Jesus is the supreme Lord
And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
The supremacy of Christ that extends over the whole created universe also extends, in a special way, over his church. He is the head of the body, the church. The picture of the church as a body, with many interrelated members carrying out their various functions, is a familiar one to the readers of Paul’s epistles, but the apostle’s emphasis here is slightly different from that in the other references. In Romans and Ephesians, Paul’s lesson is that believers are members of the same body and must function together harmoniously for the sake of the church’s well-being. Here the lesson is that the body has a wonderful head that rules and controls its every function. That head is Christ.
As a body cannot live without a head, so the church cannot exist without Christ. The human head holds the brain, the nerve center of the body. Modern science has also discovered that the growth of the body is controlled from the head, by a tiny gland located at the base of the brain. Similarly, Christ is the church’s vital head. It is only through him that the church can live and grow. And Christ is the church’s ruling head. He exercises authority over the church, directs its every function, and governs all things in the universe in the church’s interest. The church depends upon Christ alone for everything.
The church and all believers are dependent upon Christ for their very existence. This is emphasized by the phrase “He is the beginning.” In Revelation 21:6 Jesus describes himself as “the Beginning and the End,” the eternal one on whom his believers depend. By faith in him, believers share in all the blessings that belong to him as the eternal Son of God. “The firstborn from among the dead” is a title that reminds us of the importance of his resurrection for our salvation. Jesus’ resurrection guarantees that believers also will rise one day at his command. He holds the keys of death and the grave and has power over life and death. His resurrection, following his humiliation and death as the sinners’ substitute, is the affirmation of his supremacy over all things.
With one majestic statement after another, the apostle has risen higher and higher in his praise of the exalted Christ and his assertion of Christ’s unique greatness. Christ is supreme before all the created world; he is supreme over his redeemed congregation; he is supreme in the resurrection and the glory of the life to come. Now he brings all those greatnesses together into one grand statement: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.” We will further discuss the term “fullness” in our study of 2:9.
Was “fullness” another of those words that the false teachers used in such an arrogant way? Perhaps it was. But in the face of all such claims about fullness, the apostle triumphantly asserts here that real and absolute fullness, fullness in its greatest sense, can be found only in Christ. In him all the fullness of God’s grace and glory reside. Through him all the fullness of the divine thoughts and counsels is expressed. He possesses all fullness from eternity, and there is no domain in time in which he is not supreme.
The fact that all divine fullness rests in Christ is a rich source of blessing for believers. For in Christ and through the divine fullness he possesses, God was pleased to bring about a reconciliation between himself and the world of sinful human beings. By nature, since Adam’s fall, sinners are alienated from God and are the objects of his wrath. But God’s thoughts toward fallen humanity are thoughts of peace, not of evil. Through Christ, the Son of his love, God has taken the initiative and brought about peace between sinners and himself.
The Son of God, in whom all fullness resides, came into this world of sin not to vaunt his glory but to humble himself and to shed his blood on Calvary’s cross. He came to take the curse of man’s sin on himself and to pay for its guilt, so that the broken relationship between sinners and God might be repaired and changed from a relationship of warfare and enmity to one of blessedness and peace. The gospel’s opponents in Colosse spoke much about making peace with God and removing the barriers that separate God and man by building ladders to God with their own rituals and schemes and works and deeds. Paul brushes all this away as irrelevant and unnecessary. Jesus has already done all that is necessary to remove the barriers that sin created between God and man. He has done all this by his cross and the shedding of his blood. Through them our guilt is pardoned and his righteousness is credited to us. He earned full forgiveness for all sinners.
Individual sinners receive that forgiveness as their very own by faith. The reconciliation that Jesus brought about is perfect and complete, including the whole created world. When man fell into sin, the whole created world was affected by the consequences of sin. What had been a beautiful and perfect world became a very imperfect world. Christ’s redemptive work, however, reestablished peace between the sinful world and the holy God.
Human beings receive the blessings of that peace spiritually by faith already here in this world. In eternity they will experience them perfectly and permanently. In the resurrection world, even the created world that was corrupted by man’s sin will be restored to perfection again. We do not understand all the details of what that resurrection world will be like, but we do know that everything about it, including our own relationship to our Lord, will testify to the complete and perfect redemption and reconciliation accomplished by the all-sufficient Christ.
Paul wanted the Colossians to be personally aware of Christ’s supremacy in the realm of their salvation. They had been recipients of the spiritual blessings brought about by God’s reconciliation of the world to himself. From their origin as sinners born of sinners, they had been alienated from God. They were strangers, shut out from God’s mercy and love. They were enemies of God in their affections and dispositions, and their wicked actions revealed their inner hatred of God and their unwillingness to serve him.
But now, by a miracle of God’s mercy, those same people had entered a new and wonderful relationship with God. They had been made personal sharers in the reconciliation Jesus brought about between sinners and God. Because Jesus came into this world, took on a human nature, and became man’s substitute, because in his physical body Jesus bore the curse of sin and satisfied the justice of God, the Colossians’ debt of sin also had been paid.
Through the gospel, the Holy Spirit had entered their hearts to fill them with the faith by which they believed in Jesus and received his redemptive blessings as their very own. With Christ’s righteousness and his redemptive payment for their sins credited to them, they could now stand without blemish and be free from accusation before God. Jesus is supreme in the realm of salvation, and Jesus and his salvation are all-sufficient for believers’ personal reconciliation with God.
It is only through the gospel that Christ and his redemptive blessings come to believers’ lives so that they share in the blessings of reconciliation, and it is only through the gospel that those who have been brought into that vital faithrelationship with Jesus are maintained and strengthened in their faith. The false teachers in Colosse were urging the Colossian believers to accept in place of the gospel a human message that claimed to be gospel but was not gospel at all.