Tuesday after Quasimodogeniti
Posted on April 13, 2021 by under
Scripture: Colossians 2:9-15 (NKJV)
2:9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; 10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
11 In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
Devotion
In the Old Testament, circumcision made you a participant in God’s covenant with the people. It made you a beneficiary of God’s promise to Abraham, but also bound you to the Law of Moses. The Gentiles were outside of these blessings and duties, “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). But in Christ Jesus, according to the New Covenant established by His death and resurrection, there is no distinction between Jew or Gentile, between male or female, between servant and master. All are made holy. They form one body under one Head.
We Christians have been brought into the New Covenant by being baptized into Christ the Mediator. By His grace we have all of the blessings, and none of the curses. Jesus bore the curse of the Law to make us free—not from the Law itself, but from its curse. We are now alive to God, as alive as Christ is from the dead, and free to walk in the light of His holy commandments. We lack nothing because Christ has supplied us with everything: regeneration and renewal, victory over death, and especially the forgiveness of sins. Now in this new life we must daily fight against our sinful flesh so that we do not fall back into the grave out of which God has raised us up.
Prayer: Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who have celebrated the solemnities of the Lord’s resurrection may, by the help of Thy grace, bring forth the fruits thereof in our life and conversation; through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
