Reading
Colossians 1:15-23Recap and Introduction
Last time, we introduced the letter to Colossae and Paul's reason for writing: the people were being influenced away from the gospel by notions from other religions and philosophies.Paul's first remedy was to encourage the Colossians to seek the full knowledge of God's will through the wisdom and understanding brought by the Holy Spirit, so they could live as genuine, fruitful and determined disciples of Christ.
Paul's second remedy is for the Colossians to have a clear understanding of just who Jesus is and what he's done for them, and that's what we'll be considering today.
The Supreme Christ
There's no greater aspiration a preacher can have than to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of all mankind. The passage we now have before us is as good a starting point as there is. It tells us of- Christ's divinity,
- Christ's pre-eminence over creation,
- Christ's pre-eminence over the new creation, and
- Christ's purpose in redemption.
Christ's Divinity
We heard last time how the Father rescued us from the dominion of darkness (the realm under Satan's control) and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. We know that 'the Son' means Jesus, but the important thing to grasp here is that before Jesus was the Jesus we know, he was the Son. He has always been; he is co-eternal with the Father.In a later, fully developed form of the religion known as gnosticism, Christ was seen as the last in a long line of intermediaries between God and the material world and who indwelt a man called Jesus but left him before the crucifixion. The intermediaries were necessary because the heavenly world was good and couldn't mix with the evil, material world.
If the mystery religions we suspect to have been at work in Colossae were pushing an early form of these ideas, then Paul refutes them emphatically by what he writes here. Christ had a physical body (v22), the Father was delighted to have all his fullness on display through Christ (v19), so much so that, if you want to know what the Father is like, you can look at the Son who 'is the image of the invisible God' (v15).
Just so we have it clear in our minds, let's remind ourselves of what John says at the beginning of his Gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' Later in that chapter he writes, 'The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.' Here, 'the Word' again refers to Jesus, the Son, who is God.
There was nothing insignificant about the Jesus the Colossians had come to trust in; Paul wanted them to understand that. This is the same Jesus we trust in today.
What a Saviour: God, fully expressed in fully-human form.
Christ's Pre-eminence Over Creation
Paul goes on to describe the Son, the image of God, as 'the firstborn over all creation.' It's important to understand what this expression means.The Jehovah's Witnesses, and other cults, take this term to mean that Christ was created, not eternal, but that's a misunderstanding and a misapplication of the term. And, as John has it in his gospel, 'Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.' So, logically, Christ must have existed before all created things because he couldn't have created himself!
So, what does firstborn mean? In middle-eastern cultures, the first-born son was the sign of paternal strength. He received a larger inheritance and a special blessing, he had a position of family leadership, and an honoured place at mealtimes. It's primarily about status.
Modern science provides us with a number of theories for how everything came to be, the big bang theory being one of them, but it has nothing to say about who initiated creation or what it's for.
Paul tells us all things were created in the Son, through him, and for him. He was the agent through whom the Father created everything, and he's the one it was all created for. That's why the Son is pre-eminent, the firstborn over all creation, the creation that he later entered to make himself known as Jesus.
What do people think of Jesus today?
- Some doubt he ever existed. Wrong!
- To some, he was just a man who taught some good ideas. Wrong!
- To the Jew, he was a rabbi who went off the rails. Wrong!
- To the Muslim, he's a very important prophet in a line ending with Mohamed. Wrong!
- To the Hindu, he's another deity to put on the shelf with all the others. Wrong!
- To the cults, he's a man who became a god. Wrong!
Christ's Pre-eminence in the New Creation
Next, Paul tells us that the Son is pre-eminent in the new creation. We are told that, 'he is the head of the body, the church'. God's church is not a human institution or a building. All God's redeemed children make up the church universal, whatever tradition they they may follow.Paul uses the metaphor of a human body to explain how we function: the church is the body, Christ is the head. Now, in a normal, healthy human being, the body acts out the instructions from the head. If my will is to move to the other side of the room, then my body moves to the other side of the room. Now I'm telling my body to move back again, because that's where my notes are!
In Ephesians, Paul writes that '… God … appointed [Christ] to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.' Christ is on hand so that we can become all he intends for us. Just as God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, so Christ is pleased to have all his fullness expressed through us. And, perhaps, there's something in this verse about Christ finding fulfilment through his church: we are a joy and a delight for him!
The Colossians had to understand that no one other than Christ could be their head, and that following other leads just doesn't work! The same is true for us.
Christ is our head, we are his body. Christ leads, we follow his will. We pray for God's kingdom to come so that his will may be done on earth, just as it is in heaven. We can discover '… his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives', as we heard last time.
Whilst we may be drawn from all walks of society, and may have many of the issues and hang-ups of our broken society, we're not here to be an expression of human society. Rather, we're here to demonstrate the kingdom of God. After all, we've been rescued from the dominion of darkness (which is where human society gets its problems) and brought into the kingdom of the Son.
- If Christ is not our head, we are a lifeless corpse!
- With Christ as our head we have the potential to change the world!
Paul tells the Colossians that Christ is the beginning of a whole new order. He's the firstborn from among the dead. He overcame death, and therefore has the highest honour in this new order. In Ephesians, Paul tells us we were dead in our transgressions but God has raised us up with Christ. We are members of God's new creation!
So Christ is supreme over the old creation, and he is supreme in the new.
And he is your Saviour!
Which brings us to:
Christ's Purpose in Redemption
If you look up the word alienation in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary you'll see that it means 'the state of estrangement' or 'the state of being owned by another' and Paul tells the Colossians that that was their problem before they found Christ. God's remedy was to reconcile all things to himself through Christ.The same is true for us. Like the Colossians, we were estranged from God and we belonged to another; we needed to be rescued from the dominion of darkness.
Not only that, the Colossians were enemies of God in the way their minds worked. Again, the same is true for us. The footnote in my NIV gives a slightly different reading for verse 21: 'you … were enemies in your minds, as shown by your evil behaviour.' You don't need a Ph.D. in psychology to know that the way we think governs the way we behave. What weirdness goes on in the mind of Donald Trump, I wonder… I don't want to imagine what goes on in the minds of child-grooming gangs.
But the bottom line here is that if Satan has your mind, he has you; you belong to another. The good news is that if God has your mind, then you are very firmly and fully his. We can be transformed in our thinking, and our alienation can end. Our lives can be renewed, and the endlessly repeated patterns of wrong behaviour can be broken and replaced with good patterns and wholesome living. We'll return to this theme when we get to chapter three.
Working through Christ, God has brought an end to our alienation. He's reconciled us to himself. He made peace with us and for us; we couldn't do it ourselves. And he offers peace and reconciliation and transformation to all who will come to him.
But this came at great cost to him. It came through the shedding of Christ's blood on the cross. Christ's physical body went through death. As Charles Wesley put it:
O Love divine! What hast thou done?
Th'immortal God hath died for me!
The Father's co-eternal Son
Bore all my sins upon the tree;
Th'immortal God for me hath died;
My Lord, my Love is crucified.
Is crucified for me and you,
To bring us rebels back to God:
Believe, believe the record true,
Ye all are bought with Jesu's blood,
Pardon for all flows from his side:
My Lord, my Love is crucified.
Our salvation came at great cost to him and brings great benefit for us. Through Christ we are made holy and can stand before God without blemish and free from accusation.
I don't know if anyone else here is like me. There are things in my past that I'm ashamed of; patterns of behaviour that derived from the way I thought. Often, I remember these things and, until quite recently, that usually ended up in my beating myself up all over again, wondering yet again how I could dare to approach God, feeling alienated, asking for forgiveness yet again. But there's been a change! I still remember those things, and that I did them, but now I find myself full of thankfulness that God has redeemed me from those things, I'm forgiven, Christ has made me holy and without blemish as far as God is concerned, and no one can level accusations at me for those things. I have been rescued from the dominion of darkness! Finally, the truth of that has worked it's way from my head to my heart!
Our passage ends with a warning. Our destiny is ours only if we keep the faith. It's possible to begin well but still end up lost. Paul's implication is that if the Colossians take notice of outside influences and go off course to follow them then they'll lose out on all that God has for them.
Paul tells them and us how to avoid this happening. He tells them they need to be established and firm. These are construction terms. Established implies having well-prepared, solid foundations. Firm implies being carefully and strongly built. In terms of what we've learnt from the letter so far, these come from
- finding and doing God's will, and
- understanding just who Jesus is and that no one else can supplant him, and
- trusting in what he alone can do for us.
Summary
There's no one like Jesus. There never has been and never will be anyone comparable with him.- He is God the eternal Son.
- He is pre-eminent over all creation.
- He is pre-eminent over the new creation and the head of the church.
- He has done all that was necessary to reconcile us with God.
I wonder … do you know him?
