ISB ~ Colossians 1 v15

He is the image:Christ makes visible the life and love of the invisible God (Jn 1:18; Rom 5:8). His humanity is thus the sacrament that brings the Father into view (Jn 14:9). Although man was created in God’s image, something more is said of Christ, who is that image in the most perfect sense (2 Cor 4:4; Heb 1:3).

• The hymn may allude to the creation of Adam, the first man to bear the image of God (Gen 1:26) and pass it along to his progeny (Gen 5:3). Because the image Adam bequeathed to the human family was damaged and disfigured by sin, Christ comes to reverse what Adam did by reshaping our image in the likeness of his own (Col 3:10; Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49).

• Christ is the image because he is of one substance with the Father. He comes from the Father, and not the Father from him, since the nature of an image is to copy the original and to be named after it (St. Gregory Nazianzen, Orations 30). the first-born: The term for an eldest child, with emphasis on his legal right of inheritance (Deut 21:1519). Since Christ is the first and only (natural) Son begotten of the Father, he is the designated heir of the Father’s estate, which is the entire cosmos (Heb 1:2). Paul’s point is not that Jesus is the noblest part of creation, but that Jesus has the filial right to possess all of creation as his inheritance.

See word study:First-born at Heb 1:6.

• The apostle calls him the first-born of all creation. Notice he says first-born, not first created, that we may believe he is begotten in virtue of his nature and first in virtue of his eternity (St. Ambrose, On the Faith 1, 7).