He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. (Colossians 1.15)
How long has humanity made idols? Small carvings of earthly figures symbolizing divinities scattered across time. Ancient peoples stored them up, little pieces of wood and stone, in their secret places of worship. They set up great metal monuments to deities, abusing their bodies and sacrificing the lives of their own children in exchange for rain and fertile fields. Survival at a price. They shaped and chiseled out these images to give their invisible fears and beliefs form.
The idols we make mock us with their speechless lips and lifeless presence. They symbolize not divine strength and power but our feeble attempt to name our fears and struggles to defeat them. We seek to control the uncontrollable and exercise a sovereignty beyond our grasp.
Into this fury of graven images Jesus walks among us. Not stone or steel. Not wood or glass. Fully God and fully man, the unchanging image of the invisible God. He is not a composite of our fears, a broken mirror of our cosmology. He is of one substance with God the Father, immutable and full of glory. May we see Him as He is, the greatness of the invisible God made visible for our salvation. There is no need for a pantheon of lifeless shadows in the presence of Jesus, the image of the Invisible God.
Jesus, show me the broken down idols in my life that need to be swept away.