¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross .

(Colossians 1: 15-20)

Last Sunday, we had a visiting speaker who spoke on the pre-eminence of Christ. He chose this Colossians passage which describes the elevated status of Christ. If we believe that Christ is indeed the “image of the invisible God”, “first” (Gr. protos) over all creation and “head of the body, the church”, then rightly, he is to be pre-eminent in our hearts too. The challenge we were given at the altar was to restore the rightful place of Christ as protos in our lives, just as we acknowledge that he is protos in all creation, so that “in everything he might have the supremacy.”

Colossians is not an easy epistle to negotiate, for all its shortness, if we don’t like “ideas”, and if we are bent simply on searching the scriptures for blessings and providence. Colossians 1 particularly draws us to the heavens to give us a higher view, a philosophically panoramic and galactic view of the place of Christ in the universe. It is a mind-boggling sight if we like stars and such. But if our beak is pinned to the ground looking for wormy food, then Colossians will escape our view.

Some basic unpacking of ideas and philosopical phrases in Colossians 1 may be necessary here …

In Colossians 1, Jesus’ place and status in creation is clear: he is, being the exact representation of God, God himself. Being “firstborn” over all creation does not mean, as JWs will insist, that Christ is a created being. Rather, “firstborn” refers to Jesus as being the “first” in all things, ie. having not just prominence, but pre-eminence.  All the fulness of “godness” lay in him. Whatever was divine was Christ.

Since he created all things (v. 16), and all things were created for his sake and pleasure, he must be above creation itself. He is thus “before” all things. In fact, being the Creator, “in him all things hold together.” Jesus is, Paul explains, the centre of the universe, the One who made and sustains all creation, giving it both the pulse of life as well as its capacity to continue and perpetuate new growth. He makes all things cohere.

This Creator, the protos of everything, is also the “head of the body, the church.” Being “firstborn (prototokos) from the dead” refers to what we saw in Colossians 1:15. Jesus was not the first person to be raised from the dead, certainly. But He is the most important one.  When he rose in the power of indestructible life by his sinlessness and purity, he created and founded a new entity called the church, which was made up of all whose sins were covered by his sacrifice, and for whom a final resurrection from the dead is promised. Without his resurrection, there could be no ultimate resurrection for us (1 Cor. 15:20). In this sense, Christ is the protos, the creator, the founder, of all the resurrected ones, the “firstborn from the dead.”

In all his roles, Christ stands as the true life-giver. He creates, he begins, he founds, he makes, he sustains, he holds together.Verse 20 caps it all by its description of him as the reconciler and the one who removes division and enmity: “to reconcile all things to himself … by making peace through his blood”. The bridge builder between God and man, and man and man, is found in this same creator who “holds all things together”, who unites all things and makes them cohere. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28).

This Person, then, in whom God’s fulness dwells, demands and deserves the place of pre-eminence in those of us who call him Lord. None of us could contest that. Many of us do not put our money where our mouth is, though. It’s not at all uncommon these days to find Christians elbowing their way to No. 1, by fair means or foul, simply because they can. Even less uncommon to find Christians slugging it out in church, in the public arena and the courtroom, because we don’t like what and how things are being done, or we won’t give way even where change is needed. Of course, it is all done in God’s Name … If we truly subscribed to Christ’s lordship, I doubt that the body, the church, would look as it does.

But we must put legs to these Colossian verses and apply them to where our lives are lived. The challenge of the speaker in my church last Sunday pins everything down to whether we are truly the followers of Christ. Is he really the Christ to us? Is he truly the Lord, the “head of the body, the church”? Is he protos? Is he pre-eminent?

We grapple existentially with these questions. Their immediacy and their confrontational demand for honest answers force us to face our deepest selves and truest thoughts. But it is a grappling and confrontation that we should never lose. In fact, there should be little question as to how the dice fall. In every struggle, our joyful answer ought to be a willing crucifixion of the hard and wicked ‘self’ (because the life Christ gives us is simply matchless), “so that in all things he might have the supremacy.”

Coming down to brass tacks, the fact is, to be anything other than a vessel where Christ is pre-eminent is to be anything else other than a Christian. And if Christ is not Lord over all of our life, then he is not Lord at all.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29: 11)

 This verse from Jeremiah is much-loved an oft-quoted. It is a beautiful prophecy of encouragement to the exiles who found themselves far away from Jerusalem. The sins of the leaders and the people had led to Judah’s defeat at the hands of the Babylonians (587/6 BC). As a result, King Nebuchadnezzar had deported certain Jews to Babylon. The Hebrew Bible records three distinct deportations.

1. Daniel 1: 6, Nebuchadnezzar solidified his rule by appointing vassal kings and taking hostages. The prophet-statesman Daniel and his three friends were taken as a part of this early deportation.

2. 2 Kings 24: 14 & 25: 11, King Jehoiachin and 10 000 persons, including Ezekiel (in 597 BC) were exiled to the city of Babylon, the capital of the Chaldean empire. Zedekiah was made puppet king over Judah by the Babylonians.

3. The third deportation occurred in 587/6 under Zedekiah’s rebellion with the fall of Jerusalem.

After the first deportation, Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles (Jer. 29). In it, he consoled the exiles that God had not forgotten them. The exile would last 70 years because of their sin and disobedience, but God was looking beyond this time of punishment and discipline to a further time of forgiveness and restoration. Where the exiles saw defeat and humiliation, disaster and destruction, God comforted them by telling them that his intention was not to destroy them, but to give them a hope and a future. He knew the plans he had for them; surely, he thought of them and contemplated the time when they would again find favour and renewal from him.

Regardless of how things looked in their present moment, God assured them that he remembered them. Although the promised blessing would not materialise immediately or even in the near future, nevertheless it would certainly come when their discipline was over. They would have to wait, and patiently endure the discipline of the Lord. But God’s promise to them was to ultimately restore Jerusalem and end the exile. History confirms the faithfulness of the Lord. In time, the Persians overtook the Babylonians. Cyrus, king of Persia, permitted the exiles to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild the Temple. In 538 BC, the exile came to an end.

King Cyrus of Persia

What is even more interesting about Jeremiah 29: 11 is really the few verses that follow it:  ” ‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back from captivity’ ” (vv. 12-14). These verses stress the hopeful nature of the future. In the midst of the most disheartening of circumstances, was there any room for the exiles to entreat the Lord for mercy and pity? God’s answer was, mercifully, “yes”. But God’s open heart and listening ear were dependent on the spirit of repentance that the exiles had to demonstrate. They would find God when they sought him with all their heart.

Wholehearted repentance was the key to turning the captivity to deliverance and restoration. Acceptance of the discipline of God and the willingness to obey had to characterise the attitudes and lives of the exiles. The exile lasted 70 years, as Jeremiah had prophesied. There was no getting around it. But when the period had ended, and the lessons of discipline had been learned, the “hope and a future” long-promised by Jeremiah came to pass. The Jews returned to Jerusalem; they rebuilt the Temple; they planted vineyards and wheatfields; and once again, the songs of children, of brides and bridegrooms, were heard in homes and streets.

It took time. All this did not happen overnight. One of Jeremiah’s opponents was the false prophet, Hananiah, whose ”quick fix” prophecies did not come to pass as he had said they would: “In that same year, at the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fifth month of the fourth year, Hananiah the son of Azzur, the prophet from Gibeon, spoke to me in the house of the Lord, in the presence of the priests and all the people, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord’s house, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon, declares the Lord, for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.’ ” (Jeremiah 28: 1-4). Unfortunately, Judah would not escape Babylonian exile, but rather, submit to a foreign yoke. Many deported Jews lived and died in exile, never looking upon their homeland ever again. Jeremiah was proven right over and over again. But when the appointed time came, God’s finger removed all obstacles as he re-gathered his children from the nations.

There are a few lessons for us to learn here. One is that God is good; his plans for us are good. The second is that God disciplines those he loves; no amount of wishful thinking or cajoling will make him change his mind if discipline is the only thing that will shape and mould us into his image. Thirdly, God keeps his word. What he promises, he will fulfil. It is impossible for him to lie, nor is it possible for him to make empty promises. Whatever may face us today, we can take heart that his plans are to prosper us, and not to harm us, to give us hope and a future. On that solid rock, we can stand.

Once a year, I try to get a gospel into my bible study class. Last year, we did John, which is my favourite account of the life of Christ. This year, we will be attempting Mark, the shortest gospel of the four in the biblical canon. It is placed after Matthew in the New Testament, but most people agree that Mark was the earliest gospel to be written. The author is traditionally accepted as John Mark, the cousin of Barnabas.

Eusebius, a church historian, wrote: “Mark, who had been Peter’s interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, one of Peter’s. Peter used to adapt his teachings to the occasion, without making a systematic arrangement of the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark was quite justified in writing down some of the things as he remembered them. For he had one purpose only – to leave out nothing that he had heard, and to make no misstatement about it.”

In Scripture, he is the young man who caused Paul and Barnabas’ heated quarrel so much that they split company in the book of Acts. He is also the young man who recorded the Apostle Peter’s discourses. Later in life, even Paul happily acknowledged Mark’s contribution to his missionary efforts.  

What is the Gospel of Mark like? We don’t know if Mark was similar in temperament to Peter, the big-hearted and very blustery fisherman turned apostle.  But this account of Christ’s life seems to reflect quite a bit of Peter. It is full of energy, action, and as we all know, the word “immediately” defines its narrative! In contrast to John, who shows a strongly contemplative and meditative side to the Lord, Mark’s portrayal of Jesus shows him to be God’s man of the hour, action-oriented, decisive, authoritative and heroic … descriptions that appealed to Mark’s early readers, the Roman Christians.

In early Christianity, the four gospels were described by their symbols to demonstrate how each gospel focused on a particular aspect of Christ’s role on earth: Matthew (man), Luke (ox), John (eagle) and Mark (winged lion).

Matthew: (winged) man to represent Christ’s Incarnation and human nature

Luke: ox to represent Christ’s sacrifice, service and strength

John: eagle to represent Christ’s divine nature

Mark: winged lion to represent courage and monarchy

Yet, what transpires in the account of the heroic man of action and authority in Mark is this: Jesus is the Servant of God. His servanthood is foregrounded in Mark in ways that highlight his true identity as the Son of Man, the Son of God, and universal Messiah. His servanthood takes nothing of his high status from him. Rather it is precisely his humility that elevates him, so that even when he is mocked, dignity graces him; when he suffers, heroism defines him; when he dies, he assures his own victory over death.  

The bible loves irony. Maybe God does too. In Mark, we see irony and paradox at work. Mark contrasts the obtuseness and dulness of the disciples with the truth about Christ (which of course the reader, being enlightened, knows). The disciples think that the hero, Jesus, must be “successful” in all he accomplished. Finally, he must lead Israel into victory and emancipation from the Roman overlords. In the early chapters, we see how Jesus indeed accomplished everything with power and authority, and therefore, “success”. Mark 8 is of course the turning point of the whole narrative:

  ^31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. ^32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

^33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

What greater paradox is there, that a man should welcome defeat and death in order to find victory?  Or lose, and win? No wonder Peter took him aside to “advise” him about such things. Hence the irony.^

^34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ^35 For whoever wants to save his life^ will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

The gospels have a way of levelling our pride. When we see the Master himself taking on the role of a servant, we cannot say that we will do otherwise and still be obedient. When he pays attention to the lowly or undeserving, we cannot say they are not worth the time of day. Our plans and paperwork cannot take precedence. There is simply no such thing in the kingdom of God. In Mark, as in the other gospels, this truly “successful” man, the appealing and strong hero, is shown to be most willing to lay it all down for the sake of others.  

The gospels “threaten” our status quo and our justifications to do whatever we like in the name of God. I like teaching the gospels. I learn so much from them. If anyone wants to know how to model his/her life after Christ, there is no better stopping place than the page that starts right after Malachi, and before Acts.

Teaching Mark will prove to be a challenge to me just as teaching John was. Jesus turned the world upside down with his rightside up ideas and notions about greatness. Personally, this has been hitting me a great deal in the past year or so. I still cannot find any exemplar of the best life lived than in Jesus, and no greater leadership style than the kind he taught and lived out to the very end. Jesus was the Servant Leader, the one who led by example and empathy. If I could teach just this one thing in Mark, I would say that I had succeeded well indeed.