Aug 3

“... to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ;” Colossians 2:2

The apostle desires the hearts of the saints to be comforted, knit together in love and reassured in the understanding they have been imparted of the truths of God. In particular he points here to the doctrinal truth, the ‘mystery’ of God, now revealed. This has to do with the powerful truth that God is One. Some would divide God into three separate, distinct persons rather than to see He is but One God, who manifests Himself in multiple ways. This is in part the truth over which Paul wanted the saints at Colossi to rejoice and be assured in. He also instructs them, later in the same chapter, not to be deterred from this truth by traditions, deceptions, philosophies or man’s reasoning. He reminds them that in Jesus dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and that they and all believers are complete in Him! This powerful and liberating truth identifies God and focuses all the glory, the honour, the power and the worship to the One to Whom it belongs! Hearing from, obeying and following the ways of the Holy One of Israel, was and remains core doctrine among the Hebrews and should be so among all Christians also. All of deity, the fullness of it, is in Christ Jesus! It is all in Him! Scholars agree that ‘and’ (kai, in the Greek) may be rendered to mean ‘even’, or ‘that is’, and does not always imply a ‘copulative’ (addition) action. Thus the mystery of God ‘and’ of the Father, ‘and’ of Christ, in our verse, is not a mystery involving three beings, persons or gods. It is the mystery of God, now revealed to man through His word involving God, that is, the Father that is, Christ! We are told in 1Timothy 3 that the great mystery of the Godhead is how that God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory! Jesus fits all of that description! Paul confirms that the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwelt in Jesus, not just a portion, a second person, a third or a partial aspect! The same One God, who was the Father in eternity, took on the form of man and became known as the Son of God in redemption, died on the cross for our sins, rose again from the dead, and now abides as the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers! This is a great assurance, a cause of great comfort, and an establishing, stabilising truth to all the faithful - that we may personally know the God we have believed in and trusted for our salvation! 

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion

July 13

“For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” Colossians 2:9

Having encouraged the Colossian church to walk in Christ as they have received Him, and warned them of the pitfalls and dangers of man’s traditions and philosophies, Paul now reinforces the pivotal concept of the deity of Christ. He teaches that In Jesus, dwells all the fullness of Deity, in a bodily form! Several concepts are to be noticed here. Our faith in Christ Jesus is predicated upon the fact of His deity, not merely on the divine origin of His doctrines, as some would have it, making Him merely another prophet or messenger from God. Jesus is God! He is the fullness of God in One being. The tense of the word ‘dwell’, is in the present. This means that Jesus remains God today, and was not God or Godlike merely as some stage in the past, but continues to be the true and full manifestation of Deity today. We note also that not a portion or a percentage of the Godhead dwells in Jesus, but the all the fullness of it. The import of this statement is paramount. Some have wrongly concluded that Jesus is but a third of some divine committee of three persons, but that would prevent Him from having ALL the fullness of deity residing in Him! Jesus must be the One and Only, Supreme deity, for this to remain a true fact of scripture. If all dwells in Christ, then there is no more to dwell in any other ‘person’! The ‘fullness’ here, must refer to all that the Godhead or deity is, the sum total of the power, and the completeness of the essence of what Deity is - all the attributes and all the fullness of them! Thus it is all in Jesus, and He is All in All! When we pray to Him, we are praying to the entirety of the Godhead. We are praying to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for these titles merely reflect the various offices, which Jesus, the One God fulfils! That is why we are to pray and do all in the name of Jesus, for it is name in which the power and authority of God is summed up. There can only be ONE Almighty, and the fullness of that power cannot be divided, as some imagine among multiple divine persons! We have it on good biblical authority that it all dwells, abides, resides and remains in Christ Jesus! ‘Godhead’ here cannot be seen as some aspect of divinity alone, but a reference to the entirety of all that is God, the whole of Deity. Anything less, would make this statement irreconcilable and inane. It would be like saying that ‘in Jesus is the all the fullness of only a part of what God is’. That would make Him less than all of God, and therefore, not God at all! Almighty Deity requires an absolute singleness a numerical oneness, and is not something that can be shared, pooled or made communal! Yahwah Himself states that there is no other god beside Him. He knows all things, yet does not know of the existence of another Almighty person! This same, singular, Almighty God became flesh, the Logos incarnate, was born of the virgin Mary, and as the Son walked among men. In that bodily, human form, existed all the fullness, just as it did eternally prior to the incarnation! Jesus was always Almighty God, from eternity. The physical body died in offering and sacrifice for our sins, but was resurrected immortal. It continues to exist today, as the only visible, physical form that God has even begotten or taken for Himself. One day we shall see Him, as He is. We too will have immortal, eternal bodies like unto His glorious body, and will eternally live in heaven with the One in whom dwells, all the fullness of the Godhead bodily!

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion