Colossians 1:15-20 Jesus is the Reason for the Season: Or Prominent? or Preeminent

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek is preaching from his series, Correcting Christmas Cliches. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning, Recast. We're glad to have you with us today. My name is Spencer. If you're new here, we would especially like to thank you for coming. We're glad that you have joined us to open up God's Word this morning for the next couple of minutes.

Jesus Is More Than Merely Prominent at Christmas

We're going to continue our series this morning on Christmas cliches. Our purpose in this series isn't to bash popular Christmas sayings, but rather to help us think biblically about the Christmas season.

How many of you have heard the phrase, Jesus is the reason for the season? Everybody, right? That's super common, right? I'd say that when people use it, they use it with good intentions. Typically, I think people use it trying to remind one another that Christmas is about the birth of Christ.

It's not about holiday traditions like hanging up stockings, cutting down a Christmas tree, or even giving presents to one another. While those things are good and provide a lot of fun and activities for the families, we shouldn't let them overshadow the fact that Christmas is a celebration of God being born as a man.

In that sense, I think the phrase is a good reminder for us to not lose sight of Christ during the holiday season and the busyness and the traditions that come along with that. When I think about that phrase, I think it's really a call for us to make Jesus prominent in our holiday celebrations.

That's good. I think we've got to be careful to not fall into a rut where Jesus is prominent for a month, a year, and then he kind of hits the back burner for the rest of the year when Christmas is over.

We just kind of continue life as normal where he's not the center of attention. Our text this morning is one that I dearly, dearly love. It is going to remind us that Jesus demands more than just a prominent focus one month,.

A year.

Rather, he deserves our worship, our affection, and our service every day of the year. The text uses a very interesting word to communicate that reality. It tells us that in everything, Christ should be preeminent.

You see, there's a difference between something that is prominent and something that is preeminent. If something is prominent, it means that it's important, but it may be kind of on an equal playing field with other things that are just as important.

Preeminent, on the other hand, means to have first place. It means to have first in influence, to have the highest priority, to have the highest authority. And when used in relation to Jesus, it means that there is nothing and no one higher in position or authority or influence.

And so the question we have to answer is this, is Jesus preeminent in my life? All the time, in all the seasons, or is he just prominent? Perhaps he may only be prominent at Christmastime. I think a lot of us, if we're honest, would say that Jesus is prominent.

We would say that he's important to us, that he gets some of our time. We might even say that we love him, but very practically, there are other things in our lives that are just as prominent, things that we treat as just as important.

The problem with Jesus being just prominent, though, is that something can't be both prominent and preeminent. If it's preeminent, it is above all else more important than all those things that have a prominent role in our life, things like hobbies, our traditions, or even our families.

And this conundrum, this problem is an interesting one. I think it's been around since the Bible was written. As a matter of fact, the text we're going to look at this morning, Paul writes to them to address this very issue.

We're going to be in the book of Colossians, and one of the reasons Paul wrote Colossians was to address false teachers who were suggesting that Christ was not sufficient for their spiritual growth. They would say that in order to be truly spiritual, they needed to add other elements to Christian.

Living.

So they needed Christ plus asceticism or Christ plus mysticism or Christ plus angel worship or legalism in order to grow spiritually. It was a suggestion that Jesus simply be prominent in their spiritual lives, among other things, rather than having first place.

But Paul writes this to make it perfectly clear that Jesus shouldn't just be prominent in our lives. He should be preeminent. So if you have a Bible, turn with me to Colossians chapter 1. We're going to look at a section of scripture that most scholars consider to be a hymn.

And this hymn has two stanzas. We're going to focus on the second one this morning, verses 18 to 20, but I kind of want to read the whole hymn to give you a little bit more context. So we're going to read Colossians chapter 1, beginning in verse 15.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.

For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. So you may have noticed, if you're really paying attention, that there's some similarities between these two stanzas.

They both begin with a description of who Jesus is, and then they describe what He has.

Done.

And as we work through verses 18 and 20, you'll see that all of the information is related to that phrase, in everything He might be preeminent. Verse 18 flows toward that statement, and then verses 19 and 20 flow from it.

When Paul opens up this stanza in verse 18, he opens up with three descriptions that answer that first question of who is Jesus. He says that Christ is the head of the body, the church, that He is the beginning, and finally that He is the firstborn from the dead.

And then interestingly, the outcome of who Jesus is, the outcome of those realities, is that in everything He might be preeminent. So let's start to unpack this. I want to take the first phrase and look at it really quick here.

The phrase, He is the head of the body, the church. So obviously, this is a metaphor that Paul is using to describe the church, when he uses the words body and head, and his focus here is not so much on the body as it is on Jesus as the head of the church.

But what does that mean? What does it mean that Jesus is the head of the church? I think the phrase kind of has three realities or roles for Christ wrapped up into it. First, it comes with the idea of authority, that is that Christ is sovereign over the church.

Second, I think it has the idea of control. Christ is going to lead the church in the direction that God wants it to go. And finally, I think this idea of headship carries with it the idea of sustenance, that is that Christ is the force that holds the body together and supplies it with the energy that allows it to grow.

Interestingly enough, Paul picks up this idea in the next chapter of Colossians. In chapter 2, verses 18 and 19, Paul says, let no one disqualify you, and here he's talking about these false teachers and what they were presenting.

He says, let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going out in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head, that's Christ, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

So as the head of the church, Christ has authority over it. He provides direction to it and he sustains it. This is a really important reminder for us, right? We are dependent upon Christ for our spiritual growth, both as individuals and as a church, and so we need to daily rely on him for strength and for direction.

If he's not preeminent in your life, if you aren't looking to him daily for those things, if he's just prominent during the Christmas season and in the background of your life the rest of the year, then you are separating yourself from the very source of spiritual.

Life.

Without him, we can't do any spiritual good. We'll just wander around placing our affections on things that ultimately will never satisfy our souls. And so this is a good reminder that the Christmas season is one where we need to constantly look to Christ and Christ alone to meet our spiritual needs.

The text goes on then and it says two more things about who Jesus is. It says he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. These two statements are really closely related because that idea of firstborn really is restating the idea of beginning.

So I kind of want to treat these together as we explore them. When we think of the word beginning, though, we typically think of it in a temporal manner,.

Right?

Like I might say to you, I went on vacation at the beginning of November. What am I communicating? That I went early in the month. It's the beginning of a period of time. But this word for beginning in the New Testament can also mean primacy in rule or authority.

Primacy in rule and authority. And so here I think when it's used in relation to the church, it takes on both of those aspects. A better way to think of it might be to think of the word founder. That's a word you guys are all familiar with, right?

For example, Jeff Bezos was the founder of Amazon, right? And when we think of him as the founder of Amazon, we realize that he was the beginning.

Of the company.

That it's due to his ideas and his creativity and his hard work that Amazon ultimately came into fruition. And we could have said, at least before he resigned and stepped back, that as the founder, he was also the person with ultimate authority.

When it came to Amazon, the buck stopped at Jeff Bezos, right? He was the person that was in charge. He was the one that got to make final decisions about the direction of the company. And so I think when we think about Jesus as the beginning, we are thinking of it in that sense.

That he is not only the beginning of it time-wise, he's the one who started the church, right? And the eschatological program, but he is also the one with ultimate authority. In that sense, he is the Lord.

He's the Lord of the church, but the text goes on and gives us a glimpse to say that he's also the Lord of redemption. I think we get that idea from the next phrase, firstborn from the dead. That phrase is a reference to the resurrection.

And so when you put together the idea of founder with the idea of resurrection, what you see here is that Jesus is preeminent because he is the founder of the resurrection program. Now, if you're astute, you might say, well, here, how can Jesus be the founder of the resurrection program?

There was other people that were resurrected, right? As a matter of fact, he himself resurrected three people from the dead. But I think you would be right. But I think what we have to remember is that those people that Jesus resurrected, they were more, I think a good way to think of it is the term resuscitation.

Those people were resuscitated, right? They came back to life, but what ultimately happened to them? They died again, right? That didn't happen to Jesus. Jesus lives forevermore. He was the first person to rise from the dead with a glorified body, never to die again.

He's the one who broke death's hold on humanity, and he's the one who initiated this eschatological resurrection. His resurrection guarantees the resurrection of everyone who follows him, right? 1 Corinthians 15 makes this really, really clear.

It says, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. But each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ.

And this is super important for Paul's argument here because it demonstrates Jesus's supremacy. He has conquered death, right? He is above all things because he has defeated the biggest enemy that we have, right?

And so in putting forth Jesus as the defeater, if that's even a word, of death, Paul is demonstrating that Jesus is supreme. And the result of him being the founder of this resurrection program is, in fact, his.

Preeminence.

Now, Christ has always been sovereign over everything, right? Because he created everything. But in his resurrection, Christ established his power over a fallen and rebellious world in a new and different degree.

And because of that, he must have preeminence. He must have first place in all of creation. He must have first place in the church, and he must have first place in your life and.

In my life.

His preeminence here is a fact, right? There's nothing you can do to change the reality that Jesus is preeminent. But I think it's also a challenge to us, right? And so we have to come back to that question.

Is Jesus preeminent in my life, or is he just prominent? And as I said earlier, he can't be just prominent. We shouldn't read Luke 2 before we open presents and then not touch the Bible again until Easter.

You know, cutting down a Christmas tree shouldn't be more important to us than spending time in prayer talking to Jesus. Receiving gifts shouldn't be more special to us than reflecting on the gift that we have been given in Christ Jesus.

And so in that sense, Jesus is the reason for the season. But I'd suggest to you that he's also the reason for your year, and he's also the reason for your life. As the Creator, we owe our very lives to Christ, and if he's truly preeminent in our lives, we need to daily lay down our lives before him and follow him.

We need to do what he's asked us to do and allow him to direct our thoughts and our attitudes and our actions. But that's a challenging concept to wrestle with, I think. You know, very practically, what does that look like?

How do I know if Jesus is preeminent in my life? What I'm going to suggest to you isn't the only way that you can know whether Christ is preeminent in your life, but I think mulling over these couple of questions that I'm going to put before you can give you a good idea, and give you something to chew on.

So the first question I think that's helpful to think about is, are you doing what he has told you to do? You know, God has revealed his will to us in the Bible, and we need to wrestle with the reality of whether we are placing ourselves under the submission of God through the Word.

Are we walking in a manner that is worthy of him, as Paul says elsewhere in Colossians? And number two, are we seeking to glorify him in each and every aspect of our lives? Is the pattern of our lives, and that's a phrase I like to use because we're not looking for perfection here, right?

But what we're looking is for a pattern of your life, your heart to be focused on walking in a manner that makes much of him. If you think about those and you wrestle with them and you think, you know what, the pattern of my life really isn't characterized by a yes to those two questions, then Jesus probably isn't preeminent in your life.

And he may just be one of many competing interests. He may be a priority, but he's not the priority. And if that's reality, you need to make a Spirit-empowered change. This isn't something you can do on your own.

It's something that you have to do through the power of the Holy Spirit. But if you acknowledge that Jesus is Lord and live in light of his authority, the Spirit will work and he will take you and he will shape you and make your life such a way that you are displaying to the world Christ's preeminence.

You might wonder, that sounds like a big, big ask, does Jesus really expect that from.

Me?

Yes, he does. Yes, he does.

Yes, he does.

This is not a negotiable thing. And you might wonder, well, why? Why does he demand so much? Paul goes on and he answers that question with the conclusion of this hymn. Notice what he says here. Look at verse 19.

He begins and he says, four. Now four is an explanatory conjunction. These verses are going to give us the reason why Paul could say what he just did about Christ's preeminence. The reason for Christ's preeminence is the work of his reconciliation.

But notice here, Paul doesn't just launch right into Christ's work of reconciliation. He adds one more phrase about who Jesus is and he does that because with this phrase he provides the authority with which Christ could perform this work of reconciliation.

Back to the text here. He says, for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Now that phrase fullness in Colossians simply means totality. It means that all of the divine power and attributes and character and nature of God reside in Christ.

He is all that God is because he is God. And because he is God, he and he alone could accomplish this work of reconciliation. And with that statement, Paul then moves into describing what Jesus has done.

The text says, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross. I don't know about you, but when I first read that, I was a little bit confused.

You can go, man, there's a lot packed in here. So I want to take a couple minutes and really make sure that we understand what Paul is talking about here when he brings up this idea of reconciliation.

You know, Christ's work on the cross had a lot of aspects to it, and it had subsequent effects on us, and reconciliation is one of those. You see, one of the problems that we face as sinners is that our sin separates us from God, right?

Because God is holy and we are not, we are at enmity with him. And reconciliation is God's solution to that problem. It's the establishing, you might say, of a relationship between two parties who were formerly at odds.

And when Christ died, he paid for sin that separated people from God, and in doing so, he removed the enmity, making people savable. Now, we can get confused here because most often when we think of reconciliation, we think of it in very personal terms, right?

Because we're usually discussing the relationship between God and man or between one another,.

Right?

And both of those are very personal aspects. And because we have that tendency to think of reconciliation in very personal terms, this verse can be confusing. Because what does he say here? He says that all things, whether on heaven or earth, are the object of reconciliation.

That's a very universal statement. And we know that it's cosmic in its scope because the phrase all things has been used twice already in this hymn to refer to all of creation. Christ as the creator and the sustainer of all things has a relationship with all of creation.

And that relationship between God and creation and between Christ and creation has been marred due to the effect of sin. And so, all of creation, in some sense, needs to be brought back into a proper relationship with Christ.

Specifically, I think there are three different realms which are in need of creation due to the effects of sin. The spirit world, the human world, and the material world. And so, I want to tackle these just real quickly and kind of deal with the issue of how they're affected by sin.

First, we know that about a third of the angels rebelled due to pride, which is a sin, right? And they were cast out of heaven. And so, in that sense, the spirit world was affected by sin. Then, of course, the human fall is recorded in Genesis 3, and Romans 5 tells us that it resulted in sin and death coming to all people.

And then finally, the material world was affected as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve. Genesis 3 .17 says that the ground was cursed. Romans 8 says that the creation was subject to frustration, that it is in bondage to decay, and that it groans.

And so, you can see that all things, all of creation was affected by sin, and it no longer bears the relationship to the Creator that it was intended to have. And so, as a result, the work of Christ in reconciliation needs to extend, in some sense, to all of creation.

And Jesus was given the task of making right what has gone wrong. And by His power and by His authority, He's going to correct every aspect of creation. It's not enough to just reconcile people, because that doesn't fully deal with the sin issue.

Sin still would be present in creation, and so to stop there would be, I think, to rob Christ of some of His glory as the preeminent one. All of the effects of sin have to be done away with, and so everything needs to be reconciled.

In that sense, when Paul uses the term reconcile here, what he's talking about is that through Christ's death on the cross, all things have been brought back under the rule of His sovereign power. In that sense, they have been brought back into their rightful order.

But that reconciliation of all things back to God is possible, our text says, because Christ has made peace by the blood of His cross. This is the last thing that our text says that Jesus has done, and I think it's a very fitting conclusion.

The reason that it's possible for anything to be reconciled to God is because Christ has made peace with God by shedding His blood on the cross. His death has not only brought peace between God and man, but ultimately will restore harmony to the entire universe.

And so Christ is preeminent because He died on that cross, and in that death He made a way for you and I to be saved from the penalty of sin and have everlasting life. If you have never submitted to the preeminent Christ as Lord and Savior, it's never too.

Late.

And it's not a complicated thing to do, right? The Bible says that if you believe in your heart that Christ shed His blood for you on the cross and rose from the dead for your sins, and if you confess with your mouth that He is Lord, then you will be saved.

And the Spirit will empower you to live a life that displays the preeminence of Christ. As Dave comes up and plays a song for us, we're going to kind of transition to communion here for the next couple of minutes.

When we participate in communion, we are reflecting on the fact that Jesus is God, and that He came from heaven to be born in a humble manger at what we celebrate as Christmastime, before He then went on to live a sinless, perfect life and ultimately shed His blood on our.

Behalf.

And so if you've come to a point in your life where you believe that Jesus died for you and you have confessed to follow Him as Lord and Savior, we invite you to participate in communion. But if you've never come to that place, I would encourage you to talk to myself, talk to Don here in the front, talk to one of the elders in the back about how you can have a relationship with Christ Jesus.

When I'm done praying, I would invite you, as the song plays, to just get up from your seat, make your way toward the back. There are various tables in the back there where you'll find a cracker that represents Christ's body that has been broken and given for you, and you'll find a cup of juice that represents the new covenant in His blood.

Just take one of each of those and come back to your seat and eat and drink whenever you.

Are ready.

We're thankful that you've joined us this morning to celebrate what Christ has done in coming and being born and dying for us. Let's pray. Lord, we are so thankful that You came to earth. We are thankful that You created us.

We are thankful that You are above all things, that You're sovereign, that You call the shots,.

Lord.

We're thankful that You provide direction for us, that You sustain us by Your power. We're thankful that You died for us so that we might have eternal life. Lord, I pray for those of us here today that as we reflect on Your death at Christmastime that it would be a reminder that You are calling us to lay down our lives for You, not only during Christmastime, but during the rest of the year for the rest of our lives.

And for those people here who have never placed their faith and their trust in You, I pray that the Spirit would work in their hearts in a manner that might just convict them of their sin and call them to hope in You.

We're thankful for Your death for us, and we're thankful for the Spirit that empowers us and allows us to reflect Your preeminence over our lives to a lost world around us. We're thankful, thankful, thankful, thankful for all that You've done.

We pray in Your precious and holy name.

Amen.