“He is the image of the invisible God…the firstborn over all creation…” Colossians 1:15-17 paints an incredible picture of what Jesus is and His power over creation, but what does it exactly all mean? Join Dr. Marty Baker as he takes us through the passage, points to the incomparable Christ, and invites us into The Connection That Counts.
The first time I heard the Islamic call to prayer was during my first tour of Israel. When I started teaching my group, that is when the minaret tower loud speakers behind me came to life with the call to prayer:
God is Great! God is Great! God is Great! God is Great!
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Hurry to the prayer. Hurry to the prayer.
Hurry to salvation. Hurry to salvation.
God is Great! God is Great!
There is no god except the One God.
According to this prayer, there is no God and Savior but Allah.
I wonder how the Apostle Paul would react to the content of this prayer? Based on his reaction to a watered-down Gnostic view of Jesus that had infiltrated the church in Colossae, I know Paul would stress the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ as the only true God and Savior of sinners. Here is how he responded to those Gnostic false teachers who taught that Jesus was nothing more than a diluted emanation of God; therefore, he was not the true God.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Col. 1)
While Paul has courageously showcased the supremacy of Christ in other writings delivered to other saints in other geographical zones (Eph. 1:20-23; Phil. 2:5-11), this statement to the saints in Colossae is the most robust, clear, and powerful. In it, Paul leaves the reader in no doubt that there is no God but Jesus and no other Savior but Jesus. It’s a message that defanged and destroyed the teaching of the Gnostics, and it still accomplishes the same purposes today because people are still being misled by false religious and philosophical systems masquerading as truth.
To point out the error of those who diminish the deity and the redemptive work of Jesus does not mean you hate the person in question. It means you are concerned about spiritual truth and their eternal soul. To be wrong about Jesus, therefore, is to be wrong about how a sinner becomes a saint bound for heaven. Since so much hangs in the balance, I can understand why Paul corrected the Colossian Christians’ thinking about Jesus in the opening words of his letter to them.
In this large instructional and polemical section (Col. 1:15-2:23), of which we will only cover a small portion in this study, Paul drives home this timeless truth:
Jesus Is The Supreme Lord and Savior. There Is No Other (Col. 1:15-17)
Jesus Is Supreme Because He Is God (Col. 1:15a)
The Gnostics taught that matter was intrinsically evil; therefore, it stood to reason that God, who was and is holy, could not be the Creator, so He permitted angelic beings to be created with deity powers. After a vast amount of time (eons), the final angel, Jesus, was created. He was a diluted deity form, quite suited to creating matter and mankind.
Paul countered this faulty, truly blasphemous teaching with a positive, combative statement in verse 15 of chapter one:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. (Col. 1)
15 ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου, πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, (Col. 1)
I supply the Greek text because it is so important for guiding our thinking about what Paul just said.
First, Paul says that He, i.e., Jesus, is “the image of the invisible God.” The present tense verb estin (ἐστιν), “to be,” can be classified as the gnomic use of the present tense. This means Paul used grammar to state a general, timeless fact.[1] Jesus always is and ever will be “the image of the invisible God.” To Paul, Jesus was not an inferior form of God, but the perpetual image of God to mankind.
Second, Paul underscores that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God.” The word “image,” here is eikon (εἰκὼν). BAG’s Greek lexicon gives us three lexical nuances of this pivotal, instructive word:
① an object shaped to resemble the form or appearance of something likeness, portrait (cp. Did., Gen. 82, 6) of the emperor’s head on a coin (so Artem. 4, 31)
② that which has the same form as something else (not a crafted object as in 1 above), living image, ③ that which represents something else in terms of basic form and features, form, appearance.[2]
Gaebelein’s Expositors Bible Commentary offers this excellent and precise definition of this word from which we get our term, icon.
Eikōn, the Greek word for “image,” expresses two ideas. One is likeness, a thought brought out in some of the versions (e.g., Moff., Am. Trans., Wms., and Knox). Christ is the image of God in the sense that he is the exact likeness of God, like the image on a coin or the reflection in a mirror (cf. Heb 1:3). The other idea in the word is manifestation. That is, Christ is the image of God in the sense that the nature and being of God are perfectly revealed in him (cf. John 1:18). Therefore Paul can boldly say that we have “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”. . . (2 Cor 4:6).[3]
To see Jesus is to see God because He is the exact representation of the unseen God. This is exactly what John writes in verse 18 of the first chapter of his gospel:
18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. (John 1)
In Greek, John literally says that Jesus is the exegesis of God (ἐξηγήσατο), meaning that, as God, He alone is fully qualified to explain or draw out the meaning of who God is. His entire ministry validated this point, didn’t it?
Right out of the proverbial gate, Paul left the Gnostic, limited, erroneous view of Jesus in the dustbin. He gave the high-minded intellectual Gnostics not a diluted, lesser view of the person of Jesus, but the loftiest description one he could express in Greek. He also showed them no philosophical or religious grace, either. He gave them no wiggle room to continue to propagate their false Christology among the saints in this little church in Asia Minor. He didn’t worry about offending them. No, Paul, like a masterful shepherd, guarded the sheep by taking the wolves head-on because they were dead wrong about Jesus.
Paul argued the same point in his letter to the messed-up, carnal Christians in Corinth:
4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor. 4).
Satan’s main goal, as with folks like the Gnostics, or anyone in a religious system that denies the deity of Jesus, is to blind unbelievers to the fact that Jesus is the manifestation of glory of the eternal, invisible God, because He is God.
Later, the author of Hebrews drives this point home in a definitive fashion:
3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high… (Heb. 1).
He is the radiance of God’s glory. Two outstanding things are disclosed about the person of Jesus Christ in this short clause.
First, He is the “radiance of God’s glory.” What does that mean? You can tell the translation is difficult here by comparing it with others. Attempting to communicate the Greek construction here in English has led to the following translations:
- “Who being the brightness of his glory…” (KJV).
- “He is the sole expression of the glory of God…” (Amplified).
- “He reflects the glory of God…” (RSV)
The Greek word here for “radiance” is apaugasma (ἀπαύγασμα), and it denotes, not just a reflection of light, but the source of that light. BAG’s lexical definition supports this:
ἀπαύγασμα, ατος, τό (s. αὐγάζω; Heliod. 5, 27, 4 φωτὸς ἀ.; TestAbr A 16 p. 97, 17 [Stone p. 42]; Philo; Wsd 7:26; Tat. 15, 3 τῆς … ὕλης καὶ πονηρίας [of hostile spirits]; Plut. has ἀπαυγασμός Mor. 83d and 934d; PGM 4, 1130 καταύγασμα) act. radiance, effulgence, in the sense of brightness from a source; pass., reflection, i.e. brightness shining back. [4]
What the Spirit is saying here is that Jesus is not a reflection of God’s glory; He possesses that glory Himself!! Why? Because He is God!!! And we see Jesus revealing that great divine glory in the NT to some of the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-13), and to a wrathful young man named Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3).
Second, He is the essence of God’s divinity. The author of Hebrews states in no uncertain terms that Jesus is “the exact representation of his being.” No doubt, the “his” here grammatically refers back to “God,” and leaves us with only one conclusion about who Jesus is. He was and is God in the flesh.
It is worth noting that the word “exact representation” is a single word in Greek. It is the word charakter, (χαρακτὴρ) from which we get our word character. In ancient usage, this word referred to a stamp used to make coins. Applied to Jesus, it means that He possesses the exact correspondence to the essence of all that God is. He, therefore, wasn’t just a man, nor was he a god, nor did he become God. He was and is and always will be God!
Again, the Scripture is clear. There is absolutely no room for Gnostic vague emanations concerning the person of Jesus. He was and is not a lesser angelic being, but God in every sense. He is not just a man, or just a prophet among prophets. No. He was, and is, the God-man, and THE prophet because He was, and is, God.
And because of who Jesus is, the invisible Father God is seen and known (John 14:7ff).
What is God’s character like? Look at Jesus for the answer. How does God respond to religious legalists who wrap themselves in law as the means to gaining favor with God? Look to Jesus for the answer. How does God feel about a woman with a sordid relational past? Look to Jesus. How does God respond to His people in precarious situations, like their boat is about to sink on a turbulent sea? Look to Jesus. How does God feel about sinners? Look to Jesus. What is God’s person like? Look to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration for the answer. Jesus is the perfect image of the unseen Father-God because He, too, is fully God. This truth changes everything, doesn’t it? Indeed.
Jesus Is Supreme Because He Is The Creator (Col. 1:15b-17)
According to Paul, Jesus was not a created angelic being, but the final, diluted emanation from God. On the contrary, Jesus was the uncreated Creator. Here is how Paul develops this concept:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. (Col. 1)
First, Paul says that Jesus is “the firstborn of all creation.” The Greek word for firstborn is prototokos (πρωτότοκος). Here is how various biblical commentators define this word:
“Firstborn” (prōtotokos) is used of Christ, in addition to the passage under study, in Colossians 1:18; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 1:6; and Revelation 1:5. (It is used also in Luke 2:7, but in a different setting.) It may denote either priority in time (cf. Moff., Am. Trans.) or supremacy in rank (NIV). In the present passage, perhaps we should see both meanings. Christ is before all creation in time; he is also over it in rank and dignity. The major stress, however, seems to be on the idea of supremacy.[5]
We must be very careful to attach the right meaning to this phrase. As it stands in English, it might well mean that the Son was the first person to be created; but in Hebrew and Greek thought the word first-born (prōtotokos) has only very indirectly a time significance. There are two things to note. First-born is very commonly a title of honour. Israel, for instance, as a nation is the first-born son of God (Exodus 4:22). The meaning is that the nation of Israel is the most favoured child of God. Second, we must note that first-born is a title of the Messiah. In Psalm 89:27, as the Jews themselves interpreted it, the promise regarding the Messiah is: ‘I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.’ Clearly, first-born is not used in a time sense at all, but in the sense of special honour. So, when Paul says of the Son that he is the first-born of all creation, he means that the highest honour which creation holds belongs to him. [6]
Other texts, like John 1:1 and John 8:58, clearly assert that Jesus is the eternal God. Hence, Paul is not saying that Jesus was created first and then, in turn, created everything else. What he is saying is that Jesus, as the uncreated Creator, has the highest honor because He possesses the highest rank. Paul is not talking about time but position. The Gnostics, like all false religions, sought to downplay and dilute Christ’s position, and here Paul reveals that Jesus possesses the highest position in the unseen and seen worlds because He is the Creator.
In our day, Gnosticism is alive and well in the form of Jehovah’s Witness theology. Not only do they make Jesus “a-god,” not “the God,” but they purposefully and deceitfully alter the Greek translation of Colossians 1 at key junctures to make it appear that Jesus was a created being. Here is the New World (Jehovah’s Witness) translation of this section of Colossians:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All other things have been created through him and for him. 17 Also, he is before all other things and by means of him all other things were made to exist,
What is most interesting is that the word “other” does not appear in the original Greek text. They have added it to smooth out the reading, supposedly. That is a lie. They added this word to radically change what the passage says about Christ’s person. Instead of being the eternal God prophesied to come to earth (Isa. 7:14; Mic. 5:1-3) and who did come (John 8:58), they portray Jesus as the first created being among all other created beings. As they state in their heretical writings:
“Being God’s first creation, he was with the Father in heaven from the beginning of all creation. Jehovah God used him in the creating of all other things have been created.”[7]
“Our Redeemer existed as a spirit being before he was made flesh and dwelt amongst me. At that time, as well as subsequently, he was properly known as ‘a god.’ – a mighty one.”[8]
“At the time of his beginning of life he was created by the everlasting God, Jehovah, without the aid or instrumentality of any mother. In other words, he was the first and direct creation of Jehovah God . . . He was the start of God’s creative work. He was not an incarnation in flesh but was flesh, a human Son of God, a perfect man, no longer a spirit, although having a spiritual or heavenly past and background.”[9]
This, my friend, is nothing short of ancient Gnosticism dressed up in new garb some 2,000 years later. What Paul taught the Colossians about Jesus’ person is just as true today as it was in his day. Jesus was, and is, nothing short of full deity. Anything less than this is a lie from the Devil himself and should be treated accordingly. Jesus wasn’t a created being; He was the uncreated Creator, and as such, He demands our respect, adoration, and worship.
Just in case the ancient Colossian Christians needed further clarification about Jesus as the uncreated Creator, Paul adds these statements:
16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Everything that exists in the seen and unseen worlds, whether they are men or angels, dolphins in the ocean, neutrinos, magnificent mountains, complex amino acids, or DNA chains, all find their origin in Him, Jesus. Put differently, everything that is created is now actualized, but before this, it was but a potential. As a potential, it was utterly incapable of creating itself. And because none of it existed anyway, it couldn’t have caused itself to be actualized because this is logically impossible. How did that which was only a potential for actualization originate? Its origins could only come from One who is outside of time and space and is purely actualized with no potential. That is God. That is Jesus, the Creator. That is awesome. No wonder He claimed the title as the great I Am (John 8:58). This is what Paul states here in Colossians 1:16. All of creation was only created “through Him.” Because He was the instrument of this lavish, highly complex, and spectacular world, including the unseen spiritual world, Paul is correct to say it was created for Him. And what is the purpose of creation? To worship and adore its Creator, Jesus Christ (Ecc. 12:13; Psa. 19).
Jesus, therefore, is not some weak angelic being, as the Gnostics proposed, but the Creator God himself. And as God, he was “before all things” because He simply is. This all makes perfect sense. In philosophical terms, the concept of cause and effect, if viewed as a chain, cannot go back into timeless eternity. Why? Because there is no such thing as self-causation. Concerning this, my late apologetics professor, Dr. Norman Geisler, argues:
This first cause of all else that exists must itself be un-caused. It cannot be self-caused (which is impossible) and it cannot be caused by another, because it is necessary and a necessary Being cannot be caused by another. Whatever is caused has the potentiality for existence, but a necessary Being is pure actuality without any potentiality. Therefore, a necessary Being cannot be caused. It is literally the not-caused cause of all that is caused. It is the not-affected effecter all of effects. It is the necessary ground of all actualized possibility.[10]
This is why Paul states that Jesus is before all things. He is before all things that are created because He is the eternal, purely actualized, and necessary being, or God. Wow.
And as God, it is not shocking to read what Paul says about Him at the end of verse 17:
17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Col. 1)
As God, He uses His divine power to hold together all the unseen and seen worlds. He is the glue of the cosmos. No diminished angelic being could do this. But God could, and Jesus is the God who keeps everything functioning well instead of slipping into utter chaos.
Looking at this reality causes physicist Eugene Wigner to confess that the mathematical underpinning of nature “is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”[11] The glue that holds the cosmos together so it is quite predictable, thus permitting scientists to formulate hypotheses to study it, moves physicist Paul C. Davies to conclude, “…to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour. Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are? …The favorite reply is, ‘There is no reason they are what they are – they just are.”[12]
That is not an educated answer, is it? No. We, as believers, know better. Jesus is holding everything together for His own grand purposes.
- Jesus keeps the solar axis of the Earth tilted at 23.5 degrees from vertical so we have four predictable seasons.
- Jesus causes the two high tides and two low tides every 24 hours through His positioning of the moon to the earth’s rotation.
- Jesus keeps the planets in our solar system from spinning out of control and colliding with each other.
- Jesus placed the massive planet we call Jupiter where it is in our solar system, so it gets hit with space debris, and not us?
- Jesus placed us on one of the darkest arms of the Milky Way galaxy so we can have an optimal view of the stars above our heads? Jesus.
- Jesus makes all the laws of physics possible.
No wonder He commands our worship. No wonder He doesn’t take the dilution of His person lightly. No wonder He and He alone is equipped to turn repentant sinners into eternal saints. No wonder He is the greatest friend and counselor in life you could ever have. No wonder this is wonderful news: The Lord of glory, Jesus, is the Creator who came to earth to die for our sins, not His, and to rise victorious from the grave on the third day so we’d have the opportunity to secure forgiveness and become His family members. The question in light of His absolute supremacy is clear: Do you know Him? If not, what are you waiting for? He’s waiting for you to respond to Him in faith.
[1] Daniel Wallace, Selected Notes on the Syntax of the New Testament Greek, Dallas Theological Seminary Class Notes, 1981, 164.
[2] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 281–282.
[3] Curtis Vaughan, “Colossians,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians through Philemon, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 181–182.
[4] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 99.
[5] Curtis Vaughan, “Colossians,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians through Philemon, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 182.
[6] William Barclay, The Letters to Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 3rd ed. fully rev. and updated, The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 138.
[7] From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained (W.T.B. & T. Society of New York, 1958), 126, 127.
[8] Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. V, p. 84.
[9] The Kingdom Is At Hand, pp. 46, 47, 49.
[10] Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 246-247.
[11] Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist (New York: BasicBooks, 1998), 43.
[12]Paul C. Davies, at Arizona State University; quoted in edge.org/3rd_culture/davies07/davies07
_index.html.
