WHO IS NUMBER ONE?……Bill Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

Colossians 1:18

¹⁸  He is also head of the body, the church; and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.

This time in the year when Christ’s birth is celebrated is dear to believers.  The first advent of Christ has taken the hearts and talents of so many that we have a wealth of art, poetry, and hymns.

Dora Greenwell’s hymn I Am not skilled To Understand has a stanza summing up the mystery of His coming.  This 3^rd stanza, “that he should leave his place on high and come for sinful man to die, you count it strange?  So once did I, before I knew my Savior!”  The whole of this hymn is so excellent and moving that it is one of my favorites.  Find it in your hymnal and read it.  If your hymnal does not have it you need one that does.

There are two truths of Christ’s coming that are especially important.

1.  The love of the Father who sent Him.  His designation as “the Apostle of our confession” in Hebrews 3:1 states the truth of God’s sending Him.  Apostle is by definition a sent one.  He is of all the Apostles, the Apostle above any other.  He is the model and the authority from which the Apostles are given to the church.

Jesus places His ministry and the authority which identifies Him directly on the sending of the Father.  Note this in John 5:30, 36, 37.  Then in John 5:42-43 Jesus again places His Apostleship as the criteria for judgment.  In John 3:16 the cause of God’s sending and the result of it is stated.  Out of His love, He gave.

Smeaton, in The Doctrine of Atonement as Taught By Christ Himself states, and correctly so, “it has the sacrificial sense of being given up to death,” Pg. 44.  His Apostleship is completed in His sacrificial death.  The birth separated from His mission is fable.  He came into the world to save sinners.

2.  The second important truth of His coming is the humility that is the essence of His life and death.  It is a complete failure to attach the humility of Christ to His death alone.

In Philippians 2:8, Paul states, “He humbled Himself and became obedient.”  This humility began in His birth process and extended throughout His life.  A life in which, “He took upon Himself the form of a bondservant.”  There was nothing lower than this in Israel.  The Lord of Glory was a bondservant.

Paul sees this humility bringing Him into death.  The author of life dies, amazing humility.  But Paul stops here as in wonder and writes, “even the death of the cross”.  “You count this strange?  So once did I”.

Paul’s conclusion is both self-evident ad necessary, “that in all things He may have the preeminence.”

Please read Colossians 1:15-18.