Daily Bible Reading 1st June 2025 // Colossians 1:12-23
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 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. 17 And 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, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Paul slides, immediately and naturally from intercessory prayer into a quite thrilling and marvellous proclamation of the Gospel of God. He summarises the salvation in which the Colossian believers and every believer stands (vv 12-14). He exalts Christ as the supreme and pre-eminent Lord of Creation (vv 16-17). He affirms the supremacy of Christ in His Church, in the new Creation (v 18). He proclaims the mystery of Christ's Incarnation and the universal efficacy of His atoning life and death (vv 19-23). And at the end of v 23, Paul explains that what he has just been doing (vv 12-23) is proclaiming and re-affirming and reminding them of the Gospel of Christ (v 23b). This is not some abstruse theological treatise. It is the Gospel which was preached to the pagan Colossians, to bring them to Christ. This is the Gospel which was taught to them by Epaphras in his efforts to establish them in the faith. Paul's strategy, as he writes to the saints in Colossae, is highly significant, and perhaps something we would do well to emulate as we seek to combat the enemies of the Gospel within the Kirk. Although the apostle seeks to counteract and refute the false teaching which is causing so much confusion at Colossae, as it marginalises Christ as one among many spiritual mediators, he does not do this, in the first instance, by denouncing the heretics nor by systematically destroying their arguments. What Paul does is pray for the believers (vv 3-11) and then proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ (vv 12-23). He sends them a letter telling them that he is praying for them and reminding them of the authentic gospel, which they have already heard from Epaphras, calling them back to the truths to which they are already willingly committed. He commends them to the throne of grace in prayer and he proclaims the unsearchable riches of Christ. He proclaims the majesty and mystery of who Jesus really is and what Jesus has done in his Incarnation and Atonement, reaffirming, in ringing terms, the Lordship and supremacy of Christ and the absolute and only sufficiency of His life, death and resurrection for the salvation of all sinners.