Christus Bild Gottes / Kol 1,15
Einleitung
1. Was darunter gemeint ist: Er ist das Bild des unsichbaren Gottes
The language, however, suggests more. Paul writes that believers are destined to be conformed to the image of God’s son, Jesus Christ (Rom 8:29). This language is a call to act as Jesus would—to live like him. Acting like Jesus points to the functional idea of the image of God; it suggests we think of the image of God as a verbal idea. By “imaging God,” we work, serve, and behave the way God would if He were physically present in the world. In Jesus, God was physically present. Thus, we are to imitate—or, image—Christ.
He is the image of the invisible God. Not as man was made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), in his natural faculties and dominion over the creatures: no, he is the express image of his person, Heb. 1:3. He is so the image of God as the son is the image of his father, who has a natural likeness to him; so that he who has seen him has seen the Father, and his glory was the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, Jn. 1:14; 14:9.
15. They who have experienced in themselves “redemption” (Col 1:14), know Christ in the glorious character here described, as above the highest angels to whom the false teachers (Col 2:18) taught worship was to be paid. Paul describes Him: (1) in relation to God and creation (Col 1:15–17); (2) in relation to the Church (Col 1:18–20). As the former regards Him as the Creator (Col 1:15, 16) and the Sustainer (Col 1:17) of the natural world; so the latter, as the source and stay of the new moral creation.
image—exact likeness and perfect Representative. Adam was made “in the image of God” (Ge 1:27). But Christ, the second Adam, perfectly reflected visibly “the invisible God” (1 Ti 1:17), whose glories the first Adam only in part represented. “Image” (eicon) involves “likeness” (homoiosis); but “likeness” does not involve “image.” “Image” always supposes a prototype, which it not merely resembles, but from which it is drawn: the exact counterpart, as the reflection of the sun in the water: the child the living image of the parent. “Likeness” implies mere resemblance, not the exact counterpart and derivation as “image” expresses; hence it is nowhere applied to the Son, while “image” is here, compare 1 Co 11:7 [TRENCH]. (Jn 1:18; 14:9; 2 Co 4:4; 1 Ti 3:16; Heb 1:3). Even before His incarnation He was the image of the invisible God, as the Word (Jn 1:1–3) by whom God created the worlds, and by whom God appeared to the patriarchs. Thus His essential character as always “the image of God,” (1) before the incarnation, (2) in the days of His flesh, and (3) now in His glorified state, is, I think, contemplated here by the verb “is.”
Who is—By describing the glory of Christ and the pre-eminence over the highest angels, the apostle here lays a foundation for the reproof of all worshippers of angels: the image of the invisible God—Whom none can represent but his only begotten Son: in his divine nature, the invisible image, in his human, the invisible image of the Father, the first begotten of every creature—That is, begotten before every creature; subsisting before all worlds, before all time, from all eternity.
Da betete er für ihn dieses Gebet: Du hast Liebe erwiesen dem, der gesehen wird u. nicht sieht; der, welcher sieht u. nicht gesehen wird, möge dir Liebe vergelten.
Colos. 1:15. “Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature.” Heb. 11:27. “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” This highest blessedness of the soul does not enter in at the door of the bodily senses; this would be to make the blessedness of the soul dependent on the body, or the happiness of man’s superior part to be dependent on the inferior. The beatific vision of God is not any sight with the bodily eyes, because the separate souls of the saints, and the angels which are mere spirits, and never were united to body, have this vision. Matt. 18:10. “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” It is not in beholding any form or visible representation, or shape, or colour, or shining light, in which the highest happiness of the soul consists; but it is in seeing God, who is a spirit, spiritually, with the eyes of the soul. We have no reason to think that there is any such thing as God’s manifesting himself by any outward glorious appearance, that is, the symbol of his presence in heaven, any otherwise than by the glorified body of Christ. God was wont in the Old Testament, oftentimes to manifest himself by an outward glory, and sometimes in an outward shape, or the form of a man. But when God manifested himself thus, it was by Christ; it was the second person of the Trinity only that was wont thus to appear to men in an outward glory and human shape. John 1:18. “No man hath seen God at anytime; the only-be-gotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” But since Christ has actually assumed a human body, there is no need of his assuming any aerial form or shape any more. The Deity now became visible to the bodily eyes in a more perfect manner by his having a real body. The saints that shall see Christ in heaven in his glorified body, much more properly see Christ than if they only saw an assumed shape, or some outward glorious appearance, as the symbol of his presence; for now, that which they see is not only a glorious appearance by which Christ is represented, but the real Christ; it is his own body. The seeing God in the glorified body of Christ, is the most perfect way of seeing God with the bodily eyes that can be; for in seeing a real body, which one of the persons of the Trinity has assumed to be his body, and in which he dwells for ever as his own, the divine majesty and excellency appear as much as it is possible for them to appear in outward form or shape. The saints do actually see a divine person with bodily eyes, and in the same manner as we see one another. But when God showed himself under outward appearances and symbols of his presence only, that was not so proper a sight of a divine person, and it was a more imperfect way of God’s manifesting himself, suitably to the more imperfect state of the church under the Old Testament. But now Christ really subsists in a glorified body; those outward symbols and appearances are done away, as being needless and imperfect. This more imperfect way therefore is altogether needless, seeing Christ there appears as a glorified body.
This seems to be one end of God’s assuming a human body, viz. that the saints might see God with bodily eyes; that they may see him, not only in the understanding, but in every way of seeing of which the human nature is capable: that we might see God as a divine person as we see one another. And there is no need of God the Father’s manifesting himself in any other glorious form; for he that sees the Son, sees the Father, John 14:9. and that because he is the image of the invisible God. Coloss. 1:15.—Heb. 1:3. “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” But if there be any outward symbol by which God the Father represents himself in heaven; seeing that is not the beatific vision, for that is a far more imperfect way of seeing God than seeing him with the eye of the soul; the soul is capable of apprehending God in a thousand times more perfect and glorious manner than the eye of the body is; the soul has in itself those powers whereby it is sufficiently capable of apprehending spiritual objects without looking through the windows of the outward senses. The soul is capable of seeing God more immediately, and more certainly, and more fully and gloriously, than the eye of the body is.