Something Greater

Ready For The Real Thing | Genesis 1:2-4 Sounds like an advertising slogan. I intended to use it for the title of a sermon. Not sure about it now. But, it does capture a bit of what I feel the Lord is working in, with and around me. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. Genesis 1:2-4 (ESV) God wanted the earth to have light. He wanted whatever and whoever that was earthly to have light. Why? Because light reveals what's real. Darkness hides what's real. Shadows distort and confuse. The black of night overwhelms color and form. Gloom depresses. God wants me to see the real thing. Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his na...

So You Also Must Forgive "Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." Colossians 3:13 (ESV) Paul says in Ephesians 4:32 that God forgives us on the basis of the sacrifice of Christ. Forgiveness of our sin cost God the life of His Son. In Colossians 3:13, Paul says that Jesus Christ, the Lord, has forgiven us on the basis of His own personal death . As the Lord has forgiven us, so we are to forgive others . On what basis? On our death? Yes . Becoming a Christian means complete identification with Jesus Christ, a radical return to the Original Plan in which God created us in His image. We are spiritually immersed into all that Christ is and does. We are spiritually baptized into His death, burial, and resurrection. We no longer live to ourselves, but to Christ . We have died to ourselves , yet we live in Christ. "Now if we have died with Christ, we be...

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, 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. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. (Colossians 1:15-18) Jesus is the image of God, writes Paul. What can that mean for us? We have no photographs of Jesus, no portraits were drawn or painted while He lived on earth. Why could Paul have not simply said that Jesus “is the invisible God?” Is an image something less than the real? Is Jesus something less than God? Let's begin our study by looking at the original Greek word that Paul used. “Image” is translated from the Greek word, eikon, meaning a likeness, a statue, or a profile . It could mean a representatio...