Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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/ /
/safe and secure!/
We all like to feel safe and secure.
When I was a young lad, I had this dream that has stayed with me for the last 45 years.
I dreamt about a large house with a flight of external stairs.
For some reason I was scared, I couldn’t work out why.
Then I felt compelled to climb the flight of stairs—step by scary step.
I reached the top and walked into the house.
And from another room, in my dream a witch appeared with a long, curved nose wearing an evil black dress—and I screamed, so loud and so hard!
I woke sweating in the arms of my mum.
I felt safe and secure.
I felt safe because she was a lovingly mum and there was nothing she couldn’t do.
I felt secure as she wrapped her arms around me—I was free from the terrors of my imagination.
In my home, she was the supreme lady, she was sufficient to meet all my boyish needs.
Those words ‘supreme’ and ‘sufficient’ lead us back to Paul’s letter to the Colossian Church.
The saints in Colossae were safe and secure in their Lord.
They were a mature church and Epaphras had reported this much to Paul in Ephesus (Col 1:3).
But there was a threat to this stability.
So after his opening prayer, the apostle gets down to business.
That’s no less than a compact and probing explanation of the wonders of Christ’s person and his actions for a rebellious humanity.
Col 1:15–20 is a christological high point in the New Testament.
It’s sometimes referred to as a ‘hymn’ which expounds the supremacy of Christ in creation and redemption.
There’s lots of discussion in the literature as to whether or not Paul got the hymn from elsewhere and inserted it into his letter, or whether Paul was indeed the author.
But such debated ought not delay us, for in either case Paul takes responsibility for its content as he expounds the priority of Christ to the Colossian Church.
There are different ways we can visualise our passage.
Scholars such as Douglas Moo and F.F. Bruce divide the hymn into three sections based on the repetition of key words and phrases.
Whilst these divisions are useful, I am attracted to the twofold division proposed by Dick Lucas.
The first division is verses 15–18 which concern themselves with the ‘supremacy of Christ’.
The second division is verses 19 and 20, ‘the sufficiency of Christ’ (which we shall look at next time).
Paul’s hymn brings to our attention the ‘supremacy’ and ‘sufficiency’ of Christ.
And in this way Christ is portrayed as the exclusive instrument through whom God created the universe, and through whom he is in the process of pacifying the universe .
It is clear that the false teaching in Colossae was questioning Christ’s exclusive role in providing spiritual growth and maturity.
The false teachers were arguing from cosmology to spirituality: since the universe is filled with spiritual powers, ultimate spiritual fullness can only be found by taking them all into consideration.
This is not unlike our experiences in life.
The way forward is to keep /everyone/ happy.
If you won’t a promotion at work: keep your colleagues and the boss happy.
A big part of success in sport is pleasing /all/ the sports administrators.
Likewise, if you want salvation, please /every/ spiritual power you can find—and then some more.
Not unlike the Athenian monument to the ‘unknown God’ in Acts 17. It’s smart to have an altar to the god you don’t know—just in case.
The false teachers were urging the Colossians to pacify every spiritual force because herein lies the key to salvation.
In today’s language, Christ plus the new age gods.
Christ plus mysticism.
The latter tapping into the spiritual realm where Christ is supposedly unable to go.
Even Christ plus baptism, that somehow the physical, sacramental act crushes spiritual forces in a way that Christ on our behalf cannot.
The theme of Paul’s letter to the Colossians is the sufficiency of Christ, and he can’t be sufficient if he is not supreme.
This supremacy of Christ means that we are safe, for the universe is not about to change hands and receive a new owner.
We live safely under the rule of Christ and this will never change.
And the sufficiency of Christ means that we are secure—he meets all our needs again and again and again because all power is given to him.
If you can picture the early day explorers cutting a way through extremely dense jungle—it’s hard work and its not unlike ploughing our way through the very dense text in verses 15 to 18.
So get your knife out, dowse yourself with mosquito repellent, get your mind into gear and come with me into this remarkable hymn.
/Christ is supreme in creation/
Verses 15 to 17, ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together’.
These verses declare that Christ is supreme in creation.
The whole created order, in time and space, owes its existence to Christ.
He is its true origin.
He sustains the universe.
Nothing happens which is outside his control.
Without Christ, creation has no ultimate meaning.
We cannot understand creation outside the person of Christ.
/ the image of the invisible God (1:15a)/
The one who created ‘all things’ is described in verse 15 as ‘the image of the invisible God’.
The Greek word εἰκὼν sounds like our word ‘icon’, which is a word which sends computer buffs into raptures of excitement.
There’s nothing more thrilling than clicking on a windows icon.
And if you haven’t done it, make sure that you get the experience some time!
The icon is that little picture on the computer screen which represents the unseen program that stands behind it—like the word processor which I used to write this talk.
Jesus is the image who reveals the glory of the otherwise unseen God.
On our own we cannot know God; we need Jesus to make God known.
Christ is the ‘the image of the invisible God’.
In the words of the Nicene Creed, he is ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father’.
In Christ, the being and nature of God are perfectly represented.
Christ is the visible icon, the tangible revelation of God.
No-one had ever seen God until the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
A major question for both Jews and Greeks in the time of Paul was this: where can God be seen?
It’s a question that occupies minds today, ‘where can God be seen’?
Paul says that we need look no further that Christ.
John says that the ‘Word’ was ‘with God’ and ‘was God’ (John 1:1) and has ‘made him known’ (John 1:18).
The writer to the Hebrews says that ‘the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being’ (Heb 1:3).
Where can God be seen?
In another letter, Paul declares that the ‘everlasting power and divinity’ of the unseen Creator is ‘clearly perceived in the things that have been made’ (Rom 1:20).
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands (Psalm 19:1).
But this general revelation of God has been surpassed.
We have a special revelation of the unseen God in Christ.
In 2 Cor 4:6, Paul puts it this way, ‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’.
God made light shine into darkness, and the world came into being.
This world bears the stamp of its Creator and it testifies to his presence and power.
Then God shone his gospel light into our hearts, and Christ, in the image of God, reveals the glory of God to us.
Christ is supreme, he is stamped with the image of God, he reveals the invisible God.
/ firstborn over all creation (1:15b; Ex 4:22, Psalm 89:27)/
The one in the image of God is ‘the firstborn over all creation’.
This doesn’t mean that Christ was the first of all created beings, like Arius thought in the fourth century and like modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In the Bible the ‘firstborn’ is often understood in its metaphorical sense.
The firstborn son has special rights, the firstborn son has pre-eminence—a special place, superiority and power.
And so Moses must say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says, “Israel is my firstborn son’ (Exod 4:22).
And God says of David in Psalm 89:27, ‘I will appoint him to be my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth’.
Christ, as the firstborn over all creation, is the most exalted one in all of the creation.
He is his Father’s heir, creation is for him.
Christ is supreme over every creature.
As the firstborn, Christ is unique.
Christ is to be distinguished from the rest of creation because he is prior to and supreme over that creation since he is its Lord.
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