Marsha's Musings on Colossians 1...Good Stuff!

 

Colossians 1:7 as you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf,

 

 

Can it be said of me that I am a faithful servant (minister) of Christ?

 

 

Colossians 1:8 who also declared to us your love in the Spirit.

 

 

If someone from a far away place was visiting me in my home or in my church, could he carry news back to his church that I have love in the Spirit for my fellow Christians?

 

 

Colossians 1:9-12 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.

 

 

Here is a wonderful prayer that we can all pray for our friends and loved ones!  I love Paul's prayers. 

 

 

Colossians 1:13-14, 20-22He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins....and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled  in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight--

 

 

This is what God has done for us!  Great truth!

 

 

Colossians 1:15-19 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,

 

 

This tells me who Jesus is. 

1. The image of God in the flesh  

2. Occupies the rank & pro-eminence of the first-born. This term first born is figurative because further down in the chapter in verse 16 it says He created all things. It follows then, that if He was literally the first born of God, that He then would be a created being Himself. The Creator of all things could not create Himself.  He has to be already existing from eternity past. 

3. He is the creator of all things

4. He created all things for Himself

5. He is eternal (before all things)

6. He holds all things together (in Him all things consist)

7. He is the head of the church (body)

8. He is the beginning

9. He is the first to raise from the dead by His own power (firstborn from the dead)

10. He has preeminence in all things

11. All the fullness of God the Father dwells in Him.

 

 

 

Colossians 1:24-27 I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church,of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

 

 

I love a good mystery.  Paul reveals a mystery here.....see if you can find out what it is.