‘Joy Has Dawned’
Scripture Reading — Colossians 1:15-23
God was pleased . . . through him to reconcile to himself all things . . . by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
“Joy Has Dawned” is another contemporary song about the Christmas story. And, like many other songs, it speaks of the reason Jesus came: “Son of Adam, Son of Heaven, given as a ransom,/ reconciling God and man, Christ our mighty champion.”
Colossians 1 echoes this theme. “The Son is the image of the invisible God. . . . He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
As the apostle Paul shows in this passage, God’s fullness lives in Jesus. And through Jesus the Son, God the Father was able to reconcile all things to himself. Because of our fall into sin, there was brokenness in our relationship with God. And the only way to restore that was for us to be ransomed. Our debt had to be fully paid for.
Jesus, God’s own Son, came to pay our ransom. Jesus, the Christ, paid the debt for our sin, “making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” As the song sings, “Christ [is] our mighty champion”!
“What a Savior, what a friend, what a glorious mystery.” It is indeed a mystery that Jesus, once a tiny baby in Bethlehem, is “now the Lord of history.” God himself, in Christ, has come to pay our ransom, our debt of sin, so that we may be reconciled with God.
Thank you, Jesus!
The fact that you, Lord and Savior, would come to be like us and save us from our sin so that we may be reconciled is indeed a mystery. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
About the author — Brian Kuyper
Brian Kuyper is the lead pastor at a church in Taber, Alberta. He has served in two congregations in southern Alberta over the past 12 years. He is married to Brenda, and they have three school-age children.
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