It’s all about Jesus: Colossians 1
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 10/23/2016
Jesus. There is no other name in heaven or on earth that is more loved, more revered or more controversial than Jesus. At first glance, Jesus’ résumé is rather simple. He never traveled more than a few hundred miles from his hometown. He never wrote a book, never held a political office, never married, never went to college, never visited a big city, and never even attended a comic-book convention. Despite all that, Jesus stands alone in all of history—the single most significant person who ever lived. But who is Jesus really?
There are a lot of different interpretations of Jesus out there. A cartoon version of Jesus has made several appearances on long-running TV shows like The Simpsons and South Park. Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Ben Affleck, and Brad Pitt have all been spotted wearing “Jesus is my homeboy” t-shirts. In the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, comedian Will Ferrell leads his family in prayer to an “8-pound, 6-ounce, newborn infant Jesus” wearing “golden fleece diapers” and watching developmental video about shapes and colors. Apparently, he liked the Christmas Jesus best. There was even a bizarre Canadian kung-fu/comedy/horror/musical about the second coming, called Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, which pairs Jesus with Mexican Wrestling hero El Santos to battle an army of vampires! Bumper stickers all over the country proclaim, “Jesus is my co-pilot!” You can even buy a “Buddy Christ” Bobblehead figure, winking and shooting you a thumbs up!
Jesus, it seems, is everywhere. And everyone seems to have an opinion about him. Jesus once asked his disciples, “Who are the people saying I am?” (Matthew 16:13 TLB). They gave a variety of answers and they still do today. In fact, BluefishTV took to the streets asking bystanders the question “Who is Jesus?” Listen to some of their answers.
PLAY VIDEO CLIP
There are so many conflicting opinions about Jesus and the truth is—how we see Jesus affects everything. In his book, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore, John MacArthur writes, “What you think of Jesus will thoroughly color how you think about everything else… Our view of Jesus affects our view of God, the world, ourselves, and every one of our decisions.” So who is Jesus really? How should we see him?
The church in Colossae wrestled with those very questions when Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians. Some very sketchy beliefs penetrated the church in Colossae and threatened to cripple it from within. This false teaching was a deceptive combination of Jewish legalism, Eastern philosophy, pagan astrology, mysticism, and asceticism. There was something for everybody and that’s what made it so dangerous. By mixing their Christianity with all of these various religious and philosophical worldviews, the Colossians had lost sight of Jesus. They forgot whom it’s really all about!
So Paul writes this letter to set them straight, and he begins by setting the record straight about Jesus! If you have a Bible in your hand or an app on your phone open up to Colossians 1:15-23.
Most scholars believe that this section of Scripture, because of its poetic structure, is likely an ancient creed or perhaps the lyrics of an early Christian hymn. Whatever its source, it’s all about Jesus. And this is what it says:
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. (Colossians 1:15-20 NLT)
Now, Paul could have started off by attacking the Colossians’ incorrect beliefs or immoral behaviors, but instead he starts by saying let’s talk about Jesus! It’s all about Jesus! And if you get Jesus right in your life and in your church, then everything else will fall into place. So let me highlight three characteristics of Christ as Paul describes him here. First, Jesus is our Creator.
• OUR CREATOR
Paul asserts that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh—the visible image of the invisible God. He writes again, “Through his power all things were made—things in heaven and on earth, things seen and unseen… All things were made through Christ and for Christ” (Colossians 1:16 NCV). Have you ever thought about that? That Christ created everything that can be seen?
Astronomers estimate that the diameter of the observable universe is about 28 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years). It contains over 100 billion galaxies, each galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars, and nearly every star has one or more planets revolving around it. Unfortunately, those of us without direct access to the Hubble Space Telescope don’t get to see any of that for ourselves, so let me take you on quick tour of the observable universe.
PLAY VIDEO
This is our privileged planet from about 100 miles up. It’s one of the—if not the—most unique planets in the universe. You may not be able to tell, but our planet is revolving around the sun at a distance of 93 million miles. As we pull back another 240,000 miles our moon quickly comes into view. Then Mars, our nearest neighbor, at 33 million miles away. As we clear the asteroid belt you’ll see Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, fly by followed by the familiar rings of Saturn. We’re now about 1.2 billion kilometers from the earth. As we pull back even further, leaving our solar system, you’ll see hundreds of thousands of stars. The bright blue one here is Sirius—it’s not the biggest star, but it is the brightest star ever discovered. As we exit our little cul de sac in the Milky Way, we’ll pass through some interstellar clouds or nebula. The lights that you see passing by are not stars, but globular clusters—hundreds of thousands of stars grouped tightly together. As we pull back even farther, the Milk Way galaxy finally comes into view. It’s 100,000 light years across, but it’s just one among billions of other galaxies that are now coming into view. As we continue to zoom out, you’re seeing clusters of galaxies until we finally reach the edge of the observable universe—everything that can be seen. Everything beyond this point remains unseen.
Doesn’t that just blow your mind!?
Jesus, Paul says, “made all things seen and unseen.” He made it all. Let me just switch gears for a minute and think about the detailed intricacy of the other side of creation.
Did you know that a caterpillar has 228 separate muscles in its head? Isn’t that crazy? The average elm tree has approximately 6 million leaves on it. Your own heart generates enough pressure that it could squirt blood up to 30 feet. (I don’t recommend testing that). Have you ever thought about how creative and incredible Jesus is?
He didn’t have to make hundreds of different kinds of bananas, but he did. He didn’t have to put 3,000 species of trees within on square mile in the Amazon jungle, but he did. He didn’t have to create you, but he did. And everything about you is unique—your finger prints, your heartbeat, your DNA, even your laugh. Have you ever met anyone who laughs exactly the same way as you?
Whatever Christ’s reasons for such diversity, creativity, and sophistication in the universe, on earth and in you, the point of it all is His glory! Christ’s creation speaks of himself, reflecting who he is and what he’s like. His art, his handiwork, his creation all echo the truth that he is glorious! There is no one like him. That’s why Paul writes, “He…is supreme over all creation” (Colossians 1:15 NLT).
This is the Christ of Christianity. So first of all, Jesus is our Creator. Furthermore, Paul says Jesus is our Commander.
• OUR COMMANDER
In August 1994, a Korean Air jet skidded across a rain soaked runway and rammed a safety barricade while landing in Cheju, Korea. Thankfully, all 160 passengers escaped safely just moments before the plane exploded into flames. What was the cause of the accident? According to news reports, the pilot and the co-pilot had gotten into a fist fight… over who was in charge of the landing controls!
You’d think they would have covered that in the flight manual! There’s just something in our human nature that makes us want to be the one in charge, isn’t there?
In the church, though, we’re not the ones in charge. Christ is in charge. Paul puts it this way: “Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything” (Colossians 1:18 NLT).
What does it mean that Christ is the head of the church? It means he’s the boss. Christ is in charge. What he says goes. He calls all the shots and he has all the authority. He is our Commander in Chief. In fact, Paul writes elsewhere, “God has put Christ over all rulers, authorities, powers, and kings, not only in this world but also in the next. God put everything under his power and made him the head over everything for the church, which is Christ’s body” (Ephesians 1:21-23 NCV).
Jesus is in charge of his church. This is his church. I’m not the head of the church, the elders are not the head of the church, the deacons are not the head of the church, the president of the Southern Baptist convention isn’t the head of the church, and the Pope isn’t the head of the church. Jesus and Jesus alone is the head of the church. We follow his leadership and his teaching. If I were to put an organizational chart up here showing who’s responsible for what ministries in our church, right at the top would be the name Jesus Christ.
The problem with that is—just like those Korean pilots, we like to be the ones in charge. We like to call the shots. We want to know how the money is being spent. We throw our weight around when an important decision needs to be made. And we grumble and complain when things don’t go our way.
Listen if Jesus really is supreme over all creation—if he’s powerful enough to speak the cosmos into existence and brilliant enough to fashion together the trillions of cells that make up every detail of who you are—then the smartest thing we can do is follow his leadership. Surrender to Christ’s sovereignty—both in our personal lives and in our church.
An African convert, while visiting a school where girls were learning to sow, noticed a simple principle: wherever the needle went, the thread followed. That, he decided, represented his relationship to Jesus. He prayed: "O Lord, You are the needle and I am the thread." Wherever Christ led, he would follow. The same should be true in our lives and relationships with Jesus.
First, Jesus is our creator. Furthermore, he’s our commander. Finally, Jesus is our conciliator.
• OUR CONCILIATOR
A conciliator is someone facilitates reconciliation—a peacemaker or mediator.
Maybe you know what it’s like to be alienated, separated or estranged from someone you were once close with. Maybe it’s a father and son, or mother and daughter, siblings, or just two close friends. They get into a fight or an argument. Things are said that can never be unsaid. Feelings are hurt and the good relationship they once enjoyed is strained to the breaking point. They stop talking to each other and they just drift further and further apart.
According to Paul, that’s what happened between us and God. And it was our fault. He writes, “You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions” (Colossians 1:21 NLT). We have broken our relationship with God, time and time again. We sin. He hurt God greatly with our disobedience and our rebellion. God does not have to forgive us. In fact, he could just as easily hold a grudge and banish us for eternity. Instead, God choose reconciliation.
Paul continues, “Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault” (Colossians 1:22 NLT).
This is the gospel—the Good News for you, for me, for everyone. Our faults, failures and foibles drove a wedge between us and God—so much so that he saw us as his enemies. But despite all of our sins and shortcoming, God still loved us and wanted to have a relationship with us that would last into eternity. So God became a man and visited this tiny blue planet in this vast universe that he created. As the God-man, Jesus lived the perfect, sinless life that we never could and died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. The Old Rugged Cross was tinged red with the blood of the creator of the cosmos. Through his sacrifice, Jesus reconnected us with God. He allows us to know God personally and to spend all of eternity in his glorious presence.
God comes to us through his Son, Jesus Christ, embracing us, calling us brother and sister, and saying, "I forgive you. I don't hold your sins against you. I want to walk with you and be your friend." Jesus makes that possible.
Conclusion
So as Paul surveyed the doctrinal dysfunction going on in Colossae, he knew the place to start was Jesus. It’s all about Jesus. If they could get on the right page when it comes Christ, then they could get back on track. So who is Jesus?
First, he’s our creator—all things were created by him and for him.
Further, he’s our commander—he is head of the church, which is his body.
Finally, he’s our conciliator—through we are reconciled to God.
The question now is—once we know who Jesus is and the place he holds in universe, the church and our own lives, how does that change things? How does that affect our actions, attitudes, relationships and more? We’ll explore those questions as we continue through the book of Colossians.
Invitation
In the meantime, if you’re ready to put your faith and hope in Christ alone—then I want to invite you to talk with me after service. But more importantly, talk with Jesus. Maybe as we stand and sing you can just stand and pray. Acknowledge Christ as creator and commander, and then ask him to be your conciliator. Then you can stand before God clothed in Christ’s goodness and glory. Let’s stand and sing.
