Is God Good? What Jesus Is Actually Like
If God runs everything, is he safe? And if he is not safe, can he still be good? Colossians 1 answers both questions in the same breath, and the answer holds steadier than most people expect.
Is God Good? Colossians 1 Answers Without Softening It
There are two ways people arrive at this question. Some are new and genuinely want to know what Jesus is like before they trust him with anything. Others have believed for years and cannot remember the last time any of it moved them. Both are asking the same thing underneath: is the God who is in charge of everything actually good to me. In C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, the children ask whether the lion Aslan is safe, and Mr. Beaver tells them no, he is not safe, but he is good. That is the tension Colossians 1 refuses to resolve by lowering one side.
Paul stacks the claims in verses 15 to 17. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, which means he does not just describe God, he shows him. He is prototokos, firstborn over all creation, and that word is about rank and inheritance rather than birth order. Psalm 89:27 uses the same idea when God calls David his firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. Then verse 17: in him all things hold together. The Greek is synesteken, a perfect tense that means the holding is not a one-time act but an ongoing state. The universe is not self-running. Someone is carrying it right now.
The message moves in two turns. The first is supremacy. Every empire that believed in its own permanence has fallen, and Alexander’s did not outlast him by a year, but the throne Christ sits on has never been vacated. The second turn is the one people miss. Verses 18 to 20 take all that power and aim it at a cross. The fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything by making peace through the blood of his cross. Power alone gets you an impressive God. Power plus the blood and the resurrection gets you a savior.
That is why the answer to “is God good” is not a softer God. It is a stronger one who chose the cross anyway. If your life is heavy right now, the point of Colossians 1:17 is that you are not the glue holding it together. He is. And if your life is going well, that is the season awe usually dies, because success makes us forget who is actually running things. Valor Church is an expository, Bible-teaching church in northwest Arvada, Colorado, serving Westminster, Broomfield, Five Parks, and Candelas. Sundays at 8:30 and 10:30 at Excel Academy, 11500 W 84th Ave.
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Seven days of Scripture, reflection, and prayer drawn from this sermon. One a day. Read it in five minutes. Carry it the rest of the day.
You Do Not Get Used to a Lion
Colossians 1:15
Most people do not walk away from Jesus in a dramatic moment. They get used to him. The mundane wears down the wonder until he becomes a utility you call when something breaks. Ask yourself where Jesus currently sits in your week: king, or convenience. The honest answer is not a reason for shame. It is a starting point.
Prayer
Jesus, I have gotten used to you. Wake that up in me again.
If You Want to See God, Look at Jesus
Colossians 1:15
Paul says Jesus is the image of the invisible God. That means you do not have to guess at God’s temperament. If you want to know how God feels about the guilty, watch how Jesus treats them. If you want to know how he handles the sick, the doubting, the disqualified, read a Gospel. God is not one thing in heaven and another in Jesus. Jesus is what God is like.
Prayer
Father, correct what I have assumed about you that Jesus never showed me.
Firstborn Means Rank, Not Birth Order
Colossians 1:16-17
Firstborn here is not a claim that Jesus was created first. It is a claim about rank and inheritance, the same way Psalm 89:27 calls David God’s firstborn, highest of the kings of the earth. Everything visible and invisible, thrones and rulers and authorities, was made through him and for him. Whatever is currently intimidating you sits under that list.
Prayer
Lord, put the thing I am afraid of back under your authority in my mind.
You Are Not the Glue
Colossians 1:17
In him all things hold together. The Greek carries the sense of ongoing coherence, not a finished act. He is holding it right now, while you sleep, without effort. A small child thinks her father is impossibly strong because what is impossible for her is easy for him. The difference is that our strength fades and his does not. What overwhelms you does not overwhelm him.
Prayer
God, I have been carrying this like it is mine to hold. It is yours.
Resurrected, Not Resuscitated
Colossians 1:18
Lazarus came back from the dead and later died again. Jesus came out of the grave into a life death has no more claim on. That is the difference between resuscitation and resurrection, and it is why Paul calls him the firstborn from the dead. He did not walk back into the mortality he left. He conquered it, and he went first so that we could follow.
Prayer
Jesus, thank you that you did not just delay death. You defeated it.
The King Takes the Lashes
Colossians 1:19-20
A good king cannot ignore a crime and a just king cannot excuse it. The only way both hold is if the king pays it himself. That is what verse 20 says God did: making peace through the blood of his cross. There was real hostility and a real debt, and he did not overlook it. He absorbed it. Shame is the wrong response to that. Awe is the right one.
Prayer
Father, you took what I owed. Help me live like someone who knows that.
Heaven Is Not Bored With Him
Revelation 5:11-14
John’s vision shows countless voices around the throne saying the same thing: worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Notice that heaven holds both together, the Lamb who was slain and the King who reigns, and it never gets old up there. If your worship has gone flat, the fix is usually not a new song. It is remembering both halves of who he is.
Prayer
Lord, let me hold the lion and the lamb together and mean it.
For your small group, family, or personal reflection.
- Is God safe? Is God good? Answer both out loud and notice which one you believe more easily.
- Where has Jesus quietly become a utility in your life, something you call when a problem shows up rather than the king you answer to?
- Colossians 1:17 says he holds all things together. What are you currently holding together yourself that you were never meant to carry?
- Awe usually dies in good seasons, not hard ones. Is your life going well right now, and what has that done to your sense of God?
- What do you assume God is like that Jesus never actually demonstrated?
- Verse 20 says peace was made through the blood of the cross. Why does the cost matter to whether God is good?
- If someone asked you this week whether God is good, what would you say, and what in your life would back it up?
Want to work through these with others? Small groups at Valor meet throughout the week. Find a Group
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Arvada, CO 80005
720-507-9246
Arvada, CO 80005
720-507-9246