Colossians 1:15 posed as a puzzle and then answered from an experience. How can anything be the image of something invisible? Neville answers from the awakening: when he came out of the tomb that was his own skull he saw everything around him objectively and nothing could see him, and at that moment he understood the words. To be the image of the invisible God is to be more real than any being you are looking at while remaining unseeable by anything mortal that looks at you. He pairs the verse with Proverbs 8 - the firstborn of all creation is the first of his acts of old - so the image and the Way turn out to be the same thing, and with the promise from Nathan's oracle that something is being formed inside the garment of flesh and will be brought out. The consequence he draws is a condition on the timing: you cannot be brought out before you conform to the image of the invisible God, which is why the awakening comes when God sees the ripeness and not when the man asks for it. Kept as a child of the conformed-to-the-image motif, which carries Romans 8:29 and the destiny; this one carries the Colossians verse and what it is like to be that image.