Week 2 of GREATER THAN, our study through Colossians. Pastor Kent Keller opens with Coco the gorilla, who — having no vocabulary for an earthquake — signed “darn floor, bad bite.” We are not much better off, he says, when we try to describe who Jesus is. So Paul reaches for the words of an early Christian hymn, and it rises in four movements. The Manifestation of His Glory: Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” — the Greek word is icon, an exact representation. People wondered for centuries what God is like; God’s answer was, look at Jesus. “Firstborn” means first in honor, not first in time — He is uncreated, the agent of creation, one person with two natures, as Chalcedon put it in 451, “without mixture, confusion, separation, or division.” The Magnitude of His Reign: every throne, dominion, ruler and authority was created through Him and for Him. Angels are real, but secondary — don’t fixate on second things. As Abraham Kuyper said, “there is not one molecule in the universe over which Jesus does not cry, ‘Mine.’” The Majesty of His Lordship: “in him all things hold together” — the unity in a diverse universe springs from the mind of the Son of God. And then the hymn lands somewhere stunning — the Magnificence of His Sacrifice: those once alienated and hostile have been reconciled by His death. The One who breathed the world into existence one day also breathed His last on a Roman cross, so that we might be saved. Come to Him broken, crushed, guilty, ashamed — any way at all, except dishonestly. His grace is greater than your sin.
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He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
