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Well, friends, this morning we take a brief break from our consideration of Isaiah to
consider a passage in the New Testament in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Colossian
believers Colossians chapter 1 verses 15 through 18 Colossians chapter 1 verses 15 through
18.
You’ll find that on page 1168 in your Pew Bibles.
And to fill out the context a little bit, I’m going to read through verse 20, but again
our focus will be especially on verses 15 through 18 Colossians chapter 1 verses 15
through 18.
This is the Word of God, let us hear it with reverence and awe.
And speaking of Christ, the Apostle Paul writes, He is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation.
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.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
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.
For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through Him to reconcile to Himself
all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.
Dear friends, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Let us pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of His Word.
O Holy and loving God, our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are not a God
who has left us in the dark without a sure and certain word, but you have spoken to us.
You have spoken to us in the Scriptures, and by your Spirit you help us to understand the
Word that you have spoken.
We pray, Heavenly Father, that by your Spirit you would open our minds and our hearts this
day to behold wondrous things from your Word.
We ask that you would help us to see what the Spirit is revealing to us in this portion
of your God-breathed Word.
And Lord, we ask once again that you would set a guard over my lips, that I, your unworthy
servant, might only speak that which is faithful and true and glorifying to you.
We pray that this Word today would be for our edification, our challenge, our encouragement,
and we pray that it would be to your praise and honor and glory.
We ask these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said…
Amen.
Amen.
You may be seated.
Well there are sermon outlines available.
If you missed them, they’re out in the foyer on the podium there out in the foyer.
And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, there’s a number of key words that
you can be listening for, especially the children, if you find this to be helpful in following
along in the sermon.
And the key words to listen for today in my sermon are image, icon, firstborn, preeminent,
divine, and head.
Well dear friends, one of the problems of the Christmas season is that there is a prevailing
tendency within our culture to sentimentalize Jesus during this holiday season.
Now don’t get me wrong, it is certainly a good and an edifying practice to celebrate
the birth of Jesus and to reflect upon the significance of the baby Jesus lying in the
manger in Bethlehem.
The Advent and Christmas season, when voluntarily observed in the spirit of Christian liberty,
can help us to remember that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was and is indeed a genuine
human being.
Our Lord Jesus had and has a genuine human nature.
He is truly man.
He has a human body and a human soul, just like we do, minus the sin, of course.
Just like us, Jesus of Nazareth was a real human being who, in his humanity, he went
through the ordinary stages of growth and development as he experienced the stages of
birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and on into adulthood.
Even Jesus experienced the cracking voice during his adolescence.
But of course, the danger here, my friends, is that we focus so much on the precious Christ
child lying in the manger that we might tend to lose sight of the fact that this precious
baby lying in the manger was and is the image of the invisible God, the divine agent of
creation, and therefore in all things preeminent and supreme.
Our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, taken from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Colossian
Church, helps to highlight this important truth about the person of our Lord Jesus Christ,
a truth which tends to get pushed off to the side in many cases during this holiday season.
Now it’s important to understand what Paul is dealing with here as he writes to the Colossian
Church.
What are the issues that he’s addressing in this letter, this epistle that the Spirit
inspires him to write to the Colossian Church?
Well friends, in his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul emphasizes the supremacy
and the preeminence of our Lord Jesus Christ, and why does he do so though?
He does so in an effort to push back against a heresy that was threatening to infiltrate
and to infect the Colossian Church and the believers in that congregation.
It’s difficult to pin down exactly what the Colossian heretics were teaching, but a careful
reading of Colossians indicates that their teaching seems to have involved a sort of
a weird combination of various elements of Jewish ceremonialism and legalism, the worship
of angels.
There seems to have been a fascination with angelology and whether there were angelic
hierarchies and so forth, as well as ascetic monk-like practices which promoted an extreme
self-denial.
Paul understood that this heresy that was threatening the Colossian Church, it’s a
heresy that he knew had the effect of undermining both the supremacy and the sufficiency of
Christ, the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ both for Christian faith and for godly
living.
As biblical scholar Curtis Vaughan puts it, he says the most dangerous aspect of the Colossian
heresy was its depreciation of the person of Christ.
In other words, the Colossian heretics had way too low a view of Jesus Christ and who
he was.
Vaughan goes on to say to the errorists of Colossi, Christ was not the triumphant redeemer
to whom all authority in heaven and on earth had been committed.
At best he was only one of many spirit beings who bridged the space between God and men.
In terms of the immediate context of our passage for this morning, here we see Paul breaking
into an exuberant doxology of praise, a doxology that highlights the supremacy and the preeminence
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because of the structure and the wording of this section of Colossians chapter 1, many
biblical scholars believe that what Paul is doing here is that he’s actually quoting from
an early Christian hymn, and that is a possibility.
But if that is the case, then what he is doing is implicitly inviting us as his readers
to worship Christ the divine Son of God, the one who is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
Now the hymn theory cannot be proven with absolute certainty.
It does seem to make sense of the wording and structure of this section, but whether
or not Paul is quoting from an early Christian hymn.
The fact is that in this passage, Paul highlights our Lord’s supremacy and preeminence, both
in creation as well as in redemption in our salvation.
And by doing this, by focusing on the supremacy and preeminence of Christ in both creation
and salvation, Paul is implicitly pointing out that the false teachers at Colossi had
an inadequate view of who Jesus was, an inadequate view of the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So with all of this background information in mind, let’s dive into our text for today.
And I would direct your attention, first of all, to the opening verse of this section
of Colossians, verse 15, as we consider the meaning of Christ as image of God and firstborn
of creation.
This is the first point on your sermon outline, the meaning of Christ as image of God and
firstborn of all creation.
Paul writes this of the Lord Jesus here in verse 15.
He says, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
What does he mean by this language?
What does it mean for Jesus to be the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of or
over all creation?
Now some folks in church history have taken these terms image and firstborn to mean that
Christ is somehow less than fully 100% divine, less than fully 100% God.
The ancient heretics known as the Arians, who were followers of an early heretic named
Arius in the early centuries of the Christian church, Arius taught that, based on passages
like this, that Jesus Christ was the first created being.
He was an exalted being, he was a divine-like being, but he was not of the same essence
or being as the Father or the Spirit.
And so Arius and his followers would point to passages like this.
I believe your friendly neighborhood Jehovah’s Witnesses would interpret this passage the
same way.
But friends, if we understand the apostle’s usage of these terms in the context of this
passage and in the light of the rest of the teachings of Colossians, not to mention the
rest of the scriptures, then it’s clear to the careful student of the Bible that these
terms in no way deny or detract from the full deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In fact, I would argue that if we understand these terms correctly, we will see that they
actually strengthen the Bible’s testimony to the full divinity of Christ.
So let’s first of all consider Christ as the image of the invisible God.
What does that mean?
Well the term image here, as it’s translated in our English Bibles, is the Greek term icon.
And icon is the term from which we derive our English term icon.
Jesus is the icon of the invisible God.
Jesus our Lord is the icon of God, not in the sense that he’s merely an artistic depiction,
but in the sense that he is the living icon of the living God.
He is the icon of God in the ultimate sense.
Now I will mention as an aside that our Eastern Orthodox friends appeal to passages like this
and to the use of this term icon to justify their practice, their religious practice of
venerating icons of Jesus, lighting candles to pictures, depictions of Jesus in their
iconography and so forth.
What do they believe is going on there?
Why do they do that?
Well the Reformed theologian Dr. Robert Lethem explains that Eastern Orthodox Christians
view their icons as quote, teaching devices, windows to heaven through which to perceive
greater realities beyond.
And so if you’re ever in a conversation with an Eastern Orthodox Christian and you say
well hey I believe that what you’re doing is a violation of the second commandment,
I believe you’re committing idolatry by venerating that icon, they would be very offended.
They would say no we’re not worshipping the icon.
The icon is simply a window to heaven, a means through which we worship the resurrected Lord
Jesus Christ.
The problem with that of course is that’s precisely what any educated pagan would tell
you about their religious practices.
You talk to an educated Hindu, an educated Hindu would tell you oh no we don’t worship
that statue of Krishna or Vishnu.
We worship the divine reality that that image represents.
That’s precisely what idolatry does, it’s precisely what it is.
But again there is a certain beauty to Eastern Orthodox iconography.
But as artistically ornate and beautiful as Eastern iconography can be, and indeed it
can be very beautiful from an artistic perspective, only the Lord Jesus Christ is the true living
icon or image of the invisible God whose divine beauty and grandeur far surpasses even
the most ornate artistically splendid works created by the idolatrous hands of man.
Christ is the true image, the true and living icon of the invisible God, and as such he
is the true and living window into heavenly realities.
For he is heaven incarnate.
And so brothers and sisters we don’t need an artistic depiction of Jesus created by
the sinful hands of man.
We don’t need that to enter into the communion with our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.
We have access to Christ.
We see Christ in his beauty and grandeur not with the physical eyes but with the eyes of
And we see the beauty of Christ revealed in the gospel, the good news of Christ our Savior.
And so Christ is the divine image or icon, the living icon of the invisible God.
But that may lead to the question, well wait a minute pastor, aren’t we all image bearers
of God?
Aren’t we all in a sense icons of God?
Aren’t all human beings image bearers of God as we are taught in Genesis chapter one
where it says that God created them after his own image, male and female he created
them in his own image?
Well of course yes, we are image bearers of God.
But the Lord Jesus Christ is the image or icon of God in the ultimate sense of being
God’s eternal and only divine son.
We see this when we compare verse 15 with the verse that preceded it, verse 13.
Go back to verse 13 where we read of Christ, where we read of the Father that the Father
has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of whom?
The kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
So this image of the invisible God is the beloved Son of God, the divine Son of God.
Jesus Christ is the image or icon of God as the one and only divine Son, whereas we are
only creaturely images and sons of God.
Or to put it another way, Christ is the natural uncreated image of God, the divine image of
God, but we are created, derived images of God.
And what is the significance of this term icon or icon image?
Well as Dr. Vaughan points out, this term icon, the Greek word for image, expresses
two ideas.
One is likeness.
Christ is the image of God in the sense that he is the exact likeness of God.
Like the image on a coin or the reflection in a mirror.
The other idea in the word is manifestation.
That is Christ is the image of God in the sense that the nature and being of God are
perfectly revealed in him.
And when we compare scripture with scripture, this comes to the forefront even more clearly.
Let’s do that a little bit.
Let’s look at a couple of passages that would confirm and bolster this teaching that Paul
is presenting us with here in this passage.
Let’s turn to Hebrews chapter 1 and look at verse 3.
In fact, let me start reading at verse 1 and read through verse 3 of Hebrews chapter
1.
It says this.
Long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.
But in these last days, these last days in other words that were inaugurated by the coming
of Jesus, the incarnation and birth of Christ, we’ve been in the last days, by the way, since
the first century, because this was written in the first century.
In these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all
things, and notice this, through whom also he created the world.
And who is this son, this final revelation of God?
Verse 3, the author of Hebrews brings this out.
He says of Christ, the Son of God, that he is the radiance of the glory of God and the
exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
The radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of God’s nature is a very rich and
full way of saying that the Son of God is divine, fully divine, fully God.
This is also brought out by the Apostle John in John chapter 1 in his prologue, especially
verse 18.
John chapter 1 verse 18, it says this, No one has ever seen God, the only God or the
only Son of God, who is at the Father’s side.
He has made him known.
Christ as the Son is at the Father’s side, face to face with the Father.
Now let’s bring this down to earth.
I know that we’ve been dealing with some very mysterious and very deep and profound theological
truth here thus far.
But how does this connect to our day-to-day lives as Christians?
Well basically, let me suggest to you that if you want to know what God is like, then
study what God’s word teaches about Jesus Christ because Christ is the ultimate final
revelation of God.
And all of the scriptures, the inerrant word of God is all ultimately about Jesus.
The Old Testament prepares and anticipates the coming of Jesus the Messiah.
The New Testament reveals him.
Christ is at the heart and center of all of scripture.
And if you want to know what God is like, then study Jesus as he’s revealed in the
word.
Jesus in his divine nature is the exact representation of God the Father’s being.
And as the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, he perfectly reveals
the Father for he shares fully in the one divine essence, the one divine being with
God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
So he is the image, the icon of the invisible God.
But he’s also described here as the firstborn of all creation.
Now I had mentioned earlier the Aryans, the heretics who denied the full deity of Christ.
And they would, I believe, point to passages like this one and say, aha, see, Paul says
that Jesus was the first created being.
It says he’s the firstborn of all creation.
But is that really what that phrase means?
Does firstborn of all creation mean first created being?
Well the answer, the simple answer to that question is no.
Again to quote from another commentator, Paul is not saying that the Son was the first created
being.
You see, in the Old Testament, a firstborn Son would be the principal heir of the estate.
Used of Christ, the term firstborn means that he has such honor and dignity, not that he
was the oldest child in the family.
Christ is especially loved by his Father as we see in verse 13 where he’s described as
the beloved Son.
And all things were created in him, by him, and for him as we see in verses 16 and 17.
In other words, my friends, the term firstborn emphasizes our Lord’s supremacy, his preeminence
as the divine Son and image of the invisible God.
It does not mean that Christ is the first created being.
Again to bring this home, brothers and sisters, since Christ is indeed preeminent and supreme
over all of creation, shouldn’t you and I recognize and submit to him as preeminent
and supreme over our lives, over our families, and over our church?
Is Christ supreme in your life?
He is indeed Lord, whether you recognize him as Lord or not.
But have you trusted him as your Lord, your Savior?
Have you bowed the knee of your heart, so to speak, to the Lord Jesus?
Have you received and rested upon him as your Savior from sin and your divine King and Lord?
The scriptures tell us in Romans 10 verse 9 that if you confess with your lips Jesus
is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
May God give you the grace this day to repent and believe in Christ and having trusted him
for salvation, may you confess him as your Lord.
So Christ is indeed the firstborn of all creation as he is the image of the invisible God.
But we also see here, as we move on to verses 16 and 17, we learn of Christ as the agent,
goal, and sustainer of creation.
That’s the second point on your sermon outline.
Christ as the agent, goal, and sustainer of creation.
Paul goes on to say in verse 16, for by him, by Christ, all things were created.
By the way, if all things were created by Christ, that means that he’s not a created
being because all things is all inclusive.
All things 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 and he is before all things and in him all things hold together.
Now let’s focus on the first part of verse 16, for by him, all things were created.
Here the apostle Paul in line with the rest of the apostolic testimony that we find in
the New Testament scriptures, here Paul affirms that Jesus Christ is the divine agent and
mediator of creation, just as he is the agent and mediator of our redemption and salvation.
God the Father created all things through the Son and by the agency of the Holy Spirit.
Creation is a Trinitarian work of the triune God, just as our redemption is a Trinitarian
work of the triune God.
This language that Paul uses here is similar to the language used by the apostle John.
Again going back to John’s prologue in chapter 1 verses 1 to 3, John writes, in the beginning
was the word, the Greek term is logos, it’s speaking about Jesus as the logos, in the
beginning was the word and the word was with God, so there’s the distinction between the
word, the living word, Jesus the Son of God and God the Father, but then he goes on to
say and the word was God, everything that God the Father was, Jesus was and is and ever
shall be for he is fully divine.
He was in the beginning with God which implies he had no beginning, he’s pre-existent, he’s
eternal and then notice verse 3, all things were made through him, there’s that language
of mediation, all things were made through him and without him was not anything made
that was made, you get the point?
All things were created through him and in getting back to our passage for today, verse
16, Paul then expands the all things and what he’s talking about, he says all things in
heaven and on earth, in other words we would say everything in the universe, everything
that is came into being through him, whether thrones are visible and invisible, visible
and invisible, in other words he’s speaking of the physical creation, the physical realm
as well as the spiritual angelic realm, there is a real invisible realm of angels that we
don’t see with the physical eyes but which is just as real as the physical reality that
we see around us.
The existence of angels, the reality of angels is just as objectively real as the reality
of this pulpit that I’m standing behind today and so all things visible and invisible and
then he goes on to say whether thrones or dominions, principalities or powers, perhaps
alluding here by using this language to the angelic hierarchy that figured so prominently
in the Colossian heresy, again to quote from Vaughan, he says Paul’s mention of these things
does not of course mean that he recognized the existence of a hierarchy of spirit beings,
his words do suggest however that whatever supernatural powers there may be, Christ is
the one who made them and he is their Lord.
Again apparently these Colossian heretics were just fascinated by angels and by the
way on the next Lord’s Day I plan to preach a sermon on the role of angels in redemptive
history based on the Christmas passage in Luke’s gospel but in any case the Colossian
heretics were fascinated with angels and with speculations about angelic hierarchies and
rankings amongst the angels and Paul is perhaps borrowing their language and he’s saying look
even if there are such angelic rankings and hierarchies, they were created by Christ,
they’re not in any way equal to Christ, they don’t denigrate Christ, Christ is Lord over
the angels as he is Lord over humanity and Vaughan goes on to say that his words do suggest
that whatever supernatural powers there may be, Christ is the one who made them and he
is their Lord and notice again all things were created through him and for him. Christ
is the goal of all things, he’s not only the divine agent who brought into being all things,
he is the goal of all things, of all creation and ultimately all things will serve to bring
him glory and that’s a message that our culture needs to hear today doesn’t it because our
culture tells us it’s all about you, some of you may be old enough to remember and I’m
dating myself by using this illustration but some of you may be old enough to remember
that McDonald’s commercial that went you deserve a break today, right, you remember that? That’s
what our advertising culture tells us, that’s what popular culture tells us, it tells us
it’s all about you, you deserve a break today, you deserve this, you deserve that. We don’t
deserve the breath that we draw, it’s a gift of God, not something that we earn or deserve.
All things are about him, it’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s about Jesus Christ
for all things were created through him and for him. Well friends, the fact that Christ
is here presented as the divine agent of creation, the one through whom God the Father made
all things, shows that our Lord was not himself a created being, rather he is the creator
one in divine essence with the Father and the Spirit and therefore we are to confess
him and worship him as divine. We’re not committing idolatry when we worship Jesus in our worship
services. But not only is he presented as the agent and the goal of creation, he is
also presented as the sustainer of creation. Look at verse 17, Paul writes, and he is before
all things, temporally speaking, he’s before all things, he’s pre-existent, and in him
all things hold together. Christ is here revealed as the pre-existent one who personally, providentially
sustains or holds together all things. The universe doesn’t hold itself together, the
universe doesn’t hold together on its own. Yes, there are natural laws and regularities
of nature and science studies, those things, and those things are part of what God created,
that’s part of how God governs and sustains the universe. But since he is before all things
in time, he himself is timeless, he is the uncreated being. And since in him all things
hold together, he is the divine providential sustainer of all creation. Now again, I know
this is getting kind of maybe a little bit abstract, so let me try to bring it down to
earth a bit. My friends, I want you to think about it. Every sunrise and sunset that you
and I encounter, every beat of your heart, every breath that you draw, every moment of
every day, all of these things are made possible only because the exalted Lord Jesus Christ
moment by moment sustains all of the universe and all of its creatures, including you, including
me. And what that means is if Christ were to remove his sustaining providential hand
from his creation for even a millisecond, if that were to occur, all things would de-create,
all things would collapse and unravel into utter chaos, destruction, and non-existence.
But because all things hold together in him, we can be confident that life and the created
order will continue. So let us thank our Lord for his sustaining hand.
So our Lord is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, the preeminent
and supreme one. He is the divine agent, goal, and sustainer of all creation. But he is also
presented here in verse 18 as the head of his church and preeminent in everything. This
is the final point in your sermon outline. Christ as head of his church and preeminent
in everything. It says in verse 18, and he is the head of the body of the church. How
useful is a body without a head? A body without a head is dead, right? It is from Christ the
head that the church gets its lifeblood, its vitality. And Christ is called. He is the
head of the body of the church. And not only that, he is the beginning, the firstborn from
the dead, referring to his resurrection from the dead. He’s the firstborn from the dead.
That again, that in everything, he might be preeminent. This is the death blow to any
form of secularism or humanism that puts man in the center. Now, this terminology, firstborn
from the dead, the term in the Greek for firstborn is prototokos. This means that Christ, you
might say, well, wait a minute, didn’t other people, weren’t other people raised from the
dead before Jesus rose from the dead? I mean, what about Lazarus, right? And what about
the miracles of resurrection that Jesus performed? Well, that’s true. Jesus raised Lazarus from
the dead, but then Lazarus lived his life and ended up dying again, right? But in the
case of Jesus, he’s the firstborn from the dead in the sense that he is the first one
to come back from the dead in true everlasting resurrection life, resurrection life that
would never die again. As Paul says elsewhere in first Corinthians chapter 15 verse 20,
Paul writes this, he says in that passage, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the
dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. He is the first one to rise from the
dead, never to die again. And he is the firstfruits and a guarantee that of our resurrection brothers
and sisters in Christ. Again, it is that in everything, he might be preeminent. Friends,
couple closing points of application, then we’ll close our time in the word. First of
all, Jesus Christ is qualified to be head and king of the church because of the fact
that he is king and head over all of creation, but especially so since as the God man, he
rose from the dead, thereby conquering sin and death in hell. So let us as a church confess
and proclaim his cosmic universal lordship, his lordship over the church and his lordship
over our lives. Dear listener, once again, let me ask you, is Jesus Christ your Lord?
Do you trust in him as your savior? Have you called upon him for salvation? And Christ
also has the supremacy over all things. By the grace of God, let us, let those of us
who are his followers seek to honor his supremacy in every area of our lives. Dear ones, during
this special season of the year when most Christians remember and celebrate the birth
of our savior so many years ago, let us remember that that special baby lying in the manger
in Bethlehem is none other than the divine image of the invisible God, the firstborn,
and the preeminent one of all creation, the eternal divine son of God who is supreme and
preeminent in all things. As we celebrate his incarnation and birth, let us extol his
supremacy and preeminence both now and throughout the approaching year. And may you all have
a blessed and merry Christmas. Christ the Lord is born. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly
Father, sovereign and eternal God, we thank you that you so loved a lost and dying world
that you gave your one and only son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have
everlasting life. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that though you were in the form of God,
you counted not equality with God, a thing to be grasped onto, but you humbled yourself
taking upon yourself the form of a servant. You added to your divine nature a full human
nature, and you were born in such humble circumstances in order to raise us up back
into a right relationship with the Father. Oh Lord, we would pray that as we celebrate
our Savior that your Spirit would deepen our appreciation for and our understanding of
the glad tidings of great joy. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people
said, Amen. Friends, let’s rise as we close our time together. Let’s rise and we’ll sing
together number 319, O come all ye faithful, 319.