Colossians 1.15-23
The Christ Hymn of Colossians is one of my favourite passages. Here Paul takes my inadequate little picture of Christ, of the Father and of the world, and he blows it apart. In its place, we’re given a panoramic vista of the glories of creation, new creation, the church and the supremacy of Christ over it all. With this song, Paul launches a raid in broad daylight to liberate us from our inadequate pictures of our world and our saviour.
You see, I tend to shrink Jesus down to my size (which in my case is extra small). Often I have a Christ who bends to my will, submits to my desires and abides by my agenda. Paul blows this little picture to smithereens with a description of the real Christ: risen, ascended, exalted and enthroned over all creation, reigning over every power; the fullness of God, the one in whom all things were created and all things are reconciled.
Unsurprisingly, when I exchange the real Christ for one shrunk down to my size, it turns out he’s not really enough. I’m left with only my own strength, I remain in my own sins and struggle alone through my own storms.
But when I realise that Jesus isn’t really small like that, he’s magnificent like this, well that’s the most astonishing, liberating news imaginable.
Paul is writing to the Colossians because their picture of who Christ was and what kind of world they lived in was under siege. They were tempted to move on from Christ. To move on to the next thing, the next level of religious knowledge or practice or wisdom. They also lived in the shadow of the Roman Empire and were daily bombarded by its Imperial Cult. Caesar was Lord, he was proclaimed as the ‘saviour’, ‘the beginning of life and vitality’ and the one who ‘put an end to war and set all things in order.’
Well, here Paul imprints on their imagination and plants in their hearts the truth that Christ is sufficient and Christ is supreme. There’s no moving on from Christ. Any step away from him is a step further away from fullness of life, not a step towards it. And there is no one who is worthy of your full allegiance and worship except him.
We aren’t assailed by the demands of a Roman ruler, but there are plenty of other things which demand our undivided allegiance and which compete for our worship. There are many things we look to in order to satisfy us apart from Christ. ‘Enough’ is what we rush to find around the next corner, rather than what we have already found resting in the presence of Christ. We are similarly bombarded by the propaganda of a world which tells us life is found anywhere but Christ.
We need to resist this by refreshing our imagination with images of the real Christ, the one who perfectly reveals to us the invisible God. Christ is the firstborn over all creation; the one who holds the title to it all. All things were created in him, through him and for him. When we ask what this world is all about and why we’re here, we are not answered by a cruel and empty silence. Instead we hear a cosmic story of love, as the Father creates all things in, through and for the Son. A cosmic love story in which we are invited to participate.
Verses 21-23 tell the story of our invitation. We were once estranged from God, hostile to him, doing evil things. A threefold exclusion from the presence and love of God.
But now Christ has made peace with us by his blood. The one who created all things took on our physical flesh and submitted to death in our place. Christ, the raison d’être of the cosmos, the reason for all things, was given for you.
United with Christ in his death, resurrection and ascension we are now holy, blameless and irreproachable before the Father. In place of a threefold exclusion, we receive a threefold welcome into the presence and love of God, an invitation to join by the Spirit in the delight shared between the Father and the Son.
Paul tells the Colossians, do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.
That is what we also need to hear. If we hear it with a familiar sigh or a tired nod, let us lift our eyes from the little Christ we have made in our own image and look to the real Christ, the perfect image of the invisible God, risen, ascended and enthroned over all.
Father, thank you for Jesus. Thank you that you have reconciled all things through him and that by faith we are united to him so that your delight in him is the same as your delight in us. Please help us to live with the grain of the universe – along with all things would we also live in, through and for Christ. When other things demand our allegiance and attention, refresh our vision of you and fix our gaze so that we delight in Christ’s sufficiency and supremacy.
Amen.