Colossians 1:15

the thought continued: greatness of the redeemer as head of creation

15. who is Here opens, in closest connexion with the preceding matter, a confession of truth and faith about the Person of the Redeeming Son of God, the King of the redeemed. He appears in His relation to (a) the Eternal Father, (b) the created Universe, especially the Universe of spirits, (c) the Church of redeemed men. Every clause is pregnant of Divine truth, and the whole teaches with majestic emphasis the great lesson that the Person is all-important to the Work, the true Christ to the true salvation.

the image So 2 Corinthians 4:4. The Greek word (eicôn) occurs often in Biblical Greek, most frequently (in O.T.) as a translation of the Hebrew tselem. Usage shews that on the whole it connotes not only similarity but also "representation(as a derivedlikeness) and manifestation" (Grimm's N. T. Lexicon, ed. Thayer; and see Lightfoot's note, or rather essay, here). An instructive passage for study of the word is Hebrews 10:1, where it is opposed to "shadow," and plainly means "the things themselves, as seen." Thus the Lord Christ, the mystery of His Person and Natures, is not only a Being resembling God, but God Manifest. Cp. John 14:9, and Hebrews 1:3.

"Christian antiquity has ever regarded the expression -image of God" as denoting the eternal Son's perfect equality with the Father in respect of His substance, power, and eternity … The Son is the Father's Image in all things save only in being the Father" (Ellicott; with reff. inter aliato Hilary de Synodis, § 73; Athan. contra Arian. i. 20, 21).

the invisible God For the same word see 1 Timothy 1:17; Hebrews 11:27. And cp. Deuteronomy 4:12; John 1:18; John 5:37; 1 Timothy 6:16; 1 John 4:20. This assertion of the Invisibility of the Father has regard to the manifestingfunction of the Image, the Son. See Lightfoot here. The Christian Fathers generally (not universally) took it otherwise, holding that the "Image" here refers wholly to the Son in His Godhead, which is as invisible as that of the Father, being indeed the same. But the word "Image" by usage tends to the thought of vision, in some sort; and the collocation of it here with "the Invisible" brings this out with a certain emphasis. Not that the reference of the "Image" here is directly or primarily to our Lord's visible Body of the Incarnation, but to His being, in all ages and spheres of created existence, the Manifester of the Father to created intelligences. His being this was, so to speak, the basis and antecedent of His gracious coming in the flesh, to be "seen with the eyes" of men on earth (1 John 1:1). In the words of St Basil (Epist.xxxviii. 8, quoted by Lightfoot) the creature "views the Unbegotten Beauty in the Begotten."

the firstborn of every creature Better perhaps, Firstborn of all creation (Lightfoot and R.V.), or, with a very slight paraphrase, Firstborn over all creation; standing to it in the relation of priority of existence and supremacy of inherited right. So, to borrow a most inadequate analogy, the heir of an hereditary throne might be described as "firstborn to, or over, all the realm." The word "creature" (from the (late) Latin creatura) here probably, as certainly in Romans 8, means "creation" as a whole; a meaning to which the Greek word inclinesin usage, rather than to that of "a creature" (which latter Ellicott and Alford however adopt). See Lightfoot's note.

" Firstborn:" cp. Psalms 89:27; and the Palestinian Jewish application, thence derived, of the title "Firstborn" to the Messiah. A similar word was used of the mysterious "Logos" among the Alexandrian Jews, as shewn in the writings of St Paul's contemporary, Philo. Studied in its usage, and in these connexions, the word thus denotes (a) Priority of existence, so that the Son appears as antecedent to the created Universe, and therefore as belonging to the eternal Order of being (see the following context); (b) Lordship over"all creation," by this right of eternal primogeniture. See Psalms 89:27, and cp. Hebrews 1:2.

" Of all creation:" so lit. The force of the Greek genitive, in connexion with the word "first" (as here "firstborn"), may be either partitive, so that the Son would be described as first ofcreated things, or so to speak comparative(see a case exactly in point, John 1:15, Greek), so that He would be described as first, or antecedent, in regard ofcreated things. And the whole following context, as well as the previous clause, decides for this latter explanation of the grammar.

On the theological importance of the passage see further Appendix C.