Bible Text: Colossians 1:15-20 | Pastor: Eric Danielson | Series: Advent 2019 | One of the ways we can worship and adore Christ more deeply at Christmas is to see how far the eternal Son of God lowered himself to come and save us from our sins.

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Lowering Himself for Us
Colossians 1:15-20

As we draw nearer to Christmas my hope is that God will fill our hearts with a fresh sense of awe and wonder at the spectacular gift that Jesus is. Last week we looked at how desperate we were and how desperate we would be without Christ. Yet God didn’t wait for us to see the error of our ways and come to him for forgiveness. He took the initiative and sent Jesus to us. While we were still sinners God sent his Son to die for us. That’s a spectacular gift and gives us reason to worship Jesus with awe and wonder.

Another way we can renew our adoration and awe in the gift of Jesus is to see how far he willingly lowered himself to become one of us and save us from our sins and desperation. One of the things that impresses us is when we see stunning acts of humility by people in high positions. When someone in a high position lowers themselves to associate with people lower than them, we take notice.

I saw a great example of this when I was at Crown College. At the beginning of my Sophomore year I got to campus about a week early for training in welcoming new students. We were all excited about the start of a new year and we were also excited because we had a new president and we were curious what he would be like. Well my first introduction to him made a big impression. When you think about a college president, you probably think of someone who is very important, they have the highest position in the college, they have the power and authority, the fancy office. They wear a suit and tie and if you’re a student you never see them unless they’re giving a speech to the student body. They’ve got much more important things to do than spend time with you.

But my earliest memory of Gary Benedict was not of a lofty president wearing a suit and tie who didn’t have time for us lowly students. It was of him volunteering to serve alongside college students on a paint crew that was painting a student lounge before new students arrived. The man with the highest position in the college came down to our level, put on grubby clothes, and served along with us. And he wasn’t the one giving the orders. He was just part of the crew, getting paint on himself and sweating like everyone else.

I was so impressed by that act of humility. He became like us because that’s how he felt he could be the best president. That kind of humility is very noteworthy and this morning I want us to see an even more stunning example – one that words can’t even really describe and imaginations can’t really comprehend. But we see this example every time we look at the baby Jesus.

When the wise men came from the East to search for the newborn king, they went to the place that you would expect to find a king – they went to Jerusalem. Jerusalem at that time was a wonder to behold. Herod the Great had built it to be a city that people marveled in. Even now, when I went to Jerusalem last year, the architecture and buildings from that era were stunning. That’s the kind of city where a king should be born. But when the wise men asked about his whereabouts, nobody knew what they were talking about. No king had been born in that city that they were aware of. That’s because a king hadn’t been born there. The king that they were looking for was born in the tiny village of Bethlehem. He was born in a barn, not a palace, and laid in a feeding trough, not a crib. I want you to picture in your minds what the baby Jesus would have looked like in that manger, and then I want us to look at a passage of Scripture that will help us see the glory of who he really was.

In the first chapter of Colossians Paul describes who Jesus was before he was born to help us understand how incredibly awesome it was when he came to us as a baby.

Read Colossians 1:15-20.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

In verse 15, Paul describes Jesus as “the firstborn of all creation,” and then he follows it up with several verses to explain why that’s the case. The significance of the firstborn in ancient Israel, according to the Reformation Study Bible, is that they would be the principle heir of the inheritance of their father. Here, Paul says that Jesus is the firstborn – he is the principle heir of the Father, and the inheritance he has received is all of creation. Jesus has been given all of creation as his inheritance – all the oceans and continents, all the lakes and mountains, all the people of the earth, all the angels in heaven, all the planets, stars, and galaxies in the whole universe belong to Jesus. God the Father has given it all to him as his inheritance.

Paul then goes on to give reasons why Jesus has the right to receive such a glorious inheritance. I want to look at the reasons he gives in verses 16-17 because they tell us some awesome things about who he was before he came to earth as a little human baby.

The first two reasons Paul gives are in verse 16. Paul says, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” Most people assume that it was God the Father who carried out the works of creation, but here Paul declares that it was actually the Son. You see a similar statement in John 1:1-3 when John is writing about Jesus. He writes: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

So it was through him that all things were created – nothing that has been made was made without him. The author of Hebrews, in Hebrews 1:1-2 writes: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” Later on, in Hebrews 1:10, in quoting a prophesy about Jesus, he writes: “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.”

I don’t know if you’ve been stunned lately by the magnitude of God’s creation, but it is absolutely mind-boggling. We can’t even come close to comprehending the immensity of this planet we’re living on. Over Thanksgiving we drove to MT to visit Amy’s family. Most of the trip is on Interstate highways, so we can average about 70 mph. That feels pretty fast when you’re in a car – certainly very dangerous if you would get in an accident.

To get to Amy’s parent’s we have to clip along at that dangerous speed all day long, hour after hour, and finally, after an exhausting day on the road, we make it. It feels like we’ve driven half way around the world. Mile after mile of farmland and fields, woods, hills, grasslands… We’ve passed the homes of thousand upon thousands of people. The trip is about 700 miles long. But even though it may feel like it, we’re not halfway around the world – we’re not even close. The circumference of the earth is 25,000 miles. That means we would have to make that trip 35 days in a row to make it around the world! 700 miles a day for 35 days at 70 mph just to make it around the world one time.

It boggles my mind to thing about how massive this planet is, and it’s just a tiny speck of dust compared to our solar system and galaxy. And to think that there are billions upon billions of galaxies! The universe is mind-numbingly vast and incalculably intricate, and you know who created it all? Jesus.

So it makes sense why Paul would tell the Colossians that one of the reasons Jesus had the right to inherit all of creation from the Father was that he created it all in the first place. But there’s another reason given at the end of verse 16. Paul points out that Jesus has the rights of the firstborn because all things were created “for him” and he explains what that means further in verses 19-20: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

So God didn’t just create all things through Jesus, he created them for Jesus. His purpose for creating all things was to give them to Jesus so that he would reconcile all things to himself through his death on the cross. Paul writes about this in Ephesians 1:7-10: “In him [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

So before anything was created, God had a purpose for why he would create all things as he did, knowing full well that both angels and men would rebel against him and all of creation would be subjected to the devastating consequences of sin. God had a purpose in it. All things were created through Jesus and for Jesus so that by giving all of creation to Jesus as an inheritance, he could reveal his glory by reconciling all things to himself through his death on the cross.

So not only was Jesus the one who created all things, he was also the one whom all things were created for. And those two things give him the right to be the firstborn over all creation. But there are two more reasons given in verse 17: “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

So the first reason in this verse has already been implied in the previous verses – Jesus has the right to receive all of creation as his inheritance because he is before all things. He didn’t come into existence in 4 B.C. when his human nature was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb. If that was the case, one could maybe question his right to be the firstborn of all creation. But Jesus actually existed before anything was created. He always existed. He was never created because he is God. Going back to John 1:1 it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So because he existed before all things he has the right to receive all things as his inheritance.

And finally, in verse 17 it says, “And in him all things hold together.” Not only is he the pre-existent creator of all things; he is also the Sustainer of all things he created. The only reason all things continue to exist as they do is because they are held together in Christ. Your body, this building, the air we breathe, the car you’re going home in – everything is held together by Christ. It always has been and always will be, and anything that is not, will cease to exist. Hebrews 1:3 says, “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.” Job 34:14-15 says, “If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, 15 all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.”

Jesus has every right to be the firstborn over all creation – he is the creator of all things, he is the one all things were created for, he is the one who existed before anything was created, and he is the one who holds all things together. These are glorious descriptions of who Jesus is, and all of them describe who he was before he was born. Jesus was the eternal, glorious, Son of God at the right hand of God the Father. He created all things, sustained all things and was given all things to reconcile to himself. He was glorious, all powerful, eternal, all-knowing, existing in perfect harmony with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

And yet this perfect, powerful, glorious Son of God did not remain in his lofty position in glory, leaving us whom he created and who rebelled against him to wallow in our wretchedness and desperation. He did something we can’t even adequately imagine. Philippians 2:6-8 says, “Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

From the highest of heights, to the lowest of depths, Jesus willingly humbled himself to save us from our sins. And that’s what we see every time we look at that baby in the manger… What a spectacular gift! What a glorious and merciful Savior. Let’s take some time now to worship and adore him.