Or, The Jews Didn't Know Who They Were Messing With
Scripture: Colossians 1:15-20
Date: June 15, 2014
Speaker: Jonathan Sarr
In our current study through the gospel of John, we have been faced with the reality that at every step on the way to Calvary, Christ was in control. This reality gives us pause and gives us hope. The Lord who gave up His life for us while sustaining the lives of His executioners is Lord of our lives as well. And this is good, because if there is anything outside of the scope of the sovereign control of Christ, then it must not bow the knee in submission to Him, whether kings or kids, parents or presidents, tornadoes or termites.
And this morning we find ourselves in between parts 1 and 2 of our study of The Crucifixion of the King. To our shame, our familiarity with this story can make it easy to become jaded as we learn about the greatest event in redemptive history. Well, Sean had a host of uncommon boulders put into his schedule this week so I asked the elders if I could insert a message about Christ in a sort of parenthetical exercise. It’s important for us to maintain a right perspective lest we become desensitized to the enormity of the sacrifice of Christ and the circumstances He worked to bring it about. So I’m going to take us on a sort of quick detour that emphasizes the power of the one the Jews were messing with. They crucified the Messiah they were awaiting, the One who was in complete control as they did so.
If the Jews knew Whom they were executing, it’s silly to suppose they would have proceeded with their plan. Rather, they would have responded in fear and awe, in the same way as Peter did in the boat once Jesus enabled their monstrous catch of fish, or the way His apostles did when He calmed the storm, or the way that John did in Revelation upon seeing the vision of the glorified Christ. If we knew Jesus as well as we should, we may never sin again, from the resulting holiness of knowing Him and the terror of the Lamb’s wrath.
Yet here we sit far too often, wanting our churchgoing ears tickled with an encouraging message about Jesus when we - like those who crucified Him - ought to be crying, “Lord.” Well, in Colossians one, Paul offers encouragement, but it comes in the form of mind-blowing truth about Christ. For my theological money there’s no passage like the one we’re studying this morning for a sake of clear and strong statement of Christ’s preeminence. In the first chapter of his letter to the Colossians, Paul declares the incomparable nature of the actual, physical and sovereign Christ.
He was combating the Gnostic heresy and its dualistic teaching that matter is evil, so Christ couldn’t have actually been both God and Man. I’ll revisit this in a little while, but he combats this heresy head on with a glorious declaration of the One crucified for our sake some thirty years prior.
So as we plod through this paragraph on the incomparable nature of Christ, I hope to have John’s account of the crucifixion as the sort of lens through which we view this passage. I’ve got five points for our consideration:
Let’s look first at verse 15.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
First we must note the present tense usage of the verb “is.” Not “was” or “will be,” but rather, in His risen status, He is the visible God, occupying physical space in His glorified, resurrected state. The reality of His material substance would create a host of problems for the Gnostic heretics infecting Colossae.
Paul begins here by identifying Christ’s deity. “He is the image of the invisible God.” He is the visible Person of God. The Father and the Spirit are invisible, but the Son is incarnate, or in the flesh. How do you have an image of something that is invisible? Well, in this case, by taking on human flesh. He came in the flesh as human and was then 100% man. Yet He retained His deity and was then 100% God.
An image of someone invisible is an oxymoron, but helpful language nonetheless. It is to say that Christ is none other than an incarnation of God Himself. He is “the firstborn of all creation.” Paul’s readers understood this to mean what Paul intended: Christ is not the preeminent creature. He is “firstborn” in honor and position, and not in chronology.
But heretics in Colossae and throughout the Roman Empire would later embrace this phrase, “the firstborn of all creation” as meaning that Christ’s “firstborn” status did in fact mean that there was a time when Christ “was not,” to borrow the language of the Arians. By the fourth century and the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine, the greatest enemies of the church were not wearing Pharisees’ robes or Roman armor, but they came from within the Church herself. These were false teachers influenced by Eastern and Greek philosophy, like the Gnostics I mentioned above.
As they tried to reconcile the Gnostic teaching that matter is evil, they had to conclude that Jesus never had a physical body. But better than most men, Paul realized that without a physical body for Christ, there is no actual atonement for sin. Salvation wouldn’t come from some secret Gnostic knowledge transcending Scripture; it came rather from the redemptive work of the physical Christ on the actual cross for - fittingly - our actual sins.
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.
As mentioned before, the Arian heresy - against which Athanasius so heroically fought in the fourth century - believed that there was a time when Christ “was not.” This was after Paul’s time, but the work that our Church fathers did to establish orthodoxy and the right teaching of the person and nature of Christ helps us to know Him better, too, as well as to understand these passage.
So the Arians taught that Christ could not be “firstborn of creation” without having been created. Paul, of course, is speaking of the honor of firstborn status, but we don’t need to look any further than the text to refute the Arians. Specifically, verse 16:
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him.
If Jesus created “all things,” then He must Himself have been uncreated, or else He too was created, and Paul is a liar.
Paul here exhausts all categories: in heaven, on earth, visible, invisible, and then spiritual forces.
In heaven: consider the stars and planets. If you want to feel small, look outside at night and think for just a moment. The image of the stars that we can see is but a picture of what they looked like many years ago, as stars are often thousands of light years away. And many of them are considerably larger than our own sun, yet they look small to us. And compared to them, the Earth is a speck. And compared to the Earth, we are smaller than a speck of dust that weightlessly floats through the air.
David thought this way:
Psalm 8:3-4 - When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Psalm 147:4 - He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.
These planetary systems are the handiwork of a sovereign Creator. Compared, then, with the whole of the universe, the creation of Earth would seem rather small by comparison. And yet it has His special seal, His mark of particular blessing evidenced by His own coming in the flesh not to Jupiter or Neptune, or some other-galactic location. No, He came to Earth, to fallen humans, to redeem us.
And it seems at times as though there are tremendous spiritual forces in our way, endeavoring to thwart the work of Christ in His Church – in and among Christians. We feel spiritually interrupted. Things in the spiritual realm are hindering our progress. And yet, note that Paul mentions that Christ has created all things both visible and invisible. You and I cannot create anything; we can – at best – rearrange atoms so as to potentially restructure something. But even the things we cannot see have their substance in Him. And what does Paul mention? “thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through Him and for Him.”
Of all the billions of things he could have listed to further illustrate his point, what does Paul list? Spiritual forces! These are differing ranks of spiritual powers, including angels and demons. I suppose it’s possible that Paul could have been speaking this truth for his own benefit as well, reminding himself that his spiritual opponents in Colossae ultimately answered to Christ as well.
The greatest obstacles to our spiritual progress include forces that Christ Himself has both created and even sustains! And He allows this evil to continue to exist for His own purposes. The powers that thought they had won as Christ ascended Calvary were borrowing life from Him.
Christ has absolute control over all calamity and destruction, and He has not only the ability, but the absolute right to do with His creation what He pleases. He does what He wills, and despite what we see, nothing can thwart His plans.
A plain reading of the text yields all this. But in the context of examining the Crucifixion account, it means that as the Jews and Romans killed Jesus as told in John 19, they used implements and elements He created.
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Paul continues here with the present tense: “He is before all things.” Christ was worthy to declare in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” His existence has simultaneous past, present and future significance. So, chronologically He is before all things, He is preexistent. And in terms of honor and authority He is before all things. He alone has the authority as Creator over all that His hands have built and fashioned.
You know the planets that we mentioned earlier? That they hold together and continue to spin and orbit stars, and that the stars themselves even continue to burn is only the work of Christ. If the one who created them ceased to sustain them, to hold them together, they would cease to exist. We all hold together in Christ. Paul wants His readers to understand that our very substance was formed and is kept together in Christ.
Athanasius observed the mind-boggling reality that while Jesus was in Mary’s He was creating a body for Himself and holding the stars in place.
Christ keeps the electrons in orbit around every nucleus. Christ keeps you heart beating. And even when He stops it, He does so for His own glory. He effortlessly sustains the winds of hurricanes at over 100 miles per hour. He allows us to breathe…and we think because He has done it every moment up until now that he’ll do it later on today? We flippantly recognize the power of our Incomparable Sustainer when say, “Thanks God for this day.” When is the last time you meant that?
And returning to our larger context, as Christ was flogged mercilessly, the bits of bone and glasses imbedded in the leather thongs of the whips that exposed bone and blood only stayed in place because He kept them there.
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
Paul says that Christ is the beginning; all things start with Him. He’s only strengthening the case that Jesus precedes all of creation, and there is not a time when He was not.
The word rendered here “preeminent” means “first” in priority. Paul speaks of Christ’s preeminence, then, in everything! That can’t be stated any clearer: all kings and lords and powers and peasants and students and teachers and parents and rocks and trees and planets and stars…ALL must answer to Him because he is preeminent. As firstborn from the dead, this speaks of His bodily resurrection and ours. He is the first fruits of the resurrection, the first One resurrected to a glorious state. His position is not only one of honor, it is one of absolute sovereign supremacy.
This means then, that Christ is the true, the only Sovereign. “Sovereign” can be a noun or an adjective. As an adjective, it means “having supreme rank, power, or authority.” As a noun, it is any person, like a ruler or a monarch, who possesses these qualities. In other words, a true sovereign has no authority to whom he answers, and he rules with supremacy. We know that this ultimately describes one entity in all the universe: God. And more narrowly, as relates to all of creation, it is Christ.
Even the most powerful and sovereign monarch in the world who insists that he answers to no one may very well finish out his days on top. But in the end all caesars and kings submit to King Jesus. They all must answer to the one true Sovereign. Paul teaches in Philippians 2:9-11 that “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
In the end, all men will acknowledge that for whatever authority may have been temporarily granted them by God for this life, there is only one Sovereign. 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.
Finally, in a stark change of tone, Paul tells us that this supreme God, Creator, Sustainer and Sovereign has also become our Peace. It almost feels like Paul, grabbing his readers by the collar (who were being seduced by lies about the nature of Jesus) and stressing his point, now having their attention, says, “Yes! That incomparable, creating, sustaining, sovereign Christ! He is the one who has brought us peace with the Father at the expense of His own life. So don’t listen to lies that tell you He was a bodiless, formless vision or essence.”
The One who exacts justice gave His own innocent Son as a substitutionary sacrifice, and Christ laid aside His own preferences in order to reconcile us to the Father.
At Gethsemane, Jesus knew exactly what He was doing. He knew what awaited, and He knew what it cost, and what that payment would purchase. And He did it anyway.
The reality of Christ as a sovereign, omnipotent being is only good news if He is good and He is for us. And here Paul helps us. If Christ were sovereign and wicked, this preeminent Being would resemble Zeus or Kronos. But He is good; He is for us, and loves us, and by His sacrifice on the cross He has deliberately reconciled us to the Father.
So, as a man, Christ’s sacrifice paid for the sins of men. No angel was redeemed at Calvary, as it was a Man who died. No angel has ever been redeemed because there has been no appropriate, complete angelic sacrifice atoning for the sins of fallen angels. But there has been a sacrifice for men.
As a sinless, innocent Man, Jesus had no sins of His own to pay for. If He had sinned, He would not have risen again from the grave, as He too would be paying the infinite penalty for His sins.
And if Jesus is innocent Man but not God, then He would be an appropriate substitute for one other man. But as God, His sacrifice is enough for all men, and it is efficient for everyone who believes.
So where there was was enmity between us and God, our having offended Him and violated His righteous standard, now, says Paul, there is peace.
The preeminent Christ was illegally arrested and executed. The One who spoke the Law suffered the violation of the Law so that He may reconcile us to the Father. And the Jews and Romans who afflicted Him figured they were dealing justly with a blasphemer.
We ought to let this reality to sink in as we continue to study the crucifixion account, lest we also become jaded or lest we dare take for granted this unbelievable sacrifice.
In love, He underwent the most unjust murder ever because a sacrifice was needed to meet the demands of His Father’s wrath…for us. At no moment was He out of control; in fact, His control went (and goes) far beyond what we see.
So ends our parenthetical reminder of the nature of the Afflicted One. Next week, Lord willing, we’ll continue with our study of the Crucifixion of the King with a proper wonder and renewed perspective.