First Place in Everything

This is the final week of Advent, and with it, we get to focus on the aspect of Restoration and Reconciliation in Christ's coming. We've seen it already in our reading from Micah 5. God's people have felt brokenness in this world since the brokenness began in the garden. Sin has created a rift and God sent his beloved son to repair that rift that we could never repair on our own. We're going to see very clearly from our text in Colossians how he did that, but let me set the stage.

Last week, we looked at Jesus and his superiority and supremacy over all and before all as the creator of all who is our perfect picture of the invisible God. Paul is going to continue to expound upon this here in verses 18-20 as he looks specifically at Jesus as the head of the Church. We see that God in Christ is restoring all things to himself through his son and he is redeeming a remnant to the praise of his glory.

Let's read this passage and get a lay of the land before we dive into the specifics.

Colossians 1:15-20 "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 as we dive into this text, I want you to see the big idea. Last week we see Jesus as Over all Creation, Before all Creation and the Creator of All Creation. In good form, Paul then takes those ideas and applies them not to creation itself, but to the church specifically, so we are going to see that Jesus is Over the Church, Before the Church, and the Creator of the Church.

Over the Church

First, Jesus is Over the Church. In verse 18 we see, "He is the head of the body, the church." We could talk for all of our time together about what it means for the church to be the body and what it means for Jesus to be the head. That's not going to be my focus though. I think it is important though to define some terms.

Church

What is this thing that Jesus created, founded, and leads? It is not a building or a set of bylaws. It's not made of bricks and mortar. Jesus' Church is the collection of all of the redeemed which God has called out of the world. That is what church means. Ekklesia. Ones who are called out. The church is the assembly of all true believers from all times and every nation tribe and tongue. There are plenty of places in the Bible that speak of the church at a local gathering of believers, but this is a larger concept. You can't have a local church if Jesus hasn't established the universal church in his blood. You shouldn't take the church for granted.

Jesus didn't talk very much about the church. I think he only mentions the word twice. Once when he was talking about church discipline and the other time he told his disciples that he was going to build his church on the foundation of Peter's confession that he was the Christ the son of the living God. Besides that, all of the talk of the church came about in Acts and after. Jesus was more focused on the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. So that begs the question, Is the church the Kingdom of God?

In short, no. The kingdom of God is so much bigger than just the church. The Kingdom of God is the reign and rule of God over all things through Jesus Christ. The church is an agent of the kingdom created by God but the kingdom is so much bigger. The church is the bride of Christ, the kingdom is the entire wedding party. We are nearsighted and think it's all about us, but the kingdom of God existed before God breathed life into the first man. The kingdom of God existed in perfection before the lights were turned on in creation. The perfect triune God enjoying fellowship and love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The Church is the vehicle by which God is bringing humans into the kingdom. The church could also be aptly summed up by the phrase, "those who are in Christ." The Church is made up of people and it exists through the work of God in Christ and for the glory of God in Christ. Thus, there are similarities between the kingdom and the church and they are very closely linked, but they are not the same.

Body

Paul loves this analogy of the church as the body of Christ. It is a word picture of another of his favorite concepts of being in Christ. Romans 12:4-5, "For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another." This is the idea of Diversity in gifts and how those differences work to build up the church. Paul also expounds on this idea of the body in 1 Corinthians 12, but that is not the idea here. Here, the focus is on Christ as the head of the body.

Over in Ephesians 4:15-16 we see the closest parallel verse that we have in scripture. "Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love." The church is the body of Christ and Jesus is the head of the body of all who are in him. What does this mean?

How important is the head to the body? If you cut off the head, what happens? I'm afraid that there are lots of churches around our country and world that are good at the diversity part of being a body, but they want to just have Jesus as another part of the body or they want to supplant Jesus as the one true head. What does the head do for the body?

When you watch a football game? What is the part of the body that they protect more than any other? We need to protect the idea of Jesus as the head from those who would try to lift something else above Jesus. Not philosophy or morality, or politics or social justice. Jesus is all in all.

This has been hotly contested over the centuries. Kingdoms and nations have been established and destroyed over this idea. Many men of God have been burned at the stake and excommunicated because they dared to say that Jesus, not the Pope, is head of the church.

We've got to take the Bible at its word. Who is the head of the Church? Jesus is. Not the pope, not the congregation, not a king, not a theologian, not the government, Jesus himself is the leader of the one true church. Some people talk about loving Jesus but not liking the church, that is just silly talk because Jesus is the head of his church. There are definitely many who would claim to be in the church but if they don't have Jesus as their ruler, leader, and guide then they are not the church. Anyone can gather a crowd, but only Jesus builds a church.

The eternal purpose of God is centered upon making Jesus the absolute head over all things. His driving passion is to make His Son preeminent over everything. The great need today and every day in the body of Christ is to reinstate the headship of Christ. Tragically, all sorts of things have replaced Christ’s headship. Church boards, committee meetings, church leaders, church programs, man-made rules and regulations, and so on, have often supplanted the headship of Jesus Christ. I'm not saying that Christ has somehow lost control and that if we don't give it back to him that he will never be able to rule and reign as God has planned. Christ alone has the right to rule His church, not any human or committee. It is His body, not ours. We all belong to Him. He has purchased us with a costly price, and thus He alone possesses full rights over us.

I remember taking two rows of chairs as a kid and pretending that I was driving or riding in a car. We'd hold our imaginary steering wheel and imagine the scenery passing by. Then I got a little bit older and went out in the woods and found a real car. I loved to go out there and sit in the rotted seats and pretend to drive. There is nothing wrong with playing that way, but I was always fully aware that I was playing. There was no engine in that car that would actually crank and take me somewhere.

However, there are plenty of believers that play church but have no idea that there is no engine under the hood. Jesus is the engine and if he's not present then we are just playing games. Too often the mentality among Christians is, “I will do whatever I can, using my own cleverness, gifts, and abilities, and only rely upon the Lord when I cannot do anymore.” This is foolish thinking at best. Our human ideas and philosophies cannot fulfill one fragment of God’s work. I pray that God would work in our hearts and minds to enable us to yield our rights to the Lord, to wait on the Lord, and to put the absolute rule, authority, and decision-making rights into his nail-scarred hands as the head of his church.

Before the Church

Second, Jesus is Before the Church. Colossians 1:18 says, “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Jesus is the beginning of the church. If we look at history and we see God's redemption story, we see that he has desired a people who were set apart for him. So he establishes Israel as a people who wouldn't have existed if not for his divine intervention. Then he gave them the law to show them that he was holy and set apart and he commanded them to be holy as he is holy. This was never intended to be a solution since man is fallen and incapable of pleasing God. So in the fullness of time, God did what he had planned from the start. He sent his son to do what we could not do. He lived that spotless life as a Jewish man and through his cross, he paid the admission for all who would come after him. He opened the gate for victory over the grave.

Death was defeated and Jesus arose as the firstborn from the dead. Jesus wasn't the first person to come back from the dead, we saw last week that both Lazarus and Talitha came back from the dead. However, his resurrection was different. They came back and eventually had to die again. Jesus didn't. Instead, he is firstborn in the way that we talked last week, he is the most important, the front-runner. His resurrection gives us hope in the promise that we will be raised too.

That's what Paul means when he says "Firstborn from the dead." Since he has been raised, all who are in him will be raised too. Here it is Christmas, and we're talking about Easter. Don't think for a minute that as a Christian we can get beyond Easter. If there is no resurrection, we are to be pitied because we have been duped and we are fools. He was resurrected from the dead. He was seen over and over and over for forty days by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. And then He ascended into heaven. And He will return.

I strongly recommend you read 1 Corinthians 15. The point of 1 Corinthians 15 isn’t that death doesn’t sting and hurt right now. The point of 1 Corinthians 15 is that there’s coming a day where we’ll have new, imperishable bodies, bodies that will never die, will not grow weary, will not grow faint. That day is coming. It’s not some ethereal, float up, sit on a cloud, play the harp. That’s not our future. Strong, physical, undying, unable to get sick, glorious bodies given to us at the resurrection, that’s the promise of 1 Corinthians 15 and that’s what Jesus purchased for us in the cross and the resurrection. He is the firstborn from among the dead, and we will join Him. That’s when death no longer has a sting, that’s when death no longer has victory, that’s when it’s swallowed up, when death is no more. That’s when it’s over. So we put a lot of hope there. We put a lot of trust there, a lot of confidence there.

The question I have always had about everything is why? Why would God go out of his way for me? What purpose does he have in sending his son to save me? Why would Jesus endure all of the shame and scorn of the cross? The very end of verse 18 shows it. The purpose for everything rolls back to the phrase, "That in everything, he might be preeminent." Jesus didn't create the church so he wouldn't be lonely. It's not that God wanted some extra company in heaven. It is so he would get the glory. That he would have first place.

That idea rubs us the wrong way because we think it is a selfish motive to do something so you can get the glory for it. But we're thinking about it from man's perspective. Man doesn't deserve any glory. We are fallen created beings. But if God gives the glory to anyone but himself then he is crowning that other person or thing as God. Only God deserves glory, only God deserves first place and he will have it. Does he have first place in your life? Does He have first place over your thought life? Does He have first place over your words? Does He have first place over how you use your time? Does He have first place over your finances? Does He have first place over your entertainment choices? Does He have first place in everything in your life?

Created the Church

The last thing we see in this passage is that Jesus created the Church, and this is where we are going to spend the rest of our time. Many people don't see the need for Jesus because they don't understand the dire situation. You see it in the words "reconcile" and "making peace." Those are words from a time of war. If people don't see that our default situation is opposition to God then they will never understand why they need Jesus.

Remember, last week. We just got through looking at the grandeur of the Son. That he is the image of God and he the one in whom all things hold together. If we are his enemies, what is to keep him from snapping his fingers and letting me dissolve into oblivion like Thanos. I mean all the fullness of God dwells in him. God who is all powerful, and all knowing, and eternal. He is perfectly holy and we stand in opposition to him. We are no threat to him but we are an affront an offense. Our sin is a disgusting abomination and he would be right to do away with us. We can't clean ourselves up to make ourselves more palatable to him.

The church is made up specifically of people who were once dead in sin, who could not have a relationship with God because they were dead. The church is those whom God has brought back to life.

You mentioned watching the Princess Bride this week. Do you remember when Wesley was brought to Miracle Max and he found out that he was only mostly dead, and, to be mostly dead is to be partly alive, and therefore, all he needed was a chocolate coated pill to come back to life. If he had been all dead the only thing he could have done was rummage through his pockets for loose change.

I think most of us think of our lives in Christ that way. Yeah, I am mostly dead in sin, but not completely. Unfortunately, this is not the case. If once you sin, which we all do, you are completely unplugged from the source of all life, God. You may go on breathing in and out because God is gracious, but you are spiritually not alive at all.

Paul lays this out most completely in Ephesians 1:22-2:10:

"And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

There's no pill, no magic incantation, no breathing machine, no medical intervention that could bring us to life. Only the work of God himself who accomplished it on our behalf.

Those who were once dead are made alive in Christ. And having been brought to life, all the brokenness begins to be reversed. In Jesus, the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. God is fully and completely there in Jesus—there’s no gap or bits missing, God is fully there. And what is the church? The body of Jesus.

So, when you are found in Christ, when you are part of his body, the fullness of God is pleased to dwell in you through the Holy Spirit and your relationship with God is fully and completely restored.

It may not feel like it and that is the struggle of living here in the already established nature of the kingdom but in the not yet completely fulfilled manifestation of it. It's kind of like we are in the middle of a war sticking our head up out of a foxhole to try and see if the war is over. It definitely feels like it is still raging, but through the truth of scripture, we can rise up 10,000 feet above the fray and can see things as they really are. And looking down from this position we can see that the battle is already won.

Christ is preeminent, he is sovereign, he holds all things together, he has destroyed death, the fullness of God dwells in him, and what is he doing? Look at verse 20, he is the agent by which God is reconciling all things to himself—that means putting them all back together, both on earth and in heaven. How? By the blood of the cross.

Reconciled

We’re about to celebrate the birth of Jesus, not his death. This amazing moment when the fullness of God came to dwell in a baby, of all things.

A shriveled up baby born to poor parents that cries all night and gets horrible tummy aches and doesn’t smile for a long, long time. The fullness of God came to dwell, and that baby grew up and walked his steady unrelenting way to the cross to fix this mess. That’s what we mean when we say that God is sovereign over all things. He is first in all things. He created all things. He is preeminent.

Not like a dictator who sees all the sin and evil in the world and doesn’t care, and snaps his fingers to do away with the problem. In Christ, God purposes, out of love, to reconcile all things to himself by becoming one of those things - those people - suffering and dying. And destroying death. Forever.

That’s the amazing joy of Christmas. That’s the purpose of the cross. That’s the end toward which we all long and hope for. That the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of Jesus has overtaken evil is transforming us and will overtake and remake the world.

So, you can go ahead and fight the fight. You can go on muddling through, following Jesus and keeping your eyes fixed on him and doing what he calls you to do. Because he is making you alive. He is your hope, your joy, your breath, your life. You can trust him because he has it in hand, he is holding it all together. Maybe you have spent your life checking off the boxes of moral demands without any real love for Jesus Christ or understanding of what the gospel is, and it is exhausting. It’s exhausting.

You have been in church your whole life and all you’ve done is heard the rules and then in trying to clean yourself up, have just made a bigger and bigger and bigger mess. This text says Jesus came to set you free from that. That the problem with all of it is you. That’s the problem with “This will solve it... this will solve it... this will solve it.” Jesus has solved it and he is working through the process of making peace through the blood of his cross.

There’s a pursuit of Jesus Christ, a progressive sanctification that pulls us into the fullness of what He has for us until He calls us home and perfects us in all things. And that’s what this text is teaching, and Jesus comes and puts on flesh so that you can get His righteousness and so that He can take on your sin so that you could be right before God, not because you checked the boxes but because He’s beautifully gracious.

He goes to the cross, restrains power and doesn’t defend Himself. All these things we get asked to do in the Scriptures. So we are not without mercy from Him, not without empathy from Him when we walk through it. You don’t have a high priest, you don’t a Savior who is not empathetic toward your sorrow and pain. You’ve got a Savior that says, “I know... I know,” which is why he says, “Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” It’s because you find a very merciful, very empathetic high priest who went to the cross to reconcile us to God, bore flesh, stepped out of eternity into this and lived perfectly for thirty-three years so that you would get righteousness. He took on your sin in the cross and made a way.

Making Peace

But, I want you to hear this because I think your view of Jesus will really work out how you live your life, and the text is really going to dig in on this next week. When we think about the Church as Jesus’ handiwork, we cannot divorce it from the reality that we talked about last week. Jesus is the fullness of God!

There are objective evidences of salvation, and it makes pastors like me very nervous to preach about them because we don't want you to lose sight of the fact that Jesus does all the work for you. The minute I give you something to do, our legalistic hearts start making a checklist. But Jesus went to the cross and when he did, he took your lists with him and he made sure that they got nailed to the cross too and they are covered by his blood.

But the paradox is that there are evidences of salvation. We don’t do those things to be saved. We do those things because we are saved. There are evidences that your heart has been awakened to spiritual things. But what I’ve found is that most people, although they wouldn’t say it with our mouths, fall practically in that line of “Jesus is a good man and a good teacher.” They have no fear with regards to obedience, they have no fear in regards to walking as He said to walk, because He’s just grace and mercy regardless of how you live, regardless of what you do, and regardless of what you say.

Way too many people are out there are living like there’s going to be that day where He’s like, “Come on in, " despite the fact that Matthew 7 should just throw this terror into all of us.

He says, “Many of you are going to say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord’ and he's going to say ‘Who are you again?’ And you’ll reply ‘Did I not cast out demons in Your name? Did I not do all sorts of miracles in Your name? Did I not prophesy in Your name?’ And he will say, "depart from Me, for I don’t know you. I don’t know you.’”

So, you’ve got all these texts that interject this, “I need to wrestle with my heart... I need to do business with the Lord.” Passages like "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling" or "Make your calling and election sure." But for some reason, we’re like, “I’m a good guy and Jesus was a good guy, and I’m trying my best to do what Jesus told me to do.”

That message is one that lulls people into a spiritual slumber. Paul here is warning the Colossians that they need to see the Godhood of Jesus and they need to have a healthy dose of fear. Not a fear that paralyzes you, but a fear that frees you.

So, in case you missed it, Jesus is not some effeminate, Jewish shepherd who stumbled onto some truths about how life works. He’s the God of the universe tapping you into how He wired that universe to work and be. And it’s in submission to Him that we find life. It’s in faith put fully in what He did for us on the cross that we are freed from the weight of sin and death and grief. So, this is my hope for you, that you would see that, that you would savor that, that you would understand that and that it would transform you.