
The Treasure & The Pearl, Part 3
I don’t know if you’ve followed the news at all this week. There’s been a lot that’s happened in our country, with our Prime Minister resigning. That made me reflect on the nature of a democracy, where the citizens eventually have the final say, and leaders, at one point or another, must succumb to the will of the people.
How different from a kingdom, which gets it’s very identity from the king who reigns over it. How different from the kingdom of heaven, where Jesus reigns forever, will never resign, and always makes the right decisions.
I also watched the hell-like images of fire sweeping across Los Angeles. I’ve visited LA twice; it’s a beautiful city and expensive cars and houses are everywhere. And so many of those people lost everything this week.
That made me reflect on the parables of the man who sold everything for the treasure buried in a field, or the merchant who sold it all for the pearl of great price.
See, the question isn’t whether you’re going to lose everything. Everybody always loses everything. Either through death, or by a disaster like we’ve seen this week, or by willingly surrendering it all for a greater treasure.
That was the sense, as I understand it, behind Jim Elliott’s famous phrase: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what He cannot lose.” The call to give up everything for Jesus is not really a call to sacrifice anything. Because we can’t keep any of this anyways. We’re going to lose it all eventually. How foolish to turn aside from Jesus, a priceless treasure who lasts forever, just to hang on to some temporary trinkets that will only last as long as it takes for the next forest fire to rip through.
In these past weeks we’ve been considering the treasure that Jesus is, and the surpassing value of being a part of His kingdom, which simply means having Him as our king. We’ve stepped outside of Matthew temporarily to see what another part of God’s word has to say about the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
Last week we camped out in Colossians 1:15-17, which speaks about the supremacy of Christ over creation. Christ is supreme over creation because He is the perfect image of God, He’s the firstborn of creation, He’s the sphere, the agent, the goal of creation, He pre-exists creation, and He’s the one holding all of creation together.
Today, we’re continuing through this passage in Colossians by looking at verses 18-20. If last week was about the supremacy of Jesus over creation, we could say that this week is about His supremacy over the New Creation. And we see this in four regards.
1. Head of the Church (v. 18a)
First, verse 18 tells us that Jesus is “The head of the body, the church.” And this fits under the idea of the “New Creation” because the church is the redeemed people of God who are already the new humanity and who will one day populate the New Creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
This language of Jesus being the head of His body has shifted our focus from creation to redemption, or, we could say, from creation to New Creation.
And Jesus is the head of His body, the church. This is a profound truth we could probably spend all morning on. There is so much beauty here and I feel like I just scratched the surface in my study this week. But let’s consider this from mainly two directions.
The first is in connection to marriage. The church is Jesus’ body, and He is our head, in the same way that a wife belongs to her husband and he is her head. We get this from Ephesians 5:23: “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior” (Ephesians 5:23).
The word “head” here primarily indicates authority, which we know from verse 22. “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). Why? Because of verse 23: the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body. And then the application is made again in verse 24: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (Ephesians 5:24).
As the head of the church, this also means that Jesus takes care of His church. “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body” (Ephesians 5:29–30).
And we often jump to the marriage application here, which is important. Married women, you should not have to scratch your head and think for long and hard if someone were to ask you, “When is the last time you submitted to your husband not because you found ways to get him to make the decision you wanted him to make, but just because he’s your husband?” Husbands, you should not have to scratch your heads and think for long if someone were to ask you, “When is the last time you sacrificially laid down your life for your wife and did something that nourished and cherished her, not to get something from her, but just because she’s your wife?” That’s important. And if you want to talk about this more, come on out to the marriage workshop tonight.
But we often don’t consider what this means about us as a part of the church. Christ is our head, and that means we submit to him in everything. And that means that He nourishes us and cares for us.
We know that we submit to Him by submitting to His Word. As the word of Christ is read, taught, preached, Jesus is exercising His authority over us. And we listen and obey our head, with no “ya, buts.” At the same time, Jesus nourishes and cares for us through His Spirit, through the gifts He’s given to the church like apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers, and through the other members of His body.
Now, there’s a second major way to look at this. Which is that, instead of seeing Jesus as the head of His church in a husband-and-wife kind of way, to see Him as head of the church in an actual head-on-top-of-a-body kind of a way. Christ is the head of His body, the church, in the same way that my literal head is the head of my literal body.
Now here’s the beautiful truth that stunned me this week: even the headship of a husband over his wife is meant to be a picture of this head-on-a-body kind of headship. Listen to these words from Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 28: “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’” (Ephesians 5:28–31).
When a husband and a wife are joined together in covenant union, signified and and sealed by their physical union, they become one flesh, and from that point on the husband is responsible to nourish and cherish his wife as much as his own flesh because they have become one flesh.
This is why we save physical intimacy for marriage. When a man becomes one flesh with a woman, he is consummating a commitment to nourish and protect her as much as his own body for the rest of his life. They truly have become one. And there is a beauty to this biblical vision of sexuality that Hollywood will never be able to hold a candle to.
And Ephesians 5 tells us that this is all just a picture of the truer reality, Christ’s headship over His church. Right after those verses we just heard from, we read “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32).
And several other places in the New Testament further develop this picture in explaining that the church really is Christ’s body. We are members of Christ—which literally means, we’re His body parts.
- “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:4–5).
- “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).
- “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15–16).
- “...holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:19).
So for Christ to be our head in this sense still implies authority: It’s from the head, the brain, that decisions and direction and information comes to the rest of the body. It also implies nourishment and growth: the head is where oxygen and food and water comes through to the rest of the body. It implies unity: the head is what keeps the body all working together as one unit. It implies identity: the head is where we find the face and the voice and the fundamentals of what makes us, us. In a movie, when the camera zooms in on someone, what part does it zoom in on? Not their shoulder or their knee, but their head. Police mug shots, school yearbook photos, they all feature the head.
This doesn’t mean the body is unimportant. There is a unity between the body and the head, and as we’ve seen, a person with a properly functioning head takes care of their body. To be in the church, with Christ as our head, means that we are united to Jesus in a profound way. We are parts of His body, united to Him as much as your arm or your spleen or your big toe is united to your head.
And yet, no matter how great your body is, above it all is your head.
We could camp out here for a bit and talk about what this truth should actually mean for how we operate as a church. We did some of that last week. And it’s worth asking some questions again. Do we really submit to the authority of Jesus, even when He tells us to do hard and uncomfortable things like love our enemies or practice church discipline or refuse to consider divorce as an option?
Do we really find our nourishment and spiritual growth from a growing relationship with Jesus? Do we make decisions and go trough our days based on merely human principles or are we relying on the living life of our head that lives in us by His Spirit? Are His words abiding in us and are we responding in prayer, not just on our own, but together, in a way that reflects the fact that we could not exist apart from Jesus our head?
Do we really understand that, as the body of Christ, Jesus is what unifies us? Are we willing to put up with people who are really different than us? Are we willing to put up with things that make us uncomfortable? Are we willing to be a part of the body even we want to withdraw, simply because Jesus is our head together? Are we willing to love people who don’t make us feel good because Jesus is their head as much as He is ours?
Do we understand that our entire identity is shaped by Jesus? We’re not here to build our own kingdom or advance our own interests but to do what Jesus wants in the way he wants it done because He is literally our everything.
Those are key questions to ask. And yet, in the context of Colossians 1, let’s remember that the biggest idea here is that, by being the head of His body, Jesus is supreme. We get our everything from Him, we cannot live without Him, and exalted in Heaven, He is far more than just head and shoulders above us.“He is the head of the body, the church.”
2. Firstborn from the Dead (v. 18b)
Next, verse 18 tells us that Jesus is “The beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18). Here is where the emphasis on the New Creation comes through even more clearly.
Let me explain. Through the prophet Daniel, the people of Israel were expecting the resurrection from the dead to occur at the end of time. Daniel 12:2-4 says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:2–4).
You see that connection there between the end of this age and the resurrection from the dead.
And so that was the big news to the people of Israel when the apostles announced that Jesus had risen from the dead. The sadducees were challenged because they didn’t believe Daniel and didn’t think the resurrection was a thing. And the Pharisees were challenged because if Jesus had risen from the dead, it meant the New Creation had already begun.
You might wonder why Jesus is considered the firstborn from the dead, and not Lazarus. After all, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead some time before He Himself was raised from the dead.
That’s a good question, ad there’s no doubt that, in John’s gospel, Lazarus’ resurrection is meant to be a picture of the end-times resurrection, and proof that Jesus will be the one accomplishing it (John 5:25-29; 11:25, 43-44).
Lazarus’ resurrection was a miracle—no doubt. But as as far as we can tell, though, it was a miracle that basically rewound time. The effects of death were undone and Lazarus was rewound to being the healthy person he was before he got sick and died.
Lazarus’ body was still a part of this old creation, in other words. He still would have gotten old and died.
Jesus’ resurrection, on the other hand, moved the clock in the other direction. Jesus did not just go back to how he was before He died. When He rose from the dead, He woke up in a new resurrection body, the first partaker of the New Creation.
Jesus’ new resurrection body wasn’t just His old body before He died. It could do things like pass through locked doors (John 20:19) and disappear from sight (Luke 24:31).
In the language of 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus’ original body was like a seed, sown in a perishable form, raised imperishable. Sown in dishonor; raised in glory. Sown in weakness; raised in power. Sown a natural body; raised a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). And that’s why Romans 6:9 says “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Romans 6:9).
So Jesus far greater than Lazarus. His resurrection didn’t just undo His death. It propelled Him forward into the new era, and when Jesus stepped out of His grave that morning, he left behind the realm of death forever and walked into the glory of the New Creation.
See why Jesus really is the last Adam? He is the beginning of the New Creation. He is the firstborn from the dead—and this time this does mean the first to rise from the dead in the way that He did. That’s why 1 Corinthians 15:20 calls him “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Like the first ripe apples on a tree, like the first bushel of wheat off of a field, Jesus is the first in a great harvest.
But like we saw last week, firstborn means more than first. It means first in prominence, importance, glory. And Jesus is that. The New Creation is and will be made up of people who look like Jesus and reflect His glory in a far greater and better way than we look like Adam today.
This is what Romans 8:29 tells us. Many of us are familiar with Romans 8:28, which says that God is working all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. But what is the “good” that He’s working all things for? It’s not us being comfortable. The “good” is defined in the next verse, which explains it this way:
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29).
If you know the Lord, this is what God is doing in your life right now through every joy and every sorrow, every heartbreak and every delight: He is conforming you into the image of Jesus, so that Jesus will be the firstborn among many brothers.
Which is to say, when we arise from this dirt with the dawn of the New Creation shining in our eyes, Jesus will be there, and we will look like Him, like brothers and sisters in a family. We will be like Him. And not just because of the final transformation, but because of what God is doing in your life right now. When the trumpet sounds and the dead are raised, and you’re changed, that final change will be the completion of a process that began the day you were born again and the Holy Spirit started working in your life.
And that’s the goal of this? The goal is not just that you be changed so you can enjoy that change. The goal is Jesus at the centre of His family, surrounded by brothers and sisters who bring attention to Him because they are like Him.
We’ve seen shallow imitations of this, when a popular person uses a certain phrase or wears a certain brand of clothing and they are imitated by their followers, which only ends up making that person all the more famous. In a far, far greater way we are being shaped into the image of Jesus so that He shines forth as the fully excellent one.
Or, as Colossians 1:18says, “that in everything he might be preeminent.” He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, for this reason: that in everything He might be preeminent, be supreme, rising over everything.
And this isn’t just among His people, like we’ve seen. Ephesians 1 tells us that Jesus was raised from the dead and seated at the Father’s right hand in the heavenly places, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1:21).
In His resurrection, “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11).
That’s the goal. The goal of history, the goal of Jesus’ resurrection, the goal of your life. Jesus being preeminent in everything.
In case any of us need to hear it today, it’s not about you. It’s not about you being known, of people liking you or being like you, of people thinking about you or remembering you or treating you in a special way or doing things the way you want them to do them.
We put ourselves through so much agony in life when we think that it’s about us. We waste so much time getting upset about things and complaining about things because we make ourselves preeminent, our preferences and opinions and wants and desires preeminent.
And we need to flip the script. The question isn’t, what do I want? What can I do to get my wants and desires met? The question is, what will put more emphasis on Jesus? What will contribute to Jesus being more preeminent here?
If that’s the goal of everything, then that ought to be the goal of our everything, shouldn’t it be?
3. Fullness of God (v. 19)
The preeminence of Jesus in the New Creation continues to be explored in verse 19 which tells us that in Jesus, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” In other words, the full measure of God was pleased to dwell in the person of Jesus.
In the Old Testament, we hear about God’s glory filling the earth (Psalm 72:19, Isa 6:3). In Jeremiah 23:24 God asserts that He fills heaven and earth. And in a particularly special way, the glory of the Lord filled the temple (Ezek 43:5, 44:4). That also connects to the idea of God dwelling in the temple (Psalm 68:16).
And so we see that in this new era, all the fullness of God does not dwell in a building, but in a person. Jesus, as we just heard this morning in Sunday School, has replaced the temple.
Would you see everything that God is? Would you see the best and perfect representation of God? Look to Jesus. When you have Jesus, there is nothing more you need, nothing extra on top of Him, because all of the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Him.
4. Reconciler of Creation (v. 20)
And finally, the fullness of God dwelling in Jesus, through Jesus, reconciled all things to Himself, as verse 20 tells us, “making peace by the blood of his cross.”
Prior to the work of Jesus, there was a rift in creation. A rift between creation and God. It affected all of creation—the visible world, the world of humanity, and the invisible spirit world. There was a rift through the cosmos, caused by sin and rebellion, that shows up in natural disasters and spiritual war in the heavenly places and stubborn pride in our own hearts.
And in Christ, God reconciled to Himself all things. He made peace by His blood on the cross. This reconciling peace wasn’t just for humanity. The peace that Jesus made in His blood on the cross extends to “all things, whether on earth or in heaven.” All creation is being brought back into a right relationship with its creator.
We need to pause there for a moment, because those words, taken on their own, could seem to suggest that, because of what Jesus did on the cross, everything and everyone has been reconciled to God and there’s nothing left to do but just enjoy that.
This is a view referred to as “universalism.” Everybody’s saved, they just don’t know it yet.
That view is awfully alluring to some people. But it’s not what the text says. First, the immediate context shows us that “reconcile” is not automatic. Look at what verses 21-23 tell us: “and you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 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, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard” (Colossians 1:21–23).
There’s so much there to unpack, but did you see how our reconciliation and being presented before Him blameless in some sense depends on our continuation in the faith?
Now, we can step back and recognize how even our faith and the power to continue in it is something provided for us by Christ, but the basic point is that continuing faith is a condition, and not everybody will meet that condition.
Another clue comes in the second chapter of Colossians which describes what happened on the cross in this language: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:13–15).
The “rulers” and “authorities” there refer to the dark powers at war with their maker. And one of the major ways they derive their power is through our sin. Like the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia, the powers of darkness tempt us to sin and then use our guilt as a tool to keep us under their power and then, finally, be destroyed by God’s judgement.
But Jesus disarmed the powers on the cross because He died for our sin, and so whatever debts we owe have been paid in full. The dark powers have nothing on us anymore. There is nothing they can do to threaten us or frighten us. There’s no judgement or condemnation that Jesus didn’t take already.
We see here that Jesus’ death on the cross did bring reconciliation to the unseen spirit world. Not that the dark powers find sin and salvation. Rather, they find shame and destruction and defeat and powerlessness.
And in that spot, they are brought back into proper relationship with their creator. Think of it this way: what is the proper place for a criminal to be? In jail.
Jesus brings peace to all things through His death on the cross, by either providing salvation to those who believe, or final judgement to those who persist in rebelling against him. Either way, there is peace.
You see, what Jesus did on the cross wasn’t just a small thing that applies to us on an individual level. It was a great and cosmic thing that brings all of creation back into proper relationship with it’s maker. Like Romans 8 tells us, this even includes the physical creation, that groans until it shares our freedom with us.
Some of you might enjoy watching home renovation shows. We make celebrities out of people who have a knack for taking broken-down homes and make them new and beautiful.
How much more Christ, through whom God reconciled to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross?
The renovation project is still on going. There are still rebels to subdue, sinners who need to repent, unreached places and peoples who need to hear.
But the reconciliation project has begun. You and I are proof of it. If you know the Lord, you have peace with God through Jesus Christ. Peace. And not the peace of a crushed rebel but the peace of an adopted child. Jesus made peace by the blood of His cross, and every day we live in this peace, this shalom, that He bought and paid for on the cross.
According to John, Jesus’ first words to His disciples after His resurrection were “peace be with you” (John 20:19), and that’s a peace that continues to this present day.
And it’s a peace we owe to Jesus. It’s a peace we get to celebrate and enjoy as we eat and drink, remembering the body in which God’s fullness dwells, crucified on a cross, and the blood with which Jesus made peace, not just for us, but for all creation.
As an outpost of the New Creation, we enjoy the peace which is and will sweep through all of the cosmos.
And as we do that, we remember the most obvious and most wonderful point that this Jesus, whose death is the turning point for the universe, is a treasure worth more than literally anything else we can imagine.
To have Him is to have everything. To not have Him is to have nothing.
In our joy, lets eat and drink and then go spend our lives on the one who is head of the church, firstborn from the dead, the dwelling place of God’s fullness, and the reconciler of all creation.