“Faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven
and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel.”
[Colossians 1:5]
If we are to share the good news with others, we need to know the good news. The second part of Colossians 1 is Paul’s explanation of the gospel. It speaks, in beautiful language, of who Jesus is – firstborn of all creation, the one who creates and holds all things together. Paul is affirming that Jesus is God in human form, the visible image of the invisible God.
The first part of the gospel is that Jesus is God; the creator, the one who acts in history, has come to earth as a human being. Paul moves on from this to explain why God came to earth: to make peace with us. Jesus came to fix the breach that has existed between people and God since the day that people decided they didn’t need God. The next part of the gospel is that through crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus became a blameless sacrifice and healed the breach, so that we could live in the hope of heaven.
There are many places in the Bible where the gospel is shared. We know the message, but do we share that message with other people? If we don’t, why not? After all, it is part of living a life for God.
Many hymns speak of sharing the good news, though perhaps one of my favourites is ‘God’s spirit is in my heart’ by Alan Dale and Hubert Richards (Singing the Faith 404), which emphasises telling everyone that the kingdom has come. Another would be ‘We have a gospel to proclaim’ by Edward Burns (Singing the Faith 418), which also tells the gospel story we should share.
Lord Jesus Christ, Firstborn of all creation
In you all things live and move and have their being
We praise you for the glories of creation,
For your willingness to step into creation as a human being
For your sacrifice for us, that we can never repay
We thank you for crossing the divide and healing it forever
That we could be with God now and always
Amen
Image: photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash
Prayers for June 2019 by Revd Claire Rawlinson
You can download this Prayer for the Week here
