Colossians 1:11-20 Commentary

The contrast between the images of the Son of God presented by this Sunday’s Epistolary and Gospel lessons could hardly seem starker. Preachers might find fertile homiletical ground in that space – perhaps especially on this Christ the King Sunday that falls so close to the beginning of the Christmas season. Preachers might follow the Spirit’s prompting to lay side-by-side Paul’s claims about the Son of God, Luke’s portrayals of the incarnate Son of God and some of our culture’s conventional wisdom concerning Jesus.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson makes some startling, perhaps even shocking assertions about Jesus Christ. He is, insists Paul in verse 15, the “image [eikon*] of the invisible [aoratou] God.” When, in other words, we see Jesus, we see the God whom no one has ever lived to tell about seeing. As The Message paraphrases the apostle’s profession, when “we look at this Son … [we] see the God who cannot be seen.”

So what does God look like in Jesus Christ? At Christmastime we remember how God looks like someone whose mother birthed him in a manger and wrapped him in cloths “because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). What’s more, this Sunday’s Gospel Lesson shows us a God whom the Roman authorities dragged outside of Jerusalem to a hill they called “the Skull” (Luke 23:33). There they crucified the visible God right next to some common criminals. Quite simply, the authorities did everything they could to make the God made visible in Jesus Christ look a lot like just another naked thug.

At Christmastime we remember how the Son of God was Mary’s “firstborn” (Luke 2:7). In verses 15a-16 Paul goes on to profess that Jesus Christ is “the firstborn [protokos] over all creation. For in him all things were created [ektisthe]: things in heaven and on earth, visible or invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers [archai] or authorities [exousiai]; all things have been created through him and for him.”

Whatever else this theologically rich and somewhat mysterious profession means, it at least means that the Son of God had a vital role in creating everything that has been created. Paul even insists he had a vital part in creating the kind of authority the Romans had claimed for themselves.

But who seemed to have all the authority at the hill they called the Skull? The Creator or the created ones? The Roman creatures, of course, were the authorities who designed crucifixion to be a humiliating form of torture. Its brutality sought to completely intimidate anyone who even dared contemplate questioning their authority.

And just in case anyone wondered who the Roman powers assumed was in charge on that hill they called the Skull, those authorities placed a sign above Jesus their creator that read: “THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” So the one through and for all things, including the Roman authorities, were created looked a lot like just another pathetic, failed challenger to the Roman “throne.”

This Son of God, claims Paul in verse 17, “is before all things, and in him all things hold together [synesteken].” The Message paraphrases this profession as “He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment.”

But, as preachers might point out, you’d never guess it from Luke’s’ description of his crucifixion. The people whom the Son of God holds together didn’t just stand and watch him suffer torture, degradation and humiliation. They also added to his misery by “sneering” at him. Jesus’ own “peeps” acted like schoolyard bullies by taunting Jesus as if he were some deluded person: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.”

Even the soldiers who were created through and for the Son of God joined the mocking chorus. The soldiers over whom Paul claims the Son of God had authority but served the Roman authorities “offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself’” (23:36-37).

Preachers might at this point let the Spirit guide us to lay alongside Paul and Luke’s observations, some observations about cultural beliefs about Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. In 2015 George Barna released results of some of his research on American’s beliefs about Jesus (https://www.barna.com/research/what-do-americans-believe-about-jesus-5-popular-beliefs/). While not all readers of this commentary are American, their own cultures may share at least some of those beliefs.

Most Americans, Barna notes, assume Jesus was some kind of historical figure. Yet while Paul asserts Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (15), younger generations are increasingly less likely to believe Jesus was God. While the apostle professes in Christ “all things were created” (16), Barna deduces one-third of American young adults believe he was just a religious or spiritual leader.

While Paul insists God was “pleased to have all his fullness dwell in” Christ (19), only a little more than half of all Americans believe he was sinless. While the apostle professed God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things through Christ’s shed blood (20), Barna found Americans are conflicted between Jesus and Good Works as the way to heaven.

So it isn’t just the apparent gap between Paul’s description of Jesus and Luke’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion that seems large. It’s also the gap between the New Testament’s assertions about the Son of God and American’s perceptions of him that are huge.

However, in verse 20 Paul makes perhaps the most radical claim of all about the Son of God. He professes “God was pleased [eudokesen] … through him to reconcile [apokatallaxai] to himself all things, whether things on earth or in heaven, by making peace [eirenopoiesas] through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Of course, that reconciling work is visible in one of the criminals whom the Romans executed with Jesus. After all, in Luke 23:41 he admits, “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” The tortured criminal then turns to Jesus to beg him to “remember me when you come into your kingdom” (23:42). The Son God, in fact, announced he’d reconciled himself to God by promising, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Yet Paul seems to at least hint at something far, far more far-reaching about the Son of God’s reconciling work. He doesn’t claim that God was pleased to reconcile to himself just those who, like the penitent criminal received God’s grace with their faith. No, the apostle insists that “God was pleased … through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

So where does Christ’s reconciling work leave the religious leaders who conspired with the Roman authorities to have Jesus crucified? Where does Christ’s reconciling work leave the soldiers who divided up his clothes and mocked him? Where does Christ’s reconciling work leave the people who stood close enough to the crucified Christ to mercilessly taunt him?

Where does Christ’s reconciling work leave the criminal who remained unrepentant until the very end? And where does Christ’s reconciling work leave a creation and its creatures that will not or cannot offer “the sinners’ prayer”?

There can be no question that God summons all people to receive God’s amazing grace with our faith that believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who receive God’s reconciling work in Christ can be humbly confident that God has reserved a place for us with our Savior in paradise.

Those who have received with our faith God’s rescue of us from the dominion of darkness (13a) and are being strengthened with all power (11a) can know God has graciously reconciled us to himself through Christ’s blood shed on the cross. Those who believe God has brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves (13b) and are patiently enduring (11b) can know that God has reconciled us to himself through Christ’s shed blood.

As for people who mock Christ now, both this Sunday’s Gospel and Epistolary lessons offer Christians the hope that as long as skeptics and unbelievers have life, God gives them an opportunity to receive Christ’s reconciling work with their faith in him. What happens to those who die refusing that grace we leave in the nail-scarred and bloodied hands of the risen and ascended reconciling Son of God.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

A story Charles Leerhsen recounts about the Hall of Fame baseball player Ty Cobb might illuminate something of apparently ordinary nature of the Son of God’s Incarnation. In his book, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, he notes that when Cobb arrived in the major leagues from a minor league, the Detroit Tigers’ “Bennett Park didn’t have dugouts yet, so Cobb watched the first major league game he ever saw … from the exposed bench of the third base side of the infield, where the other Tigers sat.

“No one much noticed the arrival of perhaps the greatest player of all time [italics mine]. ‘The glances of the players as I went to the bench were not unfriendly,’ Cobb [later]wrote … ‘But they were decidedly impersonal. No particular interest was taken in my presence’.”

Might the ascended Son of God make a similar claim about his Incarnation?

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