03 - The Awesome Facts About Jesus Christ 2011

Last time we looked at Paul’s prayer for the vision, vitality, and victory of the church.

Next, Paul will praise God for remaking us as His very own children:

“…giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. …”—vs. 12-13

The word “qualified” takes us back to the fact that in Adam we were “disqualified” from sharing in God’s glory. We experienced Paradise lost. Now Jesus, the 2nd Adam, has qualified us to once again enter our inheritance as children of light.

Jesus literally “delivered” us from the power of darkness. The word “delivered” means “translated.” It is the picture of a conquering king who uproots his defeated enemies and carries them away to another place.

Jesus has “uprooted and removed” us from Satan’s sphere of darkness and has placed us into His own kingdom. The Holy Spirit calls Jesus’ kingdom, “The kingdom of the Father’s dear Son—the kingdom of the Son of His love.”

He did all this by the power of His shed blood. “…in whom we have redemption through His blood…” The rivers of blood that flowed in O.T. times from the endless animal sacrifices could not redeem people from their sins.

As the Apostle put it in Hebrews, “The Law is a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the real things themselves. It never can perfect the ones who are trying to draw near to God through the same sacrifices that are offered continually every year.”—10:1

The sacrifices made annually under the law could not once for all perfect those who looked to it. The shadow of a key cannot set a prisoner free. The shadow of a meal cannot satisfy the hunger of a starving man. ‘

But the shed blood of Christ fully satisfies our need for redemption. How casually we read the words, “forgiveness of sins!” Mankind has groaned under the weight of guilt over sin all the way back to Eden. Modern psychology traces many emotional problems and pathologies to guilt. But the psychologist has no real answer for how to be rid of guilt, except to shift the blame to someone else.

The answer is simple: Don’t shift it to other people, shift it all to Jesus! Take His life in exchange! As the old hymn says, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain; He washed it white as snow.”

Next, we come to the awesome truth about Who Jesus really was and is:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”—vs.15

Here, Paul reaffirms the truth about the absolute deity of Jesus Christ as Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

First, God is invisible and eternal. We simply cannot wrap our minds around that fact, but it is true nevertheless. God is, has always been, and always will be. He had no beginning and will have no end.

Jesus told the woman at the well that “God is a spirit.” He has no need for a body. He exists on a plane and in a dimension unknown to us. We have no problem imagining One who never gets tired, never gets hungry, never gets sick, never grows old, and can never be tempted.

We can even visualize One who dwells in a very different relation to time than we do, One who transcends time, who describes Himself as the I AM, who enfolds past and future into an eternal present. But eternal and invisible? Here is where our finite minds choke and we pull back.

The fact is that men want a God they can touch, feel, and see. This is why there has always been such a chronic problem with idolatry—we want a God we can touch, even if we fashion him ourselves.

The Lord Jesus satisfies our longing for a “touchable God.” He has all the God-like attributes of wisdom, power, love, and holiness, but is also One we can see, touch, hear, and talk to.

Paul says, “He is the image of the invisible God,” the One who gives visible expression to the invisible God. Jesus told Philip, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Image is from the Greek word ‘I-Kon” meaning “likeness.”

When Jesus was born, an unprecedented event took place. A new personality was not born as with all other children. A Person Who had existed for all eternity came into the world! God became man without ceasing to be God. The human and the divine were blended into one.

John tells us that the eternal Word “became flesh” to dwell among us. “In the beginning was the Word,” writes John, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”—John 1:1-2

This one statement separates Jesus Christ from all others as far as east is from west! What God is, Jesus is. What God does, Jesus does. What God says, Jesus says. There is not one iota of difference between God in heaven and Jesus on earth. This is why He could say to Philip, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father.”

FACT: Jesus set before us a flawless, moment-by-moment, audiovisual, full-color, three dimensional demonstration of what God is like. He was “the image of the invisible God.” The blending of the human and the divine in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ was like the seamless robe that He wore, woven throughout to be one indivisible whole.

In the Gospels, we meet One who was very human indeed. He was born, He grew up, He went to school, and He worked as a carpenter. He became tired, hungry, and thirsty. He experienced all of the emotions of the human heart apart from sin.

He asked questions. He enjoyed companionship. He was wholesome, delightful, and perfectly balanced at all times. He was a wonderful and attractive human being to whom all kinds of people were drawn.

At the same time, He was God. The demons instantly recognized Him and were terrified. He had power to turn water into wine or to multiply a few loaves and fishes into a banquet for a multitude. He walked on top of the water and waves and commanded the storm to stop. He cleansed lepers, healed all manner of sicknesses, and raised the dead.

We see Him, for instance, sound asleep in Peter’s boat. This was His humanity. The next moment, He stood in the presence of heaving waves and howling winds and commanded them to be still. This was His deity.

At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept along with Mary and Martha. This was His humanity. The next moment, He called Lazarus back from the dead. This was His deity. Jesus was all man and all God. He was the God-Man!

Again, none other in all the history of the human race can stand next to Him. He is utterly unique, unprecedented, the undisputed Savior and Messiah of God.

Paul next says, “Who is…the firstborn of every creature.”—1:15b

This is not saying that Jesus was born first or created first of all created beings. In verse 16, Paul agrees with John’s gospel by saying, “By him all things were created.” The Creator of all things cannot also be created. This would mean He had to have created Himself.

The passage simply means that Jesus was there when creation began.

The word “firstborn” also means that Jesus was the first to experience glorification at His resurrection (see Heb 12:23; Rev 1:5). The first among others who follow. As Jesus was resurrected from the dead, so shall we be. He was first, and we shall follow.

Paul wrote about this again in 1 Corinthians:

“He’s the first crop of the harvest of those who have died. 21 Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came through one too. 22 In the same way that everyone dies in Adam, so also everyone will be given life in Christ. 23 Each event will happen in the right order: Christ, the first crop of the harvest, then those who belong to Christ at his coming,”—1 Cor. 15:20-13

Next, Paul blows apart the Gnostic teaching that God did not create matter. He bluntly tells us that Jesus was the Creator of the universe:

“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.”—vs. 1:16

And not to mention, this passage deals with origins. It blows evolutionary teaching out of the water. As Genesis 1 reveals God as Creator of all things, Colossians 1:16 traces all life and material things back to Jesus Christ as the 2nd Person of the Godhead, and the supernatural creation of the world.

The fact is that science knows nothing of origins. We can talk all day about one species begetting another species, or the transition from one species to the next.

But the argument ultimately comes down to origins. Where did life begin? How did it originate? Where did the first life come from? Or the first matter? Science can’t answer that. The Bible does. “By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible...”

FACT: Whenever a scientist pontificates regarding the origin of the universe, he is no longer speaking as a scientist; he is speaking as a philosopher. He is not saying, “This is what we know.” He is saying, “This is what I think.”

Our concept today of Jesus Christ is too small. Paul had no doubts at all as to Who exactly Jesus was. Jesus of Nazareth was God, over all, blessed forevermore, the second Person of the Godhead, self-existing, uncreated, and the Creator of the universe!

NEXT TIME: Jesus Christ Claims the Universe for Himself!