December 22
The Fullness of God’s Glory Is Found in Jesus Christ
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Colossians 1:19-20
Looks can be deceiving. Take the manger in Bethlehem for example. When we look into it, all our physical eyes see is a tiny newborn baby. Helpless. Hungry. Tired. He’s dressed in rags. His parents are peasants. His first visitors stand on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. It hardly looks like the kind of birth that should have been announced to the world by angels from heaven. But looks can be deceiving.
For when we look into the manger in Bethlehem through the words of Holy Scripture, what our eyes of Spirit-worked faith see is entirely different. We see the Christ Child. God’s Anointed One. The Messiah. God’s greatest glory. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.” All of it. There in that manger lies God from God. Light from light. Very God from very God. This is the One by whom and for whom all things were created. The Eternal One who holds his entire creation together.
But why? Why in all the world would the divine, eternal, omnipotent Creator be lying in a filthy feedbox in a tiny, two-bit town? The answer is almost more astounding than the miracle of the incarnation itself. “For God was pleased . . . through him to reconcile to himself all things.” Because the world couldn’t come to him, because it wouldn’t come to him, because in its sinful state, the world seethed with nothing but pure hatred for him, God came to the world. “To reconcile to himself all things.”
In the person of Jesus Christ, God came to reconcile the world to himself “by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Yes, even at Christmas we can’t avoid it. Blood. Jesus’ blood would be shed on a cross so that we can say, “Lord, let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.”
O Savior, child of Mary,
who felt our human woes,
O Savior, King of glory,
who conquered all our foes,
bring us at last, we pray,
to the bright courts of heaven
and to the endless day. Amen.
(CW 360:4)
Rev. James Danell serves Martin Luther College as dean of Preseminary Studies and a professor of German.
