Dennis Tuuri

Once more, it will be to your benefit to have an outline. The outline this week has notes, 19 of them. I don’t want to hear that I preached a 19-point sermon. These are notes. Sermon text is from Colossians 1. This is our third sermon going through Colossians. Next week Reverend Murray, Lord willing, will be preaching for us and then we’ll return to Colossians two weeks from today. Today the sermon text is Colossians chapter 1, verses 15–23.

The sermon title is “Christ, His Excellencies, His Mission, and You.” Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Colossians chapter 1, beginning at verse 15.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things. And in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself. By him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross.

And you who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight. If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard which was preached to every creature under heaven of which I Paul became a minister.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the magnificent vastness of what we just read in your holy word. Lord God, we are incapable of understanding or really beginning to grasp some of these things. By your Holy Spirit, Lord God, help us to see what’s presented here, to respond with great thanksgiving and praise to you and to leave this place with a further commitment to follow our Lord Jesus Christ given the excellencies that this text places before us.

Bless us, Father, by your Holy Spirit. We cannot even understand these words correctly apart from your spirit’s inspiration. So we pray, Lord God, that you would indeed transform our lives through this word. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated. In a few minutes, as we prepare for the Lord’s table, we’re going to sing a song that is a sung creed. It’s Luther’s paraphrase or version of the Nicene Creed. And it’s beautiful music, beautiful arrangements, and diversity and eschatology in the way the song proceeds—all those beautiful things. And of course it’s taking the wonderful truths of the Nicene Creed. Well, the text before us, I think, is probably to be seen as a sung creed as well. There’s lots of discussion about its origins and this and that, but we don’t need to get into those. But what we do see here, or at least we see particularly if we have a translation that shows it to us, is that there are various poetic devices that are used throughout this text.

There’s the obvious repetition. The A-B thing is going on—that’s kind of obvious. The repetition of the word “all.” All. All. All. The metering of the lines. There’s chiasms involved here. I’ve got the entire text as a chiastic unit. That’s not my doing. That’s from a commentator, one of the many commentators I read. And then there’s a microcosm chiasm on your outline as well. So there’s chiasms, there’s inclusions. There’s all kinds of beautiful literary devices here.

This is a wonderful piece. This is not just prose, okay? This is poetry. It’s really probably either was or became a sung creed in the development of the Christian church of the first century. So that’s what this is. This is a sung creed. The question this sung creed focuses on at the beginning particularly is who is Jesus, right? So they’ve been established in Christ. And what the Colossians need to know—he’s just prayed for their growth and knowledge and understanding and wisdom so they’d have increased fruitfulness.

What they need to know, what any newly planted church really needs to focus on and what a maturing church as well, I think by way of application of the text needs to focus on, is the centrality and supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what this part of the movement of Colossians does for them. Having begun with a greeting and thanksgiving and calling them to give thanks and having declared who they are—being transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son—he then tells us about that Son. And he’s telling them this for a particular purpose: for their further establishment, for their growth in grace and their growth in good deeds and effectiveness in living out the gospel in their lives. We need the same thing when we come to the worship service. We want to see Jesus, right? And this text has him front and center. And it has him front and center in some of the most beautiful lines that could ever be written.

Right? Beauty, pure beauty and grandeur here. We will not, we cannot comprehend the fullness of what is here stated. One of our problems is: unlike God, we’re bound to time. And these verses, you know, show a divine perspective on reality and what it is that is not bound by time. We have a hard time, we have an impossible time thinking outside of time and yet that’s the sphere in which God exists. Time is a creation by God, right?

And so, you know, I remember reading R.G. Rushdoony years ago about these debates concerning the fall and supralapsarianism, infralapsarianism, when did the decree happen—all that stuff. And Rushdoony, he said it was all sort of heretical because it puts God into a time frame and binds him to that, and he really is not bound to that. So this text has a great deal of mystery to it. Not sure if “mystery” is quite the right word I’m going for, but grandeur, you know? If you stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon, you really can’t take it all in, right? Well, this text, you know, you really can’t take it all in, but it has some incredible truths to tell us about.

It moves from Jesus and his relationship to God, and then it moves to Jesus and his relationship to creation. Then it has to do with Jesus and the church. And then finally, the last three verses, Paul makes it very personal—and you, he says to the Colossians. So this description of who Jesus is, this basic answer has to do with who he is in reference to God, creation, the church—we could say new creation—and his worldwide mission. And then it’s applied to us.

John 1 sort of rewrites Genesis 1, right? You know the connection between John 1 and Genesis 1. Or if you don’t, read the two, you know, the opening parts of both chapters. John is kind of—you could call it a Christological lens through which to see the opening paragraph of the Bible. And Colossians, this section in Colossians does the same thing. Obviously, you could go home and underline various things, but clearly this text is channeling Genesis 1 and kind of transforming it in the context of Jesus, this side of the cross and the revelation of who Jesus is. So that’s what this thing does.

Now there are bookends to the text so we remember the movement of where we’re going. In verse 12 and 13, just before this text, here’s what we read: “Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we also have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

So that’s a little shorthand. The Son of His love, redemption. Now we get an unpacking of that to describe to us who this Son of His love is. Now obviously the response that Paul is going for as he concluded the last section of verses we talked about was thanksgiving by the Colossians. And obviously these verses—the verses we read today—the proper response is thankfulness and praise to the Christ who is revealed here.

But this is the Christ who’s been described in summary fashion, right, as the Son of His love, the beloved Son of the Father. That’s the shorthand. And what we’ll see now sort of unpacks that. So there’s a movement now from this thanksgiving focus on the Son of His love into now a full-blown description of who he is—who is Jesus?

In verse 24, we read this: “I now rejoice in my suffering, offerings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.” Won’t that be fun to listen to in two weeks? I’m looking forward to that sermon. I am filling up what’s lacking in the afflictions of Christ. I hope you’re curious.

But the point I’m trying to make here is that what happens in verse 24 is Paul gets into a description of his suffering, his ministry, his particular calling. So we’re looking back—the bookends are “Son of His love.” And then he’s going to move, after these verses today, into a description of his ministry and his suffering. And so today’s text sort of ends with the fact that Paul has been called to be a minister. That’s a segue into the next section. So that’s where we’re moving in terms of the bookends of the text.

So point five on your list of notes on your handout: we, like the Colossians, need to know the supremacy and centrality of Jesus Christ. We need this information. The Colossians needed to continue to grow. We need it. We need to focus upon it. That’s where we are today. And as my note number six says, these are “inconceivable but eternal facts, outside of time and yet inexorably tied to time.”

Clearly, the link is to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, a historical reality in time. Although even there Revelation tells us that He’s the Lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world. So God exists outside of time. We don’t see something, you know, new and novel that God is doing in the death of Christ. He is the Lamb from the eternal perspective, from God’s perspective outside of time, who was slain from before the foundations of the world.

All right. So now let’s look at the text itself. And we’ll make comments on the text as we begin to go through it. And I’ve structured it in this fivefold way. Like I said, it’s not my outline. It is the outline of one of the commentators that I’m reading every week as I prepare my sermons. And of all the commentaries I read, believe you me, there’s a great deal of discussion of how this text should be outlined or thought of. Should we even try to do that at all? You know, various forms of doing it. This one seemed rather simple to me and it’s based on particular words. The words that I italicize match the sections up, okay? And so one A and A prime, B and B prime, and then C at the middle. So I think it’s useful. You know, I’m not too tied to it, but I think it’s helpful when you look at a text, particularly one that you can get as lost and dizzy in as this one, and it has that kind of content to it.

And you don’t want to lose that lost and dizziness in a way, right? But you also want to sort of get the flow of what’s happening in the text. And I think this little chiastic structure does that.

So beginning this then: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”

So this is in reference to God. He is the image of God. Now Adam was made in the image of God, right? Jesus is the image of God. You see the distinction? By “image” he is the exact representation of God. There’s no distinguishing between the two of them, okay? This is the second person of the Trinity we’re talking about. But he is the reflection. Jesus said over and over again in John’s gospel, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.”

We read, in fact, I should read this text in—and maybe I’ll read it in a couple of minutes. But we read in Hebrews, of course, that “in the past God spoke in different ways, but now he has spoken to us in his Son.” So the full revelation of the Father is found in the coming of Jesus Christ, okay?

In John’s gospel again, “no one has seen God, but the Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him”—is what we read in John, I think it’s 1:18. No one’s seen God at any time. So when we see appearances of God in the Old Testament, this is why commentators think it’s the pre-incarnate Jesus that we see there. It’s the second person of the Trinity, okay? So no one has seen God the Father, but we’ve seen God the Son and he is the image of the Father. The exact representation.

So no one has seen God at any time but the Son who is in the bosom of the Father. Does that sound familiar? The beloved Son of the Father. That’s what we just read about a couple of verses before this section: “We are in the kingdom of the beloved Son. Jesus is in the bosom of the Father.” And actually in that particular verse it means he’s ever drawing nearer to the Father in their love. That’s what it means. He’s in the bosom of the Father, ever drawing nearer to the Father, love, connection, and he has “exegeted” him. That’s the word in the Greek, the basis for our word “exegesis.” He has revealed the Father. He has exegeted the Father. So Jesus—the first thing we need to know about Jesus—is he’s the exact representation of the Father.

He and the Father are one. If you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the Father. He’s not like us made in the image of God. He is the image of God. Equality, divinity—it’s what’s being stressed here. And then the second thing that’s said in these titles at the beginning is he’s the “firstborn over all creation.”

Now, don’t get confused here. Arius got confused here. He thought that meant he was created. It doesn’t mean that at all. The “firstborn” in, for instance, the Old Testament in Psalm 89, David is declared to be the firstborn. Well, what does that mean? It doesn’t mean his actual birth. It doesn’t mean that at all. It means he has preeminence. All the dominion and control of the firstborn is his. And actually in terms of God the Father and God the Son, it’s another declaration that the firstborn bears the image of the Father.

Eternally begotten, begotten, not made, not created, not begotten at a point in time. Eternally begotten. The Son has always existed in the bosom of the Father. And he bears the representation of the Father as a beloved Son. And as that beloved Son, he is firstborn. See? He’s got the preeminence, he’s got the rank, he’s got, you know, he’s number one position there in this relationship. So he is the “firstborn over all creation.”

So now the text moves from his relationship to God to his relationship to the created order. Now here in your handouts, I’ve got a little mini microchasm. And in order to do this, I had to change the word order, or the author did. But you know what? It’s okay because his word order is right. The bracketed parts of this little mini microchasm—those indicate to you the changes from the translation we just read. But the changes are accurate. That’s why it’s hard to do some of this literary stuff if you don’t know Greek, because the English translations don’t always, and frequently don’t, maintain the word order of the Greek. The Greek words that are being used—this little microchasm maintains that Greek order.

“For by or in him” would be a better translation: “in him.” What does that mean? In the context of—he’s the locus of—he’s what creation is all in the context of or related to, okay? So he’s the locus of creation. “In him were created”—past tense. “All things that are in heaven that are on the earth, visible and invisible.”

So if you see the combination of “earth” and “visible” at the middle, around the middle of the chiasm, that is “in heaven that are invisible.” In other words, and what it throws in here is: “whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.”

Okay. Now I think that because of the word order and actually because of the terms themselves, those four things are ranks of spiritual beings or some form of spiritual beings—angels, whatever it is. Colossians will get into combating some heresies that Paul will do, and one of them has to do with relationship to angels. And maybe that’s why Paul throws this in. These words can occasionally have relationship to physical, you know, kings of the earth, but it seems like this being placed in the context of the invisible things is meant to convey to the Colossians and to us that Jesus has supremacy. He created all things on earth, visible and invisible, in heaven and invisible.

And that includes all those powers and authorities that are real, but none of them exist apart from the oversight of their creator, the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, it’s like when we sing the Lorica, you know? So Patrick’s out there in Ireland, there’s storms. There’s all kinds of strange things going on. It’s a pagan land. And he sings this song of triumphant confidence in the triune God of the Bible, right?

Or later, you know, when the Midianites—when Balaam’s trying to curse Israel, there is no enchantment or divination against Israel, right? Against Jacob. Halloween’s coming up. We don’t care what séances are held. There’s no enchantment or divination against us. Is there enchantment and divination against others? Maybe so. There are spiritual authorities. We live in a secularist age. We don’t like to acknowledge it. But see, it’s not as if these things don’t exist. These are created beings from God. And there’s four of them. And I don’t think we need to get all hung up on the particular words.

But the fourness is fullness in the Bible, right? The Bible has four corners. Four corners of the earth. There’s four gospels. You know, four is a number of fullness in the Bible—the totality of a thing. So the totality of whatever spiritual powers the Colossians or we may be concerned about, frightened by, alarmed by—the totality of those are being described as the creative act of Jesus Christ bringing them to bear. He has preeminence over them.

Now, this is a very comforting text. I mean, it’s comforting enough to know that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and no matter what goes on in this world, he is overseeing all kings. He has the power of all kings. That’s comforting. Even more comforting to know that he has ultimate authority and has created the spiritual beings for his purposes because that’s where the text is going.

“All things were created in the context of Jesus, the locus of Jesus, right?” But more than that, they were also created by Jesus as the agent, and “all things were created for him as the goal.”

You see the context, the agency of creation, the goal of creation. Now brothers and sisters, this is heady stuff. It’s heady stuff, but it’s also very practical stuff. That means that whatever is created is not somehow separate from Jesus Christ. The text will go on to say that “in him all things consist.” They hold together. Without Jesus, none of this holds together. He created them. He sustains them.

What does this mean? This means there is no what Van Til and his followers would say—no “brute factuality.” Kind of an intellectual term. What does it mean? It means that there are no facts of history, no facts of the existence of your life, nothing in the created order, either visible or invisible, in earth or in heaven, that is removed or doesn’t have relationship to Jesus Christ. Every fact, every created thing, physical and non-physical, visible and invisible, in earth and in heaven—everything He has created in relationship to Jesus Christ.

That means that every fact of the world is personal. It’s personal. It’s all about Jesus. Who is Jesus? He is the context, the agent, and the goal for every bit of creation, everything visible and invisible. And he is the one through whom all things were made and in whom all things consist.

Now, that’s an amazing thought. As I said, these thoughts, you know, they’re way bigger than our brains can kind of understand. But Jesus is the image of God. Christ is the image bearer. And we actually find out in a couple of verses that are noted on your outline that we also, you know, bear some image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s see if I can find—I’m not real organized up here today. Please forgive me. But let’s see: 1 Corinthians 15:49. “As we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man.”

Adam, Jesus. Man of dust, right? Adam. Heavenly man, Jesus—God-man. And so what it says is that this language—that Jesus is the image of the Father—has relationship to us. Then the communicable attributes that are divine, that belong to the Father and the Son, that’s what we’re being transformed into. We bear his image in some form.

Romans 8:29: “For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

Predestination ultimately is a doctrine of great comfort because it tells us that we’re being conformed to the image of the Son. This wonderful picture and description of who Jesus is—somehow we share some of that reflected light, right? We’re like moons compared to the sun. And that’s what we’re coming to.

So the idea that Christ is image is identification with God, and it also shows us what’s going on in our particular reality, in our particular life. This is what is happening with us.

Let me read another piece of scripture. I would encourage you to read Psalm 89 later. I’m not going to read it now, but there are one or two other scriptures I’d like to read in connection with these opening statements about Jesus. But where are they?

Okay, here we go. John 1—no, I meant Hebrews 1. So if John 1 is channeling Genesis, Colossians is doing the same thing. And fleshing out what Genesis means, not just in terms of the original creation, but recreation. Hebrews 1 does some of the same thing. Let me read the first four verses.

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in the past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power. When he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, and he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.”

Same images, right, that we just read in these verses from Colossians. Creation, recreation, the brightness, the fullness of God—which we’re going to read here in a couple of minutes, that was pleased to dwell in Christ. He’s the image. He’s the firstborn. He has preeminence. And so the same kind of things that are being talked about in Colossians 1, John 1, Genesis 1, are also in Hebrews 1.

So, uh, trying to get—let you know where we’re at in the notes. Verse 11—I got the Psalm 89 verse there in terms of “firstborn.” We’ve talked about it. Not verse 11—note 11. Note 12: “Above threatening powers,” right? And then as I said, “No brute factuality.” So we’ve made those points.

As this text unfolds, we have this great assertion of the reign of Jesus Christ over everything. So going back to the text now: “For by him, that is in him, were created—past—all things that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things through him and for him.”

So again, this is the point. It’s on your—it’s on the actual text itself. I say “were created” because that’s where the proper order goes. “For him” implies present sustenance and goal. He’s going to say that in a minute—that Jesus sustains all things. But it’s already said in the verse we just read: “through him and for him.” And “by” means through, or “in” means through or the locus. The sphere as I said, the means or agency, and the goal of the entire cosmos.

So we’ve talked about that a little bit. And then: “He is before all things, and in him all things consist.”

Okay. So that ends this first major section, and it has all these wonderful truths about who Jesus is. He’s the firstborn. He’s the image. He’s the creator. Everything has relationship to him as context, agency, and goal. And all these things are accomplished by him.

And now we move to the second section. So the B section on your handout, it’s verse 18: “He is the head of the body of the church, which is the beginning the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence.”

Okay. So now we’re moving, aren’t we? Now we’re moving into the domain of the church. So now we’re moving from old creation really to new creation. That’ll become more apparent as we go along here. But now we move from his relationship to God, from his relationship to creation, and now we read about him in relationship to the church. That’s the movement of the text.

“He is the head of the body.” So the head provides direction. The head provides sustenance. You know, the body has no existence apart from the head. And so all this imagery is here brought into this description—the church, the gathering. “Who is the beginning”—Jesus, in other words, is the beginning. So what’s the beginning? The beginning is the first phrase of Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” Jesus is the beginning. And so when he’s using—he’s using creation language here in reference to Jesus’s relationship to the church, the body.

So the imagery is that the church, the body, is the new creation that has been initiated by the beginning—the beginning of the first creation, the beginning of the second creation. “The firstborn from the dead.” So this ties it to the resurrection from the dead of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it pins this new beginning, this new creation, this new humanity referred to as the church to the firstborn, the rising of the firstborn from the dead.

To what purpose? “That in all things he may have the preeminence.”

Why does this happen? “For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself. By himself all things to himself.”

So we now have a movement in this particular text of creation: “in, by, for”—again, locus, agency, goal—is the movement of these verses describing new creation. So what we have here is—you know, what happened at the death of Christ, what happened with the death resurrection event? The scriptures here, at least, and many other places say nothing less than that a new creation occurred, that we live now in the context of a new world, a new humanity.

He’ll see in a minute that the gospel has been proclaimed throughout the entire world. Is that hyperbolic language? Is he just talking about the Roman Empire? Well, you know, I think to some extent—I think I have this on your notes, note 14: “Earthquakes and new creation.”

You know, there were earthquakes at his death and there was an earthquake at his resurrection. And I think the way we’re supposed to—and the death, the veil is torn in two, right? The old world represented in the temple and in the access to the temple is ripped in two, and an earthquake happens both at his death and at his resurrection.

Now, I think what’s going on is—and I know this may sound a little odd—but I think the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ changed the world. The message went out to the entire created order. The resurrection, the death and resurrection, produced new creation accompanied by imagery of the death of the old creation and the coming of the new—imagery that was not tied just to the proclamation by words of the gospel. The event transformed everything. And it’s important for us to see that because what Paul is saying here is he’s reconciling not just sinners to God. We know that he’s reconciling all things, right?

“For it pleased the Father.” So let’s say that. “So the firstborn from the dead, that in all things may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell and by him to reconcile all things to himself.”

So the reconciliation that’s proclaimed in this second section, speaking of the new creation, the beginning again, is a reconciliation that affects all things. Now he’s told us what “all things” are. They’re things visible and invisible. They’re earth, in heaven. And what he’s telling us here is—there’s a—in order for him to reconcile all things, that means that sin ruptured all things. Sin had effects in the entire created order.

Now, we know this because in Romans, you know, “the creation groans waiting for its redemption, right? It’s been put into vanity because of the sin of the man.” The created order, you know, is going to change. Heaven and earth will join—the ultimate rupture is heaven and earth. The ultimate joining, the reconciliation, is heaven and earth.

But the point here is: if you think of reconciliation just about you, you got way too small a vision of Jesus and who he is and what his mission is. And if you think about reconciliation just about the people in this room and God and you to them—way too small. And this text says that if you think about reconciliation just in terms of humanity, those who come to him, the universal church, you’re still thinking way too small. Jesus Christ has come to reconcile all things, to fix everything that was broken.

And so the implication here is: the fall affected all things. Now, how did he do it?

Well, that’s the center of the section of the text. “Having made peace through the blood of his cross. By him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

So again, the universal scope of the reconciliation. How did the reconciliation occur? Through the blood of his cross—through a physical historical event where the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, second person of the Trinity, died on the cross for mankind and for the whole world. He has made peace. And we read about this earlier in Colossians: a peace that is cosmic but also applies to us. And that peace is the essence of reconciliation. And that peace—the blessings of orderliness and prosperity—results from the death of Jesus.

Vicarious atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ is what’s being described here. And it’s being described as having far more of an effect than just the salvation of sinners. Through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, he has made peace whether things on earth or things in heaven.

Okay? Now, that’s the grand picture of who Jesus is. It’s—you know, his excellencies are displayed here in wonderful titles and wonderful truths, truths that are incomprehensible to us ultimately, but which we can delight in. We can thank God for. We can praise his holy name for who Jesus is. This is what sustains us. This is what causes us to get up tomorrow morning and do whatever God calls us to do. This is why you’re going to be singing praises, the centrality of Jesus with these wonderful excellencies described for us in some detail that I’ve only been able to kind of skim along the surface of.

And his mission has been portrayed to us. That mission is not just, you know, global. It’s cosmic. He is reconciling the entire created order which somehow was affected by the fall. And his mission then is cosmic peace and reconciliation—with the things in earth, things in heaven, including all those angelic forces, et cetera.

So Jesus’s excellencies and then his mission is described to us. And then finally in the B’ section we turn to you.

Jesus’s excellencies, Jesus’s mission, and Jesus in you.

“And you who once were alienated enemies in your mind by wicked works. Yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight.”

Okay. So now he goes away from a description of Jesus to the results of that, the implications of that for you. Now he’s writing to a gentile church, right? He’s writing to a gentile church that didn’t have, you know, they were all converts. They weren’t raised in the faith. So it’s not quite like us. And he’s not writing to you personally. He’s not writing to each individual Colossian. Although they hear it and appropriate it. But he’s writing to the Colossian church. It’s a collective presentation that he’s making here, okay?

And so there’s a sense in which we got to keep that stuff in mind: that the meaning of the text is that Jesus has reconciled that church, which means the members in that church. And he’s done this because it’s the only way it would happen, right? So he tells them, you were cut off. You were alienated, right?

Now in Ephesians, in other places, this alienation is seen as Jewish and Gentile, and part of this whole reconciliation of all things—heaven and earth—is sort of Jew and Gentile related to. And that’s the, that’s kind of the text, the subtext of the reconciliation of all things: the bringing together of Jew and Gentile, okay?

So they were alienated or cut off from the promises of God, et cetera. But look at the type of alienation that’s actually described here. “You who once were alienated”—you were the other. You were outside, enemies in your mind by wicked works.

Now that takes it out of a Jew-Gentile discussion, right? They were alienated from the promises of the covenant. But their alienation—and our alienation now—we can relate to this: is that in our minds we are not just neutral. In the fallen man’s mind, he is an enemy with God. That’s what the Bible clearly says. I don’t care if you experience that, if people tell you they like that or not. This is the reality: that the human condition, apart from this sovereign Lord intervening and producing reconciliation and peace, is absolute alienation from God because we hate him. We would do anything to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness and we do. That’s the world, okay?

That’s where we were. And this hatred was related to not just in our minds but in our wicked works. The things we do reinforce that hatred of the mind. And the hatred of the mind creates wicked works that we do. We’re hopeless. That’s the point here. He’s telling the Colossians, you are absolutely hopeless, enemies of God, alienated, cut off because you hated him in your minds and you did all kinds of things in disobedience to him.

Now, how do you get out of that situation? You can’t. You can’t get out of that situation. The only way you get out of that situation is not you doing something. It’s God doing something, right? Christianity doesn’t say, “Do this, do this, and do this and you’ll find God.” Christianity says God finds you. And when he finds you, he always finds you hating him, doing wicked works, alienated from him. And then he, by his sovereign spirit, applies the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to reconcile you to himself.

So all this beautiful language about Jesus becomes quite personal now to us. Again, we saw this in the last section of Colossians: the personal and the cosmic going back and forth. And just like the new creation imagery—you saw last week with the repetition of terms—”all, all, all” is going on in the text we just read. Why? Because the new creation is flourishing. It’s a garden. It’s growing. And it’s growing in what? Good works. The opposite of what we used to do.

So we’ve now been reconciled by the pure grace and sovereignty of God. Brothers and sisters, there is no other way around it. That’s the only way for people in that state. And Paul can describe every one of them in that state. It’s the only way they’re going to become reconciled: through work of the Lord Jesus Christ, that work on the cross, the body of his flesh through death—for a purpose.

Great. We’re saved. What for? “To present you holy, blameless, above reproach in his sight.”

And this is language that’s both sacrificial and judicial, okay? Holy, blameless, no spot or wrinkle, right? The lamb is to be brought—no spot or wrinkle. Ultimately, that’s Jesus, okay? Jesus is the perfect lamb. But we have this sacrificial imagery that we as well. Jesus is in the process. The whole point of this transference is to bring us into flourishing humanity. And when humanity flourishes, it’s doing what God called it to be. And what God calls us to be is to get rid of the dirt, to get rid of the blemishes. That he’s moving us—he’s sanctifying us, right? Without spot or wrinkle. In another text of scripture—it says, “holy and blameless and without reproach.” Judicial language as well.

So he’s presenting us. He’s moving us. The purpose of this salvation, the application of these wondrous excellencies of Jesus and his global mission now to us, is his purpose: that we would grow in holiness and blamelessness, right? And these are judicial terms. When you die tonight—if you died tonight, you’re going to be presented before Jesus in that state because you’re clothed in his righteousness. You’re holy and blameless and without reproach. In the judicial court that you will have to appear in, you’re declared that. Because why? Because, as the text just told us, in the body of his flesh through death, he has accomplished our salvation, our reconciliation.

So it moves to very personal terms.

Let’s see if I missed anything. Yeah, Mall of America. I should explain that. Right? In his commentary on this portion of the text, you know, talks about a visit he made to the Mall of America. Has anybody ever been there in Minnesota? I’ve never been there. I should go. They say you can spend a week there and never see the same shop twice. I think there’s a big playground or amusement park in the middle of it. I don’t know. And Leithart went and when he went there, he immediately got very lost and he didn’t know where to go. It’s so huge, right? And so he found one of those maps, you know, like you go to the Clackamas Town Center and you find the little red dot—”you are here”—and everything becomes oriented then, right?

You know where you’re at now. You can figure out where to go. Kind of. Well, Leithart says that’s what this text is doing now. So he’s presented this huge—I mean, the comparison to the Mall of America is ridiculous, of course—but he’s presented this incredible truth about the excellencies and goal—or the mission—of Jesus. And then he places us in that map in these verses. And he tells us that who we are is—all these cosmic wonders have affected us personally. God and his sovereignty, and obviously his grace and mercy, has, you know, changed us, even though we were enemies in mind and doing wicked things, cut off from him. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has reconciled us and made peace between us and God, just like he is in the process of doing cosmically in the world.

Now there’s a final section, and that matches up: the reconciliation, beloved. The middle of the whole thing is peace. And now the cosmic excellencies of Jesus are related to us. He’s going to talk about the gospel proclaimed to every creature. That expansive terminology again—as we move to the A’ section.

But here’s what it says, verse 23: “If so, you know, this is who you are. This is where you are in the map. If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard.”

We sang earlier: “Unless the Lord builds the house.” This is architectural imagery. It talks about the foundation and then it talks about the way a house is built up. And then the third term is: don’t shift away from the foundation, okay?

Now this verse is not intended to introduce doubt. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here at all. But he is saying that, you know, your perseverance, your staying in there, is the test of the reality that you’re the ones being addressed in this epistle, okay? The test of that reality is not really the perseverance of the saints so much as it is the preservation of the saints by God. But there is perseverance that we’re called to do. We’re called to do this. But it’s not, as I say, it’s not as if he’s introducing doubt into the equation. He’s actually, I think, fairly confident here in just reminding them, you know, that they can’t take things for granted.

They’re not, you know, passive participants in this process. Rather, they are active participants in the process. So he says, “Now, instead of saying ‘maybe if indeed you continue in the faith’”—maybe it’s like: “now, since you’re going to be continuing in the faith, these things all will apply to you.” It’s more like that. There’s still a call to continue in the faith, but the “if” clause is not conditional really. It’s really asserting more that this is your condition. You will persevere.

So it’s not meant to introduce doubt, but it is meant to introduce commitment and to call for commitment. The gospel always calls for commitment, okay? So you being grounded and steadfast, not shifting away from the foundation—or the steadfast timbers in which you’re built in this house of the gospel—which you heard, which was proclaimed to every creature.

And I’ve lost the conclusion of the verse. Can anybody read it for me? How does that verse end?

“Of which I, Paul, became a minister.”

And that’s the link to the next section which we’ll talk about in two weeks. But notice here again: the conclusion of the matter goes back to that cosmic recreation of all things—the greatness of the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. That this message has been preached—past tense, okay? He doesn’t say “will be preached.” There’s some truth to that. But he’s saying there’s a great truth that it has been proclaimed.

So this text has scored out the incredible excellencies of the Lord Jesus Christ. I preached several sermons a few months back on the riches of Christ, right? Well, here they are. Here they are in spades. This is Fort Knox. This section of scripture, if you want to talk about the riches of Christ, here we go. This is it. Comprehend it. Think about it. Meditate on it. Thank God for it. Praise God loudly in the rest of this service, meditating upon the greatness of Christ. Because that’s what Paul intended. He laid it all out here because the Colossians needed it—to give full-throated thanks to God. And they need to know who Jesus is, to be called to persevere in that hope of the gospel which is sure, and grow in works and grow in knowledge and obedience to Jesus Christ, and be part of this flowering of the garden that will, from one perspective, already been accomplished in the mind of God, and will, through time, accomplish what it is called to do.

Christ’s goal is nothing less than cosmic reconciliation, having made peace through the blood of his body. And that means for you and me tremendous confidence. Nothing needs to shake us. We are filled with a sense of blessing and gratitude to God. Not for what he’s done for us—that’s true enough. But for the excellencies of Jesus, for what he has, who he is, who he is to be in this text. Our hearts should utter forth praise and thanksgiving to him for those excellencies.

And then, you know, the cherry on the top is praising God for what he’s done in his sovereign grace and mercy to us. This is what the Colossians needed to be built up—to become surer in the hope of the gospel. This is what we need: the centrality of the excellencies of Christ, Christ, his mission and its relationship to us.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the excellencies of our Savior. We praise your holy name. We thank you for making known, Father, who you are through the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for him, for you, Father, and for the Holy Spirit that does all these things and illuminates our hearts with this message and causes us to break forth in praise and thanksgiving to you.

Bless us, Father, as we come forth offering ourselves afresh to the One whose excellencies and mission are so cosmic.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.