The Supremacy of Jesus Christ, Part 1
Colossians 1:15–17
© Mike Riccardi
Introduction
What is the need of the hour for the Church of Jesus Christ?
One of the blessings of sharing the pastoral duties at Grace Church is that I often get the opportunity to come to church as a member, and not just as a preacher. And as I sit and stand, and sing and pray, and listen and take notes, I ask myself what I need from attending the morning services. I’m a Christian, whose desires and longings after holiness far surpass my own actual progress in grace. I need to be reminded, first of all, week in and week out, that there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins, where sinners like me lose all their guilty stains! I need to be reminded that there is a Redeemer, who has fulfilled the broken law of God on my behalf; who has borne in His own body all the guilt and shame of my sins; who has risen from the grave and conquered the punishment that I deserve; and who invites me, once again, to look unto Him not only to be saved, but to be assured and strengthened and fortified in that salvation by trusting afresh in His once-for-all and finished work.
You and I need to feast the appetites of our soul on that life-giving Gospel. That’s true when we’re tired. It’s true when we’re downcast. It’s true especially when our heart is cold and we can’t even sense our need for the means of grace. For all of that, we need to “lay aside every encumbrance,” Hebrews 12 says, “and the sin which so easily entangles us, and…run with endurance the race that is set before us.” And how do we do that? “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.” The need of the hour, Grace Church—the need of every hour—is that we know Christ. It’s that the Good Shepherd would know His own, and that we His sheep would know our Good Shepherd. There is no more worthy pursuit in the world than the knowledge of Christ and Him crucified.
Jesus Himself defined eternal life in this very way. In John 17:3, the Son says to the Father, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Eternal life is to know Christ! In fact, the Apostle Paul says nothing else is worth knowing. First Corinthians 2:2: “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” Now, Paul wasn’t a one-trick pony. Elsewhere he said, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). But here he says the sum and substance—the very marrow of his ministry—is Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. The Puritan John Flavel paraphrases Paul and says, “All other knowledge, how profitable, how pleasant soever, is not worthy to be named in the same day with the knowledge of Jesus Christ.” This is where life is.
In Philippians 3, Paul will say, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” All other knowledge in the world is nothing but rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ. In Him, Colossians 2:3, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Flavel says again, “Take away the knowledge of Christ, and a Christian is the most sad and melancholy creature in the world. [And yet], let Christ but manifest himself, and dart the beams of his light into their souls, it will make them kiss the stakes, sing in the flames, and shout in the pangs of death, as men that divide the spoil.” The knowledge of Christ is the marrow of life.
But we Christians, we’re a curious lot. On the one hand, we can hear those verses that I just read, and our hearts sing: “Yes! I want to know Him!” And at the same time, we say things like, “Man, what’s with all the heady, heavy, complex theology? I wish they would just focus on practical teaching.” What’s the matter with us? On the one hand we say we want to know Christ, and then we turn around and complain about the difficulty of doctrinally robust teaching—teaching that tries to show us Christ. Friends, we don’t get one without the other. The knowledge of Christ that satisfies our souls only comes from understanding the glories of His person and the riches of His work.
Yes, of course, it is every good teacher’s responsibility to show how theology applies to our lives. But even if there weren’t practical steps for us to take in response—even if the only application was: “Enjoy Him! Worship Him for who He is!”—it would still be valuable to know these truths about our Savior, because knowing Christ is the essence of life. It’s what makes life sweet. And in fact, it is the answer to every one of life’s very practical challenges.
And that is something that Paul wants the Colossians to understand. I remind you: these believers have been assailed by false teachers, who are peddling a mix of Jewish ceremonialism and pagan mysticism, that attacked the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus Christ in and above all things. They attacked Christ’s sufficiency in salvation—saying that simple faith in Him needed to be supplemented with the observance of Old Testament ceremonies. They attacked Christ’s sufficiency in sanctification—arguing that true power for spiritual growth and fullness came not only from Jesus, but from harnessing the power of the angelic forces that existed in the heavenly realms.
They even attacked His very deity—claiming that He was not fully and truly God, but only one of a series of lesser emanations from the true and ultimate source of divinity. Sure, He was a divine spirit-being, but He was not the one, true and living God Almighty. Neither could He be fully and truly man, according to these false teachers, because they believed in a philosophical dualism that regarded spirit as good and matter as inherently evil. No divine figure—and certainly not the true God Himself—could ever take on material flesh.
All of this heretical Christology made it so that Paul was going to have to set forth God’s true revelation concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ. And in the next section of our study in the Book of Colossians, he does just that—in what one biblical scholar called “one of the Christological high points of the New Testament” (Moo, 107). In fact, Pastor MacArthur, in his commentary, said, “Of all the Bible’s teaching about Jesus Christ, none is more significant than Colossians 1:15–19” (44).
As Paul closes his introductory prayer in verses 12 to 14, he unfolds for the Colossians the riches of God’s grace that come to them by virtue of the work of Christ. “In [Him] we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Well, having briefly celebrated the blessings of the work of Christ, Paul now turns to celebrate the glories of the Person of Christ. He moves from redemption to Redeemer, giving something of the Redeemer’s résumé. Believers can be assured that our rescue from the domain of darkness is irrevocable and that our deliverance unto the kingdom of God’s beloved Son is incontrovertible because it was accomplished by a Savior who is the Supreme Lord and God of the universe (cf. Moo, 111).
And remember, the main thrust of Paul’s prayer for the Colossians in verses 9 to 14 is that they would “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects.” The fact that Paul follows up that prayer with the high and deep Christology of verses 15 to 20 shows that Paul believes an understanding of high and deep Christology is foundational for pleasing the Lord. We have to know who He is in order to follow Him faithfully. Second Corinthains 3:18 says the spiritual sight of the glory of the person of Christ is what transforms us into His image. That means, if we would be sanctified—if we would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord—we have to see Him as He is. Doctrine is the ground and foundation of devotion.
And so what He gives us in verses 15 to 20 is a revelation of the person of Christ as He is supreme over the creation, in verses 15 to 17, and as He is supreme over the new creation, in verses 18 to 20. And our focus tonight will be on that first point: Christ’s Supremacy over the Creation, in verses 15 to 17. Let’s read that text. Colossians 1, starting in verse 15. Paul writes, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For 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. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
And in this hymn of praise to our Savior, Paul declares six truths about the Lord Jesus Christ that demonstrate His absolute supremacy over all creation.
I. The Image of God (v. 15a)
And that first truth is that He is the image of God. Verse 15: “He is the image of the invisible God.”
God is invisible. John chapter 1 verse 18 says, “No one has seen God at any time.” The author of Hebrews calls Him, chapter 11 verse 27, “Him who is unseen.” In 1 Timothy 6:15–16, Paul says, “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” is the One “who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” Seeing God not only does not happen; it’s impossible. God is so wholly other from His creation, that there is a certain inaccessibility to Him. And in part His glory consists in this inaccessibility. We praise Him for it: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise; In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes.” There is a sense in which we are at a loss to truly know and understand and have a relationship with this God, whom we were created to know and love.
But Paul begins this hymn of praise to the supremacy of Christ by saying: This Jesus reveals the inexpressible glory of the unseen Father. He is the image of the invisible God. He is the revelation of the God who would otherwise remain unknown to men. Back to John 1:18: “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” “Explained” there is exegeomai”—the word from which we get our term exegesis, which means “to read out” of a text (as opposed to reading into a text). Jesus is the exegesis of God. He makes the invisible God visible.
Hebrews 1:3 teaches the same truth. It says, “He is the radiance of [the Father’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature.” “Exact representation” translates the word charakter, which refers to the imprint of a seal or a stamp. When you dip a stamp in ink and then press it on a page, that stamp produces the exact representation of its design on that paper. Hebrews is saying the Son is the perfect imprint of the Father’s nature. Everything that the Father is, He is. In Exodus 33 and 34, Moses caught a glimpse of the back of God’s glory, but Jesus is the embodiment of the fullness of God’s glory (cf. Piper)—the very radiance of the Father’s glory.
And so Jesus Himself can say to Philip in John 14:9, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” Not because Jesus isthe Father, but because Jesus is everything that the Father is—because He is in the Father and the Father is in Him, because the only-begotten of the Father is of the same nature as the Father. He is the perfect, visible exposition of the invisible Father. And so the great commentator, John Gill, wrote: Jesus “has clearly and fully declared [God’s] nature, perfections, purposes, promises, counsels, covenant, word, and works; his thoughts and schemes of grace; his love and favour to the sons of men; his mind and will concerning the salvation of his people; he has made, and delivered a fuller revelation of these things, than ever was yet; and to which no other revelation in the present state of things will be added.” If you want to know what God is like, you look at Jesus, because He is God incarnate. He is the ultimate and pinnacle self-expression—the very image—of the invisible God.
But as glorious as that is, that is not the fullness of what Paul means to express by identifying Christ as the image of God in this verse. He is not only the image of God by virtue of His humanity, making the invisible God visible through His incarnation. He is the image of God by virtue of His deity—before He was ever incarnate. And it’s His being the eternal image of God by virtue of His deity that fits Him to be the perfect visible expression of the Father on earth.
What do I mean? Well, notice the relationship between verse 15 and 16. Verse 15 gives Christ two titles—image of God and firstborn of all creation—and then verse 16 begins with the little word “For.” “For” indicates the ground or the basis for why Jesus can be called image and firstborn. And the basis Paul gives is that He is the Creator of all things. Now, it is by virtue of His deity that Christ can be the Creator. Surely, at the very least, Christ was Creator before He became incarnate. This means that Christ did not become the image of God at His incarnation, but that He is the eternalimage of God from before time began.
And that is because He is the eternal Son of God. “Image” language, from its earliest appearances in Scripture, is inextricably linked with “sonship” language. According to Genesis 5:3, a son is begotten in his father’s image. Moses tells us that “Adam…begat a son in his own likeness, according to his image.” To be in the image and likeness of someone is to be a begotten son of that person. And so even Adam, who was made in the image of God, Genesis 1:26–27, is called “the son of God” in Luke 3:38. And we know we’re on the right track, here, because in verses 12 and 13, Paul has just spoken of “the Father,” who has “transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.” To be the image of God is to be the Son of God.
And what do we know about the father/son relationship? Well, a son has the same nature as his father, but the son has that nature from his father. Does that make sense? My son is human like I am human; we are the same sort of being, we have the same nature. To use the older language, we are consubstantial—we share the same kind of substance. You remember in John chapter 5, the Jews sought to kill Jesus, “not only [because He] was breaking the Sabbath,” John 5:18, “but also [because He] was calling God His own Father”—listen—“making Himself equal with God.” To call God His own Father is to say that He is God’s Son. And to say that He is God’s Son is to say He is equal with God. And to be equal with God is to be God. It is to subsist in the divine nature. Sonship implies consubstantiality.
At the same time: my son is not me. We are distinct persons. Seth shares the same human nature that Adam had; he was human like Adam was human. But Seth was not the same person as his father. He received his nature from Adam. The same is true with Christ, the divine Son, eternally begotten in the image of His Father. The Son is not the Father, but He is the perfect reproduction of Him: His image, begotten in the likeness of God. Just as the image reflected back to you in a mirror is not modified or altered in any way, so also: all that the Father is, the Son is. They have the identical divine nature. But just as an image is distinct from the archetype it represents, the Son is a distinct Person from the Father, and not just the Father in some other form or manifestation.
And so the reason the Lord Jesus can so fittingly image forth the invisible God on the earth during His incarnation, is because from all eternity He has been the eternally begotten image of the Father: God the Son! Very God of very God! This Jesus that Paul and Epaphras have proclaimed to the Colossians is not, as the heretics claim, one of many semi-divine emanations. He is none other than God Himself, distinct from the Father, but eternally subsisting in the identical divine essence. Fully and truly God Himself.
II. The Firstborn of Creation (v. 15b)
A second truth about Christ that demonstrates His absolute supremacy is, number two, He is the firstborn of creation. Verse 15 again: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”
Now, from the Arians of the fourth century to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of today, heretics have seized on this this word, “firstborn,” prototokos, to claim that Christ was the first created being among the rest of creation. But that is not what this text is teaching. For one thing, if that had been Paul’s intent, he would have used a different Greek word: protoktistos means “first-created.” Secondly, it would run counter to Paul’s whole purpose for writing the letter of Colossians, because he would be agreeing with the false teachers that Jesus wasn’t truly God.
But in the third place, such an interpretation totally contradicts (1) the statement he just made—that Christ is the very image of God, and so is God Himself—and (2) the statement he is about to make: that this Jesus is the Creator of all things. Everything that belongs to the category of “creation” was created by Him. And because you can’t create yourself, Jesus cannot be placed in the category of “created.”
So what does this mean? Well, as I said, the word translated “firstborn” is the Greek word prototokos. And while it isoften used to refer to the child who was literally the first child born to a set of parents, it primarily refers to the position of authority one occupied in the family (MacArthur 46). In the Old Testament, the “firstborn” of the Jewish family occupies a position of authority or supremacy, and this is indicated by his being given a double portion of the family inheritance. So, Deuteronomy 21:17 says that a father “shall acknowledge the firstborn…by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; to him belongs the right of the firstborn.”
Interestingly, in Exodus 4:22, Yahweh calls Israel, “My son, My firstborn,” using the same word, prototokos, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Israel was not the first people God had created. The Chaldeans are mentioned as early as Genesis 11, and Israel doesn’t exist in any form until God sets Abraham apart to make a people out of hisdescendants in Genesis 12. (And even then, the name “Israel” first occurs in Genesis 32, when God changes Jacob’s name.) What God means by calling Israel His firstborn is that they occupied “a special place in the father’s love” (O’Brien, 44). They were supreme in God’s affections above all the other peoples of the earth.
And still further, in Psalm 89, God speaks of His covenant with King David, who will call Yahweh his Father, his God, and the rock of his salvation. And then, in Psalm 89:27, God says, “I also shall make him My firstborn (prototokos), the highest of the kings of the earth.” David was the youngest of his brothers, but here God says he is His firstborn. And then he defines firstborn as “the highest of the kings of the earth.” David will be the king who is supreme over all kings!
And so it is this note of supremacy that Paul is aiming at in calling Christ “the firstborn of all creation.” He exercises the right of primogeniture as the King who rules over all the earth. He doesn’t just inherit a double portion; He inherits the whole world! In the Second Psalm, the Father speaks of the Son whom He has begotten, and says to Him, “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession.” And in Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2, we read that “In these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heirof all things.” This Jesus is “the highest of the kings of [all] the earth”! He is the “King of kings, and [the] Lord of lords,” Revelation 19:16—the supreme and sovereign Ruler over all creation! “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” He is seated on the throne of heaven, at the right hand of the Father in the heavenly places, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, far above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”
Paul will use the term “firstborn” again just a few verses later, in Colossians 1:18, where he calls Him, “the firstbornfrom the dead”—which does not mean that Jesus was the first person ever to rise from the dead. He Himself raised Lazarus from the dead. It means that Christ is supreme over all those who will ever rise from the dead. “For an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth” out of their graves, and stand in judgment before the Firstborn! And look at what Paul says is the result of His being firstborn from the dead: “so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.” That is what it means to be firstborn: to have first place, to have the preeminence—the supremacy—over all things.
O Christian, this Jesus is no mere spark, emanating from the divine light source. He is not merely a perfect man. He is not the greatest of all created beings. He is not Michael the Archangel. He is Almighty God, the rightful Heir and Ruler of all creation, the supreme potentate of the world! Vladimir Putin does not have the supremacy; Volodymyr Zelensky does not have the supremacy; Xi Jinping does not have the supremacy; Donald Trump does not have the supremacy! Jesus Christ has the supremacy! He is the firstborn of all creation! And therefore He is worthy of all your admiration, all your devotion, all your allegiance, all of your worship and love and obedience. If He is to have the supremacy in everything, then let Him be supreme in your affections. Shape your entire life around Him, for truly, all of the universe revolves around Him.
III. The Creator of All Things (v. 16a)
And that brings us to a third truth about Jesus that displays His supremacy over all things. He is the image of God, He is the firstborn of creation, and, number three, He is the Creator of all things. Verse 16: “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.”
“Through Him,” not as the mere instrument of the Father—as if He were just the chisel in the hand of the sculptor. “Through” doesn’t always signify mere instrumentality; often it speaks of the efficient cause of something (e.g., 1 Cor 1:9). That’s its sense here. “By Him all things were created,” Matthew Henry says, “not as the workman cuts by his axe, but as the body sees by the eye.” Christ is the efficient cause of all creation! Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s Son, whose father and mother we know, whose brothers and sisters are all with us, who was put to death on a Roman cross: is the Creator of all things! Back to Hebrews 1: “In these last days God has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” And John 1: “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”
Everything that has come into being owes its existence to the Word, who never came into being! Every creature of the earth—from the largest elephant, to the most miniscule insect; from the birds of the air, to the snake that slithers on the ground, to every kind of fish that swims in the sea. Every species of plant, every kind of tree. All the metals and minerals that can be mined out of the earth. The stars of the heavens; the sun and the moon themselves; the hundreds of billions of galaxies throughout all the caverns of space. Even the angels and the archangels. The dominions, rulers, and authorities of both earthly and spiritual realms. Everything you can see and everything that you can’t see: all of it was created by your Savior!
And Paul especially zeroes in on these angelic beings. “Thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities” are words that are all most often associated in the New Testament with angels and demons in the spiritual realm. The term “dominions” is used in 2 Peter 2:10 and Jude 1:8 right along side the phrase “angelic majesties.” In Ephesians 6:12 he says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” And this makes sense when you consider that, as one commentator put it, “The existence of spiritual beings of various sorts and their critical impact on the affairs of human beings were fundamental components of the ancient worldview” (Moo, 123).
More than that, a significant tenet of the false teachers’ heresy was—he says in Colossians 2:18—“the worship of angels.” Paul is saying: “Whatever those heretics say about the glory and supremacy of angelic beings, Jesus made them all!” And not only that, but by His death and resurrection, Colossians 2:15, He “disarmed the rulers and authorities, [and] made a public display of them, having triumphed over them” by atoning for sin and defeating death. Believer: you don’t need to fear any sort of angelic or demonic spirits. Christ has created them, and He is their Ruler. And so, says the author of Hebrews, chapter 1 verse 6: when the Father “brings the firstborn into the world, He says, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him.’”
IV. The Telos of the Cosmos (v. 16b)
But Christ is not only the Creator of all things. He is, number four, the telos of the cosmos. T-e-l-o-s is the Greek word for the goal, or the end to which everything points. We borrow that word into English to signify an ultimate aim. Jesusis the goal—the point—of the entire universe! Look at the end of verse 16: “All things have been created through Him and for Him.”
And I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how important and foundational and consequential a statement that is. “All things have been created for Jesus!” The most ultimate questions you can ask are answered by these two words. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of evening and morning, of Sunday through Saturday, of summer-fall-winter-spring, of year after year and decade after decade; of planting, and watering, and harvesting; of marriage and family and vocation and even vacation? Everything that exists exists “for Him”! to put His glory on display! to demonstrate His supremacy! to reveal the beauty of His perfections! to cause men and women to stand in awe of His greatness! to delight in His character! to worship His name!
I wish I knew how to speak words to capture how truly remarkable a thing this for Paul to say. Nothing in this world is ultimate! Absolutely nothing in this world exists for its own sake! Everything—absolutely everything—from subatomic particles that we can barely detect under a microscope, to hypergiant stars 20,000 light years away that can fit 13 quadrillion planet Earths in them; from the Mariana snailfish that lives 27,000 feet deep in the ocean, to the Rüppell’s vulture that soars 36,000 feet high above the earth; from gravity to inertia, from the laws of logic to the laws of mathematics, from the most insignificant insect to most enduring governments and institutions in human history—everything that exists exists for the glory and the pleasure and the honor and the fame and the praise of Jesus of Nazareth! who only thirty years before Paul wrote this hung naked and bleeding on a wooden cross as if He were a criminal!
This world does not exist for you, dear friend. You are not the center of the universe. You are not the point. This world does not exist to be a theater for your greatness. The people in your life are not supporting actors for you as the protagonist to tell the story of your identity. This world exists for Jesus! You yourself exist for Jesus! You have life and breath and you have your being not only from Him, but for Him! O, how you ought to order everything in your life for the purpose for which you’ve been given life: to please Him, to show Him to be glorious and wonderful and marvelous! Dear Christian, if He is the telos of the entire cosmos, O, make Him the telos of your entire life! “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever: Amen!”
V. The Eternal “I AM” (v. 17a)
And what more is there to say after that? But Paul keeps going. A fifth truth about Jesus that displays His absolute supremacy is that He is the eternal I AM. Verse 17: “He is before all things.”
And of course: the One who created all things must have been existence before all things. The One who is “before all things” in dignity is also “before all things” in existence (cf. Gill). This is to say nothing other than that Jesus is eternal— just as the Old Testament promised that Messiah would be One whose “goings forth are…from the days of eternity,” Micah 5:2, and that His name would be called “Eternal Father,” Isaiah 9:6. And in the opening verses of John’s Gospel, the Apostle records a new Genesis and says, “In the beginning was the Word. … He was in the beginning with God.” In other words, before the beginning began, this Word already was. He was already existing, already being. As Matthew Henry put it, “The Word had a being before the world had a beginning.”
And in John chapter 8, when the Jews protest that they are Abraham’s seed, Jesus replies, John 8:56, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” And they say, “You’re not yet fifty years old, and You’ve seen Abraham?” And Jesus responds, John 8:58, “Truly, Truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” I mean, what a thing to say! Not just: “I pre-existed this 2,000-year-old man!”—which would have been enough of a whopper on its own! Not even, “Before Abraham was born, I was.” But: “Before Abraham ever came into being, I never came into being! I am who I am! I am the eternal I AM! Yahweh Himself! “Before all things.”
And so it is nothing but a vain delusion—a delirious fever-dream—to say, with the Arians of the fourth century, “There was when the Word was not.” No, dear people. Before there was a beginning, before time itself—before all things— the Word was. This Savior of ours is eternal God. And so all of the glory, all of the grandeur, all of the mystery that belongs to One who never had a beginning, who never began to be but just always was—that glory, that grandeur, that wonder belongs to Jesus Christ. This Savior of ours is the eternal I AM.
VI. The Sustainer of Every Being (v. 17b)
Well, that brings us to a sixth truth about Jesus that displays His absolute supremacy. He is the image of God, the firstborn of creation, the Creator of all things, the telos of the cosmos, the eternal I AM, and finally, number six, He is the Sustainer of every being. Verse 17 again: “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
We learned in verse 16 that Christ was the beginning of the creation—that everything was created by Him. And we alsolearned at the end of verse 16 that Christ is the end goal of the creation—that everything exists for Him. Here Paul tells us that Christ is in the middle of all creation as well: that He presently sustains all creation. He not only brought the universe into being, but every moment He continuously maintains its being. He maintains the being of every being. Acts 17:28 tells us: “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
Back in Hebrews 1:3, we’re told that the Son through whom God has spoken, “upholds all things by the word of His power.” Do you know why the entire universe doesn’t fold in on itself, right now? Do you know what keeps the planets from falling out of their orbits into the vast expanse of space? Do you know what keeps this planet from disintegrating or imploding? Jesus’ voice! The word of the Word! He sustains all creation by His Word. If Jesus wanted to destroy the world, He wouldn’t even have to issue a command for it to be done—as easy as that would be. No, all He would have to do is as it were stop speaking, because it’s by His word that the Word sustains all creation. He holds all things together.
In his commentary on this passage, John Gill writes: “The heavens have their stability and continuance from him; the pillars of the earth are borne up by him, otherwise that and the inhabitants of it would be dissolved; the angels in heavenare confirmed in their estate by him, and have their standing and security in him; the elect of God are in his hands, and are his peculiar care and charge, and therefore shall never perish; yea, all mankind live and move, and have their being in him; the whole frame of nature would burst asunder and break in pieces, [were] it not held together by him; every created being has its support from him, and its consistence in him; and all the affairs of Providence—relating to allcreatures—are governed, directed, and managed by him, in conjunction with the Father and the blessed Spirit.”
Conclusion
O dear Christian: He sustains the galaxies! Do you think He can sustain your faith? He holds the stars in place, keeps the planets in orbit, maintains oxygen levels and pH balances and keeps your heart beating! Don’t you trust that He can sustain your weary spirit in the midst of trial and temptation? He maintains the lives of the very enemies who would do you harm, who would destroy your soul. No mischief that your enemies could inflict on you escapes the notice of your Good Shepherd, who will not let you be struck beyond what His goodness and grace will support you through.
O, how worthy He is of your trust! How settled ought your confidence be when your Savior—your elder brother who subsists in the very same sort of human nature as you do, your intercessor, and comforter, and King—is none other than eternal God Himself, the Supreme Ruler of all creation, who created all things, sustains all things, and is the goal of all things! O, some men have competent mediators. But if your mediator is very God of very God, how happy and blessédare you! How sure your case is before the Father! If you have a well-grounded trust in the God-man to avail with you before God, you have God interceding with God for the salvation of your soul! Dear brethren: your case is secure with a divine Advocate pleading for you.
But if you are not trusting Him here this evening, dear unbeliever: trust in Him now. What more could you ask for in a Savior? O, bow the knee in repentance tonight. Confess your sins. Own your guilt before Him as a breaker of His holy law. Turn away from your sins, and turn away from your righteousness as any ground of trust to meet God’s holy standards. And rest your soul upon the shoulders of the image of the invisible God. How worthy He is of your trust! How willing He is to receive you! Don’t delay: entrust your soul to Jesus. Lay hold of forgiveness and righteousness by faith alone.
And again, to my fellow-believers: don’t only trust Him, but love Him. Delight in Him. Worship Him. Follow Him in devoted obedience. If we are brought into existence by Christ, if our present life is sustained by Him, and if all of creation is for His honor and glory, let us direct the entire energy of our souls to living unto Him. He is, truly, the beginning, middle, and end of all creation. May it be that He is the beginning, middle, and end of our lives.
The great 18th-century pastor and hymn-writer, John Newton wrote a wonderful hymn called “What Think Ye of Christ?” The final stanza summarizes the proper response of a believer’s heart to beholding the supremacy of Christ as we have done tonight. He says, “If ask’d what of Jesus I think, / Although my best thoughts are but poor; / I say he’s my meat and my drink, / My life, and my strength, and my store, / My shepherd, my husband, my friend, / My savior from sin, and from thrall, / My hope from beginning to end, / My portion, my Lord, and my all.”