God with us
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things… by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Colossians 1:19-20)
If you’ve been at the beach as a child, perhaps you share one of my memories. You dug a big hole and used a little bucket to try to fill it with water. The sea never got any emptier; neither did the hole fill up, no matter how many buckets you emptied into it. You wondered: does the entire sea fit into this hole?! Growing up has probably burst that bubble…
Paul describes here perhaps the greatest of all miracles: the fullness of God, in some sense, ‘fitted in’ a human being (if I can reverently put it that way). The fullness of God dwelled in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23). The eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1-5, 14). “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). Not that God stopped being everywhere (omnipresent), but in Jesus we truly see who God is (John 14:9-10)!
Why? Because it pleased God in this way to “reconcile to himself all things.” He lived in a broken, cursed world. The one and only sinless man, surrounded by sinners. To reconcile them – us – to God.
How? By bearing the curse in our place, as he shed his blood on the cross. Payment was needed. Blood needed to be shed. That’s why the only person worthy and capable of paying the infinite debt – God – needed to become a man, with blood and flesh and bones. That’s what Christmas is about. We might not comprehend this miracle, but let’s believe it in wonder and worship!
Klaas-Jan Gunnink