In a short letter he wrote to the small church located in Colossae (in modern day Turkey), the apostle Paul pens the words to the greatest hymn ever written. Scholars believe it was a hymn to Jesus sung by early Christians (a similar hymn is found in Phil. 2:5-11). This hymn is the center of Paul’s letter to the Colossians; you could even say the hymn is the center of the entire Bible, maybe the most profound words ever written. In these verses, Paul makes the boldest, most audacious claims about Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew who transformed the world. Here we find both the mystery of God and the key to unlocking the mystery of humanity. Listen to these majestic words:
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen.
We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created.
For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.
He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end.
From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding.
Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross. (Col. 1:15-20, The Message)
This is the core of the Christian message: every last atom and molecule in this far-flung universe, from the Pleiades and Urion down to your little self, was created by God the Son, whom we have come to know through Jesus of Nazareth.
Everything was also created for Jesus: the reason everything was created was to display the amazing love of God for humans revealed in Jesus–the love that created and now recreates human beings.
The Creator God is not some far off, unknown deity. The hands that fashioned you in your mother’s womb have nail scars all over them.
The Creator God who crafted your miraculous body slipped into a human body himself, emptying himself just for you, came down and took hold of you, rescuing you from the powers that oppress you, and is pulling you up to become the human he had created you to be in the first place.
God did all this for you! We Christians often forget that the core message of Christianity is God stooping to raise us up as humans, to not only dignify us as humans but to exalt us as humans with and in Jesus, the Son of God who became the Son of Man so that we can become sons and daughters of God.
This Christmas season, reflect on Jesus the Creator and Recreator of humanity in these bold and hopeful words of this Hymn to the High King:
The Visible Image of the Invisible God. This man Jesus of Nazareth, crucified but raised from the dead, is the physical “image” (eikon) of the invisible God. “God” is unfathomable; how in the world could we ever be able to know what our little minds cannot comprehend unless God reveals himself in some way? The great Creator God of the universe is Spirit—he transcends space, time, and matter and is active everywhere as Spirit all the time. Jesus reveals to us, in our own flesh and blood humanity, exactly what this Spirit God is like. We find echoes of this thought in other places in the New Testament (particularly in the Gospel of John, Colossians, and Hebrews): No one has seen God; God the only begotten Son has made him known; The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. “When a person looks at me,” Jesus says, “he sees the One that sent me.”
In space and time, at just the right time in human history, God became one of us to achieve his cosmic purposes. God is not incomprehensible; he has made himself known through the people of Israel and in the human Jesus, the fulfillment and culmination of Israel’s purpose. God has donned a human face, and that face is Jesus.
The Prototype of Humanity. Paul says that Jesus is the “firstborn” over and above all creation. The Greek word for “firstborn” is prototypos, or “prototype.” Another word for “prototype” is blueprint. Humans were in a sense patterned after Jesus; Jesus reveals perfectly what humans were created to be. “The Son himself is God’s eternal idea of what a true human should be.”[1] We are not talking about Jesus’ physical abilities or his maleness. We are talking about his heart, about how God’s divine Presence is expressed through the selflessness, humility, compassion, truthfulness, and dependence on God we see in Jesus. “Christ is the purpose or goal for which God created the world. The creation of the world already anticipates its ultimate goal, its perfection. This includes the perfection of humankind, since the new humanity found in Christ is humanity as it was created to be.”[2]
The Victorious King. The early Christians used a phrase to describe Jesus: Jesus Christ the Lord. The word “Lord” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew personal name for God: Yahweh. “Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, which means “anointed one.” The prophets predicted the Messiah would not only free the Jews from the occupation of world rulers (like Rome) but would become “King of the World.” So, when the early Christians said Jesus Christ is Lord, they mean Jesus is God, King of the World!
King Jesus transformed the Roman world and created Western civilization, and he is still the only hope for our broken world. How did Jesus become King? Paul says, “through the blood of his cross.” Jesus’ horrible death was the place where the worst of evil exhausted all its power forever. All the “powers” of accusation, fear, shame, hate, alienation, and death were completely exhausted on Jesus and now have no power at all. Jesus has disarmed their power to harm us or cause us fear. “On the cross, God’s power is disclosed not in its undeniable capacity to destroy…but rather as the self-giving power to heal and renew, to bring wholeness to the world created in Christ. God’s power is not grasping and manipulative, but giving and serving. God’s power further empowers people to live in ways commensurate with a God who discloses power in such ways.”[3] King Jesus invites us to join in the victory parade of life, no longer enslaved to shame, fear, worry, regret, bitterness, anger, or any other power that no longer has power over us.
The Firstborn from the Dead. How in the world could the early Christians claim that the humble, crucified Jesus is “Lord and King!”? Paul supplies the answer throughout his letters, and especially his opening to Romans: “Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 1:2-4). In the resurrection of Jesus, God was announcing to the world that this Jesus in our midst is none other than God himself! The man Jesus of Nazareth came back from the dead with a brand new, indestructible body, never to die again. His resurrection stunned his disciples, and especially the Pharisee Saul (Paul). But the resurrection was the key to making sense of it all. The resurrection not only proved Jesus was who he claimed to be (God), but the resurrection made sense of Jesus’ horrible Roman crucifixion. In both the cross and the resurrection, God was doing everything we need: aligning himself completely with us, and rescuing us from death as well as all the dark powers that rule and oppress us.
Jesus is the first to overcome death, but he is not the last. He is bringing us with him! Because he rose from the dead, death is not going to be the end of you, either! Jesus is the first fruit of those who will overcome death (1 Cor. 15:20). His resurrection guarantees not only that God is more powerful than death, but that God’s love will not let death separate us from him (Rom. 8:38, 39). Jesus is the portal of love through which humans might also live forever.
The Creator of the New Reality and the Humans We Want to Be. Jesus, the blueprint for humanity, is so much more than just a “model” or “example” for us to look at. The Incarnation didn’t stop when Jesus ascended to heaven; Jesus, the risen one, is still among us, alive and active, recreating us now to become like him, the humanity God created us to be. Jesus is now recreating us, through his Spirit and Word in us and through our relationships in his body, the community of lovers called the church. “Now, in Christ, the living out of God’s intention in creating humans in his image is progressively being realized in believers in renewal and transformation, and will one day lead to complete conformity to the image of Christ.”[4]
Jesus, the image of the invisible God, is the way for us to become human again. Jesus is the means—the Way, the Truth, and the Life–whereby we are restored, refashioned, and remade into the humans we most want to be. By coming “into Jesus,” we come into the sphere of love that gives us the freedom, purpose, and power to become all that we were created to be. By letting Jesus come “into us,” Jesus can change our minds, our attitudes, our loves, our communities, our actions. Another way to say this is what Paul says in Col. 2:9: we are being renewed in knowledge in the image of our Creator, the Son of God.
[1] Marc Cortez, Resourcing Theological Anthropology: A Constructive Account of Humanity in the Light of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 124.
[2] Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians and Philemon (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 116.
[3] Thompson, 117.
[4] John S. Hammett and Katie J. McCoy, Humanity (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic 2023), 89.