2564.—The First-Born of Every Creature.
By John Harvey Kellogg
Does Col. 1:15-19 mean that Christ was really begotten in His origin? If He was not, how could He lay down His life? The passage in Colossians has to do not with the origin of Christ simply, but His humiliation also. He was born of woman and made a brother-man; therefore, He is the Head of the body of the church, kindred with them; “the first-born from the dead,” not in point of time, but in the purpose of God, and in the preeminence shown in the next clause, “that in all things He might have the preeminence.” As to how He could lay down His life, we do not know. He declares, “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” The whole sacrifice of Christ was not enacted on Calvary. When sin entered God's dominion, Christ gave Himself, laid aside His glory, took upon Himself the form of a servant, was an angel with the angels; still later He takes another step downward, and takes upon Himself the form and likeness of sinful flesh and becomes in all things like His brethren of the human family, and suffers with the infirmities of the human family upon Him, dying at last upon the cross. That act was but the climax of a series of acts, extending from the time when He gave Himself for man's sin, at the foundation of the world, till He died upon the cross. Human minds can never understand it. “Great is the mystery of godliness.” How He who was “from the days of eternity” (Micah 5:2, margin) could become as His creatures, going down to the very depths of wo and sin, will be utterly incomprehensible to the creature. Just so long as endless ages roll, he will see new depths, new beauties, new glories, in the great love of God. As has been expressed, the plan of salvation will be “the science and song” of the redeemed thruout all eternity. But He did it all, and He did it for us; and while our minds can not comprehend, faith can apprehend the great fact, and so the means of another mighty miracle, Christ dwelling in us.