There is no person or thing greater! Join Dr. Marty Baker as he points to the supremacy of Jesus Christ as illustrated by the Apostle Paul in the book of Colossians.
One day, I received a knock at my door. When I opened it, I saw an older man with a younger man. I assumed from the get-go they were probably Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they were. After a few minutes of pleasantries, the young man asked me a question.
“Sir, don’t you feel like the world is morally and geo-politically spinning out of control?”
I replied, “Yes, I completely agree that it appears evil is advancing almost unchecked.”
Then he posited another question, “Wouldn’t you like to know more about the Kingdom of Jehovah that is coming? Wouldn’t you like to be part of that kingdom?”
At that juncture, I shifted tactics. “Sure, I know that the Davidic Messianic kingdom of God is coming, as prophesied in the Old Testament. You can’t miss that as you read. But what I’d like to talk about this morning is the identity of the Messianic king. Clearly, from the opening pages of Matthew, we know He will be from the Davidic line, and from prophetic passages like Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:1-2, God informs us that the Messiah will be God in the flesh. The writers of the gospels clearly relate all of this to Jesus, and John goes so far as to establish that Jesus is Jehovah God in the first verse of his book (John 1:1). So, that is what I’d like to talk about. I want to talk about the fact that Jesus is Jehovah, God in the flesh.”
Instantly, the older JW stepped in and engaged me, leaving the young man to listen and learn. From the beginning, it was quite clear they believed Jesus to be merely “a god,” not fully divine. My view, of course, which originated in sound exegesis of the biblical text, showed that Jesus was not “a god,” but “the God.
We talked for some time, but I left them both with much to think about concerning the person and work of Jesus, because getting this wrong is to miss out on a relationship with Him now and on eternity with Him later.
The distorted theology I encountered that day was nothing new. Paul encountered it in the church in Colossae as he engaged Gnostics who denied the full deity of Jesus long before the Jehovah’s Witnesses did. This propensity to diminish and dilute the person and ultimately the work of Jesus is found in all false religions the Devil has sown like weeds in the world (Matt. 13). So, be on your guard. Also, be prepared to defend Christ’s identity and activity so that the spiritually lost can become spiritually found. How do you accomplish these twin goals? Simple. Study Colossians, especially chapters 1:9-2:23, where Paul gives us the most robust description of Christ’s person and work in any of his inspired writings.
The motif of this pedagogical section is easy to see:
Jesus Is The Supreme Lord and Savior. There Is No Other. (Col. 1:18-23)
To the ancient Gnostics, who denied the full deity of Jesus, leaving Him to be nothing more than “a god,” not “the God,” Paul educated them concerning the truth about the person and work of Jesus. The fact that he took these “well-meaning,” “nicely dressed,” educated people to task doesn’t mean he hated them. On the contrary, he spoke the truth to them because he loved and wanted them to know Jesus as their Savior. He didn’t worry about offending them, because he knew that the truth is offensive to falsity. Further, he knew that offending them with the truth might move them toward the cross of Christ and salvation. But neither did he speak in a caustic, condescending, or negative tone. Instead, he wrote in a positive format to reveal the true person and work of Jesus, not just to the church in Colossae, but also to those who dared to philosophically teach heresy about Christ’s identity and redemptive work.
May we go and do likewise when we encounter those who reject the biblical revelation of Jesus. Along these lines, I like what the late John MacArthur said in his book The Jesus You Can’t Ignore. Writing about how Jesus dealt with the Jewish religious classes that rejected His deity, the wise pastor concludes, “The practical lesson regarding how we should conduct ourselves in the presence of false religions is consistent throughout: corruptions of vital biblical truth are not to be trifled with, and the purveyors of different gospels are not to be treated benignly by God’s people. On the contrary, we must take the same approach to false doctrine that Jesus did, by refuting the error, opposing those who spread the error, and contending earnestly for the faith.”[1] I couldn’t agree more, and Paul’s teaching in the passage before us mirrors the essence of this counsel.
In verses 15 through 17 of chapter one, Paul waxed eloquent about the person of Jesus, explaining why He is supreme. His point, of course, completely deconstructed everything the Gnostics taught unwary believers in this little church in Asia Minor. Let’s recap:
- Jesus Is Supreme Because He Is God (Col. 1:15a). He is not “a god,” but “Jehovah God.”
- Jesus Is Supreme Because He Is The Creator (Col. 1:15b-17). He wasn’t created because He, as the Creator, is eternal and uncreated. Hence, He possesses no potentiality for existence, but is, on the contrary, purely actualized inside and outside of time.
To these profound concepts, Paul adds three more:
Jesus Is Supreme Because He Is The Head Of The Church (Col. 1:18)
Here is how Paul develops this powerful point:
18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. (Col. 1)
Jesus is not just the head of creation, but also the head of the Church, His mystical body composed of believers from all walks of life and from all the nations. When do believers become members of His Church, His chosen, called-out ones? They become members at the moment of salvation, when they see their sin and turn to Christ as their Savior. When a sinner becomes a saint by the redemptive work of Jesus, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:13, they are mystically and spiritually baptized into the body of Christ, the Church:
12 For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:13).
Christ’s Church is much like a body. It has various parts that do different things. Some are more important than others, but they are important because they form one unified body. Hence, an Apostle is one body part with great responsibilities. In contrast, a lesser part, like a person who serves quietly behind the scenes, is lesser in this fashion, but still extremely important, for they are both needed to function correctly. Hence, Christ’s Church has independence wrapped up in interdependence, focused on unity at all times (Eph. 4:3). And sinners became saints at the moment of salvation. The Spirit responded by baptizing them, or submerging them fully (which is what the Greek word means), into the body of Christ, the Holy Church.
Just as a body is controlled by its head, so, too, is the Church body subservient to the thinking, dictates, and teaching of the head, who is Jesus. Additionally, just as a body accomplishes much when it is subservient and submissive to the head and mind, so, too, is the Church body powerful and effective when it follows its head, which is Jesus.
How did Jesus become the head of this entity not foreseen in the Old Testament? Here is Paul’s answer:
18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. (Col. 1)
Jesus is the “firstborn from the dead.” Once again, Paul employs the Greek word prototokos (πρωτότοκος). The word can denote a point in time, and as such, it speaks here of the timing of Christ’s resurrection from the dead around 33 A.D. The word can also lexically denote “supreme rank or position.” Hence, Paul underscores that, contrary to Gnostic teaching, Jesus’s resurrection placed Him instantly at the head of the Church He established. He not only founded the cosmos as we know it, but he also founded the new order of resurrection by being the first man to die and rise again, never to die after this, which did not occur for anyone resurrected before this (1 Kings 17; 2 Kings 4; 2 Kings 13:20; Mark 5:41; Luke 7:14; John 11:38-44). Because of this, He is absolutely supreme and beyond anything taught by the Gnostics. He was, and is, the God-man who conquered death with life and then turned and created a Church, of which He is the rightful head and leader.
No wonder He should be worshipped.
All of this leads to a logical question: Are you a member of the Church of Jesus Christ? There is only one. There is no other group that God approves of. His Church is the entity to which true believers belong. Hence, to have a faulty view of Jesus precludes you from being a member, as Paul argues elsewhere:
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; . . . (Rom. 10).
Confessing Jesus as the Lord, not “a Lord among many lords,” and believing in His resurrection to defeat sin and death is what transfers you from the Devil’s family to God’s. Have you done this yet? If so, fantastic. If not, what are you waiting for?
Gnostic tendencies surface also in Islamic teaching that believes Jesus lived as a man, but that he wasn’t God, and that He certainly didn’t rise from the dead. Sura, An-Nisa 4:157,
“They said (in boast), ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Apostle of God;’ but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who different therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety, they killed him not.”
If Jesus didn’t die by crucifixion, then he most surely didn’t rise by means of resurrection. Allah supposedly just took him directly into heaven. Just like the Gnostics, this is a blatant dilution of the biblical, historical account. If Christ is not the firstborn from the dead, then He is not the head of the Church, nor is He capable of forgiving sin because He didn’t pay the price for sin with His divine life. Paul thought and taught otherwise, and so should we because such thinking is based on truth, not a twisting of truth.
To this concept, Paul adds another:
Jesus Is Supreme Because He Is Absolute Deity (Col. 1:19)
He has covered this ground back in verses 15 through 17, but he stops here and re-emphasizes it because it is so important. Paul knew us well, didn’t he? We don’t always grasp a concept the first time around. Sometimes it takes a few rounds to get the truth into our minds, especially if we’ve been listening to someone teaching us a lesser view of Jesus.
19 For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him . . . (Col. 1)
19 ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ εὐδόκησεν πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικῆσαι (Col. 1)
The keyword here is pleroma (πλήρωμα). Here is how BAG classifies its lexical meanings:
λήρωμα, ατος, τό (πληρόω; Eur., Hdt. et al.; ins, pap, LXX, Philo; Mel., P. 40, 279).
① that which fills
ⓐ that which fills (up) (Eur., Ion 1051 κρατήρων πληρώματα; Hippocr., Aër. 7 τὸ πλ. τῆς γαστρός. Esp. oft. of a crew or cargo of ships since Thu. 7, 12, 3; 14, 1) ἡ γῆ καὶ τὸ πλ. αὐτῆς the earth and everything that is in it 1 Cor 10:26; 1 Cl 54:3 (both Ps 23:1, as also Did., Gen. 74, 8). ἦραν κλάσματα δώδεκα κοφίνων πληρώματα they gathered (enough) pieces to fill twelve baskets, twelve basketfuls of pieces Mk 6:43; cp. 8:20 (s. Eccl 4:6; EBishop, ET 60, ’48, 192f).
ⓑ that which makes someth. full/complete, supplement, complement (Appian, Mithr. 47 §185 τὰ τῶν γυναικῶν πάντα ἐς τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν δισχιλίων ταλάντων συνέφερον) lit. of the patch on a garment Mt 9:16; Mk 2:21 (FSynge, ET 56, ’44/45, 26f).—Fig., perh., of the church which, as the body, is τὸ πλ., the complement of Christ, who is the head Eph 1:23 (so Chrysostom. The word could be understood in a similar sense Pla., Rep. 2, 371e πλ. πόλεώς εἰσι καὶ μισθωτοί).[2]
The other day, I placed a cup in my new espresso machine to make a cappuccino. I loaded the appropriate cartridge, hit the go button, and sat back and waited for it to run through its cycles. Once the coffee started coming out, it didn’t take me long to realize the cup was too small. As I grabbed another small container to hold the excess, the coffee overflowed my original cup and spilled over the edges. This is an illustration of pleroma, or fullness. And this is a statement concerning the deity of Christ. Contrary to Gnostic thinking, Jesus wasn’t a weak, diluted emanation of God, but the fullness of deity. Paul brings this point home in chapter 2, where he employs the same word.
9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form . . . (Col. 2)
9 ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς . . . (Col. 2)
The word “dwells” here (κατοικεῖ) is a present tense indicative and can be grammatically classified as a gnomic use of the verb, meaning it stresses an ongoing truth. Ostensibly, this means that there was, and will never be, a time when Jesus did not and doesn’t possess full deity. He is, therefore, not “a god,” or just a man who happened to be a good teacher of religious concepts, or a prophet, but not the divine prophet foretold in the OT (Deut. 18; Isa. 7:14; Mic. 5:1-2).
Again, misguided, erroneous religions still fail, like the Gnostics, in relation to what they say about Jesus. For instance, consider how the Jehovah’s Witnesses view Christ’s death:
“Who ran the universe during the three days that Jesus was dead and in the grave . . . If Jesus was God then during Jesus’ death God was dead and in the grave . . . If Jesus were the immortal God, He could not have died.”[3]
Christ, as the second member of the Holy Trinity, had no problem running the cosmos when His physical body died, because He remained quite alive, along with the other two members of the Trinity. Jehovah’s Witnesses reject this outright, and this logically leads them to conclude that Jesus wasn’t fully God, erroneously, but only partially God—a truly Gnostic error.
- Warner Wallace, a Christian apologist, formulates this definition of Jesus after reading various Mormon documents:
Jesus was first “procreated” as a spirit child of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, then later conceived in an act of physical sexual intercourse between God the Father and Mary. He is the spirit brother of Satan, and is rather common in terms of His nature (in that he is one of many gods who share the same nature). Jesus earned His salvation through good works, eventually being exalted into godhood (like other obedient Mormons have been and will be). He is not a member of the triune Godhead but is instead a separate god from God the Father.[4]
Mormon teaching, like Gnostic teaching, is heretical because it states that Christ had a point of creation; hence, he was not fully God. Their system also diminishes Jesus because he had to go from being a man to being elevated to divine status by His various religious actions/works. Jesus is not the biblical Jesus if you change His nature. That was Paul’s argument, and it remains true.
What about Muslim teaching? They find it abhorrent to believe that Jesus was/is the Son of God. Sura, At-Tawbah 9:30 states that those who believe this are deluded.
The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah,” while the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” Such are their baseless assertions, only parroting the words of earlier disbelievers. May Allah condemn them! How can they be deluded from the truth?
I guess delusion engulfed Paul. They reject Christ’s divine sonship because they think it implies that Allah had to have sexual relations with a female partner (Mary). Thus, they conclude that Jesus was not God in human flesh, but was just a man. Like Gnostics, therefore, they embrace Christ’s humanity, but they reject his absolute deity.[5] According to Paul, to do this is espouse false teaching, and to ensure you are not headed to an eternal relationship with the Savior, Jesus.
Gnostic tendencies are far from dead, which is why we need to know what the Scriptures teach about Jesus’s person and work. And what do the Scriptures teach? They assert that Jesus possesses full deity status, period. Without this, He could not form the Church, save anyone from sin, nor provide a way for sinners to become saints and enjoy a home He created for them in heaven. Make sure you possess a firm understanding of this as you head out into a culture tainted by Gnostic thinking.
The last concept Paul drives home is a logical outcropping of the others.
Jesus Is Supreme Because He Alone Is The Reconciler (Col. 1:20-22)
Because of what Paul said about Jesus in the preceding verses, he, Jesus, can do what Paul describes in the next three verses:
20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. 21 And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, 22 yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach— (Col. 1)
This is where a little preposition (dia) is the difference between eternal life and death. The preposition here expresses the only means by which a sinner, who is irreconciled with God because of his inherited and imputed sin (Eph. 2:3; 2 Cor. 4:4; Titus 1:15; Rom. 5:12-21; 2 Cor. 5:19; 1 Pet. 2:24), can secure reconciliation with a holy God and find eternal peace with Him, as well.
Only through a faith relationship with Jesus, the Creator-God, can a sinner move from being hostile toward God to being at peace with Him. Did you get that? Yes, it is narrow. Yes, it is exclusionary, but it is the truth, so don’t miss it. You can’t come to God through Buddha, Hinduism, the Church of Scientology, the Unification Church, and so forth because they all diminish, dilute, and distort the person of Jesus, along with His redemptive work.
Jesus is the only one qualified to bring reconciliation between the sinner and the Godhead. What does reconciliation mean? Paul probably coined the word because it doesn’t appear in Koine Greek outside the NT. It is the word apokatallasso (ἀποκαταλλάσσω). Katallasso means “reconciliation,” but Paul added another preposition (apo) to the existing preposition (kata). Why did he do this? He did it to make the verb highly intensive and emphatic. In light of this, we could translate it: to super-uber-reconcile. BAG highlights the actual meaning of the word:
καταλλάσσω (s. prec. entry and διαλλάσσω) 1 aor. κατήλλαξα; aor. mid. 3 aor. pl. κατηλλάξαντο (TestAbr A 8 p. 85, 30 [Stone p. 18]). Pass.: fut. 3 sg. καταλλαγήσεται 2 Macc 7:33; 2 aor. κατηλλάγην; ptc. καταλλαγείς; gener. ‘exchange’ one thing for another (TestJob 25:3 τρίχα … ἀντὶ ἄρτων); in our lit. only the exchange of hostility for a friendly relationship, reconcile (so Hdt. et al.; 2 Macc). Act. τινά (Hdt. 5, 29; 6, 108; Aristot., Oec. 2, 15) someone τινί to someone.[6]
Only through the sacrificial death of Jesus, followed by His glorious resurrection, are the irreconcilable differences between sinners and God met, resulting in a healed, holy, and peaceful relationship. This is why it is so important to embrace Jesus’ full deity. No watered-down version of Jesus, or any other so-called God, can bring reconciliation between sinner and God. Only the God-man, Jesus, can do this with repentant sinners. Question: Are you still at odds with Jesus? Are you still hostile toward Him, truth, and morals? It’s time to stop fighting with Him and to embrace Him in faith. It’s time to drop your old and false belief system, be what it may, and permit Christ to use His divine power to forgive you and make you His child.
What is Christ’s goal once He reconciles you? He wants to make you holy and blameless. Positionally, this is true because He gives you His holiness (1 Cor. 1:30). Practically, this is another matter. As you yield more and more of your life to Him each day, as you confess and move away from sins which formerly enslaved you, you mature spiritually (Rom. 12:1-2). But, no matter how much or little you mature, you will forever enjoy the fact that your faith in Christ’s divinity and divine redemptive action brought peace between the two of you. What greater thing could happen in your life?
All of this is made possible by Jesus, the divine Lord and Savior. There are no substitutes.
Before Paul left this lofty Christological section, he moved from discussing the person of Jesus to the performance of the saints (Col. 1:23).
23 if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.
Does this mean you only secure a reconciled relationship if you continue to walk like a Christian? No. That is not what Paul is saying, and it would be an unbiblical point because it would make the security of salvation dependent on our power rather than on the Lord.
So, what is Paul getting at? I think Paul is looking forward here to when saints will be tried for the quality of their service to Christ at the Judgment Seat (1 Cor. 3:10ff). Christ’s goal is to present us holy and blameless, which we will be positionally. But pragmatically, we know some of our works will be burned up and found worthless. Paul says this much in 1 Corinthians 3. Pragmatically, we know that not all who run the Christian race will receive the same rewards from Christ. Rewards are based on performance, and some, as Paul articulates in 1 Corinthians 3, won’t have much to show for their walks as disciples because of evil motives or compromise in their lives. Hence, the warning in verse 23. If any saint permitted the teaching of the Gnostics to tarnish their once vibrant faith, then that would probably cost them at Christ’s Judgment Seat (Bema). That is strong motivation to run away from false teaching, or to at least drive it away so it doesn’t dilute a person’s faith-walk.
What applied then applies now. As saints, we must all be careful how we walk and what we believe, for belief impacts our walks. So, do you have any false teaching you need to move away from before it tarnishes and twists your once great relationship with Jesus? If so, then do you know what you need to do to get back on track with Jesus, who is the supreme Lord and Savior? And, if you don’t know Him as Lord and Savior, then He is waiting for you to bow before Him in faith right now. Will you do it?
[1] John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), xvi.
[2] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 829.
[3] Let God Be True (Rev. 1952), 109.
[4] J. Warner Wallace, “Mormons Are Not Christians Because The Mormon Jesus Is Not The Christian Christ,” Cold-Case Christianity, January 19, 2024, accessed February 26, 2026, https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/mormons-are-not-christians-because-the-mormon-jesus-is-not-the-christian-christ/
[5] Read more about this position at the muslimunitycenter.org. The article in question is: How Is Jesus Perceived In Islam. The entire article works every angle to deny Jesus deity status.
[6] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 521.
