Colossiens 1:15

Christ the Image of the invisible God.

I. Christ is the image of God. Image signifies that which represents another, and as things are variously represented, so there is a great variety of images.

1. Some are imperfect, and express but some particular, and that defectively.

(1) Artificial images, whether drawn, sculptured, or embroidered, represent only the colour, figure, and lineaments, and have nothing of life and nature.

(2) Adam, who was called God’s image because the conditions of his nature had some resemblance to the properties of God--intellect, will, and lordship; but he had not God’s essence.

2. Some are perfect. We call a child the image of his father, inasmuch as he has not merely the colour or figure of his parent, but his nature and properties, soul, body, life, etc. So a prince has not only the appearance of his predecessor’s power, but its substance (Genèse 5:3).

3. In which of these two senses is the figure true of Christ? Surely not in the sense that man is the image of God. For intending to exalt Christ and to show that His dignity is so great as to capacitate Him to save us, it would ill suit his design if the apostle attributed no more to Him than what holds good for any man. Read our Lord’s own testimony (Jean 14:9; Jean 12:45). Now where is the portrait of which it may be said that he who has seen it has seen him whom it represents? This can only be found in one which contains the nature of the original (Hébreux 1:3).

(1) God’s nature is perfectly represented in Christ. Hence He is called God over and over again.

(2) Christ represents the Father in His properties, eternity, immutability, wisdom, etc.

(3) In His works 1 Jean 5:19; Hébreux 1:10; Jean 1:3, etc.).

4. Now no child perfectly represents is father; there are differences of manner, disposition, feature: but Christ represents the Father in everything.

5. This sacred truth overthrows two heresies--the Sabellian and the Arian. The former confounded the Son with the Father, the latter rent them asunder. Those took from the Son His person, these His nature. Paul demonstrates the Sabellian error here, for no one is the image of himself; and the Arian, for Christ could not be a perfect image unless He had the same nature as the Father.

II. God, whose image Jesus is, is invisible.

1. The Divine nature is spiritual, and hence invisible, inasmuch as the eye sees only corporeal objects. For this cause, Moses, in teaching that there is nothing material in the Divine essence that might be represented by pencil or chisel, remonstrates to them that when God manifested Himself they “saw no similitude” (Deutéronome 4:12; Deutéronome 4:15). Whence He infers they must make no graven image.

2. But the meaning here is also that God is incomprehensible. Seeing is often put for knowing. The Seraphim cover their faces to embody this truth (Ésaïe 6:2). Through His grace indeed we may know something of His nature (Hébreux 1:1); but however clear it does not amount to a seeing, i.e., an apprehension which conceives the proper form of the subject.

3. Why is this quality mentioned here? To show us that God has manifested Himself to us by His Son. There is a secret opposition between image and invisible. God has a nature so impenetrable that without this His Image men would not have known Him.

(1) By Him He made, preserves, and governs the world. To Him we must refer the revelations of God under the Old Testament.

(2) But here the reference is to what took place in the fulness of time. In Christ we see all the wonders of the invisible Father--His justice, mercy, power, etc., in all their completeness, whereas creation only shows the edges. (J. Daille.)

The image of God

We believe in many things we never saw, on the evidence of other senses than sight. We believe in music, invisible odours, nay, in what we can neither hear, taste, smell, nor touch--our own life, our soul. Thus it were irrational to disbelieve in God because He is invisible. Still we are tempted to forget His existence, and as for the ungodly “God is not in all their thoughts.”

I. I would warn you against allowing God to be out of mind because He is out of sight.

1. This is a danger to which our very constitution exposes us. Hence the necessity of striving to walk by faith, not by sight. This is difficult because we are creatures of sense. The dead are out of sight and so often forgotten, the eternal world, the devil, and so God.

2. Why should the invisibility of God be turned into a temptation to sin? It should rather minister to holy care. How solemn the thought that an unseen Being is ever at our side! Were this realized, then bad thoughts would be banished, and unholy deeds crushed, and purity and heavenliness imparted to the life and conduct.

II. The visible revelations of the invisible in the old testament were most probably manifestations of the Son of God. To Jacob at Peniel, to Joshua at Jericho, to Manoah, to Isaiah (chap. 6.), and to others God appeared. How are we to reoncile this with “No man hath seen God at any time”? Only by regarding these appearances as manifestations of Him who is “the image of the invisible God.” This is in perfect harmony with other passages in the history of redemption. We know for certain that the fruits of the incarnation were anticipated, and the fruits of His death enjoyed before He died. Why not, then, the fact of the incarnation? Viewed in this light, these Old Testament stories acquire a deeper and more enduring interest. In the guide of Abraham’s pilgrimage I see the guide of my own. Jacob’s success in wrestling imparts vigour to my prayers.

III. The greatness of the worker corresponds with the greatness of the work. It is not always so. Sometimes God accomplishes mighty ends by feeble instruments in both nature and grace. But redemption is differentiated in greatness, grandeur, and difficulty from all the other works of God. It cost more love, labour, and wisdom than all yon starry universe. But great as is the work the Worker is greater--the visible Image of the invisible God.

IV. God as revealed visibly in Jesus meets and satisfies one of our strongest wants,

1. The second commandment runs more counter to our nature than any other.

(1) Look at the heathen world. For long ages the world was given up to idolatry with the exception of a single people. To fix the mind on an invisible Being seemed like attempting to anchor a vessel on a flowing tide. And as a climbing plant, for lack of a better stay, will throw its arms round a rotting tree; rather than want something palpable to which their thoughts might cling, men have worshipped the Divine Being through the most hideous forms.

(2) Look at the proneness to sensuous worship among the Jews.

(3) We find the evidence of this prosperity in the Christian Church. Fancy some old Roman rising from his grave on the banks of the Tiber, what could he suppose but that the “Eternal City” had changed her idols, and by some strange turn of fortune had given to one Jesus the old throne of Jupiter and assigned the crown which Juno wore in his days to another queen of heaven?

2. In what way are we to account for this universal tendency? It is not enough to call it folly; the feelings from which it springs are deeply rooted in our nature. You tell me that God is infinite, incomprehensible; but it is as difficult for me to make such a Being the object of my affections as to grasp a Sound or detain a shadow. This heart craves something more congenial to my nature, and seeks in God a palpable object for its affections to cling to.

3. Now see how this want is met in the Gospel by Him who “knoweth our frame.” In His incarnate Son the Infinite is brought within the limits of my understanding, the Invisible is revealed to my sight. In that eye bent upon me I see Divine love in a form I can feel. God addresses me in human tones, and stands before me in the fashion of a man; and when I fall at His feet with Thomas I am an image worshipper but no idolater, for I bend to the “image of the invisible God.”

V. In what sense is Christ the image of the invisible God?

1. It means much more than mere resemblance; it conveys the idea of shadow less than of substance. I have known an infant bear such a resemblance to his father that what his tongue could not tell his face did, and people struck by the likeness exclaimed, “He is the very image of his father.” Such was Adam in his state of innocence. Now it may be said that as our Lord, like the first Adam, was holy, he is therefore called the image of God; yet that does not exhaust the meaning, nor is it on that account that Paul calls Him the second Adam. Nor have they sounded the depths who say He was so called because He was endowed with power to do the works of God. For many others have been in that sense equally images of God. But where are they represented as “God manifest in the flesh”?

2. In Christ’s character and works we have a living, visible, perfect image of the invisible God.

(1) In Him we see the power of God, and notably at the grave of Lazarus. To make something out of nothing is a work more visibly stamped with divinity than to make one thing out of another--a living man out of lifeless dust, and then on that mountain side the bread multiplies.

(2) In Christ we have the image of a holy God.

(3) In Christ we have the image of a God willing and waiting to save. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)

The image of the invisible God

I draw out from my pocket a little miniature, and look upon it and tears drop from my eyes. What is it? A piece of ivory. What is on it? A face that some artist has painted there. It is a radiant face. My history is connected with it. When I look upon it tides of feeling swell in me. Some one comes to me, and says: “What is that?” I say, “It is my mother.” “Your mother” “I should call it a piece of ivory with water-colours on it.” To me it is my mother. When you come to scratch it, and analyze it, and scrutinize the elements of it, to be sure it is only a sign or dumb show, but it brings to me that which is no sign nor dumb show. According to the law of my mind, through it I have brought back, interpreted, refreshed, revived, made patent in me, all the sense of what a loving mother was. So I take my conception of Christ as He is painted in dead letters on dead paper, and to me is interpreted the glory, the sweetness, the patience, the love, the joy-inspiring nature of God; and I do not hesitate to say, “Christ is my God,” just as I would not hesitate to say of that picture, “It is my mother.” “But,” says a man, “you do not mean that you really sucked at the breast of that picture?” No. I did not; but I will not allow any one to drive me into any such minute analysis as that. Now I hold that the Lord Jesus Christ, as represented in the New Testament, brings to my mind all the effluence of brightness and beauty which I am capable of understanding. I can take in no more. He is said to be the express image of God’s glory. He reveals to us a God whose interest in man is inherent, and who through His mercy and goodness made sacrifices for it. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die for it. What is the only begotten Son of God? Who knows? Who can know? That His only begotten Son is precious to Him we may know, judging from the experience of an earthly father; and we cannot doubt that when He gave Christ to come into life, and humble Himself to man’s condition, and take upon Himself an ignominious death, He sacrificed that which was exceedingly dear to Him. And this act is a revelation of the feeling of God toward the human race. (H. W. Beecher.)

Christ the image of God

There is in Rome an elegant fresco by Guido--“The Aurora.” It covers a lofty ceiling. Looking up at it from the pavement your neck grows stiff, your head dizzy, and the figures indistinct. You soon tire and turn away. The owner of the palace has placed a broad mirror near the floor. You may now sit down before it as at a table, and at your leisure look into the mirror, and enjoy the fresco that is above you. There is no more weariness, nor indistinctness, nor dizziness. Like the Rosplglioso mirror beneath “The Aurora,” Christ reflects the glory of the Divine nature to the eye of man.

Christ is intended to be familiarly known

The whole value of the gospels to Erasmus lay in the vividness with which they brought home to their readers the personal impression of Christ Himself. “Were we to have seen Him with our own eyes, we should not have so intimate a knowledge as they give us of Christ, speaking, healing, dying, rising again, as it were in our very presence … If the footprints of Christ are shown us in any place, we kneel down and adore them. Why do we not rather venerate the living and breathing picture of Him in these books?… “It may be the safer course,” he goes on, with characteristic irony, “to conceal the state mysteries of kings, but Christ desires His mysteries to be spread abroad as openly as was possible.” (Little’s “Historical Lights.”)

The firstborn

The expression as it stands is somewhat ambiguous.

1. Does it imply that all creatures have been born, but that Jesus was born before them? Impossible. All human creatures have been born, all at least but the first; and even he was “the son of God” (Luc 3:38). We are all “God’s offspring.” But, except in poetry, we can scarcely speak of the birth of the earth, ocean, stars, etc. They have been created, not born; they are the creatures rather than the children of God.

2. Nor can the meaning be firstborn within the circle of all creation; for the higher nature of Jesus is not within that circle: it is far above it; before Abraham, and sun, moon, and stars, He was and is.

3. The apostle’s idea is that Jesus is the hereditary Lord of the whole creation. The representation is based on the prerogative that is still attached in many lands to primogeniture. That prerogative is great. In virtue of it the first-born of the Queen is Prince of Wales; of the Emperor of Germany, Crown Prince; of the late Emperor Napoleon, Prince Imperial. In ancient times and among the apostle’s people, in the days of their national grandeur, there was a corresponding privilege attached to the royal firstborn. And hence in the course of time the word came to be so employed that the ideas of birth and priority of birth got sometimes to be merged out of sight, while the ideas of special hereditary privilege, prerogative, and honour stood prominently forth. Hence God said to Pharaoh, “Israel is My son, My firstborn,” because they were in distinction from other peoples the recipients of the advantages which were the natural prerequisites of primogeniture. Again in Jérémie 31:9 the idea of priority in birth is entirely shaded off, for that priority could not be affirmed of Ephraim--the reference is to peculiarity of prerogative and honour. Take again Hébreux 12:22. Here Christians are called the firstborn, and not Christians in heaven, for they are distinguished from the “spirits of just men made perfect,” but Christians on earth. All such Christians, though scattered, and variously denominated, are “the one general assembly and Church of the firstborn.” This shows that the term may be and is used without priority of birth, and in the sense of being God’s very highly-favoured children. All the blessings of primogeniture are theirs because they are Christ’s, the Firstborn. As He is the Crown Prince of the universe, the Prince Imperial and hereditary Lord of the whole creation, they are constituted joint heirs with Him of the “inheritance incorruptible,” etc. Again, this interpretation is supported by Romains 8:29. “Firstborn among many brethren” is a notable expression. We cannot suppose that God desired to secure the Saviour a relation of chronological priority. Jesus was already before all. The idea is that it was the aim of God to remove from the peerless Son the condition of solitariness in the parental and heavenly home. This aim was accomplished by surrounding Him with a circle of multitudinous brethren, bearing the familiar family likeness, who might be sharers with Him in His inheritance of glory. (J. Morison, D. D.)

Christ is one of us

On the centenary of the birth of Robert Stephenson, there was a very large demonstration at Newcastle. The town was paraded by a vast procession who carried banners in honour of the distinguished engineer. In the procession there was a band of peasants, who carried a little banner of very ordinary appearance, but bearing the words, “He was one of us.” They were inhabitants of the small village in which Robert Stephenson had been born, and had come to do him honour. They had a right to a prominent position in that day’s proceedings, because he to whom so many thousands did honour was one of them. Even so, whatever praise the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers can ascribe to Christ in that grand celebration when time shall be no more, we from earth can wave our banners with the words written on them, “He was one of us.”