Christ Our Focus; Christ our Purpose
https://youtu.be/s3HFeb-hjQw
“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]
Introduction
What’s your purpose?
Isn’t that just the worst question? It’s a question that’s been weaponized in the self-help industry ala 1990s, early 00s, even bleeding into the 2010s. My theological heroine, Dorothee Sölle, shined light on the fact that this question was alive and well in the mid-20th century. Since the dawning of modernity and the birth of the enlightenment, we who live post both find ourselves searching for something rather elusive: purpose. Why am I here? What is my life for? What am I supposed to do, who am I supposed to be, and what existential game do I find myself in the middle of?? These questions plague us, even we who have things like agendas, plans, and clear goals. I can tell you—with a certain amount of confidence—I’m pretty close to centered on what I feel my purpose is in life; I can also tell you there are dark moments, bad days, or just pure fiascos reminding me I might not be, that I haven’t the slightest clue, and even if I am close to being exactly where I want to be, all of that can change in the blink of an eye.
The reason why this is such a deadly question, one that makes people sigh, weep, or roll over and pull bedcovers over their head is that we tie our purpose to our work (action, deed). In the pursuit of ourselves apart from God, we’ve found a new god: work; this new god knows nothing of love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace. Concurrently, we’ve fused ourselves to our work hoping to make ourselves irreplaceable and unique, but anyone can do that work, fill that job. Thus, by working so hard to become irreplaceable, we’ve become, sadly, replaceable and puts our purpose on shaky ground. When we wed our purpose to our actions, then it means that only foundation for our purpose is our work, no wonder we begin to panic as we lose ourselves in our retirements (if it doesn’t start early in mid-life). In our pursuit to make ourselves unique and irreplaceable through our work, we’ve made our work (the role, the job, the deed) the irreplaceable and not-interchangeable thing and made ourselves replaceable and interchangeable.[2]
We need to be refocused and reconsider where we, as Christians, get our purpose from. So, today, we get some help from Paul writing to the Colossians.
Colossians 1:15-28
Paul begins (continues?) in a hymn[3] extoling the work of Jesus,
[Christ] is the representative of the unseen God, firstborn over all creation because in him all things, in the heavens and upon the earth, were created, the seen and the unseen, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities; all things have been created by him and in him. And he, he is above all things, and he has established all things in him, and he, he is the head of the body that is the congregation (vv1-18a)…
Paul has (may have?) refurbished a hymn that participated in the Jewish wisdom tradition and used it to communicate to the Colossians who this Jesus is[4] who rescued them from domination of darkness and delivered them into the reign of the Son of the love God (v14). It is here in Christ, for Paul, that the Colossians are to find their identity, their wisdom, and their purpose.[5]
The one whom they follow, listen to through the proclamation of the gospel and in prayer, and are formed into by the power of the Spirit, isn’t just a teacher or some peddler of popular theologies, philosophies, and ideologies. This one, Jesus of Nazareth, is none other than the image/representativeof God who is also the firstborn over all creation. According to Paul, Jesus is God: in both his representing God to humanity and in his being the source[6] and sustainer of creation.[7] For Paul, no one else in all biblical history and story can claim such a position and title,[8] for it is only Christ who is an “exactly similar” revelation of God;[9] to see Jesus is to see God, to encounter Jesus is to encounter God.[10] It is in and through Christ that the essence of the ruling systems of the world find the location of their essence (whether or not they actually reflect the reign of God in the temporal realm);[11] for all things are created in Christ.[12] For Paul, Christ is the source of life and of creation and is also the head of the body. In other words, Christ is the source of life of all things especially of his body who represents him in the world after his ascension and by the power of the Holy Spirit: [13] the congregation that gathers in his name and abides by his reign.[14]
Paul then adds, [Christ] is the beginning, the first born of the dead so that he, he might come [to be] first place in all things. For in [Jesus] all God’s fullness was pleased to dwell[15] and through him all things are reconciled completely in him by means of peace-making through the blood of his cross, through him whether the things upon earth or the things in the heavens (vv18b-20). For Paul, Jesus is the firstborn of creation, the image and form all of creation is given life, and the first one born from the dead in his resurrection on Easter Sunday; this makes Jesus the source of both our earthly existence as it is and the new-creation and new-life we receive by faith in him.[16] It’s this double firstborn status that gives Christ the primacy of place in the lives of all things; but it’s not the only thing for Paul. God’s fullness dwells in Christ, thus Paul not only reinforces the previously mentioned thought that Christ is the perfect image/representation of God but that the new temple is Christ.[17] It is in and through this new temple where sacrifice has been made (for final) and in which the peace of God is made among those who follow this Jesus of Nazareth who is God—no matter what their background: everyone who enters in spiritually by faith and temporally into the gathering is now one family of which Christ is the head (the source).[18]
And then Paul adds,
And you who were once alienated [from God/ from the people of God] and hostile in mind and in evil works, but now [God] reconciled completely by the body of the flesh of him through his death—to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if you remain in the faith having been firmly established and steadfast and not being moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, that which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, I became a servant (vv21-23).
Here is where the Colossians find their firm foundation, the source of their identity, and the underlying groundwork for their purpose: Christ Jesus and the Gospel. For Paul, to be alienated from the people of God and separate from Christ is to wander this world alone, without the tools to navigate the spiritual and temporal realms. According to Paul, humanity is caught under the cosmic powers and domination of darkness; to walk about in the dark is to guarantee one hurts not only others but themselves, too. Christ came to illuminate the darkness (John 1) with the goal to liberate all who are held captive therein. Reconciliation does not happen, for Paul, apart from Christ; reconciliation of those who were alienated is only through Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Spirit.[19] Reconciliation then, according to the hymn at the beginning of the passage, is for all people in all the world…it is not just for those with whom you agree; it is the means by which the world experiences everlasting, divine peace.[20] Not so that all become Christian, per se, but that Christians refuse to participate in actions and deeds, systems and institutions that cause tearing apart rather than pulling together, alienation rather than solidarity, death rather than life. If some of us—Christians—refuse to play the game the kingdom of humanity has thrust upon us, then we participate in being “peacemakers” which is fundamentally a way of representing Christ and allowing faith to work itself out as love. Thus, Christ—his death, resurrection, and ascension—become the foundation not only of the Colossians’ life, but also of their new life, and their new life as reconciled members of the body of Christ eager to be peace-makers in the world among their neighbors; this is what it means to be the body of Christ and part of the family of God.[21] This is the goal of their lives (not just once but every day), this the purpose of their presence (not just once but every day), the Colossians are to be as Christ in the world as Christ was before them, and by being such, they bring God’s love, life, and liberation to their neighbor.
Conclusion
Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians to refocus on the source of their life and identity gives them a new and sustainable purpose purpose while they walk this orbiting rock, waiting to be either called home by Christ or to welcome him in his hoped-for return. The Colossians need not sell themselves—body and soul—to pursuits that will only prove fruitless and trigger an existential crisis. To be focused on Christ, to have Christ and the gospel of God as their focal point repeatedly supplies them with life, identity, and purpose will never fade or go away: daily, they are called to be sharers of God’s love, life, and liberation, being peacemakers like Christ is. And, as all of scripture does, this exhortation from Paul to the Colossians isn’t just between Paul and the Colossians; it’s also an exhortation to us who read all these years later (probably, much to Paul’s surprise!).
When we go about pursuing the world to either affirm or give us our purpose in life, we end up stuck in a vicious and self-destructive pursuit of a reward that our deeds and works will never be able to give us. When we try to define ourselves by the external deeds, we become too closely identified with such things and thus, give ourselves over to the domination of action (even virtuous and altruistic action). We mustn’t start with the world and our actions. Rather, we must start with God and God’s actions toward us in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul is saying to the Colossians. When we start there, with God at the foot of the Cross and in the light of the resurrection, we are grafted into an ancient and long-enduring purpose: to live fully as we are with our neighbor whoever they are, to love both God and our neighbor as we have first been loved, and to set the captives free.
[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.
[2] Dorothee Sölle, Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology after the ‘Death of God,’ trans. David Lewis (London: SCM, 1967), 27. Originally published as, Stellvertretung—Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem ‘Tode Gottes,’ Kreuz Verlag, 1965. “For whenever the individual imagines that he is unmistakable and unique, society puts him right and instructs him about exchangeability.”
[3] McKnight, Colossians, 133. “Many scholars think Col 1:15-20 reflects or is an early Christian hymn (or confession…”
[4] McKnight, Colossians, 138. “Put differently, this hymn may have origins in the Old Testament, in the Jewish wisdom tradition, as well as in Greco-Roman vocabulary, but Paul—because of Jesus, because of his incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection and exaltation—has swallowed it all up into new expression by means of his own exegesis.”
[5] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, TNICNT, ed. Joel B Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 132. “The rhetorical strategy of this hymn is to show that the audience and author are allied in a common Christocentric faith, or perhaps more refined, into a christological monotheism. In fact, it is in Christ—the one who lived, who was crucified, who was raised, and who rules, the same one who created and is the goal of creation—that true wisdom is to be found.”
[6] McKnight, Colossians, 150. “The incarnation and this comprehensive superiority are grounded in the Son’s life-giving capacity to create ‘all things.’ Everything that is not the Creator is created, and the Son rules the entire created world as its Creator.”
[7] McKnight, Colossians, 149. “His status is superior because temporally he is before all things, hierarchically he is above all things, and ontologically he sustains all things. This matters for anthropology: if Christ is the Prōtotokos, Adam is not simply the prototype of the Second Adam, but Christ is the prior Eikōn-template used to crate Adam and Eve. Christ may be the Second Adam, but Adam then, is the Second Prōtotokos-Eikōn. One might then say that, in contemplating creation—since all creation is in, through, and unto Christ—we are to encounter a manifestation of nothing less than the Son.”
[8] McKnight, Colossians, 146. “…for the apostle Paul, Jesus was himself the one and only true eikōn in bodily form, leading to the implication that we can understand Adam only trough Jesus, and not Jesus simply as the second instance of the original Adam. This, then, is not so much Adamic Christology, as if Jesus is merely Adam Version 2.0, but instead a Christological anthropology, or a christologically reframed Adam, an anthropology both embodied and ‘storied’ in Israel.”
[9] McKnight, Colossians, 147. “This God-man King or Lord rules and reveals God. That is, in Jesus—the Cruciform One—we see ‘no error, no failure,’ when it comes to an ‘exactly similar’ revelation of who God is. It is right, then, to see in eikon the ‘essence’ of God no manifest.”
[10] McKnight, Colossians, 147. “To call Jesus the eikōn of the invisible God is to say that Jesus is the one who rules over all as the Davidic king…Furthermore, eikon connotes revelation as the physical presence, or the ‘exact representation’ (Heb. 1:3), in concrete, embodied reality of the invisible God.”
[11] McKnight, Colossians, 151. “Perhaps the boldest statement is that Christ is the creator of ‘all things,’ which is spelled out in location (‘things in heaven and on earth’) and essence (‘visible and invisible’), and then the essences are given concrete terms: ‘whether thrones or powers or rules or authorities.’”
[12] McKnight, Colossians, 152. Christ “…is the essential source of life in creation, he is the agent of creation, and he is the telos of creation.”
[13] McKnight, Colossians, 156. “…the ‘head’ in this context is the one who grants and sustains life, while also creating a new kind of unity among the members.”
[14] McKnight, Colossians, 157. “In this context one must also think the term ekklēsia will have evoked a political assembly of citizens; as such, the co-opting of the term by Paul for a Christian kind of politics under King Jesus has overtones of a political alternative.”
[15] McKnight, Colossians, 160. “The son is preeminent because God’s fullness dwells in him. But one might opt instead for a softer relationship and take all of v. 18 as grounded in the Father’s decision to locate all of the fullness in the Son.”
[16] McKnight, Colossians, 158. “…the son is the beginning of new-creation life as the first one raised from the dead, resulting in a preeminent status over all the redeemed.”
[17] McKnight, Colossians, 161. “…as Zion echoes temple and was the mountain where God as pleased to dwell….so now God dwells in the Son. Hence, we have here a Christological revision of temple theology, with echoes of new-creation theology. This divine glory indwells the Son.”
[18] McKnight, Colossians, 162. “The Son’s redemption reconciles all things, which is a peace-making work that brings together Jews and Gentiles into one family of God. The redemption here is less an ecotheology or a sociopolitical theology and more a theological and christological ecclesiology.”
[19] McKnight, Colossians, 163. Katalassō, “The linguistic game this term and its cognates play is that, first, humans are out of sorts with God (enemies…)—including the essence of captivity to the cosmic powers, which is the focus in this hymn—in need of reconciliation; second, the means of that reconciliation is King Jesus, who reconciles by means of his salvation-accomplishing events, most notably the cross and resurrection and exaltation to rule.”
[20] McKnight, Colossians, 164. “The reconciliation of our passage, then, includes the divided peoples of the Roman Empire, and it must be emphasized that that sort of reconciliation I the focus of Pauline ecclesiology in Colossians …and Ephesians…”
[21] McKnight, Colossians, 164-165. “Peace-making” “The term expresses the sense of adoption into, and behaving like, God’s family.”
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