Colossians: Splendor in Focus

Transcription

1 Colossians: Splendor in Focus Sermon #3: Jesus Is Reconciler Colossians 1:18-23 Dr. Matt Cassidy --- March 19, 2017 in this prayer that we ve been praying. Lord, I continually pray, we continually pray, that You would fill Grace Covenant Church with the knowledge of Your will through all the wisdom and understanding that Your Spirit would bring us, so that we might live a life worthy of the Lord and please You in every way. That we would bear fruit in every good work, that we would be growing in our knowledge of who You are, and be strengthened with all the power according to the might of Your glory; so that we ll have endurance and have patience with one another. That we want to give You joyful thanks because You qualified us to have an inheritance in Your holy family, the kingdom of light. That Jesus rescued us from the dominion of darkness and that You have brought us into this kingdom, the kingdom that Your Son, who You love, rules. In Him we have redemption and forgiveness. And all God s people said, Amen. That was the prayer in Colossians. We re praying this for Lent and actually praying it past Lent until Easter. And I acknowledge it s a very difficult, complicated prayer, and so we put this in the bulletin for you. We re asking everyone to pray this every day. And we put it in the bulletin in an outline form so that you get the cadence of it, so that you might pray for your friends, for yourself, maybe write a note to someone, and please, pray for your church. Today --- twenty-seven days left to pray, so let s get on that --- today we re going to look at what could be the most profound paragraph that has ever been written. We re talking about the gospel today. Listen carefully to this paragraph.

2 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 powers or dominions 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, so that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy, blameless, and above reproach before him --- 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 to all creation under heaven and of which I, Paul, became a minister. Those might be the most important set of sentences put in a row in human history. When I read this paragraph, especially when I have envisioned myself teaching this passage, I think I should take my shoes off and be barefoot like Moses before that burning bush. This is holy writ here. This is a passage of scripture that is like none other; it s going to tell us about Jesus, it s going to tell us about the gospel. It s going to say that Jesus is like no other religious leader. That He is pre-eminent; that He is different in kind, not in degree. And then it s going to say that Jesus brings us, offers us a different gospel, a different salvation --- different in kind, not in degree. It is a pre-eminent salvation that He s offering to us today. And before we get too far down the road, I want to make sure that we understand the difference between pre-eminent and something like prominent, or primary. We looked at this last week, but it will be helpful to see that because it s going throughout the whole passage. Pre-eminent means it s all by itself, it s not to be compared with other things. An engagement ring is a pre-eminent ring. It s a different type of ring, it s a different kind of ring, it

3 might not be, for example, the prettiest ring the person has. It might not be the most expensive. When you buy an engagement ring it s not an investment. You re not going to sell this later. At least, that s the plan. And so it s a ring of pre-eminence because it has a pre-eminent purpose. Let s just say for the sake of ease that the purpose of jewelry is to make something pretty, it s to make something beautiful. And that might be true or not with engagement rings. But the purpose of an engagement ring is different in that if a man is on his knees and he s proposing and he s offering this ring, he is saying something that s different, and if she receives that ring and puts it on her finger, there is introduced into the relationship a no-compete clause. You cannot compete anymore. That s what the ring means. It means you were once one of the women in my life. You were once my favorite woman. But now with this ring, you are the only woman in my life. You hear that, mom? Yeah. Am I the only one that has that kind of stuff in their background? You re the only woman in my life, honey, and she says, You are the only man and I want to be preeminent in your life. I used to be primary in your affections and I want to become pre-eminent in those. I used to be prominent in your hierarchy of things and now I want to be over here; I don t want to compete. It s a no-compete clause that s part of that engagement ring. 1. Jesus Nature is Pre-eminent Colossians 1:15 The Son is the image of the invisible God How is Jesus pre-eminent, different in kind? Jesus is God. And we see that in verses 15 through 18. We looked at this last week. I ll go through this in review rather quickly because it does give us great context. Not everyone was here, but it gives us great context when we look at the pre-eminence of Jesus. It s going to lead to the pre-eminence of the gospel or the salvation that He is offering unto us. So when it says that Jesus is pre-eminent --- we learned last week that His very nature is pre-eminent --- and in Colossians 1:16 it says that His Son is in the image of the invisible God. And the word there image means the exact likeness; that Jesus is the picture of God.

4 2. Jesus is Pre-eminent in Creation Colossians 1:15-16 the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created by him and for him. Jesus is not just in His nature pre-eminent, but He is pre-eminent in creation. It says in verse 15, He s the firstborn over all creation. And last week we learned firstborn was a figure of speech, or actually, closer to a title. It means the absolute equivalent in power and dignity as the Father. It goes on talking about creation, verse 16, that He created all things: For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. Jesus created all things. He created all those physical things and that means that He s sovereign over that, He reigns over that, He rules that. Jesus created the invisible things; he s referring to, probably, angels and demons. He rules that realm. He s sovereign over that realm. He reigns over that realm, because He created that. He s the author of that. And He s not just the instrument of creation; He s the end of it. He s the destiny of it. Look at it, it says, All things have been created by him and for him. He is the object of creation. You can look at it chronologically. All of history has been --- the purpose of history has been the story of Jesus Christ who is culminating in this life, death, resurrection, and finally, glorification, where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. All these things, the invisible and the visible, are created for this purpose, for this glorification. He s the Alpha and the Omega of all creation. He is the king. He s not a king, he s the king of all kings. And He is sovereign, He rules, He reigns. That s Jesus. That s Jesus nature, that s His pre-eminence in creation, and He s also pre-eminent in the new creation. That s the church.

5 3. Jesus is Pre-eminent in the New Creation: The Church Colossians 1:18 And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that He Himself will come to have pre-eminence in all things. In verse 18 we found out that He is the head of the body, that is, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn among the dead. He s the head of the body. Why that title? Because He give us life and He rules us, He tells us what to do. He s the firstborn; He s the firstborn of the dead and the idea there is that in His resurrection, He was the author of a whole new life, a whole new reality for all of us who follow Him. And so He s preeminent in His nature, He s preeminent in creation, He s preeminent in new creation so that so that He Himself will come to have preeminence in all things. He Himself, Christ alone, only Him we ll have absolute over here, different in kind, supremacy over all things. He is not prominent. He is not priority. He is pre-eminent. He does not compete. He does it with nature, with creation and new creation, and in our lives He should have that same status. He is not first with others, seconds and thirds, chomping at His heels. He is by Himself --- no competition. That s Jesus pre-eminence. Pre-eminence of Salvation Now today, we look at the second part of the paragraph where it says that this preeminent Jesus Christ, He presents to us a preeminent salvation, a salvation that is not like other methods of salvation. It is not to be compared with others. It is different in king, not in degrees. So what we re going to do now is we re going to look at the passage, verses 19 through 23. And the outline, the logical outline --- I moved the verses around, because the logical outline is easier to follow. The logical outline is the problem, the solution, the results. The problem, the solution, the results.

6 1. The Problem Colossians 1:21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your mind because of your evil behavior. 22 But now He has reconciled you by Christ s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation We ll start with the problem. And the Bible says this when we talk about the problem. It says that we cannot save ourselves. And then things are so bad that only God could fix our brokenness. That s what I want you to be hearing in the problem. Look what it says in verse 21: Once we were alienated from God and we were enemies in our minds because of your evil behavior. See, we were alienated and we were enemies. Alienated means --- the definition is permanently, persistently estranged. Permanently --- that was the grammar in that --- persistently estranged. Literally it means that you are owned by another owner. In other words, we are owned by the evil one. That s alienated. We don t belong to Him. And then it goes on to say we were enemies in our minds. And what that means is that in our evaluation of who God is, we did not value Him for who He is truly is. In other words, we did not give Him the value that He deserves as God. In our reasoning we do not make decisions with Him in mind. We re enemies in our minds. That means we didn t wake up and live our day and go to bed wondering, What is God s will for us? Before we were followers of Jesus Christ, we were enemies in our mind, we made our plans, we had our vision for our lives, we chose the path that we wanted to follow, and we either completely ignored the nature of God and who He is, or He was off in some far horizon and we didn t give Him value. But this is for sure --- we wanted Him to stay out of our lives and not to interfere with them. That s the point. That s what it means to be enemies. And this is where we are, in this former state. We are enemies and we are alienated. And we can t fully appreciate how desperately bad this is for us until we look at where we re supposed to be to have a relationship with God. So in verse we re going to go fast over the first part --- but in verse 22 it says, He has reconciled you by Christ s physical body through

7 death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish, and free from accusations. That s what we re supposed to be: holy, without blemish, and free from accusations. What does all this mean, this holy blemish why is he using those words? I think Paul, thoroughly Jewish, his concept of understanding of being with God is going back to Old Testament rituals, especially those in the temple or the tabernacle. And here s the issue at hand -- - this is what we re talking about, this is the subject. It is presentability. It is the ability to be in the presence of God, to be presented to God. And you can t just go up and enjoy the presence of God if you re not holy, if you have blemishes and you have accusations. And so Paul is reflecting back on temple rituals thinking, Okay, this holy place inside the temple --- this is the place where God dwells. This is His presence. In some respects, this is the face of God. And you ll see in books like Leviticus and Numbers --- it ll wear you down, the details a person must endure to enjoy a moment in this holy place. It s extremely comprehensive and it s holistic, because you can t just walk in on the presence of God. And so it will talk about your body being clean. You will literally clean your body. And it doesn t stop with just cleaning your body, it has to be whole, it has to be well. So absolutely no blemishes or wounds or any kind of disfigurement --- cannot qualify. You cannot be presented. It s about presentation. The clothes you wear have to be clean and holy without blemish. And so they had to be clean, but they had to be a certain type of fabric. Not any fabric --- you can t just pull something out of your closet and expect to be in the presence of God. So your body, your outfits, and then the dietary laws go on for chapters, because, good heavens, you have to eat right or else you can t be in the presence of God. No yeast in your diet. But here s the bigger picture. Why all those laws? There is where we get bogged down if you ve read through the Bible, it s Leviticus and Numbers with all these laws and the details that we say, Wow. But what s the point? And this is why Paul is referring to these vocabulary words with this ritual, is because the external laws and rules were to be metaphor for internal, metaphysical things of the soul. So we re all spiritually learning impaired. It s hard for us to understand what s going on in the spiritual world. And so God set up many of these rituals to say, As it is physically, it is spiritually. And as you have to go through all of these things to enjoy or even endure the presence of a holy God, so it is with your soul. You need to have a clean soul, a pure heart, a perfect spirit.

8 That s what it takes to be in the presence of God. This is about the presentation, remember? And we are in a very difficult place because we are enemies and alienated from God and this is a long way from where we re supposed to be. This is the part of the gospel I think most people understand. I think most people can grasp the idea that we don t treat God as He should be treated and honor Him as God. And then we also understand that we cannot rescue ourselves. We are in way too much debt towards His holiness and our need. And so we have a pre-eminent Jesus and we need a pre-eminent salvation, a different kind of salvation. And that s why we sang I need You today. I need You, O Lord, I need You. That s why we sang that. Solution Colossians 1:19-20 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Him, 20 and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross. And listen, we re going to look at the solution now. That was the problem; now we re going to look at the solution. But before we look at a single word from this passage, I want you to know what to look for. Because what we re looking at is how the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ is going to be attached to the sacrifice that is needed. I want you to see that Paul is tying together the deity of Jesus Christ, that He is the very nature of God, and he s attaching that to the only way that we can be reconciled with God. Let me just say it simply. Jesus had to be God for us to have peace with God. That s what Paul s going to say in these next two verses. This is part of the solution. Let s read them. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

9 Way too much to take in let me read it again. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood that was shed on the cross. Let s look at this in parts. The first part has to do with His deity. Verse 19: For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him. The word fullness there means completeness. Verse 19 is called the most powerful sentence in describing Jesus the Christ as God, as deity. And the reason is because verse 19 is a summary of 15 through 18 if you were here last week. It summarizes all those sentences into this one sentence: The fullness of God dwells in him. And He is serving as a mediator between God and man. And He has to be God and man to do that. And so Jesus comes as the God-man. He is both fully God and fully man. He s the perfect man. He s the first Adam. And this, this aspect of the gospel, this is what s called the scandal of exclusivity, because this part of the gospel says it is not like any other gospel. This part of the gospel says this is a preeminent salvation story, because Jesus is different in kind. Here s how C. S. Lewis puts it. He says, There is no parallel with Christianity and other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him: Are you the son of Brahma? he would have said, My son, you are still in the veil of illusion. If you went to Socrates and said, Are you Zeus? he would have merely laughed. If you d gone to Mohammed and said, Are you Allah? he would have torn his clothes and then cut your head off. If you would have asked Confucius, Are you Heaven? I think he would probably respond by saying, Your remarks are not in accordance with the nature of true things and you are in bad taste. The idea of Jesus being a great moral teacher is simply out of the question. Because He s God and He s the only religious leader that claims to do that and proves it because of His resurrection. And so this is called the scandal of exclusivity, but before we get too distracted on what s next --- this exclusivity is not like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where Willy Wonka gives out five golden tickets for the whole world. That s exclusivity. If Jesus has the heaven factory or whatever, everyone gets a golden ticket. That s not very exclusive. You just have to trust and believe and have faith in all that it means to make it. Do you see? I don t know what is exclusive if everyone gets this ticket. But He is exclusive in this; this is the theme. That a pre-eminent Jesus Christ brings a pre-

10 eminent type of salvation. And it s a different type in kind. Here s what it says in verse 20. It is through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Reconciled means changed from enemy to friend. That s pretty simple. To himself --- he reconciled to Himself. God has to reconcile us to Him. He s not reconciling Him to us. We fled. We sinned. We rebelled. We are the enemies. He s reconciling to Himself. He s changing the status. And how is He doing that? It says through His blood shed on the cross. It s a graphic expression of death. And here s the point. That we have such a dire problem that this blood on the cross is the only way to fix it. That this pre-eminent Jesus would have to go and pay with His life an excruciating death, because that s what was owed. So just to be clear, this is not the gospel, that the teachings of Jesus could bring you peace with God. You can t have reconciliation with God by church attendance and Bible study and moral lifestyles. That is not what this passage is saying. It says we have peace and reconciliation through the blood of the pre-eminent Jesus Christ. Reconcile --- it comes from God. It comes from the crucifixion of the only Son. In the Old Testament and in the New Testament it says Without the shedding of blood, there s no forgiveness of sins. When John the Baptist introduces Jesus, he says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And do you know how you become the Lamb of God? Do you know how you take away the sins of the world? You rewind that story back to the original exodus out of Egypt, the first one --- you ve seen the movie, I hope you ve read it. You get a lamb, a young lamb in the house for a week, let the kids play with it, let the kids name it. It has no blemish, no marks. It has no accusations against it. It s a holy lamb. And if you just make friends with that lamb and pet that lamb, then you ll survive. No. That lamb must die and that lamb s blood must be splattered on your door, on the top, on the sides, and drip down at the bottom, because it s a sign of a future lamb to come, the Lamb of God. And the lamb had to be slain. Pre-eminent Jesus. The death of the pre-eminent Jesus is the only way. Because it s the only way it could work. It s the only way it logically works. Jesus is this mediator between man and God and He can play that part because He is man and He is God. God the Father cannot send an angel to do this work. An angel cannot represent us. He can t send a prophet, a really righteous man or woman to do this, because of original sin, which is complicated, but even if he didn t have that, he could not make it to the finish line. Let s just pretend we give him the finish line, that he makes it all the way to the finish line. One man can pay for one man s sin. He needed to be a man, fully man, but He needed to

11 have the fullness of deity dwelling in Him so as to pay the price for all men that would choose to follow Him. Results Colossians 1:22 But now He has reconciled you by Christ s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation We have a problem; we have a solution. I want us to look now at verse 22, because this is the result of this preeminent salvation. Verse 22: But now --- don t you like that But now? That s good. I like now. But now he has reconciled you by Christ s physical body through the death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free of accusation. But now. It s all different now. And He s going to present you to the Father as holy. Present ---- that s a great verb. It s passive. Remember what passive means? You receive it. You re not doing the work. You are presented as holy and blameless without accusations. You are declared that way, is another way of looking at it from the Bible s point of view. You do not become righteous, you are stated to be righteous. You are introduced as righteous. And in detail it says without blemish. That means there s nothing wrong with you. That means there is no ill to be found, no flaws. That means you are worthy of being presented. Then it says holy. Holy is not the same as unblemished. Unblemished means nothing wrong. Righteous means everything right. And this is when he s talking about receiving the very righteousness of Jesus Christ to our account. And then he says without excuse. This is a legal declaration. Now we re talking about jurisprudence. We re talking about a legal declaration of absolute innocence. You re completely forgiven. No, it s more like you never did anything wrong. And that s why we sang today How Great Thou Art. I need you, oh, I need you. How great thou art. This is what he s doing here. That s the story of the gospel.

12 I don t want us to miss the meaning of this passage. It s easy to become bewildered and even amazed with the details. I want you to see what you re to visualize here. Paul is presenting this in a way that s aesthetic, that s visual, that talks to us through intellect but through emotion. It s art. He s showing us something here that s artistic and I don t want you to miss that part. The pre-eminent Jesus Christ presents you to the Father as holy. Do you see that? Do you see what s happening here? Envision the grandest expression in your imagination of a ballroom or a castle or a throne room. And you re walking down this hallway or actually, down this center aisle, and all you can hear is the clacking of your shoes on the marble floor. And you have on your back the hand of Jesus, the pre-eminent Savior. And it s so bright at the front that you can t see and eventually your eyes are able to focus and it is the Father. And the Son says, I would like to present to you [your name]. And she is holy and she is without a blemish and there are no accusations against her. That s not the whole story. Why does he use this vocabulary? Because the Father says, You are beautiful. There s a presentation with a purpose. There s a presentation with a response. And the Father says, Look at you. You re pretty. Wow, Jesus changed you. You clean up well. Have you ever in your life with the Lord envisioned yourself in front of Him where He said to you, You re beautiful.? And if you haven t, then you re missing the power of the preeminent gospel. There s no salvation like this.

13 Forgive the earthiness of this illustration but I just felt like maybe a picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe three is worth three thousand. And so this is what we look like as a dog - -- alienated, enemies in our minds and in our behavior. All we can do is add insult to injury. This is the nature of our souls. And then is says because of the blood of the cross of the pre-eminent Son He has made us new. We are holy, without blemish, without accusation, and that s us. You re pretty. You re pretty. You re beautiful. You know, that s not it, because that is a very nice mutt. I mean, the dog looks great. You ll take that one home, maybe, but a king won t. He takes you from that alley and He makes you into a fine lady.

14 This is a fine lady. This is the winner of the 2016 World Dog Show, the largest dog show in the world. It was in Moscow in There were 19, 295 entrants --- contestants. This is the most beautiful dog in the world. Because there were 19, 294 other dogs where someone said, I think there s a blemish there. Some other dog in second place said, I think I have an accusation against me. This dog is holy. That s how He sees us. And that should alter the way --- it should rearrange all of us, every aspect of our lives. How can that not change the way we think, the way we feel and what we do? If you don t think, if you don t believe that when you re presented to the Holy Father and you are able to be presented, if you don t believe, feel, or live in such a way that He doesn t look at you and say, You re beautiful, you re wrong. That s all there is to it. You re wrong. And you have to change what s wrong and believe this passage, because it s true. It s right. This is what s real. How does this happen? By the mercy of God, by the love of God? No. There s been no talk of love and mercy today. There s nothing about love and mercy in these passages. I don t see it. It s the motivation. But it s not the reality. What we re talking about today, this gospel --- it s about justice. And justice has an obligation and the obligation is to make sure that debts are paid and paid in full. And that s why this passage is about justice. We are looking at words like blood and physical body and death through crucifixion. And do you know why those

15 words are highlighted in this passage? Because that s a different kind of salvation. That s one that says, Oh, yes, we absolutely had a problem. And only God could fix it. And yes, He did. He caused justice to pass over us. And friends, we couldn t be more secure in our relationship with God and it should rearrange every aspect of our value system. And the reason we can be secure is because this passage is about passive verbs. This happened to us. This is not because of us. And so our confidence, if we re wavering, is in the wrong tense of the verb. This is the true gospel. This is this pre-eminent gospel brought to us by pre-eminent Jesus. I know, it s mind-bending, it s so difficult to believe this. There s a part of us that understands this about the very nature of God and His perfection. Here s how Pascal put it. I love this. He says, It is unworthy of God to unite Himself to wretched man, Right. How could God unite Himself, be presented with a wretched man? Man couldn t endure that. You see, God could not unite Himself with a wretched man, but yet, it is not unworthy of God to lift man up out of his wretchedness. Only God can fix this. And it is not unworthy of God to have that mongrel, alley, flea-bitten mutt as a dog at His side or in His lap. That s us --- alienated and enemies. But it s not unworthy of God to rescue that dog and transform him into this fine lady. That s what He does. That s the true gospel. That s the real gospel. Application Colossians 1:23b This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. This is how Paul applies it. This is the last verse. This is the gospel --- that s what he says --- This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

16 Do you know what you do with this knowledge? You become a slave to it. You become a servant to it. Some passages say you can be a minister to it. At Grace you are the ministers to this gospel. This gospel is grotesque in its honesty about how bad we are. And it provides a solution, not from us, but a pre-eminent solution from a pre-eminent Jesus Christ. It only works with a God-Man being willing, with mercy and love as His motivation, to bleed, to die this excruciating death so that this blood will somehow miraculous transform us from the inside out. This part of the gospel, this idea that you could be presented to the Father by the Son and the Father would say, You are beautiful --- this is the part of the gospel that you could reject. This is the part that you could have a great deal of doubt about --- not reject, but have doubts. This is the part of the gospel that says, This is too good to be true. This cannot be real. This is much too wonderful. Yes, if you view the gospel that way, then you re on target. Now you get it. Now you see the preeminent gospel. And it will take a lifetime --- no, two lifetimes, this one and the next, to comprehend what this means. If you have your doubts there, they re in the right place. Who is man that God would care for him? But this is the only way it works. Because if righteousness could be had through good works, then Christ died needlessly. And God will now waste the life of His Son if it were not absolutely required. That s what justice requires. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world. But God so loved the world that He sent His pre-eminent Son, that whoever would believe in His death and resurrection would not perish, but have eternal life. This is the true gospel, that His crucifixion makes us clean, and His resurrection gives us presentability to the Father who says, You re beautiful. Is that what you believe? If you haven t yet, why not today? Have a passive salvation, a salvation of a different kind. And if that s your story, then let s celebrate that today. Let s live in a manner worthy of the Lord, worthy of this God, this Lord. It s a good paragraph. Let s pray a prayer of gratitude, shall we? Lord, we have so much encouragement from being united in Christ, and we have great comfort from His love and we are thankful beyond even understanding, that we might share in a common spirit. Thank you, Jesus, who in the very nature of God did not consider that equality with God, that the fullness of God would dwell in Him, as something to be used for Your own advantage, but rather, You made Yourself into nothing. You took on the very nature of a servant

17 being made like us. And we are forever grateful that You chose to humble Yourself and that You were obedient to the Father and obedient to death, not any death, but death on the cross. That You might take our judgment, that we might take your righteousness. It was the only way that we could ever be presented to the Father as holy, without blemish, and without accusations. And we want to live for You now. We desire that we would obey and continue to live out our salvation with fear and trembling. Forgive us for not comprehending the depth of what You did and the cost and the glory that we have been given. We desire that Your Spirit would work in us, to will in us, to act in us, to fulfill Your purpose in our lives. Lord, we commit to trying not to do anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. We re going to emulate what You re like in Your humility. We will value other people above ourselves and look out for their interests. We long for this day. This is the day we live for. That at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow, on heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue would acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord; that He would say, This was all for the glory of the Father. We can t wait to be there. And all God s people said, Amen.