Nielsen’s Nook

9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (ESV)

It’s amazing how sometimes just a turn of a phrase will strike you in a way that makes an amalgamation of the familiar burgeon into something fresh and stirring. Writing about Colossians 3:9-11, Farley writes:

The only abiding reality is Christ—He is all and everything and the only thing that matters. And He is in all. He is in everyone in the Church, without regard for their former race, religion, culture, or social position….¹

There is a boldness here that, to some, might verge upon audacity. Farley’s point is that the Apostle Paul seems to intimate that if Christ is the Incarnate Deity, the Savior of the World, the Perfect Imprint of the Father; then, indeed there is a cosmic reordering that is at hand. You see this echoed in Farley’s idea of former. In a very real and transcendent sense there is no longer race (and gender, c.f., Gal 3:28-29). There is no longer religion. There is no longer culture. There is no longer society. There is Christ—all in all.

Have we contemplated what it would be to allow Christ to more fully transform and renew the way I think about race, for example? In Christ, I am formerly a Caucasian. What does that mean? It seems to mean, at least on the surface, that Salvation circumscribes every aspect of the world in which we live, every facet of who I am as an individual and member of humanity. It does not obliterate our distinctions but puts restores them to their purposed places in the mosaic of Creation.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Help us to think cosmically about your work in our lives and in this world. Amen.

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¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 182-3.