The Supremacy of Jesus

I recently preached a sermon at my church on Colossians 1:15-20. That passage from the Apostle Paul’s pen is one of the most magnificent descriptions of Jesus in all the Bible. It was pure joy to preach.

My sermon was too long (over 50 minutes, which is at least 15 minutes longer than I typically preach). But the length didn’t seem to matter to our congregation. They gladly stared at Jesus with me for that length of time, and we all walked away better than we came in.

In the sermon, I hit on a few vital doctrines that I wanted our church family to get at least a taste of. We have a fairly theological-minded group, so I doubt there were many new things. But it’s not often you hear about the eternal generation of the son from the pulpit. I believe it is good from time to time to stretch our brains and reach deep back into Church history to hear about events like the Council of Nicaea to consider how our fathers wrestled with the doctrine of the Trinity.

Below is an expert from that sermon, focusing on Colossians 1:15-17. “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.

The Image of the Invisible God

The Colossians were confronted with destructive teaching about Christianity. Paul writes this letter to defeat that wrong teaching. So how did he do that? By lifting Jesus up for the church to see. That’s always the best way. When we see Jesus, it’s easy to see wrong theology. But when we take our eyes off Jesus, all kinds of wrong things can slip into our minds and find a home there. What these Colossians needed, and what we need, is a big vision of the glorious Jesus. We need to see how sufficient he really is. We do not need anything else. Jesus is enough. When we start thinking something else is better, something else is needed, we need to come back and stare at Jesus.

So let’s start staring at him.

We’ll take it bit by bit. Look at the first half of verse 15. “He is the image of the invisible God.”

This is not the only place in the Bible we see this language. John said something similar in the opening chapter of his gospel. “No one has ever seen God. God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). The author of Hebrews uses a similar phrase when he refers to Jesus as “the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus himself said in John 14:9, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

So what does it mean that Jesus is the image of God? It means Jesus represents God. He shows us who God is. How does he do that? I have four children. Two take after me, and two look like Sarah. Andy, for example, is basically the spitting image of me at his age. Is that what Paul means—that Jesus looks like his Father? Well, yes, and no. We can’t say that in the physical sense because God the Father is invisible. So Jesus must image him in another way. What way? In his essence. In his righteousness, goodness, wisdom, power, holiness—in all the invisible attributes.

Now, in a way, I think this helps us see the point even more clearly. If my son looks like me, you can say he is an image of me, but that’s only surface-level. Do we share the same temperament? Are we the same person underneath our skin? With Jesus, the answer is yes. Everything that God is, Jesus is. He just puts a face on God in the incarnation. Jesus shows us God because—and here’s the point—he is God. When we look at Jesus, we are looking at God.

In Jesus, God becomes very definite to us. In Jesus, we can point to a specific person who lived in real space and time. The name “god” is used all the time, but how do we know we’re all talking about the same god? The answer is who we say Jesus is. Is he God? If the god we talk about doesn’t look like Jesus, then it isn’t the true God we’re talking about. The Bible makes it clear: if you accept Jesus, you accept God; if you don’t accept Jesus, you don’t accept God. No more than any other person, God is not someone we get to define. He defines himself, and he reveals himself in the visible Jesus.

Now, Jesus is also the image of God in another way. Think back to the beginning of the Bible when God created everything. In what way did he create man and woman? In his image. Our sin kind of messed that up. We’re not very good image-bearers, are we? But what about Jesus? The Bible tells us he never sinned. But in the incarnation, as the eternal God stepped into our world and took on flesh, he became the perfect image of God in the Genesis sense as well. He became the perfect image-bearer we failed to be.

So Jesus is both the image of the invisible God and the perfect image of humanity, made in God’s image.

Therefore, we have a double blessing as we behold Jesus. We see God as he truly is, and we see ourselves as we will one day truly be. We see God because Jesus is God. We see ourselves as we will one day be because Jesus, in his humanity, became the perfect image-bearer and showed us who we will become in him by the power of his resurrection. So as we follow Jesus, we are following God, and he is making us more our true selves. Jesus does not remove our humanity from us. He gives it back, redeemed and restored. By the way, this is how we find our truest self—by following Jesus and letting him mend our broken humanity.

The Firstborn of All Creation

Paul goes on. Look at the second half of verse 15. Jesus is “the firstborn of all creation.”

This is an easy phrase to misunderstand. What is Paul really saying? Is he saying Jesus is the first created being? That’s what Jehovah’s Witnesses say today. But that’s not a new heresy. It’s an old one.

In the 4th century, there was a man named Arius who denied the deity of Jesus by asserting there was a time when the Son did not exist. In his desire to protect monotheism, he said that while God has always existed, the Son has not. There was a point at which the Father became a Father. He didn’t deny the holiness of Jesus, just the infinity and equality of Jesus with God. Now, the Bible clearly presents God as a Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But to Arius, the Trinity was not an eternal reality.

This heresy, known as Arianism, spread around the ancient world until, eventually, at the council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the Church officially distinguished between two words that Arius smushed together to mean the same thing. Those two words were “begotten” and “made.” Begotten is a biblical word. You recognize it from maybe the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” Does that mean God made Jesus? Arius thought so. But if that is true, it means Jesus isn’t really God because he is a creation of God, and the created can never be the creator. There is a difference in nature. But the Bible does not distinguish the nature of the Son from the nature of the Father nor from the nature of the Spirit. The Triune God is one in nature.

So how did the council of Nicaea resolve this? They resolved it by expounding on the word begotten and how it related to God the Father and God the Son. The key distinction comes down to a doctrine known as the eternal generation of the Son. That’s a good five-dollar theological word for you. Obviously, to be a son means to be from a father. But when talking about God, does it mean the Father created the Son, or does it mean something else? In God, this generation is an eternal act, not as an act of creation but as an act of eternal reality in himself. If Jesus was never sent into the world to save it, he would still be the Son because his sonship does not depend on creation at all. He is the eternal Son from the Father regardless of creation. Jesus has always existed as God, with God. There was never a time when the Father was not the Father, and there was never a time when the Son was not the Son, and there was never a time when the Spirit was not the Spirit. The Son is called the Son because he is eternally generated from the Father, not as a different creation of him, but from the same eternal, infinite, immutable, impassible, divine essence of God. To affirm Jesus as he really is requires we affirm his whole divinity—he is of the same essence as God the Father and God the Spirit.

They hashed all this out at the council of Nicaea. Whatever we might think of ancient people, we can’t say they were dumb, can we? This is hard stuff!

At the council of Nicaea, they wrote the Nicene Creed. It is one of the most important statements of faith in Church history. That creed says Jesus is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”

Now, in a way, that’s a sidebar to our text today, but it’s important we understand Jesus was not made. Jesus is the eternal God. There are other clues in our text today that affirm this. For example, I couldn’t help but notice a phrase in verses 15, 17, and 18—“he is.” He is the image of God. He is before all things. He is the head of the body. Jesus is. Not he was or he will be, but he is. He has existed eternally with God, as God, in the person of the Son. He is as the Father is, the great I AM.

So if Paul isn’t saying Jesus is the first created being, then what is he saying? He’s using firstborn language in the sense of priority. In the ancient world, if you were the firstborn, everything was yours by right. That’s what Paul means. Everything belongs to Jesus by right as the eternal Son, and because he is God, he is the ruler and creator of it all.

Creator of All

That’s why Paul says in verse 16—notice the prepositions—“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.” If all things were created by him and through him, he cannot be among those things created because then it wouldn’t be all things. It would be almost all things. But Jesus stands above all.

Notice that Paul includes heaven and earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. He doesn’t leave anything out, does he? As Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” Jesus is supreme over it all. Jesus rules heaven just as he rules earth. Jesus rules over things we can’t even see, just as he rules over what we can see. There are things in the depths of the ocean and in the expanse of space we haven’t yet seen, but Jesus is lord of those things too. There is no power anywhere that Jesus isn’t supreme over.

We owe all we have and all we see and all we are and all that is to Jesus, the Son of God, the King of the universe, the Lord of all. So, as Paul says in verse 17, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Without Jesus, this entire universe ceases to exist. As John Calvin once said, “If God should withdraw his hand a little, all things would immediately perish and dissolve into nothing.”

I want you to see one more thing before we move on. Notice it says all things were created not only by him and through him but also for him. Let’s personalize this a minute. You were created for Jesus. He cares about you because you belong to him. Your life has meaning, and that meaning is not defined by you; it is defined by Jesus. You are not ultimately in charge of your life, and that is very good news because you—the real you—were created for Jesus. He loves you.

Jesus is supreme. He will always be enough. If you are a Christian, there is nothing else you need but Jesus. If you are not a Christian, there is nothing else you need but Jesus. He is the goal and purpose and joy of life.