Tuesday, September 27, 2022

 

Tuesday, September 27, 2022


Psalm 68:1-20

Joel 3:9-21

Colossians 1:9-20


Observance: Vincent de Paul, priest & worker with the poor (d. 1660)


Christ is the image of the invisible God.


A wise spiritual teacher once described Christ as a “many-faceted jewel”. There have probably been many across the centuries who have used this term to describe our Lord, so we won't bother with a specific reference. The idea is that Christ, as the image of the invisible God, has many “points of contact” for us to make when we want to approach God in our prayer closet and in our mental apprehension of God. Hebrews describes the famous three-fold office of Christ as Prophet, Priest and King: an excellent starting point, but in no way exhaustive when we think of all the things our Lord is.


We have moved from Romans to Ephesians and now Colossians in recent months, and in each epistle Paul feels the need at some point to emphasise the supremacy of Christ over everything. Here, Paul is placing Christ as not only the highest amongst all creation (that is, everything that our material minds can comprehend), but something beyond creation that both holds creation together, and is the reason for creation being created in the first place! So when Paul comes out with his well-used image of Christ as the head and His church as the body, he is cutting a few more facets into the diamond that is Christ, giving us some more points of contact to make with Jesus as we sit and think about all that He is.


While the apostle John made the contrast between light and dark as spiritual imagery famous, Paul is no stranger to this illustration, either. Our inheritance, along with all the saints, is “in the light”. We may stretch our metaphor of the gleaming diamond one step further: the invisible God, the clear, white light of the Divine, hits the jewel of Christ, and splits off, through its facets, into a multitude of colour and wonder. Anything we want to know about God, we learn in Jesus. And He is very pleasing to look at.



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