Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Colossians 1:15-23 | Date: November 1, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Christ the Lord of Creation

All right, Colossians chapter 1. And I’ll ask again if someone will read for us verses 15 through 23. Colossians 1:15–23. All right, we have here one of the most important passages in the Apostle Paul’s writings with regard to the deity of Christ, the person of Christ, and it is a sustained presentation of Christ’s Lordship. We’ll take our time with that today, hopefully get through these verses.

Some New Testament scholars have suggested that this was, in fact, a hymn that was sung by the early church. There are various factors they have in determining that. Not sure if it’s true or not. If it is, was it composed by Paul, or was Paul repeating it, or is he altering it here, expanding on it? At any rate, their argument is that it seems to be something familiar to the church. There’s a symmetry to it with the stanzas and so on. But at any rate, we do have here an exalted presentation of Christ that’s just marvelous in its details.

Remember last time, we looked at Paul’s prayer, verses 9 to 14. In verses 12 to 14 of that prayer, Paul lists for us—well, he’s been listing for us the four marks of a walk that is worthy of Christ. And the fourth of those was a thankful heart, giving thanks to the Father, specifically giving thanks to the Father for this rescue mission that he has accomplished on our behalf in Jesus Christ. In verse 14 then, culminates that statement, speaking of the redemptive work of Christ in which we have the forgiveness of sins. So verses 12 to 14 then, we have thanksgiving for the rescue that we have in Christ.

And now verses 15 to 23, what Paul is doing is expanding for us on the qualifications of the rescuer. So verses 12 to 14, thank God for the rescue we have in Christ. Verses 15 to 23 now, just how is it that Christ is qualified to be this rescuer for all of us? And the answer is, verses 15 to 17, he’s the Lord of creation. And then verses 18 to 23, he’s the Lord of the church. So two aspects of Christ’s Lordship. Verses 15 to 17, he’s Lord over creation. Verses 18 to 23, he’s Lord of the church.

It’s one of the Christological high points of the New Testament. And I’ve mentioned before that evidently some of the false teaching going on in Colossae that Paul is confronting impinges on the supremacy of Christ. And so, Paul goes to great lengths in this epistle—here at the most length, but other places as well as we’ll see—to emphasize the supremacy of Christ and the sufficiency of Christ. You have Jesus; you don’t need anything else. Everything we need, we have in him. And here he lays the groundwork for that by expounding on the, explaining the great supremacy of Christ.

Okay, first then, verses 15 to 17, Christ the Lord of Creation. “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 or things. All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

All right, a lot here. Verse 15 again: “He is the image of the invisible God.” Now the short explanation—and I’m going to give you the longer one too, because I’m a preacher, we do that. The short explanation of this, “he’s the image of the invisible God,” is simply to recognize that Jesus is the revealer of God. Or, put it this way: in Christ, God is made visible. The invisible God manifests himself in Christ. That’s the idea of this phrase here, the image of the invisible God. He is the representation, if you will; in him God makes himself known. So again, just in a nutshell, we have here an unmistakable reference to the deity of Christ. He is God imaged. He is God revealing himself. God making himself known. So he is the image or the representation of the invisible God.

Now, for the longer explanation. And I’m going to back up here and give some broader reflections on Trinitarianism in the New Testament and how we find it, because it is reflected in this assertion here and in some of the remarks that follow in this passage. We already know that the Trinity is the leading mystery of the Christian faith. It’s easy enough to say there’s one God, three persons who are God, and the three share completely whatever it is to be God, and yet those three are distinct persons. It’s easy enough to say that. It’s a lot harder to get your mind around it. There’s no analogy that works. There’s nothing that carries it all. It’s unique. God is unique. But we have one God who in his essence and his being is one God and it’s shared among all three persons, fully and completely—whatever it is to be God, the Father is that, the Son is that, the Spirit is that—and yet there’s a distinction between them in terms of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now, that raises the question—and these are questions you probably, many of you haven’t thought of, and in fact, this takes us back to the theologians of the early church. Can you imagine, try to put yourself in that, in the early centuries of the church? You’ve inherited monotheism; there’s only one God. And now suddenly Christ has come and you’re worshiping him. And you’ve got to grapple with this. How is it we’re worshiping Jesus if there’s only one God? And God sent him. And then you throw in the third person. You have the Holy Spirit, who is God as well. How does all this work out?

And so we had this, as I’ve said before, revelation dump. Jesus comes, and he reveals all this, and the apostles come, and they tell us all of this. And now it’s left to the church to sort all this out. How do we say that in a formulated way, in a way that we can grasp all the details? And in the early church, they grappled with questions that many of us wouldn’t even have thought of, but how to penetrate the understanding of these Trinitarian relationships.

And what they have said, and what all of the church since, in all of its branches, has inherited, is that the distinction between the three persons is one of relations. We have to understand their relations in order to understand the threeness of the one God. So it’s not enough to say that there’s one God who subsists in three persons. We have to go on and say these three persons stand in a specific relationship to one another. And that relationship is, there’s Father, and there’s Son, and there’s Spirit. The Father begets, the Son is begotten. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And that is the relation. In every other way, they are identical. In their being and in their essence, whatever it is to be God, that is true of all three of the persons. The distinction among them is the relationship. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The distinction between them is one of relations.

Now once you say that, you’ve got to say also those relations are eternal. So the Son is begotten by the Father, but that never happened in time. He’s always been begotten by the Father. And so the early church came up with the expression that we’ve inherited, “eternal generation,” which, in a sense, is an oxymoron. How can he be generated, begotten, and yet eternally? But if you’re going to put together all that you have in the New Testament about the Trinity, you have to say that. He’s begotten by the Father. There’s a sense, some deep sense of relational dependence, relational origins. The Son is begotten by the Father. And yet it was always that way. It’s eternal. There’s a sameness of essence, but a distinction in relations.

And then you take it a second step. In those relations—Father, Son, and Spirit; the Father begetting, the Son begotten, and the Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son—there’s a distinct order. The Father begets the Son. You never have the reverse. The Spirit proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Son. You never have it the other way. There’s a distinct order. The Father begets the Son. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And yet, it’s always been that way. It’s eternal relations. So the Father is always understood as prior in some sense, and yet it’s always been that way. And so there’s perfect equality, perfect equality in essence and being and eternality and glory and all of that; perfect equality, and yet it’s always been that way. Yet within that, there’s some relational dependence in terms of origin of relations. The Father begets the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The language the New Testament uses is this word “begotten.” The Son is the only begotten of the Father.

All right, so we have perfect equality in essence and in glory—and I’m going to show you how this crops up here in this passage—perfect equality in essence and in glory, and yet distinction in terms of relations and in ordering within those relations. Now let’s take it a step further. How is it we know this about God? We could never have imagined it, couldn’t have come up with it on our own. We only know it because God has so revealed himself. God has revealed himself in what we call his external works, in the work of salvation, the work of creation. And in the work of creation and the work of salvation, the Father sends the Son. The Father and the Son send the Spirit. We never have any other reverse order. We never have the Son sending the Father. We never have the Spirit sending the Father and the Son. There’s always this distinct order. In other words, the external works of God in salvation reflect how it really is with God in his eternal relations among the three.

About a year ago, or maybe two now, I was interviewing a few different theologians on the doctrine of Trinity for a project we were doing. And one of them suggested that because of the equality of the persons of the Trinity, the Father could just as easily have been the one who became incarnate. The rest of us were pretty shocked by that, that he would say such a thing, because what we know about God—and this way it’s always been understood in the history of the church—is the way he reveals himself: the Father sending the Son, the Son and the Father sending the Spirit, reflects the way it really is with God, and it reflects these eternal relations that they have among the three persons. I think we have to say that.

And so we have some related expressions, and I’m still trying to narrow down here to “image,” but we have some related expressions in the New Testament. Matthew 11, verse 27. Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” Notice that we have the same direction. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. And there in the context, he’s speaking of the Father’s inexhaustible knowledge of himself. The Son has that as well. And yet he says, “it’s been given to me by my Father.” Perfect equality. No one knows the Father except the Son. But yet that has been given to me by the Father.

Or, John 3:35. “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.” Notice the same direction. The Father gives all things to the Son. My favorite expression of this is John 5:26, where Jesus says, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself.” Think about that. Life in himself—what is that? That’s eternality. That’s what we call “aseity,” self-existence. God has life in himself. He’s not dependent on anything. He has life in himself. The Son has life in himself. Aseity, self-existence, independent existence. The Father has life in himself. The Son has life in himself. Perfect equality in being. And yet it says the Father has given the Son to have life in himself. How do you put that together? How can you have life in yourself, self-existence, and yet that be given? And this is a part of the mysteries of the Trinity that we have to grapple with in the New Testament. You have this order of relations, and yet it’s always been that way.

Oh, there’s some more. John chapter 1, Jesus is called the Word. “In the beginning was the Word.” And then caps off the discussion, the prologue in John 1 verse 18: the Word is the one who makes the Father known, who’s invisible. So the Word is the one who reveals God. He’s called the Word because Jesus is, in a sense, God speaking. In all that Jesus is, in all that he does, in all that he says, he’s making God known. So he is God’s Word, God making himself known. Or the famous one in Hebrews chapter one, where we read: “The Son is the imprint of God’s nature, the effulgence of his glory, the brightness of his light.” Notice again, the same direction. The Son is radiating the Father. Never the other direction.

Okay, we’re in some of the deepest waters of the scriptures and the deepest waters of Christian theology. But notice that’s always that same direction. There’s some kind of relation of origins—Father, Son, Spirit—that order, but there’s a perfect equality in terms of eternality and all of that. Now here in verse 15, he has another figure. He’s the “image” of God. And we have that same idea of God making himself known by means of his Son. The eternal God now revealing himself in his Son. Whatever the relational dependence, the statement is just unequivocally: in Jesus, God is making himself known. He is God making himself known. The image of God. Well, all of that is the larger theological background that’s in Paul’s mind as he writes this and in the New Testament as well. I don’t want to open this up forever, but any questions on that before we move along?

Yeah, Pastor Greg. “Now, it says, everything he has put under him is pure, because it does not include God himself as the Father, who put everything under Christ.” Yeah, very good. Christ comes, he reigns, he puts down everything, and he gives it back to the Father, mission accomplished. So that God may be all in all. Good, thank you.

All right, we’ll expand on the Trinity in greater depth some other time, but I wanted to give you that larger backdrop of this idea of Christ as the image of the invisible God. Perfect equality in terms of glory, eternality, all of that, and yet there’s an ordering within them: Christ reveals the Father.

All right, verse 15b: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Now here’s an expression that has created some misunderstanding. In fact, there’s been considerable controversy over this passage in the history of the church. Most famously, in the fourth century, a bishop by the name of Arius taught that—by the way, the descendants of the Arians, fourth-century Arians, are the Jehovah’s Witnesses today. They take this expression “Firstborn of all creation.” They say, “Well, if he’s firstborn, there must have been a time when he was not.” And so therefore, the Son is not eternal. And so there’s a great controversy in the early church. It was a huge rift in the church. It finally climaxed in the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where the Orthodox position was finally hammered out, particularly through the efforts of one Athanasius, many of you have heard of. But this was a huge rift in the church. And Arius had a huge following.

Now keep in mind this is Christendom, and so everybody’s claiming to be a Christian. And the rift now is: how do we understand the Son? Is he perfectly equal with the Father? Or is he just above the rest of us and above everything else, but not quite equal with the Father? And Arius’ argument was: he’s firstborn; therefore, there was a time when he was not. And yet people, his followers, chanting in the streets. If you can imagine this. Again, this is Christendom, so we can’t imagine it in our society today. But yet people chanting in the streets: “There was a time when he was not. There was a time when he was not.” And actually, in the Greek, it has a little bit more of a ring to it, ēn pote hote ouk ēn. And everybody out there, ēn pote hote ouk ēn. There was a time when he was not—can you imagine that? People out in the streets chanting that, and there’s a huge rift, and it finally had to be settled at the Council of Nicaea.

Well, the question then is: what does Paul mean by this expression, “firstborn”? Does he mean that he was the first one ever created? That’s what Arius said. The New International Version gives a bit of an interpretive rendering here, and I think it actually captures it well. For those of you who have the NIV, “he’s the firstborn over all creation,” which is a perfectly legitimate way to translate the genitive there. In other words, “firstborn” is a title of supremacy. It’s a title of dignity. It’s not temporal priority, but positional authority. Prepositional priority is the idea.

Let me explain that. In the Old Testament, we have the firstborn and the privileges that belong to the firstborn. You remember the firstborn inherits two-thirds and the others get the rest, split up. The firstborn had a preeminence above the others. And that’s picked up, for example, in Psalm 89 and verse 27. I want you to hear this. This is a messianic psalm, a famous psalm, Davidic psalm about the Messiah, David’s greater son who will come. Psalm 89 verse 27 says of the Messiah, “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” Notice how he explains what “firstborn” means. “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” Now, David was not the firstborn. The reference here, obviously, is back to 2 Samuel 7, where God promised David that his son would reign on the throne forever, and God said, “I will make him my son.” He’s picking up on that here. David was not the firstborn, and in fact, Messiah is not David’s firstborn. But he’ll be made the firstborn. What does that mean? Well, he tells us it means he’ll be the highest of the kings of the earth. He’s the one who will rule. That’s the idea. Firstborn. He’s the one who will be preeminent over all things. So it’s a note, a title of rank and of superiority. Supremacy. So again, I think the NIV captures it well here: the ruler over all creation. It’s an expression of Christ’s lordship. He’s the firstborn.

Now there’s one consideration here that establishes beyond any question that Paul is not thinking here when he says Christ is the firstborn—there’s one consideration here that establishes once and for all that Paul is not thinking of temporal priority. That’s the next verse. Notice how it starts: “for.” You have the explanatory conjunction. “He’s the firstborn of all creation, for by him were all things created. In heaven and on earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things were created through him and for him.” So he is the firstborn of all creation. Why? Because he created everything. That’s why. So it’s not temporal priority, but it’s positional priority.

There’s no realm of existence—he even unpacks this here at length. There’s no realm of existence that was not created by Jesus. The Son is the creator of all things: heaven and earth, visible, invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authority—all things. He repeats it. All things were created by him, not just all other things. But whatever exists outside of God was created by the Son. Now we have—why don’t we take the time to look at it? Someone read for us John 1:1–3. All right, again we have the idea not only that the Son is creator, but specifically emphasis: He’s the creator of everything. In all of reality you have uncreated and created. Uncreated is a category that belongs to God alone. Created is a category that came into being by the Son. The Son, then, is in this category of uncreated. He created everything that is, not just all other things, but all that is was created by Him. I’ll just mention here in passing, for those of you taking notes, if you would like, 1 Corinthians 8, verse 6. Again, we have this: “through him all things are made. Through him are all things.”

And notice here, verse 16, Paul is not about to be misunderstood on this point. He expands on it. “By him, all things are created.” That’s enough. He doesn’t want to be misunderstood. So he expands: “things in heaven and on earth.” Well, what else is there? There’s nothing else. Well, let’s say it again. “Visible and invisible.” That is the spirit world and the material world. “Whether thrones or dominions or rulers”—that’s probably a reference to the demonic authorities, fallen angels. And then he repeats it. “All things created by him.” And then he adds something that we don’t find anywhere else in the New Testament: “All things are created by him and for him.” They’re his. You can see how Paul is hammering away here at the ultimate lordship of Christ over all things. And the reason ultimately that he’s the ruler, the firstborn over all things, is that he created everything that is. Again, this idea of the rulers and dominions, thrones and dominions, is almost certainly a reference to the angelic powers, whether demonic or good angels or both. That will have relevance later in Paul’s discussion in Colossians 2. He mentions that these false teachers are teaching some kind of worship of angels. Already, he’s laying the groundwork for that argument. Whatever these angels are, whatever importance they have, understand first of all, they’re created by the Son. The Son is superior to them all.

All right then, here’s why the Son is the firstborn over all creation. Answer: he’s the creator; he made it. They’re all his because he made it. Verse 17: “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Before, that is in a temporal sense; that’s the Son’s eternality. He’s eternal just as the Father is. He’s before all things, and in fact he is the sustainer of everything. In him all things hold together. Now that in later centuries would have bearing on the arguments against deism. Remember what deism is? The classic example of it is: okay, we believe in God. He made all things, but it’s like a clock. He wound it up and let it go, and he’s not involved. The deistic idea that God is immanent over all things—or I mean transcendent over all things, but not imminently involved in all things. He’s kind of detached. Paul doesn’t allow for that. He upholds all things. That we have in Hebrews chapter 1 as well. He upholds all things by the word of his power. So he’s firstborn. How? He’s the creator, and he’s the sustainer, the upholder, that is, the ruler over all things. Christ, Lord of creation.

Are there any questions on those verses? Yes, Pastor Greg. “I thought these verses that you set forth are wonderful. It’s giving us a time to be alone with whatever is occurring to you. Today, high school, all college students, I think that’s a very good move or a promotion of what we want to do. And we point out, you know, that the Christian division has done excellent work in two years now.” Yeah. Yeah, very good.

Yes, Laura. “I’m just curious. Would you say that the voice of Genesis 1—” Okay, start over. I missed the first part. “Would you then say that the voice in Genesis 1 was Jesus?” Well, there’s obviously some reference, allusion to that at least, that God’s creating through his word, and the word ends up being Jesus. And I think you have to say there’s some kind of allusion to that. And then you have the Spirit hovering over the face of the deep, the Spirit involved in it as well, and you have the same ordering—Father, Son, Spirit—that we find everywhere in the Bible.

Okay, let’s try to finish the passage. It’s not going to happen. Any other questions? If not, we’ll dismiss early. All right. Pastor Greg, would you pray for us, please?

“Lord, we thank you for giving us the time to be aware of what we have to do. Also, since we reflect on it, we ask that everyone knows. We thank you for the grandeur and majesty of your person beyond comprehension, always subject to wonder and faith unto us. We’re glad that in time we have set aside for worship on Resurrection Day to pause, to reflect, to learn, and to receive a welcome in your presence. We pray that you will accept our worship and service to God and establish a good will in your presence. We reflect on the truth in the face of God in your presence in the face of those who are having to join them. And we need to now help them to also receive the blessing.”