Introduction
Muhammad Ali claimed that he was the greatest of all times. Listen to some of his most iconic claims:
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see."
"I wrestled with an alligator, I tussled with a whale, I handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail, I'm bad man.... Last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I'm so mean I make medicine sick…."
"If you even dream of beating me, you better wake up and apologize."
"It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am."
"Not only do I knock'em out , I pick the round."
"I'm a poet, I'm a prophet, I'm the resurrector, I'm the savior of the boxing world. If it wasn't for me, the game would be dead."
"It's not bragging if you can back it up."
"I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark."
He may have been one of the most talented boxers to ever live, but he was certainly not the greatest of all times. There is really one who is the greatest of all times: the Lord Jesus Christ who is God the Son and the Son of man in one person.
I. A Bit of History First
A. For the first 400 years of the Christian era, the Church worked really hard at getting Christ right.
B. The theological controversies of that period tended to revolve around who Christ was.
1. It was very difficult for some to accept the biblical teaching that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man at the same time.
2. So, several teachers in the Church would deny one or the other nature of Christ.
a. The first major denial was that he was fully human because they couldn't fathom God soiling himself with a physical nature (Gnosticism).
b. After that, heresies shifted toward denying that Jesus was fully God (his deity) – this was a more serious error because virtually the whole Church bought into it (Arianism).
c. The pendulum swung again and the denial of his full humanity became popular gain with the denial of his human will (monothelitism) and his human nature (monophysitism).
C. Finally, the Church formulated what the biblical position on the person of Christ was in the Chalcedonian Creed, which is the standard position of all branches of the Christian Church.
"We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us."
D. All this history because our passage today was at the center of all these controversies and was an important determinant of the final creedal formulation concerning Christ.
1. This passage speaks of the whole person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. So, sometimes Paul speaks of Jesus Christ the man and sometimes of Jesus Christ God the Son.
E. Verses 15-18 is the continuation of Paul's explanation of whom "the Son of his love" is and may well have been a hymn.
II. Christ the Image, 15.
A. Humanity cannot see the Father in his glory.
Ex. 33:19-20 (God answering Moses's request to see his face) – Then He said, "I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." But He said, "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.
Jn. 6:46a – Not that anyone has seen the Father….
1. We can't stand seeing him because we are creatures.
2. We can't stand seeing him because we are sinners.
Is. 59:2 – But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.
B. Apart from Christ no one can know God beyond knowing him as the wrathful judge of the entire world.
C. It is only through Christ that we can see God as holy, but also as compassionate, merciful, loving, etc.
"… Christ is called the image of God on this ground – that he makes God in a manner visible to us." John Calvin
Jn. 1:18 – No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
Jn. 14:8-11 – Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.
Heb. 1:1-3a (they thought they could go back to a Christless religion and be just fine) – God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by HisSon, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of Hisglory and the express image of His person….
D. In order to be a true image of the Father, Christ must possess all the characteristics of the Father.
1. Therefore, the declaration that Jesus is the image (the express image in Hebrews) is a declaration of his divinity.
2. We see God in the face of Christ.
III. Christ the Firstborn, 15, 18.
A. Christ is called the firstborn twice in this passage.
1. Once in v. 15 and another in v. 18.
2. Each time it means something different.
B. Christ is the firstborn of all creation, 15.
1. This is a reference to the OT right of the firstborn to inherit all things.
Dt. 21:15-17 – If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the unloved, and if the firstborn son is of her who is unloved, then it shall be, on the day he bequeaths his possessions to his sons, that he must not bestow firstborn status on the son of the loved wife in preference to the son of the unloved, the true firstborn. But he shall acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.
2. This is not a reference to his being created, but to his being the rightful owner of all creation.
a. Notice that the reason Paul gives for Jesus's being the firstborn is precisely that he was not created.
b. Rather, he is the creator of all things, 16.
3. As the ultimate Son of David, he is the heir of all things.
Ps. 89:27 – Also I will make him My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.
Eph. 1:22a – And He put all things under His feet….
C. He is also the firstborn in the sense that he was the first and so far the only one to rise from the dead with a glorified body, 18.
1 Cor. 15:20 – But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
1. There are many examples in the pages of the Bible of people who came back to life, perhaps Lazarus being the best-known one.
2. But they were resuscitated, not resurrected like Christ.
IV. Christ the Creator, 16.
A. All things that were created came into existence through Jesus Christ and by his power.
Jn. 1:3 – All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
B. Notice that there is nothing outside of things that were created by Christ.
1. Heaven and earth = visible and invisible.
a. This is the entire cosmos, but not like Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
"The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." Carl Sagan, the very first line of the first episode in 1980
b. This cosmos, the biblical cosmos, includes the physical and the spiritual.
2. Thrones, dominions, principalities, powers are not identifying four separate groups of created order.
a. They are, rather, all inclusive terms for all created power structures, human and angelic.
b. There is no sovereign, there is no angel, there is no world leader that is not under the creative power of Jesus Christ, 16b.
"For those who have been redeemed by Christ, the universe has no ultimate terrors; they know that their Redeemer is also creator, ruler, and goal of all things." F.F. Bruce
V. Christ the Sustainer, 17.
A. Here is another statement of Christ's eternal, uncreated nature – he is before all things in the sense that he was there before all things were.
B. We see here that, not only did he create the universe (physical and spiritual), but also that he sustains it together – phrase translated all things consist is better translated as all things in him have been held together.
"What holds the universe together is not an idea or a virtue, but a person: the resurrected Christ." Douglas Moo
Heb. 1:3 – … who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power….
C. Without Christ, the universe just wouldn't work.
VI. Christ the Head, 18.
A. It is this Christ, the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, that is the head of the Church.
B. Paul introduces here a theme that the Church is the Body of Christ, 1:24; 2:19; 3:15.
C. The Head nourishes the Body, 2:19.
D. The Head governs the Body.
"So far as the organic relationship is concerned, Christ and his people are viewed together as a living entity: Christ is the head, supplying life and exercising control and direction; his people are his body, individually his limbs and organs, under his control, obeying his direction, performing his work. And the life which animates the whole is his risen life, which he shares with his people." F.F. Bruce
VII. Christ the Preeminent, 18.
A. This is ultimate purpose of all that Paul has said in verses 15-18 – see alternative translations below.
Col. 1:18c – in order that he, him and him alone, may be in all things first.
Col. 1:18c – in order that he himself may be in all things supreme.
Col. 1:18c – in order that he and no other may be in all things most important.
B. Because he is the Image, Firstborn, Creator, Sustainer, and Head, he is first, preeminent, foremost in all things.
1. To exalt someone else or something else is to exalt what doesn't have the credentials for that position.
2. To be satisfied with someone or something else as most important in our lives is to try to be satisfied with what doesn't satisfy.
"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses
Conclusion: How Shall We Then Live? Christ Must Be First in Our Whole Person
A. Heart (belief and attitude)
1. We must believe everything God says in his Word.
2. If God says it, we believe.
3. This implies four things:
a. The basis for belief is not what we understand, but what God says.
b. We cannot be selective in what we believe in the Bible
c. We must know what God says – we open our Bibles confessing that we are full of unbelief and that he would help it.
Ps. 119:18 – Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.
Phil. 3:10 – … that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death….
d. We will avail ourselves of every means God has given to us to know him so that he can be supreme in our lives.
B. Mind (thinking)
1. Belief must shape how and what we think
2. Belief with no application is dead.
3. Because we believe in what God says, then we let that belief govern our thinking so that Christ can be supreme in our minds.
Rom. 12:1-3 – I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.
C. Body (behavior)
1. Belief and thinking translate in behavior in which Christ is supreme.
2. The acting, the doing is the last link in making and keeping Christ first in our lives.
Phil. 2:5 (as basis for 1-4) – Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus….
Phil. 2:1-4 – Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
The whole Christ, God and man, is supreme over the whole Christian, heart, mind, and body.
http://olympiabp.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-greatest-of-all-times-colossians.html
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