The Image of the Invisible God
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 16 December 2018
Let us focus our attention on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who He is, why He came into the world and what the birth of the Lord Jesus really means. The humble birth of Jesus Christ was never intended to hide the reality that God was being born into the world. But it has turned out to be just that. People can accept the birth of an infant but not accept birth of the God/man.
They can accept Christmas because it seems harmless from the perspective of a manger, but people do not believe Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. And consequently for the greater part of the world, Christmas has absolutely no meaning at all. Even though the angels announced the meaning of Christmas, the shepherds understood the meaning, the wise men knew it, but most people have missed the meaning.
What is the significance of Christmas? Well there was a child born whose name is called Emanuel because it means God with us. That child was God in human flesh. In Isaiah 9:6 the promise was that a child would be born, the government would be on His shoulders, and His name was mighty God, the everlasting Father. These are designations of deity assigned to the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Who was that Son? Who was that one made flesh? He is the fullness of God. None of us can ever fathom what it means for God to be born in a manger, for God to stoop down to the greatest condescension the world has ever known.
Though Jesus Christ was infinitely rich, He became poor, assumed our human nature, entered into our sin polluted atmosphere and took our guilt, bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, was wounded for our transgressions, was bruised for our iniquities, was raised for our justification, ascended into heaven for our intercession and will return some day to take us to be with Him forever.
This, says Paul, is the mystery of godliness that God was manifest in the flesh. There has never been a person like Jesus Christ. He is unique. We can see that in Revelation when it describes the end of the age, at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to establish His Kingdom. In Revelation 5 God is sitting on the throne with the title deed to the earth, the seven-sealed scroll.
And heaven and earth is searched for someone who is worthy to unravel the scroll, and no one is found. And John begins to weep and then he hears that the lion of Judah is worthy and Christ steps forward. And all of heaven begins to praise Him for He is worthy to take the earth. Why? He is incomparable. In all of the universe He is the only one who has the right to possess the creation.
Colossians 1:15-20, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.”
“18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. 19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, 20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”
First let's see Jesus in His relation to God. Some say He is less than God, a created being, a high angel, a good teacher, and a prophet. But let us see what God Himself says in verse 15, "He” refers back to verse 13, the kingdom of the Son, the one in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin, that one who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
A limited study of the Bible tells us that God is invisible. The Old Testament says that no man has seen God. In Exodus God says you cannot look at Me and live. In John 1 it says that nobody has ever seen God. In 1 Timothy Paul writing about God called Him the invisible God. “God is a spirit”, Jesus said in John 4:24, “and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
But God now is visible. God is invisible but God has become manifest in the person of the Son who is Jesus Christ. Paul is writing to the Christians in Colossae. This city in Asia Minor was inundated by a false teaching called Gnosticism. It means to know. Certain people elevated themselves as the only ones who really knew the truth. They were the Gnostics, the ones who knew.
They believed that creation came from evil and that all matter was consequently evil. Matter was evil and spirit was good, which is philosophical dualism. They believed that God was spirit, so God was good and therefore could never touch matter. They concluded that God couldn't create and God couldn't become a man because if God created mankind, that meant a good God created evil.
They believed that Jesus was just a good angel. So the Apostle Paul writes to tell them that Jesus is God and that He is the creator. Verse 16, “by Him were all things created.” What does it mean that Jesus is His image? We were created in God's image, but Jesus is God's image. There's a big difference. He is the replica. He is the exact reproduction. Jesus said, "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father.”
Some people say, "Well, it really means that Jesus is just a good outline of God. He just gives you the general idea.” That is not correct, verse 19 eliminates that possibility, “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell." He is not the outline of God, He is the fullness of God, and He is all God. Look at Colossians 2:3, “In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
The tragedy is that many people in the world in this age of unbelief don't see this, apart from those Christians who find that narrow way that is found by few. And they're categorized in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
It's an incredible thing to realize that this child that came into the world was the God who made everything. It's inconceivable that such love would manifest itself, that the One who made everything would heal the sick and feed the hungry and weep over the broken hearted, that He would choose ordinary men to accompany Him in His life time. But that is what God did and Christ is God.
If God were a man I would expect Him to be sinless. Jesus was. And if God were a man I would expect that His words would be the greatest words ever spoken. And Jesus' were. And if God were a man I would expect that He would exhibit the most profound influence over human personality of anybody who ever lived, and He did. And I would expect if God were a man that He would do miracles, and He did.
And I would expect that if God were a man He would manifest love beyond human comprehension, and He did. Paul says in verse 15, "He is the firstborn of all creation." Now many people have misinterpreted this and think that Jesus was a created being like everybody else. But that is not talking about the act of birth. Jesus said in John 8, "Before Abraham was I am."
Jesus never was created and even when He became a man He was not the first one created. What does it mean that He was the firstborn? It's the word prototokos in Greek, it means the right to rule, the heir, the ranking one, the one in authority. It has to do with the rights of inheritance. In the Jewish mind the firstborn was the one who inherited everything. Christ is the inheritor of all creation.
God speaks in Psalm 89:27, “I will also make Him My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” In Revelation it says, "The King of kings and Lord of lords." Hebrews 1:1-2 says, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things.”
Yes, Jesus is God in a body and yes, He is the creator. The claims that He made were astounding. He claimed to be in authority over angels in Matthew 13, over men in Matthew 25, over everything in Matthew 28:18, claimed to be God, to forgive sin, to raise His own body from the grave. He proved it all and Thomas was right when he said in John 20:24, "My Lord and my God."
Again here Paul presents Christ’ deity, verse 16, "For by Him were all things created." Jesus made everything. John 1:3 says, "Without Him was not anything made that was made." God created the worlds through Christ, the action of the trinity. God is creating in Genesis 1. The Spirit is moving and bringing life in Genesis 1. And the Son is creating in the New Testament.
Can you ever conceive what is out there? Light travels at 186 thousand miles a second, so light can reach the moon in one and a half seconds. Yet our solar system is three billion miles away. And the nearest star is 20 billion miles away, the North Star is 400 billion miles away. And the star Beetlejuice is 880 quadrillion miles away and has a diameter of 200 million miles greater than the earth's orbit.
His relationship to the world is indicated in verse 17, “He is before all things and by Him all things consist.” Jesus lived as God before He was ever known as Jesus, before He ever came into the world He existed in eternity past. In John 17 He said, "Father, I've finished the work which You gave Me to do, now restore Me to the glory that I had with You before the world began.”
How incredible that somebody should be the creator of David and the son of David. But He is the pre-existing one. He is before all things. All things were made for Him for He is the heir of all things. And then in verse 17, "And by Him all things hold together." This is talking about sustaining. In Hebrews 1:3 it says Jesus Christ upholds all things by the power of His word.
If the earth's rotation slowed down, we would alternately freeze or burn. Our globe is tilted on an axis at 23 degrees which enables us to have four seasons. If it wasn't tilted like that, great ice continents would pile up on the north and south. If the moon didn't remain at its exact distance from the earth, the ocean tide would completely inundate the land twice a day.
What is His relation to the unseen world? Jesus is the one who made the angels. He is God. He is the one who made everything visible and invisible. You have thrones, dominions, principalities, powers and the New Testament adds authorities. Those five terms describe the five ranks of angels, at least those are the ones that have been revealed to us. Christ is over all of them.
Now let's move to the area of redemption in verse 18. Here Paul shows that Jesus is God in redemptive history. First of all, Jesus in His relationship to the church, verse 18, "And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead that in all things He might have the preeminence.” In redemptive history there is none greater than Jesus Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 12 this is fully developed and the idea is that all of us are parts of a living organism, that the church is not so much an organization as it is a living organism. And everybody has a function. Jesus Christ provides growth for His church through His own life. And He provides direction from the Word for His church. He said in Matthew 16, "I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it."
Jesus is also the firstborn from the dead. He gained His exaltation by His resurrection. It says that Christ became a man, humbled Himself and through the resurrection God was well-pleased and God exalted Him and gave Him a name above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. It was in the resurrection that the exaltation came. He is the firstborn from the dead.
Verse 19, "It pleased the Father that in Him all fullness should dwell." Why was Jesus treated so badly? Verse 13-14, “God has delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Verse 20, “and through Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.”
Why was that done? To make peace between God and man. There is a war raging between man and God and the wrath of God is poured out and spent on sinful man. Man fires back his hatred and indifference toward God and a baby makes peace. Jesus alone is able to take the hand of sinful man and holy God and because of His own infinite sacrifice on the cross, to join the two.
Why was He born? Because there was no other way to bring peace between man and God. He alone could do it. He's the incomparable, the unique, the only one who can reconcile man to God. And He did it through the blood of His cross. Do you believe that? If you believe that and you are committed to that reality, Christmas for you is truly salvation. Let us pray.