Colossians 1.15-20.
The apostles often dictated their letters, as you can tell from their big run-on sentences. This’d be one of them. I broke it up into sentences, as do most interpreters, but really it’s just one big eulogy Paul and Timothy wrote as they were greeting the Christians of Colossae, Phrygia Pacatiana (now ruins outside Honaz, Turkey).
In so doing they described how they thought of Christ, the Son of God. They identify they’re talking about the beloved Son in
It’s a pretty cosmic description for a Nazarene handyman-turned-schoolteacher. But that’s our Jesus.
Colossians 1.15-20 KWL - 15 The Son is the ikon of the invisible God,
- firstborn of every creature,
- 16 so that by the Son everything in the heavens and on the earth is created,
- the visible and the invisible (thrones, dominions, chiefdoms, or powers)
- —everything was built through him and by him.
- 17 The Son is above everything,
- and everything holds together because of him.
- 18 The Son is the head of the church’s body.
- The Son is first.
- Firstborn from the dead,
- so that he might take first place in everything.
- 19 Because God is pleased in all fullness to dwell in the Son,
- 20 and by the Son reconcile everything to him,
- making peace through him by the blood of his cross,
- whether with things on the earth or things in the heavens.
Jesus is what God looks like.
Y’might recall one of
Exodus 20.4-6. - Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the L
ORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
And that includes statues of him. Because people have ignored this command, and tried. You remember that gold calf the Hebrews built while Moses was away?
But God doesn’t wanna be represented by statues. Because he knows how we humans are. We wind up worshiping the image instead of him. We imagine the unlimited God as the limited form we created of him.
We already do this with images of Jesus. How many Americans, who grew up surrounded by paintings of
Hence God doesn’t want us to create an image of him, because he planned to create his own image of himself: Jesus of Nazareth.
That’s his ikon. Not the mosaics we put in churches; not the stained glass we hang in windows; not the paintings we hang on our walls; not the webposters we stick on Twitter. Those are bad copies of his ikon, which do the same thing for us as the gold calves did for the ancient Hebrews. They throw us off track.
We’re meant to look, not at paintings and sculptures and statues, but at Jesus’s character, as found in the scriptures. At Jesus’s teachings, as found in the scriptures. At Jesus’s commands, partly found in the bible, and partly told to us moment by moment as we listen to the Holy Spirit. And follow him. Not manufacture inadequate images of him, then stand as stock-still as they do.
I’m not saying all Christian art is idolatry, and we need to start smashing ikons and Jesus statues. (Though some of them are awful, so it wouldn’t hurt.) I’m saying we need to follow Jesus. The art should, at the very most, remind us to seek the real Jesus. No more.
Jesus is the image God made of himself; he’s what we’re meant to look at if we want to see the invisible God. Jesus is entirely, fully God; as God as God can be, yet in a human body for us to interact with. God incarnate.
God the Son, creator.
“God the Son” is what the scriptures and theologians tend to call Jesus before
The apostles called him the firstborn of creation.
So before Jesus came into the world, he made it. That is, it was made through him,
Jesus created
Greek philosophers (namely Plato of Athens) pointed out there were many things in the universe, but behind these things, greater than these things, are the ideas of the things. The idea of a king—the respect for the king, and his power—held far more sway over people than the physical might of the king himself. Many ancient gnostics claimed God created these ideas… but another god, a lesser god, a demiurge, created matter and physical things; things lesser, corrupt, perishable, and irrelevant. And such teachings run contrary to the scriptures: Jesus creates everything. Not just the stuff gnostics or Greeks considered pure and nice; everything. Power and the wielders of power.
The King James Version has verse 16 read, “thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers.” Various Christian interpreters have weird ideas about what this means. Some treat ’em as powerful spirit beings—a “throne” is one kind of angel, and a “dominion” another. Others figure they’re different kinds of political offices; namely powers which humans wield. (And if that’s the case, the apostles utterly forgot about oligarchs. Which they shouldn’t have.) All these interpretations are allegories which miss the point, either because we’re too fascinated by power, or too fascinated by angels. They’re a list of things which have both visible and invisible components. You can see all these things. You can even see the power behind them, when put into action.
Jesus, fully God.
But back to Jesus’s greatness. Jesus is above all; Jesus holds everything together; Jesus made and runs his church. Jesus’s death and blood established a relationship between God and his rebellious creation, namely us. Jesus is first in everything; heck, he was the first to be resurrected from the dead, so he’s first in that too.
He’s first because
Jesus is everything God is. God dwells in him completely. Anyone who defines God by his power, is using a deficient definition of God—largely based on how we humans covet power, and won’t respect people who lack it. Some preachers actually say they can’t respect a Lord who’s not almighty! (Well no wonder they won’t take God seriously till they begin to feel the consequences of their sins.) Nor can they respect politicians who don’t sound forceful; nor will they adequately respect a church board unless they threaten to expel them. Yep, these preachers have problems. As does any Christian who thinks like them.
’Cause Jesus made himself weak. Made himself frail. Made himself human. Made himself mortal. He doesn’t respect power; he respects the opposite of power: Grace. Grace surrenders power—gives up the right to demand reciprocity, justice, vengeance, payback—and lets go of what’s owed. People teach grace is a form of power because God swaps it for power. And again, they distort things because their lust for power blinds them to how grace works. “Well if God values grace so highly, it must be a form of power.” Nope; still isn’t.
Jesus set aside his power, died, and reconciled heaven and earth to God. He created ’em; now he has a relationship with them, and has every right to rule ’em. And he will—not by exercising power over them, but by forgiving them, and by them responding to his grace with grace in return. And that’s how he conquers the universe.
