CONSIDER HIM by G. W. Rine

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 29, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 44.

“CONSIDER HIM”

By G. W. Rine

BY PROF. G. W. RINE

CHRIST THE WORD WITH THE FATHER BEFORE THE WORLD WAS.

In the preceding article it was shown that Christ, as the eternal Word, is, and always has been, the manifestation and expression of the Father to man. All things—absolutely all things (except the anomaly, sin)—are of the Father, but through the Son. This great fact is thus graphically put: “To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.” 1 Cor. 8:6, R. V. We now understand why, in the very nature of things, it was essential that the Son should in every particular be the exact counterpart and reproduction of the Father—that in Christ should dwell “all the fulness of the Godhead.” The Father could not be adequately revealed and portrayed through a personality inferior to Himself.

It is through divinity only that divinity can be manifested. Hence the significance of our Lord’s declaration, “I and My Father are one.” This being true, “He that hath seen Me [Christ] hath seen the Father.” The Father put Himself into the Word; thus it is that the Word is God. This fact is distinctly asserted: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1. In Isaiah’s prophecy, the coming Christ is characterized as the “mighty God.” Ch. 9:6.

Christ, being God, is timeless, i. e. eternal. “In the beginning was the Word; . . . the same was in the beginning with God.” The idea that God should be finite as to time, or duration, is manifestly unthinkable. Whatever is God must, by virtue of that very fact, be infinite in all attributes. Christ, being God, is without beginning or end. This fact once understood, how wondrously significant is His petition to the Father: “And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” John 17:5. Thus we see that from the days of eternity, the ever-blessed Christ—your Saviour and my Saviour—was a glorious high King. We too may look up into the Saviour’s face, and adore and magnify Him in these sweet, stately numbers of God’s inspired singer in Israel: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.” Ps. 90:2.

Yes, in the beginning was the Word, and that Word was then—was eternally—as now, very God of very God. Tho the Word is God, yet as a personality He is distinct from God the Father. The Holy Spirit affirms not only that “the Word was God,” but that “the same [the Word] was in the beginning with God” [the Father]. How significant is the preposition “with” here employed by the divine Spirit. It signifies movement toward and communion with. It denotes the absolute oneness of spirit and the perfect, unbroken fellowship subsisting between the Persons of the one and ever-blessed God. “The face of the everlasting Word was ever directed toward the face of the everlasting Father.” The only-begotten Son ever was and “is in the bosom of the Father.” God has not given us as a Saviour a mere abstraction, an ideal, or a mere word; no, He has given us a Person—the righteous One, whom our hearts crave. Neither has He given a merely evanescent Person—a Person who is “as the flower of the field,” or who is mere “grass,” as is the case with man—not a Person that “is even a vapor;” no, no; He has given to every soul a Saviour whose Person is coeval with eternity, a Saviour who “inhabiteth eternity,” a Saviour whose prerogative it was to declare, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” John 8:58. Not that He simply was, or is, or will be, but He is the timeless One, the ever-during One; He is Absolute Essence, immutable Being.

Eternity is an eternal dawn; and in its firmament Jesus has ever shone as its Bright and Morning Star. How sublimely the timelessness of our Lord is enunciated in the poetry of the prophet: “But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, tho thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity.” Micah 5:2, margin. In that firmament, the firmament of eternity, He shone not only as the Morning Star, but likewise as the refulgent Son of Righteousness. Not only “in the beginning was the Word,” but the Word was the beginning; that is, all things began, came to be, in Him. Thus He Himself declares: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.” Rev. 22:13, R. V.

Anent the Word, the beloved apostle wrote: “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” John 1:3. The verb “were made” is in the Greek most significant. Its exact English equivalent is “came to be.” The thought is that through Him all things came into being. At His creative fiat all things emerged out of nothing; absolutely all things, for “without Him was not one single thing [Greek] made that was made.” This stupendous fact is put with equal directness and force by the apostle Paul. “For by Him [Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him, and for Him; and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.” Col. 1:16, 17.

Jesus being the Creator of all things, He was necessarily “before all things,” both in time and in rank and prerogative. That His only-begotten Son was the dynamic agency in the making of the universe, the Father Himself attests in these words addressed to the Son: “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands.” Heb. 1:10. Note

the phrase “in the beginning,” an evident reference to the first affirmation of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”—just as truly God the Son as God the Father. The Father and the Son were united in creation, as they are in all things. Creation, like everything else except sin, is of the Father, but executed through the Son. Hence the significance of the divine colloquy, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Gen. 1:26. In creation God was in Christ, making the worlds; in redemption God is in Christ, reconciling this world (the only fallen world) unto Himself. In the beginning was the Word, uttering the Father in creation; in the hearts of men is the Word, uttering the Father in re-creation (regeneration), which is redemption.

The process of creation is, by its very simplicity, invested with an awful sublimity. There was no strain or paroxysm of effort; no highly wrought elaboration of plan. There was simply the calm, deliberate, all-potent utterance of the divine fiat, “Let there be light,” a world, a beast, a man; “and there was light;” there was a world, etc. The very inditing, by the Holy Spirit, of the sublimely simple mode of procedure in creation, is itself so exquisitely simple and trenchant as to constitute it one of the grandest and loftiest passages in all literature. It runs thus: “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. . . . He [Jesus] spake, and it was [done is supplied]; He commanded, and it stood fast.” Ps. 33:6–9. The Son of God speaks into the illimitable void of space, and worlds roll into being; Jesus speaks to the penitent soul in which “there is no good thing,” and righteousness with its concomitant power fills that soul. The fact that my Redeemer can command worlds into being is to me the pledge and surety that He can speak to my vile, sinful heart, and out of it evoke a new heart, a clean heart, a right spirit. By virtue of His divine prerogative to create, is His divine prerogative to redeem.

“The Son of God speaks into illimitable space and worlds roll into being.”

It is the ineffable privilege of every sinful, suffering soul to come to this same Jesus, his Creator, and say, “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean;” and into the ear of faith will roll back, as the sound of many waters, the cleansing, healing, creatively potent words, “I will, be thou clean,” and immediately his leprosy, his sin, is cleansed. And as Jesus upholds “all things by the Word of His power” (Heb. 1:3), and as “by Him all things consist” (are conserved) (Col. 1:17), so I KNOW that He “is able to keep you [and me] from falling.” Jude 24. May His love constrain us all to fall at His feet, with the ascription, “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they were and were created.” Rev. 4:11.

“And there was light; there was a world.”