Colossians 1:13-20

Christ Preeminent

The believers at Colossae were endangered by the false doctrine of the gnostics which partitioned spiritual and good away from physical and evil. This erroneous dichotomy affected the gnostic approach to morality, but more importantly it affected what they taught concerning God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Obviously both of those persons of the Trinity had dealings with the material world. You can see how that would lead the gnostics to debase the God we know from the Bible, and the Son of God in particular. Paul is writing to exalt Christ in the minds of his readers. He extols our Savior for all of His splendor and the riches of His grace to us.

He paints a clear Christian worldview for us in these verses, centering our values exactly where they should be: our marvelous Savior, the King of glory, the Lord Jesus Christ. As the letter unfolds, he also debunks the mechanised and distorted view of good and evil propagated by the gnostics. He does this by reminding the Colossians of their guilt and of the forgiveness and redemption that Christ had brought to their lives. As they knew, they had passed out of death into life, out of spiritual darkness into the light of life.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is the the God-man, God in human form. In calling Him the firstborn of creation, Paul is asserting that Christ is the head and rightful owner of all of creation. It is not a statement that He was the first created being. You can see that by the very next assertion: Christ did all the creating of everything that was created. (v. 16)

In particular this creation includes all invisible angelic majesties. Their ranks, orders, and kinds are mostly unknown to us, but all were created according to the design of the Lord Jesus to serve Him as it pleased Him. It seems the gnostics posited all sorts of such angelic hosts but placed the Lord Jesus far down near the bottom of the hierarchy. On the contrary, Jesus existed eternally before all the things of creation, and He holds all of creation together. We will exist forever because He will make it so.

Beyond this galactic and spiritual mastery, the Lord Jesus is also the head of the body of all Christians – the church throughout all places and ages, from Pentecost to the rapture. He is the beginning and foundation of this assembly of believers.

He is also the firstborn of the dead. Many will be resurrected. In fact, all will be resurrected: some to life and some to eternal death. Christ is their head by being the first man to be resurrected. Others like Lazarus rose from the dead only to die again. Christ stands in life permanently, as all the rest of us will one day.

God the Father has arrayed all of these aspects of human history to give the Son first place in everything. He is preeminent and worthy of our adoration and praise. The wise plan was for the incarnation to take place. The Son of God would take to Himself a perfect human nature and yet remain fully divine.

This unfathomable miracle would allow Him to die, paying our ransom, reconciling us to God, and making peace through His blood. Here is the One that is vital to our well being and who is worthy of our unflagging worship: The Lord Jesus Christ. Cling to Him and accept no substitute.

Pursuit of wisdom for today from the Ancient of Days

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