Who is Jesus to you?
Paul presents a fairly developed Cristology in Colossians 1.
He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;
all things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in all things he himself might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile all things for him,
making peace by the blood of his cross
through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.
A Christology is not a historical recounting of the deeds and teachings of Chist. Cristology develops what we know of the historical Jesus and explores the meaning of the person and events as it relates to the present reality of the Church. The Gospels themselves, written many years after the death of Jesus, are both a history and a Christology.
Christian commitment to Social Justice is itself based on a particular Christology. The Kingship of Jesus the Christ leads some to formulate a Christology of dominance and power. But, for others, the Chistology presented in the Gospels places the Christ on a cross, presiding from a lonely wooden tower. For them, their King who reigns from the throne of a sickbed, a hospice, a hovel built on the side of a Third World dumps where he earns his living, a cardborad box beneath an overpass that warms and shelters him at night, the back units of a mental institution or the strapped bed of the profoundly developmentally delayed.
Christology impacts discipleship. The partcular discipleship to Christ the servant King includes care for the needy, the marginal, the oppressed. We are anointed into the ministry of the King we reach out in compassion and service to where Gospel Royalty abides.
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