Seeing The Invisible: Many Mirrors, One Image

Colossians 1:15

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

As a one-time scientist, I’m in awe of the engineers who make the instruments which reveal the invisible wonders of creation. The James Webb space telescope is nearly a million miles away – four times as far as the Moon! – but focusing it has been directed from Earth, each adjustment just millionths of a millimetre, The telescope is made up of eighteen four-foot mirrors, and when it was first switched on, each mirror gave its own, separate, image of a star – eighteen views of the same thing. Gradually the images have been brought together, until there is now just one clear picture – the sum of all of them. Soon the telescope will be sending back images of stars so faint that we have no other way of visualising or understanding them.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul also talks about the 'image of the invisible.' If you want to know what the invisible God is like, he says, you need to pay serious attention to Jesus. The whole New Testament (and much of the Old) speaks of him – and each incident, each parable, each teaching is like one of those mirrors – it contributes to the full image, but they all need to be brought together to give us a full, rounded picture of Jesus the Son. And then we will see the image of the invisible God – everything he wants us to know about him…

Of course there are far more than eighteen facets to Jesus – but this week we’ll be considering just a few of the insights that the New Testament offers into Jesus, and through him to the Father – for as John says at the start of his gospel 'No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.' (John 1:18)

Prayer — Come Holy Spirit and open the Word to me this week, that through it I may see more of Jesus, and the Father through him.