October 6 Sermon: In Him All Things Hold Together
Consider these questions as we look at Colossians 1:15-23:
1. How does Pastor Mark emphasize the practical nature of Jesus' identity as God incarnate and the impact of His work on humanity? What aspects of Jesus' divinity are highlighted in the text?
2. In what ways does Paul present the sufficiency of Jesus, and how does he address the temptation to add to the gospel with external rituals or practices, as was the case with the Colossian church?
3. What is the significance of the idea that we go from being hostile rebels against God to being declared holy, blameless, and above reproach through the work of Jesus? How does this truth impact our understanding of salvation and our relationship with God?
Transcript:
If you are like me, you probably remember the first time you experienced a premium product. I will never forget the first time I rode with my uncle in his Jaguar XJS. It was not just fancy looking on the outside you could tell everything about premium. I had the same experience the first time I played a Gibson Les Paul guitar. We were at a conference at a church in Sioux Falls and someone I knew pretty well because our bands had played shows together when we were in high school was there. He was playing guitar with the group that was leading the praise songs and during one of the breaks we were chatting up front. While reminiscing about some of the shows we had played a few years back we somehow got to the point where he offered for me to play his Les Paul guitar. I played around on it a little bit and it was like nothing I had ever played before. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one who noticed a difference in the quality because after playing it, I mentioned how nice it was to my wife. She said “Oh, that was you playing? It sounded so good.” My feelings were only a little hurt because she was right. It was really that good. It not only felt good to play it even made my playing sound better.
Like I said, you probably remember the first time you experienced something that was just better quality than you were used to. You may also remember when you came across something that was supposed to be premium but you weren’t impressed. I’m guessing it was a little over 8 years ago I was on the bus home from Rocky Mountain High and a student in front of me informed me that he had to be careful with his headphones because they had cost him over $200. I was intrigued. I had never heard 200 plus dollar headphones and so I asked if when he wasn’t using them if I could give them a listen. He handed them to me and they felt premium in the hands. I was honestly impressed. I plugged them into my phone and started with one of my favorite songs and I was decidedly underwhelmed. I ran them through the paces. A little hardcore metal music, a little rap, some acoustic folk, and finally Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #3. Honestly they didn’t sound any better than my $30 headphones that were sitting on the seat next to me. I even compared them and the difference was negligible. Well, in the era of the Internet and people trying to make money off of people watching videos one thing you can always find is a teardown of new products. I had kind of forgotten about my experience with those headphones and then one day I came across a tear down video of them. Turns out they basically had the same electronics as my $30 headphones but to give them that premium feel they added weights in certain parts of the headphones. They had the appearance of quality but when they were broken down they were not of any real quality at all.
In our passage today from Colossians, Paul is telling us about the supremacy of Christ. But he isn’t just going to tell us that he is the best he is going to do a teardown and give us the evidence that Jesus is everything he claims to be. He is greater than anything else and there are reasons this is true. When you break down who Jesus is and what he is done, you will find that he is even more amazing than we can imagine. He is the real deal and he is worthy of all honor, glory, and praise.
We see here in verse 15 that Paul is continuing his thought on the sufficiency of Jesus. Last week, we saw that Colossians is addressing an issue in the church at Colossae. They believed that Jesus was necessary for salvation but they struggled with the idea that Jesus was all that they needed. They believed that pagan spiritual beings could disqualify them from their salvation and so to combat this they needed to participate is special rites, rituals, and feasts in order to stay in a position where they can be saved. So Paul told them that Jesus is sufficient and now he is going to tell them why he is sufficient.
He starts out by establishing that Jesus is no ordinary man. We understand this pretty clearly. While we might struggle with the idea of the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity it is something most of us have probably confessed even from a young age. One of the easiest things to do in Catechism class with Middle School kids is to get them to break down the Trinity. I say a few lines from the Apostles’ Creed and they will just start to follow along. You can tell the students who are unchurched or go to a church that doesn’t say the creed regularly because they kind of have this “Whoa, how do you guys know this?” look on their face as their peers answer me by reciting portions of the creed. So while the idea is familiar to us imagine what it would have been like for a first century Hebrew much less a Gentile pagan. They have heard and believed the true story of a real man named Jesus who was crucified and resurrected but what does all of that mean? Who was he? Was he just a man who God decided needed to be alive instead of dead? If we think about it maybe this is why they struggle with the sufficiency of the gospel. They don’t fully understand just who Jesus is. They don’t grasp that he is God the Son who took on human flesh and so Paul is going to make that clear to them.
When he says that he is the image of the invisible God he isn’t suggesting that Jesus is a violation of the 2nd commandment that we should not make any images of God. What Paul is trying to convince these people of is that believing in Jesus as God is really practical. Because he is by nature God, we get to see who the invisible God is by Jesus who made him visible. Again he’s not suggesting that he was just an image or even that we should make images of Jesus. He wants people to understand that Jesus is how God has revealed himself to us. John Calvin suggests that we have to be careful not to look for God anywhere else apart from Christ because anything else that we run after will end up being an idol. Why because the nature of God is revealed to us in the person and work of Jesus? Want to know about God’s love? Look to Jesus. He took on the wrath of God for our sin in his death and resurrection. You get the idea. Jesus helps us to understand that which can be difficult to comprehend. This is why I struggle when I hear people talking about the idea of a god who loves but yet they deny Jesus. What does that even mean? What is that love? It isn’t tangible. It’s just a concept. Paul wants us to know that this isn’t just an idea. Jesus is real and he reveals the love, power, mercy, and justice of God to us in real substantial way. The Christian faith is presented by Paul here as practical because Jesus is God and Paul expands upon this with the way he talks about Jesus.
He says that he is not only the image of the invisible God but he is the firstborn of all creation. This isn’t implying that Jesus was the first creation of God the Father. This is a reference to the idea of the firstborn being the principal heir. We see this throughout the Old Testament, right? It is supposed to be the oldest child that inherits from the father. So when Paul calls him the firstborn he is saying that he has all the supremacy and honor that God the Father has.
In fact, Paul says that all of creation was created both through him and for him.
Paul is continuing to break down who Jesus is here. He is getting down to the core to show that he is not subject to these alleged spiritual beings the Colossian church believes can steal their salvation. He is above them. Not only is He the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation. All things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. The Colossians have been tempted to think angelic or spiritual beings have some sort of power and Paul is making sure they fully understand that Jesus is so far above any of that. Everything that was created is subject to him because it was created through him and for him.
To prove his point he also draws out that he was around before anything else and that all things hold together through him. What Paul wants them to understand is that if he was creating all of this and is holding it together what in the world could anyone do to him? He is not just a guy from Palestine who happened to be resurrected. He is God and everything is subject to him and this even includes the church.
You can see what Paul is doing. He wants them to understand that he is over everything. Including his body the church. We are familiar with the imagery. Paul describes the church as a body in other places in the New Testament. The idea is that body has different functions but they are under the head, Jesus Christ.
And he also lets us know why Jesus is over his church. It is his resurrection that gives him this elevated honor.
Paul comes back to this idea of the firstborn. Being firstborn of the dead here means that his resurrection shows the beginning of a new creation. This new creation is those who are in Christ and will be resurrected from the dead. This status we have in Christ is what makes us the church. Without the resurrection there is no church and so we see that God uses this to give even greater honor and glory to Jesus. He is preeminent. He was already above all things and through him all things were created but this is continuing to an even higher level. His resurrection and ascension makes him even greater because he is the victorious, obedient, and exalted Messiah. Lord of the universe, ascended King of all creation. It has always been his but his work for his people makes him even more worthy of all honor and praise.
And Paul wants them to know that all of this that he has been saying was the plan of God. The fullness of God was pleased to dwell in a human body. This would have been a scandalous statement for Gentile pagans to hear. Paganism then and now believes that the flesh is bad and so to say that God knot only took on human flesh but was pleased to do it would have been completely contrary to how they looked at the world. But again, Paul wants this to be practical. He wants them to understand why it was necessary. It was to reconcile sinners to himself. It was to make peace through the blood of Christ’s cross. Paul wants us to understand that we were at war with God. This peace he is talking about isn’t feelings of tranquility. It is the opposite of war. In our sin and unbelief we are rebels against God and deserve his wrath. Jesus came to make peace but it came at a great price. Blood had to be shed. The price to be paid for sin and rebellion was death and so the sacrifice and his shed blood were the reason that Jesus took on human flesh. It seems outrageous to pagan thinking that God would take on flesh but we see here that it was necessary. As we read in Hebrews 9 without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. This helps us to understand the practical nature of what we see here. The idea of God taking on human flesh might seem strange to them but if our problem is our sin and rebellion and the solution is paying the price for that rebellion then we will understand why Jesus took on flesh. A spirit does not bleed. We needed a perfect savior who would live the perfect life we could not live to die in our place to pay the price for our sin.
And we see the truth of this. We were not only separated from God we were hostile against him. Our rebellion in our sin was treason but we are reminded that it was through his bod that we are presented as holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Look at the contrast that is thrown up here. We were rebels at war with God. Alienated. Hostile. But because of Jesus bearing the wrath of God in the flesh we are now presented as holy and blameless and above reproach before God.
This is so important for us to see. The work of Jesus described here does not set us back to zero and now it is up to us to keep the balance between good works and evil works so that we can go to heaven. Instead, these words express that we are holy, blameless, and above reproach. We have gone from being hostile against God to being seen as him with a perfect righteousness. We get the idea of God paying our sin debt and clearing things up for us. I believe we struggle with the idea of being given his perfect righteousness.
We think that what Jesus has done for us is taken our billion dollar debt and paid it off. Now we just need to make sure that we work hard and live within our means. But the gospel comes to us not only wipes out our billion dollar debt of sin but also credits righteousness to us. We go from bankrupt in our sin to being perfectly holy and righteous. But it isn’t a righteousness of our own. It is the righteousness of the God-man, Jesus who did this all for us. Like I always say “this is the best news you will ever hear”. You are declared righteous before God because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on your behalf.
And this is the hope that we are told to cling to. Do not shift from the hope of the gospel that has been declared to you. The audience that was receiving this letter is being tempted to try something other than Jesus. Paul is telling them. Stick with what you have heard. It is enough. It is sufficient. And Paul has broken this down to help us understand why it is enough. The tear down of who Jesus is isn’t revealing cheap shoddy parts. Instead it is showing that he is of infinite value. He is the only one that matters. He is the image of the invisible God. By him and through him all things were made. He is the head of the church. He reconciled you to God and put an end to the war and he has given you complete and perfect righteousness that you might stand before God holy before him.
What We have seen is the sufficiency of Christ because of the supremacy of Christ.
And Paul tells the Colossian church and by extension through the holy, inerrant Word of God that we must hold to this faith and not shift from the hope of the gospel.
And so, this is the call on our lives today. This is what we are to leave here with today. Do not shift from the hope of the gospel. The temptation for us is to try to add things to it. This has been the story throughout history. People have tried to move on from the sufficiency of the gospel and tried to add things to it. Things that we have to do because we like to be able to do things. We like to think that it is about us but in breaking down who Jesus is we come away with one question we should ask ourselves in the face of that temptation. What could possibly be better than what Christ has done for you?
If God the Son has taken on the wrath of God for your sin what could you possibly do that would make you more righteous in the sight of God? Can your attempt at spiritual ascent bring you closer to God than in the way that he has already come down to you through his broken body and shed blood?
One of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther expresses this idea in a way far better than I can express it. He says “What is it about your own miserable works and doings that you think could please God more than the sacrifice of his own Son?” That is the question isn’t it and the challenge for our lives as we step out into the world this coming week is to believe that truth and serve God knowing that he has done this great thing for us.
But we are not left to our own devices to do this. There is so much involved in our taking of the Lord’s Supper but one of the most beautiful parts of what we do today is that it reminds us what this passage has taught us. God has come to us in a real tangible way. He is not distant he came near to us in the person of Jesus Christ and he still comes near to us in this meal in a practical way that we can touch and taste.
And so, as we come to the table today know that as surely as you touch the bread to your mouth and as surely as the juice touches your lips so surely Christ came near to us. The one through all thing were made and for all things were made came near to us that we might have confidence that we are holy before God. Go into this world with this truth and remain steadfast in it.
