Thought for the day on the verse of the day: Colossians 1:28

“We proclaim him,” writes the Apostle Paul in today’s Bible Gateway verse of the day from Colossians 1:28, “admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.”

And the important word here is “him” (or actually, “whom”, since in the Greek this is a continuation of the previous verse: “To them [the saints] God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we proclaim ... etc,” cf KJV).

Moreover, the continuation of thought here is important, because Colossians begins with some astonishing statements about Christ, not least the words of vv 15-16,

He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.

If we ask that old question beloved of cosmologists, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” the answer Scripture gives is simple: “Because of Christ” — for “all things were created by him and for him.”

But this has very important implications for our preaching of the gospel. As Paul says, it is Christ whom he proclaims in order to achieve the work God has given him to do, to present on the Last Day a host of people who are “perfect in Christ”.

The idea of ‘perfection’ entails ‘completeness’ — people being what they ought to be. And that must also pick up on something in v 15 where Christ is called the ‘image’ of God. For of course in the beginning the entire human race was made to ‘image’ God (Genesis 1:26).

We must not make the mistake of assuming that Christ has somehow displaced us as image-bearers. On the contrary, later in Colossians Paul writes that all God’s people have,

... put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

All the saints of God are becoming renewed ‘images’ of God. But for that to happen completely they must be constantly and carefully taught and admonished (1:28).

And the content of this teaching and admonition, notice, is not ‘Christian ethics’ or ‘moral behaviour’. It is not a set of ideas or the performance of religious exercises. It is Christ himself. We must therefore ask about the Christ we are proclaiming and who is proclaimed in our churches.

Is this Christ the one who made the world (1:16)? Is he the one for whom the world was made (1:16)? Is he one in whom the fullness of God dwells in bodily form (2:8)? Is he the be-all and end-all, not just of our lives, but of the very existence of all things? Often, for all our acknowledgment of him, there seems to be ‘clear water’ between Christ and God in our thinking and preaching. But if this, diminished, Christ is the Christ we proclaim, how can we expect to produce people who are perfect in him whom Paul proclaimed very differently?

As Paul suggests, to know Christ is to have wisdom, and the more we are taught of him, the more wisdom we have. Let that be our guiding thought for today.

John Richardson
7 September 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Thought for the day on the verse of the day: Proverbs 22:6

Derek Kidner has an interesting comment on today’s Bible Gateway verse of the day. The NIV renders it,

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

The principle demand, read thus, would be to teach the child what is morally and socially right: the way he should go.

Kidner, however, writes,

The training prescribed is lit. ‘according to his (the child’s) way’, implying, it seems, respect for his individuality and vocation, though not for his self will (see verse 5, or 14:12). (IVP OT Commentary, 147)

Literally, the verse reads something like, “Train a child in the mouth of his way ...” — an idiom that clearly needs some interpretation before we can reach an application!

What is important to realize from this slight ambiguity is that there is more to raising children than simply given them instructions and making sure they follow them. The book of Proverbs is very much concerned with what the young should learn in order to be wise — especially from their parents.

Wisdom lies, first and foremost, in the knowledge of God. Proverbially (1:7), “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge ...” (NIV). But true wisdom is not found simply in learning and applying rules. The child is expected to following instructions: “Clean your teeth, tidy your room.” The adult should have some understanding of the principles entailed in these instructions, and our whole process of child-rearing should be a preparation for the independence of adulthood.

The archetypal ‘mature child’ in this sense is surely Christ himself, who, on the one hand did only what he saw the Father doing (John 5:19), according to the Father’s will (John 6:38), but to whom the Father had committed his own authority (John 5:22).

This is surely the model we should follow in parenting, and in responding to being parented. The ultimate goal is the entirely trustworthy child to whom all things can be entrusted.

John Richardson
1 September 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Thought for the day on the verse of the day: Psalm 95:6-7

The source of today’s Bible Gateway verse of the day, Psalm 95, will be familiar to older members of the Church of England as the Venite, from the Latin version of its opening exhortation: “Come!”

It continues in praise to God, the creator and saviour:

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. ² Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. ³ For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. ⁴ In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. ⁵ The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

So far, so positive, and then come the further words which form today’s verses:

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; ⁷ for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. (Ps 95:6-7, NIV)

What an encouragement it is, to realize that we are God’s people — the sheep of the Good Shepherd. But of course, the Psalm does not stop there, and neither should we! For v 7 continues into vv 8-9:

Today, if you hear his voice, ⁸ do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, ⁹ where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did.

Thus exhortation and encouragement become admonition and warning — and warning turns finally into denunciation:

For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.” ¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.”

Indeed, so unpalatable does the message become by this stage, that later versions of Anglican liturgies have made vv 10-11 optional, as if we ought to block our ears or stop our mouths when God speaks words of judgement!

On the contrary, we absolutely must hear these words, for the writer of Hebrews picks them up in Hebrews 3:7-11, declaring that they are the words of the Holy Spirit and apply directly to us, especially the word ‘today’ in v 7: “Today if you hear his voice ...”

Hebrews continues with more words of warning, spoken to the church:

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. (Heb 3:12)

For the message of Psalm 95, according to Hebrews, is to treat ‘today’ as the day when God calls us to press on towards another ‘day’, which is the Sabbath rest of the people of God. Psalm 95 is indeed an encouraging word, but it is an encouragement to persevere in faith, rather than to fall away in unbelief, just as Hebrews says,

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; ¹⁰ for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.

John Richardson
31 August 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Thought for the day on the verse of the day: Romans 12:4-5

The image of the body, which occurs in today’s Bible Gateway verse of the day, is familiar to many Bible readers and — at least in theory — informs our understanding of the Church. We all understand the first point since we all share the same experience:

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function ... (Rom 12:4)

Indeed we do have such a body, and indeed our various limbs and organs have various functions, from which we are led to the idea of ‘every member ministry’ in the church.

But the point Paul stresses here is not, in the first instance, the variety of ministries but rather that the ‘members’ of Christ do not all have the same function. And the emphasis is not on what we are able to do, but on the fact that we are not able to do everything.

In v 3 he writes,

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought ...

This is important, because our question is so often phrased in terms of what we can do, or ought to be doing, for the church to take our share of the work. Ironically, this is partly because the church developed a pattern of ‘ministry’ which very much overlooked exactly what Paul was saying, so that we wound up with just one kind of ‘minister’, and very often just one minister per church. And in this case, we must have a minister who is thought of rather too highly, at least by others if not by himself.

Paul’s word, however, is to all of us:

... but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

And what we must think of ourselves is this: “I cannot do everything. In fact, I can do only those things God has equipped me to do. Therefore I am dependent on other Christians.” Thus our ‘verse of the day continues,

... so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

This is yet another reason why you cannot be a Christian apart from the Church. To do that would require that you are omni-competent. More dangerously, it would also require you to think that you were so good at being a Christian that you did not need the contributions they would make.

In fact, though, as vv 6-8 go on to say, each of us has strengths and weaknesses:

We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. (v 6)

So some of us are good at ‘prophesying’, others at serving, some at teaching, others in leadership, and so on. Sometimes we still forget what this means and we berate ourselves that we are not great at something we see others doing. The message of 1 Corinthians 12 is not that we should make greater efforts, or ask God to enable us in this area as well, but rather accept that this is why there is a Church at all. Relax and rejoice!

John P Richardson
26 August 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Thought for the day on the verse of the day: Psalm 119:165

Once again, the Bible Gateway ‘verse of the day’ gives us words of encouragement drawn from a context of discouragement. The first word of this section of Psalm 119 (which begins with the Hebrew letter ‘shin’ and thus follows the acrostic pattern of the whole psalm) is ‘rulers’ (sarim, v 161) — and it is these rulers who make life difficult for the psalmist.

As Derek Kidner writes,

... the prevailing temper [in the psalmist’s day] seems to have been a religious scepticism ... ranging from the non-committal ... to the thoroughly profane ... (IVP OT Commentary, 422)

We may be inclined to respond, ‘Not much change there, then.’ And we may equally be inclined to say that the psalmist nevertheless finds strength in God.

Simply to put it that way, however, would be to miss almost the entire point of Psalm 119, for the focus is not on God per se as an object of contemplation, so much as God’s word as a vehicle of communication: “Rulers persecute me without cause,” writes the psalmist, “but my heart trembles at your word.”

It is not just the idea of what God is like that sustains the psalmist, it is the specifics of what he regards God as having said: his word, his promise, his law, his statutes, his precepts. It is these which produce in the psalmist trembling (v161), rejoicing (v162), love (v163), praise (v164) and, of course in v 165, calmness and inward security:

Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble.

Surely, if we know and love God, we ought to find the same response in ourselves towards God’s word as we also have received it in Scripture? Indeed, an awakened awe of Scripture — a trembling at God’s word — is one sign of spiritual regeneration. We may not always comprehend what the Bible says, but we will always be eager to discover the truth of God’s word and to follow it. And therein lies salvation. As the psalmist concludes,

I wait for your salvation, O Lord, and I follow your commands. I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly. I obey your precepts and your statutes, for all my ways are known to you. (vv 166-168)

John Richardson
25 August 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Thought for the day on the verse of the day: Psalm 116:1-2

The Bible Gateway verse of the day today is Psalm 116:1-2:

I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.

Before we consider the significance of this verse for ourselves, however, it is helpful to reflect on its occurrence in the New Testament.

In 2 Corinthians 4:13, Paul quotes the LXX of Ps 116:10, in a way that at first glance might just look like an almost-arbitrary snippet. He says,

It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak ...

But Paul has in mind two things. The first is the Christian experience of weakness, carrying the treasure of the gospel in ‘jars of clay’ (v 7). Thus: “We are hard pressed ... perplexed ... persecuted ... struck down” (vv 8-9), carrying around in our body the death of Christ, and constantly given over to death for the sake of the gospel (vv 10-12).

Yet what sustained him, keeping him speaking out the word of faith, is in v 14:

... we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.

It is this that allows him to conclude, “Therefore we do not lose heart” (v 16). And it is the latter thought, as well, which surely leads him to words from the Psalm, for after affirming that God calls him, the psalmist writes,

The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came upon me; I was overcome by trouble and sorrow.

Moreover, his experience of human opposition is profoundly discouraging (v 11),

... in my dismay I said, “All men are liars.”

But he looks to God who watches over his suffering people (v 15):

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.

And this same God will finally bring his people into his Temple presence:

I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord— in your midst, O Jerusalem.(v 18-19)

In the same way, knowing the resurrection of Christ, Paul writes (2 Cor 4:17-18) that,

... our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

God has already heard our cries for his mercy, and will ultimately deliver us even from death itself.

John Richardson
24 August 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Bible Gateway verse of the day: Psalm 94:18-19

The Bible Gateway verse of the day is Psalm 94:18-19:

When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your love, O Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.

What caused the Psalmist to utter these words? The answer lies in his difficult circumstances. The one whose foot slips has experienced calamity (Dt 32:35; Ps 8:16). No wonder he is in great anxiety!

And what is the cause? The answer, in the first instance, is the wicked — specifically the wicked who get away with their wickedness (vv 3-7). They say, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed”, (v 7) because their wickedness meets no obvious response from God. “Rise up,” says the Psalmist (v 2), “pay back” those who are jubilant, arrogant and full of boasting, as they crush and oppress God’s people (his inheritance), ruthlessly targeting those whom the Lord deems especially worthy of his care: the widow, the alien the fatherless (v 6).

As we contemplate the world today, ought we not to feel the same concern? Yet do we not also feel a hint of the same anxiety felt by the Psalmist, the same sense of disorientation, as people mock with impunity the apparent absence of action on God’s part?

We want to say with the Psalmist, God knows, God hears, God sees, God punishes, God corrects (vv 8-10). But we have so little evidence for this. Therefore we must learn faith and patience, and the value of God’s discipline (v 12). One day, “Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it” (v 15), but meanwhile it is hard to stand against the evildoers armed only with our faith in God (v 16).

Yet the very fact that we can continue to do this is evidence of God’s help, without which we “would soon have dwelt in the silence of death” (v 17).

And so the Psalmist can praise God, as he does in vv 18-19.

Nevertheless, the opposition is powerful, potentially going to the very top: the “corrupt throne” which “brings on misery by its decrees”. And does this not also remind us of our own circumstances in an increasing post-Christian culture? We may easily fear the outcome of v 21: “They band together against the righteous ...”.

Our only answer is reliance on God and faith for the future:

But the Lord has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge. He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the Lord our God will destroy them. (vv 22-23)

With this in mind, we must remain faithful, remembering the warning of Hebrews 10:37-39,

For in just a very little while, “He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.

John Richardson
23 August 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Bible Gateway verse of the day: Romans 8:32

Bible Gateway’s verse today is Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all —how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

The emphasis is on God’s giving: of his Son for us, and, eventually, of all things to us.

The point of the verse is that God’s attitude towards us, and therefore our ultimate security, is shown in his action for us, revealed and expressed in Christ. Nevertheless, we must not overlook the prior statement that God did not spare his own Son.

The word elsewhere (Acts 20:29; Rom 11:21) means ‘to keep from trouble’, even ‘to have mercy on’. And in the context this is important, for Paul is addressing the issue of “our present sufferings” (v 18), reassuring us that these are part of God’s plan and purpose.

Thus whole world is “subject to frustration”, but “by the will of the one who subjected it in hope” (v 20). And we ourselves groan, yet in “hope for what we do not yet have” (v 25), helped in our very groanings by the Spirit (vv 26-27).

Moreover the point and purpose of this is that we might be “conformed to the likeness of his Son” (v 29). But how did God treat his Son? He did not spare him. Our hope, then, is not that God will spare us from trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” (v 35), but that he will enable us to be, like Christ, “more than conquerors” through these things.

John Richardson
22 August 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Bible Gateway verse of the day: Psalm 42:8

By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life. (Ps 42:8)

Today’s Bible Gateway verse is one of those potentially deceptive quotations that absolutely does need to be read in context.

It would be very easy to take it as simply a statement of God’s wonderful love and his abiding presence, and the security of our relationship with him: He loves me, and I respond in prayerful song.

But either side of this verse, all is uncertainty. In v 7 the Psalmist laments, “all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” And in v 9, “I say to God my Rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me?”

Indeed, there is much more in the Psalm about anxious searching for God (“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God”) than there is about dwelling securely with him.

We must never make the mistake of imagining that life with God is easy. There are times when faith is about hanging on to what we have experienced of Him in the past, (v 4, “These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude ...”), rather than what we know in the present (v 5, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?”)

The substance of faith must often be the future hope, (v 11) “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.”

Faith and agony of soul sometimes depend on the same experience of reality (v10): that God’s presence is neither immediately felt, nor outwardly demonstrable. That is why we must not then add feelings of guilt about this to our other problems!

John Richardson
21 August 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.