CHRIST THE VISIBLE GOD

At the heart of this message lies a profound question that shapes everything about our spiritual lives: Who do we really think God is? Drawing from Colossians 1:15-19, we're confronted with a truth that corrects a thousand confusions—Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. This isn't just theological language; it's the remedy for every distorted picture of God we've accumulated through disappointment, fear, or religious performance. The early church in Colossae faced pressure to add things to Christ—special knowledge, mystical experiences, strict religious rules—creating a dangerous 'Jesus plus' mentality. We face the same temptation today. When life squeezes us, the picture of God that comes out reveals what we truly believe. Do we see God as distant? Angry? A cosmic genie? Or do we see Him as He truly is—revealed fully in Christ? The revolutionary truth is that we cannot worship God accurately while imagining Him wrongly. When we look at Jesus' compassion for the broken, His hatred of hypocrisy, His tender mercy toward sinners, His authority over all creation—that is what God is like. There's no hidden version of God behind Christ that our circumstances might reveal. Everything God is toward us has already been shown in Jesus. This message calls us back from spiritual drift, from letting our experiences reinterpret God rather than letting Christ interpret our experiences. When we turn our eyes back to Jesus—not as an idea we've mastered but as the living image of the invisible God—everything else falls into place.