Col. 1:15 ¶ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
The apostles started dealing with doctrinal error at the earliest days of the church. The errors always boiled down to one thing, who exactly is this Jesus of Nazareth. Was He a man, a created being, some sort of heavenly angel like creature, or was He more mystical, like a spirit? Paul and John both drew the line in the sand, Jesus Christ is no less than God Himself. John said that whoever did not call Jesus the Lord was antichrist, part of the antichrist spirit. Paul had a more theological explanation. He said that Jesus was the very image of God, the radiance of the Father’s glory. He began to explain in human words what it means to be the only begotten Son of God. Obviously there is quite a difference between what we are as adopted sons and daughters and who Christ is as the eternally begotten Son of the Father. Here are some thoughts from the Tyndale Commentary on today’s verse.
“From all eternity Jesus had, in his very nature, been the ‘image of God’, reflecting perfectly the character and life of the Father. It was thus appropriate for him to be the ‘image of God’ as man. The doctrine of incarnation which flows from this cannot, by definition, squeeze either ‘divinity’ or ‘humanity’ out of shape.
Indeed, it is only in Jesus Christ that we understand what ‘divinity’ and ‘humanity’ really mean: without him, we lapse into sub-Christian, or even pagan, categories of thought, and then wonder why the doctrine of incarnation causes us so much difficulty. Paul’s way of expressing the doctrine is to say, poetically, that the man Jesus fulfils the purposes which God had marked out both for himself and for humanity.”
You have to be careful when it comes to the deity of Christ. Even the modern day cults can be clearly identified by their beliefs about Christ. They may call Jesus the Son of God but may mean something totally different from what Paul meant. That’s why he spelled it out so clearly. They knew that it was the relationship with this Person that God’s the key to life itself. He is where true life begins. Knowing Him is everything. Who do you say that He is?
