(Taken from a recent Wednesday evening study of Colossians 1:15-20. The text is wiidely considered to be one of the most important New Testament texts for understanding Christ’s identity. Many theologians and scholars think the text is a first century hymn that either was penned into the canon or was made into a hymn because it was in the canon. Other NT examples of this phenomenon might be John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:1-10, both of which also deal with Jesus’ identity and work.)
Christ’s coming into the world altered how the people of God thought about and reflected upon the Word of God. Christ didn’t change the Word of God, nor was his life and ministry a “twist” in the story. Rather, his coming showed how God would fulfill HIs promises and plan which had been witnessed to throughout the Old Testament. Things that were unclear are now clear. This is why Paul refers so often to the “mystery” that was hidden for so long but is now clear (ie, Rom. 16:25; Eph. 3:6,9; and Col. 1:26, 2:2): While God’s Word accomplished all of his purposes throughout time (Is. 55:10-11), there was much that still needed clarified in order to understand it. Christ clarified it, and now the purposes of God are revealed in the fullest way possible within a fallen world. Thus we can’t read the Old Testament any longer without remembering our relationship to Christ. We, to borrow from one theologian, can't help but to “read backwards."*
The Preeminence of Christ’s Person in Col. 1:15-17
How important is Christ, the Son of God?
-First, He is the “image (Gk icon) of the invisible God” (1:15a), as in 2 Cor. 4:4 and Heb.1:3. For a human to know what God is like, they must look at Jesus, who is his image.
-Second, Christ is the “firstborn of all creation” (1:15b). An ancient church leader named Arius took the notion of “firstborn of creation” to mean that Christ was the first creation of God. Arius, along with others like him, thought he found support in Prov. 8:22. They say that this verse must mean that Christ is not eternal. For how could he be the firstborn of creation, if he was never “born?”
-But 1:16-17 entirely rules out the possibility of Christ being created: “By him all things were created…he is before all things,” which means first that he is, in some way, himself the Creator, and second, that he, predating all things, is not a thing himself. So “firstborn of creation” must mean something else.
Psalm 89 drips with Christ as the promised descendent Seed of David. Verse 27 has God promising “I’ll make David (that is, his promised descendent) the firstborn.” But this promised seed, not having come yet, if he were a created being, would be far from the first person created. It becomes obvious, therefore, that “firstborn” is a term, not of chronology, but of priority. So the Seed promised to David will be the most important in all of creation.
But what of the phrase “of creation” in “firstborn of creation?” This is where it gets tricky, but not so tricky that we end up confused. The eternal Son of God, the eternal Word (Jn. 1:1-2), in becoming incarnate to be the promised seed of David, put on a created body in order to do so. Make sure you understand that: While the eternal Word is uncreated, the body he took on in the Incarnation is created. This is the doctrine known as the Hypostatic Union (formulated in the Athanasian Creed, 4th c), which means that Christ united in one hypostasis (existence) two natures: Humanity and Divinity. Doing so, he becomes the most important of all that exists, especially of the creation, with which he can identify because his body is created. While the Word is not just a man, but is also divine, in His humanity He is the firstborn of all of creation.
The Efficacy of His Work in 1:18-20
So the next few verses emphasize his work from his time on earth and on, as the Redeemer. Whereas 1:15-17 focus on his eternality, 1:18-20 focuses on his work as the Redeemer who, being divine, identifies with creation in order to save it. The work he did on earth 2000 years ago continues, because his resurrected body included his physical body (Lk. 24:39), and that resurrected body entered into heaven to intercede for sinners such as us as “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).
-1:18 - He’s the head of the church, his physical body on earth. He’s the beginning
(meaning, the beginning of the New Creation, cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).
-1:19 - In Him God’s fullness dwelt bodily (Jn. 14:10).
-1:20 He alone can reconcile all things to himself.
The point is this: His eternal Person and his work in time establish him as the most important of all that exists. In this way he is “the firstborn of all creation.”
The Importance of Distinguishing Bw His Person and His Work
Arius and others like him (in the modern world, Jehovah’s Witnesses) act as though texts like Col. 1:15 teach that it wasn’t until the 1st century that Christ existed. But being pre-creation, He is eternal. Time didn’t exist until creation existed, and now it only exists as the measure of the temporal limit of creation. But Christ is the eternal Word who is himself from eternity. The incarnation reflects something of His eternality as the Word, but is special in that it fulfills God’s promises and reaches the goal of the Old Testament (that is, giving God a faithful covenant partner). In other words, the eternal Word put on humanity in a way that accomplishes God’s purposes without jettisoning the Word’s eternality. God becomes a man in order to draw man to himself.
When we glory in Christ (Phil. 3:3)—that is, when we worship him, reflect on his goodness, and enjoy him—we not only glory in Him because of what He’s done for us, but because of who He is in himself. If you belong to Jesus, you can rest assured that as old as Christ the eternal Word is—and age doesn’t really apply to him, being eternal—that is a reflection of HIs eternal love for you (Eph. 1:3-4).
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*Richard Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Waco: Baylor Press, 2016).
