The sermon outline as provided is below.
Christ over all
Colossians 1:15-23
Introduction: Is Your Jesus Too Small?
1. Christ and the Creation (vs. 15-17)
- The image of God
- The firstborn over all creation
- Christ and all things
- in him all things hold together.
2. Christ and the new creation (vs. 18-20)
- The head of the "body"; the church
- The firstborn from among the dead
- To reconcile to himself all things.
- Before -- alienated and enemies
- Now -- reconciled through Jesus/ death, holy in God's sight
- How -- faith grounded in the hope held out in the gospel.
Some comments:
This is a rivetting passage for many reasons, but I want to touch on a few related to its implications for Christ's being our creator (of course, given the topic of this blog).
The centrality of Christ is firstly opposed to the pluralism of today. The sermon made this point well, I thought. What it didn't explore was 'why pluralism'?
I think that underneath pluralism, in the West, at least (Eastern pluralism may be a different matter) lies a meta-religous position that is not scrutinised (see my Fundamentalism 2 blog). Modern Western pluralism would regard faith in Jesus as merely one of a number of religious choices all being of equal value; that is, none, outside the person and their span of influence. That is, as it touches on what is really real, of no value at all. The position, the 'meta-religious' position defaults to materialism. With reality being really no more than matter in various arrangements resulting from the outworking of the nature of matter itself, any beliefs that emerge from this matter that are not necessarily dependent on it are mere decoration; they have no more to do with what is true than the colour of carpet in a hospital has to do with the success of surgery.
The challenge for materialism is, of course, to doubt its own axioms.
The Christian stand against pluraism turns on Christ, and in this passage on Christ as creator.
And this takes us to the next thing.
Paul delineates Christ's place and work for us by reference to him as the image of God (the successful image, counter to the failed image of Adam and Eve, representing God the source (head) of life and love to the creation) preeminent in all creation, creator, firstborn from the dead with respect to the church and reconciler.
The interesting connection that I see is that between death and Christ, and that in terms of Christ as creator.
The contrast between the life giving Christ (John 1:4) and death and its ramifications could not be clearer. (1 Cor 15:21 and 26). It is too easy for us to think of death as a part of the creation, after all, it dogs us all and we cannot but not conceive of it; but it crushes life, it stands in opposition to God; is the antithesis of creation because it undoes creation: runs creation in reverse and produces not-life: and it therefore starkly denies Christ in whom is life.
But I think that death, in any form, cannot be part of creation. Indeed, its introduction is the result of undoing the relationship between man and God (Gen 2:17, 3:19 and with 1 Cor 15:21 with Romans 5:12) and results in breaking creation; it is in direct opposition to Christ.
Thus I find it problematic that some Christians can see death in the creation between its initiation and the fall, which is required if the life of Adam and the fall is pushed forward to a date after death is surmised to be in the creation (but not of it, which I think the Colossians passage indicates) thus having the creation including death being for Christ. The incongruousness of this is such as to deny the words of scripture and plant at its heart, in Christ, a (fatal?) contradiction.
But Christ repairs the creation, he overcomes death which is out of step with creation, confronting creation with its negation, and setting aside its power and destructive place, over us and the whole cosmos (Roms 8:22).
