What Did Jesus Do?
Colossians 1:18-20 · Mike Doyle · Aug 30, 2026
Colossians, No. 05
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/83026195663208

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Really cool verses today. Any discussion in Paul's epistles that focus in on who the Lord Jesus is and what he did are really important to us. So my first, I'm gonna review a little bit of what Miles did such a great job last week with, but what dawned on me was he was focusing on who is Jesus, and I wanted to focus some on what did he do? Well, as we found out, he is a very, very emphatic term. The emphasis is on Christ's headship.

I was listening to Ron Merriman, and I thought, oh, that makes a lot of sense. What did he do? He delivered us from the dominion of darkness. and he transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. That's a pretty big step, don't you think? Take you out of darkness, put you into the kingdom of his son, and in him we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

All of those things. He is the image of the invisible God. He's the firstborn of all creation. Just those verses alone would grab your attention as to, well, who is this person, Jesus? Jesus, the Son of God, and what did he do? Well, he's the head of the universe. He's the creator.

There isn't anything that's ever been created, that's ever been made, that he didn't do it. And he did it, for himself. By him all things are created, both in heavens and earth, as Jim was talking about. There's visible, invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All have been created by him and for him. I never think about the fact that the creator did this for himself.

And he is before all things. In him all things hold together. I love this last part of this verse, all things hold together. I can remember 30 years ago listening to Hal Malloy and he talked about how the new heavens and new earth are gonna be created and the old heavens and earth will be instantly blipped out of existence and it's because Jesus will stop holding it together. And when he stops holding it together, it all goes away. It just goes away. You think splitting the atom bomb was something. Imagine the whole creation with every atom not being held together in an instant of time. Gone.

So when you study the first creation, which Jesus is the head of, and the sustainer of, you're really studying science. The study of the universe is the study of science. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about that later. But Paul talks about his essence as the son of God. He says he's the image of the invisible God. And if we take a look at him, we're gonna find that he really is that.

He's the firstborn of all creation. That's a position of first in authority, first in position. All things are created, et cetera. And he is before all things and all things hold together. So that's who he is in the creation. Now, it answers the question, who is Jesus Christ in the first creation? That's his relationship to the first creation. So, now what? Who is he now? Well, verse 18, which we're gonna focus on 18, 19, and 20 this morning.

He is also the head of the body, the church, and he is the beginning. Christ is the head of a brand new creation that's called the church, and that church is called his body. So there's a unity between the creator and all those beings that belong into that new creation as his body. He is the firstborn from the dead.

Why? So that he himself might come to have the first place in everything. This is the realm of theology. If you study the first creation, it's science. If you study this new creation, it's theology because we're studying about God and what he did and what he's doing now. So he's the head of the body, the church.

He's also the beginning of the firstborn from the dead so that he himself might come to have first place in everything. Bishop Lightfoot said that he himself alone is the head of his body, nobody else. Lightfoot says the head, the inspiring, the ruling, guiding, combining, sustaining power, the mainspring of its activity, the center of its unity, and the seat of its life. That's the body of Christ, which we all belong to.

What does it mean that he's the firstborn from the dead? Ever think about that phrase? Firstborn from the dead. He has a rank according to humanity. He has a priority because he is not only firstborn in position, but he's the first one of the new creation. The first one.

He died to or out from the fallen creation. In other words, when he came to earth and was incarnate, he joined the old creation, which he created, which fell. So here he is for 33 years living on the earth in the first creation that's fallen, And when he goes to the cross, he dies. Well, death means separation. Well, what did he separate it from? Well, we think, in our mindset, that if I die, that I get separated from everything's here and I go to a place called heaven. When the Lord Jesus died, he died from the entire first creation that he created. He left it behind. Ek is here. He rose out of it. He rose out of the dead ones. He rose out of that creation. And the event was the beginning of the new creation.

And I had the thought this morning that here he is standing in the garden next to his empty tomb and Mary is talking to him and she thinks he's the gardener. And when she finally recognizes him, he says, don't identify with me. Well, why did he say that?

He is right then the firstborn of the new creation. And Mary has no identity with who he is. Nobody has any identity at that point as to who he is, the firstborn of the new creation. He's the first one. This all adds up to his position in all creations. So he really is, has the position of first in both creations, both creations. He has first place in everything. There isn't anything that he doesn't have first place in. And hopefully as we go along, I'm gonna try to show how contemporary Christianity tries to usurp this place that he has. So the word beginning here means that he has a priority of time.

He's the first fruit, the first fruit. Remember the other The Feast of the First Fruits was about that the first part of the crop was presented to Jehovah as representative of what the whole crop was gonna be. It's gonna be just like the first fruit. Well, he's the first fruit.

What are all of the other fruits gonna be that he represents? They're gonna be just like him. So we're gonna be just like him. Kind of cool. The first fruit from among the dead, originating power, he is the source of resurrected life. Nobody else. Him.

So you can see there are two distinct firstborns. He's the firstborn of all creations because he was a creator. And you can say he's the firstborn from the dead as a new and mighty matter of fact. It's just fact, he's the firstborn. Christ is not only the head of creation as man, but he's the firstborn from the dead, has risen, and he's the head of the church, his body.

What a way to put it. You could think, well, he's the president of the local club. That's kind of how we would think of it. But now he puts it this way. So he's eternal in his existence. He's supreme in his glory. He is before all, and the whole universe is held together through his wisdom, his power, and his authority. And so is the church. Such is the personal greatness of whom who is the head of the body. Now, the reason I think Colossians is going down this road by showing us in the beginning how important the Lord Jesus is is because it's designed to deal with some problems that were coming into the church at that time.

With such a head, why should the saints of God, his members, seek for anything outside of Christ? In other words, would you, as a believer, look for an answer to any situation in your life outside of Christ? Would you go to a psychiatrist to fix your insanity? Would you try to assuage your emotions by going on vacation? Would you go to someone who would give you earthly advice? Or would you stick with the Lord Jesus?

That's the point. Because of the second headship in the head of the body, the firstborn from among the dead, he's about to take possession of all things, and he's gonna do it on the ground of redemption. So we're talking about redemption. As a risen man, he'll take all that he has created as God and the church and the body, and we will see the glory of the fullness of a human being, the God-man, who has all the glory of the first creation, the church, the body in him, in him. So this triggered a question in my mind. Are there efforts to supplant Jesus as having a first place with something or someone else in the world today? And I could say the Christian world.

All heresy, if you look at it, you don't have to study it, all heresy is directed at one thing, and it's Jesus Christ. It's all directed at him. And the reason is that nobody in the body of Christ is to usurp his position. Nobody. And that includes organized denominations, religions, or anything. You do not and I do not need somebody between me and the Lord Jesus. I don't need somebody there to, I have to go through them to get to him. I don't need that. because I'm a member of his body, I can go right to him. The door's open. Romans 5 talks about it. Romans 3 talks about it. We have access.

So don't let anyone get between Jesus and you, the believer. And I'm talking about don't let me get between you and Jesus. Don't let Roger or Miles or anybody else or the books that you read, don't let them get between you and him. You and Him are joined, and you need to stay with Him no matter what the circumstances are.

If one diminishes the deity and the value of the Son of God, what happens? He diminishes value. His value. If He's done all of this, can't He fix my problem? Or can't he lead me through whatever perceived problem I have into his glory? Absolutely he can do that. And oh, by the way, he's the only one that can do that.

Now, so why then should we look for anything from men when all of God is to be found in him, who is the image of the invisible God, the head of whom we are united? Why would you look any place else? Well, you would if you didn't understand this. If you didn't understand when you take a look at your Bible, that, well, I need to go to philosophy. Well, philosophy never secures forgiveness of sins.

You gotta go to him for that. You'll only find forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ. He is the beginning of all that proceeds from God. And when we start talking about reconciliation, I'll make this point several times. You are not reconciled to him.

He's reconciled to you. Now, do you believe that? No, I got it backwards. Did you pick it up? Who does the reconciling here? Is it you or is it him? He reconciled us to himself. And we'll see it was quite a task because we don't realize how far gone we were, how totally separated we were. And at the same time, we have a righteous God to deal with who isn't gonna vary from who he is, okay?

He takes the chief place, that which is rightly his, the place of the firstborn from the dead. How transcendently great is the head of the body and his personal excellency in every position he fills, every position. When on earth all that fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in him, but nobody saw it, except a little bit on the Mount of Transfiguration. In view of reconciling all the universe to the Godhead, it's interesting that he's taken on that task.

Just for a minute, imagine if you were God and the whole world that you created turned against you, what would you do about it? You'd probably just turn the lights off. Walk away from it. But the Lord Jesus and the Father didn't do that. So if you study either of these creations, if you were just a student, and you studied creation, this first one and the second one, what do you find? You find they're kind of impersonal, both of them. Our relationship to the first creation is really impersonal, because how important are you to the first creation?

So how important am I? If I die, I mean, maybe a handful of people say, well, I'll see you. I'll see you when I get to heaven. But the five trillion other people that live on, or a billion people that live on the planet, they don't even know I exist. So it's very impersonal about what happens there.

But here's Jesus Christ, the head of the new creation, and he's involved with everyone who is in that new creation. because the believer is to respond back to him so that the two become very personal. That you and I have this intimacy with the God of the universe.

We have a relationship to Jesus in the new creation that's personally as our savior, that's where it starts. And then we find out he loves us and that he died for us and he wants us with him. He sends us his spirit to maintain a personal relationship with him.

That's what he does. So you talk about being involved with this new creation. Look how involved he is. He's involved intimately and personally with every single one of you, alone and as a body. If you start at verse 19, which I was looking at the way the verses were laid out, verse 19 starts a brand new paragraph. And it's about the son's work in the new creation.

So it was, and notice I have the word father crossed out here. It was the father's good pleasure. for all the fullness to dwell in him. And Jim read it right. Thank you for reading it right. When I looked at the interlinear, which I put up here, the word Father isn't there. And the next slide, I think, will help explain that. Paul had seen the risen Christ in heavenly vision above the brightness of the sun. Paul, the writer here, has seen the glorified Christ.

The heavenly vision had to do with every thought and every step of life he had after that. You cannot ever find a place after that transfiguration where Paul decided to go his own way for a little bit. He didn't. So, because in him was pleased the fullness to dwell, We, with the preeminence of Christ in all things, you end up with two great considerations. One is, all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him. It was not a partial, almost full manifestation of God. This might have been true of any other man. But here, all fullness was pleased to dwell in him.

So we're not talking about the Father giving permission to the Son to have fullness dwell in Him. That isn't the way it works. This is the truth of Christ's person, the glory of the incarnate Lord. That's who He is. As the God-man, all fullness dwells in Him.

Now, and I think I got this from Maybe Louis Verry Chafer, I thought this was kind of interesting. There's a peculiar phraseology in the passage which may have led the English translators to put the word father in verse 19. And as I read through this, I thought, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can see why they did it.

If the estimation is correct, they did it not so much because of this verse as of the one following in the 20th. the 20th verse, and here's the 20th verse, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, who's him here, the father or the son, or was it God, all three persons, having made peace through the blood of his cross, that's the son, through him I say whether things on earth or things in heaven. What's going on here, I think, is the fact that the translators just couldn't get in their mind that Jesus, as the Son of God, was God himself. All of the fullness of the Godhead dwelled in Christ, not one person of that divine fullness acting to the exclusion of the rest. Do you realize that the Godhead has one mindset between the three of them.

They never think independently. They always think the same. And they always have all knowledge in play all the time, right now. All three of them. So one of them doesn't have to go to the other one and have a meeting. or get on the phone and say, what do you think about this? That's what we do. We have meetings all the time. What do you think about this? And we're trying to get to one mind. They already have that.

So, his being the God-man and the work of God was done by him, so you cannot separate clearly the two thoughts as far the construction goes. You can't separate the father and the son about reconciliation. It was a uniform idea that they all three had at the same time.

So what is reconciliation? Reconciliation is a really interesting term because, here's a quote from Chafer, reconciliation means that someone or something is thoroughly changed and adjusted to something which is a standard. Let me stop right there. What's the standard? The standard is the righteousness of God. He is not gonna let anybody be with him for all eternity who isn't like him, who hasn't been crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ. Isn't gonna happen. His righteousness has to be satisfied. So he adjusts those who are in Christ to his standard. as a watch may be adjusted to a carometer. The doctrine may be considered in many of three aspects.

In the Old Testament, if you look at Leviticus 8.15, the whole idea of reconciliation was the idea of atonement, blood sacrifice. But they were looking forward to the work of Christ on the cross, looking forward.

If you look at Leviticus 8.15, look it up.

And then, of the whole world to God, 2 Corinthians 5.17, and I don't usually do this, but I think it's important. I'm gonna read these verses. Namely, that God, God, was in Christ.

Reconciling the world to himself and not counting their trespasses against them, he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Romans 5, 6 through 11, and while we were yet helpless, at the right time, God's time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one would hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man, someone would dare to die. But God demonstrated his own love towards us, and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. The wrath of God is the response to being unrighteous. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life, by his life.

And not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. This is the universal scope of what God did to reconcile you and me and reconcile the word back to him. I want you to notice in these verses, there are four expressions about you and me before we were saved. This is really pretty cool. You can write them down and take them home. Ungodly, without strength, sinners and enemies. You ever thought to yourself, gee, I'm ungodly, I'm without strength, I'm a sinner, and I'm an enemy.

But by the death of Christ on its behalf, the whole world is thoroughly changed in relationship to God. The world is changed. So the point is, is that God is never said to be reconciled to man. The world is so altered in his position, respecting the holy judgments of God through the cross of Christ Jesus. God is now not imputing their sin to them. Now listen to this, the world has now been rendered savable before the work of Christ. There is no chance of salvation for anybody. And so the third part from reconciliation, each individual distinguishes the three characteristics, changes connected with reconciliation.

Second Corinthians 5.17 says, if any man be in Christ, he's what? He's a new creation. I have to be a new creation if I'm in Christ. He's the firstborn from the dead, the new creation, there I am. Old things have passed away, behold, things have become new.

Now all things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. And just to repeat in verse 19, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. not counting their trespasses against them, and he's committed to us the word of reconciliation. So, if we back up a little bit, we see that verse 17 here shows that, which is a personal, wherein our soul is seen to be in Christ, verse 17 of 2 Corinthians 5. 19 shows that of a general relationship on the basis of which salvation is offered to all mankind, Verse 19 says, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not counting their trespasses against him. He made us savable.

In verse 20 here, which is therefore we are the ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. We beg you. It shows which is a mental attitude or a trust of the individual heart when one sees and accepts the value of the death of Christ. Next week we're gonna talk about verse 21 here where it says, although you were formerly alienated and hostile in your mind, engaged in evil deeds, oh, we're back to that again.

So the position of the world before God has completely changed, as I said, and why? Through the death of Christ. He is prepared to deal with souls now in the light of what Christ has accomplished. This seems to be a change in God, but it is not a reconciliation. God, to the contrary, he believes completely in the thing which Christ has done and accepts it. He says, okay, because you did this, I'll make the world as savable. So as to continue being just, and although thereby justifying any sinner who accepts the Savior as his reconciliation. So God is both. He is the one, he never ceases to be just. His righteousness is never tarnished. But because of the work of Christ, he can also be the one now who justifies you because of what Christ did.

All fullness dwelling in him really was insufficient. It brought God to man, not man to God. All of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in Christ in themselves, not as a mere passing thing. This is what they do all the time. But Christ's work made man savable. His work is independent of the anointing due by the Holy Spirit. And the point I'm making here is that your salvation doesn't depend on anointing of the Holy Spirit. It's the continued delight of the whole Godhead to dwell in him as a man. association or unity with him wasn't due because we were anointed, it's because we were crucified, buried, and resurrected in him. That's what made it effectual.

Man was so far gone that this could not deliver him. Sin could not be just gotten over. In other words, God couldn't have said, you know what, I really love my creation. I'm going to lift up the rug and sweep all of it, and we're going to put the rug down and nobody's going to look at it anymore. He couldn't do it that way.

And it's good for us to recognize that he doesn't do it that way because the job that he did is complete. Even God himself coming down to earth in the person of Christ, his unselfish goodness, his unwearied patented love, not anything found in Christ nor altogether could dispel sin or righteously recover the sinners.

We're studying John on Wednesday nights and boy, this is so evident that here he is. Jesus, the God of the universe, a creator, sustainer of everything, he's in a body, and he's trying to explain to his disciples what he's here to do, and they don't understand it. That's how far gone they are. How does God make man savable? It's real simple.

It became distinctly a question of reconciliation, and that was done through the blood of his cross. That's how he did it. All things then are to be reconciled as we see peace has been made. How? Why? By the blood of his cross. Now he can come down. God manifests in the flesh, has taken upon himself the burden of sin and he's made peace with God. How did he do it? By the blood of his cross. By the blood of his cross. All men are now savable because of the blood of his cross. So, it's merely now a question of time suited to God and his wisdom for the manifestation of Christ as the head over all things.

For 2,000 years, we read about it, we believe it, but we haven't seen it. As far as the success of the work is concerned, There's nothing more to be done. Nothing. Meanwhile, God is calling in the saints who are to share along with Christ. That's what he's doing now.

And as he says in Romans 8, all creation groans, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Now you think about who you are as the son of God, and you're a member of his body, the firstborn of the new creation, you're one of them, and he has set it up so that when he comes in glory to manifest himself as a ruler and controller of everything in the new creation, you're gonna be revealed with him because you're a son. So, All is subjected to the worthlessness by sin. As a result, Jesus has done all that is needed for God and for man.

God is satisfied, we're satisfied, or we should be. Morally, it's all done. The price has been fully paid. If you come from my old denomination, they want you to believe that the price was partially paid and that your life is going to be decided by whether you can pick up the rest. Either Christ did it all, paid it all, or he didn't do any of it. The work has been accepted by the Godhead, all three persons. so that there too we may say all things are ready.

All things are ready. God would now be now justified in purging from the face of the earth every trace of misery and decay. Why does he wait? Because he can save more souls if he waits. So let's pray. Father, how thankful we are for your son. We're so thankful for You, Father, your Son, and your Spirit, all engaged to wake us up to the fact of who the Lord Jesus is, and He's the one we have to do with.

We have no life outside of Him. We have no existence outside of Him. And I mean 24-7. There's no sense in which any of us could spend any time away from him because he is our very life. We're so thankful for that. We thank you for your word and we thank you for yourself and we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.