“… IF indeed we continue in the faith, well grounded and steadfast, and not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we have heard…” Colossians 1:23

Colossians 1:21-23 Amplified Bible

²¹ And although you were at one time estranged and alienated and hostile-minded [toward Him], participating in evil things, ²² yet Christ has now reconciled you [to God] in His ^[a]physical body through death, in order to present you before the Father holy and blameless and beyond reproach— ²³ [and He will do this] if you continue in the faith, well-grounded and steadfast, and not shifting away from the [confident] hope [that is a result] of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed ^[b]in all creation under heaven, and of which [gospel] I, Paul, was made a minister.

The Word of God for the Children of God.

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

Love Rejoices With the Truth

Love does not delight in evil.

Evil is anything that spoils, corrupts, pollutes, disables, destroys God’s good creation.

On the sixth day of creation “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

There was no trace of evil—evil has no right to exist in this universe.

When Adam and Eve listened to the devil and sinned against God, evil began to have its destructive way throughout the creation.

As a result of their sin, every human being is born with a tendency to delight in evil.

For example, we are delighted when an enemy’s reputation is ruined, or when we discover that someone we envy is having financial and or marital problems.

We make fun of people who look different, with mental and physical difficulty.

We delight in bad news and demeaning “jokes” concerning people who are of a different class, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation or religious faith.

But God’s love poured into our heart moves us to rejoice with the truth that God is reclaiming and restoring his good creation through his Son.

“God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things…by making peace [with believers] through his blood, shed on the cross.” We rejoice with the truth that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (Colossians 1:19-20, 2Corinthians 5:17)

Reality is, Though, We Never Quite Seem to Move On

Most 21st-century Western people would say human beings are, overall, good.

One day’s worth of news, however, will quickly call such a notion into question.

And one day in our own biased and prejudiced company should also undermine the claim that we are, “overall good.”

For, if we’re completely honest, we must admit that our thoughts, own hearts are unruly and out of control—and popular solutions to this problem, such as social media posting, social engineering, greater education or changes to social circumstances, just never seem to fix things. Humanity continues to be a mess.

When we turn to the Bible, we discover an ugly truth about ourselves: the reason we feel alienated from the people around us—the reason I sometimes feel alienated from myself—is because we’re far and away alienated from God.

Our horizontal alienation is indicative of a far more serious vertical alienation.

God made us so that we might have an intimate relationship with Him, yet our minds and our tongues are turned away from Him. We don’t think of Him. We don’t love Him as He loves us. We don’t even look for Him as He looks for us.

There is, however, good news.

As followers of Christ, while we were once wasting away, we have now been renewed. We were alienated, but now we’ve been reconciled. We lived in a dark place, and now we’ve been brought into the light. We were trapped, and now we’ve been set free. We were dead, and now we’ve been made alive with Christ.

That’s the reality of the experience of those who know God as He has revealed Himself through His word.

This transformation isn’t simply the result of a decision to revamp life.

At some point, most of us have thought, “I’m turning over a new leaf and making a change. I’m going to be more thankful this year than I was last year.”

And good! There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Our friends and family would probably be thrilled to hear it and actually lived out! But that alone is not the end goal for a Christian though. Rather, change in a Christian’s life is motivated and initiated only by the saving grace of God. We go on as we began: by grace.

The good news of the gospel is the fact that Jesus of Nazareth came on our behalf to bring an end to our alienation.

He, and He alone, has done what we most need but could not do for ourselves.

So the call to us is very simple: to “continue in the faith … not shifting from … the gospel.”

We never need to move on from the simple gospel of Christ crucified, risen, and reigning; in fact, we dare not.

And yet how easy it is for us to grow cold to these truths; for familiarity to breed if not contempt, then stone hardened apathy and mind numbing complacency.

So consider your heart honestly. Acknowledge your sin. And come back to the gospel once more, in awe “that thou, my God, should’st die for me.”[1]

1 Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be?” (1738).

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us Pray,

Psalm 108 The Message

Praise and Supplication to God for Victory.

A Song. A Psalm of David.

108 ^1-2 I’m ready, God, so ready,
    ready from head to toe.
Ready to sing,
    ready to raise a God-song:
“Wake, soul! Wake, lute!
    Wake up, you sleepyhead sun!”

^3-6 I’m thanking you, God, out in the streets,
    singing your praises in town and country.
The deeper your love, the higher it goes;
    every cloud’s a flag to your faithfulness.
Soar high in the skies, O God!
    Cover the whole earth with your glory!
And for the sake of the one you love so much,
    reach down and help me—answer me!

^7-9 That’s when God spoke in holy splendor:
    “Brimming over with joy,
I make a present of Shechem,
    I hand out Succoth Valley as a gift.
Gilead’s in my pocket,
    to say nothing of Manasseh.
Ephraim’s my hard hat,
    Judah my hammer.
Moab’s a scrub bucket—
    I mop the floor with Moab,
Spit on Edom,
    rain fireworks all over Philistia.”

^10-11 Who will take me to the thick of the fight?
    Who’ll show me the road to Edom?
You aren’t giving up on us, are you, God?
    refusing to go out with our troops?

^12-13 Give us help for the hard task;
    human help is worthless.
In God we’ll do our very best;
    he’ll flatten the opposition for good.

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

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