The Uniqueness of Christ / Colossians 1:15-23
Building a Frankenstein Jesus
If you have your Bibles, open with me to Colossians chapter one. Welcome to those of you who are guests with us today. We are walking through Colossians, and we are going to look at verses 15 and following.
To begin, I have to be completely honest with you about something. When I talk to people who grew up in church, I am actually a little envious. I didn’t grow up in a faith community at all. My dad was a single dad raising me, which meant our life consisted of a lot of meatloaf and a lot of Monday Night Football. We didn’t do a lot of Jesus. My grandparents knew the Lord, so on Christmas and Easter, we went to the little Nazarene church in Reedley. All I remember about that church is that everybody there was old and the basement smelled like dirty socks.
Because of that, I formulated my own idea of who Jesus was. It was a mix of Christmas, Easter, Monday Night Football, and watching professional athletes pray in the end zone. I took bits and pieces of my own perceptions and, almost like Frankenstein, tried to build a Jesus out of my own thoughts. Have you ever felt like that?
Meanwhile, I watched people who grew up in church. They knew the stories, they knew the truth about Jesus, and they understood biblically who the Lord was. I didn’t have that foundation, so I was constantly piecing things together.
It wasn’t until I was in college that everything shifted. An ex-girlfriend’s dad bought me a Bible and told me, “You need to read this book.” That is a great thing to say to a young man who doesn’t know the Lord and is dating your daughter. I started reading the Gospel of John almost on a dare. The man basically said, “Just start in the Gospel of John, and God bless you.”
So I started reading. It didn’t take many pages for me to recognize that something strange was happening. What I had done most of my life was paint onto Jesus what I thought He should be. But then I started reading the actual text.
I read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” I remember thinking, Wait, start over. What is he saying? It said that apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and this life was the light of men. And this Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
John 1:1-4 (NASB)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
As I kept reading, this Jesus invited people to be born again in John 3. In John 4, He hung out with shady people, just like me. He was speaking directly against empty, external religion. There was an intentional drawing near to those who needed a Savior, who needed hope, who needed peace. My Frankenstein Jesus began falling apart because the real Jesus was incredible.
In John 8, He showed grace to a woman caught in adultery. In John 9, He told a group of religious people who thought they could see that they were spiritually blind, and He restored the sight of a blind man who truly saw who Jesus was. In John 10, I saw that He was the Good Shepherd calling my name. In John 14, I read what was the most terrifying claim I had ever seen: Jesus claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.
John 14:6 (NASB)
Jesus said to him, ’I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
Then in John 18 and following, I saw that this Jesus—the Word made flesh—went to the cross for me, died for me, rose from the dead, and called me to follow Him. In that moment, my homemade Frankenstein Jesus fell completely apart, and biblical Christology took over. My view of Jesus became a biblical view of Jesus, and it changed everything.
Shortly after, I placed my faith in Jesus, put my trust in Him, and began to follow Him. A right view of Jesus changes your life because He is supreme, He is sufficient, and He is still calling disciples today.
The Danger of Bad Theology
Understanding who Christ really is biblically is vital. Many people still construct their own Frankenstein picture of Jesus: He’s a little of this, a little of that; He walked on water, He rose from the dead, He can fly, He can turn water into wine (which is a bonus), and He can raise the dead. You put these disconnected stories together, but you end up with an incomplete picture of the sufficiency and supremacy of Jesus Christ.
In John 14, Philip made an odd comment to Jesus. He said, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” He was speaking directly to the Word made flesh, asking to see the Father, as if to say, “You’re nice, Jesus, but we want to see the Father.”
Jesus gave a response that perfectly sets up where we are heading in Colossians: “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not come to know Me? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say to Me, ‘Show us the Father’?”
John 14:8-9 (NASB)
Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’ Jesus said to him, ’Have I been so long with you, and [yet] you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how [can] you say, ’Show us the Father ’?
Jesus said in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” A biblical view of Jesus changes everything because to know the Son is to know the Father, and to know the Father is to know the Son.
You have heard the old expression, “Old habits are hard to break.” How about this: old, bad theology is hard to correct. The original recipients of Paul’s letter in Colossae were deeply influenced by a distorted view of Jesus. They had strapped cultural deities together, diminishing who Christ truly was by mingling Him with the pagan philosophies of their day. They were stripping away the biblical merit of Christ and creating an image of Jesus in their own likeness.
They were heavily influenced by Platonic thought. Plato taught the concept of visible forms and invisible ideals—the idea that the physical world is inherently evil, indulgent, and corrupt, while the spiritual world is holy and good. Plato introduced a system of bifurcation. You and I might not realize we carry that same thinking, but if you have ever said, “This is how I act at work, this is how I act on a Friday night, and this is how I act at church,” welcome to Plato. Plato allowed people to divide life into the secular and the sacred.
They were also influenced by polytheism and Greek mythologies. These systems taught a hierarchy of deities. Even the pinnacle deity, Zeus, did not control everything; he only controlled certain domains. Below him was a ladder of lesser, superhuman manifestations. The lower down the hierarchical ladder you went, the more interaction these beings had with the physical world, because the supreme gods were supposedly too pure to touch corrupt matter. The culture believed these lower, mediated beings shaped the physical world and lived in the heavenlies.
Paul writes Colossians 1:15-23 to dismantle these false ideas point by point. He takes their projected view of who they thought the Savior was and re-establishes a biblical view of Christ. To the Colossian culture, Christ was merely a lesser deity, a phantom bridging the gap between God and man. But Paul shows that He is the triumphant, fully divine Redeemer who purchased our redemption through His physical death on the cross.
Listen to how Paul sets the stage in verses 13 and 14:
Colossians 1:13-14 (NASB)
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The central question is: who is this “He” who rescued us? Paul walks through it with absolute clarity.
The Exact Image of the Invisible God
Paul begins in verse 15 by declaring the identity of Jesus:
Colossians 1:15 (NASB)
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
Jesus is the “image” of the invisible God. Image here does not mean a mere physical sketch, because God is spirit. It means the exact essence and nature of God. Jesus is God. He is deity clothed in humanity, where the unknown God is made known perfectly.
The author of Hebrews explains it with the exact same theology:
Hebrews 1:3 (NASB)
And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Paul also tells us that Jesus is “the firstborn of all creation.” Contrary to what groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach, this does not mean Jesus was a created being. In biblical language, “firstborn” refers to priority in time and supremacy in rank. It means He existed before all things and is higher than all things. Jesus is pre-existent. We often assume Jesus came into existence in the manger at Christmas, but Jesus was around long before the nativity scene was ever set up in your grandparents’ home. He had no beginning.
As the firstborn, He possesses the supreme rights, privileges, and distinctions as the Heir of the Father’s kingdom. Biblically, the firstborn received the double portion and the Father’s blessing. Jesus is the firstborn over all creation.
Notice the contrast here with the pagan deities of that era. In the ancient world, if you were a wheat farmer, you sacrificed to a fertility deity to bless your harvest. If you were a sailor, you offered sacrifices to a god of the sea. There was a specific god for the sun, the wind, love, wine, the underworld, and the mountains. Much like Apple has an app for everything, the ancient world had a god for everything.
Look at how Paul systematically demolishes that mindset in this text. In verse 16, he writes, “For by Him all things were created.” At the end of verse 16, he writes, “All things have been created through Him and for Him.” In verse 17, he writes that He is before “all things.” In verse 20, he writes that through Him, God reconciled “all things” to Himself. Jesus is not a localized deity over one small corner of life. He is pre-existent before all, sovereign over all, and Redeemer of all.
Colossians 1:16 (NASB)
For by Him all things were created, [both] in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities– all things have been created through Him and for Him.
You might ask, “Wait a minute, Genesis 1:1 says, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ Genesis 1:26 says, ‘Let Us make man in Our image.’ John 1:3 says all things came into being through Jesus. So did God create, or did Jesus create?” The answer is yes. Jesus is God, the active agent of creation.
The false teachers claimed that lesser deities formed the world out of pre-existing matter, which implied that physical matter was eternal. But if Jesus spoke the universe into existence out of nothing, matter is not eternal; it is temporal and created. Jesus is absolute Lord over the physical world.
Verse 16 also states that He created everything “in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.” This means Jesus created the spiritual realm as well. The Colossians worried about appeasing intermediate spirits and spiritual rulers, but Paul reminds them that Jesus created those spiritual beings with the word of His mouth. He is Lord over both the physical and the spiritual realms.
The Sustainer and Head of the Church
Paul continues in verse 17:
Colossians 1:17 (NASB)
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Jesus is before all things in time and in rank. He is both the Originator and the Sustainer of creation. All things literally hold together by the word of His power.
Because He is Lord over all creation, He is also Lord over the church. Look at verse 18:
Colossians 1:18 (NASB)
He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
When the church gathers, we gather under the authority of Jesus Christ. He is the Head. He is the Senior Pastor. He is the Chief Shepherd. As much as leaders might want to take credit for what happens in ministry, Jesus alone is the Head of the body.
Paul calls Him “the firstborn from the dead.” This does not mean He was the first person ever raised back to life, but that He was the first to rise from the dead never to die again. His resurrection was the Father’s absolute affirmation of His divine identity.
Romans 1:4 (NASB)
who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,
Paul makes this crystal clear in verse 19:
Colossians 1:19 (NASB)
For it was the [Father’s] good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,
The word “fullness” means the complete, unedited essence of God. All the fullness of deity dwells in Jesus. He was not a phantom, a lesser manifestation, or an angelic intermediary. He was fully God and fully man—two natures united in one person, without confusion, without division, without change, and without separation.
Because Jesus is fully God, He is supreme, sufficient, and able to reconcile us to the Father. Because He is fully man, He was able to stand in our place and pay the penalty of death that our sins deserved. When you wrap your mind around who Jesus is, human language falls short of capturing His magnificence.
Reconciled Through His Fleshly Body
Look at what Christ accomplished on our behalf:
Colossians 1:20 (NASB)
and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, [I say], whether things on earth or things in heaven.
Our reconciliation with God does not come through secret, mystical knowledge. It does not come through ecstatic experiences or philosophical rituals. It comes entirely through the brutal, physical reality of the cross. Jesus shed His physical blood to secure our peace with God.
Paul addresses the false teachers’ claim that Jesus was just a phantom spirit:
Colossians 1:21-22 (NASB)
And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, [engaged] in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach–
Paul uses the phrase “His fleshly body through death.” That sounds almost redundant, but Paul intentionally emphasizes it so no one could claim Jesus was merely an apparition. God took on real human flesh and died a real physical death in order to present us holy, blameless, and beyond reproach before the Father.
Notice our condition apart from Christ in verse 21: we were “alienated, hostile in mind, and engaged in evil deeds.” When I sat in that roach-infested college apartment in Fresno reading the Gospel of John, I realized there was a deep hostility between my sinful heart and a holy, sovereign God. There was nothing I could do to earn His favor.
An arrogant Christian is an absolute oxymoron. What did you and I contribute to our salvation? Absolutely nothing. We did not earn it, we did not deserve it, and we did not make the cut because we were good enough. We were alienated enemies. Yet, through the death of Christ in His physical body, we are now presented to the Father as holy, blameless, and without accusation.
If you followed me around today, or if I followed you around, we might not always act holy and blameless. But positionally, because of the finished work of Jesus Christ, when the Father looks at you, He sees you clothed in the righteousness of His Son.
Paul concludes this section with a vital encouragement in verse 23:
Colossians 1:23 (NASB)
if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.
The phrase “if indeed” carries the sense of “since”—assuming you continue in the faith, firmly established and unwavering. Paul is not telling them to place their hope in church attendance, moral perfection, or personal righteousness. He tells them to remain anchored in the hope of the Gospel.
This Gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven. There is no division where the physical world is evil and the spiritual world is good. Jesus Christ is the sovereign Creator and Lord of both. He was fully man and fully God, crucified for our sins, raised from the dead, and exalted above all. He is supreme, and He is completely sufficient.
From Knowledge to Heart Belief
Years ago in that college apartment, I realized it was never my job to project onto Jesus who I thought He should be. Instead, I had to let the biblical Christ show me who I truly was. In that moment, the Gospel became wonderfully real to me.
It is easy to study a rich theological text like this and say, “Amen, we have a great Savior,” and walk out the doors unchanged. So let me ask you: what does having a biblical view of Jesus mean for your heart today?
You can know facts about Jesus, but do you truly believe this at a heart level?
If you believe that God took on flesh, lived the life you could not live, and died on a cross to rescue you, you have encountered a love deeper than anything this world can offer. If you understand that while you were an enemy of God, Christ reconciled you through His blood to make you holy and blameless, that is not mere information—that is life transformation.
Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Jesus is enough. When you embrace Him, there is no greater love, no greater grace, no greater security, and no greater joy than simply resting in Him.
When Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father,” Jesus told him, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” Have you seen Jesus for who He truly is? Can you stop striving, stop trying to earn God’s favor, and simply delight in the finished work of Christ? The Creator of heaven and earth walked among us, died for us, conquered sin and death, and reconciled us to Himself through faith alone in His grace.
Let us pray together.
Father, as we respond to Your Word, I pray that we would truly see Jesus. Help us to rest, delight, and rejoice in the beauty of Christ. There is none like Him. He is completely supreme and entirely sufficient. His glory is beyond words and beyond our imagination, yet He took on flesh and sacrificed His life so that we could live. God, we thank You for Jesus. We thank You for the truth of Your Word. Deconstruct the false images we have built in our minds, and let Scripture define who Jesus is. And as we see Him clearly, let Him define who we are—people who hold fast to the hope of the Gospel, resting completely in His finished work. In Jesus’ name, Amen.