And you that sometime alienated and in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled … in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight (Colossians 1:21-22).

Graduation day! When the hard work of study and training is over and rewards are given out at colleges and universities. It is when successful candidates are presented as complete in their qualifications and ready to face the outside world.

Now, if you’re a Christian believer saved by grace and pursuing the “high calling of God in Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:14), the good news is that there awaits just such a “graduation” event for you too. It is when you will be presented faultless before God Himself as the above verses clearly teach.   

Already you have been reconciled to God Himself. 2 Corinthians 5:18 declared to the Acts period believers:

And all things are of God who hath reconciled us unto Himself by Jesus Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. To wit, that Christ was in God reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

 Colossians 1:21-22 says more, revealing that the purpose for the reconciliation in the now dispensation of the grace of God (Ephesians 3:1-4) is to present us as faultless and holy in God’s sight. Evidently, God already views us as “unblameable and unreprovable” but the full reality of that will only be known to us when we are officially and finally “presented” before the Lord’s heavenly throne.

This will be our “investiture” when we are installed in our completed holiness before Him. Amazingly the verb to “present” also means to be “placed beside”. Think of that: our holiness acquired only as a gift through the Lord’s death, burial and resurrection – his merits, not ours – will accord us a seat beside Him as He rules both heaven and earth.

Notice that while the reconciliation has already taken place and that because of it God already views us as “holy and unreprovable” the actual presentation of us as such awaits a future time. It will occur at the Lord’s appearing when “judges the quick and the dead” and brings in his “kingdom” (Titus 2:13, 2 Timothy 4:1).

As members of the “church which is “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23), we are the called out company already organically made part of who He is. “For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones” (Ephesians 5:30).

As we see ourselves in the present reality that does not seem to be the case. He is holy and in some ways, though better than we were, we still fall short of his high standard. But, our hope is that at his “appearing” we will be manifested as we really are, since God has said that we have been reconciled …

… in the body of his flesh through death, to present you [that is, us] holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight… if ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard and which was preached to every creature under heaven, where I Paul am made a minister (Colossians 22-23).

As said, our unveiling as to who we really are in Christ – that is, holy and without blame – will take place at the Lord’s appearing. This is made plain in Colossians 3: 1-4 which teaches that we should:

Set your affection on things above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.

Right now we are “dead” to what we really are and what we will be in glory. But we will be made fully alive to all that we will be in Christ at his appearing in glory. This momentous event has been my most precious hope for twenty years now. Looking closer at the appearing we learn that the Greek word epiphanea it translates means a blazing forth of the Lord’s glory as He intervenes to take over government of the world

 It is indeed our “blessed Hope” (Titus 2:13). Importantly, the hope of this stupendous intervention by the Lord into the world and the affairs of men stands in sharp contrast to “hope of Israel” for which the Apostle Paul in Acts 28:20 was “bound with this chain”. That hope was the resurrection of Israel’s faithful dead to restore the nation in God’s sight.

But at the appearing God Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, will lift the curse of disease and death, poverty, war and futility still lying on mankind as a result of Adam’s sin. He will turn the hearts of the people back to Himself and restore the earth to the pristine beauty in which He first created it. All this to fulfil his promise to restitute, or restore, “all that the prophets have spoken since the world began” (Acts 3:21).

For you and I, it will be the day of our presentation in the glory of what God has made us.

(See more studies on this wonderful Day of Christ, brought in by his appearing, elsewhere on this website).

John Dudley Aldworth

You’re welcome to contact me at the email address below.

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com

Website: https://www.dayofchristmnistries.com/rss/all.xml