True & Beautiful Things About the Bible--New Testamentਨਮੂਨਾ

Colossians: First place in everything

We can never say too much about Jesus. And in this life, we can never fully grasp Him in all His wonder and glory. But Colossians invites us to consider Jesus in a new light.

Think back, back as far as your imagination can go, to the beginning of everything, and Jesus Christ is there. He didn’t have the name Jesus then, but there He was, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, at the beginning, before time was even invented. He who was never created spoke into existence the heavens and the earth and everything in it. He spun it out of nothing into something.

Jesus, who we watch hush a stormy sea, was the one who created those seas and everything in them. It follows that nature recognized His voice and obeyed Him. Jesus, who likely gazed up at the Milky Way hanging over His boyhood hometown, remembered when He spoke and the world was formed. He assigned planets to their galaxy. Maybe He even named them.

Not only did Jesus create all things, but He holds it all together. Across the expanse and down to the molecular level, Jesus ties them together in perfect balance. He dreamed up gravity. Every night, He tucks in the oceans’ tides. Without Him, the Andromeda system would explode into emptiness. In His brilliance, He crochets our strands of DNA to make us each unique. His breath fills our lungs. He counts our heartbeats and numbers the hairs on our heads.

And who do you think Adam and Eve walked and talked with in the Garden of Eden? It was Jesus—pre-incarnate is the word—before He put on skin. For a moment, Jesus, “the image of the invisible God,” and the “radiance of God’s glory” stepped into His creation in the cool of the day to look for Adam and Eve after they sinned.

Before Jesus, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, came to redeem the people He created and loves, He was also the Lamb of God who laid out the plans to die for us when the world was being formed in the beginning.

When you’re tempted to put yourself or anyone you know at the center of the universe, go to Colossians 1. This is Jesus’ place. First place.

Everything true and beautiful you can possibly know and experience about God can be known in Jesus. The rest of Paul’s letter to the Colossians explains how that truth makes a difference in your life.

Jesus is without any doubt the greatest phenomenon to ever cross the world’s horizon. And in Him, you will never find a dearer friend or more faithful Savior.

Next: When we pray for each other