Christ is both God and Christ. As God He is the Creator, but as Christ He is God’s anointed One and appointed One. As God’s anointed and appointed One, Christ carries out God’s commission. As God Christ is the Creator, but as Christ He is the instrument, the means, of creation. Therefore, in John 1:3, the emphasis is not that Christ is the Creator, but that He is the means through which creation was processed and came into existence. The same is true of Colossians 1:16. The process of creation was carried out in Him, through Him, and unto Him. He is the means, the instrument, through which and in which creation came into existence.
Verses 16 through 18 are a definition of verse 15. The items found in these verses are related to Christ as the image of the invisible God. This means that Christ as the image of God is related to the process and goal of creation, to the firstborn of creation, to the subsistence of creation, and to the firstborn from among the dead. The issue of these items is all the fullness, the fullness in the old creation and the fullness in the new creation, spoken of in verse 19. Hence, the fullness in verse 19 is the image in verse 15.
How does Christ, the image of the invisible God, express God? As the Son of the Father’s love, He expresses the Triune God because He is the One through whom both the old creation and the new creation came into being. Furthermore, He expresses the Triune God because He is the firstborn of both creations. This makes Him the full expression of God. All the fullness in verse 19 denotes the very Person of Christ. This is the reason that in the following verse Paul uses a masculine pronoun to refer to the fullness.
Praise the Lord that Christ is all-inclusive! In Paul’s words in Colossians, Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, and the firstborn from among the dead. As the Son of the Father’s love, He is the full expression of God, seen both in the old creation and in the new creation. As God, Christ has no beginning. But as the firstborn of creation, He had a beginning. Let us set aside the natural concept, believe the pure Word of God, and praise the Lord that as the all-inclusive One He is the full expression of the Triune God.