Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 4th June 2023), continuing our new series in the letter Colossians.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
‘You are everything and everything is you’
Point of No Return, The Stylistics
As way of a reminder, Paul is writing this letter to a community of believers he has never met, who live in a city called Colossae. Paul’s in prison. He has heard about them through a fellow worker, Epaphras, who had come to visit him.
Paul writes this letter because there are whispers of what became known as Gnosticism creeping into the Colossian church. We’ll hear a little more of its ideas today.
Paul doesn’t really focus on the content of this Gnostic teaching. He hints at it, and he subverts its own language. But Paul’s tactic is simply to focus on Jesus. As he will say, at the start of chapter 3, he wants them to set their sights on the realities of Jesus’ reign.
And so, that’s what Paul helps them do.
From the opening verses, 1-8, Paul focuses on the Good News (the Gospel) of Jesus’ Lordship and its widespread fruitfulness. His prayer, in verses 9-14, pulsates with the desire to see the Colossians grasp God’s revelation in Jesus to the fullest extent possible.
Then, in verses 15-20, which we’ll look at today, this letter turns into a musical; Paul suddenly breaks out in song.
READ: COLOSSIANS 1:15—23 (NLT)
CHICKEN SUPREME
During my school years, I was exposed to a strange set of substances known as ‘school dinners’.
Secondary school was an improvement on primary—the desserts where fantastic. But primary school was hit and miss; there were less options, you had to eat what you was given, and sometimes it was hard to know what it was you were eating. There was always a name for the dish, telling you what it was supposed to be. But, more often than not, the food failed to live up to its name.
The main example of this was a dish that consisted of lumps of leathery meat drifting around in a watery white sauce. It was described as ‘Chicken Supreme’.
If you’re going to call something supreme, it does build-up a certain level of expectation.
As a young child, though, I had no idea what the word supreme meant. My definition was solely based on my primary school’s imitation of Chicken Supreme. For most of my time at primary school, I thought supreme meant, ‘bland, garbage, disgusting slop; something that should be spat out.’
Adding to the confusion was that, in the morning, as we got ready for school, the radio in our kitchen would be playing music by someone called, Diana Ross and the Supremes. I used to think, ‘why would anyone call themselves disgusting slop!’
As I got older and wiser, I came to realise what supreme really meant, and that some things, like The Supremes, merit the name, and other things, like Chicken Supreme, don’t.
Supreme doesn’t mean garbage. It means the highest, the greatest, and the best.
To put it another way, to be supreme, to have supremacy, means that there is nothing higher, nothing greater, and nothing better.
Supremacy is the theme of this song (or creed) that Paul recites in Colossians. Jesus is supreme. There’s nothing greater, higher or better. So, if you have what is truly supreme, you don’t need anything else.
Some Gnostic teaching was peddling stinky ideas about Jesus’ status in comparison to other “spiritual authorities”, so-called “angelic rulers” and “elemental kingdoms”. Jesus, they suggested, wasn’t supreme.
Paul’s response to this is to sing.
It’s an odd approach, on the surface of it. But, if you want, you could think about it like a boxing match. As the contenders enter the ring, the fanfare starts; music begins to play and the attributes and accolades of the boxer are suddenly proclaimed.
It’s like Paul is saying, ‘In the reeeedddd corner, we have Jesus…’, and he lists Jesus’ qualifications. But, Paul doesn’t even look at what’s in the other corner of the ring. That’s his point. There is no point looking at the other corner, because there is no equivalent contender to Jesus Christ.
Jesus is unrivalled.
As we ourselves often sing in song, ‘You [Jesus] have no rival. You have no equal.’[i]
Paul’s song has a lot to say. I feel that I will barely touch the surface here, so I apologize. But, oddly for me, there’s three things I want to focus on that Paul is proclaiming: Jesus is unrivalled in his substance; unrivalled in his status; and unrivalled in his saving work.
UNRIVALLED SUBSTANCE
Jesus is Deity. Full stop.
In verse 19, Paul sings, ‘For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ’. He says the same thing again in Col. 2:9; ‘For in Christ the fullness of God lives in a human body, and you are complete (you are full) through your union with Christ.’
The word translated fullness is a Greek word, Plērōma (play-roh-ma). In an ancient, non-religious context, it was used describe a fully stocked and fully crewed ship. It was the best way of saying that nothing is missing, nothing is lacking, everything was present, and that there was no room left for anything else. You can’t squeeze another thing in, the whole residence and capacity of the ship is taken up.
In other words, Paul is saying that all of God—everything God is, with nothing lacking—is present, with no room for anything else, in all of Jesus. Jesus, in his totality, is Deity. All of God is in the all of Christ. All of Christ is all of God.
As Paul puts it at the beginning of the song, Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). When we see the Son, we don’t catch a glimpse of God, or bits of God, here and there, mixed in with other things. We see Deity in its entirety. Plērōma.
As I’ve said many times before, if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.
The writer of Hebrews, in their introduction, puts it the same way; ‘everything about the Son represents God exactly.’ (Heb. 1:3, NLT, italics mine).
John’s Gospel, in his introduction, again, says the same things: ‘No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.’ (Jn. 1:18, NIV)
Jesus is no mere photograph of God. Jesus is not some demigod or partially god, either. Nor is Jesus some ingredient in a recipe called ‘God’. Jesus, the Son, is fully stocked, with nothing lacking, nothing diluted, with the substance of Deity. He has always been, since before anything was made, God (cf. Jn. 1:1; Heb. 1:1-3).
Even in his incarnation—when the Son became fully human—Jesus didn’t lay aside his divine nature. He did, as Paul writes in Philippians 2:6, lay aside his Divine rights. Yet, everything of God, of divine substance, was present in his humanity.
I don’t want to go into any deep conversations on the Trinity, here. But, the Father and the Son, though we describe them as two distinct persons, are not two different substances, and they are not two separate Gods.[ii] If you could crack open the Son, you will see the Father. If you could crack open the Father, you would find nothing in the Father that isn’t present in the Son.
This would challenge some gnostic ideas.
They treated the experience of God in the same way we collect stickers for a sticker book. Seeing God, for them, was like seeing Manchester United: you needed the full team—every player sticker, the manager and coach stickers, and the shiny badge sticker—before you could say that you had the fullness of Manchester United. If you wanted to see God fully, then sure, Jesus was a sticker in that book, they would have said, but you need some other stickers, too.
But the New Testament writers, including Paul, won’t have this.
No one else, as Jesus put it himself, gives access to the Father. [iii] If you want to encounter the substance of the living God, then Jesus is it. Jesus is unrivalled in his substance.
UNRIVALLED STATUS
Jesus is also unrivalled in his status.
In this song, after Paul sings about Jesus being the visible image of the invisible God, he also strikes the chord that he existed before anything else was created. Or, to keep to the Greek and the way most translations put it, Jesus is the ‘firstborn’.
Now, if there was ever a verse that has caused debate, this is it. What does it mean that Jesus is the firstborn? Does this mean Jesus was made first, or born first, and then everything else was made, as some ancient and modern Arian voices have argued? And, if this is the case, does this mean Jesus is a created thing?
No, and no.
The Greek word is prōtotokos (pro-tot-ok’-os), and yes, it can literally mean the first born child. But it wasn’t its only use. It also means having the highest place and was used describe governance.
There’s a pertinent earth-bound, human and scriptural example, that does involve children, in Jacob.
When Jacob, the Old Testament patriarch, is on his deathbed and hands out the blessings and inheritance to his family, he does not make his first born son, Reuben, the firstborn in rank. Reuben, and the next eldest child, Simeon, are stripped of their status, for dishonouring things they had done. Instead, it is Judah, the third eldest, who is declared firstborn (see Genesis 49: 1:1-12)[iv]
Judah has all authority in the household of Jacob; he is over it all. Ergo, being firstborn is not stating who popped into existence first. Being firstborn means having all the status, standing and authority of the father. It’s primacy of rule.
Tellingly, after giving Judah all authority, Jacob then goes on to say something interesting:
‘The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the rulers staff from his descendants, until the coming of the one to whom it belongs, the one whom all nations will obey.’ (Gen. 49:10)
This is a startling promise. Judah, it turns out, is merely a human steward, until the One to whom it all belongs, and to whom it has always belonged, comes into the world.
Another example that would have been in Paul’s mind when he penned these words, along with Jacob’s deathbed words to Judah, is in Psalm 89:27. In this song, furthering the words of Jacob to Judah, God promises King David, a descendant of Judah, that He will highly exalt one of his ancestors, saying, ‘I will appoint him to be my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth.’ (NIV, italics mine).
Again, firstborn is about status, and, as stated in this Psalm, the firstborn God has promised to exalt will be more than just the leader of Israel. He will be the King of all kings.
Picking up the prophecy of Jacob, picking up the promise of Psalm 89, Paul, in Colossians, is not talking about Jesus being born, or created. Paul is saying that Jesus is the King of Creation. That’s why I like how the NIV words it, when it translates it ‘firstborn over all creation.’
Jesus is not some created thing. ‘If firstborn literally means first created [then] it seems odd [for Paul] to support that claim with an argument that all created things were created through him (for Jesus would then be one of those “all” things)’.[v]
Paul is proclaiming Jesus as the rightful ruler and rightful heir of everything in the cosmos, whether it’s visible or invisible. As he makes it rather clear, I think, in this song; Jesus existed before everything else (v.17), everything that exists was made through him (v.16), everything is held together by him (v.17), and everything was for him (v.16).
It all belongs to Jesus. Creation is Jesus’ inheritance.
Paul’s not the only one to make these claims.
Again, like we saw earlier, the opening of John’s gospel makes the same claim: ’In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.’ (Jn. 1:1-3, NIV).
The writer of Hebrews also opens up with the same claim, ‘[God] has spoken to us through his Son, to whom he has given ownership of everything and through whom he created the universe.’ (Heb. 1:2, CJB, italics mine)
I should add, that Paul also states in this song that Jesus is the head of the church, and he’s the first in the Resurrection. Whatever it is, Jesus is first; he precedes and leads it all.
How does this status matter?
There are many reasons. To pick one reason, that has often been neglected, and because it’s been neglected, has left room for gnostic ideas to creep back into Christian circles: Creation, the Cosmos, is Jesus’ workmanship. It belongs to Jesus and the goal of creation is found in Him. And, echoing Genesis 1’s Creation poem, as Paul is also doing, Creation is terrific.
I know I am going to blow some minds with this thought, but we need to realise that Jesus is not simply a response to a creation that has fallen. He has always been in relation to it as its creator and sustainer, and yes, now as it’s saviour. Without Jesus, there wouldn’t be a world in the first place. Everything that exists, has its end, it’s purpose, it’s goal in Jesus Christ.
Let me say that again: Jesus is not just a response to a sinful world. He has always been the source of life to this world, and forever will be. The world cannot find life anywhere else.
As Paul writes elsewhere, in Ephesians, the plan, the goal, has always been, at the right time, ‘to bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything on Heaven and on earth.’ (Eph. 1:10)
In 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul talks about the certainty of resurrection, and when death is truly eliminated, Paul says that overall plan is that God the Father, through the authority given to the Son, will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28)
Remembering all of this is essential, because Gnostic ideas (both then and now) see the material world—from mountains, galaxies and human bodies—as worthless. In their view, it is utterly and incurably evil. Some even claimed that creation was the work of an evil deity. They claimed that the goal of the real God was to liberate spirits from the material bodies they had been imprisoned within.
They said this, because, sure, evil existed—summed up in death itself. Agreed, our world does have some serious problems. No one can (or should) deny this. Nevertheless, gnostic ideas are wrong in saying that the cosmos in worthless, and utterly and incurably evil.
Mud, mucus and membranes do not repel God. They were God’s idea. Actually, God even became mucus and membranes when he became human. Let’s not forget that! Paul stresses it a few times in this poem. Creation, Incarnation and Resurrection, which are all mentioned in this poem, are all physical and material Divine acts that forever prove that God is affirming of, and faithful to, the material world.
‘Jesus Christ, says this poem boldly, is the one through whom and for whom creation was made in the first place… It was his idea, his workmanship. It is beautiful [and awe-inspiring]. [When] the beauty [and complexity] of the world makes you catch your breath, remember that it is like that because of Jesus. … [Yes], there’s ugliness and evil […]; but that wasn’t the original intent, and God has now acted to heal the world. The Jesus through whom the world was made in the first place, is the same Jesus through whom the world is redeemed.’[vi]
Paul says something huge in verse 20. Sure, in verse 21, he moves onto how we, humans, have been reconciled. But, before he does, he takes us up into something that is much bigger than us. Somehow, through the cross of Christ, God has declared peace not solely to people, but he has made peace with everything on Heaven and earth.
I’m sorry to disappoint some people, but God is not out to destroy the world; his plan, his unchanging plan, is to redeem it and reign in it. And our salvation, our own redemption, does not consist of liberating souls from a material existence. ‘Rather, salvation is conceived of wholistically, as the deliverance of the whole person from death to life, as resurrection presupposes, to live in a cosmos redeemed from destruction and death.’[vii]
If Sin, Satan and Death are allowed to have this creation, if God just starts again without redeeming and renewing this world, then Jesus is not unrivalled. If creation is utterly and incurably evil, then this implies a power greater than Jesus. However, as Paul will go on to write in Col. 2:15, all these other so-called “powers” have been disarmed, defeated and publicly shamed by Christ’s victory on the cross.
As the writer of Revelation hears it:
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.”
Revelation 11:15, NIV
Jesus is unrivalled in his status.
Jesus is King and creation is his territory. It’s his world, and there is not a power in existence—in heaven, on earth, or under the earth—that can get in the way of God achieving his purposes for it (cf. Romans 8:35-39).
UNRIVALLED SAVING WORK
This brings me to the third and final thing I want to highlight in this poem: Jesus’ unrivalled saving work.
Unlike gnostic thinking, salvation is not about us escaping existence, or about us doing our best to get God to notice us and change his mind so he will permit us to escape. God’s plan, which includes us, is to redeem the whole of existence, to reconcile it all to himself. Most importantly, ‘it was God who began the whole process of salvation.’[viii]
Redemption was God’s idea, God’s initiative—it flowed from God’s own self. We did not have to do anything to bend God’s arm up his back and compel him.
The only thing we brought to the table was our alienation and enmity, as Paul says in verse 21. I need to be clear here: it is not that God alienated us, or that God hated us. We disaffected and we were hostile toward God.
God’s attitude toward us has never changed, and has never been anything else than this: God has always loved us and wants to bring us home, to restore us to our place in all this, as holy and without fault in his sight.
Sometimes, it has been suggested that Jesus did something to change God’s attitude toward us. This is a gnostic idea that finds no justification in the scriptures. ‘God was pleased’, as Paul writes, ‘to have all his fullness live in Jesus and reconcile everything to himself’. Or, to put that as John 3:16 does, ‘it was because God so loved the world that he sent his Son.’[ix]
To put this another way: In spite of human hostility, God’s posture was to seek reconciliation with humanity, God comes to make peace with a warring enemy. We are the hostile force. The cross is not Jesus protecting us from God’s violent hostility; it is God responding lovingly to ours.
God may have supremacy, but God is not a domineering tyrant. Being a tyrant is what we, humans, do with supremacy, and its’ why we fail in displaying (imaging) what God is like. What we do with supremacy, how we get it and maintain it, has caused so much ugliness in this world. In contrast, Jesus, the true image of God, unrivalled in substance and status, shows us that God’s supremacy leads to self-giving.
The wonderful A. W. Tozer, once wrote, ‘Salvation was bought not with Jesus’ fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that he might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.’[x]
No one can take any credit for this, as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:4-10. None us could save ourselves. None of us can say we don’t need saving. God does it all. Salvation is a claim that belongs to Jesus, and to Jesus only. He is the unrivalled Saviour. Or, as Acts puts it, there is no other name in which we are saved.
Salvation is found in no one else, because no one else has the means nor the authority—the substance and the status—to achieve such a thing.
No one except the Son.
And, if the Son, the One with unrivalled supremacy, sets you free, then you are free indeed (Jn. 8:36).
When we consider the unrivalled substance of Jesus, his unrivalled status, and his unrivalled saving work, and the more we realise that God is the God of utter self-giving love, why would we ever want anything else?
You can’t get anything higher, greater or better that this!
So, as Paul encourages, believe in this truth! Trust in it. Stand firmly in it.
‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.’
The Apostle Peter, Acts 4:12 (NIV)
[i] From the Hillsong chorus, What a Beautiful Name
[ii] We Trinitarians state that God is three persons (there is a distinction of person in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit), but that each person is fully God, and that there is only one God (the three persons are in unity). Yes, this is a mind-bending concept to grapple with. However, though complicated, it does a better job of handling the tensions ingrained in the New Testament than the models of Modalism, Arianism and Tritheism.
[iii] As per the conversation recorded in John 14:6-11, ‘Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’
[iv] Jacob does a similar thing with Joseph’s sons in the preceding chapter, of Genesis 48.
[v] Anthony C. Thiselton, Colossians: A Short and Pastoral Commentary (Cascade Book, Eugene, Oregon, 2020), p. 34
[vi] Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (SPCK, London, 2012), p. 152
[vii] Marianne Meye Thompson, The Two Horizons New Testament: Colossians & Philemon (Eerdmanns, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK, 2005), p. 43.
[viii] William Barclay, The New Daily Study Bible: The Letters to the Philippines, Colossians and Thessalonians (Saint Andrews Press, Edinburgh, 2003), p. 142
[ix] Ibid
[x] A. W. Tozer, Preparing for Jesus’ Return: Daily Live the Blessed Hope.
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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