The Son is the image of the invisible God …
Summary: The image of something invisible can be a difficult concept to grasp.
There are few things any human being could write that are more profound or disturbing than the nine words in today’s passage.
“The Son,” of course, is Jesus. (This is the same Jesus who famously said, “I and the Father are one” — John 10:30).
So, how does one create an “image” of something that is invisible?
Strong’s Concordance, unfortunately, is not much help in this case. The Greek “eikōn” means exactly what you would expect it to mean; “a likeness, i.e. (literally) statue, profile, or (figuratively) representation, resemblance:—image.”*
An image is normally associated with something (A) inanimate and (B) visible to the eye.
One famous “image” is a self-portrait by a man named Van Gogh. He was someone who knew about things invisible as well as visible.
Van Gogh was a Dutch artist who worked in paint. His paintings included images of himself. He was also a person who suffered from what his Wikipedia page calls “psychotic episodes and delusions.” New Testament writers might have described this condition differently. They might have said he struggled with demonic possession.
Whatever the cause of his mood swings, they were powerful and sometimes violent. And, they were invisible to everyone but him. We know about them, in part, because after one especially violent attack, he sliced off his own right ear. And then he painted a picture of himself with his head bandaged.
His self-portrait of his bandaged head is an image of the power of his invisible illness.
In a similar way, Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
This is profound because the invisible God (John 4:24) is what created everything that is visible. His Spirit moves throughout creation but we cannot see it move (John 3:8). We are only aware of it by using other senses.
Until Jesus.
When Jesus arrived, people saw a man, but he did things no man has ever done before. He made the blind to see and the deaf to hear. By his will, he healed the lame, cleansed those with leprosy, and even raised the dead to life (Luke 7:22).
Paul’s statement is disturbing because we also see a man willing to sacrifice his life so that those who believe in him can live. This disregard for the visible world carried over into his teachings:
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)
Which brings us to the critical question: Which is more important, the image or the thing the image represents? If we are to believe Jesus, the life we strive for is something we can’t see (Hebrews 11:1).
Application: Trust Jesus!
Food for Thought: In what other ways is Jesus the image of God?
*”G1504 – eikōn – Strong’s Greek Lexicon (niv).” Blue Letter Bible. Web. 14 Oct, 2024. https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g1504/niv/mgnt/0-1/.
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