A story is told about William Randolph Hearst, the late newspaper publisher, who had invested a fortune in collecting great works of art. One day, he read about some valuable pieces of art and decided that he must add them to his collection. Hearst dispatched his agent across the globe to locate and buy them. Several months went by and eventually the agent returned and reported to Hearst that the items at last had been found — they were stored in his own warehouse. Hearst had purchased them years before.
That story is an apt illustration of Christians and Christmas; we tend to major on the cuddly little baby in the manger, the star, the wise men, gold, frankincense, myrrh, and, yes, even the farm animals around Joseph, Mary, and the child (and don’t forget those swaddling clothes).
But by fixating on the external circumstances of the Advent story, we miss the profundity of the gift that comes with the appearance of the baby in the manger. I’ve found the beautiful hymn, which Paul quotes as doxology in Colossians 1:15–20, to be helpful as a reflection on what God gave when He sent His Son to earth.
In verses 15–17, Paul shows how the one “born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth” is supreme over creation:
1. He is the image of the invisible God.
Jesus is the perfect, totally accurate image of God, untarnished by sin. He is both the representation and manifestation of God. John 1:14 puts it this way: “And we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.”
2. He is the firstborn of all creation.
We must be careful here. Jehovah’s (false) witnesses follow the early church heretic Arius in using this passage to prove that Jesus was not divine. In Jewish and Greek culture, it was typically the son who had the right to the inheritance. In Exodus 4:22, God calls Israel his “firstborn son,” meaning they received the inheritance of salvation out of all the nations. Thus, Jesus is the firstborn in rank, not the first human created.
3. He created all things.
Jesus is supreme over creation because He is its Creator. That’s why Jesus can speak to the winds and the waves on the Sea of Galilee, “Be still,” and they obey without protest.
The size of the universe is staggering. The sun has a diameter of 864,000 miles (100 times that of earth). It could hold 1.3 million planets the size of earth in it. Light travels 186,282 miles per second, and it takes sunlight 8.5 minutes to reach earth. Yet, that same light would take more than four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, some 24 trillion miles from earth.
The Milky Way Galaxy, our galaxy, has billions of stars, and astronomers estimate that there are perhaps billions of galaxies. What they see leads them to estimate the number of stars at 10 to the 25th power. That is roughly the number of all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches.
Think of the wisdom and intelligence of our Creator. Even the slightest change in the tilt of the earth’s axis would be catastrophic; it would cause the earth to be too hot or too cold to support life. If the sun were any nearer the earth, it would burn us up. Any farther away, and we would experience a permanent ice age.
If the earth were any nearer to the moon, then huge tides would flood all the continents. A change in the makeup of the gases in our atmosphere would also be fatal to life. A slight change in the mass of the proton would result in the dissolution of hydrogen atoms. This would result in the mass destruction of the universe, because hydrogen is its dominant element.
Only a fool would believe this is the result of accidental forces.
4. Christ created all spiritual powers.
Paul speaks of things “visible and invisible,” and “thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities,” and he is referring to various ranks of angels and Jesus’s superiority to them as their Creator.
5. All things were created for Him.
Jesus is not only the agent of creation, the Creator, He is the goal of creation. What I mean by that is this: He created all things for His own glory.
6. He is before all things.
Contrary to the Arians of the Watchtower Society, Jesus already existed when creation began. This is John’s point in the first two verses of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. And all things were made through Him and there was not anything made that was made.”
7. He holds the creation together.
Hebrews 1:3 makes this point forcefully, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”
The children’s catechism is helpful here: What is God’s providence? God’s providence is His completely holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action. By His mighty word, Christ continually sustains, keeps, guides His creation and prevents it from falling into chaos. Why doesn’t the sun crash into the earth and burn it up? Because Jesus is holding it together. He maintains the delicate balance necessary to life’s existence.
He is the power behind every consistency in the universe, things we often call “natural laws.” Why does gravity work the way it does? Because of His superintending work. Why can we expect cold in the winter and heat in the summer? Because of His superintending work. Why do all the planets in our solar system revolve around the sun? Why can we count on a visit from Halley’s Comet approximately once every 75 to 76 years? Because of the supremacy of Christ over creation. Christ is ruling over every atom and molecule and every blade of grass and every grain of sand for the good of His people and His own glory.
The Child of Bethlehem is supreme over redemption, as Paul shows in verses 18–20. It’s why we can sing the glorious line from “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”:
1. He is the head of the church, the company of the redeemed.
The church is a body with many parts, but Christ is the head. The concept here is not like the head of company, but in the sense that the church is a living organism that is inseparably tied together by the living Christ as its head. Christ both gives life and direction to the body.
Christ energizes and coordinates the diversity of spiritual gifts and ministries within the body to exalt His name. Christ is not an angel, who serves the church, but is head of the church.
2. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.
Christ is the source of the church, the church’s existence is rooted in His sacrificial death and resurrection which provides new life for the elect, the church. Christ is the firstborn from the dead because His resurrection secures the resurrection of all believers for all time. He defeated death so that death might no more have any claim on His people.
3. He is pre-eminent.
As a result of Christ’s death and resurrection, He is pre-eminent, or has first place over everything in the created order. This is what Paul means when he wrote to the church at Philippi in Philippians 2:8–11, “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. … And God highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
4. Christ is God.
“In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” Jesus not only bears God’s glory, but all that God is dwells in Him. He possesses all the wisdom, power, Spirit and glory of God the Father. This is another way of saying that Jesus is fully God.
5. Christ has reconciled all things to Himself.
Isaiah speaks of Jesus as the “Prince of Peace,” because He will ultimately bring peace to a created order that is captive to sin and death. War and death and cancer and tornadoes and car wrecks and child abuse and divorce and hospitals and weeds and the need for law enforcement and armies will be no more.
Christ, the second Adam, has undone and will undo the curse that the first Adam brought on all of humanity at the fall. No longer will the ground be cursed. Demons and Satan and all who reject Christ will be cast into hell and Christ’s universal kingship will be enforced upon them, for their rebellion will be decisively defeated by Christ as the conquering king. They will no longer be able to work mischief in the universe. This is Paul’s point in Romans 8:19–20.
6. Christ has made peace by the blood of His cross.
The central event in human history will restore ultimate peace between God and sinners and the created order. When you were outside of Christ, you were at war with God, the Father. But now that you are a follower of Christ, His blood has ended the enmity between you and God, because Christ’s righteousness stands before God in the place of your sins and you are now at peace with God because of Christ. You have a brand-new identity as a member of Christ’s family.
What more could you want for Christmas or for any other season?