The image of the invisible God

 This week's verse is on Colossians 1:15:

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

 These verses are where Paul is talking about the supremacy of Christ. He writes it in the form of what might have been meant to be a poem. (Imagine that being your legacy, to have future theologians debate whether or not your poetry really counts as poetry.)

There are tons of things around us that are invisible, like the wind. We can feel the wind, and we can see its effects, but how do you get a picture of the wind? You could show a tree bent over by its power, but what if you showed it to someone who never experienced wind before? "Why is that tree bent?" To understand the wind, you have to experience it.

Or what if you wanted to explain ice cream to someone from another time? (King Solomon could have anything he wanted, but he couldn't have an ice cream cone!) The feel of the cone in your hand. The taste and texture of the ice cream. The weird alien material they make the flat-bottom US cones out of, like manna, that tastes like nothing and is impossibly light. The impossible twist of soft serve ice cream, complete with that little piece on top that tips over, almost like a hook. If he saw a picture, would our ice-cream-stranger ask "Is that for hanging it up?" Or what about how cold it is, even on a hot day? Unless you had experienced an ice cream cone, the picture would do you no good. Everything good about that ice cream cone is invisible.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

Israel had the same problem trying to explain God to others. Their neighbors all had idols and pictures that showed their gods. "Our god looks like a person with a dog head, and his best godfriend has a pigeon head. What does your God look like?" Nobody knew. They couldn't even explain God's character in terms of how he lived on earth. Jesus fixed all of that. Instead of having to wonder about the ice cream cone, you could talk to someone who had tasted it, and maybe even have your own bite.

When we discover that there is a God, Jesus answers the question of "what's he like?" We can read about God forgiving Israel in the old testament, or people being blessed by him, but it's more meaningful when we see Jesus touch a leper, or tell a man who can't move on that his sins are forgiven. Reading about what happened, we have an image that lets us experience the invisible. He becomes more real, more of a person.

So, when thinking about his unmatched greatness, we don't often stop to think about how he lets us see the invisible greatness of God, and how he shows us how to act in life as a human being on earth. No other being in history has been able to do that.

Take some time and think about the different things we know about who God is, thanks to Jesus being born and living on earth. We no longer have to guess or wonder. We have experienced him ourselves and can see the invisible.