Most people have heard the name Martin Luther before. We learn about him usually in world history at some point. He was a German monk and a Bible professor about 500 years ago who became a key figure during the Protestant Reformation. As a young man, Martin Luther really struggled with this idea, and he was terrified of God's judgment and how to deal with it. He didn't take it lightly. Growing up, this was something that he thought about day and night, especially as a monk, he took this on himself. He prayed for hours. He fasted, lived with discipline. He confessed every day to the point where those he was confessing his sins to told him, You need to stop. You're confessing too much. But the strange thing was, the more serious that he took this, the more guilt, the more he couldn't let this go, the more he felt crushed by it. Later, Martin Luther would talk about this in saying, If anyone could save themselves, by doing the right thing as a monk, it would have been him. And yet he had no peace because he was enveloped with this idea, answering this question, What does a Holy God require?

As Martin Luther began to translate the Bible from Latin into English, he started to find passage after passage that convicted him and transformed him. He realized that the righteousness that God requires is the same righteousness that he gives as a gift through grace, through faith. Luther later said that it felt like the gates of paradise opened up before him when he realized this. This is not just Martin Luther's story, though. This is our story. Our story that almost every philosophy, every religion, every worldview looks at, trying to answer this question, our big question, how can we be saved? How can we be saved? Our culture will give us a couple of different answers to this question, and yet they all come back to one commonality. They put the weight on you. An atheistic worldview would say, there is no God, there is no final judge, there's no final judgment. And so you don't need to worry about being saved. Just try being a decent human being. And yet the question doesn't go away. We still have a standard. We still feel this guilt inside of us, and we know that there are things that we can't undo.

Even in a world where we try to convince ourselves that a judge doesn't exist, it doesn't erase the feeling in our soul. Other religions will say, Yes, there is a God, there is a standard. And so here are the rules. Here's how you should live. Practice them. Live by them. Do them. Prove yourself. And if you try hard enough, maybe you'll be accepted by this God or this spirit or whatever. The problem is you never know where you stand. You never know what What is good enough. And deep down, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we know we don't meet that standard. And then there's a third approach, which is very common in the American church. We wouldn't ever say, we never confess that we are saved by works. And yet we often live by it. We view Jesus as this ticket, this entry ticket into heaven. And once we've we've punched that ticket. Once we've said that sinner's prayer, believe that it's our job to maintain that standard. We really don't believe that we need to go any higher, but we need to maintain it. We need to be good. We need to serve hard.

We need to know the right answers, vote the right way, parent the right way, anything to feel secure. So whichever path we take, whether it's know God, works-based religion, or trying to play the church performance game, The question comes back to, how can we be saved? But fortunately, the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to Colossians 1, as we will see three movements in this passage.

1. Christ's supremacy in creation

2. Christ's supremacy in redemption

3. Christ's supremacy applied to believers.

We are in week three of our series, Gospel in Three Words, where we're just focusing on Christ. So far, two weeks ago, we looked at the righteousness of God, how God's standard is so high that even our own righteousness could never meet it. Last week, we looked at our sin. Not only is God perfectly righteous, but we are desperately sinful. That leads us to this week, a need for salvation. In this passage, what we'll see is Jesus Christ is the Supreme and sufficient Lord of creation and redemption who reconciles all things to God through the cross.

John Calvin has this quote to say, he says, "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God, the knowledge of ourselves."

That's what we've been trying to do in this series so far, understand who God is, understand ourselves, because that drives us into the wisdom of knowing we need a savior. In other words, if you want to know whether or not you can be saved, Paul says, you have to look at the supremacy of Christ because only someone who is truly God can reconcile you to God. So let's look at that first section,

1. Christ's Supremacy in Creation

Paul is answering a question, why can Jesus save you? He does this by showing us that Jesus is God. He's not a mere resemblance of God, but that he is the image God. He is God revealed. He is God. That's why he says in Colossians 1:15, the first half, he says, He is the image of the invisible God. The point is that Jesus is not a copy. Jesus is not some form of God. The point is, if you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus. He doesn't resemble God. He is God manifested. He's not a manifestation of God. He is God made flesh. In Greek thought, the idea of an image is that they would share in the reality of what they reveal.

That's what Paul is trying to communicate. Jesus is the image. He is the reality, not just a mere resemblance of it. Not only is God, not only is Jesus God in the flesh, but that he has all authority. That's what we see in the second half of that verse, that he is the first born of all creation. This doesn't mean that Jesus is created. That's why we did the Nicene Creed a little bit before this. I want us to understand that this passage, a warning, that this passage is clear that Jesus is not created. The first born means not a literal son. It means someone who has the inheritance, who has the right The first born in the Bible means the supreme heir, the one with the right and rule, not the first one made. Psalm 89 says this about Jesus, prophesying about him, and I will make him, the first born, the highest of the Kings of the Earth. The first born is the one who inherited. He was the one who would be next in line for the throne. If it wasn't royal It would be the next in line to inherit the business or the farm.

It wasn't just an inheritance of money or an inheritance of land. It was an inheritance to continue on what your father had done, to make the same decisions. Jesus has the authority over all of creation. He is not the first created thing. He is God. And in fact, if Jesus were part of creation, Paul would not say what he says next in Colossians 1:16-17. He says this, For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Paul makes it perfectly clear and impossible for us to think that Jesus is created because Jesus is saying, Jesus created everything. You can't create everything if you were created yourself. Jesus cannot be inside the category of created things. He is the creator. He created all things. That word all, right? Sometimes we break down the Greek. This isn't a simple one for us. It's the Greek word 'pos', the meaning of it is all. You can't take it another way. It just It means all.

That's it. Which is why John says this, All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. What Paul, what John are trying to show us the proof that Jesus is God. They're saying, Look, look at what Jesus does. He owns everything. He is the creator. He is the one who does it. All things were made through him and for him. ' He does the very things that God does. Not only was everything made by him, And through him, everything was made for him. I think that's important for us to understand. Jesus is able to receive glory. That's what we see in Jesus being or everything being made for him. Any other place in scripture, when someone tries to worship an angel or someone else, the angel will say, No, you cannot worship me. But Jesus is able to receive glory because everything was made for him. That means that the universe is ultimately not about us. It is about him. Everything exists in creation to glorify God, and that includes our life. There's a great quote by Ironías who says this, The glory Of God is a human being fully alive, and the life of a human consists in beholding God.

What he's trying to say is, Our lives belong to God, fully alive, glorifying God. Paul is creating an argument here about how Jesus can save us, and it's crucial that we see and understand that Jesus is God. Verse 17 says this, And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That he has authority over all of creation. Paul is saying that Jesus isn't just the starter of the universe. That he is the sustainer of it. He is the one who holds all things together. He holds every atom of the universe together. Every breath that we have, every heartbeat is borrowed from God. So Paul starts by taking us all the way up. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the creator of all things, the one who holds everything together. But Paul isn't giving us theology, fun facts. He's showing us something. He's building an argument. Only the creator has the authority to redeem creation. And that brings us into our second movement here.

2. Christ's Supremacy in Creation,

Colossians 1:18-20. Verse 18 says this, And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the first born from the dead.

That in everything he might be pre-eminent. He is not only the authority over creation, but he is the head of the church. He has authority over the church. And that The word head doesn't just mean authority. It means authority, but it also means the source of life. If Christ is the head of the church, then the church can only stay alive by staying connected to him, which means the church is not a book club. It's not a time where we can come together and passively observe God. This The church is the body. It is a living, breathing organism that gets its life from Christ himself. He also is the first born from the dead. It doesn't mean that he's the first resurrected person. In the Old Testament, there are people that were resurrected. In fact, Jesus resurrected Lazarus. It means that he is the first a new resurrection. He is the beginning of a new creation. The resurrection is this resurrection, his resurrection, is a guarantee that death will not have the final word for his people. It finishes by saying this verse, it finishes by saying, He is all of these things so that in everything he might be pre-eminent.

That he's not one opinion among many. He's not a spiritual teacher that we can add on and hope that it improves our life. He's not a moral example that we can sit and view like we're at the movies. Paul says that Jesus is pre-eminent. He is first place. He is ultimate. He is supreme. He is unmatched. That's what pre-eminent means. He is first place in every category. If Christ is merely important to you, but not ultimate, you might not be seeing the Christ that Paul is proclaiming here, the Christ that we see in Scripture. Paul is trying to show us that Jesus is not just another person, that he's not like everyone else in the Old Testament that tried their best but ultimately failed. Paul wants us to see that he is God. He always will be God. He always has been God. It leads us into Colossians 1:19, For in him all the four God was pleased to dwell. This is Paul's way of cutting down every argument, every statement that would say Jesus was a good idea, or he was almost God, or he was a neat thing, he was a good teacher, he seemed moral.

No. Jesus is not part of God. He can't be a fraction of God. He cannot be a slice or a manifestation or some other mode of God. Jesus is God. He's not a junior deity. All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him. The whole divine nature dwells in him. God has ensured that in Jesus is found all that makes God God. Colossians 1:20 says this, And through him to reconcile himself to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. When Paul says, To to reconcile all things. He does not mean that every person will be saved. This is not universalism, that everybody goes to heaven. What he means is that Christ's cross is the decisive act that will put the whole universe back together under the rightful rule, either through redemption or through final judgment. Through the cross, Jesus will make everything sad come untrue. Either way, Jesus will have the last word. This passage that we're going through is actually it's called the Christ hym. It might have been sung in early churches. But this Him reaches its apex, not in creation, but in reconciliation.

That's why Paul has been piling up language, piling up this argument to say, what sin has destroyed, God restored through Christ. Sin isn't something that God could ignore either. Sin is not something that he could have just turned a blind eye to, turn the other way and let happen, let go unpunished. Sin had to be dealt with. And it was dealt with by God himself coming and bleeding for us. Our sin was paid for. It was paid for by the blood of Jesus. Because if Jesus is truly God and all the fullness is pleased to dwell within him, then his death, his blood is not just tragic. It is sufficient for us. The cross has the weight to truly deal with sin and shame. Paul won't let this idea stay out there, cosmic far off in the distant. He turns and says in this next section, And you, because reconciliation isn't just a theory, it's personal.

3. Christ's supremacy is what we'll see applied to believers

iColossians 1:21-23 God's heart is to save, but he saves through real justice, not by ignoring it. You were made by God and for God.

We were created to be in relationship with God. And yet humanity's problem, like we saw last week, is that we choose everything but God. Colossians 1:21 says, And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, our problem isn't just that we were alienated. Our problem is that we are hostile, actively running away from God. Not neutral, not having some blemishes or mostly good, but we got a few issues that we just need to iron out. No, Paul says that we were opposed to God in our minds, our instincts, every flinch of our body ran directly towards hell, directly away from God. To get us back, he could not simply ignore the evil we've committed. Because if God could just turn a blind eye, could just allow it to go, it would mean that God is unjust, that he is not good, and that he's corrupt. There are some things that we've done, causing this rift in our relationship. That cannot go under the rug. They can't be swept under the rug. They have to be dealt with. And Jesus, we see in this passage, came to deal with evil by becoming sin for us.

In fact, 2 Corinthians 5:21 says this, For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Colossians 1:22 goes on to say, He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Jesus reconciled us the Father through the cross. This is why it says the word body, flesh, and death, because reconciliation isn't a metaphor. It's not an analogy. It's not some neat teaching that we can draw something from. It is real. Reconciliation required a real substitute, a real death. It required a real death for us to have real life. If you want a one paragraph explanation of what reconciled his death means. Romans 3 might be the best passage for this. It says,

For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Because God is a Holy God.

And what we saw in week one is that God cannot even look at evil. His Holiness is so complete, so good. And the bad news for us is that we are nowhere near his Holiness. All have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Something has to happen. God cannot turn a blind eye to it. It might seem weird that God can't, that he can't just let this go, that he can't just snap his fingers and make everything go away. That's not what forgiveness is. If I came over to your house and I broke a window, which isn't unlike me, but if that happens, there's two ways you can go about that. You can say, Dude, you broke my window. You need to pay for it. And you'd be right to do that. I broke the window. That's justice. The second option is to say, Don't worry about it. I've got it. Maybe get out of my house so you don't break any other windows. And that's forgiveness. But regardless, forgiveness is not just letting it go. The window has to be fixed. The window cannot go unfixed. Someone has to pay the price.

Forgiveness means that someone has to absorb the cost. Forgiveness means that the offended is the one that has to pay. This is what happens on the cross. The offended took the place of the offender. God himself provided the propitiation. It's a word we don't use. What it means is to satisfy the wrath of God. Jesus bore the wrath we deserve so that he could be both the just and the justifier. Jesus, who is fully God, satisfies his wrath so we wouldn't have to. Jesus loved us so much that instead of demanding justice, instead of demanding that we pay the price, that he would pay it. Why? He does this. This shows us in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. If you're someone who circles in your Bible or writes in your Bible, circle that in order to... Paul is showing us the reason why. The reason why Jesus must be pre-eminent so that we could be presented, holy and blameless. This is salvation in one sentence, not just forgiven, changed, not just spared, presented, holy before God. God does not reconcile us and then leave us in our filth.

It's in order that we could be saved, in order that we can be his again, that he could wash us of our evil, our sin, and that we could be one with him. The goal of salvation isn't merely to escape hell. It is to be reconciled. It is to be unified with God. And that's what leads us to our main idea. The God who made you is the God who died to save you. The God who made you is the God who died to save you. Think about how staggering that is. The one who spoke creation into existence is not distant from our mess. The one who holds the universe together did not stand back here with his arms crossed, scolding you, hoping that you would pick yourself up by your boots, traps, clean yourself off. No. Colossians says that all things were created by him, through him, and for him. And then in the same breath says that he made peace by the blood of the cross. It means that the greatest power in the universe is not just the ability to create, it's the willingness to suffer. And that's why we talk about the cross so much.

It's not because as Christians, we want to be morbid. It's not because we're stuck on guilt. It's because the cross is the place where God's Holiness and God's love meet perfectly together. At the cross, God doesn't pretend that sin is small. He proves that it is deadly, that it will kill us. Rather than allowing it to kill us, he chose to die in our place. At the cross, God does not tell you to fix yourself. He does not tell you to try harder, to be better. He comes and rescues you. The offended, the offended one pays the cost. The judge steps down and bears the judgment that he just pronounced. This is the most beautiful reality in all of the world. The God that you sinned against is the God who was moved in love, moved in compassion to come to you, not with denial, not with sentimental tolerance, not just blinking at your sin and writing it off, but with blood bought peace. Do you see what happens on the cross? Do you see it? Jesus goes and bears the wrath of God. He was punished for you. He was tormented for you. That is what hell is.

It's God's wrath poured out against sin against evil. And Jesus willingly did that for you. Do you know what love that takes? I think most of us in here have people in our life that we would die for, people we love, people that we would take a bullet for. But who in here would be willing to trade places with someone, to bear the wrath of God for all of their sin? Jesus did. Jesus did before the foundation of the world. He said, I do, I will, I love you that much. And if this is true, if God made you, the God who made you is the one who came to save you, then Christianity is not, first and foremost, an invitation to improve yourself. It's not some moral betterment program. It is an invitation to be reconciled, to stop hiding, to stop negotiating, to stop performing, and to come home. This changes everything for us. If salvation is earned, or if salvation is not earned, it is received, if peace with God is not achieved by effort but purchased by Christ, then it has to reshape everything about us. That leads us into our points of application.

First, believe the gospel. If you've come here today, and you don't, this is my earnest plea not to leave here without believing the gospel, not merely confessing something. Belief is not mere confession. We can't believe in the same way. We can't believe in Jesus the same way we believe it's going to snow. We live in Northern Michigan. It's going to snow, right? Those two things are categorically different. Belief in Christ demands our whole life. It means whole-hearted transformation. It means surrender to God. It means putting God, seeding God, where where he belongs, treating him as if he's God. I think too many of us are all too comfortable with treating God as if he's only our provider, only our protector, only our healer, only our savior, not wanting him to be Lord of our life. Belief in Jesus has to come with relinquishing that, putting him, seeding him as Lord of our life. We cannot not say to God, Jesus, I want you to save me for my sin, but I don't want you to tell me what to do. That cannot work. Jesus must have total authority of our life. Belief means we trust him for everything.

Not just simply using him as a get-out-of-hell free card. It means trusting him totally because we can. It means trusting his work on the cross even more than trusting our own emotions. I think too often in the modern church, our salvation is tied to how we feel. We come to church because the music makes us feel good. We like the way that the sermon makes us feel. Even our own relationship with God is tied to how we feel towards him, that we feel saved when we feel saved. The danger in this is that our salvation is then It's tied to an emotion. It's still tied to a work, to how we feel, to making us feel a certain way. Historic Christianity has always said, You are saved, not by a philosophy, not by some step program, not by emotion. You are saved by a historical event. Jesus came and died for you and rose again three days later. We know that we're saved because God tells us that we're saved. He tells us in his word that we're saved. And if we ever get confused on that, he's actually given us two really great things.

He's given us our baptism and the Lord's Supper. Two means of grace that can remind us what God did for us. We cannot shift back into self-salvation. That's what we see in our next point of application. Continue in the gospel. Don't shift back into self-salvation, trying to save our self. Paul goes on to say, Continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. The translation? Once you've been reconciled, you are going to feel tempted to try to measure yourself up by what you've done, by what you feel. Some of us will be tempted into pride, into saying, Yeah, you know what? I have done a good job. I've been to church every single week this month, and I've done the right things, and I've really avoided doing X, Y, and Z. I'm much better than that person out there. Or we'll be tempted into despair in recognizing the sinfulness in ourselves. No, I have failed this week. I haven't been around church. I haven't done these things. I am without hope. But both of these forms of shifting away from the gospel. It does this because it makes you the center.

It makes you the auditor of whether you're good or not. Martin Luther has this to say.

The law says, 'Do this, and it never does, and it's never done. Grace says, believe this, and everything is already done.

We are saved by what Christ has done, not by working for it, not by trying harder. And we'll see that next week in Galatians. So practice this one simple thing this week. When you sin, don't hide, run to Christ, confess quickly, and receive forgiveness. Preach the same gospel that you would preach, preach the same gospel to yourself that you'd preach to any sinner. But you are saved not by what you've done, good or bad. You're saved by grace through faith. Believing the gospel is not moving from bad people to good people. It is moving from people who are proud, moving from people who are in despair, to moving to people who can rest in the work, in the finished work of Christ. That leads us into our last point of application, which has three subpoints. Live reconciled. These aren't ways to earn peace with God, but this is a way that our peace from God bears fruit in our life.

We need to forgive. If Christ has absorbed the cost of our sin, then we need to, in our life, slowly, painfully, and truly absorb the cost of others' sin against us. I want to I'll ask you two questions. Who do you keep punishing in your mind? What have you refused to release? It's a great place to start in forgiveness. The next is to be generous. If everything that's been created is created for God, then what we have, possessions or money, it belongs to him anyways. It's ultimately not for us. And if Jesus gave himself for us, then generosity is not a negative on our balance sheet. It is an opportunity for us to worship. The last thing is to reconcile. Reconciliation is maybe one of the most clear pictures that we can give the world of the gospel. If Christ moved towards us while we were hostile, while we were enemies to him, then you don't get to stay distant, forever, and safe from people. Is there a text that you need to send? A conversation you need to start? A confession you need to make? Not to win, but to make peace. We don't forgive, give, and reconcile to get God to love us.

He already does that. We do it because in Christ, he's shown us that he has. The beauty of reconciliation between us and God is that it is not not just for this life. Salvation isn't merely God's way of helping us cope with the here and now. It is him bringing us home forever. Because the end of the story isn't escaping a bad place. The end of the story is God dwelling with his people. Revelation 21: 3 says this, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and he will dwell with them, and he will be and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. That is reconciliation complete. Not a temporary peace, not a fragile assurance, not a relationship on probation. That is God with us forever. How do sinners get there? Not by measuring up, not by earning it, only through the blood of the Lamb, because peace with God had to be purchased. So if you hear anything this morning, hear this. The God who made you is the God who saved you. The gospel isn't our way to climb to God.

It is his way of showing us that he came to us and that he will be the one who brings us all the way home. Would you stand with me as we prepare our hearts to respond in worship?

Father God, we thank you for who you are, that you are a God who came to us, not just for this life, but to bring us home that you loved us even while we were still sinners, and you came to purchase us back. God, we cannot live and leave here as the same people. God, let us be transformed by your word. Let us go out and live with the peace that you've bought for us. Live as reconciled people. God, we love you. We love to do your will, so help us do that. It's in your name we pray. Amen.