(Col. 1:15-18.)

There are two titles here given to Christ; first I of all "the First-born of all creation." This implies His being part of that creation. The word in the original suggests supremacy and superiority, in the place of which it is spoken. There is no thought of primacy of birth, in point of time, which would be unholy. We would have to think of Christ as being born as a creature at some time prior to the remainder of the creation, so that He might have this title. We know Him as becoming part of creation in incarnation, but why should He by this be entitled to the title of supremacy and superiority of First-born, coming as He did so many thousands of years after the beginning of creation?

Here comes in every title of His deity. Surely if the Creator takes up creaturehood, He is, as such, by virtue of what He is in His essential being, the First-born of all creation, remaining as He does the Creator with the creaturehood added, which He has been pleased to take up. He is none the less the Creator because of becoming a creature, and therefore none the less controls the whole scene than when it was His footstool as a divine being, not linked with humanity on the throne of glory. By virtue of this very fact, if such an One be pleased to take the creature-place in creation He has become its glorious First-born. He obtains in this way the birth-right to which are attached heirship and all the promises, and having secured them to Himself, He is going on to perform a work by which He will bring into the inheritance and its blessings those who had forfeited every claim to it because of sin. He thus takes the place in which He is able to fulfil His appointment as Heir of all things. The place of foremost and standing first is His by right.

Of course that He is the Creator, Scripture very plainly declares. By Him were all things created (Col. 1:16; i Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2, 3; John 1:3). And this in itself is the strongest affirmation of His deity. Who else but one absolutely divine could call the universe into being? And we readily understand that He is therefore before all things, and necessarily so, if by Him the all things were created. And this being so we are enabled to understand how it is that all things subsist together by Him. He is not only in this way the One whose power characterizes and pervades the whole creation, but He is also the end for which it was created, Himself and His glory the objects in view all the way through. In this way He is the glorious Alpha and Omega of all, the First and the Last, the "Self-existing One." The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New in the light of perfect manifestation, and so He declares Himself to the unbelieving Jews, "before Abraham was I AM."

In connection with this eternity of being we have the title of "the Word " given to Him. "In the beginning was the Word " (go back as far as you please to mark the commencement of things, the Word is there) "and the Word was with God," His Fellow in everlasting communion with Him. "And the Word was God," His equal and a divine person. "The same was in the beginning with God." Ever with Him and in perfect fellowship.

He is therefore the image of the invisible God. These are characters essentially connected with Him as the Word, which means not merely the expression of thought but the very thought itself. He is Himself the thought filling God's mind, and also the divine expression of it. That in which first of all He has given expression is creation, and so we are told of Him as the Word that "all things received being through Him, and without Him not one thing received being which has received being" (J. N. D.). In creation then He speaks to us. How full of meaning and of the expression of Himself we may rightly expect to find the work of His hands. For what is done must in some sort declare the One who has done it, and thus be a telling out of His character. Nature is thus full of parables concerning Him. How often the Lord used natural symbols to tell out the spiritual is evidence enough.

But this is not the only way in which His voice is . to be heard. '' In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." Life in Him, who has been declared the eternal Word, can only be eternal life. '' And this life the light of men," which brings in the thought of its manifestation, that it might be this light; so the apostle speaks of "that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us," the Word becoming flesh and tabernacling among men. Thus we see Him as the Revealer, and all that is revealed embodied in Himself fully. This carries us along to the relationship of the Word in the Godhead, which John gives us here, that of the only-begotten Son, which expresses the fact to us that He has a divine nature peculiar to Himself, and which cannot be communicated to another. It is that which signifies the divine relationship which He has with the Father, unique and not transmittable. Who then so fitted to declare the Father?

This marks Him out as the eternal Son. He was this in the past eternity, for as the Only-begotten He came forth from the Father (i John 4:9, 10). His character as the Word is what He is in His essential being as a distinct divine person, but the relationship He is in is a different question. It is put in connection with Him becoming flesh. "The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of an only begotten with a Father full of grace and truth;" and a little farther on, "No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." And this thought in connection with Him being the Word is remarkably expressed for us in Hebrews, first chapter, "God . . . has spoken to us in [the person of the] Son " (J. N. D.). Yon will notice that the words "the person of the" are bracketed and are not in the original, which really reads "spoken to us in Son." The preposition here used denotes fixed position and instrumentality. God Himself it is who speaks, but as in the fixed position, if we may so speak, of being the Son, not as the Father, nor in the personality of the Father, nor as the Holy Spirit using some instrument, but as being God in a divine person, and that person the Son. But we find also the Son the instrument by which the word was spoken. This, of course, was in incarnation, so that He is truly the One who has declared the Father, as we have quoted from John. Here we have remarkably linked together, that He is the Word, who is God, so that it can be truly said that God has spoken to us in the person of the Son. It is God who has spoken but as in the position of Son, so that we rightly say the Son is God. Thus He is the Word, the Revealer, but He is also the vehicle of this speech. Not only the One who has spoken but in Himself also what was spoken, its substance and expression. He is then omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, essential attributes of His deity.
J. B. Jr.

(To be continued.)