Daily Bible Reading 11th June 2025 // Colossians 1:20-23
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 further asserts that reconciliation is a finished work of cosmic and universal scope. In Christ reconciliation has been objectively accomplished once and for all. We cannot add to it nor can we detract from it. What Paul is proclaiming here is the centrality of his Gospel. He is declaring the objective reality of reconciliation having been established and accomplished for the whole created order (v 20), solely by God, in and through Jesus Christ. This is the universal extent and significance of God's reconciliation. Nothing and nobody lies outside the scope of Christ's reconciling work. Christ is the key to an understanding of this objectively accomplished universal reconciliation. Jesus Christ, in who he is and what he does, brings about the peace and reconciliation of the entire cosmos, our peace with God, our reconciliation; this reconciliation occurs in the very person of Jesus, in the fact that Jesus Christ is the God/ Man; fully God and fully man, simultaneously; God and man at one. Reconciliation is not something external to Christ, it occurs in the mystery of his very person 'in his physical body' (v 22). God and man are reunited in Jesus Christ and this begins in his birth in the stable at Bethlehem. Throughout his life Jesus accomplishes this reconciliation. God and Man together, united in perfect harmony. For the first time since the Fall, for the first time ever, a human being responds perfectly to the will of God in everything he is and does. Living by faith, trusting in the Father's will, perfectly submissive and obedient in everything. The picture we need to have in our minds is of Christ as Second Adam, going over the ground of human life again. Where the first Adam was defeated, Christ is victorious. Where Adam disobeyed and failed and brought the entire cosmos crashing down, destroying man's relationship with God, causing enmity and alienation and antagonism, Christ, as the second Adam, reverses the Fall. He obeys and is victorious and raises the entire cosmos, reconciling mankind with God and God with man.