Route 66 Through The Year: Colossians 1:15-23

Spring Harvest’s ‘Route 66 Through the Year’ is designed to take readers on a tour through each of the 66 books of the Bible over the course of a year, with each day’s reading featuring a short passage and comment written by a variety of Spring Harvest speakers.

I have contributed notes for this week on Colossians, looking today at 1:15-23.

Read: Colossians 1:15-23

Paul wrote letters not narratives, but it is the biblical story that funds his pastoral engagement with churches. That story sometimes bubbles to the surface as it does in 1:15-20, where we are taken from creation to consummation through the cross in six verses. And at the heart of it all is Jesus.

He is the one who embraces beginning and end, who is himself the image of the invisible God, the Lord of creation and redemption – for the sake of his church. The creator, sustainer, and reconciler of all is none other than Jesus, the Lord of all.

And what goes with the confession of Jesus as Lord is the assurance that there is no part of ordinary, everyday reality that falls outside the scope of his loving oversight. As Paul will make clear in the rest of Colossians, Christ’s lordship has implications for every area of life – to the extent that what underwrites our discipleship, our marriages, our working days, and our engagement with the world is not just the truth about Jesus as creator and redeemer of all things, but our relationship with him as Lord and with each other as his people.

Father God, may this amazing portrayal of Christ’s lordship broaden my horizons and shape the way I go about my next task, my next conversation, my next meeting, my next purchase.