Greater Than Words

For most of human history, people have stood under the night sky and asked the oldest question there is: What is God like? Every religion, every philosophy, every late-night conversation is, in some way, a reach for that answer. And Paul, writing to a young church in Colossae, gives it to us in seven words. What is God like? Look at Jesus.

That is what Paul means when he calls Jesus "the image of the invisible God." The word behind "image" is the Greek word *icon* — not a faint copy or a rough sketch, but an exact representation. When you want to know what the invisible God is like — how He feels about the poor, the sick, the sinner, the outsider, the child — you do not have to guess. You look at Jesus. You watch Him touch the leper. You hear Him forgive the woman everyone else wanted to stone. You see Him weep at a grave. That is God, made visible.

Then Paul adds a phrase that has confused people for centuries: "the firstborn of all creation." It sounds at first like Jesus was created — the first thing God made. But that is not what "firstborn" means here. In the ancient world the firstborn was not simply the oldest child; the firstborn held the place of highest honor, the heir, the one who carried the family name. Paul is not saying Jesus was made first. He is saying Jesus is first — first in rank, first in glory, before all things and above all things.

So here is where the week begins. You do not have to spend your life wondering whether God is angry, distant, or indifferent. God has answered the question Himself, in a face you can look at. If you want to know the heart of God this Monday, do not look inward at your feelings or outward at your circumstances. Look at Jesus.

Yesterday we looked at who Jesus is. Today Paul tells us how big His reign is — and the answer is: bigger than you have imagined.

"By him all things were created," Paul writes. Not most things. Not the nice things. *All* things — the galaxies and the microbes, the visible world you can touch and the invisible world you cannot. Paul even lists "thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities," which was ancient language for the angelic and spiritual powers people spent so much energy trying to appease. Paul's point is bracing: even those powers were made by Jesus and answer to Jesus. They are real, but they are secondary. Do not fixate on them. Fix your eyes on the One who made them.

The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper said it in a line worth memorizing: "There is not one molecule in the universe over which Jesus does not cry, 'Mine.'" There is not a corner, not a pocket, not a nook or cranny anywhere in creation where Jesus is not Lord. And here is why that matters for a Tuesday: it means there is no part of *your* life that falls outside His authority and His care. Not the diagnosis. Not the finances. Not the relationship that's gone quiet. Not the part of your story you are most ashamed of. All things were created through Him and for Him — including you.

When the world feels ruled by forces you can't control — the news, the market, the powers that seem to run everything — remember the God who made them all with a word, and holds them all in His hand. You do not belong to the chaos. You belong to Him. He has looked at your life, every molecule of it, and said: Mine.

There is a phrase in the middle of Paul's hymn that scientists have spent centuries circling without quite naming: "in him all things hold together."

Think about how finely tuned your world is. The earth is tilted at just about twenty-three degrees — enough to give us seasons instead of scorched deserts and frozen wastelands. We orbit at just the right distance from the sun; a little closer and we burn, a little farther and we freeze. The moon is just the right size and just the right distance to pull the tides and, remarkably, to fit almost exactly over the sun in an eclipse. The ratio of carbon to oxygen, the rate at which the universe is expanding, the forces that hold an atom together — dial any of them a hair in either direction and there is no life, no you, no this morning.

You can look at all of that and call it a lucky accident. Or you can do what Paul does and call it a Person. "In him all things hold together." The order you see is not the leftover of random chance; it is the ongoing work of the mind of the Son of God, holding every atom in its place this very second.

And here is the pastoral weight of it. The same Christ who holds the cosmos together is holding *you* together — including on the days it does not feel like it. When your week is fraying at the edges, when the pieces of your life seem to be scattering faster than you can gather them, the truth of Wednesday is that they are not held by your grip. They are held by His. He is before all things, and in Him — right now, in the middle of the mess — all things hold together.

For three days we have looked up — at the glory, the reign, and the sustaining power of Christ. Today Paul turns the telescope around and points it at us, and he does not flinch: "you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds." That is God's honest diagnosis of every one of us apart from Him. Not distant acquaintances of God who drifted a little. Alienated. Hostile. Enemies.

And then comes one of the most beautiful words in the Bible: "he has now reconciled." The One who breathed the world into existence one day breathed His last on a Roman cross — so that people who were His enemies could be brought home as His children. The One who holds every molecule together let His own body be broken apart, to put us back together with God.

Why does this matter for you today? Because a lot of us secretly believe we have to clean ourselves up before we can come to God. We think the reconciliation is real for other people — the nicer ones, the ones with fewer regrets. But look at the order in Paul's sentence. He does not say God waited until you were holy and blameless and then reconciled you. He says God reconciled you *in order to* present you holy and blameless. The cleanup is the result, not the requirement. You come first — broken, empty-handed, honest.

The gospel really is that simple. As one saint put it, the Bible is a stream shallow enough for a child to wade in and deep enough for an elephant to swim. So come. Come with the parts of your story you'd rather hide. There is only one way to come to God wrongly, and that is dishonestly. Come as you actually are — because His grace is greater than your sin.

All week Paul has been reaching for words too big for the page — like Coco the gorilla signing "darn floor, bad bite" for an earthquake she had no vocabulary to describe. We are not much better off when we try to describe Jesus. He is greater than our words. And when you finally run out of language for someone that great, there is only one thing left to do. You worship.

That is where Paul's whole hymn has been headed. He piles up the titles — image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, the one through whom and for whom all things were made, the one in whom all things hold together, the head of the church, the firstborn from the dead — and then he names the point of all of it: "that in everything he might be preeminent." Preeminent means first place. Not a place. First place. In everything.

So here is the question the whole week has been quietly asking: does Jesus have first place in your life? Not just first place in your Sunday, or first place when things fall apart — but first place in your money, your calendar, your relationships, your private thoughts, your ambitions. The One who is greater than everything is not looking for a corner of your life. He is worthy of the center of it.

And notice: this is not a burden. It is the most freeing thing in the world. Because the One asking for first place is the One who already breathed out the stars and breathed His last for you. Giving Him the center of your life is not losing your life — it is finally putting it in the safest hands in the universe. So as you head into the weekend, let the week land where Paul's hymn lands. Not just in more information about Jesus, but in worship. Give Him first place. He is greater than words — so let your life say what your words cannot.