Colossians 1:20b, ‘…making peace through the blood of His cross.’
Here’s the picture for the final two pages of my planned Colossians board book. With the art all finished up, it’s time to start setting type and then looking over publishing options. But first, a brief write up for today’s image.
The ‘peace’ that Paul writes of here is not merely a cessation of conflict, or a ‘ceasefire’ between warring factions. Rather, it points to the final transposition of every dissonance into the eschatological harmony of God’s own Name…the ordering of all things, the gathering of every molecule and every moment into doxological orbit around the glory of God as revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ (cf Phil.2:9-11; Rev.5:9-14). It is, in a word, ‘Shalom.’
And in Colossians 1:20, Paul teaches us that this longed-for Shalom, whereby eschatological Peace will dawn upon creation’s long night of chaos, is achieved ‘through the blood of [Christ’s] cross.’ Blood…it is blood that secures peace. And whose blood? The blood of Jesus Christ, who is Himself God…
The blood of God….It is a mind-wrenching statement, but one Scripture teaches us to make….and the Life is in the blood (Lev.17:11).
This was the cost of our peace, Christian…God’s own Life…bound in sovereign love to our flesh, woven with ineffable mercy to our blood, poured with unfathomable grace from our wounds, and streaming with inexhaustible might down into the deepest pits of our agony, the furthest reaches of our rebellion, the lowest dungeons of our hell….flooding all with Life and turning all to final and unshakable Peace….
And this Peace is not only for the Bride—the Redeemed of all places and times, drawn with Sovereign love up from the sea of Christ’s ransoming blood—but for all Creation. For the redemption of the Bride is the redemption of the whole created order as well. Yes, the Cosmos, that handmaiden of humanity, whose humble head—weighed down under her masters’ curse (Gen.3:17; Rom.8:20)—is now lifted in hope (Rom.8:19), longing for the blood-secured Day when she will be set free from her bonds to sing for joy at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (Is.44:23; Is.55:12-13; Rev.19:6-8).
