Who is this Christ?

Colossians 1:15-17 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were 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.”

성경전서 개역개정판 1장

그는 보이지 아니하는 하나님의 형상이시요 모든 피조물보다 먼저 나신 이시니

16 만물이 그에게서 창조되되 하늘과 땅에서 보이는 것들과 보이지 않는 것들과 혹은 왕권들이나 주권들이나 통치자들이나 권세들이나 만물이 다 그로 말미암고 그를 위하여 창조되었고

17 또한 그가 만물보다 먼저 계시고 만물이 그 안에 함께 섰느니라

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BODY

a. He is the image of the invisible God (1:15)

i. Following the logic from verse 13-14, God the Father rescued us from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of His Son, in whom, through Christ, we have received the forgiveness of sins. It is through this Son, Jesus Christ, in the words of Paul in verse 14, that we have redemption, we have been forgiven of our sins.

ii. Now with the subject referring to Jesus Christ, because redemption is found in Jesus Christ, Paul speaks more about Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? How do we know who He is? Paul answers this question by stating, He is the image of invisible God.

iii. Hebrews 1:1-3 gives us the best picture of what this means. It tells us that God spoke to us through many ways, but now speaks to us only through His Son. Then in verse 3, it says that He is the radiance of His glory. He is the reflection of His glory. Although God is not visible, To say that Christ is the image of God is to say that in Him the nature and being of God have been perfectly revealed—that in Him the invisible has become visible.

iv. This is an astounding phrase that Paul writes. It’s astounding because we always hear that man was made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). We were made in the likeness of God, we were made like Him in humanity, in the sense that we are and He is human.

v. We tend to forget this practically because when we compare ourselves to Christ, we say things like, Jesus could do it but I can’t. Phrases like this hurt our understanding of His humanity. You see, Jesus was perfectly human. This means, that He was no different than us in His humanity. The only difference? He was perfect in His obedience. You see in everything, He chose to trust and believe in His Father and submit to Him over everything. This is why He could not sin. His love for the Father, His commitment to the Father, surpassed everything.

vi. We might say, see I can’t do that that’s why I can’t do certain things. Yes, we might not be able to do it all the time but the reality is, we can choose to do this. It’s not that we can’t choose. It’s that our sinfulness causes us to choose to not want to do it all the time. Why do I say this? Because we can choose to sacrifice for someone. We can choose to go down the hard road. The reason we don’t? Because it’s too hard. You see, we love ourselves more than we love the other person. This is why we choose our own comfort over their wellbeing. This is what separated us and Christ. Jesus always wanted to glorify the Father. He didn’t want to glorify Himself over the Father (John 17:4) “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.”

vii. This constant ambition to glorify God might be impossible for us, because that is not our priority. But this is a priority we must adopt. It was through this priority, that others saw God.

viii. All of Jesus’s miracles reminds us of this very fact. He performed these miracles to display His deity, that He was the image of the invisible God. It was through His miracles, through His preaching that He preached the Gospel of God, to repent and believe in their sins, that people would see who God was. Mark 2:12 is another reminder of this. In this story, we see that Jesus healed the paralytic to show that His ability to heal this man. The people were reasoning in their hearts and among each other that only God could forgive sin. It was there that Jesus asks the crowd, which is easier, to forgive sin or heal this paralytic? So immediately, He tells this man to get up and walk and the man was able to do so. As the paralytic got up and walked, everyone started to glorify God.

ix. It was through this miracle that Jesus reminded everyone that He is in fact God. As Jesus repeats multiple times in the book of John, but most specifically in John 14:7-9, Jesus says that if you knew me, you would have known the Father, and from now on, you know Him and have seen Him. That’s an amazing phrase because they haven’t seen the Father. They have only seen the Son. By this statement, He is saying that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father which is the immediate statement He makes in 14:9. Through His glory, we see His deity.

x. But Paul doesn’t end there. He immediately follows by stating that He is the firstborn of creation. This statement helps us to understand the connection between Paul’s thoughts. He was most likely thinking about Genesis 1:26-28. To say that Christ is the image of God, and then talk about creation which follows this statement, we can know that also through his usage of firstborn. His statement about firstborn helps us to understand the creation/new creation we have in Christ.

xi. It refers to Psalm 89:27 where it refers to the messanic king as the firstborn. Firstborn and kingship are directly linked and we can see that Paul is linking Christ’s kingship because of what he wrote in 1:13. We have been delivered into His kingdom from the domain of darkness.

xii. But the significance in this phrase, the firstborn of creation is critical that we understand correctly. In the early church, Arius, a Christian priest challenged the divinity of Christ and said that He was a created being. This phrase here might have given rise to this idea that Christ was a created being. Why? Because He was firstborn which meant that He was created. But if we understand this word in context, we recognize it is not talking about His created order, but rather His supremacy. This supremacy which leads us to verse 16-17 tells us that He is supreme over all authorities.

xiii. We recognize the significance of this verse because even in our godless culture, Christ is not acknowledged as the firstborn of creation. Why is this verse important? Because the simple fact that Paul is addressing this topic helps us understand that even during Paul’s time, this teaching was graining traction. People back then and even today, have and are questioning if Jesus is truly God. This was and is a problem that was common back then as well as today. And to this problem, Paul addresses the problem by telling us that Christ is the image of the invisible God. In today’s culture, what is the image of the invisible God? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. But how do we know this Christ today? The Word of God tells us exactly who Christ is. It is through the Word of God, through the proclamation of the Gospel and the Church that we see this crucified and risen savior. The Bible addresses the very problems we have in our own culture. It reminds us constantly about the power of sin and the power of unbelief. But even in this storm, God has given us an answer through His Word. Just as we can see the Father through the Son, we can see the Son through His Word. And when we see His Son in His word, we can see God through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

b. He is the creator of all things (1:16)

i. Verse 16 disproves Arius by telling us immediately by Him all things were created. All of creation were created by Him. We might ask the question, why does it say “For by Him?” The answer seems to be that Christ is the beginning in which all of creation was created. Colossians 1:18 says that He is the beginning which helps us to understand that if He truly is the beginning, He could not have been created. He is preexistent and preeminent over all of creation. Not only does He exist before creation, but the point Paul is also making here is that He is supreme over all of creation.

ii. If Christ is the means in which God created the heavens and the earth, and Christ is the means in which man comes to know Christ and be saved in Him, then in Christ, it is only through Christ all things happen. This is what it means when we say He is the beginning. It is through Christ that all things are created and He is the one who is supreme over all of them.

iii. Paul continues to say that all things were created, both visible and invisible, everything is under the sovereignty of Christ. We tend to think about it in the way we understand His authority over governments and the physical realm, but Paul is making a statement that He is over all thrones and rulers, over angels and even Satan.

iv. In context, it also is referring to the false teaching that is growing in this church and the community abroad, where in verse 13 we see that we were transferred from the domain of darkness, the state where we were blind to His kingdom and the Gospel,

v. Not only are these authorities under His supremacy, Paul repeats again by stating all things have been created through Him. When we read this, and we see the repetition of the word all, we can see that Paul’s focus here is stressing His authority over all things. Not some things or partly things, but the reality is, He is supreme over all things. Christ is truly king not only over His kingdom, but over all kingdoms.

vi. Paul closes verse 16 with the way he began verse 16. He ends by repeating that all things have been created through Him. This emphatically shows that Christ at the first creation is not the first of created reality nor in any way a part of the creation but is the means or agent of creation. Paul is stressing again the fact that although people might think that Christ was the first created being, Paul is telling us that He is the means or agent of creation. Creation came through Him. He then continues in verse 16 by telling us in the following verse, that not only were all things created by Him, but He is also the sustainer of all things.

c. He is the sustainer of all things. (1:17)

i. Paul continues the logic of what He’s been talking about in verse 15-16. He is the image of the invisible God, and summarizes verse 15-16 by stating that He is before all things. He is truly the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation, the one who is supreme over all creation, and goes further. He goes on to say in Him, all things hold together.

ii. This is a difficult concept for us to understand because a person doesn’t hold everything together. There is no person in this world that can hold the whole world together. We see this with the war between Russia and Ukraine how fragile the world is. One disagreement and we could be in the third world war. This goes to show the finite reality of man. No person is strong enough to hold the whole world together. But this king, The Lord Jesus Christ, is able to hold all things together. He is supreme over all authorities and governments, over all the thrones that are visible and invisible. He is sovereign king over all creation and everything in creation. This Jesus, is able to hold the whole creation in order because everything was made through Him.

iii. What’s amazing about this verse? The same God who sustains and holds the universe together, is the same God who has revealed Himself to you, and told you of His love for you. He loved you to the point that He came to earth, to die on a cross so that you would have life. He died and rose again from the dead to show us that there is no power in this world that reigns over Him. He is supreme over all power and authority.

iv. This is how we are to understand salvation. Salvation is unclear without an understanding of creation. Just as God can create the whole world out of nothing, simply by speaking it into creation, God can create a new life out of nothing simply by His Word. How does He do this? The same power that He created the whole world and keeps it together, this is the same power that is working inside of us to create a new soul and keep this soul together, by working in us to cause us to be more like Christ.

v. The focus here is how He sustains and keeps the universe, but in the same way that He sustains the universe, He is sustaining you each day. There is a very personal and intimate relationship between His sustaining the world daily and His sustenance of us.

3. CONCLUSION