The Supremacy of Christ

Here's what I shared with my classes to start the school year...it is the reality that I teach and seek to develop leaders because the world is now broken, not as Christ created and intends it to be, that people's lives are broken without the cross and the salvation brought by Jesus, and that we are called and invited to be part of the restoration of both broken lives and the broken world God created and seeks to have renewed...

This incredible passage from Colossians 1 below is central to my own calling these days as I am overwhelmed and thrilled with what Christ has done and wants to use me to do along with so many others around His world...and N.T. Wright often states it more powerfully than I can as he reflects and unpacks Scripture...

Colossians 1:15-20 (New International Version)
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And 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. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and 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.

“There is no sphere of existence over which Jesus is not sovereign, in virtue of his role both in creation (1:16-17) and in reconciliation (1:18-20). There can be no dualistic division between some areas which he rules and others which he does not. ‘There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.’ The task of evangelism is therefore best understood as the proclamation that Jesus is already Lord, that in him God’s new creation has broken into history, and that all people are therefore summoned to submit to him in love, worship, and obedience. The logic of this message requires that those who announce it should be seeking to bring Christ’s Lordship to bear on every area of human and worldly existence. Christians must work to help create conditions in which human beings, and the whole created world, can live as God always intended.”
(N.T. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, Tyndale NT Commentaries, IVP, 1986, p.79-80)