Jesus is the supreme Lord
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
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.
Firmness and a proper sense of purpose and direction were necessary. “Continue in your faith,” Paul unashamedly urges. Don’t let anyone move you from the gospel hope you have in Christ. Don’t let any false teaching from without or sinful prompting from within cause you to turn away from the one message that joins you to Christ. Use all the spiritual energy the Holy Spirit has given you in Christ to flee from the false and cling to the true. Unfailingly renew your spiritual strength by returning again and again to the strength-giving and strength-maintaining gospel. Through the gospel maintain your hold on your all-sufficient Savior.
The pseudo-gospel that the false teachers were proclaiming in and around Colosse was a message with many strange elements peculiar to that rather small group of teachers, but the gospel Paul proclaimed was a universal message. It had been enthusiastically carried by the apostles and their successors into almost every part of the Roman world.
Human beings do not have to seek new and mystical ways of finding Christ and his salvation. Human wisdom and philosophy are not necessary to discover him. All that sinners need to find Christ is the clear and simple message of the apostolic gospel. In the gospel the Colossians possessed Christ in all his fullness. No other revelations were necessary for them, or for us.
The truths Paul has discussed in this lengthy section are primarily doctrinal. They express objective truths concerning Christ and the gospel. But they are also practical, perhaps more so than we might realize at first. Think of what the great truths Paul has so forcefully emphasized here mean for our lives. Jesus is supreme in the world of creation. He created all things, and he governs all things and holds them together with his almighty power. This assures us that, contrary to what we may sometimes think, the world is not ruled by chaos. It is continually under the command of our allsufficient Lord and Savior. There is a plan, a divine purpose in all that happens in our world and in our lives, a purpose determined and brought to pass by the Savior, who loves us.
Sin, evil humanity, and the devil are not in control of this world. Jesus is. He sets limits on their wicked activities. Nothing in this world—no political menace, no military conflict, no economic depression or accident—nothing in our lives, including the worst imaginable tragedies, can separate us from our Savior or from the hands of love in which he continually holds us. Day after day he is moving this world forward to the end of the age. Then he, by his almighty power, will deliver us
completely and forever from the effects and consequences of sin, bring an end to this present evil world, and make all things wonderfully new in the eternal glory that he has promised to share with us, his children by faith.
There is blessed assurance also in the fact that Jesus is supreme in the world of salvation. The gospel sets before us the great truth that in Christ and his redemptive work, our salvation is complete. We do not have to add one single thing. At one time in history the eternal Son of God gave his life to provide a reconciliation between sinners and God. The blessings of that reconciliation are personally ours by faith, which is also his free gift to us through the gospel. The gospel reveals to us the all-sufficient Christ and connects us with him.
Today there are many who, like the false teachers at Colosse, belittle the gospel and regard it as something irrelevant for our modern age. Their logic is alluring and their words are enticing, especially to our sinful natures, as they urge us to give up the gospel.
But if we truly appreciate the unique greatness of our Savior, and if we understand that it is only through the gospel that we are joined to the Savior and his blessings, any idea of giving up that gospel or exchanging it for something “better” will quickly be rejected. Continue! Paul says. Stand firm! Hold fast to the all-sufficient Christ and the gospel that proclaims him. To Paul’s encouragement we add a loud Amen.