Colossians 1: Christ Before All Things
· #paul #colossians
✝ Passage: Colossians 1
Somewhere in the middle of a fairly ordinary opening — thanks for your faith, prayers for your growth — Paul breaks into a claim about Jesus so large it’s hard to read at normal speed: image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, everything visible and invisible created through him and for him, and held together even now.
Read it in the terminal:
bible colossians 1
A hymn bigger than its occasion
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible… all things have been created through him, and for him.” — Colossians 1:15-16
Paul is addressing a church he had never visited in person — he says as much later in the letter (2:1) — and answers whatever threat it faces by describing Christ as the organizing principle of the entire universe.
Held together
“He is before all things, and in him all things are held together” (1:17) is one of the more startling claims in the New Testament, tucked in without fanfare. Not just created through him — currently, presently, held together by him.
A mystery worth suffering for
The chapter ends with Paul describing his own hardship as filling up what’s “lacking” in Christ’s afflictions for the church’s sake (1:24), and naming the mystery finally revealed: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27). Cosmic Christ and indwelling Christ turn out to be the same claim.
Questions for study
- What difference does it make that Christ is described as “holding together” what already exists, not just having created it once?
- How does the size of the claim in 1:15-20 compare to the size of your everyday picture of Jesus?
- What would it mean to actually live from “Christ in you” rather than treating it as a slogan?