Sermon On Jesus

Who He Really Is: The Supremacy and Sufficiency of Jesus Christ

There is a question that sits underneath every other question a human being can ask. It is not a question about politics or science or philosophy, though those fields have wrestled with it. It is the question Jesus himself once posed to his disciples on the road to Caesarea Philippi: Who do you say that I am?

How you answer that question shapes everything. It shapes how you face suffering. It shapes how you understand forgiveness. It shapes what you do with your guilt and your grief and your longing for something that lasts. And so on a Sunday morning like this one, with believers and seekers and guests all sitting in the same room, there is no more important thing we could do than open the Scripture and look carefully at who Jesus actually is.

The passage before us today is one of the most concentrated, powerful, and carefully constructed descriptions of Jesus Christ in the entire New Testament. It comes from Paul's letter to the Colossians, chapter one, verses fifteen through twenty. The congregation in Colossae was being pressured by teachers who wanted to add things to Jesus, to supplement him with spiritual philosophies and cosmic intermediaries and religious requirements. Paul's response was not to argue about those additions one by one. His response was to hold up Jesus himself in full light and say: Look at him. Really look at him. When you see who he is, you will understand that nothing needs to be added.

Let us read the text together from the Christian Standard Bible.

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross."

That is the text. And if you will stay with it for a few minutes, I believe it will do something in you that no outline or argument can accomplish on its own.

Part One: Jesus Is The Image Of The Invisible God

Paul opens with a declaration that would have stopped his original readers in their tracks. He calls Jesus the image of the invisible God.

The word translated image here carries the idea of an exact representation, a precise likeness. Paul is not saying Jesus resembles God the way a portrait resembles its subject. He is saying that when you look at Jesus, you are looking at God himself made visible. The invisible God, the one no human eye has ever seen in his full glory, has made himself known in a person.

This is the staggering claim of the Christian faith. We are not left to guess at what God is like. We are not left to piece together a picture from our own intuitions or our own moral reasoning or our own religious experiences. God has spoken in a Son. And that Son, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature.

What this means practically is that when you want to know what God thinks of broken people, you look at Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. When you want to know what God thinks of the sick and the outcast, you watch Jesus reach out and touch the man with leprosy. When you want to know what God thinks of your guilt, you stand at the cross and watch the Son of God absorb the weight of it.

Jesus is not a clue about God. Jesus is God, made visible, made approachable, made present.

Part Two: Jesus Is Lord Over All Creation

Paul does not stop at the incarnation. He presses further. He says that everything was created by Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus. Everything in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All of it.

The phrase firstborn over all creation does not mean Jesus was the first thing God made. In the culture of Paul's day, firstborn was a title of rank and inheritance, not a description of birth order. Paul is saying Jesus holds the position of supreme heir over all that exists. He is the one for whom everything was made.

And then Paul adds something that is easy to read past but should not be. He says that in Jesus all things hold together. The word translated hold together carries the idea of being sustained, maintained, kept in coherent existence. The universe does not simply run on its own momentum. It is being actively held in place by the one through whom it was made.

This is not a small claim. It means that the same Jesus who walked the roads of Galilee, who slept in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, is the one whose sustaining power keeps the stars in their courses and keeps the atoms in your body from flying apart. He is not merely a religious figure from the ancient world. He is the living Lord of everything that exists.

For the person in this room who has been treating Jesus as one option among many, as one spiritual resource to consult alongside others, this passage is a gentle but firm correction. You do not add Jesus to your life the way you add an app to your phone. You bow before the one who made you, sustains you, and holds the whole of reality in his hands.

Part Three: Jesus Is The Head Of The Church And The Firstborn From The Dead

Paul now moves from creation to new creation. He says Jesus is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.

The resurrection changes everything. Paul has already said Jesus is supreme over the old creation. Now he says Jesus is supreme over the new creation as well. He is the first to pass through death and come out the other side into a new and indestructible life. He is not the first person in the Bible to be raised from the dead. But he is the first to be raised into a resurrection life that cannot die again. He is the prototype, the pioneer, the firstborn of a new humanity.

And because he is the head of the church, the body of Christ is not a religious club or a social organization or a community of like-minded people. It is a living organism connected to a living Lord. The church draws its life from Jesus the way a body draws its life from its head. Cut off from him, it is nothing. Connected to him, it participates in his resurrection life.

This should shape how we think about our life together as a congregation. We gather not primarily to be inspired or educated or entertained, though good things can happen in all of those directions. We gather because we are the body of Christ, and we need to be connected to our head. Worship is not a warm-up for the sermon. Prayer is not a formality. The Lord's Supper is not a ritual we observe out of tradition. These are moments of real connection with the living Christ who is our head and our life.

Part Four: Jesus Is The Reconciler

Now Paul arrives at what may be the most personally urgent part of the passage. He says that God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Jesus, and through Jesus to reconcile everything to himself by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

The word reconcile assumes that something has gone wrong. Reconciliation is not needed between parties who are already at peace. It is needed when there has been a rupture, an estrangement, a broken relationship. And the Scripture is honest about what that rupture is. Human beings have turned away from God. We have lived as though we were the center of our own universe. We have done things we know were wrong and left undone things we know were right. The result is not merely a bad feeling. It is a real separation from the God who made us and loves us.

But God did not leave that separation in place. He sent his Son. And his Son, who is the image of the invisible God and the Lord of all creation, went to a cross. He shed his blood. He made peace.

This is the gospel in its most concentrated form. The one who holds all things together allowed himself to be broken. The one through whom all things were created allowed himself to be killed. And in that death, he absorbed the penalty of our rebellion and opened the way back to God.

If you are in this room today and you have never personally received what Jesus did on that cross, this is the moment to understand what is being offered. Not religion. Not a set of rules. Not a better version of yourself through spiritual discipline. Peace with God. Real peace. The kind that does not depend on your circumstances or your performance, but on what Jesus accomplished when he shed his blood.

And for the believer who has been carrying guilt or shame or a sense of distance from God, hear this again. The reconciliation is complete. The peace has been made. You do not need to earn your way back. You need to return to the one who already paid the price.

A Closing Word

Paul wrote this passage to a church that was being told Jesus was not enough. That they needed more. That he was a good starting point but not a sufficient destination.

The answer then is the answer now. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is the Lord of all creation. He is the head of the church and the firstborn from the dead. He is the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells. And he is the one who made peace through his blood.

He is not a starting point. He is everything.

Go back to him this week. Study him. Trust him. Worship him. And if you have never truly surrendered to him, today is the day to do that. Not because of pressure, but because he is exactly who he says he is, and there is no better place to be than at peace with him.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.

F. F. Bruce. The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1984.

N. T. Wright. Colossians and Philemon. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1986.

Douglas J. Moo. The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2008.

Thomas R. Schreiner. Paul, Apostle of God's Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology. InterVarsity Press, 2001.