“The Head of the Body” Colossians 1:15-20

In the first church I pastored, our church was part of an association that had an interesting diversity. It was neither racial nor ethnic in its diversity, but where the pastors of the various churches had been educated that made up the diversity.

About a third of us had been trained at Southwestern Baptist Theological. Another third had been trained at the Criswell Bible Institute at First Baptist, Dallas. The other third had no formal education beyond high school.

Associational meetings were interesting, to say the least. We all enjoyed relatively good fellowship, but there were distinct differences depending on where the ministerial education happened.

One of the things that my Criswell brethren believed was that there was a clear hierarchy in the church, and that the pastor, as overseer of the church, was essentially the boss. He could and did make decisions about the church that I always believed should be made by the congregation. I often wondered who my Criswell colleagues would say was the head of the church. I have a good idea they knew their Bible well enough to know the appropriate answer is Jesus, but practically speaking, I’m not sure.

The man I consider one of my mentors once told me that a church must have only one head. A church without a head is dead, while a church with two heads was a monster. He was referring to staff relationships at a church, but it applies as well to the church in general.

In today’s passage, the Bible makes it clear that the true head—the only head—of the church is Jesus Christ.

Background

Paul’s letter is addressed to the church at Colossae. It was a church that came about through the ministry of Epaphras, one of Paul’s disciples while Paul was in Ephesus.

The purpose of the letter was to counter the false teachings of those who professed to be prophets. The teaching that was being taught was that of Gnosticism. The goal of the Gnostic was to elevate the gospel to a philosophy, a thing of the intellect and not a message of grace, faith and hope.

According to the Gnostics, there were two spheres: spiritual and material. In their view, that which was spiritual was good, while that which was matter was evil. Since matter—all created things are evil, and since God is pure spirit, they believed that God did not create the world. Instead, they said God sent out intermediaries from Himself. These intermediaries were at different levels of separation from God, and only a distant intermediary was able to create. This distant intermediary was essentially evil, since it was able to deal with matter or material things.

It is this same idea that led the Gnostics to teach that Jesus was not a human in any way other than appearance. They maintained that the Son of God would have to be good, and since good could not touch evil, then Jesus could not have had a real body, only the appearance of one.

Paul’s letter is addressing these matters, and it’s important to keep this in mind as we look at today’s passage, because these verses stress both Jesus as Creator and Jesus as a human being.

Central Truth: The body of Christ only functions properly when it recognizes Jesus as the head of the body.

Jesus is head because:

1. He is Creator of all things (15-17)

Paul tells us that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. The Greek word used to translate “image” has several meanings. It can be a representation or manifestation. But it goes beyond that. The Jewish philosophers used the word to describe wisdom, stating that wisdom is an image of God. It is also used to describe Logos (“word”), a term used by John in the introduction to his Gospel account. By using the Greek word for image, then, Paul is saying that Jesus, who is Wisdom and the Word, is the perfect manifestation of God into our world. If we want to know what God is like, we need only look to Jesus.

Having established that Jesus is not an imperfect manifestation of God, Paul then stresses that this divine revelation of God is also the Creator of all things. Here, Paul stresses that Jesus is the creator of everything, including things of this world and not of this world. This includes angels, both obedient and disobedient. The obedient angels are angels such as Gabriel and Michael, while the disobedient angels are Satan and his followers. There are those who taught that Jesus was similar to an angel. Paul stresses that all things created were by Jesus and for Jesus.

The significance of this statement at the end of v. 16 is to let us know that the reason Jesus created all things was an expression of His creativity but also for His purpose. Everything that is created, therefore, is subject to Jesus’ authority.

Paul then mentions that Jesus is before all things, and in Him all tings hold together. Jesus has supreme authority over all creation, it’s true, but He is also the One that sustains all creation. Put it this way: If Jesus ever decided to stop thinking about us, we would disappear. The whole universe would disintegrate into chaos, meaninglessness and destruction. We are in our world and in His kingdom because God, through Jesus Christ, keeps us in His thoughts.

Because of this truth—because Jesus is God in flesh, Creator of all things for Himself—He is the head of the Church.

2. He must have supremacy (18)

Lest there be any doubt, Paul then makes the statement clear: Jesus is the head of His body, the Church. Paul then gives two reasons why this is so.

First, Jesus is the beginning of the Church. As the Creator of all things, this is so, but it’s more than that. When Jesus came to our world, born from a woman, He walked in our midst, talking with us, eating with us, doing things that people do. He ministered to us, teaching us and showing us what it means to walk in humble obedience to the Father. He taught us about faith, about compassion, about forgiveness. He did this because He had a body which made Him fully human.

The promise that we would do greater things than He did when He returned to the Father was the promise that His return to the Father and the sending of the Holy Spirit would enable Him to do greater things through His new body, the Church. He is the beginning of the Church, the full revelation of God to the world. God’s revelation is the foundation of the Church (cf. Matthew 16:17-18). God continues to reveal Himself through the body of Christ, His bride, His Church. Jesus was the beginning of the Church.

He is also the firstborn of the resurrected. Without the cross, there is no redemption from sin. Without the resurrection, there is no assurance of eternal life. Because Jesus rose from the dead, He shows us that eternal life is guaranteed from the Father and given to us through the indwelling Holy Spirit. We do not enjoy eternal life only after we take our last earthly breath—we enjoy eternal life now, because we are in Christ, and He is in the Father, and He is in us. We have constant fellowship with the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. In John 17:3, Jesus begins His Priestly Prayer with this statement: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.”

Paul writes that these two things—Jesus being the beginning of the Church by coming to our world as fully God and fully man, and Jesus’ resurrection—give Jesus supremacy over the Church.

Because we know Jesus, and because we have eternal life through Him and by Him, He is not only worthy to be the head of the Church; He is the head of the body, His church.

3. He brings reconciliation to a lost world (19-20)

Paul returns to the reality of Jesus being the fullest representation of God by stating that God is pleased to have His fullness dwelling in Christ. Again, Paul is refuting the Gnostic idea of Jesus being less than God, and in so doing reminds us that all of this—Jesus, the Creator and fullest revelation of God into our world—was part of God’s great plan, and it is a plan that is pleasing to God. God didn’t send Jesus out of a sense of duty, but out of a vast love, a love so great that it could only be expressed in the sending of Jesus.

The reason God sent Jesus into our world, and the reason for our existence as the body of Christ, the Church, is a ministry of reconciliation. We only need reconciliation when there is a break in our relationship. When we have a spat with our spouse, someone has to make the move to repair the tear in the relationship. When we have an argument with our children, we have to take the steps to bring the relationship back. On and on it goes, but the point is that reconciliation is only needed when there is a break in a relationship. We broke our relationship with God when we chose to ignore Him and sin against Him. God’s response was to seek to breach the break. He sent His Son, and He has extended that ministry to us as a Church to seek to bind relationships back together.

The way God does this is through the making of peace through the blood of Jesus Christ. The shedding of Jesus’ blood sealed the covenant that would restore the relationship and bring us into peace with the Father. That is why Jesus tells us we are blessed when we are peacemakers, why the Bible tells us to live at peace with one another, as much as it is within our power to do so. The entire ministry of the Gospel is wrapped up in the restoration of peace through the forgiveness of sin by the shedding of Jesus’ blood.

That is God’s ministry in our world. It is Jesus’ ministry in our world, and, because we are the body of Christ, the Church, we obey the head and the ministry of reconciliation becomes our ministry as well.

Conclusion

This passage is clear to us that Jesus, God’s fullest revelation of Himself to our world and to us, is the head of His body, the Church. We who are saved by grace through faith are a part of the body of Christ, the Church. Because Christ is our head, we have a responsibility, and that responsibility is this: To obey the One who saved us, the One who calls us, the One who is head of His Church.