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God All in All
Friday of Epiphany 4
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God is all in all through Christ. During his earthly sojourn Christ kept his divine power hidden under His flesh. This humiliation of His divine power and effulgence He undertakes for our sakes, that we might dwell in Him with God who is all in all. He was emptied that we might be filled. He was humiliated that we might be glorified. He dwelt with us that we might dwell with God. What He once hid now shines forth in its glorious light. However, in His exaltation, which began at the resurrection, He began to have the fullness of His divinity flash out of His human nature, finally ascending visibly into the clouds to take His place of power at the right hand of God and to fill all things.
In His glorification, He will also raise us up to our home in heaven where He is seated. We have been raised out of the weakness of our flesh into the power of His incomparable glory. His power now shines through our humanity fully by His ascension to the right hand of the Father. Whatever He does He does for our sakes, that we might share His great glory in heaven. He ascended that we might likewise ascend. This is the ultimate end of our receiving the image of our Creator, now increasingly renewed, then perfectly possessed.
Rev. Dr. Scott R. Murray
Memorial Lutheran Church
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Hilary of Poitiers
"Christ dwelt in the form of God when He assumed the form of a servant, not being subjected to change, but emptying Himself, hiding within Himself, and remaining master of Himself though He was emptied. He constrained Himself even to the form and fashion of a man, lest the weakness of the assumed humanity should not be able to endure the immeasurable power of His nature. His unbounded might contracted itself, until it could fulfill the duty of obedience even to the endurance of the body to which it was yoked. But since He was self-contained even when He emptied Himself, His authority suffered no diminishment, for in the humiliation of the emptying He exercised within Himself the power of that authority which was emptied.
"It is therefore for the promotion of us, the assumed humanity, that God shall be all in all. He who was found in the form of a servant, though He was in the form of God, is now again to be confessed in the glory of God the Father; that is, without doubt He dwells in the form of God, in whose glory He is to be confessed. All is therefore a dispensation only, and not a change of His nature. For He abides still in Him, in whom He ever was. But there intervenes a new nature, which began in Him with His human birth, and so all that He obtains is on behalf of that nature which before was not God, since after the mystery of the dispensation God is all in all. It is, therefore, we who are the gainers, we who are promoted, for we shall be conformed to the glory of the body of God.
"Further, the Only-begotten God, despite His human birth, is nothing less than God, who is all in all. That subjection of the body, by which all that is fleshly in Him, is swallowed up into the spiritual nature, will make Him to be God and all in all, since He is Man also as well as God; and His humanity which advances towards this goal is ours also. We shall be promoted to a glory conformable to that of Him who became Man for us, being renewed unto the knowledge of God, and created again in the image of the Creator, as the Apostle says,
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Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator' (Col 3:9-10).
Thus is man made the perfect image of God. For, being conformed to the glory of the body of God, he is exalted to the image of the Creator, after the pattern assigned to the first man. Leaving sin and the old man behind, he is made a new man unto the knowledge of God, and arrives at the perfection of his constitution, since through the knowledge of his God he becomes the perfect image of God. Through godliness he is promoted to immortality, through immortality he shall live for ever as the image of his Creator."
Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity,
11.48-49
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1 Corinthians 15:24-28
Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For "God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "all things are put in subjection," it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
(ESV)
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Prayer
Lord Christ, ascended and triumphant Lord, increasingly grant us the renewal of the image of our Creator now, but at our end grant us fully what we only glimpse in Your resurrected glory. Keep us from every falsehood and all lying that through the discipline of the Spirit we might reflect Your truthful image to a world choking on the lies of our enemy. Amen.
For Nancy Harrison, that the Lord would be her refuge and strength as she recovers from back surgery
For the students, faculty, and staff of Memorial Lutheran School that they would be upheld in the work of teaching and learning
For all those who are seeking work that the Lord would grant them jobs in keeping with their vocation
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Art: DAVID, Jacques-Louis Christ on the Cross (1782)
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