“It is finished.” ~John 19:30
“He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” ~Colossians 1:18-20
You have heard it said when God closes a door, He opens a window. But, here is the good news of this season which stretches forty days (plus Sundays) from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday and forty days from there to the Ascension: when we nail shut the doorway to God, Jesus Christ turns the door to sawdust and blows it away like ashes. The carpenter has put down his hammer and gone out of the barrier business. “It is finished.”
Neither are there any windows to open, for the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit requires no invitations and brooks none of our protections. The Spirit blows Jesus Christ right out of the ashes to abide in our hearts through faith. “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.”
“All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” in the man who would be considered most displeasing and threatening to human fullness. But “he was making peace through the blood of his cross.” Through Christ “God was pleased reconcile to himself all things.” The record of our sin has been erased, leaving nothing. Zero. “It is finished.”
What comes after the finish? First place. Who’s there? Jesus Christ. Anything else there? “All things, whether on earth or heaven.” Why? How is this?
“God was pleased.”
God’s peace, Bethesda, it is finished. You are in first place.
Shalom,
Pastor Tom