You’ve heard of “the Fear of Missing Out”, or FOMO. The fear is that someone somewhere has scoped something that you haven’t. They have “hacked life” and are extracting all its juices. And you are missing out. Others are maximizing their returns in life, and you aren’t.
Advertisers feed on this: compare the pair, you’re doing worse than you could be, you loser. You need to shop around, compare the market: someone else is doing better. You are satisfied with the mediocre, the tailings, the off cuts. Out there, someone is doing better than you: better income, conditions, better sex, better family, better children.
Or what about when you buy a bag of chips, or a packet of your favourite biscuits. And you go home with it and you realize after you’ve opened that there is a lot of air in the chip bag. And when you open the familiar packet of biscuits, between each one there are large areas of packaging: there seems more pack and less biscuits. Or the biscuits aren’t as big as you remember when you were a kid, and you suspect its not just because you’ve grown. It’s meant to be a “Wagon Wheel”, not a tidily-winks disc. It’s called shrinkflation, and you know what I’m talking about.
I remember this ad with lasagna. It wasn’t advertising lasagna, but I do remember the lasagna. The first was a magnificent skyscraper of a piece, standing tall and proud, with beautiful mince sauce of substance cementing the pasta sheets in wonderful stratifications. The second was a couple of limp pasta sheets swimming in white sauce. I don’t know what I’m supposed to want, but I hope it is the monstrous apartment block, the huge lasagne cliff in wonderful geological formation.
Sometimes Christians think that their version is a couple of pasta sheets floating in white sauce, and out there somewhere people are eating multi-level meaty edifices. You thought you were getting fullness, but all you get are crumbs. It’s pretty disappointing.
And of course there are versions of Christianity that exist to tell you that you are missing out. The prosperity gospel teaches this sort of poor cousin Christianity, as do the various versions of manifesting and word of faith, name it and claim it theologies. And the second experience versions, such as second baptism in the Spirit, do the same. If only you spoke in tongues, your Christian life would be fulfilling and deep. Or the higher life views of Christian living, that you can have sinless perfection, or uninterrupted communion with God, or exultant experiences with worship music, and that if you only adopted this key, this technique, this approach, you will put your Christian and spiritual life on a higher, and new, and different plane.
You are missing out. There’s more, and better, and bigger, and fuller spirituality and Christianity to be had.
The Colossians were tempted to think in these sorts of ways. False teachers were offering them “fullness”, a bigger and better experience, and saying that their experience wasn’t enough, or adequate, or all that could be squeezed out of Christianity.
Another human tendency is to create career ladders and hierarchical chains of being. Like at Cubs and Scouts, you can get more and more badges awarded for your achievement. Like in regimented work-places, where they create these heirarchial systems. They create a corporate ladder. The military are experts, with their detailed ranks and complicated levels of medals and honours. Multi-Level Marketing does this. It’s a way of controlling people, of keeping them, and ranking them, of saying, you are better, he is less.
One way of looking at it is star charts for adults. At the top is the grand poo bah, who succeeded. Everyone else is less valuable, less important.
You see this with clubs and loyalty programs or sponsorship. You can be a gold member, or a platinum member. You get to drink blue label, not red or black or green. They are statements about quality that become status symbols. Who knew that Johnny Walker Blue is better than gold, platinum, black, double black, green, or red? I don’t drive a Toyota, I drive a Lexus.
Marketing executives love this sort of stuff, creating a distinctive hierarchies, and making you think it means something. We need to see it for what it is: human based systems used to manipulate, control, make money, and entrench power.
And the Colossians were tempted to think this, too: You need to access the chain of being. You need to connect with those higher up the ladder. Then you will progress.
The Colossian Christians lived in and around a town or small city about 160 km from Ephesus in Asia Minor, now in modern day Turkey. A few years previously, local boy Epaphras had gone to the big smoke, Ephesus, and heard this visiting Christian teacher and missionary, Paul, who rented a lecture hall and was speaking for two hears.
Paul authored this letter from house arrest in Rome around AD 60, perhaps 5 but not more than 10 years since the Colossian church was planted. Timothy, his co-author, probably also acted as his secretary, while Paul was probably the senior and substantial author. Epaphras, who had planted the church in Colossae, had joined Paul in Rome and was his fellow prisoner. Undoubtedly, he had reported the situation in Colossae as he knew it. Paul had never been to Colossae, so he was dependent on Epaphras report, and concerned about what he heard.
With Paul, Timothy, and Epaphras in Rome was Onesimus, the slave from that area, who Paul could say was “one of you” (Col 4:9). Onesimus was a runaway slave. He had ran away from his Christian master, Philemon. And he had found become a Christian and was now with Paul. Onesimus would now become useful.
Another fellow worker, Tychicus, and Onesimus would deliver this letter to the Colossians, along with what we know as the letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to Philemon (Eph 6:21).
The Colossians faced a threat from false teaching. We can only work out what this false teaching was from the clues in Paul’s letter. This false teaching said that the gospel that Epaphras brought them wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough that they had been transferred out of the dominion of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son that God the Father loves.
It wasn’t enough that the Colossian Christian now had redemption and the forgiveness of sins through Jesus’ death, or that they had received the Spirit. The suggestion appears to be that the Colossians didn’t have the fullness of the blessings that God had promised his new people. They seem to have been offered more profound knowledge and philosophy.
Perhaps these new teachers offered to initiate the Colossians into deeper mysteries, visions, or power through allying with the spirits, the demons. And it appears that they were being told to adopt some ascetic Jewish practices regarding circumcision, food, drink, new moons, and sabbaths.
So Paul gets to the heart of the matter: there is no one bigger and better than Jesus Christ. If you have Jesus, you have the fullness of God’s riches in Christ. Angels, powers, spirits, demons: you don’t need them because you have direct access to their boss and head. You can skip whatever chain of command these false teachers claim, and go straight to Jesus Christ, who is Lord and Master of all these things. With Christ clothed in his gospel, you lack nothing.
A key verse for understanding Colossians is chapter 2 verses 9-10: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority." (NIV)
In Christ, trusting Jesus, you are not missing out. You will not miss out. You have the riches of God. There is no CEO or higher manager left to see—you have God himself who has become one of you, one with you, and who has filled you by is Spirit.
And so the way to live the Christian life is the way you started it, chapter 2 verses 6 and 7: "Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving." (NIV)
The way to maturity is returning to the beginning. Continue in Christ the same way that you received him. The gospel we received at the beginning is the way to grow and flourish in Christ. There is no deeper mystery or knowledge or experience than the gospel and trusting in it. There is no one further up the hierarchy or chain of being than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the highest power, equal with God the Father concerning his deity. All the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form in Jesus, and you have fullness in Christ. So stay in Christ, believe what you believe, the old old gospel, and you have all the blessings that God promises.
So unsurprisingly, at the very beginning, Paul lays down who Jesus is. He expounds the true identity of Jesus Christ.
You know, don’t you, that it is a really bad idea to look at the sun, to gaze at it? If there is an eclipse, don’t listen to the guy at the pub, “If you look throughempty beer bottles, you’ll be fine”. You will burn your eyes out, ruin your sight, or go blind. Those who study the sun have to look at it indirectly, looking at reflections of the sun.
And humans, as we are now, have not and cannot see God. 1 Timothy 6:16, [God] alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. Moses asked to see God, and got rejected. Access denied. Moses could only see the afterglow of the tail of the hem of his robe as he had already passed by, and even that set Moses’ face alight.
We can’t see God for two reasons. First, God as spirit cannot be seen. We do not possess the instruments to see spirit beings, except by their effects. Second, we are sinful, and to look on the Holy God would kill us. So it is a good thing that we cannot see the unapproachable and invisible God.
No one has ever seen God, but God has condescended and stooped down to us to show and reveal himself. In our sin and creatureliness, he has not abandoned us, and left us alone as a race. God himself has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Verse 15, the one who is the beloved Son, whom God the Father has given the kingdom into which we have been transferred, and in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin, is the very image of the invisible God. Verse 15: He is the image of the invisible God (15ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου,)
Whatever God the Father is, also God the Son is, as to his essence and being. He is the exact image of God. The word here is eikon. Icon means an image or likeness. But here, in Jesus case, it refers to a high definition, mirror-like reflection, picture, and representation. Jesus reflects God the Father in the way digital images are replicated, rather than how an analog image is copied. Jesus is not like a photocopy of a photocopy, or a photo of a photo, so that the quality and fidelity of the image degrades. A digital image is always and only exactly the same file, but exactly and minutely replicated. When we see the image of God, who is Jesus Christ, there is no loss of quality in the representation of that which is imaged and whose image we are imaging. When we see Jesus Christ we see God himself, who is Jesus, and through the image who is Jesus.
John says, No one has ever seen God, but God the only begotten Son, the one who is at the Father’s side, has made him known. (John 1:18) The one who is Son of God the Father from the beginning, who is eternally begotten of the Father, as we say in the Nicene Creed.
Eternal begottenness is begotten, but from eternity. It is begotten, but not made. It is sonship, but without conception, birth, or beginning. It is the relationship of sonship, which involves two co-equal persons, Father and Son, who share the divine essence or nature. It is true Sonship, but without beginning. It is having been in relationship of Father and Son, but before time was created, and in eternity. Eternal begottenness—what we confess in the Nicene Creed--means that Jesus is God the Son, the eternal Word; his eternal Father is God the Father; and this relationship of Sonship never had a beginning, but has existed in eternity.
The author to the Hebrews says something very similar: The Son, whom the Father appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Heb 1:2-3) Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory like light radiating out from a source, like rays from a sun, or like an image bouncing back from the source, like the reflection in a mirror (P T O’Brien, Hebrews: Pillar, 54). Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being. Literally, Jesus is the ‘character of God’s essence’. Jesus is the very stamp of God’s nature. Whatever God is, Jesus the Son is. The exact, perfect picture of God. Paul’s way of saying it is: ‘All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9).
Just like you can look at photos or images of the sun, or an eclipse, and so you can study the sun even though we can’t look directly at it, so also when you look at Jesus, you see God, and you can know God and study God and what he has shown of himself, though you can’t directly see God. Jesus is the only safe way to see God without burning your retinas out.
And because God loves us and wants us to know him, the Father sent the Son. We can bear to look at Jesus, who brings God to us, in safety and in a way we can apprehend.
Jesus Christ is God made manifest, the invisible God who has now appeared. Look with me at verse 19: "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him." (NIV) But the subject is not stated in this sentence, so it is probably better to translate it, “In him [Jesus] all the fullness was pleased to dwell” (ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ εὐδόκησεν πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικῆσαι).
That is, the fullness of the divine nature, the fullness of God dwells in bodily form in Jesus. The divine nature in all its fullness condescended to dwell in the incarnate man Jesus Christ. God took bodily form forever by the person of the pre-existent Word, joining to himself the humanity he created in the man Jesus Christ. “All the fulness of the deity dwells in bodily form”. (Col 2:9). Now the second person of the Trinity remains enfleshed forever, one of us, a human, always in the presence of God. The Risen Jesus, God in the flesh, is like us in every way except sin, and we will see him. We will see God. And the impossible has become possible, through the incarnation and redemption of Jesus.
When the disciples looked and poked and prodded and touched, and smelt, and heard Jesus, they did so to God, who had stooped down to become one of us, to make himself known. When the soldiers pierced and flogged him, and shedding Jesus’ bled, they were shedding the blood of God himself (Acts 20:28). When the Jewish guards and leaders mocked and slapped and beat, and mocked, and spat on Jesus, they were spitting on God their creator. Jesus could say to Phillip with all his beautiful innocence, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9).
When we see the Son with the eyes of faith, we also see the Father. When we have the Son, we have the Father. We have the whole God when we have and are in Jesus Christ by faith. So you, dear believer in Christ, sitting here in Mortdale but trusting in Jesus as the risen saviour and Christ, are not missing out on anything. You have God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who has come to us and manifested himself to us in Christ, clothed in his gospel.
The second phrase in verse 15 identifies Jesus in his relationship to creation. He is the firstborn over all creation (πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως).
Now, I am the firstborn in my family of origin. By this I mean I am the oldest child of my parents. I am the oldest son, older than my two brothers. I have a beginning: there was once I time when I had not been conceived, and did not exist. But now I have been born, I was conceived, my Father begot me, my mother bore me, and now I am.
Paul uses and builds on these ideas, and takes language from this world, but there are some unique things about Jesus that mean that the ideas are modified in their application to Jesus. Paul indicates this in what he says.So let me tease out what Paul means by Jesus’ being “firstborn of all creation”.
Jesus is not the first brought into being of all created beings. He is not one of a class of created things.[1] Rather, as the NIV renders it, Jesus is the firstborn over all creation[2].
He is, however, eternal begotten of the Father, the monogenes theos, the only b egotten God in the bosom of the Father. Jesus has always been Son of the Father, without beginning.So there is a sort of primogeniture operating with Jesus and creation. Before creation existed, God the Son, the only begotten of the Father, the Second person of the Trinity, was always Son and Heir of God the Father. He is firstborn because he is eternally begotten. And he is firstborn because he is heir. Jesus gets everything, everything is made “for him” (cf. v. 16). The end and goal of everything created is to belong to Jesus.
This was the state of existence before creation: Father, Son, and Spirit existing in perfect eternal unity. And in love, Father and Son by the Spirit brought into existence all of creation, for the Son, Jesus Christ, to inherit.
The prototokos, or firstborn, is a statement about inheritance based on primogeniture—the unique primogeniture in eternity of eternal begottenness.[3]
Jesus is the one who inherits all things, and so everything was made for him. He is the heir because he is the eternal Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. Everything was made for Jesus. Every human through all time, every angel, every animal, every blade of grass, every galaxy and star and every cell and amobeia and atom. All things are to be given to Jesus as his rightful inheritance at the end of time. Even the devil and his wicked angels and impenitent humans reserved for eternal punishment in hell are and will be for the glory of Christ. Every knee will bow in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is lord. He owns the lot.
Now this is very fitting and appropriate, that Jesus inherits everything, as verse 16 asserts that Jesus is the agent through which everything is made.
16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. (NIV)
By using the language of agency—in him (ἐν αὐτῷ: v 16) and through him (δι’ αὐτοῦ: v 16)—Paul asserts Christ is the creator without excluding the Father’s role. That everything was made “in” and “through” Jesus is a way of saying that Jesus made it but to also honour the role of God the Father as the Fount of all deity, as the initiator, in short, as Father of the Son. Paul says that Jesus made the world, in such a way that respects that God the Father likewise made it. The Father wills, proposes, and intends, and the Son obeys the Father and does his will as the eternal Word of God by whom all things were created. And the Spirit of God, hovering over the waters, executes and operates the divine will.
The Son of God was and is the Word of God through whom everything comes to be. God the Father creates with his Word, and his Word is a distinct eternal person, who is also full God.
Our good earth, the sun moon and stars, were made through Jesus. You and I, all the animals, every grain of sand, speck of dust, proton and neutron, and entire universe, was made through him. Jesus made it. Jesus made everything that is invisible, too.
Now, lots of things are invisible to us because they are too small, or too big. The universe is too big, so it is all not visible to us. Our eyes cannot see many things that are too small. Jesus made them. But there are also things that we cannot see because we were not made to see them, at least not yet. There are things in the spiritual realm that are not visible to us: God, the angels, demons, the spirits. We cannot see heaven, the dwelling of God, not because it is too far away, but because we are not made or meant to see it at present. We cannot see where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, unless God enables this, gives the vision to see it, as he did to the martyr Stephen. But otherwise we cannot see it. We have not been given the senses, the instruments, to see this realm or its inhabitants, at this stage. Angels apparently need to take form to be seen by us.
In verse 16, the “thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities”[4] are probably part of this spiritual realm. Later on in our letter, Paul will critique those who make big claims for themselves about what they say they have seen. In chapter 2 verse 18, some of these people “goes into great detail about what they have seen” and are “puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind”. Some of what these false teachers were talking about distracted the Colossian church from Christ by focussing on “the elemental spiritual forces of this world” (2:8) rather than on Christ.
All of these “powers and authorities” in the spiritual world, Jesus made. Jesus made them, and they belong to Jesus. So why would you pay attention to them? Why would you think that the key to life and living was found in them? In Christ, you have the creator of these spiritual realms and beings. Jesus is infinitely more powerful than any angel or demon, and you have access to him.
In the first part of verse 17, Paul makes a temporal statement: "He himself is before all things"[5]. Jesus precedes and is before the beginning of all creation. Here is the primogeniture of the eternally begotten Son. He precedes everything because he is eternal, God from God, light from light.
The New World Translation, the Jehovah’s Witness Bible, is particularly embarrassed by this. Throughout verses 16 and 17, they frequently add the word “other”. They used to put it in square brackets, acknowledging that this word isn’t in the text, but their online version no longer does this. They assert that Jesus is another thing that was made by God, and not in truth eternal God. They say that Jesus was created first as the master worker, and so Jesus made all “other things”. But Paul adds no qualifier, “other”, because Jesus not a created thing. He is before all things in the sense that he is eternal, the Second Person of the Trinity.
And because he is before all things in the sense of their eternal Creator, Jesus has priority and primacy, and supremacy over all things.
Jesus is both first in time, because he precedes all time, and is outside of time as he is of the same essence of the Father, and he is therefore highly exalted above all things.
Think of John the Baptist’s statement: ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ (NIV)[6] Jesus has surpassed all things and people in rank because he is before all things and people in time.
This likewise is a statement of primogeniture, modified by the unique situation of Jesus being the only begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light.
Moreover, Jesus sustains the world, upholding it moment by moment by his powerful world. Verse 17b, “and in him all things hold together” (NIV) (καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν). The world doesn’t disintegrate into chaos because of Jesus’ ongoing work. Entropy does not have its way with us and our world, because Jesus his holding it together, sustaining it.
Rather than a watchmaker who makes the watch and sets it running, Jesus upholds our world moment by moment.
Not only in the beginning did Jesus create all things, not only at the end will Jesus inherit all things, but in the middle, he sustains all things. Jesus upholds the universe with his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3). From beginning of creation to the end of the world, nothing happens in the world without the say so of the Son. Even during his manhood, which continues now at the right hand of the Father, the deity of the Son continued to uphold everything[7].
Every breath you take, every move you make, is powered by Jesus. Let alone Jesus upholding a zillion galaxies of stars, and knowing every blade of grass and grain of sand. He understands the googleplex of atoms in our universe, and each of them obeys his word. And he knows you and me and sustains us. This is a massive, inconceivable, mind blowing Jesus. Only this Jesus is worth worshipping, because it is the only Jesus there is. Don’t accept phoney, second hand imitations, only the genuine article, Jesus , the one in whom all things hold together.
Someone once said, and I think it’s true, that we take our identity from our relationships to others. Western individualism seeks to find the core of ones identity by looking in. They suggest we look inward, to our emotions, our impulses, our feelings, to determine who we are.
But humans are actually more like onions than avacados. When we strip back the layers of relationships to find the core of our being, like an onion, there’s nothing there. There is no central core or seed that is the essence of me, like an avocado, that you can take out and study..
And when we burn off our relationships in the quest to find some essential core of who we are—our relationships with God, other humans, and our world—we are burning off the only way to establish our identity.
My ethics lecturer, Michael Hill, taught us that neither communism, or communitarianism, nor individualism, is the true way to be human, though there is a grain of truth in these philosophies.
The true way to understand humanity is ‘inter-relationally’, humans in relationship with God, each other, and our environment. That is our nature and purpose, to live in relationship, ultimately with God and neighbour. These relationships establish our identity and our mission
And Paul describes Jesus in relationship to the church, you and me, the people from the fallen world that he is gathering from all the nations, who have been transferred into his kingdom. They are a people precious to God, and the particular inheritance of Jesus Christ. For not only did he create the church, but he redeemed the church by paying for her sins by dying for her. They are Christ’s inheritance both ways, by creation and redemption.
But Jesus is the king of this kingdom, as reflected in verse 18: “And he himself is the head of the body, the church” (NIV) (18καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν ἡ κεφαλὴ τοῦ σώματος τῆς ἐκκλησίας).
Jesus is the head, not merely the source of its existence, but the king, Lord, master, ruler, and governor of his Church. The church is his body, and he is the head. The head rules and directs the different members. And the body submits to the head’s leading and directions. In other letters, Paul will expand the metaphor of Christ as head and the body as members, but here he gives the outline. ·
Furthermore, with the first coming of Christ, a great change has been wrought in the fabric of this world. Jesus has brought into the present the resurrection of the dead. The future world has broken into our fallen world. Jesus rose from the dead.
And Jesus’ resurrection and ours are joined together as the first fruits are tied to the rest of the harvest, or a deposit, downpayment or earnest is tied to the full purchase and inheritance. Jesus inaugurates resurrection, and the general resurrection consummates what Jesus has started.
So Paul says in the second half of verse 18: “He [Jesus] is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that he himself might come to hold the first place in all things” (NIV) (ὅς ἐστιν ἀρχή, πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, ἵνα γένηται ἐν πᾶσιν αὐτὸς πρωτεύων)
The first Easter Day was the birthday of a new humanity, with Jesus as the firstborn, the pioneer, when he rose from the dead. He began what the general resurrection will continue when Jesus returns. As first to be risen from the dead, again he enjoys primogeniture in his human family as the first to receive the new human resurrected body.
And by being the first in time to be risen from the dead, he has the first place, or pre-eminence, among those to be risen from the dead, his human family. (πρωτεύων ‘first place’, ‘pre-eminence’: LSJM 1544; Thayer, 554; BAG, 732).
But the incarnation of the eternal Word, the Second Person on the Trinity, had a distinct purpose. God took on human nature in the person of Jesus Christ for a reason. Jesus, the God-man, had a mission
Verse 20: 1:20"and through Christ to reconcile to himself all things–whether things on the earth, or things in the heavens–having made peace through the blood that he shed on the cross".[8] (NIV)
The Father gave the Son the mission of effecting reconciliation. The reconciliation is of “all things”. Jesus is going to put the whole created order, disordered by sin, right again. It will be better than it was, even at the beginning. Because there will no longer be creation only, there will have been redemption. Not only are the merely two innocent humans in a garden: there are innumerable redeemed humans living forever in glory in a massive city without mourning death, or pain.. Not only do they praise God Almighty night and day for creation, but the praise Jesus Christ for redemption. And in the consummation, the dwelling of God will be with humanity.
This reconciliation comes through Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross.
Now, Jesus died for no angel. There is no redemption for the devil, fallen angels, and his demons. There is only the lake of fire, the hell prepared for them. And sadly, the Scriptures witness that many impenitent humans will be there, for they do not believe in the Son, and God’s wrath remains on them.
Though Christ took the nature of all humans, and though his death is sufficient for a million worlds, without faith and repentance, humans do not enjoy the reconciliation Christ wrought.
However, even from the pit of hell, the lost will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And so creation is put right, by every mouth confessing Jesus is Lord, whether from the heights of heaven or the pit of hell.
But Paul will say later in Colossian how Jesus’ death worked this reconciliation, both defeating Satan and redeeming elect humanity. This is chapter 2 verses 14 and 15:
It will be very important for understanding the atonement, but I will whet your appetite for it.
14 He [God through Christ] has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by naiing it to the cross. 15 Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (NIV)
The decrees opposed to us, our certificate of indebtedness, is the curse of the law. The soul that sins shall die. Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. This curse, our obligation to punishment for sin, God placed on Christ, on the cross. Our sins was nailed to the cross, and by that work of Jesus on our behalf, our debt was paid in full. In theological language that is ‘penal substitutionary atonement’, the satisfaction rendered by Christ for our guilt. That’s chapter 2 verse 14.
But in chapter 2 verse 15, we see atonement as Christus Victor, the victorious Christ defeating the demonic and satanic powers. The victory of Christ flows from Christ’s bearing of our penalty, because now the accuser and his demons have nothing to say, nothing with which to accuse us. Chapter 2 verse 15: 15 Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (NIV)
Satan, the ruler of the kingdom of the air, and his minions, had this against us: we are guilty. Satan means adversary. The devil means slanderer. He is the accuser of the brethren. But the basis of his accusation has now been removed. The debt has been paid, by the Son of God. So now Satan has no charges to raise against us in God’s courtroom. In fact, he has been kicked out of God’s courtroom, because of the death of Jesus Christ.
So Paul has expounded who Jesus is, in terms of his deity. Jesus is the one revealing God as the image of God, and in whom the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form. Paul has expounded who Jesus is in relation to creation. Jesus precedes creation in time. He is the heir, or firstborn, over all creation. All creation is for him. He is the agent of creation: creation was made by him, through him, and in him. He is supreme over all creation, and upholds all creation as its sustainer.
And Paul expounds who Jesus is in relation to the Church. He is the head of the Church. He is the beginning and firstborn from the dead. He reconciles all things to God, and particularly the church, who enjoy that reconciliation in the eternal bliss of the new heaven and new earth. Reprobate angels and humans will still confess Christ as Lord, but unwillingly, non-savingly, from the place of punishment.
So now Paul turns to think about the Colossians, who he has never met in person. And by extension, he is talking about us, believers in Christ Jesus. Who are we, now that all these great, world changing things have happened?
And in the great tradition of weight watchers, Jenny Craig, and all weight loss schemes, Paul goes from Paul goes for the good old ‘before and after’. Paul takes us from plight to solution, from bad news to good news.
First, the before, the bad news, verse 21: "And as for you, at one time you were alienated from God and were enemies in your thinking because of your evil deeds"[9] (NIV)
Our thinking was opposed to God, and we were at enmity with him. This is all of us at one time. At one time or other, each of us has thought that God was wrong and we are right, and that we know better than God, and did God really say that. We can’t be intimate with God and friends with him when we think we know better than him. And so we sinned in thought, word, and deed. Our sin came from our thinking, and our thinking was opposed to God. And our acts, which flowed from our thinking, were evil. We were lost in evil deeds and evil thinking. And we alienated ourselves from God. God dismissed us from his presence, because he cannot tolerate our sin, and we cannot tolerate his holiness. Everyone is in this boat, whether Christian or not, at one point in their lives.
Second, the after, the good news, what God has done for us in Christ, verse 22: 1:22But now God has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body, through his death, to present you holy and spotless and free from blame before him[10] (NIV)
Your indebtedness has been cancelled. Your bad record has been expunged. Your guilt has been forgiven. Your sins have been covered and washed away. You can now appear before God holy and blameless and at peace with him. You now enjoy a standing of grace because of Jesus’ sacrificial sin-bearing death.
But there is a condition: you’ve got to keep trusting Jesus. If all the fullness of the blessings of God are in Christ, you can’t expect to have the blessings if you don’t have Christ. And you have Christ by faith. You are united to Jesus by faith. So keep trusting him, the Jesus who we received when we believed the gospel.
Don’t walk away from the real Jesus who comes to us in his gospel by going after a different gospel.
Verse 23: 1:23provided that you remain in the faith, established and firm, and not moved from the hope coming from the gospel which you heard, which has been preached in all creation under the heavens, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. (NIV)
The gospel has been proclaimed even to the angels and the demons in the air, the realm under heaven and above earth[11]. Christ’s achievement of reconciliation has been announced to all those heavenly institutions and powers over which he has triumphed, as well as humanity.
For us, the gospel is salvation and life and peace. So keep believing the simple gospel of Christ the God-Man, who died, rose again for us, and is now seated in heaven over every power.
And believe that you have been given fullness in Christ, not the crumbs.
Let’s pray.
[1] The so-called ‘partitive genitive’. However, the partitive genitive, taken with the lexeme for ‘firstborn’ cannot literally mean, the one born first from its parents being considered as creation. It cannot mean the firstborn from creation, in the sense of creation begets Christ as firstborn, unless this is a metaphor. The Arian will need to hold that Jesus is the firstborn from a class called created being, and firstborn means ‘first generated’.
[2] A genitive of subordination, according to Wallace.
[3] David was not the firstborn son of Jesse, (1 Chron :13-14) yet God made him his firstborn (Ps 89:20, 27). Israel was called God’s firstborn, yet Esau, not Jacob, was born first (Exod 4:22-23). in that culture, if a girl was born first, she would have been the child who opened the womb, but would not be considered the firstborn.
[4] 1:16for in him all things in the heavens and upon the earth were created
16ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς,
– whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities
τὰ ὁρατὰ καὶ τὰ ἀόρατα, εἴτε θρόνοι εἴτε κυριότητες εἴτε ἀρχαὶ εἴτε ἐξουσίαι·
– all things were created through him and for him.
τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται·
[5] 1:17And he himself is before all things,17καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων
[6] My translation: 1:30
“This one was he of whom I said, ‘the one coming after me comes before me in rank, because he existed prior to me in time.’” [fn: cf. v. 30]
[7] The so-called, Calvinistic extra in Institutes, II.8.4: ‘For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.’ See B Milne, Know the Truth 2nd Ed, 184.
[8] 20καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ ἀποκαταλλάξαι τὰ πάντα εἰς αὐτόν,
εἰρηνοποιήσας διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ σταυροῦ αὐτοῦ,
[δι’ αὐτοῦ] εἴτε τ ὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς εἴτε τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
Paul repeats ‘through him’. It has the effect of emphasizing that it is through Christ the reconciliation comes, and the reconciliation is of ‘everything’.]
[9] 21Καὶ ὑμᾶς ποτε ὄντας ἀπηλλοτριωμένους
καὶ ἐχθροὺς τῇ διανοίᾳ ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις τοῖς πονηροῖς,
[10] 22νυνὶ δὲ ἀποκατήλλαξεν ἐν τῷ σώματι τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ διὰ τοῦ θανάτου
παραστῆσαι ὑμᾶς ἁγίους καὶ ἀμώμους καὶ ἀνεγκλήτους κατενώπιον αὐτοῦ,
[11] Ephesians 2:1-3. ‘The air formed the intermediate sphere between earth and heaven. It was the dwelling place of evil spirits’ (O’Brien, Ephesians: Pillar, 160). This is synonymous with the heavenly realms in Ephesians 3:10 and 6:12.
You’ve heard of the “Fear of Missing Out,” or FOMO.
That’s the fear that someone, somewhere, has worked out life to extract the most from it, and you haven’t.
They’ve cracked the code and are squeezing every last drop of joy, success, meaning, pleasure, and fulfilment out of existence — and you’re missing out.
Advertisers thrive on this fear.
You need to shop around, compare the market, compare the pair, because someone else is doing better.
I remember an advertisement with lasagne. I don’t remember what they were advertising, but I remember the lasagne.
The first image was a magnificent example of what lasagne could be — a towering skyscraper of layered pasta, thick meat sauce, and structural integrity.
It was a stratified geological formation standing tall and proud.
The second, a couple of limp pasta sheets floating forlornly in a sea of white sauce.
I want the first one, the skyscraper: frequently we end up with the slops.
The phenomenon of shrinkflation is the same. You buy a bag of chips, take it home, open it — and discover it’s mostly air. You look at the weight on the packet and realise they’ve put less in, though the packaging remains the same.
You open a familiar packet of biscuits and realise that though the packet looks the same outside, inside the plastic packaging has grown interesting patterns and taken over, leaving little room for actual biscuits, whose number has declined.
Sometimes Christians think that they’ve got the second-class, poor cousin version of Christianity.
They thought they were getting fullness — but all they got were crumbs.
They got the pasta sheets floating in sauce, the few chips at the bottom of the bag.
There are versions of Christianity that feed on this, telling you that you’re missing out, and could have more.
The prosperity gospel does this, as it justifies the rich getting richer.
So to do word-of-faith and manifesting theologies, and “second experience” Christianities: if only you spoke in tongues, had this experience, saw these angels, had this vision, sang this worship music.
Others promise a “higher life”: sinless perfection, uninterrupted communion with God, constant spiritual exhilaration — usually accessed through the right method or technique.
The message is always the same: there is more, and better, and you’re missing out.
The Colossian Christians were being tempted to think in these sorts of ways.
False teachers were telling them that what they had received from Epaphras — the gospel of Jesus Christ — was insufficient.
They did not have the fullness of everything that God was offering humanity.
These false teachers offered the Colossians ladders to climb, hierarchies and chains of being to access, angels and demons to harness, and ascetic practices to observe.
Having Jesus Christ received through his gospel, for them, was not enough.
So Paul writes to the Colossians to counter this false teaching.
The Colossian church was young,
It had been planted by Epaphras a few years before.
He was a local boy who went to the big smoke and heard Paul teaching in Ephesus, 160 km away.
Paul himself had never been to Colossae, but his message arrived through Epaphras.
A few years later, around AD 60, Paul is in house arrest in Rome.
He is there in defence of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And Epaphras comes to him with troubling news.
The Colossians are being told that the gospel they received is not enough, that it lacks fullness.
They are being offered more and bigger: secret knowledge, mysteries, visions and access to spiritual intermediaries.
So Paul early in his letter goes to the heart of the issue: there’s no one bigger, better, higher, or fuller than Jesus Christ.
If you have Christ, you have the fullness of God in bodily form.
Colossians 2:6–10 is the key to understanding the letter.
I’m not going to preach this, but I want you to be aware of this key passage.
Meditate on it, it will illumine the rest of the letter.
Verses 9-10:
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
You’re not missing out.
There is no higher manager to see, no further access to gain, no deeper mystery to unravel.
So the way forward in the Christian life is returning to start, chapter 2 verses 6-7.
6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Fullness is found returning again and again to the same big Jesus we received in the gospel, and by growing in your trust in him.
Here, immediately after his introductions, Paul lays down who Jesus is.
He expounds the true identity of Jesus Christ.
I’m sure you know that it’s a really bad idea to look directly at the sun.
If there is an eclipse, don’t listen to the guy at the pub, saying, “If you look through empty beer bottles, you’ll be fine”.
No, you will burn your eyes out.
You have to look at reflections and images of the sun, which avoid unprotected exposure.
We humans have not and cannot see God as we are now.
1 Timothy 6:16 says that, [God] alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.
Moses asked to see God and got rejected: access denied.
Moses, hidden in the cleft of the rock by God’s hand, could only see the afterglow of the tail of the hem of his robe of his garment after God had already passed by.
And even that set Moses’ face alight.
We can’t see God for two reasons.
First, God as spirit cannot be seen.
Second, we are sinful, and to look on the Holy God would kill us.
But even though we cannot see God, God has not abandoned us, leaving us in sin and ignorance.
Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God.
The Greek word is eikon.
It means a likeness, a representation.
And in relation to Jesus, it does not mean a fuzzy approximation.
It means a perfect, exact representation, a detailed reflection.
Not a photocopy of a photocopy, but a high-definition digital image.
When you see Jesus, you see God as he truly is, without a degrading in quality, but God clothed in flesh, so that we can approach him in safety.
John’s Gospel puts it like this, chapter 1 verse 18:
“No one has ever seen God, but God the only begotten Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
The author to the Hebrews says something very similar: The Son, whom the Father appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being (Heb 1:2-3)
Jesus is eternally begotten, not made, true God from true God, as we say in the Nicene Creed
Jesus, incarnated as the image of God, is safe for us to look at, to contemplate, to gaze at, to study, and to approach.
Jesus Christ is God made manifest, the invisible God who has now appeared.
Look with me at verse 19:
1:19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.
In the original, the subject of the sentence, “God”, is not stated, so it is probably better to translate it,
“In him [Jesus] all the fullness was pleased to dwell”.
That is, the fullness of the divine nature, the fullness of God, dwells in bodily form in Jesus
God in the person of the pre-existent Word, joined to himself the humanity he created in the man Jesus Christ.
“All the fulness of the deity dwells in bodily form”. (Col 2:9).
Now as we speak the second person of the Trinity remains enfleshed forever, one of us, our kin, our friend and advocate in heaven.
And in him and because of him, we will see God.
Next in verse 15, Jesus is called “firstborn over all creation”.
This doesn’t mean that he was created, but that he is heir, and will inherit.
“Firstborn” is a title indicating inheritance based on primogeniture—the inheritance of the firstborn, oldest son.
In Jesus’ case, it is the unique primogeniture based on his eternal Sonship.
Jesus is, in the words of John, the monogenes theos, the only begotten God who dwells the bosom of the Father (John 1:18): that is, eternally begotten of the Father.
And because of this unique primogeniture, Jesus is heir: everything was made for him, verse 16.
Jesus gets the lot.
The end and goal of everything created is to belong to Jesus.
Why chase after underlings when you have access to the King of everything, who owns the lot?
It is very fitting and appropriate, that Jesus inherits everything, because Jesus is the agent through whom everything is made, verse 16.
16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
By using the language of agency—in or by him, and through him—Paul asserts that Christ is the creator without excluding the Father’s role.
Jesus made everything as the Word, but God the Father purposed everything as the Fount of all deity, as the initiator, as Father of the Son.
The Father wills, proposes, and intends, and the Son obeys the Father and does his will as the eternal Word of God.
Jesus is the Word by whom all things were created.
In the first part of verse 17, Paul makes a temporal statement:
Jesus himself is before all things.
Jesus precedes and is before the beginning of all creation.
Here again is the unique form of primogeniture of the eternally begotten Son.
Jesus precedes everything because he is eternal.
The New World Translation, the Jehovah’s Witness Bible, is particularly embarrassed by this.
Throughout verses 16 and 17, they frequently add the word, “other”.
They assert that Jesus is another thing that was made by God, and not truly eternal God.
But Paul adds no qualifier, “other”, because Jesus not a created thing at all.
He is before all things in the sense that he is eternal, the Second Person of the Trinity.
So Jesus has priority, primacy, and supremacy over all things.
We stand firm in the pre-eminence of Christ.
Jesus is both first in time, because he precedes all time, and is outside of time as truly God, and he is therefore highly exalted above all things.
Moreover, Jesus sustains the world, upholding it moment by moment by his powerful world.
Verse 17b, “and in him all things hold together”.
Not only in the beginning did Jesus create all things, not only at the end will Jesus inherit all things, but in the middle, he holds the universe together, moment by moment, with his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3).
The universe does not collapse into chaos because Christ sustains it.
Every breath you take is given you because Jesus wills it.
Verse 18 “And he himself is the head of the body, the church”.
Jesus is the head of the church, not merely the source of its existence, but its king, Lord, master, and ruler.
The head rules and directs the different members of the body.
And the body submits to its head’s leading and follows its directions.
Furthermore, with the first coming of Christ, Jesus brought into the present the resurrection of the dead.
The second half of verse 18: “He [Jesus] is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that he himself might come to hold the first place in all things”
The future world has broken into our fallen world.
Jesus’ resurrection and ours are joined together: his is the firstfriuits, ours will be part of the harvest.
Jesus’ resurrection is the deposit or downpayment: ours will be the completion of the purchase and taking possession.
The first Easter Day was the birthday of a new humanity, with Jesus as the firstborn from the dead.
He began what the general resurrection will complete when Jesus returns.
As firstborn from the dead, Jesus again enjoys primogeniture in his human family: he was the first to receive the new resurrected body.
The fullness of the deity dwelt in bodily form in Jesus for a reason.
Jesus, the God-man, had a mission
Verse 20:
1:20and through Christ to reconcile to himself all things–whether things on the earth, or things in the heavens–having made peace through the blood that he shed on the cross.
The Father gave the Son the mission of effecting reconciliation.
The reconciliation is of “all things”.
Jesus is going to put right again the whole disordered creation.
It will be better than it was, even at the beginning.
There won’t merely be two humans capable of sin in a garden: there will be innumerable redeemed humans living forever in glory in a massive city without the potential for sin.
There will be no mourning, death, or pain.
This reconciliation comes through Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross.
Jesus died for no angel.
He provided no redemption for the devil and his demons.
Theirs is the lake of fire prepared for them.
Sadly, many impenitent humans will be there, for they did not believe in the Son, and God’s wrath remains on them.
However, even from the pit of hell, the lost will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
And so creation is put right, by every mouth confessing Jesus is Lord, whether from the heights of heaven or the pit of hell, whether angelic or human.
So what have we seen thus far?
Paul has expounded who the man Jesus is, in terms of his deity.
Jesus is the one revealing God as the image of God, the human in whom the fullness of the deity dwells.
Paul has also expounded who Jesus is in relation to creation.
Jesus precedes creation in time.
He is the heir of creation, the firstborn over all creation.
All creation was made for him.
He is the agent of creation: creation was made by him, through him, and in him.
He is supreme over all creation and upholds all creation as its sustainer.
And Paul expounds who Jesus is in relation to the Church.
He is the head of the Church.
He is the beginning and firstborn from the dead.
He reconciles all things to God, particularly the church, who enjoy that reconciliation in the eternal bliss of the new heaven and new earth.
So now Paul turns to think about the Colossians, whom he has never met in person.
And by extension, he is talking about us, believers in Christ Jesus.
Who are we believers, now that all these great, world changing things have happened?
And in the great tradition of weight watchers, Jenny Craig, and all weight loss schemes, Paul goes for the good old ‘before and after’.
Paul takes us from plight to solution, from bad news to good news.
First, the before, the bad news, verse 21:
And as for you, at one time you were alienated from God and were enemies in your thinking because of your evil deeds
Our thinking was opposed to God, and we were his enemies.
This is all of us at one time.
Each of us at some time has thought that God was wrong and we were right.
We can’t be friends with God if we think we know better than him.
We’ve all sinned in thought, word, and deed.
Our thinking opposed God, and our acts, which flowed from our thinking, were evil.
Everyone was once in this boat, whether Christian or not, at one point in their lives.
But second is the after, the good news, what God has done for us in Christ, verse 22:
1:22But now God has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body, through his death, to present you holy and spotless and free from blame before him
Your indebtedness has been cancelled.
Your bad record has been expunged.
Your guilt has been forgiven.
Your sins have been covered and washed away.
You can now appear before God holy and blameless and at peace with him.
You now enjoy a standing of grace and justification because of Jesus’ sacrificial sin-bearing death.
But there’s a condition: you’ve got to keep trusting Jesus.
If all the fullness of God’s blessings are found in Christ, you’ve got to stick to him.
Verse 23:
1:23provided that you remain in the faith, established and firm,
and not moved from the hope coming from the gospel which you heard,
which has been preached in all creation under the heavens,
and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
The gospel has been proclaimed even to the angels and the demons in the air, the realm under heaven and above earth.
Christ’s achievement of reconciliation has been announced to all those heavenly institutions and powers over which he has triumphed, as well as humanity.
So stick to Christ, who comes to us in his gospel.
Don’t worry about consulting angels and demons and people who talk a big talk about what they’ve seen.
Keep believing the simple gospel of Christ the God-Man, who died, rose again for us, and is now seated in heaven over every power, and will return to finish the job.
Know that you have been given fullness in Christ, not the crumbs.
Let’s pray.