The Head

Colossians 1:18

You read that correctly, we are only covering one verse today!  As we read in the previous verses, Jesus is the Alpha and Omega.  Paul is now explaining why and how.  He doesn’t just leave us hanging with, “this is how it is because I said so, now respect my authority and believe me.”  Rather, he is very articulate in explaining how he knows and understands this.

If you don’t know much about the history of Paul, he once was a top-level Pharisee.  He was an excellent student of the scriptures, mentored by one of the smartest Pharisees of his time.  He prided himself on his innate knowledge and ability to navigate and understand the scriptures.  His focus was apologetics.  After his encounter with Christ, he was able to see even more clearly how all the scriptures point to Jesus as Messiah.  

So what does this “head of the church” and “first-born from the dead” stuff mean, anyway?  More importantly, what does it mean for us?  One of the neat things I have found is that there are three similar letters that Paul wrote to churches that he plants: Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians.  The same themes run throughout the three and in one you can extrapolate more information from points mentioned in others.  In Ephesians 1, Paul wrote this:

16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

We will see that Paul says something similar to the Colossians, but this section, not with as much detail.  What we learn is that Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection wasn’t particularly for His sake, but for ours!  If God is indeed sovereign, He didn’t need to go through all that in order to restore order in the world.  He could have just wiped the slate clean and started over.  But His purpose for us is to glorify Him with our lives.  Since sin entered the world, we have not really been able to do so.  Jesus had to go through what He did in order that our relationship could be restored to the Father, so that the Holy Spirit could be available to us and we could get back to doing what we were created to do.  Without it, we had no hope!  This is what it means for Him to be the firstborn from the dead.  He was the first sinless person to die a human death, which allowed Him to be resurrected in order to give us dominion over the world again through the power of God’s Kingdom.

Now that it has happened, He has been re-elevated to the right hand of God the Father as our commander in chief, intercessor, high priest, healer…and a bunch of other descriptors we read throughout the bible that describe His position and influence in our lives.  This is a good thing!  Because without that, we couldn’t fulfill our purpose.  Humankind’s chief end, the reason we were created and saved from death is so that we could glorify God.  Now we get to do that!

Basically, what this means, is that we no longer have a choice not to glorify Him with all we do, think and say.  He has given us the power, His power, to rule righteously over the earth.  Look at what happens in Genesis 1:26

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

We surrendered that authority and dominion when we decided to question God, doubt His truth, and try to do things our way.  Now, it might be fair to ask, “well, why do I have to suffer because of what Adam and Eve did?”  It’s a common question, but let me ask this question in response, “have you ever questioned or doubted God or even tried doing things your way out of disobedience to God yourself?”  The answer is a resounding yes, for all of us.  We have put ourselves under that curse and have nobody else to blame but ourselves.  But, thanks be to God for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who rescued us from that pit of despair and did the work on the cross so that our relationship might be restored and we can once again live under His rule!

It is interesting how easy our spiritual enemy can distract us from what God did through the Messiah to restore our relationship with Him by causing us to blame God for the fall, even though He corrected our mistake for us!  So, the important question isn’t, “why did God allow this to happen?” but rather, “what are you going to do now that He put us back where we belong?”