Yesterday it was a rare thing in Autumn, a calm day, and I was able to detour on the way to work and look at the harbour. Here we see one of the dredges that keeps the inner harbour navigable and a container: this is not a natural space, but one that Dunedin has built (and then basically abandoned — with larger ships most if not all the container work is done 10 km away where the big ships can berth)

Today’s passages are all fairly theological and challenging, and this is probably the most understandable of them all. But in doing so, it causes any Unitarians around to have a problem with exploding heads. For if Christ was there from the beginning of creation, and this universe is his handiwork in the same way that the wharf was made by the Otago Port.

The second point, that Christ created, explodes the high church of atheism, who want the comfort of a cold universe and oblivion at the end of this existence: the idea of a living and active God terrifies them.

Particularly one who saves, who intervenes.

COLOSSIANS 1:15-23

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

²¹And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him – ²³provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.

In this fallen world, we are going to do evil deeds, because as this world is fallen, we are broken. We can delude ourselves that we are being right: we can say we are in the righteous, but we are not there by anything we have done.

There is no scale on which our good deeds can outweigh the bad. A man can do great things — but he will still hang as a murderer if he kills his rival or wife. One sin taints all.

And we have all sinned more than once: we have all broken our own standards, let alone those of Christ: where the thought of murder, or lust, or envy is wrong, not merely the killing, seduction or stealing. And our current society is broken: the recent Atlas of Prejudice about Mr Putin says more about the West than Putin.

It is the very creator of this world who stepped in and took our place and paid the penalty that we should have. It is only in Christ that we are righteous. There is no other way: and the cost of that way is counter this culture. For you have to firstly realize who Christ is: and what he did to make the universe, before we all broke it. I spend time seeking shards of beauty I can photograph, be they bollards or containers, in the (increasingly brief) periods when the light is correct as winter comes.

Secondly, we need to realize that we are not merely guilty, but we will naturally turn and return to the same habits of evil. And that we need a saviour. This is one reason that Peter was a disciple, and not the local Rabbi: Peter knew he was a sinner.

And then we need to realize that we cannot earn salvation by what we do. There is no process to make ourselves right with God that does not bring us penitent to the Cross of Christ.

And much of the liberal argument. and the argument of the modern atheist, who have far greater faith in evolution than I have in my God, relates to this doubt. That their systems of theology (and atheistic evolution is a theology) are mere errors, and when we are all exposed they will be found wanting. And, turning away from the cross, be left in a hell of their own making.