GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES.
Ver. 13. From Darkness to Light.
- Man is naturally in a state of darkness, held captive by sin and Satan.
- A kingdom of freedom and light is provided by the intervention of the Son of God.
- The translation from darkness to light is a Divine act.
Ver. 14. The Great Blessing of Redemption—
- Is the forgiveness of sins.
- The blessing of forgiveness is through the agency of Christ.
- Redemption is purchased at a great cost and sacrifice.—“Through His blood.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses15–17.
The Relation of Christ to God and to all Created Things.
Having spoken of our redemption, the apostle, in terms of the highest significance and grandeur, dwells upon the dignity and absolute supremacy of the Redeemer.
I. The relation of Christ to God.—“Who is the image of the invisible God” (ver. 15). God is an infinite and eternal Spirit, incomprehensible and invisible. “No man hath seen God at any time;” yet humanity yearns for some visible embodiment of Deity. Christ reflects and reveals the Father. “He is the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person.” It is believed that the idea of the Logos underlies the whole of this passage, though the term is not mentioned. The heretical teachers at Colossæ had introduced a perverted view as to the nature of the mediation between God and creation, and the apostle aims to rectify it. The word λόγος, denoting both reason and speech, was a philosophical term adopted by Alexandrian Judaism to express the manifestation of the unseen God—the absolute Being—in the creation and government of the world. It included all modes by which God makes himself known to man. As His reason, it denoted His purpose or design; as His speech, it implied His revelation. When Christian teachers adopted this term, they exalted and fixed its meaning by attaching it to two precise and definite ideas—that the Word is a Divine person, and that the Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ (Lightfoot). Christ as the eternal Word is the perfect image, the visible representation, of the unseen God. In addition to the idea of similitude, which is capable of a wide and general use, the word “image” involves two others.
1. Representation.—It implies an archetype of which the image is a copy. Man is said to be in the image of God; but there is a difference between the image of God in man and the image of God in Christ. In Christ it is as Cæsar’s image in his son; in man it is as Cæsar’s image on his coin. In the God-man Christ Jesus we have a visible, living, perfect, and reliable representation of the invisible God.