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”

Galatians 5:1

Just like a slave can be redeemed from the slave market, so we can be “bought” out of the state of sin that we are in and made righteous people. We are bought with that shed blood of Christ, which saves and can keep us and set of free.

Translated

“who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of his love;”

God our Father in heaven has delivered us. He has rescued us from the powers of darkness and given us light.

The word “translated” in this verse of the Scripture means to take from one place and put in another. We are taken out of the kingdom of darkness and put into the kingdom of light. It is a work of God and no one else could do such a thing, certainly not ourselves! It is a translation from one kingdom, of darkness, to the other kingdom, of light. It is a complete change of position and situation and location. We go from lostness to being found. We turn from evil to embrace the righteous. We are destined for heaven and not for hell.

We are delivered from our natural, sinful, state of being, because we are trapped and cannot save ourselves. The bonds of death have taken hold of us and we cannot get free. We are doomed to die the second death and we need a Saviour to free us from our bondage. Only Jesus can do this and only the complete Godhead has power and inclination to do it. We are set free by the merit of Christ and the will of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Darkness has no more hold over the Christian because of what God has done for us. We become children of the light and become members of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, indeed, members of His body. More, we are daughters and sons of the kingdom and heirs with Christ as His redeemed people. What we have been saved from is dire and what we are saved to is glorious in the extreme!

“… seeing it is God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

2 Corinthians 4:6

Jesus the Saviour, is the “Son of his love.” The Father has entered into a covenant with the Son to buy us back and to set us free. The father loves the Son, for they have always been together and always will be. The Son is precious to the Father and it required all the love of God towards ignoble us to set in motion redemptions plan. The father gave up His one and only Son to death, to be able to forgive us and make us righteous. This was the cost of Him dying for us, and our only appropriate response is gratitude. This is why Christians love Jesus so much. This is why the Father loves the Son, for He is the beautiful One, the one who sacrificed Himself for the sake of His people, that we will be with Him forever in the eternal kingdom.

Beloved, let us never forget who we once were and who we are now. We are the gift of God to the Son, as the people of His kingdom. We are the bride that awaits for the Bridegroom and will enjoy the wedding supper of the Lamb, in the place prepared for us.

“For you have delivered my soul from death, and prevented my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.”

Psalm 56:13

Partakers

“giving thanks to the Father, who made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light;”

For all the spiritual blessing we enjoy as the people of God, we give God the ultimate praise and glory. We give thanks for our free and sure salvation that has been purchased for us by a Saviour’s blood through the death of Jesus on the cross at Calvary. Because of what he has opened for us, we are partakers of the glorious inheritance of the saints in light. It is not just a home in heaven, but we are actually made heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ to the throne of heaven and the eternal kingdom.

“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.”

Romans 8:16-17

We are made fit through Christ, through the imparting to us of His righteousness, for we have none of our own. He took or sins and paid for them, and has given us his own goodness so that we are made righteous, really righteous before a holy God. We rest under the wings of His protection and saving love.

Paul seeks to show the Christians at Colsse the full glory of the Saviour Jesus and what he has done for them. It is too easy to let this slip and to take the message and the provision for granted. We have an enemy who would seek to dull our view of the excellency that is Christ and to undermine our outlook on what He has done and what he means to us as Christian people. We have no inheritance apart from Him and no standing before the holy God, the Father.

The fatherly love of God has secured this blessing for us in Christ and looks on us as dearly beloved children. We are no longer children of wrath, but our adoption into the family of God, makes us rightful heirs to the kingdom and we will rule with Christ in that kingdom. The kingdom is all light and the light of God now shines on our hearts because of Jesus. We stay away from the kingdom of darkness and the unfruitful works of evil, and lift up our Saviour with thanksgiving always to the LORD.

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. Test and prove what pleases the Lord. Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.“

Ephesians 5:8-11