Colossians 1:15-23 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Colossians 1:15-23

• Colossians 1:15-23
• 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. 18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. 21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions. 22 But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him— 23 if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.
  • This is a passage of such difficulty and of such importance that we will have to spend considerable time on it. We will divide what we must say about it into certain sections, and we begin with the situation which gave birth to this passage and to the whole view of Christ which Paul sets our in the letter
  • The Mistaken Thinkers
    • It is one of the facts of the human mind that people think only as much as they have to. It is not until we find our faith opposed and attacked that we really begin to think out its implications. It is not until the Church is confronted with some dangerous heresy that it begins to realized the riches of orthodoxy. It is characteristic of Christianity that it can always produce new riches to meet a new situation
    • When Paul wrote Colossians, he was not writing in a vacuum. He was writing, as we have already seen in the introduction a couple of weeks ago, to meet a very definite situation. The Gnostics, which more or less means “the intellectual ones” were dissatisfied with what they considered the unrefined simplicity of Christianity, and wanted to turn it into a philosophy and to align it with the other philosophies that were popular at the time
    • The Gnostics began with the basic assumption that matter was altogether evil and spirit altogether good. They further held that matter was eternal and that it was out of this evil matter that the world was created. Christians believe in creation out of nothing; the Gnostics believed in creation out of evil matter
    • God was spirit; and if spirit was altogether good and matter essentially evil, the Gnostics said that God couldn’t touch matter, and couldn’t be the agent of creation. So the Gnostics believed that God put forth a series of emanations, each a little further away from God until at last there was one so distant from God that it could handle matter and create the world
    • They went further. As the emanations went further and further from God, they became more and more ignorant of Him. And there was not only ignorance of God but also hostility to Him. To Gnostics came to the conclusion that the emanation who created the world was both ignorant of and hostile to the true God, and sometimes they identified that emanation with the God of the OT
    • This has certain logical consequences
      • As the Gnostics saw it, the creator was not God but someone hostile to Him; and the world was not God’s world, but the world of a power hostile to Him
        • That is why Paul insists that God did create the world, and that His agent in creation was no ignorant and hostile emanation but Jesus Christ, His Son
      • As the Gnostics saw it, Jesus Christ was by no means unique. WE have seen how they put forward the belief in a whole series of emanations between the world and God. They insisted that Jesus was merely one of these emanations. He might stand high in the series; he might even stand highest; but he was only one of many
        • Paul meets this by insisting that in Jesus Christ all fullness dwells, that in Him there is the fullness of the godhead in bodily form. One of the supreme aims of Colossians is to insist that Jesus is utterly unique and that in Him there is the whole of God, the fullness of God
      • As the Gnostics saw it, this had another consequence in regard to Jesus. If matter was altogether evil, it followed that the body was altogether evil. It followed further that He who was the relation of God could not have had a real body. He could have been nothing more than a spiritual fantom in bodily form. They completely denied the real humanity of Jesus
        • That is why Paul uses such startling phraseology in Colossians. He speaks of Jesus reconciling men and women to God in His physical body; he says that the fullness of the godhead dwelt in Him bodily. In opposition to the Gnostics, Paul insisted on the flesh and blood humanity of Jesus
      • The last of human beings is to find their way to God. As the Gnostics saw it, that way was barred. Between this world and God, there was this vast series of emanations. Before the should could rise to God, it had to get past the barrier of each of these emanations. To pass each barrier, special knowledge and special passwords were needed; it was these passwords and that knowledge that the Gnostics claimed to give. This meant two things
        • It meant that salvation was intellectual knowledge
          • To meet that, Paul insists that salvation is no knowledge; it is redemption and the forgiveness of sins. The Gnostic teachers held that the so-called simple truths of the gospel were not nearly enough. To find its way to God, the soul needed far more than that; it needed the elaborate knowledge and the secret passwords which only Gnosticism could give. So Paul insists that nothing more is needed than the saving truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ
        • If salvation depended on this elaborate knowledge, it was clearly not for everyone but only for the intellectuals. So the Gnostics divided pole into those who were spiritual and those who were earthly; and only the spiritual could be truly saved. Full salvation was beyond the scope of ordinary people
          • It is with that in mind that Paul wrote 1:28, “We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” Against a salvation possible for only a limited intellectual minority, Paul presents a gospel which is for all, however simple and uneducated, however wise and learned they may be
    • These were the great Gnostic doctrines; and all the time we are studying this passage, and the whole letter, we must have them in mind, for only against them does Paul’s language become intelligible and relevant
  • What Jesus Christ is in Himself
    • In this passage, Paul says two great things about Jesus, both of which are in answer to the Gnostics. They had said that Jesus was merely one among many intermediaries and that, however great he might be, he was only a partial revelation of God
      • Paul says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God
        • Here he uses a word and a picture which would waken all kinds of memories in the minds of those who heard it. The word image can be two things which merge into each other. It can be a representation; but a representation, if it is perfect enough, can become a manifestation. When Paul uses this word, he declares that Jesus is the perfect manifestation of God. To see what God is like, we must look at Jesus. He perfectly represents God to men and women in a form in which they can see, know, and understand. But it is what is behind this word that is of such enormous interest
          • The OT and intertestamental books have a great deal to say about Wisdom.
            • In Proverbs, the great passaged on Wisdom are in chapters 2 and 8. There, it is said to exist in eternity with God and to have been with Him when He created the world. Now, in the Wisdom of Solomon, image is used of Wisdom; Wisdom is the image of the goodness of God. It is as if Paul turned to the Jews and said: “all your lives you’ve been thinking, dreaming, and writing about this divine Wisdom which is as old as God, which made the world and gives wisdom to men and women. In Jesus this Wisdom has come to us in bodily form for all to see.” Jesus is the fulfillment of the dreams of Jewish thought
          • The Greeks were haunted by the idea of the Logos, the word, the reason of God
            • It was that Logos which created the world, which put sense into the universe, which kept the stars in their courses, which made this a dependable world, which put a thinking mind into human beings. This very word image is used again and again by the Hellenistic Jewish writer Philo on the Logos of God. He calls the invisible and divine Logos, which only the mind can perceive, the image of God
            • It is as if Paul said to the Greeks, “For the last 600 years, you have dreamed, thought, and written about the reason, the mind, the word, the Logos of God; you called it God’s image; in Jesus Christ that Logos has come plain for all to see. Your dreams and philosophies have all come true in Him.”
          • In these connections to the word image, we have been moving in the highest realms of thought, familiar to the philosophers. But there are two much simpler connections which would immediately flash across the minds of those who heard or read this for the first time
            • Their minds would at once go back to the creation story in which God said, “Let us make man in our image”
              • Human beings were made that they might be nothing less than the image of God, for the word in the Genesis story is the same. That is what men and women were meant to be; but sin came in, and they never achieved their destiny. By using this word of Jesus, Paul infect says “Look at this Jesus. He shows you not only what God is; He also shows you what you were meant to be. Here is humanity as God designed it. Hess is the perfect manifestation of God and the perfect manifestation of what it is to be human.” There is in Jesus the revelation of godhead and the revelation of true humanity
              • But we come at last to something much simpler than any of these things. And there is no doubt that many of Paul’s readers would think of this. Even if they knew nothing of the Wisdom Literature, of Philo, and of the Genesis story, they would know this
                • Image was the Greek word which was used for a portrait. It is the nearest equivalent in ancient Greek to our word photograph. But this word had still another use. When a legal document was drawn up, such as a receipt or an IOU, it always included a description of the chief characteristics and distinguishing marks of the contracting parties, so that there could be no mistake
                • The image was a kind of brief summary of the personal characteristics and distinguishing marks of the contracting parties
                • So Paul is saying: “You know how, if you enter into a legal agreement, there is included an image, a description by which you may be recognized. Jesus is the portrait of God. In Him you see the personal characteristics and the distinguishing marks of God. If you want to see what God is like, look at Jesus.”
      • The other word Paul uses is in verse 19. He says that Jesus is the fullness of God. This is the word which is needed to complete the picture. Jesus is not simply a sketch of God, or a summary and no more than a lifeless portrait of Him. In Him, there is nothing left out; He is the full revelation of God, and nothing more is necessary
  • What Jesus Christ is to Creation
    • According to the Gnostics, the work of creation was carried out by an inferior god, ignorant of and hostile to the true God. It is Paul’s teaching that God’s agent in creations is the Son; and in this passage he has four things to say about the Son in regard to creation
      • He is the first-born of all creation
        • We must be very careful to attach the right meaning to this phrase. In English, it might mean that the Son was the first person to be created; but in Hebrew and Greek thought the world first-born has only very indirectly a time significance. There are two things to note
          • First-born is very commonly a title of honor. Israel, for instance, is the first-born son of God as a nation. The meaning is that the nation of Israel is the most favored child of God
          • First-born is a title of the Messiah. In Psalm 89:27, as the Jews themselves interpreted it, the promise regarding the Messiah is; “I will also make him my firstborn, greatest of the kings of the earth.” 
        • Clearly, first-born is not used in a time sense at all but in the sense of special honor. So, when Paul says of the Son that He is the first-born over all creation, he means that the highest honor which creation holds belongs to Him 
      • It was by the Son that all things were created
        • This is true of things in heaven and things in earth, of things seen and unseen. The Jews themselves, and even more the Gnostics, had a highly developed system of angels. With the Gnostics, that was only to be expected with their long series of intermediaries between human beings and God. Thrones, lordships, powers, and authorities were different grades of angels having their places in different spheres of the seven heavens
        • Paul dismisses them all with complete indifference. He is in effect saying to the Gnostics; “You gave a great place in your thinking to angels. You rate Jesus Christ merely as one of them. But, far from that, He created them.” Paul lays it down that the agent of God in creation no inferior, ignorant, and hostile secondary god, but the Son Himself
      • It was for the Son that all things were created
        • The Son is not only the agent of creation, He is also the goal of creations. That is to say, creation was created to be His, and in its worship and its love He might find His honor and His joy
      • In Him all things hold together
        • This means not only that the Son is the agent of creations in the beginning and the goal of creation in the end; but also, between the beginning and the end, during time as we know it, it is He who holds the world together. That is to say, all the laws which govern and sustain order and not chaos in the universe are an expression of the mind of the Son. The law of gravity and the rest, the laws by which the universe hangs together, are not only scientific laws but also divine
    • So, the Son is the beginning of creation, the end of creation, and the power who holds creation together, the creator, sustainer, and the final goal of the world
  • What Jesus Christ is to the Church
    • Paul sets our in verse 18 what Jesus is to the Church and he distinguishes four great facts in that relationship
      • He is the head of the body
        • The Church is the body of Christ; the organism through which He acts and which shares all Hi experiences. But the body is the servant of the head and is powerless without it. So Jess is the guiding spirit of the Church; it is at His bidding that the Church must live and move. Without Him, the Church cannot think the truth, cannot act correctly, cannot decide its direction. It is the privilege of the Church to be the instrument through which Christ works. If we neglect or abuse our bodies we can make them unfit to be the servants of the great purposes of our minds; so by undisciplined and careless living the Church can make itself unfit to be the instrument of Christ, who is its head
      • He is the beginning of the Church
        • The Greek word for beginning has a bit of a double meaning. It means not only first in the sense of time, as for instance, A is the beginning of the alphabet and 1 is the beginning of the series of numbers. It means first in the sense of the source from which something came, the moving power which set something in operation. We will see more clearly what Paul is getting at if we remember what he has just said. The world is the creation of Christ; and the Church is the new creation of Christ. Christ is the source of the Church’s life, being, and the director of its continued activity
      • He is the first-born from among the dead
        • Here Paul comes back to the event which was at the center of all thinking, belief, and experience of the early Church—the resurrection. Christ is not merely someone who lived and died and of whom we read and learn. He is someone who because of His resurrection is alive for evermore and whom we meet and experience. Christ is not a dead hero or a past founder, but a living presence
      • The result of all this is that He has the supremacy in all things
        • The resurrection of Jesus is His title to supreme lordship. By His resurrection, He has shown that He has conquered every opposing power and that there is nothing in life or in death which can bind Him
    • So there are four great facts about Jesus Christ in His relationship to the Church, which we can now put in order. He is the living Lord; He is the source and origin of the Church; He is the constant director of the Church; and He is the the Lord of all, by virtue of His victory over death
  • What Jesus Christ is to All Things
    • In verses 19-20, Paul sets down certain great truths about the work of Christ for the whole universe
      • The object of His coming was reconciliation
        • He came to heal the rift and bridge the chasm between God and humanity. We must note one thing quite clearly and always retain in our memories. The initiative oin reconciliation was with God. The NT never talks of God being reconciled to the world, but always of the world being reconciled to God. God’s attitude to men and women was love, and it was never anything else. It was God who began the whole process of salvation. It was because God so loved the world that He sent His Son His one object in sending His Son into this world was to woo people back to Himself and, as Paul puts it, to reconcile all things to Himself
      • The medium of reconciliation was the blood of the cross
        • The driving force behind reconciliation was the death of Jesus. What does Paul mean? Exactly what he wrote in Romans 8:32, “32 He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything?”
        • In the death of Jesus, God is saying to us; “ I love you like that. I love you enough to see my Son suffer and die for you.” The cross is the proof that there are no lengths to which the love of God will refuse to go in order to win human hearts; and a love like that demands an answering love. If the cross will not waken love in our hearts, nothing will
      • We must note that Paul says that in Christ God was reconciling all things to Himself
        • The point is that the reconciliation of God extends not only to all persons but to all creation, animate and inanimate. The vision of Paul was a universe in which not only the people but also the things were redeemed
        • There is no doubt that Paul was thinking of the Gnostics. They regarded matter as essentially and incurably evil; therefore the world is evil. But, as Paul sees it, the world is not evil. It is God’s world and it shares in the universal reconciliation. This is God’s world and it is a redeemed world, for in some amazing way God in Christ was reconciling the whole universe of humanity, living creatures, and even inanimate things to Himself
      • The passage ended with a curious phrase
        • Paul says that this reconciliation extended not. Only to things on earth but also to things in heaven. How was it that any reconciliation was necessary for heavenly things? Here are some of the explanations
          • It has been suggested that even the heavenly places and the angels there were under sin and needed to be reconciled to God. I.e. Job
          • Origin, the third century theologian  and universalist, thought that the phrase referred to the devil and his angels, and he believed that in the end even they would be reconciled to God through the work of Jesus Christ
          • It has been suggested that, when Paul said that the reconciling work of Christ extended to all things in earth and in heaven he did not mean anything definite but was simply using a phrase in which the complete adequacy of the reconciling work of Christ was set out
          • The 5th century Bishop of Cyrrhus, Theodore, said that the point is not to have the heavenly angels reconciled to God, but that they were reconciled to human beings. The suggestion is that the angels were angry with men and women for what they had done to God, and wanted to destroy them; and the work of Christ took away their wrath when they saw how much God still loved humanity
    • God’s aim was to reconcile all people to Himself in Jesus Christ. The medium by which He did so was the death of Christ, which proved that there were no limits to His love—and that reconciliation extends to all the universe, earth and heaven alike
  • The Aim and Obligation of Reconciliation
    • In verses 21-23, the aim and the obligation of reconciliation are set out
      • The aim of reconciliation is holiness
        • Christ carried out His sacrificial work of reconciliation in order to present us to God consecrated and blameless It is easy to twist the idea of the love of God and to say: “Well, if God loves me like this and desires nothing but reconciliation, sin does not matter. I Can do what I like and God will still love me.” The reverse is true. The fact that we are loved does not give us complete freedom to do as we like; it last upon us the greatest obligation in the word, the obligation of being worthy of that love. IN one sense, the love of God makes things easy, for it takes away our fear of Him and assures us that we are no longer criminals awaiting judgment, certain of nothing but condemnation. But, in another sense, it makes things agonizing and almost impossibly difficult, for it lays upon us this ultimate obligation of seeking to be worthy of that love
      • Reconciliation has another kind of obligation, that of standing firm in the faith and never abandoning the hope of the gospel
        • Reconciliation demands that through sunshine and through shadow we should never lose confidence in the Leo of God. Out of the wonder of reconciliation are born strength of unshakable loyalty and the radiance of unconquerable hope