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08/30/2026
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08/30/2026
COL Sermon 6
TITLE: Christ Over His Church
TEXT: Colossians 1:15–19
SUBJECT: Christ’s preeminence over His church
COMPLEMENT: As the Head of the church, Christ alone must have first place in its authority, worship, doctrine, and mission.
FCF: Churches and Christians are prone to elevate tradition, personal priorities, and human authority above Christ and His Word.
CIT: Christ is the Head of His church so that in all things He might have the preeminence.
BIG IDEA / HI: Christ must have the preeminence in His church.
APHORISM: The church is about Christ.
PURPOSE: To lead Christians to reject anything that competes with Christ’s authority and to make His preeminence the controlling priority of their church life.
SUMMARY: Colossians 1 presents Jesus Christ as preeminent over both creation and His church. Because Christ is the Head of the church, no human authority, church tradition, council, denomination, ritual, image, or religious system has the right to take His place or compete with the authority of His Word. A true church is a local body of believers submitted to Christ as its Head, unified in doctrine and practice, and carrying out His work on earth. That truth also brings the passage personally to every member of the body: the church reflects Christ as its people reflect Christ. Our lives, ministries, priorities, and mission must therefore center upon Him rather than ourselves or our perceived needs. There are many good and important things a church can do, but the supreme purpose remains the same: “that in all things he might have the preeminence.”
EXPANDED NOTES:
LVII. Christ Over His Church
Text: Colossians 1:15–19
Colossians 1 brings us to one great statement about Jesus Christ: “that in all things he might have the preeminence.” For that statement to be true, Christ must truly be Lord over all.
Last week we saw Christ as the Head over creation. He is the image of the invisible God. He is the firstborn of every creature. By Him were all things created. He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.
But Paul does not stop with creation. Christ is also Head over His church.
A. What Is the Church?
I was talking with Lon on Wednesday night, and the topic came around to the church. What is the church? Why are there so many denominations? Why is there so much division?
Those are important questions, but before we can answer them, we have to ask something even more basic: What is the foundation of these churches, and who is their head?
If the founding of your religion goes back to some Looney Tunes in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, you are a little late to the game. Others, however, will say, “No, we are ancient. We go back to Christ. We are the church that Jesus founded.”
That raises an important standard. If the foundation is unchanged and unchanging, and if the Head is unchanged and unchanging, then what we have today ought to look a lot like what Christ established as the church.
The first mention we have of the church is in Matthew 16:18, where Jesus said:
“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
The word church is ekklesia, an assembly. There were assemblies everywhere in the common marketplace. But Jesus said, “I will build my church.” This would be His church, and He said that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.
That immediately eliminates the idea that Christ’s church disappeared from the earth and needed somebody centuries later to restore it. If somebody says that the church failed and therefore we needed golden tablets to restore the church, that contradicts what Jesus Himself said.
The Bible calls the church “the pillar and ground of the truth.” If Christ’s church completely failed on the earth, presumably truth itself failed on the earth. But Jesus specifically taught that there would be no overwhelming of His church.
He is strong enough to manage His own church. His church will be fine despite all the pressures against it.
So if we grant that Christ’s church exists, the next question is obvious: Which one is it?
B. What Is Our Authority?
It seems like everybody wants to claim that his church is the most ancient and expansive church.
We have talked before about what I sometimes call the “Ortho-bros.” One of the claims of Eastern Orthodoxy is that theirs is the ancient church, the church Jesus founded, the same church continuing for two thousand years, supposedly unchanged and unchanging.
But then you start looking at the paintings. You look at the icons. Icon veneration was not made authoritative until the eighth century, particularly at the Second Council of Nicaea in the 700s.
And throughout church history there have been plenty of councils declaring one thing or another.
So who says those councils are correct and authoritative? Why does that particular council represent the authoritative word from God?
The response is often something like this: “You sola Scriptura people think you can just interpret the Bible however you want. You have no guiding authority. Every man becomes his own pope. You simply decide what you want the Bible to say. We have the Bible and holy tradition.”
But that is not what we are claiming at all.
Nobody who genuinely affirms the Bible’s final authority is claiming that he is the authority over the Bible. We are saying exactly the opposite.
The Bible is the authority over us.
Not a council.
Not a presbytery.
Not a bishop.
Not a church.
Not a denomination.
Not a priest, bishop, cardinal, or pope.
The Word of God is our final authority.
Someone says, “Well, we have the Bible and our church traditions.”
Fine. But where did those traditions come from?
“Well, large councils of bishops came together and affirmed and codified the truth that was already there. They could not all be wrong. How could thousands of years of tradition be wrong?”
But again, which traditions? Which councils?
Why do you believe one council over another? There have been great councils of bishops involving notable men where entire groups were dismissed or anathematized because one council reached a particular conclusion over against another.
Which one was right?
For our purposes, I am not even as concerned with your answer to that question as I am with how you arrive at your answer.
What are you making your judgment on?
Are you taking the current church tradition and setting it over against all the other church traditions simply because yours is old? Or is there an objective authority that overrules church tradition?
I am not asking for another authority that is merely equal to tradition. I am asking what allows us to decide between competing traditions.
That is where the Bible comes in.
Without Scripture alone as the final authority, man is still the authority.
C. You Can Read the Bible
Sometimes the response is, “Well, we should not judge. What do we know? People much smarter than I am have studied these things. I am not a scholar. I am not a bishop. Other people have thought deeply about this, so I will simply trust them.”
You do not have to be a scholar.
Part of the beauty of the printing press was that the Bible was no longer chained to pulpits and quoted to ordinary people in Latin. People no longer had to simply trust what they were being told. They could open up the Bible for themselves and read what God had to say.
And then somebody could read the Bible and say, “Hang on. We have been invoking the saints to pray for us. Where is that in the Bible?”
Or, “Wait a minute. What about devotion to Mary?”
One traditional prayer says:
“Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us. And after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.”
Why are we praying to her?
Why is she called our sweetness, our hope, and our life?
Why are we calling Mary our advocate when the Bible clearly says:
“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:”
—1 John 2:1
Were Christians doing those things in Jesus’ day? Were the apostles themselves teaching this? Were the first Christians teaching this?
No.
Tradition is not infallible. Church fathers are not infallible.
The only infallible source of truth is the Bible, the Word of God.
You want the original church fathers? Start with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John!
D. Beware of Adding to Christ
Any time there is strict adherence to a religion that says, “There is no salvation outside of our church,” we have moved directly into the territory Paul warns about in Colossians 2:
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
—Colossians 2:8–9
Beware.
Those who add to Christ are to be marked and avoided.
I recently watched a Christian and a leading Orthodox writer come together and discuss salvation. The Orthodox teaching being presented was essentially this: We know where salvation is. It is in our church. We have not changed in two thousand years.
Many of you come from a Roman Catholic background. Perhaps there came a point when you began to realize, “This is not quite as unchanged as I was led to believe. These teachings are not as scriptural as I thought.”
You begin looking at the veneration of Mary, the invoking of saints, papal infallibility, and then the rituals themselves.
Just last week there was the coronation of St. Agatha’s skull. Did you see that?
There is a skull purported to be from A.D. 251. On August 17, they celebrated the nine-hundredth anniversary of her remains being brought back to Sicily. Part of the celebration involved Cardinal Pietro Parolin placing the human skull into the head of a statue, bowing before it, and kissing it.
Folks, there are layers and layers of ungodly traditions, and that is exactly the kind of thing Paul is combating in Colossians.
The answer will sometimes be, “The Bible is not against it. We just do it for the significance.”
I recently heard somebody say, “My church walls preach the Gospel.” The idea was that the icons preach, the statues preach, the paintings preach. Then the question was asked, “Why do you not have anything on your walls?”
Again, what do the Scriptures say?
“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
—Romans 10:17
Christians are commanded to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.
Our authority and our message are found in the Word of God.
A. Worshiping God in Truth
The Ten Commandments certainly forbid worshiping another god. That includes false gods like Baal or Buddha. But there is another part of the commandment that is important. God also forbids worshiping the true God through a representation of God.
When Aaron made the golden calf in the wilderness, he did not simply announce that Israel had abandoned Jehovah and adopted a completely different god. Exodus says:
“And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.”
—Exodus 32:4–5
In the same setting, Aaron connected an image with the LORD Jehovah. He made a representation and then declared, “To morrow is a feast to the LORD.”
That is idolatry.
Anything that takes the place of God is out. And that includes attempting to worship the true God through images and representations. Anglican, Coptic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and other traditions may use various images, icons, crucifixes, statues, and depictions. Many will make a distinction and say, “We are not worshiping the statue. We are worshiping the God represented by the statue. It is just a representation.”
But you are not being a judgmental person simply because you say, “We believe that to be an idolatrous practice, and we want to worship God in spirit and in truth.” If there is anything that rears its head against Christ, we reject it.
That is where we get off rejecting entire denominations. It is not because we are trying to elevate ourselves above everyone else. It comes back to something much simpler: we have the Bible as our foundation. Therefore, anything that does not fit with the Word of God, we reject as false tradition.
That does not mean that we believe we are the only people who can be saved. Anyone can be saved by placing his faith in Christ alone. Salvation is by faith in Christ. It is not by our works. It is not even by works that show evidence of our faith. Salvation itself is truly by faith in Christ alone.
B. The Body of Christ
So now let us come back to the passage. What is this church? Which church is right?
After everything we have considered, the answer comes back to the Scriptures. Whatever church is following the Scriptures is Christ’s body.
Paul told the church at Corinth:
“Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.”
—1 Corinthians 12:27
I do not believe Paul is speaking there about some universal, invisible body of Christ somewhere out there. He is dealing with a local congregation. He is talking to a body of believers who are unified in doctrine and belief.
That becomes especially clear when you look at how Paul deals with that congregation. In that body, if there is sin, if there is leaven as he calls it in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul tells them to cast it out. He writes, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” They were to remove from communion, or excommunicate, the unrepentant sinner.
That authority existed within the body. Their jurisdiction extended to the body they were in.
I cannot excommunicate somebody who is outside of our body. First Corinthians 5 says as much. God deals with those who are outside. Humanly speaking, though, there is authority inside the body, the local church. It is within that local body that the church administers the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
That is where church authority extends.
Wherever there is a body of believers with Christ as their Head, you have what the Bible simply calls a church, a called-out assembly of baptized believers.
The Bible talks about the church at Jerusalem. It talks about the church at Antioch. It talks about the church at Rome. It speaks of the church in this house and the church at this place. Paul could look directly at a congregation of believers and say, “Ye are the body of Christ.”
Someone might respond, “What about Ephesians, where it says Christ loved the church and gave himself for it?”
I see no contradiction there. When God speaks institutionally, He calls it the church. That does not mean He is speaking universally of one giant assembly presently gathered somewhere. We will have that assembly in heaven one day. Of course we will.
Hebrews 12:23 speaks of:
“To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven…”
That will be the day when the church is glorious and without spot or wrinkle. That will be the day when we all have our glorified bodies and we are in heaven forever.
But in the meantime, we are here on earth.
And as fallible as we may be, we have a Bible and a brain, and we are simply trying to yield to the Scriptures. When false teaching arises, we are told, Beware.
If false teaching was already arising in Paul’s day, then certainly after two thousand years it has had plenty of time to germinate. They were not called by all the denominational labels that we have today, but there were still some who remained true to “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” and there were others who were simply false teachers.
The labels change. The fundamental question does not.
Are we following the faith that was delivered? Are we yielding to the Scriptures? Is Christ truly the Head?
C. Christ Is the Head
Every true church has Christ as its Head.
The pastor is not the head of the church. Sometimes people will say, “Oh, at your church…”
It is not my church.
My kids asked me the other day, “Dad, do you own the church?”
No!
“Would we be rich if you sold the church building?”
No!
Then the question becomes, “Who owns the church?”
I told them, “The people do. The church is the people.” I am just one member, just like you.
But ultimately, it is Christ’s church. He is the Head of the body. This is His church. It is not mine, and it is not yours.
That brings us right back to the beginning of the passage. If it is truly going to be said that Christ is over all, then He must be over creation, and He must also be over His church.
Verse 18 says that He is “the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” We talked last week about Christ being God. He is the beginning of all. Before time was, Jesus is. I am not talking there about His form as a man, but certainly about Him as fully God.
Then He came to earth, and Colossians calls Him “the firstborn from the dead.”
Now, Jesus was not the first person ever to rise from the dead. Lazarus, for example, rose from the dead.
But Lazarus died again.
Poor guy had two funerals!
Jesus Christ is the One who rose from the dead for good. He yet lives. He is the firstborn of many more to come.
If you are saved, your body will die one day, but you will rise again. That is the teaching of Scripture.
Why?
Verse 18 gives us the great purpose statement:
“And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.”
If you have ever heard someone addressed as “Your Eminence” or “His Eminence,” the word carries the idea of someone high and lofty, someone of great fame or excellence. But preeminence goes even further. It means first place. First rank. Chief above all.
Christ will not share that position with anyone.
He is first.
He is highest.
He has all authority in heaven and in earth.
Christ is preeminent.
Verse 19 says:
“For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;”
Jesus Christ is preeminent because He is Lord over creation, and He is Lord over His church.
As the Head, Christ is the Leader. He is the Ruler. He is the One in charge. But the picture of the Head also tells us that He is the source of life for His church. We are all parts of His body. We each do our small part for the health of the whole body. We are coming up on that same picture in Romans 12.
I am convinced that every Christian should be a part of Christ’s body. We exercise His will. We do His bidding. We come to His table. We are unified in doctrine, in faith, and in practice. We are in Christ, and we are here to declare His preeminence.
He is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. But through His blood, we are also redeemed and forgiven. In that sense, the creation comes full circle. The One who created all things is also the One through whom fallen people are redeemed.
Perhaps the false teachers at Colossae were presenting what they considered to be some fuller truth, some additional spiritual knowledge that Christians needed. But God makes one thing unmistakably clear:
“For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;”
In Him. In Christ. All the fulness.
There is no greater.
There is no other.
A. What Does His Preeminence Mean for Us?
All right, but what does that mean for us?
First, it means that our church is not to be about our church. Our church must reflect our Head, Jesus Christ.
But then we have to ask, what is our church?
Our church is you. It is the people of the church. It is not merely an institution, a building, a schedule, or a collection of ministries. The church is the people. So the question is not merely, “Is our church like Christ?” The real question is, Are you like Christ?
Let us bring the Bible home.
Did you go to work last week and work as unto the Lord? Moms, did you treat your children last week like Christ would have you treat them? Husbands, did you love your wife last week like Christ loves the church and gave Himself for it? Did you love her as your own flesh? Did you nourish and cherish her?
I did not do so good on that. I need to be more like Christ in that.
What about your attitude toward the lost? Is it like Christ’s? When you are going through a trial, is everything immediately a crisis? Are you spiraling out of control? Is there a spirit of fear? Or are you trusting Christ?
Are you living and breathing a life that is obviously connected to the source of your life, Jesus Christ?
That is what it means for Christ to have the preeminence. It is not merely a doctrinal statement that we affirm about Him. It has to come down into the way we live. If He is the Head and we are His body, then our lives ought to show a real connection to Him.
B. Does Your Life Have Significance?
Here is another question: Does your life have significance?
Well, according to whom?
There may never be books written about your greatness. There may never be crowds talking about what you accomplished. But on what is greatness measured? It is measured by what God says of you.
And in God’s eyes, He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for you. He redeemed you. He bought you back. He forgave your sin. He adopted you into His family. He fitted you, made you meet for His inheritance. He delivered you from darkness and translated you into the kingdom of His dear Son.
Colossians has already said:
“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:”
—Colossians 1:12–13
He has done all of that, and you think your life is meaningless?
Oh, no. Absolutely not.
You are a part of God’s plan for all of creation. His purpose is that in all things Christ might have the preeminence.
God’s goal is not merely to destroy, punish, or zap everybody who is against Him. His work is to redeem and to show His glory.
And His church fits into that purpose.
C. The Church Is About Christ
That means His church is not primarily about our needs. His church is about His preeminence.
Sometimes somebody says, “I am leaving this church. It is not meeting my needs.”
Now, I am not trying to shirk responsibilities. I am not trying to get out of work or excuse us from doing things well. We want to have big days. We want to have excellent ministries. We want to do a good job in the things God has given us to do.
But think about how many things can become demands upon a church.
“Well, I just want something for my kids.”
“My teenagers need activities.”
“Widows need to be cared for.”
“Ladies ministries were a huge thing where we came from.”
“At my old church, we had this.”
“We need something for the men.”
“I just think we should do more.”
“I like to be active.”
“I like Bible studies.”
“I need accountability.”
“We need a finance class.”
“We need an apologetics class. Look, we are losing young people to the universities.”
“We need something for the kids to do.”
“Let us plan more meals together.”
“We need to do missions trips every year.”
“We need to be more politically active.”
“Someone needs to speak up against abortion.”
Then we can keep going. If we are not reaching the prisons, the homeless, the hospitals, the military, the deaf, our neighbors, people with special needs, people with horses, or people with blue cars, somebody can say, “We are ignoring a segment of our society, and they are important!”
People with blue cars are important.
Taking the Gospel to the deaf is important. The life of the unborn is an important cause. Bible studies are good. Accountability groups can be good. Many of these things are great things.
And almost all of them come with the same phrase: “We need this.”
And that may very well be true.
But I am afraid that sometimes we can become stretched so thin that we miss the main thing.
The church is not about me.
The church is not about what I want.
It is not about my priorities, my needs, my kids, or my favorite ministries.
The church is about Christ.
“That in all things he might have the preeminence.”
There are many good causes. There are many useful ministries. There are many legitimate needs. But none of them can become the head of the church. None of them can become the reason the church exists.
Christ is the Head.
And the church exists for His preeminence.
D. Our Part in His Mission
We have Missions Revival coming up. Why?
So that Christ may have preeminence around the world.
Again, bring that down to us personally. What does that mean? It means that you do have a part in the worldwide Gospel mission. Your part is to be part of His church here, right now, on earth.
There is no real accountability in a universal, invisible church. There is no pastor of a universal, invisible church. There is no meaningful communion if there can be no excommunication in a universal, invisible church. There is no doctrinal unity with everyone everywhere who happens to claim the name of Jesus.
Folks, you need to join a local church.
You need to be part of a body.
If it is not here, then where will you join? Find a local body where you can be unified in doctrine and practice. Be baptized. Publicly identify with their teachings. Be part of God’s mission for this universe.
It may seem insignificant to the majority of this world.
You will go to work tomorrow, and no one there may have a clue about the cosmic significance you know your life has. You are part of a local congregation. You worship. You serve. You give. You preach the Gospel. You pray. You take your place in the body.
The world may look at that and think very little of it.
But it is all about Christ.
There are many things of prominence. There are important things. There are good things. But His church needs to be supremely about Jesus.
“That in all things he might have the preeminence.”
08/23/2026
COL SERIES Sermon 5
A. TITLE: Christ Is Our All
B. MAIN TEXT: Colossians 1:15–17
C. BIG IDEA Jesus Christ is the eternal Creator, supreme over all creation, the One by whom all things exist and for whom all things were created.
D. APHORISM: By Him all things consist.
E. PURPOSE: To move us beyond merely analyzing Christ doctrinally to seeing, knowing, and worshiping Him as the Creator, Sustainer, and purpose of all things.
F. SUMMARY: Paul presents Jesus Christ as “the image of the invisible God” and “the firstborn of every creature,” not as part of creation, but as supreme over it because He is its Creator. All things, visible and invisible, were created by Him and for Him, and by Him all things consist. Like a botanist who can analyze a rose yet miss its significance, we can understand the doctrine of Christ while missing the Person Himself. Christ is not merely a historical figure or theological specimen to study. He is the eternal God who entered His creation, sustains it, and will ultimately reconcile it to Himself. Because He is the source, agent, and goal of creation, there is no rival to Christ and no fullness to be found anywhere else.
LXIV. See Christ
Turn to Colossians 1. We are going to read Colossians 1:12–19, but today we are focusing on just three verses, verses 15–17.
This is certainly a doctrinal passage. There is a lot of doctrine packed into these verses. But if we just looked at it academically, we would miss the whole beauty of it.
Today I am just going to try to help you see Christ in the incredible way that He is presented in this text.
One author said:
Popular studies on the historical Jesus have made Christ even smaller, to the point of inconsequence. They have classified Jesus variously as a political revolutionary, a messianic schemer, a Galilean charismatic holy man, a wandering peasant, or a countercultural crusader. The Jesus of history usually comes out looking remarkably like the theological image of the historians. They leave little room for Christ’s divinity, let alone his universal rule.
All this talk about life out there somewhere is missing one thing: “by him all things consist.”
Let us pray.
LXV. Betty the Botanist
You might have heard the story of Betty the Botanist. On her table was an incredible specimen that had been left for her to study. She put it under the microscope and began examining it carefully.
She examined the vascular tissue, transporting water up the stem while also providing rigidity for it to stand against the wind. She studied the green pigments coming from the chlorophyll and the remarkable order of each leaf and petal. She looked at the anthocyanin compounds that absorb the light and emit a deep red-colored pigment to our eyes, which is good for attracting pollinating bees.
Jerry came in the next day and asked Betty, “Did you see what I left you?”
“Oh YES, Jerry! Thank you SO MUCH! I dissected the WHOLE thing and STUDIED it all evening. It was SUCH a delight!”
But Jerry was very confused.
“You dissected it? Betty, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I left you a rose!”
[PULL OUT ROSE]
See, Betty understood the science behind the specimen. As a botanist, she could study it and understand it deeper than almost anyone else.
But in all her understanding, she had missed the meaning of the rose. She had missed the purpose of the rose. She had missed the significance of the rose.
Explanation is not the same thing as significance.
And when we are going into a text about Christ, it is not just explanation we are after.
LXVI. We Are Worshipers
We are not botanists examining a specimen. We are worshipers.
And here is a bit of text that was originally meant to be read in church. It is not just an academic study. This was a praise text, like a hymn, an exaltation of Christ!
There is significance to this. Christ is the preeminent One. Christ is the focus. Christ is our foundation.
Christ is our all!
Here are just three verses that we will look at today, and they give purpose and meaning to life. Understanding and knowing and praising Christ is truly what your life purpose is about.
Now, that is a bold claim in our society. And certainly it is so if you are impressed with your own accomplishments or with what people can do. Sure, Christ will seem insignificant.
He is just a figure of history. The historians can study Him. Scholars can study Him.
“But I am MUCH MORE INTERESTED in other things, not just a guy of history.”
Why, look how we have gotten along without Him. We can do some incredible things nowadays, and we do not need Christ.
Oh, what a dangerous way to live. And what a foolish way to live.
LXVII. The Significance of Life
To live life without Christ is to miss the significance of life.
We are in a world that is held together by Jesus. Quite literally, in fact.
And yet some just think we are products of a big bang. And if there is a God, He is distant and unconcerned.
“Sure, maybe this universe is like a fine-tuned watch, but the watchmaker just ‘set it and forget it.’ He just wound it up and released it. So He is outside of our day-to-day lives. He is distant from our lives.”
“Sure, I grant a cosmic creator of some sort, but He does not care about little ol’ me.”
Oh, how wrong you are.
God is not just the God of the afterlife, while we are here to figure everything out on our own.
No, the scientists of our day are not our high priests, telling us to believe the science and trust the science.
There is a faith that this world places in the so-called experts that is far greater than my faith! It is a belief that nothing created everything. And somehow that seems far harder to understand than my faith that God created everything.
And if God is our Creator, it must mean He is good. It must mean He cares for us. And He has revealed Himself to us.
Oh, yes.
And that is what this text is really about.
LXVIII. Christ Is Not a Specimen
We can analyze all we want. We can study the scholarship of the text. We can get into the academics of this word and that word. Is this a hymn that preexisted Paul? Did Paul write it? Did he borrow and adapt it?
I read it all this week.
But Christ is not a specimen to be analyzed and dissected.
And we are not Betty the Botanist.
There is a significance to the message of Christ that I am afraid some will miss.
I hope you can know Christ better today.
A. The Phrygian Bros
Because that is what Paul was hoping for the Colossian believers. They are in this region of Phrygia, so I am calling them the Phrygian Bros.
These are those that are adding to the finished work of Christ. You must be disciplined. You must join this church. You must do religion our way. We have got a fuller religion.
They had an ascetic view of life, as if matter or material things were bad, including our bodies, and only the spiritual was good. “I am not religious, but I am spiritual” is the term nowadays.
And they had a spiritualism that included worshiping angels.
But here is a Christology that is so far beyond all others. Here is Jesus Christ, who is above all spirits and above all creation.
There are zero rivals to Jesus Christ.
B. The Plan, the Power, the Purpose
So, bumping into the Greek philosophers of his day, the Scriptures here present Christ as the primary cause, the instrumental cause, and the final cause.
The plan, the power, the purpose, as Warren Wiersbe puts it.
Jesus planned this creation. He produced this creation. And for His pleasure they are and were created.
No, Phrygian Bros, salvation is not in escaping the body, as if all material things are sinful. And no, it is not something to control, as if by our own power we can harness the universe.
This Is My Father’s World expresses this truth beautifully. [HYMN LYRICS OMITTED]
Here is the divine purpose of all creation: the Creator, who entered His creation, has redeemed His creation and will present it to His Father in the end.
C. There Is a Purpose to His Creation
No, I am not an environmentalist, as if we worship “Mother Nature.” But I am also not just trying to escape.
“We just gotta hang on till Jesus comes.”
No, there is a purpose to His creation. And in every scientific discovery, the scientist has to close his eyes tighter and tighter to the presence of God.
Jastrow, an agnostic astronomer, confesses as much in describing a scientist’s scaling the mountains of ignorance and now climbing the highest peak — the beginning of time. “As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
It is not that the theologians had all the science figured out, but that the conclusion always ends up at God.
D. Do Not Miss Christ
I know I am more or less starting my sermon at the conclusion of the matter, and I have not proven anything yet. But that is part of my point.
It is Valentine’s Day, and there is a rose on our desk.
There is significance beyond the analysis.
Now, we will get to the analysis in a minute, but do not miss Christ.
My friend, there is an emptiness to so many people’s souls because they are searching for answers in religion. Whoever has the strictest beliefs. Whoever has the best definitions. Or they search for answers in rationality. Whoever convinces me with the best arguments or shows me the best evidence.
But we cannot be convinced by the brain of something that is eternal and outside this time period.
E. A King Among Us
No, God is not just a majestic King out there, in the far-off castle in the clouds, declaring His majesty to all of us peons down below.
He is a King who is among us, meek and lowly, who entered the streets where we live.
A suffering Saviour, yet the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.
Yes, He is Jesus of Nazareth, the simple carpenter’s son. Jesus, who walked in Galilee and Judaea, who ate fish and walked with men. A friend to these humans. A personal young man, not much older than Bro. Zack.
But the scandal of scandals, the sheer preposterous claim that Christians were making, is that Jesus of Nazareth, the One who died on a cross, is the very same One who is the eternal Creator of it all.
Folks, I cannot explain it.
But I believe it.
He came to reconcile all creation to Himself, which means it needed reconciling.
And Jesus bridged heaven and earth to bring us salvation and healing, and enter us into His glorious plan.
We are talking about a Person.
The Person of Jesus Christ.
Not just “wisdom personified,” as if this is merely a wisdom poem from the Old Testament. This is a Person.
The Person of Jesus Christ!
A. Who Is This Jesus?
Now, who is this Jesus? Is He a mere carpenter’s son?
No, that is part of the beauty of this text. Jesus is so much more than that.
Is He the Jesus of the New World Translation, as if He is just one of the created ones? Is He the spirit-brother of Lucifer, the Son of Heavenly Father, but not equal to the Father? Is He the Jesus of the Quran, a prophet, but no God?
No. The Scriptures reveal this Jesus to be “the image of the invisible God.”
An image back then was the exact representation of a thing. Not just the representative, as an ambassador represents the United States, but the representation. He is the very essence of that thing in person.
Humans are made in the image of God in terms of our dominion over God’s creation, the highest of His created beings. But Jesus is the image of God.
Hebrews 1:3 says:
“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;”
The word image there is the Greek word karakter, like the image of a letter on a typewriter or a printing press, or the impression made by a seal. It represents the very thing.
And Jesus is the image of the invisible God. The nature and being of God are perfectly revealed in Jesus.
John 1:18 says:
“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
Not everyone understood that when Jesus was on earth. Jesus said to Philip in John 14:9:
“Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?”
These hazy concepts of the invisible God become crystal clear when people see Christ.
He is the image of the invisible God.
When you see Christ, you see God.
B. The Blueprint for Humanity
As we are made in His image, He becomes the blueprint for what humans ought to be. We are called to be godly, or God-like. We are called to be like God.
How could we ever do that?
Well, as our teens’ T-shirts say, [INSERT ACTUAL WORDING]:
“Live this life
As if JESUS was ME.”
He is the image of the invisible God.
C. The Firstborn of Every Creature
And He is “the firstborn of every creature.”
Of every creature. There is a genitive there. Is it partitive? In other words, does that mean He is part of creation?
Or is He the firstborn in terms of priority or supremacy?
Well, we know from the rest of the text that He is not a part of creation. He is the Creator.
The word firstborn here is first in rank. There is nothing above Christ.
With all of this, you can get very technical, and I do not intend to. But it is very simple in my mind. Read verse 16:
“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:”
He is first because He is Creator.
Creator of all things.
It is not that He was created. He is the image, eternally, and He is the Creator.
D. The God of Genesis 1:1
This is not replacing the Old Testament understanding of God the Creator. It is not introducing a second God. There is still the Jewish understanding of monotheism.
But here it is understood more fully as what one writer calls a Christological monotheism.
Yes:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1 is absolutely talking about Jesus Christ.
E. The Person of Jesus Christ
It is a heresy to believe that Jesus is not God.
Slick-talking Mormon apologists will argue that we agree on 99 percent of the other stuff, but on this one little thing we differ.
Oh no.
If I go on a date with a girl who is about 5’2”, with beautiful brown hair, I am describing Jamie Rench, and no other.
Her personhood is what matters. Not just the descriptors about her. It is her.
The person of Jamie is my wife, and if you change something about the essence of Jamie Rench, we are dealing with a different person.
So too with Christ.
You might use the same name. He might look like Jesus, be called Jesus, have done miracles like Jesus, and even have been slain on a cross like Jesus. But if it is not the Person of Jesus as described in the Word of God, we are dealing with another Christ.
We are dealing with personhood.
And this passage shows who Jesus is.
He is God.
He is the perfect stamp of the invisible God.
A. Why Is Christ First?
Why is Christ better? Why is He firstborn? Why is He supreme?
The first reason given is because He creates.
When verse 16 says, “by him,” it does not mean that God created Christ first and then, through Christ, created everything else. The text itself bears out the answer and makes it obvious that Christ is not a created being.
There are a few different expressions being used here. At the beginning of verse 16, it says, “by him.” At the end of the verse, it says, “all things were created by him,” and then, “for him.”
We use the word by in English a few different ways. We might say, “This book was written by this author,” or, “This symphony was composed by this composer.” The by there identifies the originator or source. Where did this come from?
Well, the entire universe came from the source of Christ. Jesus Christ is, in the present tense, always God, and He is the originator of creation.
Someone might say, “Which part of creation? Because it could be that He was the first one created, and then He created everything we know.” No, you really have to stretch the text to make it say that. The words are plain:
“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:”
Heaven and earth. Visible and invisible.
And what invisible things? Thrones, dominions, principalities, powers. The greatest powers you can imagine, the vast expanse of the universe, the most microscopic of particles, the invisible places of the spirit world, the forces of nature, the laws of nature, all of it was created by Jesus.
He is the source. It comes from His mind as the author.
B. The Source and the Agent
But we also use the word by in terms of agency or means. “This book was written by this author.” “This piece was composed by this composer.” That can also mean that the person personally scripted the writing. He did not merely originate the idea. He actually produced it.
When my parents were dating in college, Dad could not type fast. So he wrote the papers in his original words, and Mom could use a typewriter, at least a little faster than him. She typed his paper out.
So what was turned in was written by Dad, in the sense that the words and thoughts originated with him. But it was not “technically” written **by Dad” in the sense of agency. He was not the actual means of producing the physical paper that was turned in. Mom was the one who typed it.
You can get a Bible dictionary and look these words up. The world was created by Christ. It was original to Him. But it was also created by Christ in the sense that He is the actual Creator of it all.
He actually typed the paper too.
He designed the blueprints and He built the building.
There are different Greek prepositions behind these expressions: by Him (en), by Him (dia), and for Him (eis). Christ is the source, and Christ is the agent.
C. And It Is All for Him
But He is also the One that it is for.
That symphony He composed and created is for His coronation ceremony. That building He designed and built is for Him.
He is simultaneously the source, the agent, and the goal of creation.
And just in case you did not catch it, verse 17 recaps it:
“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”
He is before all things. Again, like firstborn, He comes before creation in time. There is His eternality again. But He is also before things in rank or hierarchy.
He is before it all.
D. By Him All Things Consist
And then comes this remarkable statement: “by him all things consist.”
The very essence of time, space, and matter are held together by Him.
The high school biology students learn to zoom in on cells and find the building blocks of all of life. But they cannot zoom in far enough to find the “God particle.”
What is it that holds the electrons in place? Why do they stick together instead of flying off? How can we be composed of mostly nothingness? What is it that keeps our whole world intact?
The Scriptures have an answer: Jesus Christ.
It is not that we relegate Jesus to just a far-off afterlife. He is present in every moment of every day, in a very real sense, right here in His creation.
It is this perfect tense, which presents a continuing presence, a “hyperpresence,” as one author put it. He is with the good and the evil. His creation is groaning for the day when even it will be redeemed and restored to what God intended it to be.
First Corinthians 15 shows the victorious day when Christ presents all of His creation to the Father, after He has restored it to perfection.
Oh, this Christ is before all things. In time, He is eternal. In rank, He is above all. And there is nothing that can stand against Him. Lucifer committed high treason when he opposed Christ’s authority.
E. Who Are We to Stand Against God?
And who are we to stand against God?
“Oh, I am so scared about global warming.” Hang on: “by him all things consist.” Nothing can destroy this world unless God allows it.
All these thoughts about governments, famines, plagues, viruses, and all the things that cause people to live by ungodly fear, when Christians are called to live by faith.
“Yeah, but all the scientists say….”
Jeremiah 8:9 says:
“The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?”
We are living in the creation of Jesus Christ. He is before it. He created it. It exists for Him.
And by Him all things consist.
A. What Does This Mean for Us?
I appreciate how one author, Garland, brought all of this down to some very practical conclusions.
First:
(1) If Christ is the image of God (1:15) and all the fullness of God dwells in him (1:19), then the Colossians will not find fullness in anything else (2:10).
What are you living for? There is no fullness except in Christ.
That is the point of all of this. If Christ is the image of God, if the fullness of God dwells in Him, then why would we look anywhere else for fullness? The Colossians did not need something beyond Christ, and neither do we. There is no fuller religion, no higher spiritual experience, and no other place to find what is missing.
There is no fullness except in Christ.
Second:
(2) If all the things “that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers” were created by him (1:16), he brings to naught all supposed threats posed by these powers.
All of those powers that can seem so intimidating are still created powers. They are not rivals to Christ. Thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, whatever power we might fear, Christ is above it because Christ created it.
And third:
(3) God’s plan from before creation was to reconcile all things through Christ, and that design has not been revised.
The Colossians did not need a supplemental salvation plan. They did not need heavenly visions or rigorous asceticism, as we will see in Colossians 2:16–23. Instead, attention to those things may actually disqualify them.
It is Christ alone.
If He is the image of the invisible God, if all the fullness of God dwells in Him, if He created everything visible and invisible, if everything was created by Him and for Him, if He is before all things, and if by Him all things consist, why would you even consider another alternative?
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