Is Jesus irrelevant?
The story is almost 2000 years old... is it time to move on?
Is it time to move on from Jesus?
A lot of people want to tell us that Jesus is irrelevant. Some people remind us that he lived so long ago, that times were different back then, that it’s all boring ancient history that makes no difference to our lives today. Other people tell us that Jesus is like the fun-police; he’s got all these rules that make life boring and he just wants us to miss out on everything that is fun.
Some people have become really clever in their attempts to label Jesus as irrelevant. Just search for things like ‘Raptor Jesus’, ‘Jesus Action Figures’, ‘buddy Jesus’, or even ‘Jesus is my homeboy’. Their attempts can sometimes be funny, but they are very subtly telling us that Jesus is nothing more than a joke.
The Christians in Colosse had a group of Jewish people telling them that Jesus was irrelevant, because he was just a man. Maybe he was a good teacher, maybe he did perform miracles, but he was just a man who the Romans killed. You can imagine the young Colossian Christians starting to wonder, ‘Is Jesus worth giving my life to?’
Paul has a big, powerful answer for them in Colossians 1:15-20: Jesus is absolutely worthy of giving our lives to. Why? Because Jesus is God.
He is the boss of all creation
In verses 15-17, Paul tells us just how relevant Jesus is: in Jesus, the invisible God has revealed himself to us. God has made himself visible in Jesus. He says it again in verse 19, that ‘all the fullness of God dwells in Jesus.’ But that’s not all. In verse 16, Paul writes that everything in existence - all of creation, whether physical or spiritual was created by Jesus and for Jesus. And in verse 17, he writes that Jesus keeps creation going.
Jesus was more than just an average Jewish carpenter bloke with a few good stories and a few interesting party tricks; Jesus is the fullness of God as a man. Jesus is God, and because of that, Jesus is the boss over every single thing that exists. Nothing happens outside of Jesus’ control.
The boss of everything dies
But Paul doesn’t leave it at that. Paul reminds the Colossian Christians about what Jesus did. Jesus was nailed to a cross. He shed his blood, and died. Jesus - God as a man - allowed himself to be killed.
His death has a big impact: it allows us to reconnect with God. It’s hard to look at the mess of our world and say that Jesus is the boss. But on the cross, Jesus is offering to reconnect us to God, by taking our punishment for us.
Don’t miss how big that is: God punishes sin, and on the cross, God suffers his own punishment in our place.
The boss of everything lives!
And Paul reminds us that Jesus didn’t stay dead. In verse 18 he calls Jesus ‘the firstborn from among the dead’. In the Old Testament, your firstborn son was your most important son. He was like the next in line to be King. And Paul attaches that same significance to Jesus. Jesus was the first to rise from death to eternal life, and so he is now ‘supreme’, or the ‘absolute best’.
So remember who you follow. Jesus is the boss of everything. Jesus is all the fullness of God. Don’t let your hope in Jesus be shaken when people tell you that he is irrelevant. We know he is relevant, because he is God and he died for us.
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