Colossians 1:15-17 — Firstborn of All

Frank Edwards: We are in Colossians one today, verses fifteen through seventeen, and I want to just read it before we say a word about it, because the words themselves do the heavy lifting here. Let me read it slowly.

Frank Edwards: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in the heavens and on the earth, visible things and invisible things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things are held together."

Linda Brown: The last line is the one that stopped me. "In him all things are held together." Right now, present tense. So everything I can see out that window, the trees, the road, the person walking their dog, Paul is saying Jesus is actively holding all of it together this second. That is a much bigger claim than I usually let it be.

Frank Edwards: That is exactly the claim, and it is the claim this whole passage builds toward, so let me start where Paul starts. "He is the image of the invisible God." Now picture where the Colossians lived. You could not walk through that city without meeting the face of a god. Statues in every temple. The emperor's head stamped on every coin in your pocket, with an inscription calling him the son of a deity. And the whole world ran on this assumption, that a god needed a representation, that the carved image was how you got access to the god behind it. To handle the coin was to handle the image, and to handle the image was to bow to the power. So when Paul says Christ "is the image of the invisible God," he is walking into a city crowded with stone faces and stamped emperors, all of them promising to show you deity, and he sets down one living Person and says, the search is over. The invisible God has one true likeness. He is not made of bronze. He does not sit in a temple you have to travel to. He walked out of a grave. What does he do to all those other faces that claimed to show you God?

Linda Brown: He quietly knocks them all down and points at one man. It is less a poetic compliment and more a demolition.

Frank Edwards: A demolition. That is the right word, and hold onto it, because there is a second demolition coming in a minute. But first there is a word right after "image" that has genuinely divided the church, and I do not want to skate past it. "The firstborn of all creation."

Linda Brown: Firstborn. That one has always bothered me, honestly, and I think it bothers a lot of people. If Jesus is the firstborn of creation, doesn't that just mean he is the first thing God made? Like the oldest kid in the family? Because that sounds like he is a creature, top of the pile maybe, but still a creature.

Frank Edwards: You have put your finger on the exact reading the passage exists to refuse, and here is the thing that most people miss. Scripture had already stretched that word past its plain meaning centuries before Paul ever reached for it. Go back to Psalm eighty-nine. God says of David, "I will also appoint him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth." Now David was the youngest of Jesse's eight sons. Born last. And God calls him firstborn. It cannot mean birth order, can it. It means rank. Supreme, heir, holding the place of highest honor. And it goes back further. In Exodus God tells Pharaoh, "Israel is my son, my firstborn," and Israel was not the oldest nation on earth. The word marks privilege, inheritance, a people set above the rest. How is Scripture preparing its own reader, centuries in advance?

Linda Brown: The Old Testament is handing you the definition before you get to the verse that needs it.

Frank Edwards: It is, and Paul even hands you his own definition a few verses later. Colossians one, eighteen. He calls Christ "the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence." Preeminence. First in rank, first in glory. Paul finishes the thought himself, so we are not guessing. Does this feel like academic fine print to you?

Linda Brown: It feels like a lot of weight on one word. Why does it matter so much whether "firstborn" means oldest or means highest-ranking?

Frank Edwards: It is the opposite of technical. It is the whole faith. Give me the next two phrases and watch a wall go up that no creature can cross. "By him all things were created." And then, "all things have been created through him, and for him." Now think about that. A creature cannot be the agent through whom everything was made and also the goal for whom everything was made. You cannot be the source and the point and also be one item inside it. The One through whom the thrones and the dominions and every invisible power came into being cannot himself be counted among them. He stands on the other side of the line. With God. As God. Do you see what the grammar is doing?

Linda Brown: The grammar is doing the theology. He is either the maker or the made, and Paul keeps putting him with the maker.

Frank Edwards: One more word seals it, quietly, and you would miss it in English. Look at "he is before all things." Not "he was before all things." Is. When Scripture talks about everything else that exists, it reaches for the language of coming-to-be. Things were made. Were created. Came into being. But of the Son, Paul uses the language of pure being. He simply is. Everything you can name, the desk, the stars, you, me, had a first moment when it flickered into existence out of nothing. It has a "was not" behind it. The Son does not. There is no "was not." He is the ground beneath all beginnings.

Linda Brown: I am going to be honest, I can feel the difference but I am not sure I can say why it lands so hard.

Frank Edwards: Then let me tell you where the church felt it hard, because this exact sentence became a battle line. In the fourth century a priest named Arius taught that Christ was the highest, the first, the best of all creatures, but a creature all the same. And his slogan was, "there was a time when the Son was not." He grabbed "firstborn" to prove it. But he could never get past this verse. Because a creature has a "was not." A creature was carried across the line from nothing into something. And Colossians puts Christ on the far side of that line as the One doing the carrying. The Maker cannot be a thing he made. That is not word games. That is whether the person you pray to is God or is a very impressive stranger.

Linda Brown: I have a name for how easy it is to slip into thinking of Jesus as, sort of, the manager God sends to deal with us. Close to God. Standing next to God. Not actually God. And this passage just will not let me keep him there.

Frank Edwards: It will not, and there is a reason it will not, which brings us back to that second demolition I promised you. Because there is a real fight underneath these verses, in Colossae specifically. Now we have talked before about the strange teaching that had crept into that little bypassed town, so I will not re-lay all of it, but the shape of it matters right here. It taught that the cosmos was run by ranks of spiritual beings. Thrones. Dominions. Principalities. Powers. And those words are not random, notice, they are the exact words Paul lists. Angelic authorities you had to honor, appease, climb past, rung by rung, to reach the invisible God. Christ, in their scheme, might be high on that ladder. He was not above it.

Linda Brown: The ladder is the part that gets me, because I do that. Not with angels, but I absolutely live like there is a stack of things between me and God that I have to get right first.

Frank Edwards: Then hear how Paul answers, because it is stunning. He does not argue that Christ belongs at the top of the ladder. He does not add Christ to the list. He removes the list. "Whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers," the very beings you are being urged to fear and appease, were made through him and for him. You cannot mediate your way to the God whose image you already have standing right in front of you. Every authority the Colossians shivered under, Christ created. And here is the pastoral point, the reason Paul bothered. He holds that whole shivering structure of the universe together at this very moment. And he holds you. Nothing stands between you and God that Christ did not make and does not rule.

Linda Brown: Say more about why these lines sound the way they do, because reading it aloud earlier, it almost has a beat to it. The repeated "all things." The balance.

Frank Edwards: You have a good ear, and this is worth naming carefully because it shapes how we read the whole letter. Many scholars think these verses were not composed fresh by Paul at his writing desk. They think this was an early hymn. Something the churches were already singing in worship before Paul ever put it in a letter. Listen for it. The balanced lines. The parallel phrases, "in the heavens and on the earth," "visible and invisible." That drumbeat of "all things," over and over. It has the feel of a confession set to music. Paul is reaching for a song the Colossians already knew by heart, and pressing it against the exact lie they were being told. What does he do with their own worship?

Linda Brown: He takes it and shows them what it actually meant all along. They are being handed back their own song as their defense.

Frank Edwards: What it meant all along. And that is a beautiful thing to sit under, that the deepest theology in the New Testament may have first lived on the lips of ordinary believers, singing. Now pull this down to the ground for us.

Linda Brown: That phrase from the very start is still ringing. "In him all things are held together." That is not just the galaxies. If it is true, it is my Monday morning. The inbox I do not want to open. The thing I am dreading.

Frank Edwards: It is your Monday morning exactly, and Paul gives it an address you can use. "All things were created through him, and for him." For him. Which means the unglamorous task you would rather skip, the report, the dishes in the sink, the email you keep leaving unanswered, it was made for somebody. So before you open the laptop, ten seconds. "This one is for you, Jesus." And then do the boring thing as though you were handing it straight to him. Because you are.

Linda Brown: The word that catches me there is "for." Not just that everything comes from him, but that it is for him. That is the part I resist, if I am honest, because "for him" means there is no corner of my life I get to fence off and label private property.

Frank Edwards: The fence. Yes. And you will feel exactly where your fence is this week, in a specific moment. A request comes. From your spouse, a coworker, a friend who is barely holding on, and it asks for the thing you most want to keep. Your time when you are already exhausted. Your money when the budget is tight. An apology you are convinced you do not owe. Everything in you files it instantly under "mine to decide." That is the moment. That is where "for him" stops being a doctrine and starts costing something. What happens when the cost actually arrives?

Linda Brown: I cannot pretend I can muscle through that on grit. I have tried. Willpower snaps right at the moment it is actually needed.

Frank Edwards: It does snap, and this is where the gospel is not one more demand on the pile. You are not white-knuckling a stranger's terms. You belong to the One who made you for himself and then died to have you. His hand opened first. On a cross. For you. You loosen your grip on the thing not to earn anything, but because his grip was pried open before he ever asked anything of yours. Matthew Henry put the shape of it perfectly, that the point is "that we should die to sin, and live henceforth not to ourselves, but to Him." Not to ourselves. To him. That is what "for him" finally means. What does it look like when those same hands that hold the universe actually hold you?

Linda Brown: The same hands making and holding the universe are the hands that were opened up for me. Being held and being owned by him are the same gesture, and that is the thing I want to actually hold onto.

Frank Edwards: The same gesture. You have said it better than I did. The One in whom all things hold together is holding you, and he will not let go, and he holds you with hands that have already proven what they will do to keep you. What would you leave people with?

Linda Brown: Here is a question, not a chore. Where is your fence? Name the one thing you have quietly marked "mine to decide." And this week, when the request comes for exactly that thing, loosen your grip on it. Not because you have to. Because his was opened first.

Frank Edwards: Do something with that today. The Christ holding the galaxies together is holding you together right now. Before you go, we have one thing to mention.

Frank Edwards: This show is part of the Dig Deeper app, so if you do not have it yet, look for Dig Deeper wherever you get your apps.