The Credentials of Jesus
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2023 · 23 December 2023
Who is this child Immanuel, “God with us”? The announcement to Joseph was that this child would be named Jesus, for He would save His people from their sins; and that His name would be Immanuel, which in Hebrew means “God with us.” God came down to save His people from their sins. Mary said, “How can this happen? I am a virgin.” And the angel declared that the Holy Spirit would come upon her.
And by His power the Son of God would take up residence in her womb, so that the child would be both God and man, the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Think about the reality of who Christ is today. Thomas got it right when he said, “My Lord and my God.” The Father declared from heaven of Him, “This is My beloved Son.” But let us study the words of Paul in Colossians 1:15-19.
Here the Holy Spirit gives us a portrait of Christ identifying Him. In fact, this passage identifies Him with regard to His relationship to God, to the world, to angels, to the church, and to all others. Let’s start with His relationship to God, verse 15: “He is the image of the invisible God.” In Genesis 1:26 - 27, God created man in His own image. Humanity was created by a divine pattern.
No other creature was made in God’s image. We share physical and biological features with the rest of living creation because we have to share the same environment. But man has completely unique metaphysical and spiritual features that belong to no other creature. Both ontologically as to his being, and ethically as to his understanding, he is like God. Man alone can reason.
Man alone can think abstractly. Man alone comprehends morality. Man understands beauty. Man possesses emotion. Man expresses will. Man understands artistry, creativity, craftsmanship. Man has a complex language far beyond any form of communication by any other creatures. Man experiences love; and man is defined as having, in the basic definition, meaningful relationships.
God, three-in-one, is a God of relationship, and created us to have relationships with one another, and even with Himself. But here it doesn’t say God made Jesus in His image; it says He is the image of the invisible God. Man is not God. Christ is the image of God, and therefore is God. He was not created by God. Colossians 2:9 says, “For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ.”
That is the clearest statement in the epistles as to the deity of Christ. All that God is He is in bodily form, who is the image of God. He is the glory of God shining in human form. Hebrews 1 says Christ is “the exact representation” of God’s nature. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”
God is invisible; no one has seen God. Paul says Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is God to us in a visible form. In John 10:30, Jesus speaking to the Jews says, “I and the Father are one.” There was no question in the minds of His enemies that He claimed to be God; and He demonstrated the reality of that claim by His words and His works. God Himself said, “No one can see Me and live.”
Jesus puts God on display in a visible way. Look at His life. Look at His deeds, His miracles, His attitude toward sin and righteousness, toward people and their struggles and their problems, toward life, toward death, toward children, toward religion, toward sin and unrighteousness, and you see God’s attitude toward all of that. So in His relationship to God, He is God, God the Son.
Christ is identified as the firstborn of all creation. Now that’s not chronology. And it also does not mean that He was not existing, and being created came into existence. He always existed. Hebrews 10:5 says, “A body You have prepared for Me.” He already existed, God just made a body for Him to be placed into, to come into this world to live and die and rise again.
But in what sense then is He the firstborn? “Firstborn” is a word in the Greek it means “the primary one.” Of all the people who have ever been created, and certainly Christ’s body was created, He is the premier one. That’s what “firstborn” means. The firstborn was the son who had all the rights, who carried on the family authority, the special place of privilege, prestige, and honor. He inherits everything.
Secondly, notice His relationship to the world in verses 16 and 17, “For everything was created by Him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together.” Christ created the whole universe in six days.
Living in the modern world we understand what the universe is, don’t we? I don’t need to go through reminding you of the vastness of infinite space and everything in it. Nor do I need to remind you of the heavenly bodies: sun, moon, stars, and bits and pieces of things flying around. Nor do I need to remind you of the complexity of life on the earth, the microcosm of creation. Christ created all of it.
And everything He created was good. Seven times in Genesis 1 it says, “And God saw it and it was good,” because He is good and He can only produce what is good. In the fall, man stained this universe with his sin. But Christ will remake it to be permanently good. Everything came from Him and ends in being given to Him. He will regather the entire universe in a new creation.
Verse 17 says, “He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together.” If you’re the Creator you have to be there before the creation. In Revelation 22:13 He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” He is before all things. That simple statement speaks of Christ as an eternal being. He is the only one who existed before the creation.
Micah 5:2 says, “Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah; one will come from you to be ruler over Israel for me. His origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.” The Messiah is an eternal being who will be born in Bethlehem. That narrows it down to one possibility: an eternal being born in Bethlehem, the Creator of the universe, the one who was before all things.
“By Him all things hold together.” This has been the dilemma of scientists. A nuclear physicist said: “Everything that exists in material form is made up of atoms.” An atom has a nucleus, and in that are positive charged protons. Physicists know that they should repel each other. What holds the nucleus together? This physicist said, “There’s no scientific reason why atoms don’t explode.”
But it is extremely difficult to split an atom. It takes massive amount of scientific effort to even get to the place where we understand atomic structure. And it’s very difficult to split an atom. This scientist said, “All the massive nuclei have no right to exist. They should blow up instantly. There is a power that holds them together. As yet he says, the secret has not been discovered.”
Christ, the Creator holds everything together. It says in 2 Peter 3, that the day is coming when the entire universe will have an atomic implosion, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Was it incredible to create a lot of fish and loaves one day on a hillside in Galilee? No, Christ is the one who holds together every atom in the universe from exploding. He makes the universe as is, instead of chaos.
Thirdly, His relation to angels. Angels do exist, as do demons, who are fallen angels. Christ has created everything in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, which would include angels and every other invisible reality like personality, intellect, and every other invisible aspect of reality. And Paul says, “Let’s include, among the invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities.”
Now he moves from the physical creation to the angelic creation. Ephesians 1:21 says, “Christ has been seated in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion.” Ephesians 6:12 says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.”
Jesus is not an angel; He is the one who created the angels. He created them all. He created even the ones that fell, and He triumphed over them. In Colossians 2:15 even when He was dead on the cross, His Spirit went to declare His triumph over the angels. “He disarmed the rulers and authorities, made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through His work on the cross.”
Verse 18, He is also the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.” Christ is not just a better teacher than others. He is the head over the church, without which the church is dead. Other religions and false forms of Christianity are headless bodies. He expresses His will through His word, and His power through His Spirit.
“He is the beginning,” means “the source.” We were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. He gives us life through His Spirit; He regenerates us. There is a church because He gives life to everyone in His church. The church was brought into existence on the day of Pentecost by the Spirit, whom the Son sent after the Father exalted Him. It is the Spirit who gives us life.
“He is the firstborn from the dead.” He isn’t the first person to rise; He raised people from the dead. There are a few in the Old Testament that were raised from the dead. What it’s saying is, of all the people who will ever be raised from the dead He is first, and by the way, everyone will be eventually. In John 5, Jesus said He will raise the righteous to life and the unrighteous to condemnation.
“So that He might come to have first place in everything.” That looks at His resurrection, because He is of all that have ever risen, the premier one. By His resurrection He showed that He had conquered every enemy: sin and death and hell, all the forces of Satan. He overpowered death. And by virtue of that resurrection He is the victor and the sovereign power over all who live.
Verse 19, “For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him.” This is not talking about His deity; this is something the Father was pleased to give Him. The fullness in Christ is the fullness of grace and truth. All divine love, all righteousness, all true pardon, all divine forgiveness, adoption, inheritance, sanctification, holiness, wisdom, strength, knowledge, peace, joy and comfort. Let us pray.