Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


2.04.2005  

Same Coin

Colossians 1:28

We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.



To what purpose are we to admonish, to teach every man with all wisdom? Paul says it is so that we may present every man complete in Christ...complete in Christ. Ok...what does "complete in Christ" mean?



When I looked at this verse several weeks ago, I was hit by various individual words and phrases...admonishing...teaching every man with all wisdom...present...complete in Christ.



The first one to really stick out was "complete in Christ." The thought of being complete in Christ was the first idea that really caught my attention. To be complete reminded me of several truths from several passages: the Spirit's work of causing Christ to dwell within our hearts through faith, as Paul speaks of in Ephesians 3; the good work that the Lord is perfecting in us, as we are reminded of in Philippians 1; and the formation of Christ in us, as is found in Galatians 4. Complete in Christ. It's a continual work, one that never ends on earth. The Spirit will continually labor to form Christ within us, and we, as the body, will be a part of that labor. The word "present," in particular, causes me to think of this labor in a very Kingdom-oriented sort of way. We, the body, labor for the cause of the Kingdom in all we do, working in order that we might see Christ being formed in one another, for without the individual members of the body working together, the body itself would never be built up. No one would be truly made complete unless the rest of the body labored to build him up! That's the design that God built into the Church, His body, and we cannot ignore that design; to do so would be disasterous. In a very real and sobering sense, we already see the effects of our ignorance all around us.



"Admonishing" and "teaching every man with all wisdom" hit me in a different manner. Upon their ponderance, a myriad of interrelated ideas popped into my head: Christ as the Wisdom of God, fear of God as the beginning of wisdom, admonishing according to the Word of God, humility being tied in to admonishment both in giving and receiving, and more. Yet, what really made those two ideas stick was the first three words of the verse: We proclaim Him. The implication there is that in order to proclaim Christ, we must admonish and teach with all wisdom; doing the inverse would mean that we would not be proclaiming Christ. In the very first part of this letter, Paul says that the gospel is "constantly bearing fruit and increasing." How so? It must be by through its proclamation! And what does that proclamation look like? Admonishment and teaching. We preach the horrors of sin and the glories of God's grace in Christ. If we do not do so, then how can we say we are proclaiming Christ?



I told Andrew that teaching and admonishing are two sides of the same coin, and that that coin is called, "proclaiming Christ." We are to proclaim Christ for the sake of His Kingdom. How do we do this? We are to ensure that we are admonishing one another, as well as teaching one another to ensure that we are seeing and savoring Him as we ought to.

posted by Bolo | 1:01 AM
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