Describing God

Categories: god

Date: 08 December 2012 13:56:40

Blogging through Advent 6

Describing God

Col 1:15-19

Once upon a time, as all good stories start, a little girl was busy drawing a picture. “What’s that you’re drawing,” said the teacher. “I’m drawing a picture of God.” “But no one knows what God looks like” “They will when I’ve finished.” This is how St Paul looks at it:

15 who [the Son] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together. 18 He is the head of the body, the assembly, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. 19 For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him;

That is what Paul is getting at here. The invisible God. God is invisible not only to people’s eyes, but also to theit understanding. We can’t know God, unless God shows us what he is like. This is what the Father has done, he has shown us Jesus. Jesus is the invisible God mede visible. We have an accurate, undistorted image of God. Paul describes this by using the term “Firstborn” twice: The Son is the firstborn of creation and the firstborn from the dead. Hundreds of years later the Church had problems with two heresies. The --- said that the spiritual world was good and that the physical world was evil. The Arians said that the Son was a created being subservient to the Father.

Look at the Son

We don’t know what the heresy of the Colossians Paul was writing to correct, but in these verses he heads off both those later heresies by pointing to the Son. The Son is the one who created both the physical and the spiritual worlds. Both are created by him, both are good. all of the fullness of God is in the Son. The little girl in the story at the beginning of this short talk was right. We can know what God looks like. God looks like Jesus.