FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture References: John 1:1-8; Colossians 1:15-17

Christ’s Relationship to the Natural Order – Continued

In 1962 our nation was well into the space program. President Kennedy had predicted that we would land men on the moon by the end of that decade. Newsmen doing a report on the pending program stated that some people thought space exploration was a sin and they were asking the opinion from several ministers. One minister replied, “Exploring space is no more a sin than boring a hole in the ground to get water or oil. The possibility of sin lies in what we do with what we learn. The same oil well will produce gasoline for a car driven by a drunken driver who injures people. It also will produce gasoline for an ambulance to take the injured to a hospital.”

Also, in 1973, on one particular day, the San Francisco Chronicle carried an article about two astronomers working in the large observatory there. They had picked up radio signals from an object in space. Their measuring instruments showed that it was fifty million light years from the earth, with light traveling at a speed of over 186,000 miles per second. Someone said that object may have burned up billions of years ago, but its radio waves were still coming through. The human mind can scarcely grasp that concept!

I don’t understand it all though I love advancements in science. But it doesn’t frighten me because I believe it is God, the Author of science that is revealing these things to mankind in His proper time. Regardless of how large science may calculate that the universe is, I know that my Lord made it all! The more we learn about the universe, the greater do we understand the glory and literal awesomeness of Christ.

And He keeps this vast universe running in exact precision. In our own solar system, we determine earth time by the movement of the heavenly bodies.

In this is a lesson for each of us. If the Lord can make this vast universe a cosmos instead of a chaos, surely He can take our shattered lives, put the pieces together, and give us orderly lives.

Christ’s Relationship to Us

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.”

The word for “became” translates the verb “to become” or to come into being. “Dwelt” renders the verb meaning to live in a tent, a temporary dwelling. For thirty-three years, Christ became something He had never been before, a flesh-and-blood man. He identified Himself completely with us, apart from sin. He did so that He might reveal God’s grace and truth in terms of our (mankind’s) understanding.

We say that Jesus of Nazareth was God. And so He was. But to me a far more thrilling truth is that God became Jesus of Nazareth, for me personally!

Just think of it! He who always was, who always was equal with God, yes, who always was God Himself, who created the universe from the smallest components making up atoms to multiplied solar systems, who is the Lord of creation, the center of the universe, and who keeps it running in exact precision, He became a flesh-and-blood man for you and me!

Even more so, He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and He is alive forevermore that He might provide redemption to all who accept and receive Him as Savior. Also, remember this, He would have done so, even if you were the only lost person in His universe.

The planets move at His word. Only you and I, made in God’s image with the right of choice, can say yes or no to Him. But upon your choice hangs your eternal destiny.

John 1:11–12 says of Christ, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.”

Will you reject Him or receive Him? Only you can answer that question.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: John 1:1-8; Colossians 1:15-17

Christ’s Relationship to the Natural Order

John 1:3 reads, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” What this is literally stating is that, “Every single thing in the universe came through him and was created [came into being], and apart or aside from Him there isn’t even one thing which was created [came into being].”

Christ is the intermediate agent in the creative work. He created the universe from those atoms (and whatever they consist of) to solar systems and the universe that contains them!

Christ is eternal. But through Him something that did not exist came into being. Thus, in essence, John denied the eternity of matter. Matter had a beginning; thus, “in the beginning.”

Turning again to Colossians, Paul said that Christ is “the firstborn over all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Contrast that with “Firstborn” in Luke 2:7 where Mary “brought forth her firstborn Son.” Later, she had other children by Joseph. But here in Colossians, that’s not what it means, no! Christ is not a created being. He was with the Father and the Father created all things through Him!

One day I decided to do an exhaustive study on what the word translated “firstborn” actually says in context. I read page after page of several commentaries and Bible dictionaries, much of it with highlighted references. Several times I was tempted to stop. But I am glad that I didn’t. Because at the very last I found that the word was sometimes used in the sense of prior being with the meaning of “lordship.” That was my aha moment, there it was! Paul said that Christ is “the Lord of all creation” (my translation).

But Paul was not through. In Colossians 1:17 what the Apostle wrote literally means, “And He alone is before every single thing in the universe, and the universe as a whole in Him holds together.” We speak of the law of gravity when we should be acknowledging and speaking of the law of Christ.

From earliest time, people spoke of a geocentric of earth-centered universe. The ancients thought that the sun moved about the earth. But Galileo proved that the earth moves about the sun. So we called it a heliocentric or sun-centered universe. However, we can no longer say that. Astronomers now tell us that what we once thought was the universe is only our solar system. We are told that there are innumerable solar systems, each with its own sun and billions of stars. One astronomer estimates that there are fourteen quadrillion such solar systems. That is fourteen followed by fifteen zeros. It stretches our minds even to think about it!

So, no longer can we say that we live in a heliocentric universe. If the sun is not the center of the universe, then who or what is? Writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul told us almost two thousand years ago. For, “the universe as a whole in Him holds together.”

Thus we live in a Christocentric universe—not a sun-centered but a Son-centered universe!

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: John 1:1-8; Colossians 1:15-17

Christ’s Relationship to/with God

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

“In the beginning,” whenever that was. Remember, since the Bible relates to man in relationship to God and vice-versa, time (from man’s perspective) also began. These three words throw us back to Genesis 1:1. As the Bible opens its account of God’s creative work, so the Beloved Apostle John begins his account of the beginning of God’s redemptive work in Christ. Revelation 13:8 speaks of Christ as slain before the foundation of the world. So, in effect, the redemptive work fixed in eternity was wrought out in time that we might believe in Him who was slain for our sins.

John personified the “Word” (logos). This means the open, spoken manifestation of the speaker. And “in the beginning” gives us a clue as to John’s selection of the “Word.” In Genesis 1, each new phase of God’s creative work is introduced with “God said.” There is His open, spoken manifestation. So, as in the beginning God spoke the universe into being, in Christ, God spoke His final word of revelation, redemption, in the very person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

“Was” is the word expressing essential, and in this case, eternal being. It may read “always was.” There had never been a time when Christ did not exist. Like God the Father, He is eternal in nature and being.

Furthermore, Christ always was “with God.” Literally, He was “face-to-face with God.” In ancient times, let us say, a person entertained two rulers. One was tall, the other was short. The host had to seat the shorter one on pillows so that when they looked at one another, it was on an even line. Neither looked up or down at the other. We would say that they saw eye to eye. This expressed equality. To express it, the same phrase was used as here. So in essence we can say, “the Word [always] was [equal] with God.” There is no difference in equality in the Godhead.

Likewise, literally translated, the final phrase should read, “and the Word [Christ] always was God Himself.” For “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Thus in one concise sentence, John answered the Gnostics, then and now, by declaring the coeternity, coequality, and coexistence of Christ with God the Father.

Now let us turn to Colossians 1:15 where Paul said that Christ “is the image of the invisible God.” The word “image” here means “exact manifestation.” This does not mean that God is visible but has not been seen. It means that He cannot be seen with the natural eye. “God is Spirit,” stated Jesus (John 4:24). And a spiritual being cannot be seen by the natural eye. This is the reason for the incarnation: So that Jesus could say, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Let me try to explain this in this way. With my wife, I bare three relationships with her. I am her husband, the father of her child, and her pastor. I am not three distinct people. I am only one person, but I bare three relationships to her. Now please understand this with this analogy, there is no human example can adequately illustrate the Godhead in its trinitarian form, this only shows how it is possible to be one, yet bear three relationships to another. In Jesus Christ, God revealed Himself as our Redeemer.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: John 1:1-8; Colossians 1:15-17

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.”

Never were more majestic words ever put down on paper. Never was so much grand truth stated in so few words. They introduce the simplest and profoundest of the Gospels. The purpose of this Gospel is “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).

Jesus had a message for His contemporaries. But does He have a message for us in this modern space-fairing age? The purpose of this message is to show that He does.

In order to understand any book one must know at least a little something of its background. John wrote this Gospel while in Ephesus. Primarily, its message was directed toward the Greeks.

In the first century A.D., there appeared a philosophy known as Gnosticism. Its name comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge.” Gnostics held that people were saved by advancing in knowledge.

However, Gnostics faced a problem in explaining the origin of the universe. They believed and said that God is absolutely good, and matter is absolutely evil. How, then, could such an absolutely good God create such an absolutely evil universe? To their own satisfaction, at least, they imagined a series of beings coming out of God in descending order, each having less deity than the one above it. The lowest one had enough deity to create, but so little as to be able to create evil matter.

Coming in to contact with Christianity, Gnostics identified Christ as that lowest being. Thus they saw Him as a created being, a demigod, almost (but not quite) a demon since He created evil matter.

Furthermore, the Gnostics divided into two groups concerning Jesus Christ. The Docetic Gnostics (from dokeō, “I seem”) said that Christ did not have a real flesh-and-blood body. He only seemed to have one. They denied the humanity of Christ. The Cerinthian Gnostics (from their leader Cerinthus) held that Christ neither was born, nor did He die. Deity came upon Jesus at His baptism and left Him on the cross. So they denied the deity of Jesus. These views cut through the heart of Christian theology. It is as great a heresy to deny Christ’s humanity as to deny Jesus’ deity. So both Paul, in Colossians, and John, in his Gospel and 1 John, wrote to refute this heresy.

Gnostics are still with us, for anyone who denies either Jesus’ deity or Christ’s humanity is a neo-Gnostic. It is our purpose, therefore, to look at Jesus Christ in three relationships: to God, to the natural order, and to us.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.