Colossians 1:15-20

The Supremacy of the Son of God

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 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 and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.



Dig Deeper

I had an idea once while I was teaching (and all of you comics out there can declare, "only once"). I decided to try something new and teach one of my U.S. History classes in a very different way from the norm. I was going to teach the class by using, as a one of our primary sources, songs that dealt with the time period of history that we were covering. Many of the songs were Johnny Cash songs, but we also used songs by many other artists. It’s not that we only listened to songs, but they did play a major part in the class. It turned out to work pretty well. The students were able to easily identify with and understand the topics being discussed in the songs in a way that just reading a book couldn’t have accomplished. Songs and even poems can be useful to try to teach things of great emotional depth, yet there is a limit to them. Because of the space limitation of most songs and poems and the desire for structure and beauty, not everything can be included in a song. It is also true that songs and poems use picturesque language and metaphors that are intended to get across a certain point, but can be misleading if they are pushed too far. For instance, in one Johnny Cash song about General Custer, he says, "he got barbered violent." This is a brilliant word-picture that is painted here, referring to his fate in being scalped, but one of my students could not seem to get past the understanding that Custer somehow died at the hands of an angry barber rather than in a crushing defeat at the hands of a Native American army.

The passage that we will consider today is most likely an early Christian hymn of some sort. There is much debate as to whether or not Paul wrote it, with the most likely answer being that Paul took an existing hymn and added a few lines to it to fit his specific point he is trying to make to the Colossians. Like any song, the lyrics are rich, majestic, and emotion-invoking. Yet, they have the same down side that any song lyrics can have if not understood as word-pictures and metaphorical language teaching beautiful truths but open to dangerous interpretation if not interpreted correctly.

Paul’s intention is to build and maintain a proper understanding of who Jesus Christ is over and against the false teachings that had begun to creep into the community of the Colossians. He, thus begins the hymn by stating that the Son is the image of the invisible God. Paul does not mean that Christ resembles or is similar to God. His use of the Greek word eikon demonstrates that the Messiah participates in and with the very nature of God. He is not a copy but is the visible manifestation that perfectly reveals God in human form. Through the miracle of Incarnation, the invisible God has revealed Himself to humanity through the person and life of Jesus the Messiah (john 10:30; 14:9).

He is truly the image of God, but Paul says there is more. He uses the imagery of the firstborn to teach another important truth about Christ. This is an image that has often been used inappropriately to assert that Paul was intending to say that Jesus is a created being, albeit the first creation of God. This false teaching goes back at least to the fourth century, and probably earlier, and continues to our day, primarily in the false teachings of groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We can only get to misunderstandings like this if we fail to take into consideration both the fact that this is a poetical metaphor as well as the Old Testament background to this term. In using the term "firstborn," Paul brings to mind at least two Old Testament images. The first is that Israel was referred to as God’s firstborn (Ex. 4:22). The concept describes the fact that God elected Israel as His people to play a part in His special redemptive purposes. It implies God’s faithfulness to Israel to not abandon them. The second concept tied into "firstborn" is the connections that it had with inheritance within a family. The firstborn received the inheritance and would become the leader of the family. Christ was the one that inherited resurrection and the life of the age to come, so he could rightly be called the heir of God’s creation, but that does not imply that he was created or somehow less than God. Those who enter into his life, then, can rightly be called co-heirs (Rom. 8:17), because what is true of him is true of those who have entered into him. By calling Christ the firstborn, Paul is stressing the primacy of his function as Messiah, not implying anything about His being a created being.

Paul wants to be very clear to stand over and above many of the false understandings of God and the created order that existed in the pagan world, and he carefully words this hymn to do just that. In Christ and through Christ, all things were created. As if to stress the point, Paul extrapolates on "all things," clarifying that this includes things on heaven and earth, visible and invisible, including the thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, the spiritual forces that some of the false teachers in Colosse were evidently stressing. Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together. In other words, all of history has been about revealing Christ to humanity, so he is not only the source of all events in history, but he also preserves and sustains the creation. Paul’s point is that Christ is supreme to every conceivable aspect of the universe. Paul will leave no room for the spheres that we like to create in our life where Jesus can be the Lord of the "spiritual" areas of our life but we are still in charge of things like our work or personal life.

There was a popular Greek image during the first century which depicted the universe as a body that was governed by a head, which was usually wisdom or knowledge of some type. Paul takes that popular pagan image and casts Christ in the central role, with an important twist. He has already stated that the whole world is held together by Christ, he is the head of the whole world. Christ is the true fulfillment of the wisdom that was often seen as ruling over and ordering the world, so Paul has filled in one blank. But he also changes the image of the "body." No longer is the body the whole universe. No, that distinction is reserved for the church. So, Paul does not offer a picture where wisdom makes itself manifest throughout creation. Rather, he offers a description of Christ making himself manifest through the church. Thus, Christ is the head of the whole world, but only the church can rightly be called the body of Christ.

God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, because he is has received the inheritance, as the firstborn from among the dead. This means that Christ is the one who entered into death, but as a genuine human being, free from sin, he was worthy to be resurrected and enter into God’s presence and His age to come. Jesus said that he is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), and he also said that he was the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). Through the death and resurrection of Christ, God is reconciling the entire creation back to himself. Those who choose to enter into the life of Christ will be reconciled to God and wait for the moment when Christ redeems and restores the entire creation, uniting the now separated realms of heaven and earth back to their original state of oneness. We cannot miss Paul’s point throughout this passage: the one through whom the world was made is the same one through whom the world has been redeemed. What an incredible God we serve.



Devotional Thought

The people of Paul’s day were enamored with the concept of wisdom. Paul has clearly depicted Jesus as the ultimate wisdom, as though he’s saying, "if you really want wisdom, here’s who you need to know." What ‘wisdom’ of the world have you accepted, and now need to go about the work of realizing that the life of Christ is the only source of true wisdom?