The Highest Praise of Christ

Scripture Reading/Prayer

Tonight’s Scripture reading will be in Colossians chapter 1, verses 15-20. If you’re using one of these standard black Bibles on the table, this will be on page 983.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of ALL creation. 16 For by him ALL things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—ALL things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before ALL things, and in him ALL things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in EVERYTHING he might be preeminent. 19 For in him ALL the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself ALL things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Let’s pray:

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for allowing us to be here tonight and for being able to freely open your Word. As we study one of the most beautiful passages in all Scripture tonight, I ask the Spirit to remove and silence distractions in our hearts and minds and to open our ears to hear of the incredible glory of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I ask this in the name of Christ, amen.

Introduction

Because this is the first time in over a year that I’ve preached for us here on Wednesday night, I am going to quickly introduce myself for those of you who may not know me. My name is Austin, I am married to my beautiful best friend Melissa. I am a full time seminary student and I work part-time here at the church as both our social media manager and as a youth ministry associate. When I am not being a workaholic I enjoy reading, playing video games/board games with Mel, building Gunpla models, and I’m also in a progressive metal band as a guitarist and death metal vocalist.

Tonight we are continuing our new series through the book of Colossians, which is a practice that prior to the pandemic we did consistently here at Redeemer Youth and I’m so happy to be able to continue doing that. Last week we preached on what it means to be Christ centered, and how the book of Colossians teaches Christians to be people who value Christ as the most important thing in their lives because Jesus changes everything. Tonight, we are going to begin a two-part study on Colossians 1:15-23, which is one of the most important sections in the Bible for understanding who Jesus is and what he has done for us. I cannot stress enough how significant these passages are and how deep they are. You can preach entire sermons on each single verse here in this passage - I know people who have done that. It may feel like we are moving through this section pretty slowly if we are breaking it down into two parts, but trust me, we are moving a light-speed relative to everything these two passages contains.

Our first section will be on verses 15-20, and next week we will tackle verses 21-23, but together these two sections are going to answer two incredible important questions that each of us in here ought to be able to answer: who is Jesus, and why do you love him? Tonight’s section will focus on answering the question “who is Jesus?”, and next week we will immediately pick up where we leave off tonight to answer the question “why do you love him?” Let’s get started.

Who Is Jesus?

First, let me open the floor here to ask you guys: who is Jesus? I want five different answers from five different people.

[Let students response]

These are all good and true answers. But now let me ask one more question, and this is a rhetorical question: what is the highest, most eloquent, most extravagant praise you could give Jesus? I’m not just talking about true things about Jesus - I’m talking about all the best things you could possibly say about him. Think about how you’d answer that question in your head for a bit.

[Wait a couple seconds]

English Standard Version Chapter 1

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of ALL creation. 16 For by him ALL things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—ALL things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before ALL things, and in him ALL things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in EVERYTHING he might be preeminent. 19 For in him ALL the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself ALL things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

These words are some of the highest possible things that could be said about Jesus. These words are some of the most eloquent and extravagant words of praise and adoration in all of Scripture that tell us about who Jesus is.

But what do these things all mean? What does it mean that Jesus was “the image of the invisible God”? What does it mean that Jesus was “the firstborn of all creation”, or “the firstborn from the dead”? What does it mean that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell”? As I mentioned earlier, entire sermons can be preached on unpacking those individual phrases, and so we need to be clear on the onset that we aren’t going to answer every question you may have about this section of Scripture tonight.

Instead, I want to take this passage and I want to focus on a couple of recurring themes here. You’ll notice that a couple of words or ideas appear several times in this passage, words like “firstborn”, “creation”, and (of course) “God”. We are going to answer the question “who is Jesus?” along these three lines, and we are going to examine what these passages say about who Jesus is, and also about what these passages say about who Jesus isn’t, and as we work through these three topics, you’ll start to see that they all reinforce and support each other to make one explicitly clear point.

“Firstborn”

Let’s start with the word “firstborn”. This word shows up twice in this section, right at the beginning and also near the end. What does this word mean when it comes to Jesus?

I’m sure you’re thinking “well obviously it means that Jesus was born first, first + born = firstborn, duh”. And yes, that is usually what the word means most of the time. I am the firstborn among my brothers because I was, in fact, born first. But when Paul uses the word “firstborn”, is he meaning the same thing as we do when we think of the word “firstborn”?

It’s important for us to understand that, back in the day, that to be the “firstborn” (and specifically, the firstborn son) carried with it a significant and importance that we just don’t have in our world today. In the Old Testament world especially, to be the firstborn meant not only that you’d receive the majority of the blessing and inheritance from you parents, but that you were a representative for the continuation of your family and your bloodline. To be the “firstborn” gave you a relational supremacy or priority that none of your other siblings received - it put you in a class of your own.

Now, when we read this phrase in isolation, it can be tempting to conclude that this means Jesus was the first “created” being - that out of all of creation, he was the first one to be created. But if we keep reading in the text, it’s pretty clear that Paul does not mean this literal sense of the word “firstborn”. In verse 16, we read that “all things were created through him and for him”; in verse 17 we read “he is before all things, and in him all things hold together”; in verse 18 we read that Jesus was “the beginning”. From the rest of Paul’s words, it’s clear here that he isn’t saying Jesus was the literal firstborn of all creation. Rather, he is saying that Jesus is categorically superior to and supreme over all creation - he is tapping into the “significance” portion of the word “firstborn” as a figurative expression of Jesus and his relationship to creation.

So briefly, let’s ask: what does this passage say about Jesus? Jesus is categorically supreme and superior to all creation, just like the “firstborn” son, in Paul’s day an in Old Testament times, is categorically supreme and superior to all his siblings. What does this passage say about who Jesus isn’t? Jesus is superior to creation, but not because he was the first created thing.

“Creation”

So if Jesus is the “firstborn” of all creation but wasn’t the first created thing, what then is Jesus’ relationship to creation? We already gave some hints in the previous section, but let’s keep going. Jesus is the firstborn of all creation because, as Paul goes on to say,

16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Jesus is the firstborn of all creation not because he is the first created thing, but because it was through Jesus that every single thing was created. Not only was everything created through Jesus, it was created for him, and not only does all creation revolve around Jesus, he is the one who holds all of creation together. The reason we can trust the laws of logic, study the world scientifically, and why the universe hasn’t just completely fallen apart is because Jesus himself actively holds all of his creation together - because all of his creation exists to point to his superiority over all things.

Now, let’s ask our two questions again - what does this passage say about Jesus? Well, you may be thinking that it says a lot of the same things we just talked about with Jesus being the firstborn - and you’d be right! This passage is telling us that Jesus is superior to all creation because all things were created through him, all things were created for him, and he holds all his creation together. And conversely, what does this passage say about who Jesus isn’t? Jesus is superior to creation, but is not a created thing himself.

Now at this point you may be thinking that I’m just repeating myself, because these are very similar to the conclusions we came to when discussing the word “firstborn”. Why am I spending so much time here? Well, it may surprise you to know that Christians have believed that Jesus was a created being himself, but the supreme and superior created being. One of the most important controversies and battles in the history of the church was over this very question - in the 4th century, a bishop named Arius began teaching that Christians were dishonoring God the Father by teaching that Jesus was also God, because Jesus was just a created being. This became such a controversial issue that it led to the very first church council, the Council of Nicaea, to hash out and figure out this very issue, and what that council concluded was that Arius was wrong and Jesus was not a created being. And before you go thinking that this was something in the distant past that we have to deal with today, think again: this image I am showing you on the screen is from a survey just last year [introduce State of Theology graphic]. Every two years an evangelical ministry conducts a survey of the theological beliefs of American Christians across a wide and diverse range of perspectives, including evangelicals, non-evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, and more, and one of the questions they asked this year was “”Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God”, and let me break down these results for you. You see two colors and two sets of numbers - the orangish/first number represents the responses from everyone who took the survey, and the bluish/second number represents only the responses of evangelical Christians who attend evangelical churches, so a subset of the total responses. While there are some differences between the two sets of responses, look at this - for both the entire survey and for evangelicals only, more than 50% of respondents think Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. Only 30-40% of respondents disagree with that statement, so this isn’t an even split here. More than 50% of modern Christians today agree with what that 4th century bishop taught nearly 1700 years ago - this confusion has not gone away, and in fact, you could even say that statistically, this is the majority belief about who Jesus is.

Now you may be thinking “Okay, so what? Why are you making a big deal about this? Why does it matter one way or another?” The shortest way I know how to answer that is if Jesus is a created being, he is not God, and if he is not God, there is no salvation. Let me say that again: if Jesus is a created being, he is not God, and if he is not God, there is no salvation. To break that down further, lets look at the last big recurring word of this passage: “God”.

“God”

At the very beginning of this passage we read that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God”, and then later on in verse 19 we read that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” Now to our modern ears this isn’t the clearest language in the world, but to the listeners in Paul’s day, they knew exactly what Paul was saying. Paul is saying here, without the slightest hesitation or reservation, that Jesus Christ is fully and completely God, and is in no way, shape, or form anything less than or lower than God.

How does he do that? Let’s look at the first phrase: “he is the image of the invisible God.” Where else have you heard of the phrase “the image of God”? If you’ll remember in Genesis, we read at the end of chapter 1 that mankind, both male and female, is created in the image of God. But notice a difference here: Paul isn’t saying that Jesus is “in” the image of God, Paul is saying that Jesus is the image of God itself. We are made in God’s image; Jesus is the image of God. This is only reinforced in the second phrase, “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” Jesus is not partially God, or “secretly” God, or has the potential to maybe become “God” later on - in Jesus, the entire fullness and completeness of what it means to be God is found in him, and not only is it found in him, he powerfully displays and declares in no uncertain terms that he is God.

How does he do this? Let’s look at the final verse, verse 20: “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” Only someone who is God could possibly do this. Someone who is merely a political revolution, or a good moral teacher, or a “nice guy” couldn’t possibly reconcile us to God by dying on a cross. If Jesus is a created being, he is not God, and if he is not God, he cannot reconcile all things back to God. Only God has the authority to announce to us that we have been reconciled to him, and to tell us that we now have peace with him instead of the expectation of wrath and judgment for transgressing his holy law. This is the message of the Gospel: we have sinned against God, and rightly deserve eternal separation from him, but on the cross, Jesus Christ has taken the punishment we deserved upon himself, and for those who place their faith in him, they have peace with God and are adopted into the family of God.

If you’re here tonight and do not believe that Jesus Christ is God, I implore you to turn away from you sins and believe in Jesus Christ and be reconciled to God. Turn away from the sins that caused you to be separated from God and place your faith in Jesus Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross so that you can be reconciled to God and belong to him forever. Do not waste your own time believing that Jesus was simply a good moral teacher or a really nice guy - if Jesus isn’t God, Christianity is worthless, and you’re wasting your own precious time believing things about him that are not true. But if Jesus is God, and if Jesus has reconciled us to God, there could be nothing greater, more valuable, or more significant to your life to believe in him for your eternal salvation and reconciliation to God. And if you’re here tonight and you’re already a Christian, as we transition now to a time of worship, let us practice what Paul does in this section of Scripture. Let us practice learning how to not just say true things about God, but how to sing the highest, most extravagant things we can say about God - this is worship.