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Colossians 1, Colossians 3
We are praying in this song (Break Though the Bread of Life) that God would speak to us beyond just the words on the page. The Word is Spirit and life, Christ is life.
Colosse was a small town. It had once been a pretty large town, but by this time it was fairly small. Colosse is in a valley, along a river bank in present day Turkey.
How did the church in Colosse start? It doesn’t seem likely that Paul was ever there. In the second chapter of Colossians Paul makes it sound as if there are a fair number of people there who haven’t met Paul. While we aren’t 100% sure how the church started here in Colosse, Paul does make it clear that there was a church there. 🙂
When this letter arrived in Colosse the church gathered to hear the letter read. How interested do you think these people were in this letter from Paul? Probably they were very interested to see what Paul was writing them about.
For the listeners of this letter to catch what the letter was saying they needed to pay attention. This is a good reminder for us to be ponderously reading and paying attention to the Word of God as we read it.
When this letter was initially read no one would have caught everything in the letter. Probably, as it is for us today, reading it through several times people were impressed with different things each time.
“Christ in you… the hope of glory…” Paul takes a moment to lay out who this “Christ” is. He is not a charismatic charleton, he is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the World.
If we see Jesus, we see the Father. Jesus existed before creation. Jesus, the first born of creation was before the creation. He is the sustainer of creation.