In his brilliant satire on how the devil works, C. S. Lewis has Screwtape writing to his sometimes witless nephew, Wormwood, about the fundamental problem as Satan sees it. Listen to just a portion of one of those imaginative letters: My Dear Wormwood, "The real trouble about the set your patient is lining in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call "Christianity And." You know -- Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring ...."1

Our text today is one of the more challenging statements to be found in Scripture regarding the nature of Christ -- who He is in reference to creation and who He is in reference to redemption. Its challenge may be matched only by its relevance, for Lewis was right -- we are far too prone to "Christianity And" rather than "mere Christianity."

The essential question of today's sermon is this -- is Christ sufficient? I hope that you would answer that question with a resounding "Yes!" Before we leave this morning, I hope you will have more reason than ever to say that "Yes!"

Two fundamental issues are ascribed to the nature of Christ in this text: His relationship to creation and His relationship to redemption.

In regards to creation, in Him all things were created. He is the image of the invisible God. "By seeing Me you have seen the Father" is how Jesus described this very idea to His disciples. What had been forever invisible from the time Adam was thrown out of the Garden could now be seen in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the icon of God. Not just a resemblance, but the pure representation of the real thing. To see Him was to see God.

While in Albania last summer, I visited a newly reopened Greek Orthodox Church that had been built in the twelfth century, but had been used as a storage barn during the Communist rule in that land. The priest there was explaining the beautiful icons across the front of the sanctuary, which had been preserved for centuries. He was quick to explain that they did not worship those paintings, but the God they represented. He continued by saying that these paintings, these icons, are sacred only to the extent that they bring us to God.

In a far greater way than that, Paul is saying to us about Christ: what sets Him apart from all others, the prophets of the Old Testament included, is that when you see Him, you see God.

If that is true, then what else is needed?

Beyond that idea, we are also reminded that He is the firstborn of creation and in Him, all things were created. His place in creation is one of unquestioned preeminence. He and He alone is first. That is so true, Paul suggests, that there simply isn't a single thing in this world that wasn't created by Him. All things is how he says it, and then he describes that idea with a list that pretty well covers the whole subject.