Bible Study Helps, Colossians 1:13-18
Colossians 1:13-18. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and [c]conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption [d]through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or [e]principalities or [f]powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
Last week we ended with the question: Why did God create physical reality and time/in time? What do you think? It’s really one of the most important questions in the universe. Lesson 3 says: For his glory. Period, really. That may not soothe our human egos, but heh, we have a hard time doing the smallest of things, and he spoke the world into existence and sustains it. Deep down we want God to have created us because He knew how special we would be, or that we would be worthy, etc. And there is a human sense of “why should God do everything for his own glory? Is God in need of his own glory being proclaimed.
This is a hard question. We are not God. We need praise to feel accomplished, accepted, on target. He doesn’t need praise. But as the center of the universe, of creation, we are right when we praise, when we worship and put ourselves in the right place as His worshipers, His creation, His children. It’s a recalibration, like on GPS. When we get out of that lane, we have wrong attitudes, wrong words.
By the way, we really only understand the OT through the New.
The alternate question. How did God not create physical reality and time? This tells us something about the creation account.
1. From something: Pagan myths.
2. Slowly, violently, wastefully, randomly, cruelly, in other words, evolutionary theory
Physical and genetic change over generations is a scientific fact and mankind knew about it for thousands of years. Micro evolution vs. macro. Best examples: dogs. Wolves? Does your dog look like a wolf? Maybe, maybe not. Kim’s little dog. But those were from mankind breeding for traits. Darwin’s theory, on the other hand, says this happened naturally over billions of years (although not consistently) due to the strongest surviving. Dog has seven puppies and six nipples. We intervene. “Nature” does not. The one that can’t push the others away dies. The strongest survive and pass on their genetics, which are slightly unique to them, and that set of genes continues. People who have type I diabetes in the past didn’t live long enough to have children to pass on those genes—but, we still have that disease. Asians have it less than Caucasians. Why? Diet over centuries? Something else?
The only two laws are survival and reproduction. Everything you do is for survival and reproduction, supposedly. God doesn’t care because He’s not there.
At our deepest level, which does mankind want? Well, evolution leave us alone in the universe. Creation makes us responsible.
We need a theology of Creation. We have a theology of the Fall.
When I say a theology of Creation, I mean going back to the original intention.
M Mainly, that work is good, not a curse. Physical work is good, not a curse, not originally. The curse was the futility of it, not the work itself, because of sin. Farmers; Teachers. Example: The body matters. Physical service is important. Acts 6, the apostles say, “We should not stop the preaching to wait tables.” This is unfortunate. It is not meant to say the waiting tables is unworthy, because they did establish it as important. It just wasn’t what the twelve were called to do. So we’ve made a distinction that doesn’t exist in the rest of the New Testament. The pastor is not too good to cut his own grass; at the same time, he shouldn’t have to clean all the toilets in the church or fix stopped ones on a Sunday. Tabitha/Dorcas. She was a disciple (like a man) but she made clothes for poor widows who mourned over here. Martha/Mary.
2. that God is powerful and in control, not against us;
3. that humans have dignity even when they don’t act like it. (Wiping another’s privates is seen as lack of dignity—why?).
4. That we bear the image of God but we are fully dependent on His rich love and grace. How we lived and thought before the fall is supposed to be re-emerging and growing in our Christian walk.
5. Even though it sounds too woke, that there is a human race not a bunch of races (that is pretty much an idea or “construct” rather than a physical reality; we do have origins from different parts of the world, but we have very very little genetic difference. ) Scientists have long suspected that the racial categories recognized by society are not reflected on the genetic level. But the more closely that researchers examine the human genome -- the complement of genetic material encased in the heart of almost every cell of the body -- the more most of them are convinced that the standard labels used to distinguish people by ''race'' have little or no biological meaning.
They say that while it may seem easy to tell at a glance whether a person is Caucasian, African or Asian, the ease dissolves when one probes beneath surface characteristics and scans the genome for DNA hallmarks of ''race.''
Now this does come from an evolutionary place, with the idea that people in sunny areas developed dark skin to protect from radiation and northern people developed pale skin to absorb more Vitamin D from the sun. You can believe that or that God developed it so they could live there (we have naturally inborn evolutionary or developmental abilities, maybe, just like immunity from viruses and diseases). Either way, when we see a person with black, stiff hair, darker brown skin, and somewhat larger lips, we put them in a category. Or someone with straight black hair, different eyes, and rounder face shape? Beauty is only skin deep, but race is really just appearance deep, except for a few things, like black people are more likely to get sickle cell anemia. And I’m glad for this, because it goes along with creation and what Paul says in Acts 17:22-28:
22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the [i]Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; 23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one [j]blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’
The Human Genome Project found that we are 99.9% the same genetically. That means out of 1000 genes in a body, only 1 is different between an African person and a European person.
Have you ever looked at person with really frizzy hair and somewhat thicker lips and thought, that person might have black blood? That’s because we’ve been taught to see difference.
Interestingly, we have trouble telling people apart in different races. I have no problem with black people, but Asians and some of my Hispanic students, (very few, just the 18 year old girls, but I have that with the young blondes too). I was raised around black people but didn’t deal with Asians or Hispanics until I was an adult. It’s like family. Some people can’t tell my brothers in law apart, but they look totally different to me.
6. Ecology
Not only does Creation vs. Evolution affect our views of what a human is, but it affects how we treat the earth. I live in Dalton. I don’t trust the water. I don’t drink it. I filter my water; it’s the only thing I don’t really like about my house. I need to get new pipes, just in case. Why? God created good clean water; we trated his creation like a garbage dump for the last 250 years, and it shows up in our bodies. Heavy metals. Lung diseases. Cancer. Our bodies can’t go unaffected by these things. Nor can animals. Now, what that means to us is kind of a matter of debate. I try to get good water to poor people. We can use natural products and less plastic. We can do small things. I don’t think it should be a huge part of our mission as a church or Christian though. We are here to bring people to Christ, not the earth to no pollution.
7. So what does this mean: Hebrews 11:1-3 Faith is essentially about creation. Believing in creation by God, by his word and out of nothing and what it means is the foundation of everything. Where that leaves me is: have a theology of creation. Recognize that there is a reason the first words in the Bible are not “God loves you” or “God has a wonderful plan for your life” but “In the beginning (of time, but not eternity) God created what you see and experience and live in every day.” Ultimately, enjoy God’s creation, even when it’s 95% humidity.
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