Colossians 1:15-17, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities — all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.”
(Below is a segment from this a journal entry….its not the entire entry so forgive the disconnected elements. We are picking up at a point where I am musing over how the man Jesus Christ crucified and risen might be the “beginning” of “firstborn” of creation)
…think of it this way, when God created reality (ie, all that is not God) what did He create? I would contend that He created all time and all space. A good analogy is a movie. God did not simply create the first “frame” of reality and build out from there, He created the entire “film” from beginning to end. We might say that God had the idea for the “movie” completed in His head, as it were, beforehand (we are necessarily using spatial and sequential language, but “before” creation these concepts are non-existent….still, we have to use them).
Now, there is no reason that God should have imagined the movie of created reality sequentially….there is no reason that the logically foundational element of creation in God’s mind had to be the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve…..no. Rather, there is every reason to believe that God—as a human script writer might do—“came up” with the most important element first….He had a story He wanted to tell, He had a reality He wanted to communicate and He built reality around this central concept. And what was this central concept? I contend that it was Christ crucified…..it was the Beloved Son offered up to the Father in love through the eternal Spirit, it was Wisdom poured out.
I believe that God envisioned the Son united to created reality in the incarnation, pouring Himself out unto the extremities of non-being in love on the cross so that created reality might not descend into non-being but be joined to the life of God; I believe that God envisioned and chose this reality and upon that foundation, upon that event, built the rest of created existence.
The crucified Christ is the ontological foundation for all of reality. He is the “first born” of all creation because it is Him that the Father first chooses, first “envisions” first “imagines” and so—upon this foundation—builds all things. Yes, Adam and Even are the beginning temporally, sequentially, experientially, but Christ crucified (and risen) is the beginning logically and ontologically….HE is where God starts with creation….HE is the melody upon which the song is built, HE is the “scene” for which the entire movie was made, God called forth the language of created reality so that this word—the Word eternally spoken within Himself as His Son—might be spoken outside of Himself.
Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the Wisdom of God who was “poured out” as a sacrifice from before the beginning of the world, who was offered up to the Father through the Spirit from the foundations of reality, through whom and for whom all things exist, and in whose incarnate, cruciform, eucatastrophic life all things have their being and their beauty.
