Claiming our Riches in Christ: The Book of Colossians
02/02/2003 - He's Number One!
I can remember it like it was yesterday. Standing on the winner's podium on the pool deck at Lafayette College surrounded by our swim team chanting, "We're #1! We're # 1! We're #1!" As an athlete you dream about the day you can hold up your index finger and have it really mean something. And we could do it that day because we had just won our Super Bowl. For six months we had trained hard, made sacrifices, put ourselves through a lot of pain with this one moment in mind.
And after eight years, first as a swimmer and then as a coach at Drexel University we had finally won the East Coast Conference Championship. And we were thrilled! Before the meet I had given my best locker room speech on what it means to be a champion and not just a winner. "Winners just score the most points," I said, "but champions have character to go with it. They know how to carry themselves with humility and dignity and respect." And we went out that day and won that meet and acted like champions.
It was a great day for the swimming program at Drexel. And it turned out to be the beginning of a dynasty of championships. After that first one we were able to recruit top quality swimmers from all around the area to make the program even stronger, because everyone likes to be part of a winner. Everyone wants to be on a team that's number one. If you're going to train hard and make great sacrifices you want to be part of a team that's going somewhere. And we were that team in our little conference.
God is out to recruit every single one of us for his team. And his team is the winning team. He's the head coach of a dynasty that he wants us to be a part of. He wants us to train hard and make great sacrifices for him because he's worthy of our best. He wants to be the most important thing in our lives because he is number one. And when we join his team then and only then do we have a shot at becoming champions in life.
Is Jesus Christ number one in your life? Is he the most important person in your life? I'm not asking whether or not you believe in him. I'm asking if he has first place in your life above everything else? Above your family? Above your husband or wife? Above your kids? Your job? Your friends? Your sports? Your hobbies? Yourself? Your very life? Is he number one? He deserves to be.
And in this section of Colossians that we're going to look at this morning we're going to see why Jesus Christ deserves to have first place in our lives. If you have a Bible turn to Colossians 1:15-23. Today we continue our series in the book of Colossians called Claiming our Riches in Christ . Over the last two weeks we've been unpacking this powerful prayer of the apostle Paul. Ever since he heard from Epaphras that there was a church in Colosse he had been praying for them.
He had been thanking God for their faith in Christ Jesus, for their love for one another and for their hope of heaven. And we said those are the marks of a strong church. That's the target on the wall for Valley View Community Church.
Then he prayed that they would have endurance and patience and joy in knowing who they are "in Christ." He wants them and us to see how rich we are and how secure we are in Jesus Christ. Jesus deserves to be number one in our lives because of what he's done for us. We have a share in God's inheritance. We are citizens of a new kingdom. We have been redeemed from spiritual bondage. That's the truth about us and that's worth celebrating. That's why we can have joy in the midst of difficult circumstances because our identity in Christ is absolutely secure. Our identity can never be stolen.
But not only does Christ deserve to be number one in our lives because of what he's done for us. He deserves to be number one in our lives because of who he is. He is number one over everything.
In this next section Paul moves from thanksgiving for what Jesus has done to praise for who Jesus is. I don't know of any other paragraph in the entire Bible that packs more praise for Christ per square word than this one, which is why in my Bible it's titled "The Supremacy of Christ." Jesus is number one in everything, which is why he deserves to be number one in your life and mine.
Look at Colossians 1:15-17, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Jesus is Lord of Creation. And the Colossians needed to hear that. You see, the Colossian church was strong, but it wasn't perfect. And in his update Epaphras told Paul about some false teachers called Gnostics that had invaded the church with the Gnostic heresy. The word "gnostic" means knowledge and they were claiming to have special knowledge that these believers needed if they were going to be really spiritual. And Epaphras didn't know how to deal with it.
At the heart of their teaching was the lie that all matter is evil. All material things are evil, only the spirit is good. So they said Jesus Christ isn't God because he had a human body and our bodies are evil because they are made of matter. And God would never put himself in an evil human body. That's what they were teaching. But that's not what the Bible teaches.
They said God didn't create the universe because God is perfect but the universe is evil because the universe is made of matter. So in order to create the universe, God first had to create a lesser god, called an emanation, who then created another lesser god, who created another lesser god until about a million of these lesser gods or emanations were created one of which eventually created the universe. That's what they were teaching. But that's not what the Bible teaches.
It all sounds so strange to us. But not much stranger than the convoluted ways that people view God and Jesus today. The Gnostics claimed that God was distant and detached. Many people today think that God is distant and detached. Maybe you've felt that way. The Gnostics claimed that Jesus was less than God. Many people today think that Jesus is less than God. Maybe you've felt that way.
False teaching always downsizes Jesus Christ and makes him smaller than he really is. False teachers don't usually deny Christ. They just dethrone him. They don't usually deny him prominence. They may say Jesus is the greatest person who ever lived. But they deny him preeminence. They don't want him to be above everything because then they'll have to submit to him and his teaching. They don't usually deny that Jesus can be a way to God. But they certainly deny that he is the way to God.
And all of it is lethal. Be careful that you're not worshiping a downsized Jesus. Anything that reduces the truth about Jesus threatens to keep us from giving him first place in our lives. In order for Jesus to be first in your life, you need to come to grips with who he really is. You cannot think too highly of Jesus Christ.
He is Lord of Creation, Paul says, in this section. He's the image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ is not just a man. He's not some little god at the bottom of this long ladder of emanations. He is the one true God. He has all the characteristics and credentials of God himself. But he also was a man with a human body. He is 100% God and 100% man at the same time. Every other truth about our Christian faith grows out of this one core belief that Jesus Christ is the God Man. To compare any human being, as good or as great as they may be, to Christ is a joke.
But the evil one wants to gnaw away at this truth just like we saw in our series called What's the Difference? In that series we discovered that every religion and cult in the world has tremendous respect for Jesus. They can't deny his influence so they make a place for him somewhere in their system. But he's not God in their system. He's not #1. Don't fall to the temptation of a downsized Jesus, of worshiping a Jesus Lite.
Jesus had two primary ministries when he came to this world. One was to die for our sins, that took him about six hours. The other was to reveal God the Father to us. That took him over three years.
In John 14:8-9, Philip said to Jesus, "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'?"
Jesus is not just a good man or a great teacher he is the image of the invisible God.
He's the firstborn over all creation. That phrase can be a little confusing so let's look at it for a minute. Christ is not the firstborn of creation, in other words, he's not the first thing God created. He is the firstborn over creation. Jesus Christ was not created by God the Father. He is eternal. He's the second person of the eternal Trinity. He's always been around. The term firstborn over creation is not a term of birth order, but a term of position.
In the Old Testament, the firstborn was the heir of all that his Father possessed. He was the eventual owner of his father's estate. It would all belong to him if he were an only son. Usually the position of firstborn went to the son who was born first, but not always. Isaac not Ishmael was the heir of Abraham's fortune. Jacob not Esau was the heir of Isaac's fortune. Jesus is the heir over all creation. He owns it all. Everything. Even us. That's why he deserves to be number one in our lives.
He is the creator of the world. Verse 16, For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things were created by him and for him.
Jesus Christ created it all and it all belongs to him. I love what a Dutch theologian once said, "When Jesus looks at his universe from his exalted throne at the right hand of the Father and he sees the great galaxies whirling in space, the planets and the people upon this planet, all the minute details of life here including the details of our individual lives there is nothing that he sees anywhere of which he cannot say, 'Mine.'" It's all his. So why shouldn't he have first place in our lives?
Think of it? The hands that created the universe were the same hands that reached up to his mother, Mary, when he wanted to be picked up and given a hug. The hands that worked on the wood in the carpenter shop to make tables and chairs are the same hands that made that wood. The hands that divided the loaves and fish to feed the 5,000 were the same hands that made the wheat and the fish that swim in the sea. The hands that stretched themselves out to receive the nails on the cross were the same hands that made the iron that formed the nails and the wood that formed the hammer and the people that drove the nails. He's the creator of the world that's why he deserves to be number one in our lives.
Verse 17, He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the sustainer of the world. He's the glue that holds it all together. All the laws of physics and of gravity and of energy and biology that hold this world together and stagger the mind find their source in Jesus. He didn't just create the universe and walk away from it. He sustains it. He keeps it going.
"God doesn't play dice with the universe," Albert Einstein once said. There is an order to it all, a precision that we can set our watches to and that's because of Jesus. Christ keeps the whole thing working.
I love what one particle physicist from Cornell said about the glue that holds the universe together, "Particle physicists such as myself want to know what are the fundamental invisible building blocks from which all the matter of the universe is made. What are the basic interactions that glue these building blocks together to make the matter that we see around us? Most of us think that the current picture we have is incomplete and there's something deeper. There's something more fundamental working behind what we know. The excitement of our work is we are constantly probing for the chink in the armor of our current understanding that will reveal some clue of the most profound and fundamental structure that's underneath." Two thousand years ago Paul revealed the clue in Colossians 1:17, "I know the chink. It's Jesus. He's the glue." Right now he's keeping all of us from exploding that's why he deserves to be number one.
He is Lord of Creation. He is Lord of the Church. Verse 18, And he is the head of the body, the church.
Jesus is the head of his church. A body needs a head to control it. We can do heart transplants and lung transplants and kidney transplants and liver transplants. But we haven't done a head transplant yet because the head controls everything. Christ is the head of his church. Without Christ there'd be no church.
And he's not watching his church from a distance, he's vitally connected to it. That's why we say the pastor of Valley View Community Church is not Bruce Carter. It's Jesus Christ. He's the one that we're following together. This church would do fine without me as long as Christ is the head. When you give you don't give to me or to the church, you give to Christ. When you serve, you don't serve me or the church, you serve Christ. It's his church. We all belong to him that's why he deserves to be number one.
He is the beginning and the firstborn among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. The church began with Jesus when he came back from the dead. Jesus is the firstborn among the dead. He's the first one to be resurrected. Others before him had been restored to life, like Lazarus, but they all died again because they didn't receive a new body. But Jesus wasn't restored to life he was resurrected, given a brand new, glorified body never to die again. And now we have the promise of receiving a resurrection body one day ourselves. So that in everything he might have the supremacy! Does he have supremacy in your life? Is he #1 in life? He's worthy to have first place in your life. Don't let anyone steal this truth from you. That's what the false teachers were trying to do in Colosse.
Now look at verses 19-23, 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. 21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body though death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation - 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Jesus Christ deserves first place in our life because he is the reconciler of all things. The word reconcile means "to change and bring into harmony." When two friends have a falling out and something gets in between them they need to be reconciled, brought back into harmony with each other again.
That's what we needed in our relationship with God. Our sin had gotten in the way between us and God. God hadn't done anything wrong. We had. He didn't need to be reconciled to us. We needed to be reconciled to him. We were alienated from God, verse 21 says, enemies of God, evil in our behavior towards God, not a pretty of picture of the condition of the human race. And we would have stayed on that path to destruction if it weren't for the reconciling work of Jesus Christ who made salvation available to every person under heaven by his death on the cross for our sin.
He paid the punishment that our sin deserved in his physical body, again a reference to the Gnostic heresy that denied that God could take on a physical body. And now when we place our faith in Christ we are made holy in God's sight, free from blemish and accusation. God sees us as perfect! And one day even this old earth will be reconciled to God and made new.
The whole Bible is a love story. It's all about Jesus loving people back to the Father. He wants to turn strangers into sons and daughters, rebels into worshippers, aliens into friends, enemies into family members. And that must always to be the mission of our church. To offer reconciliation to those who are at odds with God. To tell them that they can be forgiven and part of God's family. That's God's amazing grace.
And it was all accomplished through the death of Christ's physical body and the blood he shed on the cross. And in a moment we're going to remember that in Lord's Table. But before we do I want to give you a chance to tell Jesus that he is #1 in your life. If you mean it. He deserves to be. He's above everyone and everything else.