All Things Created, Col, 1:16-17

Good morning. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Well, let's see, we're going to proceed with Colossians 1, 16 and 17 here. And one of the things, if you're visiting us here this morning, we want to make sure you're aware of this is the number on the handout off to the side there. If you see no number, it's not on the handout. OK. And again, remember our rule of thumb here. If you see some writing up there you don't understand, don't worry about it. It's for those that do. Now, I want to recall to memory a few things. You remember that back in March 28, because we had some time off for Palm Sunday and Easter, we had addressed this passage in Colossians 1, 15 through 20.

And one of the things that we brought out there, a section that praises Christ, but uses pronouns only. It doesn't use His name, but praises Christ and gives us an understanding of Christ's position with respect to creation and with respect to the Church. And also, just to point out, and we highlighted this, that this is a section of Scripture also that is thought by many scholars to be an early Christian hymn. And as we pointed that out, this 16 and 17 is early in the first half, but there are a lot of words that were repeated and seems to have a pattern that fits more of a hymn in the way it's put together.

But nonetheless, it fits very well the message that Paul is seeking to get across. Another thing that we pointed out there is that there is this teaching that was One of the false teachings that were common in Colossae is an early form of what's known as Gnosticism, and their thought under Gnosticism was that there was a good God, but we have an evil world. In Gnostic teaching, the world matter is evil, and so in order to explain how it is that we have an evil world with a good God, the thought was that there was a series of angels, one relating to the next, And finally, it was the last one that mistakenly created this world and even mistakenly created Christ. That was the teaching of the Gnostics, and Paul was trying to confront that. And as we see in this passage from verses 15 through 20, Paul nails that teaching right and left, and we'll see that clearly as we go through that.

Now, the other thing that we pointed out is that Scripture, has general and special revelation. The general revelation are those revelations that come through nature, just viewing God's providence, that is, God's superintendence over the affairs of the earth, and conscience. The special revelation, the specific revelation, comes from Scripture and the person of Jesus Christ. And Colossians 115 points particularly at that revelation of Jesus Christ.

He is the image of the invisible God. And we find that nature, which we see some reference to here in this Colossians passage, nature is also a way in which God reveals himself in a much more limited way than Scripture and in Jesus Christ, but nonetheless, God's character is revealed in nature as well.

Okay, so now you remember everything, right? From March 28, got that memorized from three weeks ago? Okay, let's get back into the passage here. The first thing we want to take a look at is there's a series of pronouns there, mostly him and then he. But the point we want to make is those are all in reference to Christ.

The context of the passage right before in Colossians 1, 13 and 14 goes like this. It refers to His beloved Son, the Father's beloved Son, and so that is Jesus Christ. And we see Christ referenced earlier in the chapter by name. So this passage, Colossians 1, 15 through 20, is in reference to Christ. These pronouns that we saw are referring to Him. Now, let's take a look specifically at verse 16.

One of the things that we note there is there are three prepositions that show up, and this is all in reference to things being created. The first one there is, "...for by Him all things were created." The next one there, towards the end of the verse, all things have been created through him, or by him again in the King James, and then all things have been created for him.

The next slide, and you have this on your handout as well, let's look at this by, the Greek there is en, simple enough, and it creates, it gives this sense that Christ is the source of all creation. Everything that was created has its source in Christ. What's he conveying there? Christ is not some incidental to the creation process. Everything, and we'll take a look at this all things that Paul keeps using, everything has its source in Christ. Christ is not just the source of some small part of it, but all things. Everything originates in Christ. The next thing is everything is through Him.

And what's interesting is the same word is used to express the similar truth in John 1.3, 1 Corinthians 8.6, and Hebrews 1.2. The very same message is brought forth using this very same Greek word. Christ is the means by which everything is created. And finally, four.

Everything was created beginning in Him. He is the source. Everything was created through Him, and everything is created for Him. He is the sense of direction and purpose for all that's been created. What's interesting is that we have a couple of passages.

Isaiah 40.28 in the Greek Old Testament and Hebrews 3.4 use the exact same word to describe God and building. And the concept there is that God is the builder of all things. He uses that analogy of building. So if we take that sense, it brings out this idea.

Christ is the source as the designer of all that is. Christ is the source as the designer of all that is. Finally, through Him all things have been created, right? So Christ is the means of creation as the builder. Using the building analogy then, Christ is the designer and the builder. And then finally, all things are created for Him. He is the goal of creation, the purpose towards which all things are created.

So we get all three senses coming across in this passage. So what's the impact here? Rather than what the Gnostics were teaching, that Christ was just sort of an incidental being created at the end of this creation process through a bunch of angels in an evil world, Christ is instead the very head of it all. Now, here's another word that keeps popping up in this passage.

We'll draw in the end there of verse 15 that we looked at on March 28th. It uses the noun there, Christ is the firstborn of all creation, the noun, and then for by Him all things were created, now the verb form, and then at the end of verse 16 have been created. So first we have the noun and then two times the verb, the related verbs, and it goes like this. Ketesis, okay, is the noun that you see showing up there in verse 15, and then twice the verb for things having been created. Ketizo, obviously a related word, okay?

Now, use of these words for creation and to create would have been to address the Greek cultural background. That would have been most of those at Colossae. The Greek cultural background would have come from several centuries prior, Alexander the Great's influence. Now, coming into this, the Jews at Colossae, we've said before that the Jews had been moved into the area of Ephesus and Colossae about 250 years prior to this letter. So they were well established, there were about 2,000 families that were relocated there. The Jews would have understood, having been of Greek background for these two and a half centuries, they would have understood what was said, but it wouldn't be characteristically Jewish. We'll see the significance of that in just a little bit. Look at all the times that Paul underscores here, all. You would get the impression he means all, right? Okay.

All creation, all things, all things, all things. And there's one more in verse 20, all things. He most definitely means all things were created by Him. If we look at that all, or all things, that's just simply the Greek word, pas. The word is used six times in this passage to convey the idea He is the Creator and Reconciler, not of some little small incidental part, as the Gnostics were trying to tell people, not sort of a little bad part of the world, but of everything, all things, everything was included in this. There was no exception at all, every aspect Christ had responsibility for. Both uses of pas in verse 16 and the second verse in 17 have a definite article. That doesn't come across in all of our English translations, so I want to bring that out. As he's writing it, it's the all things. Specific. The all things are brought across this way. Now let's get to the bottom line, let's look at it.

Paul so clearly expressed it to the church, which had believers from both a Greek and Jewish background, people of both cultures, and he wanted to speak in a way that included both of those cultures. Now as he goes to get the point across, he's trying to tell them in their cultures everything, all things, every last thing Christ created. Christ is not an incidental at the end of some sort of mistaken creation from a series of angels. He's trying to get that point across to them real clearly.

In our own culture, we might say something like this, the whole enchilada, okay? The whole nine yards. Believe me, it's tough to come up with a nine-yard tape. Anyway. And lock, stock, and barrel, okay? We have expressions like that, okay? The whole banana. Whatever expression you want to come up with, that's what he's trying to tell them. Everything. I'm not sure what they would do if he said the whole enchilada, but you understand what I mean. Okay. The whole ball of wax. All right. We get the point that what Paul is trying to say is all creation, all things created, all things have been created, all things and all things hold together. Everything.

He is trying to underscore to them the immensity of Christ's involvement, the totality of Christ's involvement. Christ is not at some obscure corner of everything that's created. He is the one who is head of it all, the one who created the all things. You can see what happens here. Here is this idea that the Gnostics are trying to bring across that Christ is sort of at the end, the tail end of this creation process as a created being, mistakenly brought into being by an evil angel. And Paul is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Everything, even the angels, even the angels are His creation. Nothing was created without Him. All things. Just to make sure that they understood that Paul meant absolutely everything that was created, we want to look at the Oreo cookie. Oreo cookie? Yes, the Oreo cookie.

It's this part here, the white part we're going to look at in the middle. What we're going to do is we're going to look at the middle part here. Here's where it says, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. That's the part we want to look at. Here's the low-carb version.

So what we're doing, we're looking at this set of words right here. So he has three ways of trying to communicate to them everything. All the all things didn't get it across, right? So he wants to make absolutely certain they understand everything, everything, everything. So what does he say?

Both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. Everything is included. Notice here is that both the heavens and the earth and that visible, those kind of get linked together, don't they? The heavens and the earth would be well understood as all the things that are visible. The last part about that is the invisible part, and that's what the final point is there, thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities. We'll see why that's invisible in a minute here. Okay.

Let's look at the first one of those, both in the heavens and on earth. The both there means not just the heavens or the earth, but emphatically both of them. Remember the Gnostics were trying to say, you know, heaven's real good and earth's real bad. And his point was, no, Christ created everything, and so he makes sure that that gets included. Earth here, by the way, has a definite article. So it has the idea of in the heavens and on the earth. And what's interesting, this in the heavens and on the earth is a Jewish form of expression.

What we find is we go back to Genesis 1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. That pattern of speech, we find, continues to be used in Genesis. Genesis chapter 2, verse 1, verse 4. It's used again to describe the extent of the flood. It's used again later on through the prophets. They continue to use this form of expression, and Paul makes use of it here.

He also makes use of it in Ephesians 1.10.

It's a Jewish way of saying everything. So what has he done? He says, everything that's been created, Ketesis, okay? Everything, there's the Greek form of expression, here uses the Jewish form of expression. Both groups would say, yeah, Paul's talking to me. They would understand very well what he's saying. He would communicate to them in a way that they understood. Now, we've got some whys to ask here.

Why are the heavens plural? And it is that way in the Greek text there. The reason is this, that the Jewish understanding of things was you had the earth's atmosphere, that was the first heaven. The second heaven was the solar system and outer space, out in the stars. And finally, where God dwells.

So you had those three levels. Remember we brought up before, remember the phrase we have in our culture is seventh heaven or seven heavens? That's Islamic. It's not what the Bible teaches. So three heavens is what's being communicated here. So when it says the heavens, and the earth, it's those three heavens. Everything from the atmosphere all the way up to the very place where God dwells, all those things were created by Christ. In Him, by Him, through Him, for Him.

Now, let's take a look at this one. Visible and invisible. The visible things are obvious. The visible things are the part that's subject to science. The visible things are the things that we can examine. Everybody can look at and say, I know what that is.

The invisible things are the things that need to be revealed to us because we don't understand them. We don't have a way to have a perception of what the truth is about these things. And so we have revelation from scripture to tell us what that is. Interestingly, this word invisible that he's used in verse 15, that's also used here again. God is invisible.

The things that have been created that are spiritual beings are invisible as well. Just like we have in English, what has been done here is to take this word visible and put a prefix in front of it. So they have the word visible and invisible, and the same principle applies here in the Greek. Alright, so here's this word All it is is the word for visible with that prefix in front of it.

Romans 1.20 has an instance of that very use, and that Romans 1.20 talks about what can be known about God who is invisible, is revealed in the things that are made. So that word is used there as an example. So this word visible is simply the same word without the prefix a that we have in our language as well, in some words.

Okay, the last one, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. We might be inclined initially to think, well, that's, you know, earthly authorities, but that's not typically what they would have thought in those days. We find the combination of those specific words used together in several New Testament passages that you have here and on your handout.

Similar usage in 2 Peter and in Jude, as we have referenced here, where it talks about angelic majesties. And one of the things that's interesting, during the times of the New Testament, there were other writings that were going about. One of them was called the Testament of Abraham. Obviously, Abraham had been gone for almost two millennia, so it couldn't possibly be the real thing.

But the point being this, that Even at that point in time, it was understood in the common language that if you use these combinations of words, it referred to angelic creatures. Very well understood. And that's the way they would have understood those words here, that these are listings of various angelic beings who have a system of authority. We're not given exactly what that hierarchy is, but we're told that it exists. That passage will run into similar terms again as we go through both Ephesians and Colossians. Okay, so let's get to the bottom line here. It's very clear that Paul is trying to get across to them, Christ is the creator of all the physical world and all the spiritual beings as well, angelic and human. Christ is the creator of everything. That's very clear.

The other thing that comes out is neither the human nor angelic beings were created in a fallen state. They were given a window of choice. And it's interesting, for angels that window of opportunity to choose for or against the Lord appears to have been closed. We don't have any evidence that angels are continuing to make those kinds of choices. For human beings, unlike the angels which were created all at once, Human beings continue to reproduce, which angels don't, and so human beings, while here on Earth, have the opportunity to make a choice, as the angels did at one point in time. There will come a time when our opportunity of choice will be closed, won't it? Even for believers, our wills will be fixed. How about that? Our wills will be fixed.

So what we see here, he's making reference to these beings in the middle that the Gnostics said were simply various emanations of angels. And he's saying, hey, Christ didn't come at the tail end of this process. Christ came at the very start of it. He created these beings. He's not a being that's subsidiary to all these angels. He created the angels, making it very clear to them.

We've been looking at Colossians 1.16 here. Let's move on to verse 17.

And it says there, He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Our English translations don't carry something across real clearly here, and there's an emphasis on He. You see, in the Greek it's possible to put the pronoun and build it into the verb, and that's been done here. What puts special emphasis in this passage that we don't want to lose out on is the fact that the he pronoun is also added separately. So what does that do? That has this effect.

It says he, he is. It says he himself is. So what that does is the pronoun he that is that is listed separately focuses on His personality and identity. He. It's that person, Christ. That's the focus. And then the Is, in this case, focus on His presence and pre-existence.

He is. Now, we need to get the sense of what does He mean by He is. It wasn't that He was there back then and that's all He wanted to say. There's something else that He's trying to get across here. He is before all things. Sure, He's in front of all things.

Let's take a look at that. This is simply the word pra. This word conveys that Christ is prior to all things created in time. You have the idea of the beginning and the end, the time of the created world there, the beginning and the end of this, the first creation. Christ was before that. See that? Christ was before that. It's interesting, here's how it gets expressed, because we need to get the sense Christ wasn't just before it and then he went away. Christ has a continuous existence from before everything that carries on.

In Exodus 3.14, God says to Moses, I am, and in the Greek Old Testament, ego emi. Then here's Jesus speaking in the Gospel of John 8, 58 and 59. Jesus said to the Jews, and these are ones who didn't believe. He said to the Jews, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am, ego eimi. Before Abraham was born, ego eimi. Only God can say that. Only God's allowed to say that. This is a claim to deity.

This is a claim to being outside of time. See, I'll use an analogy here. We're used to thinking of, here's time, here's the beginning, here's the end, and we're somewhere here, right? We're living in the middle of it. To God, He's outside it all. He looks at the beginning. He looks at where we are. He looks at the end. To Him, it's all one time. So He could say, before Abraham was born, I am. I always am. That's the sense of time that he's trying to get across to them.

So when he says he is, here in Colossians 1.17, it's not just to say that he was before all things. He certainly was. But he had a continuous, eternal existence before all things. See that? A continuing, eternal existence before all things. This same truth is expressed in Revelation 22, 13.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. And the Alpha and the Omega are the first and the last Greek letters, right? The rabbis taught because they use aleph and tav, the Hebrew letters. They said if you express the aleph and tav, the first and the last letters, then that included everything in between. Same teaching here, only what does he do? He uses the Greek first and last letters and he says everything from the beginning to the end of creation. I'm the one by whom it came about. I am the one for whom it came about. That's what He's spelling out here.

And we see this even in Isaiah 44, 6 in the Old Testament. The Lord Himself says, I am the first and I am the last. Christ makes claim to deity when He says this. When He says, I am the first and the last, He says, and there is no God besides Me. How about that? Clear claim to deity. Okay.

The last thing He says there in verse 17 is He is before all things and in Him All things hold together. The idea is that everything stands together. It's this word sunistemi. This word is a perfect active indicative, and it has this idea. Christ created in the past the world and made it stand together, have its coherence and consistency, and it remains that way because of his creative activity in the very beginning. That's what he's conveying here in this work. Everything coheres, everything stands together.

You and I are not flying apart because things have been created by Christ in this way. It is that character that Christ gave it in the past and it now has because of what he's done. It's interesting, some years back I had the privilege of going to see the Stanford Linear Accelerator Berkeley cyclotron across the bay there and they're doing all this subatomic particle research and it is fascinating as they keep looking further and further and further into the character of matter.

The one thing that they won't see that is truly holding things together is Jesus Christ. He is the one in whom everything holds together and as fancy and as sophisticated as this equipment is, they won't get there. Scripture tells us that. Scripture tells us what multi-million dollar equipment never can. Isn't that neat? Okay, so we look at this passage here.

I want to bring up a parallel passage here, Hebrews 1, 1 through 3, and what we find is that these same things have been brought out that we just studied in Colossians. in the middle of verse 2, through whom also he made the world, and he is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, that's the thing we learn in Colossians 1.15, and he upholds all things by the word of his power.

Same teaching. Why do I bring this up? I bring this up because scripture is inspired by the same Lord. Scripture is inspired by the same word. Also the fact that we see some repetition of the same message is telling us that's important, that's critical.

You know, as you and I go through our daily lives, as we go through the things that happen each and every day, what a comforting thing to know, that it is the Lord of creation, It's the Lord of Creation with whom we are seated. It's the Lord of Creation with whom we have been ascended. It's the Lord of Creation with whom we will spend eternity. It's the Lord of Creation who has established our position in Him, untouchable in the heavens.

That is a marvelous and wonderful thing. The one who makes everything consistent, coherent, and hold together is the one that loves us for eternity. Thank you, Lord, for your marvelous work. Thank you for the fact that we can adore you for eternity. And Lord, be constantly amazed, constantly amazed at the things that you have done, what you have accomplished, and what you've set in place. We thank you so much for the things that you have done because you love us. It'll take forever for us to understand it all. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.