First Mennonite Church
July 26, 2026
Jesus His Person and Works
Text: Colossians 1:15-23
Once again, we must remember that the letter to the Colossians is one of the books of the New Testament where we find some of the most profound reflections about the person of Jesus Christ. Our passage for today is the heart of that discourse about the identity and purpose of Jesus Christ in relation to the identity and purpose of the believer and the church.
In verse 14, Paul tells the Colossians that the kingdom of light in which God has transferred them and the one in whom they have redemption and the forgiveness of sin, Jesus, “is the image of the invisible God.”
The word translated image is the Greek word eikon, and expresses two ideas.
· Likeness, as in the image on a coin or the reflection in a mirror.
· Manifestation, to demonstrate or reveal. In this case, God is fully revealed in Jesus.
Paul tells this Christian community, made up of converted Jews and Gentiles, that Jesus is the very embodiment of Yahweh. Jesus carried in himself the very stamp of God the Father. Jesus was God in the flesh.
Also, that Jesus manifested the invisible God. The character, beauty, power, love, holiness and everything Jesus manifested in his earthly life were manifestations of the essence of God. Paul’s declaration, here, must have shocked both believers of Jewish background and the Gentile converts. You see, the gentiles had images, altars, and sculptures of those they considered their gods. These were all inanimate objects, yet the Gentiles believed these represented the essence of their gods. On the other hand, although the Jews worshiped Yahweh who chose them to be his people and who acted on their behalf, they had never seen his substance or form.
Also, when Paul says that Jesus revealed the invisible God, he does not merely mean that God cannot be seen with physical eyes, but that He is unknowable and beyond human comprehension. However, in the person and work of Jesus Christ the invisible and unknowable God was made visible and knowable. Or as Paul describes God in his letter to Timothy, “He alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see (1Timothy 6:16).
Paul continues his description of Jesus by saying that “He is firstborn over all creation.” The Greek word prototokos, translated firstborn, can describe either priority in time or supremacy in rank. And those are precisely the ideas Paul intends to communicate here. Jesus was before all created things and Jesus supreme and completely different from all created things. Because, as Paul continues:
For by Him all things were created. There is no doubt that Jesus is the author of all creation as we also read in the gospel of John. John writes: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:1-3). Jesus is not a created being, but the Creator of everything and sovereign over all things created.
If we consider the wonder and immenseness of the world Jesus created, we would be moved to worship and honor Him. Here are a few facts, according to astronomers and scientists:
Life, the human body is a marvelous and complex work of God’s creation. Even when not having all the information we have today about the human body, the Psalmist was able to exclaim, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!” (Psalm 139:14).
In this vast universe, earth travels around the sun around 67,000 mph; that’s almost 20 times the speed of a bullet fired from a high-speed gun.
There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
Or as the song we sang says, “It took a miracle to hang the world in Space.”
It is not only the visible things God created in Christ, but also the invisible world, the world of the spirits, the power structures of the world and their human agents. We might not readily see how empowering this must have been for to the ears of the Colossians believers. They lived in a world where Caesar claimed to be absolute lord of the world and the human representative of the gods. Therefore, Paul’s words here unmasked the lies on those claims made by Ceasar. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is sovereign and far above every human ruler. As Paul will later say, the peace brought by Jesus was through his cross, not by the sword or by crucifixion, as it happened to those who challenged Caesar.
But Jesus is not only creator of all things, Paul affirms:
In Him all things consist: Creation is interconnected. Creation follows the DNA God embedded in it. The sun continues its course. Salmon leaves the oceans to scale the streams where they were hatched to continue the cycle of their species. All that and more because Jesus is both the unifying principle and the personal sustainer of all creation. Jesus is creator and preserver of the world he created, for in him and for him all things were created.
As Paul continues, he switches from the cosmic rule of Jesus Christ to his rule over the church.
He is head of the body, the church. From the vast and cosmic and almost impersonal rule of Christ, Paul touches ground closer to home. To that little and almost insignificant group of men, women and children, according to human eyes, Jesus is also ruler of the Colossian church. Jesus is the head of the church. In Paul’s mind, head does not only mean the physical location where the brain is that governs the rest of the corporeal entity of a person. In Colossians 2:19, Paul describes the Head as the source that unifies and sustains the growth of the church. There Paul warns on the importance of holding onto the head so that the church does not go astray. Paul urges the church to take hold on the head for its growth and flourishment.
This is vital for us to hear. This little gathering of God’s people that we are is the very substance of the person of Christ. He alone can infuse life, direction, and power into us. He alone is the head and sustainer of the church. Holding fast to the head ensures church unity, growth, and flourishment. Let us strive to hold on to the Lord, who is our head. God the Father was pleased for Jesus to hold the prominence in all things.
After Paul had closed his discourse who Jesus is, when he said, He is the image of the invisible God, Paul shifts and says, “You. Paul shifts from describing Jesus and his glorious identity and purpose, to the Colossians, but to the time before they were without Christ:
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciledin his fleshly bodythrough death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, 23 provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creatureunder heaven. I, Paul, became a minister of this gospel.
Paul reminded the Colossians of their former lives. They were estranged and hostile to God, doing evil deeds. Or as Paul would say to the Ephesians, they were dead in their trespasses and enemies of God. But that is no longer the spiritual state of the Colossians anymore. Paul says, “He has now reconciled you through his death. This group of believers, strangers to the larger society because of their faith, love for all, and patient suffering, is a community that God has reconciled to himself. God had separated them to be his own. And the purpose of their calling is to present them as a holy and blameless, and irreproachable people. Holy, blameless, and irreproachable, you, me?
How do we get there? How do we become holy? How do we achieve blamelessness and irreproachability? Please do not ask Lilian about me on these!! How about you?
Paul gives us the answer how to get there. Provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard.
Steadfastness in faithfulness is the way. Steadfastness indicates constancy, perseverance, tenacity, grit in the gospel we have heard and received. We can only persevere on something when we know what it is or how to go about. Therefore, steadfastness in the way of Christ’s message requires that we be saturated with the words of Jesus. His words will begin to filter through our actions and words. His character will become second nature in us.
My dear brothers and sisters, may we worship him who is Lord, not only of the cosmos, or over the invisible world and worldly powers. May we serve him who has reconciled us to God through his death and has made us his holy, blameless, and irreproachable people. May we strive to remain steadfast in the good news that we have heard and believed. Amen!
Pastor Romero