Christ Reveals and Restores Humanity
Today’s devotional
Christian hope begins with a startling claim: the eternal Son shares our human life. Jesus does not observe our embodied existence from a safe distance. He enters it, living among people in time and place. His humanity is real, and his divinity is not a promotion awarded for being an unusually admirable human being.
Colossians 1 names Christ as the image of the invisible God and relates both creation and reconciliation to him. The life God made and the life God restores belong together in Jesus. We come to him to learn what faithful humanity means, allowing his life to question our assumptions about strength, independence, dignity, and success.
Jesus reveals human life offered in love to the Father and to others. He serves, speaks truth, welcomes, prays, and rests. His dependence upon the Father belongs to his faithful life. Growing toward him does not require one personality or identical abilities. It gives our different lives a common direction in truthful, embodied love.
Yet an example alone cannot forgive guilt, restore our relation to God, or defeat death. Sin has damaged desires and relationships that greater competence cannot mend by itself. Colossians places reconciliation in Christ's bodily death on the cross. God acts through him to make peace with people who cannot manufacture their own reconciliation.
Hebrews 2 joins this saving action to Jesus' sharing of flesh and blood. He enters the reality of death, releases people held in its fear, and is merciful toward those who need his help. His life, obedience, death, and resurrection belong together. The one who reveals our calling is also the Savior who meets our need.
We can therefore bring Jesus more than our plans for becoming better. We can bring the wrong we need forgiven, the relationship we cannot restore alone, and the fear we cannot master. His grace calls forth a real response without making us the source of salvation. The life he restores remains bodily and relational, lived with neighbors whose dignity also deserves our care.
Adapted from chapter 25, “The Truly Human One,” in Becoming Fully Human by Dr. R. C. Titus.
Read the Scripture
Open each passage and read slowly. Notice a word, question, or invitation that asks for your attention.
Colossians 1:15-22 · WEBU
15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16For by him all things were created in the heavens and on the earth, visible things and invisible things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things have been created through him and for him.
17He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.
18He is the head of the body, the assembly, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.
19For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him,
20and through him to reconcile all things to himself by him, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens, having made peace through the blood of his cross.
21You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds,
22yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without defect and blameless before him,
Hebrews 2:14-18 · WEBU
14Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
15and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
16For most certainly, he doesn’t give help to angels, but he gives help to the offspring of Abraham.
17Therefore he was obligated in all things to be made like his brothers, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.
18For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.
Pause and respond
For reflection
Where do I need to receive Christ's saving help instead of treating him only as an example I must manage to follow?
A practice for today
Name one place where effort alone has not made you whole. Bring it honestly to Christ in prayer, then identify one faithful response his grace makes possible today.
A prayer
Jesus Christ, eternal Son and merciful Savior, help me receive both the life you reveal and the salvation you give. Forgive my attempts to secure myself through achievement. Restore my relation to God and teach me to meet my neighbors with truthful love. Amen.
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