Pauls Epistle to Colossians (4)

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Jesus Christ in all creation

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Let's turn to Colossians 1, please. We'll continue our study of this very
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Christ -centered epistle of Paul to the Church of Colossae. Last day, last
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Lord's Day, we arrive to Colossians 1, verses 15 through 20, which is setting forth the glory of Jesus Christ in what must have been an early
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Christian hymn that Paul either wrote himself or used in this epistle.
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The Apostle Paul was addressing the Church of Colossae that had been assaulted by false teaching, and the
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Apostle determined he could best confront and correct the error in teaching that was plaguing the Church by setting forth the person and the glory of Jesus Christ.
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And a proper understanding of Jesus Christ will correct a lot of error and ignorance within the churches.
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And so this is what we have, beginning with verse 15 and continuing through verse 20. Let's read these verses again.
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He, and that pronoun is a reference to Jesus Christ, he is the image of the invisible
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God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.
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Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
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And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the
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Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
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For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
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And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
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Last Lord's Day, we read this paragraph and intended to get through a number of the phrases and clauses, but we ran out of time quickly and said we would devote today and hopefully give some more detail.
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And we're going to do just that, but we're not going to get very far. In fact, we're not even going to get through the first sentence.
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We get to the first comma, as it were, is what we want to give our attention to. He is the image of the invisible
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God. And as I was considering this, reflecting upon this, I saw just how far reaching this comment, this statement was regarding our
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Lord and the implications of it. And so this is what I want us to give our attention to, this clause, he is the image of the invisible
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God. Now, again, these verses, verses 15 -20, convey two major themes.
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We have the preeminence of Jesus Christ in creation, verses 15 -17, and then verses 18 -20, we read of the preeminence of Jesus Christ in redemption, both creation and redemption.
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And so in these verses, really what Paul is setting forth is that Jesus Christ is the source and meaning for all that is and all that occurs in creation and in history.
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Everything centers in the person of Jesus Christ. As one wrote here, however,
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Christ is presented as the agent of God and the whole range of his gracious purpose towards men.
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From the primeval work of creation through the redemption accomplished at history's midpoint, on to the new creation in which
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God's purpose will be consummated. Christ is set forth as the sum of all things, the meaning of all things, the purpose of all things, the originator of all things.
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Jesus Christ is the center of history, is the center of all things.
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And so we have in this passage one of the clearest and fullest expressions of the person
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Jesus Christ. There are actually nine specific traits that are listed by the apostle.
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We want to take each of these phrases and clauses, consider their meaning and implication, and right now I don't know how many
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Lord's Day this is going to take. I'm going to deal with the first today.
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Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. Now think about that and consider what
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Paul is saying. First, I think that we will look at the end of that statement where Paul described
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God as the invisible God. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God.
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God is invisible. You cannot see God with the physical eye. The scriptures describe
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God as invisible in several places quite clearly, forthrightly. First Timothy 1 .17
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reads, now to the king eternal, immortal, and there it is, invisible. To God, who alone is wise, we honor, glorify forever and ever.
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Amen. And then at the end of that same epistle, First Timothy, Paul repeats this attribute of God with different words.
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Paul writing to young Timothy, I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things before Christ Jesus, who witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our
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Lord Jesus Christ appearing, which he will manifest in his own time. He who is the blessed and only potentate, the king of kings,
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Lord of lords, who alone has immortality dwelling in unapproachable light, and here you have the idea of him being invisible, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power.
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Amen. And so no man has seen or can see. We see that God is invisible.
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And of course, when we speak of the invisibility of God, we're speaking about the spiritual nature of God, aren't we?
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God is spirit. Contrary to what the
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Mormons teach, Jehovah's Witnesses teach, what heretical groups down through history have taught,
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God is not a corporal body, a physical body, but rather God is spirit.
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He is invisible. The scriptures make this clear. We cannot see
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God with our physical eyes, but we can see God with eyes of faith. Not our physical eyes, but eyes of faith.
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In fact, Hebrews 11 .27 describes the faith of Moses in this way, by faith he,
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Moses, forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.
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That's quite a statement, isn't it? Seeing him who is invisible. Can you see
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God even though he's invisible? You can through faith. And so although Moses was born and raised in pagan
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Egypt, he had come to know God, who was invisible to him. But Moses believed this invisible
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God to such an extent that Moses was willing to forfeit every privilege and position open to him in Egypt.
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He was willing to suffer the wrath of Pharaoh for doing so, for his spiritual sight of the invisible
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God, which was his faith, governed his thinking and his desires. He saw the invisible
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God. Now what was it that Moses saw of God when he was in Egypt?
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Moses observed several of the attributes of God that convinced him he was seeing God. He didn't see
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God physically, he saw manifestations of God, God's attributes on display.
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For although God is invisible in his essence, some of God's attributes may be clearly seen with the eye of faith.
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Now again, that's a paradox, isn't it? Invisible attributes and yet they're clearly seen.
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And so although God is invisible, not able to be seen by man, some of God's attributes, that is, what
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God is like and what God does can be clearly seen, as we read in Romans 1, 20 and 21.
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For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen. Again, what a paradoxical statement, isn't it?
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Invisible attributes and yet they're clearly seen. They're evident. Just open your eyes. Being understood by the things that are made, you're created, even as eternal power
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God had, so that they, that is the people of the earth, are without excuse. Because although they knew
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God, you go back far enough, they weren't atheists. They knew the
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God of nature was a, there was a real God and he wasn't like us and he made all things and yet they failed to glorify him as God, nor were they thankful, but they became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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And so here we read a paradox. God's invisible attributes are nevertheless clearly seen.
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And so Moses must have observed the creation about him there in Egypt, perhaps hearing of the true
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God taught and spoken by God's people. And Moses was then enabled to see
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God through faith. Now again, when we speak of the invisible
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God, we're describing God in his essential nature as being spirit. We're not saying merely that God possesses a spiritual nature, for you and I possess a spiritual nature, don't we?
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We're spiritual in nature. But when we say that God is spirit, we're saying that God's very nature is exclusively spiritual.
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He is spirit. God has no physical form, a body as we have.
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And because God does not have a body, he does not have passions that control him as we have. He does not have limitations of time and space as we have, because we, although having a spiritual nature, are not holy spirit.
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We have a body and therefore we are subject to change, time, space. God is not limited in that way.
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God is spirit.
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He's not bound to time or space. And so the attributes of God that speak to this are God's, say, immensity and eternity.
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And attributes are simply descriptions of what God is like, who he is, what he's like, what he does.
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God is immense and God is eternal. And when we speak of God's immensity, the immensity speaks of God as spirit not being limited to any given location.
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There's no such thing in this gospel age as a holy place where God is, that if you go to, you're going to see or experience
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God more than you can right here with the people of God gathered in Jesus' name. If that one truth were conveyed to the people of the world, you know how many wars that would settle, how many desires to conquer and obtain land and real estate, temple mounts, things like that.
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God is not limited to any location. God is omnipresent. The psalmist declared this truth regarding the nature of God.
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Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? These are rhetorical questions implying the answer, nowhere.
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Can't do it. If I ascend into heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in hell, in Hades, you're there.
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There's no place where God isn't because God is not bound by space.
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He is immense. When we speak of the eternity of God, we're speaking about his infinity with respect to time.
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He's not bound by time. And the psalmist also wrote of this attribute of God, Lord, you've been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth.
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Wherever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. And so God is immense and God is eternal.
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And these are attributes of God because he is spirit, not physical as we are.
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But there are other attributes of God that can only be true of a spirit being an invisible God, not having a corporal body.
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And so we speak of God being wholly and completely independent as well as immutable. And these are also attributes that are associated with him being spirit, the invisible
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God. All persons with bodies are susceptible to influence from without and by very nature are changeable.
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Even the Lord Jesus in his human nature experienced change, didn't he? He grew up.
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He went to different places. He grew in wisdom and stature with man and God.
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In his human nature, not his divine nature that was unchangeable, but in his human nature, in his human body, he experienced change because that's what happens to physical things within physical space.
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But God does not change and is fully independent of all his creatures. This can only be true of one who is essentially spirit.
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And so God declared to his people, for I am the Lord. I do not change. Therefore, you are not consumed,
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O sons of Jacob. You know, you'd be thankful that I don't change is what he was telling his people basically.
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And no one can force God to change for he is wholly independent of his creatures. For who has known the mind of the
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Lord or who has become his counselor? No one. Rhetorical questions. Or who has first given to him and it shall be repaid to him.
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Nobody obligates God to do something for him or her. No one.
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And so no one has ever made any change in God for God is immutable as only a spirit can be.
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And then God's absolute perfection warrants God being a non -corporal spirit.
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And by the way, that word is spelled both ways. I see I got it both ways in my notes. The British spelling is the one we had earlier.
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The American spelling is here before us. That which is physical is finite.
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It knows limitation and is changeable. But God is perfect. He can only be so because he essentially is spirit.
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Now, in order to show that this understanding of God to be a spirit suggests and shapes our understanding of God's attributes, we might consider the assessment of the teaching of reformed theology, that of the scriptures, as set forth by Joel Beakey and Mark Jones in a wonderful book they edited, compended a few years ago, entitled
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A Puritan Theology, Doctrine for Life. And in this book, they included a chapter on Stephen Charnock who wrote the classic work.
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If you want a book that is really the sum, the end all of dealing with God's attributes, it's
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Charnock's book, Discourses Upon the Existence and the Attributes of God, commonly only known as The Existence and Attributes of God.
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It's still available. And here is Beakey and Jones' assessment of Charnock's view of God as spirit, which is under the heading, subheading in this chapter, called
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What is God? And what I want to show you here is that Charnock argued because God is spirit, this suggests his attributes.
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And his attributes suggest that he is spirit. One leads to the other. And so I want to read this.
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The being of God is necessarily bound up with the concepts of essence and existence. The former comes under consideration in Charnock's exposition of John 4 .24.
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God is a spirit, or God is spirit. He had nothing corporal.
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There's a British spelling. No mixture of matter, not a visible substance, a bodily form. Charnock notes that in John 4 .24,
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John 4 .24 is the only place in the whole Bible where God is explicitly described as a spirit, or at least in these very words.
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If God exists, he must have a body. He must necessarily be immaterial or incorporeal, since material by nature is imperfect.
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See material, that which is physical, is by nature imperfect, because it's changeable.
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Here Charnock, in a similar vein to many Reformed Orthodox theologians, argues by way of negation. Charnock affirms that God can be described in two ways.
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By affirmation, example, God is good. And by negation,
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God has no body. The first describes to him whatsoever is excellent.
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The other separates him from whatsoever is imperfect. In Charnock's view, the way of negation is the best way to understand
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God. Indeed, it's the way we commonly understand God. And so, to describe
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God, the word mutable becomes immutable. Mutable meaning changing. God is unchanging.
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And a lot of that, God's attributes, are described by ways of negation. We are finite.
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God is infinite. The I -N is a Latin negation of the word, infinite. There are other attributes that way too.
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They don't come to mind right now, but there are a number of them that are simply negations. Because we can only know things from our perspective, and so God is not like that.
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We negate it. He's infinite. We are finite. By affirming that God is a spirit, one is at the same time affirming what he is not.
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He has no body. And that's what we're saying when he has a spirit. As opposed to a material existence,
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God's being is non -composite. Moreover, because God is a spirit, Charnock is able to show how this necessarily speaks to his other attributes.
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And here it is. For example, holding to the reform maxim, the finite cannot contain the infinite,
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Charnock explains that if God were not a spirit, he could not be infinite. Or positively, because he is a spirit, he is also an independent being who is illimitable and immutable.
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And his immutability depends on his simplicity. Simplicity means that he's of one kind.
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He's not a composite. The simplicity of God. The point that Charnock makes in this section of his exposition is that there must be consistence between God's essence and his attributes.
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Otherwise, he cannot be God. And so by beginning with God's spirituality, Charnock is in line with the
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Westminster Confession of Faith, and also the Baptist Confession of 1689, by the way, which makes spirituality the first of the attributes of God.
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And here's the Westminster Confession. There is but one living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible without body.
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This is important. For these reasons, Charnock's defense of God as spirit is a fitting starting point for his discussion of the attributes of God, the major part of his discourse.
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And so his whole book, which is very thick, begins with this. God is spirit.
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It leads to everything else. And if you're not right on this, you can't be right on the other things. And yet, even though we know this, and this is the truth, and in no way we qualify it,
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God is spirit. Yet even though we know God is spirit, we read of descriptions of God throughout the
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Bible in which he is represented in a bodily form, or in a manner that would suggest he's something other than pure spirit.
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We should understand these descriptions to be God condescending, that is, coming down to the level of us in a manner that we can relate to him.
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And so here's a list that somebody put together. I didn't, but a list of references that describe God in terms that would seem not consistent with God as spirit.
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All of these descriptions here, with all the scripture references, is true of somebody who has a physical body.
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And so you have those scriptures that speak of God having a location. He's here, he's there.
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As having motion. Spirit who is everywhere, doesn't move from one place to another.
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Using vehicles, in other words, something carrying God. He rides on the sheriff. He is said to dwell on the earth.
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That's a location. He dwells with man. He dwells in man. And then the scriptures say he has a face.
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Moses saw him face to face. Eyes, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the good and evil.
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Nostrils, he parted the Red Sea with a blast of his nostrils.
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Mouth, lips and tongue, breath, shoulders, hand and arms, fingers, back, feet, voice.
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See, all these things can only be said of something that has a body, a physical form.
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His voice is spoken of as dreaded. You know, it takes something physical to speak.
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He is said to exercise laughter. He appears to men. How can he appear to men as spirit?
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His appearance is described, and he's in a human form in different places.
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And so you have all of these places and passages that describe God in terms that would seem to counter the idea that he is spirit.
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And it's because of these passages that some of these heretics and cults fashion their concept of who
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God is. And they're completely wrong in what they do, of course. And so all of these depictions of God are characteristic of God being in one location or another, communicating through the senses of a physical body.
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And we understand these things, of course, to be anthropomorphisms. In other words, this is how
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God condescends to relate and communicate with us finite physical beings.
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Those things are not who he is in essence. These things are the manner in which he comes to us and reveals himself to us, because we can't know him in any other way.
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And so these descriptions that we've just recited, they do not describe God as he is in essence, but rather as he is to us,
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God revealing himself to us in a manner that we can relate to him. This is very important and very foundational to a proper understanding of who
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God is. He's the invisible God. That's his essence.
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He's spirit. One who described our limited ability as human beings, and therefore
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God's need to condescend to us to reveal himself, wrote these words. Our gift of language belongs to the realm of the physical.
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Language itself is something in the physical realm. Our words and expressions are derived from terrestrial objects.
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It is therefore a wondrous reality as well as a manifestation of divine goodness that man, in using sounds which are expressive of that which is tangible, is able to give an explanation about divine and spiritual matters by means of the vehicle of language.
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Our mind, being finite and having limited capacity, must function in the realm of concepts and ideas before our comprehension can occur.
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It is the goodness of God that he adjusts himself to our limited ability to comprehend. Since a harmonious concept of God, which would include all that could be said and all thought about him is beyond our comprehension, it pleases
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God by means of various concepts and ideas to make himself known to man. So God condescends.
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He's infinite. There's no way we can even conceive of him. He has to condescend to us. The metaphor that's commonly used, it would be like a college professor, a very well -learned erudite college professor who gets down on his knees and talks baby talk to a toddler.
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And that's what God does in a manner so that we can relate to him and understand him. And this is how the
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Bible reveals God to us in all these ways throughout the
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Bible, and particularly the Old Testament, in which God is described in what appears to be these physical ways, physical terms.
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But ultimately we know that God is spirit. But that changed with the incarnation of the
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Son of God. The Lord Jesus came into the world and Paul declares in Colossians 1 .15,
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he, Jesus Christ, is the image of the invisible God. There you have it.
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Here we have a physical representation of the invisible God. And we can see him, hear him.
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He walks and talks, moves about us, performs deeds that can be seen and related, recounted by others.
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And so although God is invisible, there is one in his image who has revealed God to us. Jesus Christ is the image of the living
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God. He's the image of the invisible God. Colossians 1 .15.
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Philip had foolishly asked of Jesus, Lord, show us the Father and it's enough for us. Jesus said to him, have
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I been with you so long, yet you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the
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Father. How can you say, show us the Father? The Father is invisible. Jesus Christ is visible.
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He's the manifestation of God in a visible manner. And so here in Colossians 1 .15,
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Christ is said to be the visible representation and manifestation of the invisible God. And so make a study of Jesus Christ and you will become acquainted with God for who he is and what he's like.
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But in addition to know Jesus Christ as the image of the invisible God is the very means by which we may experience the purpose for which
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God made us. And why and what did God make us to be?
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He made us to be image bearers of our God who made us. Is that not right? And so here we read in Colossians 1 .15,
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Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. But is it not true that all human beings were created in the image of God?
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In the first chapter of the Bible, we read of God's deliberation purpose for mankind. God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
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Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea or the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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So God created man in his own image and the image of God. He created him male and female.
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He created them. And yet we read that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible
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God. And yet the invisible God made you and me to be bearers of his image in his world as well.
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And so although it's certainly true, Jesus Christ is the image of God and all other human beings never could be or would be.
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Nevertheless, there is an association between Paul's statement of who Jesus Christ is as the image of God and what the
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Bible sets forth the purpose for which God made you and me as the image of God.
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Do you see that? And so when you read the statement that he is the image of the invisible
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God, you shouldn't just think in terms that he reveals God to us, but also what is being brought into play is the reason for which
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God created us to be his image bearers. This is important.
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And so let's consider what does man as the image of God mean? Who are you?
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How did God create you? Well, first recognize that man is the image of God, distinguishes man from all other creatures, and exalts mankind above all other creatures.
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There's this tendency today to see all people, all living things alike. It's really far
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Eastern mysticism, philosophy and religion brought into the Western culture, you know, where an animal has as much right as you have as a human being.
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But this is not historic biblical teaching. Men and women are special in God's purpose.
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Man is distinct. He's not an animal, although men, fallen men behave like animals, worse than animals.
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Man is a wholly different creature from the animals and should be regarded as such. Man has a dignity and worth that far surpasses any animal in creation.
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Remember the Lord Jesus assuring his disciples, you are of much more value than many sparrows.
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The Lord Jesus, you know, did not equate all life as being equal in value. God created mankind to serve him in this lofty role as bearers of his image.
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And therefore, as bearers of his image, we are to glorify God throughout life. God created us all, each of us, male and female, in his image.
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As God's image, we are to reflect the glory of God in whose image we were made, as a mirror reflects the image of the one looking into that mirror.
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So we are to reflect who God is and what he's like when people see us, observe us.
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This means we are to live in such a manner that when people see us, they can better understand who God is and what he's like.
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That should be our desire and goal as Christians. In every aspect of life, even as something as mundane as eating and drinking, you do all to the glory of God.
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The works we do as a church, giving food to the needy in our community, the clothing yesterday, that they would look beyond us, see our works and glorify our father who's in heaven, because we're image bearers.
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Another illustration, not only of a mirror, but the image of God is that of a coin. The Lord Jesus himself described in language depicting the stamp on a coin's image.
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As a Roman coin bore Caesar's image that was stamped upon its face, so Christ bore the image of God.
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As the writer of the Hebrews wrote, he reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of God's nature.
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You see Jesus Christ, you see God. You see Caesar on the coin, it belongs to Caesar.
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It reflects, there's a likeness of Caesar. To see Christ was to see
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God displayed, and we too are made in the image of God. And although through the fall of Adam that image was marred terribly, in Christ that image is restored.
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We didn't lose our image. We're still image bearers of God. We're poor image bearers of God because of sin.
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It's marred, but we're still image bearers of God. But in Christ that's restored, so that hopefully as Christians when people see us, they should see
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Christ in us, and thereby see God for who he is and what he's like. Our lives should make known the glory of God.
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Now of course we are finite, and our God is infinite, but in our own small way we should reflect the glory that's
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God's. And so say the finite wisdom that we have should be an indication to others about the nature of God's infinite wisdom.
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The justice we manifest should reflect in a measure the nature of God's justice. The love we show to one another, although certainly flawed, nevertheless should reflect the infinite love that God has for his people.
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And again as we as Christians do good toward others, may they see that we so live because we're fashioned after the image of God, and as a result glorify their
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Father in heaven. And so we're image bearers of God.
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Secondly, man as the image of God suggests certain characteristics. Man is a living soul or spirit.
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You're not a living spirit and soul, you are a living soul and oftentimes it's referred to as spirit. Soul and spirit are one and the same in Scripture.
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And so this is seen in that man is a personal being.
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He has a self -consciousness with respect to himself. He's able to contemplate and act upon his reflection of who he is and what he wills to do.
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He is able to acquire knowledge and to reason based on acquired knowledge. Animals don't have self -consciousness.
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They are unable to think upon their past and wonder and meditate on their identity and capabilities, or plan and improve their condition in life.
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I had a very sincere woman came to me yesterday, please pray for me, my daughter died.
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And then she explained it was her dog. I had her for 14 years. It was so precious.
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It took me a little bit to figure out what she was asking. But you know, we're different.
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And animals are precious. We know they become part of the family. We understand that. But let's maintain the fact that people are made in the image of God.
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Animals operate on the principle of instinct, not on a principle of self -awareness. Man was created with the ability to reason, to contemplate, to create and develop things within his environment.
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Man's creativeness in art is a reflection of him being the image of God. It's a good way to witness, by the way, when you're around creative people.
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You're manifesting, you know, how God made you. He made you to be creative as God is creative.
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Secondly, man is a moral being. He has a conscience that governs his thoughts and actions. Animals don't have a conscience.
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Your dog does not feel guilty because he remembers having chewed your best boots when he was a puppy. They don't think in those terms, do they?
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Conscience is an aspect of the image of God stamped in human nature. Third, man has the ability to communicate and to develop and maintain a relationship with others and with God.
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Animals do not have relationships based on communication of values and ideas. Animals do not commune with or pray to God.
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Animals do not commune with God. Fourth, a human body is an aspect of the image of God.
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Through this body, we're able to relate and manage the world in which we are given rule. Fifth, God has given to man the capacity for eternal life.
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That's a part of the image of God. God created man alone of all the creatures of the earth except for angels to live forever.
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Six, man is capable and qualified to rule over creation on behalf of the creator. That's a part of the image of God.
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Man is able to receive instruction, consciously understand, devise plans, execute his plans, solve problems along the way.
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That's all a manifestation of the fact God made you his image. And then this last stated purpose for man to rule the world on God's behalf is an astounding thought.
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And this really brings us back to our passage. Consider this. God created us with the capacity and purpose to rule over the entire world.
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This should amaze us and lead us to praise our God for having created us with such noble and high purpose.
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And really, I would argue that what we read in Colossians 115 and a handful of words we have delineated for us in a larger scale in the book of Hebrews, particularly
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Hebrews 2, verses 6 and following, I want us to give attention to that. The writer to the
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Hebrews was talking to these Christians, Jewish Christians, basically reminding them who they were, that God had created them to rule over the works of his hands.
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And yet when they looked at one another, none of them were ruling over the works of God's hands because of sin. But they did see
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Jesus. He was ruling. He was the image of God. And he's going to restore his fallen people to the place where they also are true image bearers of God.
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This is what Paul is leading to in Colossians 1. This is why he's bringing it all up.
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He's telling these Colossian Christians, Jesus Christ is the one who is going to bring about your restoration to enable you to become whom
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God has designed you to be, true image bearers of God. And so we read in Hebrews where God has not put the world to come, of which we speak in subjection to angels.
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Angels are, you know, spiritual beings. They're great beings. One of my, you know, favorite movies is
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It's a Wonderful Life. But, you know, you know, biblically speaking, Clarence doesn't become an angel, does he?
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Angels are a separate category of beings. And angels were not entrusted subjection of the world.
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But one testified in a certain place saying, what is man that you are mindful of him? Here's a psalmist. He's quoting
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Psalm, Psalm 8, I think. Yeah. And the psalmist is amazed.
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God, how can you do this for us who seem to be so frail and faulty?
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What is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you take care of him? You made him a little lower than the angels.
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You've crowned him with glory and honor. You set him over the works of your hands. See, Adam was to be king, prophet and priest over creation on behalf of God.
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Rule over the creation, care for, manage it and direct it to God's end.
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You set him over the works of your hands. You put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that God, he put all in subjection under him.
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He left nothing that was put under, not put under him. And yet he concludes, but now we don't see all things put under man.
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So the writer did the Hebrew Christians quoted Psalm 8. When the psalmist considered the lofty end to which
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God had designed mankind, he was overwhelmed at God's goodness, that God would so ennoble and exalt man within all his creation.
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But what became of man as the image of God after his fall into sin? We also have recorded for us in Hebrews 2, a record of man's fall into sin, marring him terribly with respect to his being the image of God.
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And so after exclaiming the glory in which God created man to rule over creation, we read in Hebrews 2, 8b, but now we do not yet see all things put under him.
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Now that's an understatement. It's designed to emphasize the utter failure of man to rise to his noble calling.
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And when sin entered the world, man fell from his lofty estate. The image of God became terribly marred, though it wasn't extinguished.
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Even fallen man is the image of God, but it's in some ways a shadow of its original form.
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As one put it, we retain the image structurally, in the sense that we remain human beings, but not functionally, for we're now slaves of sin, unable to use our powers to mirror
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God's holiness. Instead of rulers, we are ruled. That's what sin brought us.
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And so mankind, through Adam's sin, fell from his righteous state. He failed to live so as to fulfill God's purposes for him.
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Having been made in the image of God with great privileges and opportunities, he chose rather to live for himself rather than God, and thus he forfeited his life.
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And so rather than having dominion over the creation, the creation asserted its dominion over him.
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Rather than rising to manage the world on God's behalf, man could not even manage his own soul after he fell into sin.
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Mankind ever since Adam's fall has been enslaved to the creation that objects to his presence, resists his efforts to manage it, thorns come up, and he has to fight against it.
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Adam forfeited mankind's life through his resistance and rebellion toward God who made him.
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Man loves his life supremely more than God who gave him life, and the result was forfeiture of life, coming under the terrible, miserable, eternal wrath of God.
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All mankind is now naturally under the guilt and power of sin, the reign of death, the inescapable wrath of God.
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In short, fallen man came under the realm of the dominion of darkness. Didn't we have that in the previous verse?
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Was it verse 13 of Colossians 1, thereabouts? The dominion of darkness over which Satan rules over the people.
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But God through Jesus Christ has snatched us from the domain of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the
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Son of his love. He is the image of the invisible God.
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To Christ, the image of the invisible God, he makes you and me as Christians become what
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God originally purposed for us to be true image bearers, and that includes also reigning in authority.
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We'll share in the reign of Christ. Because Jesus Christ is the image of God, he came to reconcile all things unto
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God and to restore us, the image of God in us, so that we can fulfill the purpose for which
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God made us. This is a broad and all -encompassing matter that the apostle is setting forth before these
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Colossian believers. And so God sent his
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Son to fulfill his original purpose for mankind to restore fully the image of God in believers.
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And so after the writer of the Hebrews declared his disappointing acknowledgment of the failure of man to live to the end to which
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God had created him, he then pointed to the work of Jesus Christ to recover his people from their fallen state and exalt them to their destiny as glorified children of God.
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And so beginning with Hebrews 2, verse 8b, we read, but now we do not see all things put under him, that is, under mankind, under man.
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But we see Jesus, you see. We do see him, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone, for it was fitting for him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, same language as Colossians 1, in bringing many sons to glory or to glorification, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings, for both he who sanctifies those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason he's not ashamed to call them brethren.
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Basically the writer is declaring that through Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God, God reconciles us to himself, fulfills in us through him
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God's original design for us to become all that he designed, all that he purposed us to become.
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Through Jesus Christ, God restores us as his image bearers, so that we are able to glorify him fully through us.
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And so what occurs to man is the image of God through redemption in Jesus Christ. When sinners come to faith in Christ, God begins this restoration of his person, of that person's life.
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Regeneration or the new birth, when a person comes to receive new life in Christ, that process begins in which
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God is restoring the moral image of God that he created us in us.
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And he does so through God's son, the true and full image of God. Jesus Christ is
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God himself, who assumed a human nature, becoming one of us. And certainly we're perfectly in thought and action until we're fully sanctified and glorified.
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Only when we are glorified, standing before God on the day of the resurrection, will we fully manifest God's design for us.
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We will then be like Christ fully, manifesting in our glorified humanity the life that was illustrated and demonstrated through the life of the incarnate son of God.
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But even now, in a measure, to a degree, in this life, this process is taking place in you and me as Christians.
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God purposed in eternity that believers in Jesus Christ would be conformed to his image. And so God is fulfilling this purpose in the life of believers.
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Romans 8. We know all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.
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For whom God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed, there it is, to the image of his son.
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Christ is the image of God. God determined you were going to be the image of God's son.
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He's bringing us back to be conformed to his original purpose. God is reconciling a fallen, rebellious world back into willing subjection to God the
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Father. And so, what does it mean then to be conformed to the image of God's son,
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Jesus Christ? Well, I'd suggest to you it means it may be seen in basically four ways.
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First, God is predestined to be like our Lord in his relationship to the Father.
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We're adopted children. We're going to see he's the firstborn of the family. Consider it next week.
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But that means that you and I are children of God, adopted with the same end or purpose.
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We're going to reign with Christ. We are co -heirs with Christ. Do you realize what that means?
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Over new heavens and a new earth, we are going to be ruling. Do you not know you'll be judging angels,
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Paul reasoned with the Corinthians? Consider this glorious end. Can you imagine on the
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Day of Judgment when there's a separation between all the saved and the unsaved? If the unsaved get even a glimpse at the glory that's conferred freely by grace upon Christians?
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Can you imagine the remorse, the envy, the regret as they go into a
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Christless hell, fully, you know, shamed and humiliated when they see the glory of the sons of God, the children of God?
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Can we even fathom it? I don't think so. Hardly. Adopted children.
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And God is predestined that we'll be like our Lord in his character. We're being made over to be like Jesus Christ.
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Of course, God has also determined that we are going to suffer like Christ that comes with it. In fact, one produces the other.
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And then fourthly, of course, God is predestined that we'll be like our Lord in his resurrection glory. As Paul wrote,
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I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.
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We'll be like Christ. We want to close just considering over in Colossians 3, 8 and following, we have this idea or theme brought up once again, wrote to these
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Christians, you must also put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.
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Do not lie to one another since you put off the old man with his deeds. That is the past life. And you put on the new man who's renewed in knowledge.
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And here it is according to the image of him who created him. So in Colossians 2, 15, you have not only
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Jesus Christ described as the image of the invisible God that when you see
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Christ, you see the invisible God. But you have also intimated and more clearly set forth that through Jesus Christ, the image of God, you and I are reconciled and restored as image bearers.
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We also are going to glorify God. No, he's unique as the image of God, you know, because he is
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God from eternity. But you and I have a wonderful, glorious future ahead of us because he has made us to be his kings and his priests and prophets, as it were, ruling over creation and the new creation through eternity.
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We have a glorious end. And again, Paul basically is writing to this church at Colossae, what in the world are you doing, giving your attention and focus on what you eat, what you don't eat, you know, as though that's going to change anything.
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You know, Jesus Christ is everything. See it all in him and realize
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God's purpose for you in life through him. Amen. He is the heart and the center of all things.
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Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your word and for the glorious truths that we find disclosed to us.
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And we just pray that you would help us to understand these matters more clearly and fully and help us, our
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Father, to go forth from this place living accordingly. We pray that you would help us by the blessed
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Holy Spirit as we use the word of God to become more like Jesus Christ in holy character, our
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God, and in our relationships with one another and with you. Help us, our Lord, to be true image bearers in the world that when people see us, they may see and desire to know you, our invisible