Colossians 1:12-14 Giving thanks to the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:… 1. Turn from your inheritance of tears, anxiety, transitory stewardship; and you who have an inheritance of fame, respectability, etc., and lift up your eyes to the inheritance of light. 2. We have here an expression incomprehensible to many, but comprehended by a new illumination; as a bird of the greenwood may comprehend freedom, an antelope the wide wilderness, a creature of the waters its native seas. Thus not only by original but informed instinct do we comprehend the inheritance. 3. The text stands in contrast to that other inheritance from whence we have been delivered — the power of darkness, beneath whose sway we all were born, and familiarity with which enables us to appreciate the inheritance of light. We have heard of the salt mines of Cracow, where human beings labour and never see the eyes of the sun. To one born there how strange the stories of the upper world. It is a picture of the human heart without the Saviour; its faculties are all like spars and crystals in a cavern, and how hearty its rapture when it surveys its new world, and is made meet for the inheritance. 4. It is a purchased and promised possession, and is ours neither by purchase nor conquest. How could we, born in caves of darkness, have battled our way up to the terraces of light? How have passed through opposing hosts of darkness, and entered within the shining enclosures? 5. What is it? We can understand a human inheritance, park and mansion. The inheritance of light is our true and real being; pure vision; the insight of a holy nature. It represents a perfect union of the nature and the state. The mind and heart are full of light, and the light within creates light around. This is heaven; the residence of God who "is light," and of His people who are "the children of light." Even on earth we are able, in a degree, to rise to it. We know the light within, without, and beyond, and their respective glories. (Paxton Hood.) Parallel Verses KJV: Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: |
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