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.