Keep Christ in the Church

Colossians 1:15-23

We somehow left Christ out of His church and all the substitutes are severely lacking.

Each year around Christmas time there is a clamor about keep “Christ in Christmas”.  We hear voices of people that are distressed that the term “Holiday” is replacing “Christmas”.  We want Christ to remain the reason for the season.  But as the contemporary church we have begun to leave Christ out of the church, our worship, and life.  We have focused on our likes, taste, and wishes in our worship times.  We have seen Jesus as a personal maharishi for our inner peace.  Sermons have, at times, degenerated into bullet point lists to show how to get out of life what we want.  It is possible on any given Sunday in most any given city to hear a sermon on almost any subject.  Sermons on politics left and right, marriage and family, inner healing and addiction, even the life of the pastor.  But we seem to have drifted away from the core of our faith. 

Read Colossians 1:15-23 before you read this essay.  This passage touches four themes regarding Christ, it is outlined as follows:

The eternal nature of Christ vs. 15-17

Christ as the head of the church and the first of the resurrection order v. 18

The Father’s dwelling in Him, the cross and reconciliation vs. 19-20

The implication and application of our reconciliation to Christ vs. 21-23

Were a disciple to choose only one passage to study his whole life long and he chose this passage he would not exhaust its implication, meanings, and wonders.  (How much less can the few lines of this essay do this passage justice)  But this passage needs to be about more than an academic study.  An academic understanding is only half the story.  In this passage there is the invitation to look, reflect, and marvel, at the Son, the incarnation, the redemption and our lives with Him.  There is a terrible human propensity to go to extremes.   Like a drunken man who falls off a horse only to remount and fall off the other side we have trouble with equilibrium and balance.  In our faith we have sometimes treated Christ as a distant, august, and powerful King, One who is so exalted as to be unapproachable.  Currently, and perhaps as a reaction, we treat Jesus as “one of the boys”. He is our hang out buddy, wingman, or homey.  Like the good kid from our childhood neighborhood, He is just like us only a little better and a good influence for us.  Each view has something to offer, but each is inadequate.

By reading, thinking, studying, (in a word meditating) on this passage we can develop a fuller picture of Christ.  A picture that is balanced and will inevitably draw us to worship Him.  If you want to know what God is like, you see it in Jesus.  He entered into the created order, but had priority over that order.  This is true because He made all creation.  Everything created was created by Him and for Him.  Not only that, but the order of all things continues by Him.  To set the broken things right there is the church of which He is the head and proto-type of the resurrection, so that things can come back to their created purpose.  Eternal God became a man with flesh with all that involves and He died on the cross as a blood sacrifice that turned away punishment.  And in so doing He sets everything right.

This Jesus is closer than a distant King and more marvelous than a homeboy from our neighborhood.  When we gather as the church and we forget to focus on this stupendous reality we suffer a loss.  If we live our lives on our terms hoping “guru” Jesus will give us an advantage we have only this life as a reward.  When we die to our agenda and wishes and live in Christ we return to our intended purpose.  Instead of saying, “Keep Christ in Christmas,” perhaps we ought to say, “Keep Christ in the church and in our lives.”