Colossians 1:15

After 14 verses of powerful and significant introductory comments, Paul begins to address the threat to Colossian church in verse 15 of chapter 1.

We learned earlier that the greatest threat to this church was a group of false teachers called the Gnostics. These Gnostics believed that they had a special “knowledge” of Christ that made them superior. Because the Gnostics believed that matter was evil, it would then follow that Jesus could not have been born a human because that would put Him in direct contact with matter. Gnostics considered Jesus to “be only one of thousands of emanations from the great unseen God. According to them, Christ was not the way, the truth, and the life, but only the beginning rung on the ladder to the true God.” (Hughes, pp.229-230) The early church rejected this completely. To them, Jesus was “Lord of all or not Lord at all”.

This week, we will take a deeper dive into Paul’s response to the Gnostics as he develops the idea of the supremacy of Christ.

The first thing Paul states is that Christ is supreme in eternity…

“The Son is the image of the invisible God…” Colossians 1:15a NIV

Both the Old Testaments and New Testaments present God as invisible. However, consider the words of John 1:18…

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known John 1:18 NIV

While God may be invisible, we see the image of God in the person of Jesus. The word “image” comes from the Greek word “eikon” which “means an image or representation”. Like a crayon rubbing of a coin on paper, Jesus is the portrait of God that reveals not only the image of God but the personal character of God as well. The writer of Hebrews put it this way…

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being… Hebrews 1:3 NIV

The Greek for “exact representation” carries the idea of an “exact imprint” like the impress of an imperial seal in wax.

Thinking about this from a person standpoint, Genesis 1 states that we were created in God’s image. This should guide who we are called to be as a reflection of Christ. Jesus is supreme and we should give Him first place in our lives!

Questions to consider:
If someone were to make a crayon rubbing of your life, specifically your character, what would it look like?
What do you need to change that your life will be more like Jesus?
Ask God to help your life reflect the image of Christ in whose image you were created.