Inevitably our lives are shaped by what is great, our hearts are wooed by what we esteem as most beautiful, and we will always run to that which we believe will most satisfy us.
In light of this, Jesus often invited men and women to wholeheartedly consider his greatness, beauty, and ability to fully satisfy, vis a vis the alternatives. He extended this invitation to followers, those who were seeking him, and even to his opponents.
How Great is He?
The answer to this probing question shapes everything.
Make no mistake about it. For those pursuing an answer to the question “As Christ-following faculty, how shall we then live?” the critical consideration is this: How great is Jesus? From this determination, everything else flows.
Perhaps no more succinct summary to the measure of his greatness can be found than in Paul’s words in the first chapter of Colossians. Colossians 1:15-20 is widely assumed to be an old “hymn” about Christ, which Paul utilized in his correspondence to Colossae.
To introduce this hymn Paul transitions from God the Father to God the Son: “He (God the Father) has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” To gain a glimmer of the stature of Christ we will follow Paul’s thought, phrase by phrase, through Colossians 1:14-17:
The One Who Redeems
[“The Son is the one] in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:14). Paul says of the Son: in him “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Do not too quickly pass over this claim: without him there would be no forgiveness of sins, and no redemption.
None.
“Redemption” in the Bible “represents the intervention of an outside Person who pays the price which man cannot pay (Leon Morris).”
In his life, death, and resurrection Christ pays a price to accomplish redemption; no one else would do this, nor could anyone else do this.
For a variety of reasons, we in Faculty Commons are fond of the expression “offering the hope of Jesus Christ” to the world. Surely Jesus offers hope to the world in many ways, but certainly none surpasses the hope that he offers each person for “the forgiveness of sins.”
A couple of years ago a liberal arts professor at an elite research university came to Christ. Here, in her own words, she muses on her pilgrimage to Christ:
In all that [personal spiritual] journey the main thing that was missing, that kept me coming back to Jesus, was “Where’s the provision for sin?” That path for me – the yoga path, or Reiki path, or any of the others that I would study and look at — I just had nowhere to take my sins, and they were weighing me down. There was no place to go with that. There was no place to say “Who’s going to forgive me?”
And then that one day of confessing all of them, and Jesus forgiving me in that moment was … you know, that’s the big difference, if people want to know, what are the big differences between all of the others things I did and searched and studied and read about and gave my all to, Jesus is the only one who says, “I came here. I went through this for you, to forgive yours sins.”
He set me free. He was there. He healed me.
Jesus alone can offer this hope to every professor, student, and person in the world. There is no rival; think of the greatness required to offer forgiveness of sins to every person on the face of the earth, past, present and future.
Rick Hove and Heather Holleman