ODJ: being messed with

October 16, 2013 

READ: Colossians 3:18-4:1 

Remember that you also have a Master—in heaven (4:1).

I played football, baseball and golf at school. I’ve had multiple exercise routines over the years and now run 5 or 6 days a week. No one would ever call me limber, however. For years, trainers have encouraged me to stretch and coax my muscles to be more flexible. I agree with the idea, but I’ve never wanted to endure the pain and inconvenience required to follow the advice. Stretching hurts. But with the years piling up, I’ve determined that I must heed the trainers’ wisdom. I’m clinging to the hope that the work will be worth it in the end; but for now, these stretching exercises are truly a pain.

In Colossians, Paul cast a vision for a new humanity, an entirely new order of human existence brought into being by Jesus Christ, the One whose divine life has been set loose in the world. Jesus is the head of this new human body—the church. And this new humanity allows for all things to be reconciled (all races, nations and creation) in Christ (1:20).

But it’s impossible to have a new humanity without our current humanity getting messed with and upended. We like the idea of God making things right, so long as those things He makes right fit perfectly with the things that we assume need to be made right—and nothing more.

God’s new creation and humanity, however, remake the world from the ground up. This restoration begins with the family—wives, husbands and children (3:18-20). Then it transforms our work and our vocations and even unjust scenarios like those faced in the first century (vv.22-24). Finally, the gospel upends the way we use our power, the way masters exert their influence (4:1).

God messes with and transforms everything. —Winn Collier