Set Two: verses 18-20
“he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead”
This language of head, beginning, firstborn, creates a movement from creation to new creation .
Christ’s resurrection is the source of this new creation, new life for the world and all of us in it.
“The goal of the resurrection is not merely to give individual believers the hope that they might also defeat death. God is not satisfied for Christ to be head only over a small band of devoted followers. The goal expressed in 1:18b is far grander: Christ is firstborn of the dead “so that in everything he might have the supremacy.” David E. Garland