The Christ Vision

From my Everyday Bible Study on Ephesians and Colossians, with questions by Becky Castle Miller.

Colossians 1:15-20

1:15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ 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.

By most accounts, today’s reading was an early Christian hymn. Or, a Christian hymn that Paul edited. Not long after Colossians was written Pliny wrote that the Christians “were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as to a god” (Epistles 10.96-97). We cannot be certain today’s beautiful poetry was one such early Christian hymn, but we know Paul and Timothy had grown up in a singing faith. The Book of Psalms is all one needs to say. We find the presence of songs in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jesus and his disciples sang together (Matthew 26:30). But the songs the earliest followers of Jesus grew up singing morphed when they became convinced Jesus was the Messiah. Many think Luke 1-2’s poetic lines were songs, and the Book of Revelation has numerous songs in which Jesus is central. In Colossians 3:16 Paul will urge singing as he did in Ephesians (5:19). If someone was assigning early songs to their subject manner, as is done in our hymnbooks, this song in Colossians 1:15-20 would be under the “Jesus Christ” heading.

Sidebar: Indications of a Hymn

According to Ralph Martin, an expert on early Christian hymns, the following are possible indicators of a song, with a comment on whether this indicator can be found in Colossians 1:15-20:

1. Introductory formula (yes; 1:15, 18b begin with a “who”; the NIV drops it)
2. Participles preferred to verbs (not this passage)
3. Unusual themes for the author (yes; e.g., “invisible God” etc.)
4. Narrative break that interrupts (yes)
5. Rhythmical, poetic style (yes)
6. Unusual vocabulary (“firstborn” etc.)
7. Dense theological formulations (yes)
8. Ardor and enthusiasm (harder to determine, but yes)

Ralph Martin, Carmen Christi, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), 19. For a more detailed listing, see Matthew E. Gordley, New Testament Christological Hymns: Exploring Texts, Contexts, and Significance (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018), esp. 20-21.

End

The denseness and sheer brilliance of each line and nearly every word require extensive commentary, but we can only dip into this passage with three observations.

Wisdom is a person

Paul and Timothy could not stop themselves after reporting to the Colossians their prayer request for the believers to grow in wisdom (1:9-10). They decide that a thanksgiving for them ought to be followed immediately with a song devoted to Christ. The song in today’s reading identifies the wisdom of God with Jesus himself. Terms in this song that show up in Jewish wisdom texts include “image” of God, of course words about wisdom like perception and understanding, and creation – its beginning and God holding all creation together. One scholar, John Balchin, summarized wisdom in Judaism like this, and I reformat his words into a list with his summary conclusion at the end:

1. Wisdom originates with God, shares his throne, and was with him from the beginning.
2. Wisdom is the agent of creation, and Providence, as well as revelation.
3. Wisdom both comes and is sent into the world, and even returns to heaven again.
4. Wisdom has a soteriological function in the world.
5. Wisdom seeks out men and women and makes personal claims and promises.
6. Wisdom is associated with the spirit.
7. Wisdom is even the agent of judgment.

All this would fuse together in a new pattern when a real person eventually did emerge whose status and origin could only be described in terms like these, and who may even have laid claim to them himself (Balchin, “Paul, Wisdom, and Christ,” 208-209).

It is that last long sentence that returns us to the song in Colossians: that wisdom is the person Jesus Christ. Those ideas combine with Paul’s terms to present Christ as the Wisdom of God and, as the Wisdom of God, Jesus Christ is both Creator and Redeemer. I’m afraid you and I, as moderns, may just not be all that impressed with early Christians identifying Jewish Wisdom with Jesus, but it was a bold, even audacious, claim by them to do so. Jesus is given divine status in his song. Who else creates? Who else redeems? Who else but God!

The irony runs thick: an ordinary-looking Jewish Galilean man who grew up on the lower shelves of society, who had recognizable powers and who could teach in a way that drew attention from everyone, but who was crucified outside the City of Jerusalem as a false claimant to king, and who was claimed to have been raised from the dead, is here identified as Creator and Redeemer of all things.

Wisdom creates

Having prayed for wisdom and given thanks for God the Father liberating and relocating those in Christ, Paul and Timothy delve into Christ as Creator (1:15-17). The Son is the “image of the invisible God,” which means Adam and Eve were copies of Jesus Christ (Genesis 1:26-27). The One who was previously invisible (God) becomes visible (Jesus Christ). To this the song adds “the firstborn over all creation,” and the “over” comes from the meaning of “firstborn” because it has the sense of preeminence and rank, as in Colossians 1:18 (“the supremacy”), and much less emphasis on the “born” part of firstborn (MacDonald, Colossians, 58-59). Jesus, then, is not one of the created ones. He is over all creation.

Verse sixteen clarifies any questions one might have: “all things were created… in him,” with the language the same as the “in Christ” formula (1:2, 4, 16, 17, 19, 28; 2:5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 17). If Christ created all things, Christ is not created. Again, a remarkable claim. The “all things” are detailed in 1:16 to include whatever exists in both heaven and earth, whatever is visible or invisible, and all the various levels and patterns of government, both earthly and spiritual. Which means Christ is responsible for the creation of even the spirits, who were of course created good but at some time turned against the ways of their Creator.

All things were created “through him,” which repeats that Jesus is the Creator, but the song adds another expression: all things were created “for” him (1:16). The “for” expresses direction. That is, Christ created all things to reflect honor and praise and glory back to Christ as their Creator. The awe and immensity we sense as we experience the ocean, the vastness of forests, and the immensity of the sky may be seen as an experience of the divine, which it is, but Paul and Timothy teach the Colossians that the divine we experience is Christ the Creator.

The first “stanza” of this song ends with a final line that summarizes Christ as Creator: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (1:17). He is not part of that creation; he ante-dates all creation. In fact, creation rolls onward in its rhythms and orders and glories and vastness as an ongoing, sustaining, and intentional act by Jesus Christ. He prevents creation from returning to its original disorder (Genesis 1:2).

Ellen Davis reminds us, or informs us, that “deep ecologists” (I had not heard of this expression before) “are those who believe that the ecological crisis is not in the first instance a crisis in technology, but rather that the root cause lies in the human heart. In a word, deep ecologists believe that the ecological crisis stems from what Christians call ‘sin,’ above all the sin of isolating ourselves from the rest of creatures, preferring the immediate advantage of the privileges of our species over the well-being of all creation. Conversely, deep ecologists believe that humans must reconnect with the rest of the creatures, if this wounded yet still lovely planet is to be a livable place for us all” (Davis, Preaching the Luminous Word, 301-302). She said these words one time when she was preaching about today’s text.

In today’s reading Christ is the Wisdom of God, the Wisdom Creator, and this means Christ has left his imprint on all creation. Believers who see in Christ the embodiment of God’s fullness ought to be those who see the imprint of Christ in creation so much that how we treat this world is how we are treating Christ. All creation is related to Christ, and in Christ all creation exists. If we are in Christ, we are “in there” with all creation. Those who believe Jesus is Lord also believe our Jesus is the Lord of all creation. A deep Christology entails a deep ecology!

Wisdom redeems

From creation Paul and Timothy open a new stanza with a summary line, leading the listeners to words about the Creator Christ as the Redeemer Christ (1:18a). As Redeemer, Christ is the “head of the body” of Christ, the “church.” As discussed earlier in this book (Ephesians 1:22; 4:15; 5:22), head is a metaphor in need of sorting. Context determines the sort. In Colossians 1:18, head designates Christ as redeemer by way of his First-ness (“beginning”) and his resurrection, the fullness of God indwelling him, and this magnificent work of reconciling all things in his death. As Redeemer, he has the “supremacy” (1:18b). He is the Greatest of all greats, but in this context his headship is one of redeeming (and creating by implication). Ruler he is, but headship has to go with the flow of the evidence, and it flows in the direction of Head-as-Redeemer.

His resurrection makes him the “preeminenting one” (1:18; Second Testament), and the translation reflects the ongoing-ness of Christ’s preeminence. He not only became preeminent through his resurrection, he continues as the preeminent one. Two more major affirmations about Christ follow. The first is the mind-boggler: “Because in him all the fullness was delighted to reside” is the Second Testament translation, while the NIV fills in some gaps with “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (1:19). Of course, Colossians 2:9’s language gives the NIV permission to fill in those blanks. Our translation leaves 1:19 as it is, and what it is matters. This verse claims the entirety of God’s fullness resided and resides in Jesus Christ. Amazing. Margaret MacDonald speaks for many when she writes, “The fullness refers to the fullness of God in its totality” (MacDonald, Colossians, 63). In Christ we see the fullness of God. The fullness of God resides in Christ, not in the sense of occasionally popping through but in the sense that the embodied Jesus Christ, Jesus the Galilean prophet and Messiah, is God, and we know God by viewing Jesus. One well-known scholar was fond of uttering that we are not to assume we know who God is and then see if Jesus matches up to what we think of God. He turned that around to say that we need to ask if our view of Jesus is shaping our view of God! (Wright, Changing Face)

As the embodiment of God’s fullness, God “through him” was called “to reconcile to himself all things,” and here the “all things” are the same as the all things of creation (1:16, 17). Not only is God’s fullness indwelling Christ but that fullness means the redemption of all creation. That reconciliation, which is

making peace between God and people as well as
between people and people as well as
between God and people and creation,

occurs through the cross of Jesus Christ (1:20). At the strictly literal level, this song sings about universal redemption. While that may excite the hearts of many, no one in the New Testament believes that redemption occurs (1) apart from Christ’s own work of redemption on the cross or (2) apart from faith in Christ. So, wisdom leads us to affirm the expansiveness of Christ’s redemption as the intent of this song while that expansiveness makes room for some opting out or, if you prefer, never having opted in.

We now need to pause only briefly to state why it is that Paul and Timothy included this rich, dense, and evocate song: because if you get your ideas about Christ right you can ward off bad ideas and go on to good practices and behaviors. Which is what Paul and Timothy do in the rest of this letter. Including this song will lead Colossians back into the proper ideas when they gather to worship God who became visible in Christ.

Questions for Reflection and Application

1. How does Jesus represent the culmination of wisdom?

2. What stands out to you as most important in this reflection on Christ as creator?

3. Why should an understanding of Christ as creator impact our work on ecology?

4. Is your view of Jesus shaping your view of God, or vice versa?

5. How is your view of Jesus shaping your practices and behaviors?

John Balchin, “Paul, Wisdom, and Christ,” in Christ the Lord: Studies in Christology Presented to Donald Guthrie, ed. H.H. Rowdon (Downers Grove: IVP, 1982), 204-219

.

Ellen Davis, Preaching the Luminous Word: Biblical Sermons and Homiletical Essays , with Austin McIver Dennis (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2016), 301-305.

N.T. Wright, The Changing Face of God: Lincoln Lectures in Theology, 1996, Lincoln Studies in Theology (Lincoln, England: Lincoln Cathedral, 1996).

Pliny the Younger, The Letters of the Younger Pliny, trans. Betty Radice (London: Penguin, 1969).