Colossians 1 and Reconciliation

Well greetings and welcome to the dividing line. My name is james white. And if you've got a bible which any more means if you did not forget to bring your iphone with you i think i mentioned yeah i mentioned on tuesday that technology almost got me on sunday but uh turn with me to colossians chapter one normally when addressing this text and i suppose that's one of the drawbacks of being an apologist is that you know first thing you think about first thing i think about when i think of james chapter 2 is i'm gonna have to be dealing with 214 through 24 and some kind of context of work salvation or something like that.

And there is a danger. Uh it's one of the reasons i'm glad that i am involved in a local church and regularly have to preach in that local church because there's a and being um so apologetically minded that other parts of scripture that aren't necessarily overly controversial will go skittering past colossians chapter one.

Colossians 1 and the Christological and Anti-Gnostic Reading

Incredible text. Always be aware of the fact that outside of the believing christian community uh you will encounter a lot of people who will reject pauline authorship of colossians and ephesians um they do so on utterly unsubstantiated theoretical grounds they create a theoretical history of the church and if anything addresses what they think only came later then that's a pseudepigraphal uh forgery uh maybe you know if they want to be nice they'll say it was the pauline community uh that produced it blah blah blah.

But once again like i said i hate seeing people you know we get them excited about the bible. And then you forget or you didn't hear one of the programs where i warned you that one of the most spiritually dangerous places for a christian is called the christian bookstore or the christian section of amazon .com anymore.

And um you go pick up a you know figure all commentaries are equally good. They're not and run into some wild-eyed theory. And since they've never heard anybody talk about it all of a sudden they're you know calling in going well i'm sure i'm sure this has never happened i'm sure rich has never gotten a call from someone who says i have to talk to james.

What. Right now um how many have you gotten of that today. Uh you know um and it's all about something like this that it's not that it's new it's just they've just now run into it and it's causing them no end of pain and difficulty which is understandable.

But uh anyway uh clashes chapter one it's very similar to john chapter one hebrews chapter one um has the background of an incipient form of of gnosticism and utilizes a lot of the language of the gnostics against them.

And most of the time we're focused upon looking at uh 1 15 through 17 what it means for jesus to be prototokos the first board of all creation uh new world translation mistranslation of verses 16 and 17 insertion of the word other um that type of stuff.

But that's not what i want to look at gonna gonna get past that. And uh someone on uh uh on uh twitter has just uh posted uh christian section on amazon and uh yeah it doesn't look like much of what's there is overly oh a bunch of mark jones stuff.

Okay all right but different mark joneses. So i guess i don't know it's really hard to see really teeny tiny print uh in fact i i apologized everybody on twitter this morning because i initially engaged with this atheist who asked me at first it seemed like an innocuous question about why we don't kill people anymore.

Don't we believe that the you know the mosaic law and all the rest of that stuff. And you know i've been preaching through the holiness code for over a year and the little pictures especially when they're on a high resolution screen that's running at fairly high resolution can get really small.

And it wasn't until like the second time i was getting ready to respond to the atheist i went and saw that he had a very profane blasphemous uh picture for his twitter account and i had already responded to him once.

So it was just like block is there a maximum number of people you can block on twitter. I may be getting close i may be getting close. It's uh just become a lot easier to go. What what what what what what what.

And uh life is is much happier that way. Anyway back to colossus chapter one sort of good that i have my bible program over here and twitter over here. It's nice. Uh uh distinction between the two. Verse 15.

He is the image of the invisible god the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things are created both in the heavens and on earth visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things have been created through him.

And for him he is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is also head of the body the church and he is the beginning the firstborn from the dead so that he himself will come to have first place in everything.

For it was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile. That's the term catalaso reconcile all things to himself having made peace through the blood of his cross through him i say whether things on earth or things in heaven.

And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind engaged in evil deeds yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.

If indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which i paul was made a minister.

Now as i said we normally focus upon the key christological section. But i think it's important to look at what comes after this when in verse 17 and he now we should talk about one thing from the christological section in the christological when i speak as christological section the specific text dealing with the nature of christ that is reflected in verses 15 and 16 and especially the fact that what is created in colossians 1 16 is top hanta.

Now there are there are other ways of saying the all all things in uh uh in greek and top hanta rather than simply you've heard of uh pantheism that's the pawn the all all is god god is all. So pan and ponta obviously are just different forms the same word.

But top hanta shows that the creation actually exists. There are concrete things in creation and this is what is created by christ uh visible invisible thrones lordships authorities top hanta through him and for him has been created and he is before pontoon all things and top hanta uh in auto soon estakin and all things hold together in him.

And so you you'll have that use. And then you'll have a different use when it is when you have pun in verse 19 because uh for in him uh it was his or the father's good pleasure uh for ponta play roma for all the fullness to dwell in him all the fullness.

Now what's important there is in colossians 2 9 we have uh hattie and otto katoki ponta play roma ponta play roma taste they are all the fullness of deity dwells in christ in colossians 2 9. So there's a lot of assertions being made in colossians that are very christologically important and very soteriologically important.

Because here having emphasized that christ holds all things together he is also head of the body the church the church. Now i don't my assumption is that for a lot of us for a lot of evangelicals the term protest i don't even know what it means anymore to be honest with you but and not sure what evangelical does either but non-roman catholic believers the church thinking of the church in universal expression is not as normative as the local expression is.

And it's pretty clear that here in colossians 1 18 we're talking about the whole body the body taken as a whole. He is the kefale he is the head of the body the church. He is the archaic the beginning which archaic can also mean origin and source.

But given the next phrase is prototicos ecto necron first born from the dead. Uh probably the beginning or the first to match with the the first born from the dead or no he might come to have a first place in all things.

So for some folks it's a little challenging or it almost it almost puts it outside of our realm of normal thought to think of the church being mentioned in such exalted language. Here we're talking about the creator of all things all this exalted language of christ.

And then once you say that then you say he has also had the body of the church. Right there in the midst of all this exalted language of christ comes his relationship to the church. And look i know dealing with the everyday stuff in church recognizing we're all sinners and recognizing bad things happen in the fellowship.

And the new testament talks about this all the time. The new testament you know if we would just read it and recognize the apostolic period wasn't this perfect piece of perfect time of peace and joy and all the rest of stuff.

There are all sorts of problems in new testament churches as well. The apostolic churches then maybe wouldn't think this way but it's hard for us to look at the reality in the fallen world of the experience of the church and then see it likewise in this exalted place.

But you got to remember the new testament gives us both the now and the not yet. It says you know it talks a lot about what our experience now is but it also says we're seated in the heavenly places in christ jesus.

So it's good they're both true. And holding them together requires balance. There's no no question about it. And so there is an exalted view of the church in the new testament. And i really bothers me when i hear anybody just coming down the church all the time just boom.

It's all church bad church. But it's normally somebody who actually is disobeying the commands of scripture to be involved in a local assembly. It's that that's normally the person that's just constantly going after the church is someone like that.

Not always not always. But generally anyway you have this discussion of christ as having the first place in all things uh for in him he was pleased for all the fullness to dwell and don't have time today to talk about what play roma was.

Um how play roma uh referred to how the gnostics misdefined play roma and how paul is really slapping on the face over and over again um with what he's he's actually saying here. But verse 19 is an anti-gnostic polemic.

There is a by positive teaching. There is a negative refutation of gnostic belief in what is said in verse 19. But it was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile ta ponta ice out on to reconcile all things.

Exact same term used of his creative work just a few lines before to reconcile ta ponta ice out on to himself. So the subject starting verse 19 is the father and it is through him that is the son. You can't even begin to understand this without a recognition of john 5 unity of father and son differing roles but accomplishing one thing there's just it's.

It's a trinitarian understanding doesn't make any sense any other way. But it was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile all things to himself. So that is reconciling everything to the father having made peace the blood of his cross christ cross through him i say where things on earth are things in heaven again purposefully drawing the connection back to verses 16 and 17 and the exhaustive extent of the creation.

Now this is a text that has been utilized a number of times um by universalists to argue that if all things are reconciled to god then eventually since there is this hapax legomena there hapax garner means a word used only one time in scripture um i ray not poi a sauce to make peace.

To make peace it's related to peacemakers but it's different root form. That's why it's. They're both uh hopbox but they're sort of pretty close related having made peace to the blood of his cross. And so there's a lot of folks uh that will look at this and say hey universal reconciliation accomplished through the cross peace everything will eventually be in right relationship to god.

Well i suppose if you want to isolate texts and ignore everything uh then you can sort of skip past the fact that when paul makes application of this in verse 22 and yet speaking of those who were formerly alienated and hostile in mind and i suppose i should have been feeding this this whole time but i was just figuring people look at their own bibles because i'm not pointing to stuff specifically and and not doing textual criticism.

That's why i haven't been we haven't been putting it up but uh i suppose it wouldn't you know kill anybody if i did um window and accordance there you go. But you'll notice that and although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind engaged in evil deeds yet he has now done what.

Well it's the exact same route here reconciled you in his fleshly body through death. So it's a complete parallel to what was just said in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.

If indeed you abide you continue in the faith firmly established steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you've heard which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which i paul was made a minister.

So if universalism was true why. Why this. Why this statement. If indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard if universalism is true it doesn't matter whether you know what the gospel is or not everyone's gonna get saved eventually love wins as someone made money saying um so you can you can isolate these texts and try to make them say something other.

But it's just not possible to read paul as paul and come out with a universalistic reading it just it just doesn't work. So what is being said back here. Well what does it mean then through him to reconcile all things to himself having made peace to the blood of his cross if there will if there will be punishment in eternity to come.

This is also at least for some there's all sorts of forms of conditionalism. But for some while their arguments is that eventually and i need some of that stuff too i totally spaced it say apologies. Um if there will ever be if there there has to be a time when peace is made and if there is any punishment going on then peace does not exist.

That's one of the arguments uh of the conditionalist. So what does this mean. What does it mean through him to reconcile all things to himself having made peace through the blood of his cross through him i say whether things on earth are things in heaven.

Now i think this text more than any other does indicate that there is a universal impact of the cross that transcends the limitation of the cross to merely soteriological categories. Try that again. And with small words right.

Um with meaningful words maybe. In other words we can never escape the centrality of the redemptive purpose of the cross the union of the elect with christ um the providing of the foundation of the great exchange all of those things that it's right there on the surface of the text it's right there.

It's central to the argument that is the primary purpose of the cross. There's no question about it. But because of the nature of the one who gave himself and the roles that he will take in the eschaton there are other impacts of the successful accomplishment of the task assigned to the son by the father.

And i think this is one of them. Because the cross has taken place there is a perfect ground of judgment that will allow god to judge in accordance with his nature. In other words god has demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners christ died for us.

Right. Know the language. And so the glory of that act is so great that the rejection of it is basis for condemnation in and of itself. We think of john's language when he speaks of in john chapter three.

Uh and echoed elsewhere in the gospel of john as well. But he believes not. It's condemned already because he's not believing in the name of the only begotten son of god. There is a there is a condemnation upon that person for the rejection of such a clear revelation from god.

And likewise. Yes i know. So we're out of the uh plastics or the paper stuff. Yes. Yes. I don't know why but i sure hope. Oh good. No i no i wasn't worried about being dirty. I was just worried about being hot.

Um some of you are wondering where the tea went. It's too hot for tea. Um sorry. If you've got the fan going down there you got the ac running. Yeah it's gonna be 96. I think they said by tuesday. So we're we're getting close to the uh triple digits here in phoenix.

And you don't need any extra warmth at that time. So it'll be a while till we see our ribos again. Anyway paul clearly places the impact of reconciliation in salvation in the following verses. In the spirit's act of changing the heart and the mind.

Uh verse 22. He has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach. Well who's that. It's church. I mean it's it's individually what we experience.

But the church is what is presented before him holy and blameless beyond reproach. And the church is made up of individuals. And so this is salvation that's being spoken of here. Um and yet very clearly it's not just all human beings because all human beings do not continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast.

And uh most human beings don't even have the hope of the gospel which has been heard and proclaimed and all creation so on and so forth. So when it comes to the individual's experience of what this reconciliation is.

Well we are reconciled through the work of jesus christ. But what about someone who remains under god's wrath. Does that make. Does that make god's the son's work meaningless in their behalf. Or is paul's point that the judgment of god that then comes upon those individuals is just and good and righteous.

And has been demonstrated to be so because of the demonstration of god's righteousness at the cross there was a universal demonstration not only of god's power but of god's justice in his own self-giving at the cross.

And so while my peace with god is based upon that that exchange of his righteousness for my right my my sin uh etc etc uh christ taking my punishment i receive his righteousness while that's my personal experience as part of the people of god even the judgment the just judgment of god upon sinners is demonstrated to be just because of what takes place at the cross.

The cross has a greater judicial demonstration in the sense that it shows god's forbearance god's patience god's purpose. And none of this requires an abandonment of election or god's divine decree or any of that.

But it does require us to look fully at everything that is said and to recognize that if it was god's intention from the beginning to demonstrate the fullness of his character and to judge sin justly by the judgment of the one he has appointed the son then the cross demonstrates his power in fulfilling all of these things.

And therefore everything has the right relationship to god through the perfect accomplishment of his purposes. And so this term reconciliation just as sanctification can have a positional as well as an experience as an experiential aspect.

Reconciliation likewise can have a universal aspect that differs from the personal aspect only those who as it says in verse 23 continuing the faith firmly established and steadfast not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard only those that that's descriptive of receive personal reconciliation with god and hence have peace having been justified by faith romans 5 1.

But there's also a sense of universal reconciliation in the sense that because of the accomplishment of christ's work then god's judgment is demonstrated to be just in all aspects of his governance over that which he himself has created the demonstration of his wisdom to the to the powers and so on and so forth spoken of also in the book of colossians.

Responding to the Critique of “Racial Reconciliation”

Now you may be going you've gone on for half an hour now i didn't realize it'd been that long and you have not specifically um explain why this is relevant. Well some of you may have seen the article that i posted last night and then expanded upon i actually posted it i don't know what about three o 'clock in the afternoon i think i had in there had been a number of responses that had been thrown out there in uh response to my 545 word facebook article um but the one that had been uh retweeted and called a a scholarly response and you need to interact with this and and russell moore had had retweeted it and so on and so forth um i decided all right uh everybody keeps saying you you need to you know and it's from the reformed african-american network and all the rest of the stuff you need to uh you need to read that.

Okay i'll i'll read it. So i read it and just went wow and i just i just saw so many issues um so clearly the form the the the shadow of this external source of authority this this narrative that does not is not derived from biblical ex-jesus it's not derived from biblical categories.

It's it's very familiar to me from other movements as well in its basic form uh and i could just see very clearly the impact it was having on um really the twisting of my words and and intentions and it's very very divisive and so i thought well you know what i am going to respond to this and i'm going to quote i think i quoted over half of it and i'm going to respond to it and i'm going to respond to its accusations and i'm going to point out what the issues are here that we have um a christianized religionized um critical race theory type thing that is being promoted within the context of a reformed um and obviously rather young uh group of individuals and so i wrote my article and it again like i said quoted a major portion i didn't measure exactly that much but a major portion of the article that i was responding to so i post that about three o 'clock uh about 10 minutes later the website crashed and um may have had something to do with that may have not i don't know um so i had to reformat the um article and put it on my personal wordpress blog um and i don't know about two hours later i look on twitter and the author of the original article has responded to me and says this is all i'm gonna say to you this is the only response you're gonna get and there's some pictures you know how you can take screen caps and i i haven't figured out how to do this in twitter yet but i i guess you have to use the web interface or something but you can take these screen captures and just pile them all onto one thing and then you have to click on each one it blows up and and you can't select text or anything like that.

And um you know i think it was initially designed to take multiple pictures of your cat or something um but now people are actually responding by this means. And so i saved the three different screen captures and i had to go to church uh we still have uh we we're we still have wednesday night services very unusual for most people we sell wednesday services and uh so i got back last evening and added a um what was it 28 almost 2800 word.

Of course part of that was responding to the author. So quoting the author i had to type out had to take each one of those graphics and sit there and type out what was in the graphics. Um 2800 word additional so i think that was at 7300 about 7300 words i think is what that article now stands at and i added it to the bottom of the as an update to the previous post so it'll be in one spot i thought that was probably the best way to do it and i'm sure that the outcry has been just as great as the week before last.

But i already have such a long block list uh that i haven't seen nearly as much of it. Uh i've already blocked most of the noisiest folks but i still saw a lot of stuff and a lot of it utilizing this kind of language that you know speaking truth to power and white privilege and all the the buzzwords that you're supposed to that everyone's supposed to just now bow down to and go.

Oh yeah yeah i agree because if you don't then you're a racist which i find to be a real diminishment of the actual problem of racism when you conflate disagreeing with a racially based narrative with actual acts of racism when you put the two of them together that's dangerous.

And it actually helps to hide acts of racism because that's it's not racism to disagree with critical race theory or religionized versions of it or any of the other type of narratives to disagree with that does not make you a racist by any stretch the imagination.

And if you say it does you are assisting in hiding what's really bad about actual racism. And since racism is a sin then biblically anybody can be a racist. I am afraid and i happen to know that there are many people who don't think they can be a racist because they're the wrong color.

There are people honestly when i was telling someone about this they're like no no one believes. I said oh no no no they they yeah there are. Yeah um i remember within the past 10 years michael medved had a uh program had a uh young lady on in fact a woman professor somewhere who was arguing that it's not possible to be black and a racist because you have to have power to be a racist.

And so if you're in a minority and you don't have the power then you can't be a racist. Now is it not just simple biblical common sense that that attitude should never exist in the christian church. Now this woman that i heard on the radio she wasn't wasn't claiming to be a christian so but sadly i have already encountered this idea and there is a tremendous amount of racism in the black community.

It's expressed in music all the time. I can't help but i mean sometimes i'll be sitting there at the street corner and my windows are rolled up and i can still hear it. You know what i mean. Yeah my windows are rattling it to me and i can hear the slurs.

I hear the racist attitude. I see it on television all the time. I see it in the language and it is almost never challenged. It's almost never challenged. Uh oh yeah we only get into that. So anyway i saw all this stuff coming.

And then one of the things i i tried to have a few conversations with some people see how far it could go and without becoming really super nasty. And for some folks it wasn't very long uh but for others a little bit longer.

And one person said i just cannot believe that you can just so easily dismiss the cries of your brothers and sisters for justice. Where have i done that. And when you push what he's actually saying is well you hurt people by what you said.

And i go why. What was untruthful about what i said. Well it's not that it was untruthful. It's just the way it was said. Why you see for you to be offended by something you have to be able to explain what was how.

How did you discern that it was the intention of this individual to offend you. What about their life. What about their actions. What about their worldview would give you evidence that it was their intention that these words would be taken offense to be taken in an offensive fashion.

Now i know i just dated myself because i know that in our society today you can't even ask why something's offensive. Because as long as somebody says it is it is. And you're just stop right there. That is irrational.

No meaningful discourse can take place in our society. And no meaningful biblical discourse can take place within the church when that kind of unthinking emotionalism that kind of post-modern blather is allowed to rule the day.

Your emotions are your emotions. You're a human being. You can control them. You can control them. That's the biblical teaching about what people made in the image of god can do. And so i'm sitting here going.

What what you know this one person who was saying you're ignoring their pleas for justice. No i wasn't i was i was talking about the damage that is done by a rebellious attitude and fatherlessness in our country and especially in the black community.

What does that have to do with justice. Well you just i didn't say it right. Because you see you're supposed to well i'm not supposed to say it first of all. And secondly it has to be accompanied by well it's sort of like it has to be accompanied by the the pinch of incense upon upon the altar.

And instead of saying kaiser kurios you have to say critical race theory kurios or something like that. You know you have to tip the hat. You have to acknowledge the supremacy of the narrative or risk the wrath which is certainly what i've seen.

And one of the one of the terms that came up was well you're supposed to be seeking racial reconciliation racial reconciliation. I i i point out to a number of folks that uh the language that's used very often in this uh particular discussion is the language of warfare language of battle.

As if i'm on one side of a battle against a racial minority. And i'm like i i wasn't aware. Oh that's right. You aren't aware. That's that's that white privilege thing. Uh there's you know there's no way of reasoning with the with the con the convinced person here because it all ends up spinning back to uh the same starting point.

But i'm like well wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute racial reconciliation. What what do you mean by that. Well look at what happened in america when well in the middle of the 19th century i don't remember.

Okay and my parents don't remember and my grandparents don't remember and my great-grandparents don't remember. And my great-great-grandparents were born about then. And i happen to know that at least on my dad's side the one line wasn't even here at the time uh because they were born in dundee scotland.

So um i was not raised by someone telling me well you know um our ancestors were treated pretty badly treated pretty badly. And so you just you just need to think about that every day and and if you have any problems in your life it's because of what happened to them.

I wasn't you know my mom had a real simple simple thing that she would say all the time there are two kinds of people in this world those who choose to be happy and those who choose not to be now. That may be just a little on the simplistic side but there's a lot of truth to it.

And i would just i utterly reject the idea that i can go well you know the reason that i didn't accomplish this or the reason i didn't do that is because of what happened 100 years before i was born has nothing to do with anything.

Oh but but i cannot yeah my parent my my family was not well off at all. And i think any of us if we go far enough back in that crazily tangled family tree we'll be able to find people that had been mistreated and put down and everything else.

And what does that have to do with me especially in the church. And so i get back to this this concept of racial reconciliation which makes it sound like i'm guilty for what my quote-unquote race did 200 years ago and that therefore i'm supposed to seek reconciliation for something i didn't do but someone generations earlier well not even related to me directly because see i did i just cannot function with this race idea.

I'm sorry i am not accountable for what white people did. I'm not i i can't. Um babe ruth white guy right. I think all right. Uh i'm not accountable for his home runs. I can't i can't take any credit for that.

Okay einstein white guy i i can't i didn't do. Well in math i can't take i can't take credit for that. Okay. And so this whole idea of credit blame back and forth race stuff i don't get it. I don't i don't think that way.

And so the idea i guess is however despite that is that no you need to seek the reconciliation of races. And i just i just want to cry and go. But i'm i don't think about races and i don't see any basis within.

And of course the term racial reconciliation here is within the church. Where do we get that. Where does that come from in the bible. I just where is it. And so i start thinking about reconciliation. And that's why i looked here.

And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind engaged in evil deeds is there anything about race there. I mean this is these are words directed to the whole church. Right. I'm almost afraid to be perfectly honest with you seeing some of the stuff i've seen i am almost afraid that there might be some people who are going well actually you know this was written to the church of colossi.

And so you know uh they would have been of this particular race. Well the funny thing is they're probably olive skin turkish type folks. They're smacked out in the middle of it. How do you. How do you.

Even this whole thing of race just doesn't work. Not biblically. Those are true words to every converted believer in jesus christ. There are no exceptions. There is no one that's not true of. There's no one who's born as a christian.

And so these words are true for everybody. You were formerly alienated and hostile in mind engaged in evil deeds. That is the testimony of every single believer today in jesus christ formally. Yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death.

That's true of every believer. That's true of everybody. What that means is there is no jewish christian church and no gentile christian church now. That was what that now that really was paul's concern.

That really was paul's concern. He was very very concerned that there not be two churches and that one is a little closer to god than the other. No even a verse that every christian i know has memorized for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god.

In that context the all is all jews and all gentiles. That covers the entirety of the human race. And so the whole idea of racialism utterly foreign here utterly foreign. What's the basis biblically of the demand that i show forgiveness to someone else.

It's that i have been shown forgiveness. Right. So if i have been reconciled in his fleshly body through death then it follows that everyone in the body has experienced that same reconciliation. So if you start talking about if you start talking about making it a goal of the church to pursue racial reconciliation you're now adding a goal that is outside of biblical parameters and seems to misunderstand what god has already done in the work of the gospel itself because we have been reconciled in his fleshly body through death in order to present you and that's the plural you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.