Summary: Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. Christ created the heavens and the earth and everything in them and He continues to hold all things together. Christ is the answer to the Colossian deception:
The deception claimed to have special knowledge, but “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” abide in Christ.
The deception claimed to have received special guidance from supernatural rulers or authorities, but Christ created all “rulers or authorities”.
Col. 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
1:16 For by Him all things were created,
both in the heavens and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–
all things have been created through Him and for Him.
1:17 He is before all things,
and in Him all things hold together.
1:18 He is also head of the body, the church;
and He is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
1:19 For it was the Father’s good pleasure
for all the fullness to dwell in Him,
In the previous verses, the focus was on the Father, but verses 13 and 14 shifted the focus to Christ as God’s Means of redemption. The current verses continue to focus on Christ, explaining Who He is.
Image of the invisible God (Col 1:15)
God is invisible. Unless God reveals Himself in some way, our senses do not allow us to perceive Him. But Christ is the Father’s visible image (Col 1:15). Christ is God’s visible face and God’s audible voice: He is the Word of God (John 1:1).
Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus *said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:8-9)
Firstborn of all creation For by Him all things were created (1:15-16)
It is impossible for man to understand God. God is infinite, and infinity is something that man cannot comprehend. God has no beginning and no end. God is not subject to time because He created time. One cannot say that God existed before time because there is no such thing as time before time. This physical universe is also infinite. We can travel in any direction and will never find an end. Scientists estimate the age of the universe as 15 thousand million years, but the Energy which was converted into this physical universe must have existed already (E=MC2). These are things we simply do not understand. It would be inappropriate for us to speculate about these things. Let as rather focus on what we can understand, namely that “by him all things were created” (Col 1:15, 16), which requires that “He is before all things” (Col 1:17). That is the meaning of the word “For” with which 1:16 starts. Christ was that beginning (Col 1:18) of the universe:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2).
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Rev 22:13).
Some understand from the phrase “firstborn of all creation” that Christ is a created being. It is preferred to say here that Christ was the first to appear in this physical universe. He was that immense energy that shocked this entire universe into existence. We cannot say that He existed before that time because there was no time before that moment. Time only started at that moment. What we can say is that that Energy did exist at that moment. More than that is impossible for the human mind to comprehend.
An alternative is to understand the word “firstborn” not as the first in time, but the first in importance. The Old Testament does use the word in that sense as well. For instance, talking about David, it is said:
“I also shall make him My firstborn, The highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:27).
All things have been created through Him (1:16)
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1).
God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Gen 1:26).
The word “us” is consistent with the idea that everything is created by the power of the Father but through Christ. Man, as the highest creation on this planet, has been made in God’s likeness. That is a wonderful privilege; and what tragedy it is what we have become.
All things have been created … for Him (Col 1:16)
He will always be part and King of this physical universe. The Father “rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col 1:13). His “kingdom … will never be destroyed” (Dan 2:44).
“Rulers or authorities” (Col 1:16)
Even “invisible” (1:16) rulers or authorities are a particular emphasis in the letter to the Colossians (Col 2:15), which implies that “rulers or authorities” are an important part of the deception in Colossae.
In Him, all things hold together (Col 1:17)
He is the Power that holds atoms together. All things will disintegrate should He withdraw His protective power for a moment.
The wrath of God is not that He would punish sinners; He simply discontinues His loving protection. Three times in Romans 1 it is said that the “wrath of God” on all “who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18) is to give them over. They are given over “in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (1:24), “to degrading passions” (Rom 1:26), and “to a depraved mind” (Rom 1:28)
Firstborn from the dead (1:18)
He is the “firstborn” “of all creation” (Col 1:15) as well as the “firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18). He was not the first to be raised from death, but the first in importance. Other people were raised from death before Him, but their resurrection from death would have been in vain if He was not raised from death (Rom 3:25). The church today emphasizes Christ’s death, but the Bible emphasizes His resurrection even more.
All the fullness to dwell in Him (Col 1:19)
Many other wonderful things are said here about Christ; things we only dimly understand, because God is infinite. Even after living hundreds of thousands of millions of years in His kingdom, there will always be an infinite difference between God and us. But what we can clearly understand is that God loves us; so much that He was willing to die for sinners. We must cling to the evidence of His love so that we may place our faith and trust fully in Him.
Deception (Col 2:8)
The emphasis placed on Christ in these verses is unique in Paul’s letters. Colossians contains Paul’s strongest emphasis on the person of the Redeemer. As already mentioned, the interpretation in this commentary is based on the assumption that the points that Paul emphasizes, compared to his other letters, are indications of the nature of the “deception” (Col 2:8) in Colossae. Therefore, the emphasis on the person of Christ is taken to indicate that He is the answer to the 
. The Colossian deception claimed to have special knowledge (Col 1:9-10; 2:3), but “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” abides in Christ (Col 2:3). The Colossian deception claimed to have received special guidance from supernatural rulers or authorities (Col 1:16), but Christ created all “rulers or authorities” (1:16).
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