Colossians 1:11-15 reads, “May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God…” and verse 19 says, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…”
What concerns us most this evening is verse 15a and verse 19, which says, speaking of Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…”
Among other things, the incarnation of the second person of the Holy Trinity is about seeing what was not previously seen. It is about seeing what could not be seen. It is about something being revealed to us, something being made known to us. And that something is a Someone. It is a being. It is the invisible God. Christmas is about seeing the invisible God in Jesus Christ, who is His image.
This does not mean that it is about us making our own images of what we think Jesus looks like. To display a baby in a manger as Jesus, or to paint our own pictures of Jesus, no matter how well intentioned, is not to see the image of God, but to obscure the image of God.
So how is it that we see the image of the invisible God if Jesus is not physically present with us and we can’t make up pictures of Him? We do so by looking at His Word and seeing Him there. After all, Jesus is the Word of God. The first chapter of John tells us about Christ, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We see Him with a different type of seeing – with a different type of sight. We see Him in His Word by Faith, and therein the invisible God is made visible. He is no longer obscured. He is no longer un-seeable. We are no longer blind. We are no longer in darkness.
Sadly, we can take this for granted, because for us, even though we have not always been Christians, we have always lived in the era of Light, wherein the Light has come into the world, and the darkness has not overcome it. Because, it was for a long time, that God was not seen with such clarity. For thousands of years, God was not seen in flesh. The Word was not enfleshed. The Light had not come into the world. It was a dark world. It was a world in which God was only known in shadows and types, not in the image of His Son.
But before the world became dark and God was only known in shadows, our first parents, Adam and Eve, enjoyed a world without shadows. In the beginning, when God spoke creation, and our first parents into existence, was the first time that God enfleshed His words. He didn’t enflesh The Word, but He enfleshed His words. For God speaks and creates worlds by the word of His power and holds them together by the same.
But the world without darkness was soon lost by our first parents, and we lost in them. They fell for false words, instead of God’s words. They sinned and for the first time, God’s enfleshed words needed covering. They were cast out of the garden without shadows, and a cherubim with a flaming sword was placed there to guard the tree of life. And the world became very dark. It became filled with shadows. It became filled with sin, hatred, and death. What was once seen by man in the garden, could no longer be seen. God was not quite so near anymore.
As time went on God would speak and reveal things in various times and in various ways to our forefathers in the faith and to the prophets. But our sin had separated us from God and He could not be seen. Even Moses, the most humble man on the earth, could not even see the backside of God without God Himself covering Moses. There were years of darkness. The prophets could see dimly far off into the future. But God was invisible. This is why so many of the Christmas songs are about awaiting the first advent of our Lord. In these hymns a scene is painted for us of darkness and bondage awaiting light and release. But it is not as if we were innocent victims of the darkness. It is not as if we were good and innocent people patiently waiting and searching for the light. No, as we fell in Adam, we fell from our innocent estate. And we did so willingly, in him. Apart from Christ, we loved the darkness and loved our sin and loved our rebellion against God, just as John 3:19-20 tells us, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” And so, even today if you do not have faith in Christ, you still are in darkness, you are still His enemy, a rebel deserving of judgement, not a holiday. But Christmas is about something that the Angels called “good news of great joy.” And that is that the two warring parties have come to peace. Not that we have negotiated a peace deal with Christ, but that He came and disarmed us and conquered us and converted us to the Kingdom of Light.
And so it was at the right time that God sent His Son Jesus into the world to put on a flesh that He did not previously assume, that was His war clothes. He was sent, to be born in a manger, a spark that was a light in the darkness that was brighter than any star in the sky. God put, in the manger, as C. S. Lewis says, “something that was bigger than the whole world.” Yet, the image of the invisible God looked very normal. At one point it looked like a precious baby.
What lay in that manger was an image of something that had not been seen before. In that child, someone who is invisible, was seen. Yet, as John 1 tells us, He went to His own, but His own received Him not. Though He was the image of the invisible God and the exact imprint of His nature in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, He was not recognized as such by all. This is because seeing the image of the invisible God is not about seeing a picture of his face. The image of the invisible God is seen not with physical eyes, even though there were many who saw Him with physical eyes. Seeing the image of the invisible God is not about seeing with physical eyes, but rather it is about seeing with spiritual eyes. Not with eyes of flesh, but with eyes of faith – otherwise we could paint pictures of Him and see Him. But that is not how He is seen. Not in pictures. Not with carnal eyes. He is seen with words. The enfleshed Word is seen with God’s Words.
And this Word of God became flesh so that we could see Him with faith. We see God’s Words that tell us that the Word-Made-Flesh grew in wisdom and stature. We see that He lived a perfect life. We see that He was betrayed. That He was beaten, mocked, and scorned. We see that He was crucified, lifted up to die with nail-pierced-outstretched-hands. We look there and we see Him bleeding. We see His blood flowing out. The wonder of wonders is that He was enfleshed to do just that, so we could look and see Him with eyes of faith. He was born for this. He was enfleshed in a physical body, so that we could have spiritual sight. The image of the invisible God looked painful, full of suffering and sorrow. The image of the invisible God was scorned. But when someone looks with eyes of faith, they look at the blood flowing from the crucified Christ, and they believe that that blood was for them. That that blood was spilled for the forgiveness of their sins. Such a person looks and sees that that life that breathed its last, was lived and finished for them, that they might live.
A person looking with eyes of faith looks upon the thorn-crowned and dying Savior, not as a loser or a weakling, but as their victorious Savior, conquering sin, death, satan, and hell, with His life, death, and resurrection. They look and see that That Man hanging there on the cross, is the image of the invisible God. And in That Man, God is showing us Himself, showing us His justice, His wrath, His love, His grace. And in That Man, the cherubim with flaming-sword is no longer standing between us and eternal life. The only thing standing between us and eternal life is That Man, That Man hanging on the cross, That Man now resurrected and ascended. And That Man that stands between us and life, is not standing there with a flaming sword. He was pierced with that flaming sword. And He lives. He is standing there with outstretched arms, ready to receive any lost sinner who would come to Him. The veil was torn between us and God, the way to the Garden reopened, and now we can see and live. Now, the world that was filled with darkness, shadows, hatred, and death, is now being filled with Light, and Love, and Life, and the knowledge of the glory of God, and that knowledge of the glory of God will continue to fill and cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. But we have to look there at the enfleshed Son of God, and we can only look there with faith. It is there that we see the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.
And when you look and see the crucified enfleshed Christ as the image of the invisible God, you can look back at the babe in the manger, wonder of wonders, and see that there is the image of the invisible God. There, in that manger is a more clear view of God than all the types and shadows the temple had to offer. That is why Herod wanted to kill the Christ-child.
If all that is not glorious enough, it gets even better. Jesus Christ is not merely the image of the invisible God, as if He reflects the image of God, yet is not God. But Colossians 1:19 tells us that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” This is why pictures are not the image of God, God dwells not in them. Jesus Christ is the image of God that is God. The second person of the Holy Trinity did not subtract any amount of His divinity to become a man. He put on a flesh that He did not have on before. He became man without ceasing to be God. In that human flesh He put on, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. This is amazing. This is truly God with us. And since in His flesh, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, Christ will remain enfleshed for all time. And one day He will dwell with us in body, and we with Him. And we will see Him, not just with spiritual eyes, but with physical eyes. Some day, our faith will be made sight. As the apostle tells us in 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” For He is the image of the invisible God.
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