SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/24/2017
9:02 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Christ Firstborn from the Dead
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
1:18
Message of the
verses: “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.”
Looking back to our last SD I mentioned that today’s SD
would be a bit longer than the one we did yesterday, but I made a mistake in
saying that. The following is what John
MacArthur writes on this subject of Christ being the firstborn from the
dead: “First-born again translates prototokos. Of all those who have been raised from the
dead, or ever will be, Christ is the highest in rank.” That is all he writes but I have decided to
look at some of the things that are found in his sermon from 1975 that he spoke
on this subject as it is an important thing for us to understand. The reason that it is important is because
when we see the term “firstborn” there are those who contend that Jesus Christ
came into existence when He was born at Bethlehem on what we call Christmas
day. Of course that is not what this
section means at all as we have studied enough in our recent Spiritual Diaries
from different books of the Bible including Colossians that show that Jesus
Christ is the God/Man, the eternal God who created the earth and all the
universes that we can see or those we cannot see.
Now in listening to this sermon from MacArthur I learned
that those who were making trouble in the Colossian church believed that Jesus
Christ was just One of the angels that God created and this letter to the
church was showing them that He is the eternal God as I already mentioned and
being first born does not in any way negate the truth of who Jesus Christ
really is. Let us look at the second
Psalm for a moment “1 Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising
a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take
counsel together Against
the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, 3 “Let us tear their fetters
apart And cast away their cords from us!" 4 He who sits in the heavens
laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. 5 Then He will speak to them in His anger And
terrify them in His fury, saying, 6 “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy
mountain."
7 “I will surely tell of the decree of the
LORD: He said to Me, ’You
are My Son, Today I have begotten You.”
Now verse seven takes place when Jesus Christ has been raised from the
dead, and I know that for a long time I thought this meant when He was born at
Bethlehem, but this speaks of after Jesus had done His work on the cross and
the Father accepted the work that He did and this we see what our verse tells
us that He is the firstborn, the highest in rank who has been raised from the
dead. Now we know that when Jesus was on
earth that He raised people from the dead, but they all died again. In Matthew we read that there were people who
came out of their graves when Jesus was resurrected from the dead, but all of
them died again too. Jesus Christ is the
only One at this time who has been raised from the dead and continues to live.
Ok in our next SD we will finally finish looking at this
verse when we look at “Christ is the pre-eminent One.”
1/24/2017 9:22 PM
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