Christ the King

(Col. 1.11-20)

Today is the last Sunday of the Church's Year. Next week we begin a new year, at the start of Advent.

And the theme for this Sunday is "Christ the King".

We live in a society which is very confused about who Christ is.

You may remember that a couple of years ago I was involved with a church mission along Offa's Dyke.

One of the things that we did was to conduct a religious belief survey in the towns and villages where we were staying. This was a door-to-door survey, ...and so we got the views of a wide cross-section of people, (not just churchgoers).

The first question on the survey was "Which statement best describes who you believe Jesus Christ to be". And there were 5 choices to choose from.

Only about a quarter of the people we asked thought that Jesus was the Son of God.

Almost as many people thought that he was "just a good man".

A significant number of people said that he was a prophet, ...and some thought he was just a myth.

I don't know about you, but I find those statistics quite depressing. The church in Britain has not done a very good job at communicating who Jesus is, ...and I think that's partly because Christians are often a bit confused about what we believe.

Heresy is not a very nice word, is it?

It wasn't very long ago that Christians in Britain were burnt at the stake for allegedly believing the wrong things.

Thankfully, there's a lot more religious tolerance in Britain today. We no longer kill people for believing something different to what we believe, ...and that's good.

But the down side is that we've stopped caring what other people believe.

You believe what you want to believe, and I'll believe what I want to believe.

That's the spirit of the age.

And that's sad, ...because it implies that there's no right or wrong about what we believe.

Let me tell you, there's as much heresy around today as there has ever been, (perhaps even more). Yet many Christians just couldn't care less!

Furthermore, many Christians have been so influenced by false teaching that they don't even recognise it when they hear it.

That may well have been the situation that Paul was writing to in his letter to the Colossians.

[If you came to Spring Harvest this year you will remember that this was the letter that we were studying each morning]

The church in Colosse was a young church, and Paul was worried that false teaching would creep into the church, and lead people astray. And so near the beginning of his letter he places a very clear statement of who Jesus is.

If you're near a pew Bible I'd like you to turn to our Epistle reading, Colossians chapter 1, (page 832). Although our reading started at verse 11, I want us to focus on verses 15-20, which is headed "The Supremacy of Christ".

What we have here is an ancient Christian hymn.

Now I know that it doesn't look like a hymn as we have them today:

- It doesn't have a hymn number written against it,

- it's not set out like a hymn, and

- it doesn't rhyme.

Nevertheless, I assure you, that the original Greek language has all the markings of an ancient hymn, ...and it has two parts.

The first begins in verse 15, and is all about the Supremacy of Christ in Creation.

Let me read you verses 15 and 16...

Read verses 15 and 16

The second part begins part way through verse 18. There are many parallels between the phrases in the two parts, ...and this second part talks about the Supremacy of Christ in the New Creation.

Let me read you this second part...

Read verses 18b-20

Now this hymn is the driving force behind the whole letter, and he uses it to attack the heresy that Paul feared the Colossians might be influenced by.

And this morning I want to use this same hymn to attack the false teaching that can so easily influence us in Britain today.

The first heresy that's around today is that Jesus is not God.

As I mentioned earlier, the popular view among the people we surveyed was that Jesus was "just a good man", or a "prophet", ...but he is not God.

And this is a teaching that is spread by many of the sects that we find in Britain today: ...Jehovah Witnesses, ...Mormons, ...Spiritualists.

These sects often hold Jesus in a place of honour, but the deny that he was really God.

Well in our hymn, Paul goes right to the heart of this matter by clarifying the relationship between Christ and God.

Verse 15: "He is the image of the invisible God."

In other words, Christ represents God in the sense that he is the perfect likeness of God, with the very nature and character of God.

You could put it another way: Christ has made visible the God that no-one has ever seen. And Christ can only do this if he himself is actually God.

As I mentioned earlier, many of the popular sects today refuse to accept this.

The Jehovah witnesses believe that Christ was the first thing that God made, ...he therefore has a special place of honour in the whole of creation, ...but he wasn't actually God.

And if you've ever had the Jehovahs Witnesses into your home, you'll soon discover that one of their favourite verses in the Bible is the second half of verse 15:

he is the "firstborn over all creation".

"There you are", they say, "if Jesus is the firstborn over all creation, then he must be part of God's creation, ...and if he's part of God's creation he can't be God himself."

And it sounds quite a convincing argument, ...but it is flawed.

You see the there are two ways of understanding 'firstborn' in the Old Testament. One way is to use it to signify "first in time":

For example, I've got three children, and Christopher is my 'firstborn', because he's the oldest, and he was the first.

This is the way that the Jehovah Witnesses choose to interpret this phrase.

But the word can also be used, in a different sense, to signify "first in importance". In other words, to mean that Jesus is the King over all creation.

And we don't have to look very far to see that this is meaning that the author of this hymn intended. ...In fact we just need to look at the very next verse:

"For by him all things were created." (v16)

The fact that everything was made "by him", shows that Christ himself was not part of creation.

So Christ was there before the beginning of time, ..and together with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, the three of them were involved in the work of creation.

And because of that, Christ is the firstborn, (meant in the sense of King), over all creation.

And that brings us to a second error that many people in Britain believe today. Namely, that all religions are basically the same, and they all lead us to God.

"It doesn't matter if your a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim or a Hindu, ...as long as you're sincere in your beliefs, one faith is as good as another."

Have you ever heard anyone say something like that?

Well I have to say that being sincere is no virtue in itself. Hitler was sincere, ...but he was sincerely wrong.

We live in a multi-faith society, and I for one am pleased that over recent decades there has been much greater religious tolerance. It's right that we should listen and respect people of other faiths, ...but that doesn't mean that we should accept the view that all religions are basically the same.

Because they're not!

The whole point of this hymn is that Christ is the King of all creation, ...whether it be "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."

Moses isn't the king over all creation

Mohammed isn't the king over all creation

Buddha isn't the king over all creation

These might have been great men of faith, ...but they weren't God. It is Christ alone who is the image of the invisible God.

I know that it's not a popular view to hold in Britain today, ...and people will accuse us of being narrow minded. I'm sure that it was the same for Paul in his culture.

But either Christ is King of all, ...or else he is no king of all.

But I had to choose one heresy that I think is even more prevalent in Britain today it would be this:

That we get to heaven by being good.

It's a heresy that is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many people who go to church believe it too.

It's something that many of us were taught as children, ...good people go to heaven.

When I visit the family before a funeral, very often when talking about the person who died they will tell me what a good person he or she was.

I'm sure that their underlying hope is that this person is now in heaven because they lived a good life.

Perhaps you too believe this, ...if so you're in for a shock! We do not get to heaven by being good.

In our gospel reading we heard about the two criminals who were crucified on either side of Jesus.

These were not good men. They were thieves or murderers, ...and one of them by his own admission admitted that they deserved the death penalty for what they had done.

If anyone deserved to get to heaven by being good it would not be that man, ...yet Jesus said to him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise".

How could Jesus say that to a criminal like that?

Well the answer lies in the second part of Paul's hymn.

Christ is not only the King over all creation, he is also the King over the new creation.

But what do I mean by that?

Well as you know, after God created the world things started to go very wrong. Humanity rebelled against God, ...we wanted to go our way instead of God's way.

As a result, humanity became separated form God.

And so God mounted a rescue plan to bring us back.

We read in the second part of this hymn, (verse 19):

"For God was pleased to have all his fulness dwell in him, and 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."

In other words, as Jesus died on the cross, God was reconciling the world to himself. By his death he was taking the punishment that our sins deserved, ...and because of that we can be forgiven.

So we get to heaven not by being good, ...not even by going to church each week, ...but like the criminal on the cross, ...by recognising that we're not good enough, and by putting our faith in Jesus.

I can't get to heaven on my own, ...but I know a man who can get me there!

That's why God, the King of all creation, came to earth as Jesus.

This morning our theme is Christ the King, and the letter to the Colossians helps us to see that it's so important to remember that in today's society.

Christ is King - because he himself is fully God

Christ is King - and all religions are not the same

Christ is King - and we get to heaven, not by being good, but by putting our faith in him.

Let us pray.

God wants each one of us to make Christ the King of our lives.

If you believe Jesus to be God, the King of all creation, and the one died on the cross that we might be forgiven; and yet you've not yet made him king of your life, you might like to do so today by silently repeating this prayer after me.