The Image of the Invisible God

Hello Church Family!

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul confronts a troubling error that threatens to influence Jesus' followers. To counter this heresy, he presents a compelling portrayal of Christ's supremacy, highlighting both his vast cosmic significance and personal relevance in their lives.

This Christ the King Sunday, let’s delve into the truth of Christ as the image of the invisible God, the Creator of everything, and the One who reconciles all things to Himself through His sacrificial love.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Adam Thornton

Sermon Transcript:

Lord, we honor you, we praise you, we do magnify your name, Lord Jesus. It is you who has saved us; it is you who bought us with a price beyond our comprehension. It is you, O Lord, who is transforming us, who has sanctified us, who is doing a new work in us. We thank you, Lord, that you're not done with us yet, that you're not finished with what you have started, but you are bringing it to completion day by day, moment by moment.

And we have gathered here this morning with our brothers and sisters, with family and friends, to lift our voices to honor what you are doing not only in us but in all the world. And so we pray, Lord Jesus, receive our praise, receive our gratitude and thanks. We sing for you with joy. We live for you with joy, God. Speak to us this morning, we pray in Christ's name. Amen and amen.

Well, before you sit down, find somebody around you. Introduce yourself and welcome them to worship. Thank you. Good morning, church. Thank you for sitting right there because this whole section was looking sad, and I thought maybe Roger hadn't bathed or something like that. So thank you. That's not the case.

If you have your Bibles, if you turn them on or you can use an old school one like mine, we're going to be reading out of the letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 15 through 20, and probably a little bit further beyond that. But we'll start there, 15 through 20. Hear these words.

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. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy, for God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

Now we're going to go a little further. Just stay with me. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil deeds. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation. If you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel, this is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Today, in the life of the church, it is the reign of Christ Sunday. And that is a Sunday at the end of the Christian year, Christian calendar, where we celebrate the reign and the rule of Christ, where we focus on Christ as our great king, the one who is all-powerful, the one who is filled with the glory of God and full of majesty, the one who has become flesh and dwelt among us, the one who is the meeting place between the divine and the mortal.

And because of his life, and because of the life that is in him, he has broken open the way for us to enter into that eternal kingdom, and that is the kind of life that he offers now. It is to our detriment if we think that the life that Jesus offers is somehow after we die, that we are assured of heaven only, that there is not much for us to do while we're here, except try to behave ourselves and not get into too much trouble until that time when, because of Jesus' death and our affirmation or acceptance of that death and resurrection and belief in him, that we have an eternal kind of fire insurance.

If we think that, we've missed the whole point of the gospel and the life of Jesus. Yes, it is true that God in Christ offers us life eternal, that there is assurance, that there is assurance of our place with God because of Jesus, so that when we pass from this life, we will be in his presence always. But that is just a part, and maybe just 25% of what Jesus is talking about in his life and what Paul is talking about here in reference to him.

Paul is writing this letter while he is in prison. He's writing because word has come to him that the church that he planted in the city of Colossae is in trouble. While he has been absent from them in prison, there have been teachers that have come in and begun to teach things contrary to the gospel that Paul gave them about Christ. It was not unusual for there to be itinerant teachers that would pass from area to area and would begin to teach in synagogues, and now some of those have made their way into the various churches that Paul has established.

And in this case, they have been teaching a couple of things. They've been teaching some strange things, maybe pulling from the culture around them, pulling from Judaism, and trying to inculcate that into what the gospel is. And the gospel was as it was revealed by Paul to them. So they're trying to mix things a little bit. They're trying to mix cultural and philosophical patterns of life, maybe even some political patterns of life. They're trying to blend them together as if they can exist.

But what Paul is writing about here is he's saying that Christ reigns and rules and his power is absolute apart from any of those things. That we don't have to have Jesus plus, but rather Jesus himself is enough. And Jesus and his kingdom transcend all of those other things—cultural, ideological, political, theological, anything you can imagine. Christ's rule and reign is above it. It transcends it. It is not hindered in any way.

So when people worry that Western Christianity or that Christianity in general is fading, it cannot. Not because of us, because we make stands and do those sorts of things, and not because all of the weight of that is upon us, but because the rule and the reign of Christ in his creation goes on. We know this because for 2,000 years, Christians have been maligned, oppressed, persecuted, tortured, killed, and yet here we are.

My friend David tells me there's a famous saying in Judaism. For those of you who don't know David Nekrutman, a friend of this congregation, one of my very dearest friends, an Orthodox Jew, and he and I do a lot of conversation about the Jewish roots of our Christian faith. And he says there's a very famous saying in Judaism that describes all that they've gone through over their entire history. And it goes something like this. It's very easy to remember. They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat. That's the pattern. And it repeats over and over and over again.

Certainly, that could be a pattern in Christianity. They have tried over millennia to be able to stamp out this faith, these followers of the way, Jesus. And yet here we are. Not because we have great speakers and we have wise theologians and scholars, but because the rule and reign of God cannot be stopped. He will inhabit his creation. He will bring about his glory. The earth will be filled, the Psalmist says, with the knowledge of God. He will bring about the glory of the Lord as surely as the waters cover the entirety of the sea.

Jesus will be magnified and glorified. And there's only really two possible responses to this rule and reign of God. We can respond favorably or we can respond unfavorably. But either decision will not affect the rule and the reign of God. That's why when there are elections, when there are historical moments, when there are world events, when there are things that happen that have the danger of setting us into an anxiety, that we have this sure hope in Jesus Christ to know that the rule and reign of God is being poured out over all the earth no matter what happens.

It's important for us to remember that, lest we get caught up into cultural things and pulled away from the Gospel as the Colossians were. There are really three focal points in his message that Paul says to these Colossians. There are many more kind of ancillary things, but really three focal points in these words in 15 through 23 that we've read together.

The first is this: that Jesus is unique. He is the fulcrum or the lever. He is the place where heaven and earth meet, where the divine and the mortal interact in space and time in a real, not imagined way. John, the disciple and eventually the apostle, says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," and we beheld his glory. What John meant by that is God fulfilled his promise to dwell with humanity in his created order.

It began long ago. It began when the world was created, when God created the heavens and the earth and placed his representative, one who was uniquely qualified to bring about what God wanted in the world, the perfect steward, the perfect representative in the garden, Adam and Eve. They were placed there to have dominion, not like we think of dominion, which is an oppressive thing, but dominion in God's economy means to lead and to form things in such a way that they flourish.

So when we have dominion, let's say over our children, we don't rule them hopefully with an oppressive iron fist, but rather we try and do our best to shape and mold them and steer them into the best possible flourishing for them. It's confounding at times, I know, but rest assured you're in good company because you once confounded your parents. That's what dominion is.

And God was with Adam and Eve. He walked in the cool of the day with them. And it carries on beyond that. God was with Noah, steering him and his family through the flood. God was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, appeared to Abraham to let Abraham know what was about to transpire, carried his promise through the sons of Isaac and Jacob and on and on and on, all the way into Egypt, hearing the cry of the people that were descendants of Abraham and dwelling with them, appearing in their midst through Moses, bringing them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, leading them to the mountain to worship and to make covenant with this God who had delivered them under promise from Abraham.

Then it goes further than that. It goes into the kingdom and the north and the south and the division. And then it goes into the prophets finally finding its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the promise of Isaiah 7:14. You remember it. We say it every year. "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel."

What's so interesting about that verse is a rule of hermeneutics. So when you—hermeneutics is the study or the principled study of scripture. It is a process by which you're to go into scripture to be able to handle it correctly and understand what it's saying. And hermeneutics is there to help guide us so that we don't make up a lot of the wacky stuff that we hear nowadays.

And one of those rules is the principle of first appearance. So that word Emmanuel first appeared in Isaiah 7 in a much different circumstance than the Christmas story that we will begin to hear next week. Can you believe that? It's already here. And this is the context. Israel is surrounded. Their enemies are closing in. There is real threat of invasion. This sounds like we just turned on the news, by the way. But anyway, this is in the ancient world. The Assyrians, these kingdoms are pressing in upon them, and the king is concerned and worried.

So Ahaz calls for Isaiah, and Isaiah begins to talk to him about what the Lord is saying. And he talks to him saying, "Listen, your wife is going to conceive. Your young wife is going to conceive, and she's going to bear a child. And before that child reaches the age where they're able to eat curds and honey, where they're able to eat solid food, this problem with these Assyrian interlopers is going to be dealt with. That's the sign I'm going to give you, that by the time that he's done, you will see that he's going to be able to—that's all gone. And then you'll know that the Lord was with you."

And he says to Ahaz through Isaiah, "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will call him Emmanuel." The word means God with us. Even in the moment of extreme danger, God says you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. I'm dwelling with you as I promised.

And what's incredible about that is it has a second meaning. It has the Christmas meaning. The ultimate fulfillment of God dwelling with us is that he himself came to walk among us. That's what John says. He says, "The word became flesh and dwelt among us." The very word of God, through whom everything that was made, nothing that was made was made apart from him. The firstborn of all creation, the one who has primacy, the one who spoke and carried out what God the Father desired. All of that is summed up into Jesus.

He is the place where heaven and earth meet, where God and human beings dwell from all time. I don't know if you realize this, but when we pass from this life into the resurrection life, Jesus will be a person. He won't be this ethereal being. He won't be something incomprehensible. He will be like us, or rather we will be like him. He's not going to be a spirit, but a person, the permanent pledge to dwell with humanity. Remarkable when you think about it.

The second thing is this: the Lord of life offers life. The Lord of life offers life and sustains that life. As I said before, to our detriment, do we think that being saved or born again or regenerated or giving our life to Christ is only about after we die? No, no. It's much more about how we live now. It's about how we live now. It's about how we live now. It's about how we live now. It's about how we live now. It's the eternal kind of life for us right now. And the Lord of life gives us that life. That's the whole point.

Whenever Jesus touched the life of an individual, whenever he reached out and touched the untouchable, the leper, and healed them, whenever he prayed for a woman and she was healed, whenever he received someone that everyone thought should be an outsider, and when this woman fell at his feet and worshiped him, he was healed. And when the guests of the home looked on her and thought, "Good Lord," and Jesus said, "You know what? She's welcome." That's the kind of life that is offered. Not later, not when we get to college, not when we get married, not when we have kids or grandkids or some far-off place because we don't want to experience that now. It's life for now in this moment.

And every day, every day, every day, every breath, in every step, in every sunrise and sunset, that kind of life is now. And Jesus' life points to that. He said, "Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house. You've been pushed outside for too long, but I'm coming into your house because I want to dine with you." I could have dined with all sorts of people, but I want to dine with you. That kind of life offered to everyone, we meet all the time.

Last night, there was a young man who was serving us. I officiated a wedding last night for Joe and Karen Thompson's youngest daughter, Lindsay, and her new husband, Logan, and the last name, Kislingberry. I had to be very careful when I announced them. But there was a young man there that was part of the catering team named John. And you wouldn't think much of John. He's just a guy that's catering and doing all that. But, you know, I decided I was going to ask his name. And then I thought, you know what, I'm going to thank him every opportunity I get for doing the stuff that nobody wants to do and it many times gets overlooked and appreciated, trying to appreciate him in some way so that he knows someone sees him.

Now, this is not because if I were to pull apart my shirt, you would see a giant S and a uniform under there signifying somehow I am super Christian or something like that. No, I simply wanted to offer the life how I could in a non-weird way to somebody that I encountered. There's opportunities all around us. There are ways in which we can just, "I see you" to someone. And to be kind and generous when we know they're not doing well, the Lord of life offers life and sustains it.

The author of Hebrews writes in chapter six, "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where our forerunner Jesus has entered on our behalf." What does that mean? It means that what the life that Jesus offers is firm and secure because he has gone to prepare that life for us. It means we can trust it. It means we can hope in it, that we can hang on to it like an anchor that keeps the ship from drifting, that we're not affected by cultural things, but so affected by the life that Jesus offers. By the life of Jesus that lives in us, that we simply don't concern ourselves with those things.

Third, the Lord of all reconciles all to himself. The Lord of all reconciles all to himself. We heard Paul say, "You were once alienated from God because of your thoughts and your mind was twisted. Your actions were evil, but God reconciled you to himself. He broke open the way for you to come and be with him and have that eternal kind of life now and enjoy that life and live in it fully."

Paul writes to the Corinthians about this kind of life in chapter five in second Corinthians. He says this: "All this, everything that God has done, all the life that he has offered through Christ, all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."

Incredible thing that God has done in Christ to bring us to himself. And not only that, but he has in turn given us that responsibility. Brennan Manning often said that the gospel was simply this: one beggar telling another beggar where the bread is. That's the ministry of reconciliation, telling people about the life that we experience. And more than that, showing people the life long before they ever hear it, they should see it in us.

There should be transformation in our life. Last week I asked that question, does your life look any different than the lives of people who do not follow Christ? Our lives should look different. We are, after all, ambassadors going forward, announcing the kingdom and operating by its interests. Not our own personal interests, not the interests of those around, but the interests of the king in whose name we have been sent. And we are committed to that message of reconciliation.

Jesus in that invites us into that eternal and abundant kind of life now. It's about more than mental assent. It's about transformational obedience. Something that changes our lives forever. My favorite verse in all of the scriptures is Philippians 1:6. "He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." For me, what that means is, praise God, he's not done with me yet. No matter my faults, no matter my shortcomings, no matter my issues, I know that I am a work in progress.

Now, that is not an excuse to not take care of the life that God has given me, but rather, it is an understanding that God is continually working on me to make me into the image of his son, Jesus. Now, I've had some conversations with God, and I don't know how he's going to do it, but I said, if you really want me to look like Jesus, you're going to have to give me hair. And so far, that hasn't happened. So, that's what's happening in all of us. We are unfinished works. Our connection to God is complete. That is finished. But the transformation we are undergoing is not. It's ongoing.

So, I want to leave you with an invitation to follow Jesus in three ways, something for you to consider practically, things you might be able to do or think about. The first, I would say, is this: Faith in Christ, as I said before, is not about fire insurance. Ask yourself this question: What would my life look like if I really believed what Jesus said? Maybe dig into the scriptures, read some of the sayings of Jesus, go through the Sermon on the Mount, look at the Great Commission, see his great teachings and the parables that he taught. What would happen if I really believed and put into practice—because that's biblical belief—what if I really believed in the words of Jesus?

You see, belief is when the church prays for rain and as everybody shows up the next day after praying for rain, but only one boy brings an umbrella. That boy believes. That's what belief is. That's what faith is. If I really believed Jesus, what would our life look like? Too often we think of faith in transactional terms. I'm going to go through confirmation. I'm going to attend this Sunday school. I'm going to go to this special service. I'm going to transact with God to get what I need in order to have this assurance beyond this life. But rather, what would it look like if that life was primarily about how we live now?

The second thing: Jesus reconciles all people to himself and entrusts us with that same ministry. What might that look like if we live that out? Well, I can think of one very immediate and one very good way to practice that. Thanksgiving is coming. Many of us will be with family. And as we know, family is full of people with warts. And probably us too. They're filled with people who live differently than us, who have different values than us, who think in different ways than we do.

And rather than rolling in with old grudges and wounds and hurts and offenses, and rather than rolling in with preconceived notions about how these people will behave, what if we rolled in thinking, "Anywhere I go in my presence, I can't affect anybody else, but anywhere I go, I'm going to put into practice this idea of reconciliation. I'm not going to hold people's faults against them. I'm not going to prejudge them. But instead, I'm going to provide an environment, especially if it's at my house, in which everyone has the time of their life."

Because that's the eternal life. That's the eternal kind of life that Jesus offers. That's reconciliation. You say, "Well, wait a minute, Pastor. Sister so-and-so did this. Or my brother did this. Or his kids did this." Who cares? Let it go. And instead, make your house the place when they leave, they're confused. Because they had the best time and they thought for sure it was going to be a tough season. That's reconciliation.

Pastor, I just, I don't know that I can approve of the way they live. You don't have to to create that kind of environment wherever you are. I'm heartened by this because, and your response, because in the first service, they all laughed like I was telling a joke, as if this was some impossibility for God to do.

The last thing is bearing the image of Jesus. What does that look like? Does that mean we put on a robe and a wig with long hair? No, we know that's not the case. But if Jesus were doing your job, living your life, how would he do it, do you suppose? Just as Christ is the image of the invisible God, we too are called to carry the image of Christ. In fact, we talk about that pretty much every Sunday when we come to the table of the Lord to receive Holy Communion. We say a familiar phrase, usually in a prayer, "Make us be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood."

Those aren't nice words. Those aren't things that we say to pass the time. And they're certainly not words that somehow are magical that sanctify and make the bread and juice holy. No, instead, they are a reminder to us that we are called to be the body of Christ to the world. And I love it because it says, "Be the body of Christ." Not talk about or say. It talks about how we live. People will remember what we've done long after they remember what we say.

What would it be like if our words actually confirmed what we were already doing? What we were already living? That when we talked about one thing or another, when we did speak about Jesus, they heard it first in the way that we lived our lives. What might that look like to bear the image of Jesus well for the world?

It's an interesting thought as we consider the reign and rule of Christ over the earth. It's so amazing to me when I think about it. Because the reign and the rule of Christ is not a geographic location. It's not in a particular country. It's not limited by boundaries or by the treaties of men. It is all around us. It is in the moment and the area and the portion of our lives. When the rule and reign of Christ is carried out in obedience, it's wherever we have bent the knee in our lives, wherever we have surrendered to the work of Jesus, wherever we have practiced what he did, the rule and reign of Christ has come upon the earth as it is in heaven.

It's unstoppable. It's undefinable. You can only see it, but you cannot contain it. You can, however, be part of it. And that's what our Lord offers as the King of kings and Lord of lords through his reign.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let's pray.

Such a sweet and powerful time. I almost don't want to leave, so, so good. And that is the eternal kind of life now. Go and live that life, take it with you wherever you go. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.