Mary’s Little Baby – Bernhard Seter – 2013
Colossians 1:15-20 15The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Mary’s little baby is the firstborn of creation and the image of the invisible God. This is incredible stuff. Paul cannot get his words out fast enough and the addition of superlatives to what Jesus is and who He is and what he does is really quite staggering. Attention should be drawn to the fact that Christ came and lived and died to reconcile all things to himself and make peace through the blood of His cross.
It is surpassing strange to me and deeply disappointing, that it is in this holy season of the year that most of the conflicts between human beings seem to flare up again. Family’s inability to forgive one another for some perceived slight. Irritation that one brother got a piano, and the other got the bench. Frustration over the fancy plates that grandma had that no one will ever use but they were given to a cousin. I’m always terrified when I see Christians in the church acting in ways that in a business environment would get them fired. Christians in a church or in their own families say things that in a professional setting in which they were receiving some kind of remuneration would get them fired without any question. Christian congregations at odds with each other over things that people cannot even express. It is inconceivable and sad and damnable that Mary’s little baby and those who sing his praises and claim to follow him cannot even sit down face-to-face and
reconcile with one another an agree to work out their issues in the understanding that what they are together in the body of Christ, is more important than whatever stupid differences they might have as individuals.
Paul cannot contain himself in trying to express the marvelous glory Mary’s little baby has. This son of God‘s love effects a glorious reconciliation. Thoughts of God towards human beings are now thoughts of peace and not of evil, the peace that passes all understanding and which keeps the hearts and minds of men through faith in Christ Jesus. Here is the means by which God snatches hopeless and helpless people out of the power of darkness and translates them into the kingdom of the son of his love. This is the reconciliation through the blood of Jesus that presents all mankind and all sinners to be holy and unblameable and unreproveable in the sight of God. Mary‘s little baby was sent into this world to offer a love the works out a perfect redemption through the shedding of his blood. God is reconciling the world to
himself. And there are people who cannot sit down with there brothers or sisters, their nephews or cousins, grandma‘s or grandpa‘s, or the people sitting next to them in church on a Sunday morning to recognize that they are all a part of the body of Christ and that whatever petty differences they have among them selves are inconsequential, insignificant, stupid, and sinful. The Christmas messages is tidings of great joy. These are joyless people, and sadly unless the power of the Holy Spirit reaches them and convinces them, they will be joyless throughout all eternity.
