The
Son He Loves
We always thank God,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have
heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people—
the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and
about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has
come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing
throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day
you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful
minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the
Spirit.
For this reason, since
the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually
ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and
understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the
Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in
the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his
glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving
joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance
of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the
dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in
whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians
1:3-14
Because of that “Son He
Loves,” we have redemption.
We know what happened
with Adam and Eve. We know they lost their innocence when they gained
knowledge. With their loss of innocence came the need for hope, hope that their
guilt and shame could be removed and goodness restored. Today we know that the
only hope we have is in our belief that Jesus Christ died for our sins. We will
go to heaven because of that faith and knowledge.
Hope
for the Christian is a certainty – because its basis is Christ.
Our
Daily Bread – December 2, 2012