colossians on God-man

There is thus no God behind the back of Jesus Christ but only this God whose face we see in the face of the Lord Jesus. There is no deus absconditus , no dark inscrutable God, no arbitrary Deity ...

God expressed Himself J.B. Phillips paraphrases the first line of John 1:1, “At the beginning  God expressed himself ”. God’s word is more than mere speech. His word is action. When God speaks in Gen...

He by whom all things were made was made one of all things. The Son of God by the Father without a mother became the Son of man by a mother without a father. The Word Who is God before all time became...

For our salvation, He put on a man and dwelt in him.

O God, who looked on fallen humanity and planned to redeem us by the coming of your only-begotten Son, we ask that you ensure that all who confess his glorious incarnation will have fellowship with hi...

Origen, in the third century, had a great analogy. He told of a village with a huge statue—so immense you couldn’t see exactly what it was supposed to represent. Finally, someone miniaturized the stat...

My friend and colleague Keas Keasler, who teaches a class on spiritual formation, recently asked the class to close their eyes and picture God. After a few moments he had them open their eyes and, if ...

Jesus Christ became Incarnate for one purpose, to make a way back to God that man might stand before Him as He was created to do, the friend and lover of God Himself.

He who abides always in a present now, in him doth God beget His Son without ceasing.

Transcendent God, you are the creator of time, You exist inside, outside, and around time and space. In your immeasurable power, you created and ordered the universe. Amazingly, you limited yourself b...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

The temptation to sculpt God according to our expectations and presuppositions, to make this God much like another, is strong with us. You see it all down through history: in the Middle Ages it seemed...

Jesus is the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation. You were once sinners, alienated and hostile in mind to God, but you have been reconciled through his body and death. Continu...

Jesus was God spelling himself out in language humanity could understand.

He who wraps the heavens in clouds wrapped round himself a towel. He who pours the water into the rivers and pools tipped... water into a basin. And he before whom every knee bends in heaven and on ea...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

Preaching Commentary God expressed Himself J.B. Phillips paraphrases the first line of John 1:1, “At the beginning  God expressed himself ”. God’s word is more than mere speech. His word is action....

It is true that he [Christ] has awful majesty; he is the great God, and is infinitely high above you; but there is this to encourage and embolden the poor sinner, that Christ is a man as well as God; ...

Jesus Christ is what God does, and the cross where God did it.

He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.

The Father created the world by a miracle;  it is difficult to express its measure.  Letters cannot contain it, letters cannot comprehend it.  Jesus created for the hosts of Christendom, with miracles...

No one image or model, however elusive or rich, can do more than offer glimpses and hints toward the divine.

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things:Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to hispromise, he abides with...

Let us enter into worship, acknowledging the Lordship of Christ and his work of reconciliation by proclaiming together the words of Colossians 1:15-20, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first...

We cannot conceive how the Divine Spirit dwelled within the created and human spirit of Jesus.... What we can understand...is that our own...existence is...but a faint image of the Divine Incarnation ...

The Incarnation through the death of Christ makes it possible for God to be "just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus." If God should be merciful without the satisfaction of jus...

All these changes did the Merciful One effect: Stripping of His glory and putting on a body; For He had devised a way to reclothe Adam, In that glory which Adam had stripped off.

Let us pray to God the Father, God the Son, And to God the Holy Spirit, Whose infinite greatness Enfolds the whole world, In Persons three and one, In essence simple and triune, Suspending the earth a...

N.T. Wright takes some time in his book, How God Became King , to connect the idea of the logos (the eternal Word), with the idea of “dwelling,” or abiding in God’s presence: The Word became flesh ...

Only at the cross of Christ does man see fully what it is that separates him from God; yet it is here alone that he perceives that he is no longer separated from God. Nowhere else does the inviolable ...