Week 15: Day 3

Intro: Hello and welcome back to Orbit: a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life, from the team behind Satellites - I'm Sam Donaghey and I’ll be leading us through our reading of Colossians 1. We will be through the Scripture, giving space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us, commit those things to him in prayer and think how to apply that our lives.

Bible: So, let’s crack on with today’s reading from Colossians 1:18-20:

And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Thoughts: If you’ve been about Christian community for a bit, you’ll know that this idea of the church as being like the body of Jesus is one that Paul uses in other places in his letters in the New Testament. But it is only here that he talks about Jesus being the head of the church.

It’s an interesting picture: if we are all the other body parts, carrying out all the other functions of the body, then Jesus is primarily the head. Which might just tell us something about how we should approach this supremacy that the bible talks about.

Very quickly, let me give a definition for that word supremacy, so that we are all on the same page. The Oxford Dictionary defines supremacy as: the state or condition of being superior to all other in power, authority, or status.

So what does it mean for Jesus to be head of the church? And how might that inform how we, as the family God, act as the church under Jesus’ authority?

Well, let’s jump headfirst into this idea of Jesus being the head. In the head of a body, as we all aware of, lives in the brain but also the place where most senses live too – four out five to specific. If Jesus is the head, then the church is ruled by the mind of Christ. In the same way that the brain is the control centre of the whole body, so then also is Jesus. Here is a short description of what the brain does from that I found on the Johns Hopkins Medicine website:

The brain is a complex organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body. Essentially, the brain controls everything. Jesus, his very way of living and way of being, should be the regulator – in other words, the person who says what goes – when it comes to what we hunger after, how we feel things, our spiritual temperature if you like, the way we see things and everything else that I don’t have time to describe.

Jesus is the one who sets the agenda, the way of being, and the way of doing for the church. By the power of the Spirit we are being formed into his likeness. As an extension of this thought of the church being directed and managed and shaped by the ‘mind of Christ’, then also we are shaped by the senses of Christ: what he sees, smells, tastes, hears. Now, I am meaning those more figuratively than others because I don’t think that if Jesus doesn’t like ketchup, then that means we aren’t to like ketchup. But I’m meaning that we are to be led by what he sees, by his tastes, by what he hears, and be led smelling hints of heaven in the world around.

But notice, that would only leave one sense: touch. If Jesus is the head, then maybe our primary responsibility is being the physical representatives of Jesus that touch the world with His goodness of redemption and transformation? Maybe through the power of the Holy Spirit we are to be the ones who deeply feel the pain of the world and bring this to God in prayer, so that He may pour out His healing and Kingdom transformation? Maybe we are to be the ones who walk in with the presence of God, and in our very being, people encounter something of the reality of King Jesus?

You are the ambassador Christ: the one who represents the authority and reality of Jesus.

Prayer: Let’s pray: God, I thank you that you are bringing all things from death into life, through the renewal that your Son brings through his death and resurrection and the filling and pouring out of your Spirit. I ask that we would be captivated by this vision of being the hands and feet of Jesus, the commissioned ambassadors of Jesus who represent and impose the authority and the reality of King Jesus on the earth. May we know that we are the ones tasked with the commission, tasked with the mission of being your agents in this world. Amen.

Reflection: Let’s take a few moments to reflect upon what we’ve heard in the passage or something that I have shared.

Action: Write down three environments you spend a lot of time in or people you spend a lot of time with – school, football club, friends, family – and then take time to ask God ‘what are you saying to them? What are you seeing in them?’ Tap into God’s senses. Then ask, ‘Holy Spirit, how do you want me to represent Jesus to them at this time?’ Then write this down, ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, and go for it. As you continue to be Jesus’ hands and feet, you’ll be knocked over by how much God wants to bring about His reality in you, through you and into the world around you. All for his glory.

Outro: Thank you for listening and have a great day!