Joseph Hamrick
John 1:1-4- “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
The Divine Son of God, the Word of God
Jesus is the divine Son of God, without beginning and end, fully equal in the Trinity with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
As William Hendricksen states in his Colossian Commentary, “If the Son is the very image of the invisible God, and if the invisible God is from everlasting to everlasting, it follows that the Son, too, must be eternally God’s image.”
When Paul states that Christ is the image of God in Colossians 1. Christ Himself agrees when he states, “if you have seen Me you have seen the Father.” Christ can say that and be completely accurate considering He is the express image of God. In His incarnation, He was the invisible God made visible.
See the distinction: we are made in God’s image, but Christ is God’s image. And as God’s image, therefore, He must be fully equal in divinity with the Father.
The Divine Son of God, Creator, and Sustainer of All Things
Everything exists because of Christ, and everything exists for Him.
Christ’s preeminence is not only present in the Gospel accounts, but also throughout the Pastoral letters, including Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-3, and a plethora of others as well. The New Testament authors, carried along by the Spirit, took painstakingly clear measures to show in no uncertain terms, Christ is fully divine, and being divine is eternal.
Since Christ created all things, He is considered the “firstborn” of all creation. This is different than how we view that word. To be a firstborn naturally means one was born first. But here in Colossians 1:15, Paul means for us to understand Christ not as firstborn in the sense that Christ the Divine Son of God was ever created, rather, that considering that God created all things through Christ, He has the status of the firstborn: all things are His.
And not only does everything owe its existence to Christ, but also its continual sustainment. Christ keeps all things by the power of His word (Hebrews 1:3). Take a moment to dwell on that knowledge. It can be too easy to gloss over these sections of Scripture, to read of the radiance of Christ so often that it becomes a mundane, ordinary affair. That is why meditation and prayer are so essential to the Christian walk. Read these beautiful passages of Christ’s divine power and meditate on what it means that Christ sustains you.
Breathe in. Christ sustains you. Breathe out. Christ sustains you still. He does this by the divine word of His power.
The Divine Son of God, the Light of Life
Humans have the innate ability to create. We see and use our creations every day: books, movies, electronics, buildings, etc.; but all these are secondary creations, and they all lack one essential thing: life.
No matter what we create, we cannot imbue our creations with life, we cannot create a soul.
But Scripture says that in Christ Himself is life itself. When we look upon Christ, we are looking at someone who controls the very essence of life. Thankfully, and most graciously, Christ did not keep that life to Himself. For Christians, He gave us the twofold meaning of life.
First, in our creation, He gave us the breath of life. Our lives began from the moment of conception, knitted in the womb by Christ (Psalm 139:13), and secondly in our newborn lives, Christ gave us spiritual life, raising us from the dead, having created us in Christ Jesus for good works, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).
Christ is the giver of life, and the giver of life is none other than the divine Son of God.
Prayer
Christ, may we recognize who You are as the divine Son of God, without beginning and without end. May we realize our utter dependence on the Lord to give us life from the dead and to sustain our very breath and being. May we say along with Peter, “Where else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Amen.
Posted at: https://servantsofgrace.org/christ-the-divine-son/