Sometimes people are more attracted to the Christian community before they’re attracted to the Christian gospel. They need to see the gospel at work: hospitality, generosity, sympathy, harmony – this is what the gospel does. Christian lives are to fly in contradiction to the immoral societies in which they live by the way they love . Societies often seek to condemn believers, but the more they examine our lives, the more it should become evident that Christians live up to the high moral standards of the doctrine of brotherly love. Hebrews 13:1-3New International Version (NIV) 13 Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. 2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. 3 Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Chapter 13 of Hebrews unpacks what it mea...

Col 2 v 17 (NIV) 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. These observances, says Paul, were but a "shadow of the things to come" (v. 17a). The phrase "things to come," of course, is not a reference to what is future to Paul, but what was future to those who lived when the obligation to abide by these holy days was in force (cf. 1 Cor. 5:7–8; Heb. 8:5; 10:1). During the time of the Mosaic covenant they certainly had their place and fulfilled a glorious divine purpose. But that purpose was to point to Christ. They were adumbrations of a greater and more substantive reality that is now present in its fullness in Jesus Christ and all that we have by faith in him. That is why Paul exhorts the Colossians (and us) not to let anyone suggest they are sub-Christian if they choose not to celebrate these festivals or observe the regulations associated with them during the time of the old covenant. Everything t...

Col 2 v 11 11  In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature,  not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, "Paul’s point is that the circumcision perform ed in the flesh with human hands is no longer the real or spiritually meaningful circumcision (note especially  Galatians 5:6 , “for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for an ything, but only faith working through love”). ... [I would be remiss not to mention an alternative interpretation of the phrase “th e body of the flesh.” According to this view, by “flesh” Paul means not the physical body of Christ (as above, in an ethically neutral sense) but our sinful, fallen, unregenerate nature, or everything we were in Adam before we came to be in Christ. In this view, “the body of the f lesh” would be similar to what Paul had in mind in  Romans 6:6  when he spoke of “our old self” that was “crucified wit...

When Colossians 2:9 says, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” we are meant to stagger in wonder. Will the Empire State Building occupy a doghouse? Will a killer whale fit inside an ant? Yet the Gospels tell us that omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, utter eternality, and holiness dwelled in a tiny, unformed person. “The head of all rule and authority” (Col. 2:10) had one of those wobbly baby heads. The government rested on his baby-fatted shoulders (Isa. 9:6). The miracle of the incarnation is vitally important to Christian faith. We must hold it tightly or we lose some of the majesty of God’s glory in Christ. God came as unborn child, as helpless babe, as dawdling toddler, as awkward teenager, as breathing, sweating, bleeding man so that Christ would experience all of humanity. And he experienced all of humanity so that we might receive all of him for all of us. Surely if God came as a vulnerable, needful, weak baby, we have no need to fear for our own ...

The New Testament teaches that Jesus was God come in the flesh—“in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwelled bodily” (Col 2:9). He was God yet he suffered. He experienced weakness, a life filled “with fervent cries and tears” (Heb 5:7). He knew firsthand rejection and betrayal, poverty and abuse, disappointment and despair, bereavement, torture, and death. And so he is “able to empathize with our weaknesses” for he “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). On the cross, he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and a pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours. There is no greater inner agony than the loss of a love relationship. We cannot imagine, however, what it would be like to lose not just a human relationship that has lasted for some years but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. The separation would have been infinitely unbearable. And so Jesu...

The writer to the Hebrews, purporting to expound the perfection of Christ’s high priesthood, starts by declaring the full deity and consequent unique dignity of the Son of God (Heb. 1:3, 6, 8–12), whose full humanity he then celebrates in chapter 2. The perfection, and indeed the very possibility , of the high priesthood that he describes Christ as fulfilling depends on the conjunction of an endless, unfailing divine life with a full human experience of temptation, pressure, and pain (Heb. 2:14–17; 4:14–5:2; 7:13–28; 12:2–3). Packer, J. I. (1993). Concise theology: a guide to historic Christian beliefs. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being (Hebrews 1:3). Is it any wonder then that God would want all his creation to adore his Son, the Redeemer who was led like a lamb to the slaughter so we could be freed from deceitful desires such as those linked to perfectionism? Christ went to a cruel death on the cross and “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11). God is well pleased with his Son. God’s Motive for Us to Be Like His Son Our desire for perfection is generally self-focused. We desire perfection as a means to be accepted or to control our fear of rejection or failure. Like Harmony, our motives for perfection often cluster around a desire for approval or significance. In contrast, God’s desire for ...