The Start of the Great Parade

(email from Don Barnhouse, Jr. - April 2020) ​ "He has stripped the principalities and powers, and paraded them in public behind him in his triumphal procession." - Colossians 2:15 Jesus was called the only begotten of the Father before the resurrection, but after that triumphal day he is called “the firstborn among many brethren.” We can be cheered all through the year just by recalling what happened on Easter, not only to Jesus but also to us and to the whole world. Death was defeated, for one thing. Where is its sting now? Where now is the victory which the grave had over all humanity until that day? Jesus, the Anointed One, went down into the grave, as we say when we recite the Apostles' Creed, and conquered it: John had a vision of Jesus as he is today: ​ “Fear not! I am the First and the Last, and the Living One. I died, and see, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and the grave.” - Revelation 1:17,18 ​ So speaks Jesus through John, and it is part of a message to the churches: to us. When he died, he went into Paradise, taking the one thief with him, and when he ascended into Heaven he took all those righteous dead with him who had been waiting there, like the poor beggar Lazarus who had gone there to be with Abraham. They were in the “triumphal procession” Paul refers to in our key verse. What’s more, Jesus preached “to the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” What a demonstration of love! Peter explains: “They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God.” This is behind the word from Paul: “When he ascended on high he led captive a host of captives” (Ephesians 4:8). And, as Jesus had explained during his life on earth, “you cannot plunder a strong man's house unless you first bind the strong man.” Luke records his explanation in these words: “When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his goods are in peace; but when one stronger than he assails him and over-comes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoil.” Jesus “disarmed the principalities and powers,” as one translation of our key verse in Colossians puts it. Others say he “stripped,” or “spoiled” them. And then he took his host of captives and ascended into Heaven, where he is seated at the right hand of the Father. Just imagine the excitement of that parade! If we are in Christ, if we are risen with him, then we too have been made to sit in heavenly places with him. It’s as good as done. What a collection of triumphs! Meditate: Colossians 2:15; Revelation 1:17,18