22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation
When we are a Jesus-follower, no one can bring an accusation about us before God and get away with it. So far as God is concerned, we are a perfect specimen of humanity, obedient and in right relationship with Him. If the gate to the Garden of Eden were open, we could walk right in and visit with God in the cool of the evening. All this is possible because Jesus did the work of reconciliation. He did all the negotiation and dealt with our sin when He lived the innocent life and then choose to die in our place. We now have open access to God. Nothing has to stand in the way of the intimacy, nothing from God’s perspective anyway. Paul writes here that Christ’s physical body was involved in this reconciliation. He is being very specific with his words because of the particular type of teaching he was combating in the church at Colossae. Just like some groups today, they were teaching that Jesus physical death was not important, that it was really what his death meant that counted. Their reason had to do with a particular pagan teaching they had incorporated into Christianity. Today the primary reason people try to “demythologize” Jesus is to dismiss His uniqueness and the power of His message. If they can get us to believe that the power in the Gospel is not Jesus actual death, but what His life and death symbolize, then they have substituted a plastic, shallow fake in Jesus’ place. They have also redefined Jesus, if He really existed, into a naïve backwoods teacher who might have died a needless death. His teaching was good to a point, but why don’t we all just get along. Let’s not get too wrapped up in the details, after all, don’t all religions lead to the same place? To deny Jesus physical death and what that means is to deny the central teaching of historic Christianity, the teaching of the New Testament itself. Without the reality of that death and resurrection we are left on the outside looking in. Of course at that point we don’t believe in an inside and outside! At that point we might as well stare at our belly buttons. There is more power to provide true reconciliation in our belly buttons that in an empty plastic Jesus. But to have a real physical death demonstrates the severity of our problem and the uniqueness of the solution found in that death. If we want an answer to the distance we feel between ourselves and God, and ourselves and others, we need a real solution, not just a plastic substitute. Jesus provided that real solution. Draw close to Him right now. The only thing that stands in the way is your unwillingness to draw in.
The Arnold Journey 