July 16, 2022

Colossians 1: 15 (NIV)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Only those that can see the invisible can do the impossible.*

In Exodus 33: 20, God tells Moses that he (Moses) can’t see his (God’s) face because “no one may see me and live.” In verse 11 of the same chapter, we are told that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, but in light of verse 20, we have to assume that Moses wasn’t actually able to pick up on God’s body language or read his lips. Besides the fact that a human just isn’t capable of beholding spirit, God was very clear in not wanting us to manufacture images to worship – even images of himself. If we don’t know what he looks like, we can’t make a representation of him.

Then along comes Jesus, the Son of God, who is human and the image of God. Through him, we know what God looks like – and yet, we still don’t have a physical description of Jesus. With all that has been recorded about his words and deeds, all that we know about his appearance is what Isaiah prophesied in chapter 53, verse 2: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Jesus was memorable but not because of his looks.

If we are going to see the image of God through his Son, we must know the Son - what he said, what he did, how he loved, and what he is going to do next. Today's verse in Colossians also reminds us that Jesus is the “firstborn over all creation.” The firstborn is the one who inherits the title and all the property. In Romans 8: 16 and 17, we are assured that the Spirit testifies that we are also God’s children and that means that we are co-heirs with Christ. We must be prepared to share in his suffering but we are promised that we will share in his glory.

He takes his children to higher levels of fellowship so they may hear him speaking “face to face.”*