This is the most exhaustive assertion of our Lord’s Godhead to be found in St. Paul’s Writings. This magnificent dogmatic passage is introduced, after the apostle’s manner, with a strictly practical object. The Colossian Church was exposed to the attacks of a theosophic doctrine which degraded Christ to the rank of one of a long series of inferior beings supposed to range between man and the Supreme God. Against this assertion Paul asserts that Christ is:
I. The image of the invisible God. The expression supplements the title of “the Son.” As “the Son,” Christ is derived eternally from the Father, and of one substance with Him. As “the image” Christ is in that one substance, the exact likeness of the Father, in all things except being the Father. He is the image of the Father, not as the Father, but as God. The “image” is indeed originally God’s unbegun, unending reflection of Himself in Himself, but is also the organ whereby God, in His essence invisible, reveals Himself to His creatures. Thus the “image” is naturally, so to speak, the Creator, since creation is the first revelation God has made of Himself. Man is the highest point in the visible universe; in man, God’s attributes are most luminously exhibited; man is the image and glory of God (1Co_11:7). But Christ is the adequate image of God, God’s self-reflection in His own thought, eternally present with Himself.
II. As the image Christ is the first-born of all creation, i.e., not the first in rank among created beings, but begotten before any created beings. That this is the true sense of the expression is etymologically certain; but it is also the only sense which is in real harmony with the relation in which, according to the context, Christ stands to the universe. Of all things in heaven and earth, of things seen and unseen, of the various orders of the angelic hierarchy, it is said that they were created:
1. In Christ. There was no creative process external to and independent of Him; since the archetypal forms after which the creatures are modelled and the sources of their strength and consistency of being eternally reside in Him.
2. By Him. The force which has summoned the worlds out of nothingness into being, and which upholds them in being is His; He wields it; He is the one producer and sustainer of all created existence.
3. For Him. He is not as Arianism pretended, merely an inferior workman creating for the glory of a higher Master; He creates for HimSelf; He is the end of all things as well as their immediate source; and in living for Him every creature finds at once the explanation and law of its being. For He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.
III. After such a statement it follows naturally that the fulness, i.e., the entire cycle of the Divine attributes, considered as a series of forces, dwells in him; and this not in any ideal or transcendental manner, but with that actual reality which men attach to the presence of material bodies which they can feel and measure through the organs of sense (Col_2:9). Although throughout this Epistle the word Logos is never introduced, it is plain that the Image of St. Paul is equivalent in His rank and functions to the Logos of St. John. Each exists prior to creation; each is the one agent in creation; each is a Divine person; each is equal with God and shares His essential life; each is really none other than God. (Canon Liddon.)
The person of Christ
I. As related to God. “Image.” Some interpret this of the essential image; others as setting forth Christ as God’s messenger, or as perfect man, in allusion to Gen_1:26. But there is a great difference between man made “in,” “after,” or “according to” God’s image, and Christ “the image” itself.
1. An image
(1) differs widely from a shadow. The Old Testament discoveries of Christ are called “shadows,” and though a shadow presupposes substance, it is only a mere appearance (Heb_10:1).
(2) Is more than a similitude. One thing may be very similar to another in some things, and yet in others be very unlike. The sun is a similitude, but not an image of God.
(3) Corresponds entirely with that which it represents a perfect model and transcript. The cast is an exact sampler of the mould; the wax bears a correct impress of the seal, not merely in general figure, but in every line. The word therefore shows that Christ is the very form of God in whom are embodied all His perfections.
2. This suggests that
(1) the dignity of our Saviour’s person stamps infinite merit on His work.
(2) Since it is to the Divine image that believers have to be conformed, we have some idea of the privileges and dignity to which we shall be exalted.
(3) In Christ’s glorious person we may read our own defects.
II. As related to the universe.
1. He is Creator:from which it is clear that all things had a beginning, and that nothing exists that does not owe its existence to Christ; and therefore Christ is the lawful proprietor of all things. That there may be no cavil we have a particular enumeration of His works:
(1) In their universality, “all things”;
(2) their properties, “visible and invisible”;
(3) their grades in the scale of being, “thrones, etc.” Try to elevate your thoughts to the dignity of this subject. What an Almighty Saviour you have. He is above all human portraiture. His name is “Wonderful.”
2. But if Christ be all this, then
(1) here is an end of Atheism, Deism, Unitarianism.
(2) What a claim have Christ’s meanest creatures on our consideration.
(3) How desperate their condition who will not have Him to reign over them.
III. As belated to His Church. “Head.”
1. By Divine appointment; and as the natural head is the highest part of the body, so Christ has in all things the pre-eminence.
2. In respect of His wisdom. The head is the seat of mind. There are all the organs and mental phenomena:the eye to see, etc. “In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
3. As regards spiritual sustenation and support. The head is where most of the vital functions are which impart energy through the system, and diffuse pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow. So Christ transmits whatever supplies are required for the Church’s welfare; through Him the whole body increases with the increase of God.
Lessons:We have a Saviour--
1. Almighty.
2. Sympathizing.
3. Everlasting. (T. Watson, B. A.)
The dignity of Christ
I. Christ in his pre-incarnate state. This dignity is represented by two brief clauses dealing with--
1. His relation to the God head, “image.” There is a distinction between image and likeness. Likeness represents superficial resemblance, as when two leaves from the same tree are said to be like each other; image indicates resemblance by participation in the same life by reproduction of essence. Likeness is that which is superficial and partial, image that which is essential and exhaustive. Our Lord is that representation of God which God could not but have. Whatever of glory dwells in the Eternal Father is eternally imaged in His Son.
2. His relation to the universe.
(1) “In Him all things were made,” i.e., the creative energy not only passed through Him, as the volume of a river’s waters passes through its rock-hewn channels, but the creative energy dwells in Him, belongs to Him, as the life of His life, essentially and eternally.
(2) In Him also all things consist, stand together; in Him the universe finds its unity and coherence. We talk about the laws of nature. If it were possible for us to trace the laws of nature and of history to their point of convergence, we should find that to be nothing less than the personal sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
(3) He is the universal Governor. For Him all things exist, to serve His purpose and to manifest His glory. Jesus Christ is the first, efficient, and final cause of all created existence.
3. Now these separate clauses are dove-tailed into the clause preceding them, “the firstborn,” for that expression does not mean that our Lord is the first creature, either in time or in rank. The emphasis must be put upon both adjectives, “firstborn.” The primacy of Jesus Christ in the creation is the primacy of birth. He alone is born, not made; all other things are made, not born; and there is a very marked distinction between these two. Our thoughts are born of our intelligence; our works are the product of our hands. The things that we make are outside of ourselves; they may perish, and our being be not affected; but the thoughts that are born within us and of us are a part of our being; when you touch them you touch yourself. Our Lord’s place in the universe is that of the firstborn; His own being is rooted in the very being of God, as inseparable from Him as thought is from being. Therefore He is called the Eternal Word of God. Thought always precedes achievement, just as a great cathedral is born in the mind of the architect before the click of a chisel is heard. Even so is Christ the first born of creation as holding in His living thought all the realms and ages. Thus far the essential majesty of the Divine Christ. This is a glory that blinds us, but does not kindle nor transfigure us.
II. The apostle passes to the glory of Him who tabernacled in human flesh. As creation finds in Him its head, unity, and coherence, so also does the kingdom of grace. These are not two systems, joining each other as two circles might have their contact at a single point, or overlapping, but are one, because the sovereignty of each and both is invested in Christ.
1. In His relation to redemption Christ is “the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead,” not the first who came forth from the grave in rank or time. His relation to the kingdom of grace as to that of nature is birth, i.e., in Him the resurrection finds its original and eternal home. It is net merely said that He is risen, but thatHe is “the Resurrection and the Life.”
2. As He is said to be the source of spiritual creative energy, so also is it declared that the authority of spiritual control is vested in Him. He is Head of the Church, to whom alone our prayers are to be addressed, and through whom alone the answer of God can come to us. Between us and God there areno hierarchies of principalities and powers, no army of saints and martyrs. The way is clear through Christ. There is but one Mediator. Just as the head interprets, gathers up, and responds to the multitudinous demands of the body that are telegraphed along the nervous filaments of sensation, so also does Christ, as the Head of His Church, interpret her needs and respond to her prayers. The heart does not always pray as do the lips, and our wishes are sometimes very different from our wants:but the great Head of the Church knows how to interpret, and always pierces to the deepest need. And so when the strength of our hands fails us, and our wisdom is staggered by the problems that front us, a larger wisdom and a mightier hope come pulsing into our feebleness.
3. Great prerogatives are these, but they are not a temporary investiture. They belong to Him by eternal right, “for it pleased the Father that in Him all fulness should dwell.” Grace has in Him its eternal dwelling place. And so long as the redeemed shall endure will He be their loving and loved Head. For in Him both God and man find their sufficient and eternal reconciliation.
4. This great reconciliation is not merely problematical and partial, it is positive and universal. The tenses are in the past. We are living to-day, not in the dispensation of the wrath of God, but in the dispensation of His redeeming grace. God is sending forth His ministers, bidding all to repent, assuring them that the feast is ready, and that it is only waiting for the guests. The age of demoralization passed away eighteen hundred years ago. The age of reconstruction began when on the cross our Lord said, “It is finished!” That was the burial of the old, as it was the birth of the new; and ever since, and until the end of time, in spite of opposition and apparent defeat, all things have been and shall be working together for good, and surely, though slowly, advancingthe cause of God’s eternal righteousness.
III. Practical inferences.
1. We have been led by the apostle to the most exalted conceivable position whence we can look out on the works of God and upon the history of the world. We have been led through all the grades of being, from matter in its crudest form to mind in its loftiest manifestation, and we have seen that in Christ the whole universe of created existence finds its unity and coherence, while the awful struggle of right against wrong, truth against falsehood, find in Him its consummation and ending. This is something that neither science nor philosophy can give. In Him all contradictions are solved between the seen and the unseen, the created and the uncreated, the sin of man and the righteousness of God.
2. If it be true that both creation and redemption find in Christ their living centre, then it is also plain that only in proportion as we enter into the mind of Christ can we understand aright either the works of God, or the history of the race, or the revelation of His character and purposes in Scripture.
3. Here, too, is the only solution of the vexed question of Christian union. How shall that unity be brought about? Certainly not by creeds nor by forms. There is only one name, one sign, that can subdue us all, and that is the sign that must conquer the world, the flaming cross of Jesus Christ. When we bow before that, and all our faces are turned reverently toward the One on the throne, then shall enmity perish, and we shall be one, even as He and the Father are one.
4. The incomparable dignity of our Lord should awaken in us a three-fold attachment.
(1) It should awaken in us a feeling of reverence. As no one of us would think of standing before a throned king without becoming humility, it behoves us when we come into our Creator’s presence to bow with reverence at His feet.
(2) But incomparable as is His dignity, it is for ever joined with our common nature; and therefore, while it calls for reverence it also calls for trust. He is the Head of the Church, and therefore we ought to come not only reverently, but confidently and boldly. There ought to be joy as well as reverence in our worship and in our service.
(3) This incomparable dignity ought also to fill us with assurance and courage. (A. J. F. Behrends, D. D.)
The Divine pre-eminence of “Christ”
I. Christ’s pre-eminence.
1. His supremacy in relation to God. “Image” means
(1) The supreme likeness of God.
(2) The supreme representation of God.
(3) The supreme manifestation of God.
2. His supremacy in relation to nature. We have
(1) His dignity, “firstborn,” telling of His age, heirship, authority.
(2) His creative and sustaining agency. All is made by Him and consists in Him. In His miracles He was the Divine Ulysses whose use of his love proclaimed him lord.
(3) His consummating glory. Creation exists for Him as well as by Him. He is its end as well as its origin.
3. His supremacy in relation to His Church. He is
(1) Its sovereign, “Head”;
(2) Its force, “Beginning.”
(3) Life, “Firstborn from the dead.” His risen life is the life of the Church.
II. The explanation on His pre-eminence is his Divine plenitude. He is the Pleroma, the totality of Divine attributes and powers.
1. In Him are all the Divine resources. He is the fulness of wisdom, power, love.
2. In Him all those resources permanently “dwell.” Because He is thus full of God, He must in pre-eminence be fully God.
III. The work of Christ in His pre-eminence and plenitude is the work of reconciliation.
1. Reconcile what? “All things.”
2. How? “By the blood of His cross.” (U. R. Thomas.)
The glory of the Son
There are here three grand conceptions of Christ’s relations.
I. To God. Paul uses language which was familiar on the lips of his antagonists. Alexandrian Judaism had much to say about the “Word,” and spoke of it as the Image of God. Probably this teaching reached Colossae. An image is a likeness as of a king’s head on a coin or a face in a mirror. Here it is that which makes the invisible visible.
1. God in Himself is inconceivable and unapproachable. “No man hath seen,” etc. He is beyond the sense and above understanding. There is in every human spirit a dim consciousness of His presence, but that is not knowledge. Creatural limitations and man’s sin prevents it.
2. Christ is the perfect manifestation of God. Through Him we know all that we can know of God. “He that hath seen Me,” etc. The great fathomless, shoreless ocean of the Divine nature is like a “closed sea.” Christ is the broad river which brings its waters to men. Our souls cry for the living God; and never will that orphaned cry be answered but in the possession of Christ, in whom we possess the Father also.
II. To creation. “Firstborn.”
1. At first sight this seems to include Him in the great family of creatures as the eldest, but it is shown not to be the intention in the next verse, which alleges that Christ was before, and is the agent of, all creation. The true meaning is that He is firstborn in comparison with, or reference to, all creation.
2. The title implies priority in existence and supremacy. It applies to the Eternal Word and not to His incarnation.
3. The necessary clauses state more fully this relation and so confirm and explain the title.
(1) The whole universe is set in one class, and He alone over against it. Four times in one sentence we have “all things” repeated, and traced to Him as Creator and Lord.
(a) “In the heavens and earth” is quoted from Genesis, and is intended, as then, to be an exhaustive enumeration of the creation according to plan.
(b) “Things visible and invisible” includes the whole under another principle of division--there are visible things in heaven, and may be invisible on earth, but wherever they are He made them. () “Whether thrones,” etc., an enumeration alluding to dreamy speculations about an angelic hierarchy filling the space between God and men.
(2) The language employed brings into strong relief the manifold variety of relations which the Son sustains to the universe. The Greek means “all things considered as a unity.”
(a) “In Him,” regards Him as the creative centre or reservoir in which all creative force resided, and was in a definite act put forth. The error of the Gnostics was to put the act of creation and the thing created as far away as possible from God, and is here met.
(b) But the possible dangers of that profound truth are averted by the preposition “through” Him. That presupposes the clear demarcation between creature and creator, and extricates the person of the firstborn from all risk of being confounded with the creation, while it makes Him the medium of the Divine energy, and so shows His relation to the Divine nature. He is the image of the invisible God, and accordingly through Him have all things been created. “The express image of His person by whom He made the worlds.”
(c) “For Him.” All things sprung from His will, and return thither again. These relations are more than once declared of the Father. What theory of Christ’s person explains the fact?
3. His existence before the creation is repeated. “He” is emphatic, “He Himself”; “is” emphasises not only preexistence, but absolute existence. “He was” would not have said so much as “He is before all things.” “Before Abraham was I am.”
4. In Him all things hold together. He is the element in and by which is that continued creation which is the preservation of the universe. He links all creatures and forces into a co-operant whole, reconciling their antagonisms, and melting all their notes into music which God may hear, however discordant it may be to us.
III. To the Church. A parallel is plainly intended between Christ’s relation to the material creation and to the spiritual. As is the pre-incarnate word to the universe, so is the incarnate Christ to the Church.
1. Christ the Head and the Church His body. Popular physiology regards the head as the seat of life. So our Lord is the source of that spiritual life which flows from Him into His members, and is sight in the eye, strength in the arm, swiftness in the foot, colour in the cheek, richly various in its manifestations, but one in its nature and all His. That thought leads to Him as the centre of unity by whom the many members become one body. The head, too, is the symbol of authority.
2. Christ is the beginning of the Church. In nature He was before all, and the source of all. So “the beginning” does not mean the first member of a series, but the power which causes the series to begin. The root is the beginning of flowers, although we may say the first flower is.
3. He is head and beginning by means of His resurrection.
(1) He is firstborn from the dead, and His communication of spiritual life to His Church requires the historical fact of His resurrection, for a dead Christ could not be the source of life.
(2) He is the beginning through His resurrection, too, in regard to raising us from the dead. He is the firstfruits, and bears promise of a mighty harvest. Because He lives we shall live also.
4. So Paul concludes that in all things He is first, and all things are that He may be first. Whether in nature or grace the pre-eminence is supreme. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
