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JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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208<br />

The Emperor was indignant! He forcefully stated:<br />

"Is this all the respect you pay to a prince that I have made of equal dignity with myself?"<br />

The bishop replied courageously:<br />

"Sir, do you so highly resent my apparent neglect of your son because I do not give<br />

him equal honors with yourself? Then what must the eternal God think of you,<br />

who has given permission to have His co-equal and co-eternal Son degraded in<br />

His proper deity in every part of your empire?"<br />

The Emperor acknowledged the reproof to be just, and gave orders to have all the Arian<br />

chapels shut up, and would not permit one of them to exist.3<br />

The godly bishop was right. We must give equal honor to the Son.<br />

● Jesus is the divine Wisdom<br />

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by<br />

Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,<br />

whether thrones of powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by<br />

Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.<br />

And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the<br />

firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the<br />

supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him and<br />

through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or<br />

things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross" (Col 1:15-20).<br />

This section takes the form of a poem as Paul envisions God's purpose in creation as<br />

being to sum up all things in the name of Jesus Christ. He is one who, though not yet a human<br />

being, was God's agent in the creation of the world. This was so because of His preexistence,<br />

because of His being "the image of the invisible God," because He is "the firstborn over all<br />

creation," because "all things were created by Him and for Him," because "He is before all<br />

things, and in Him all things hold together," because He is the head of the body, the church,<br />

because He is "the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead," because "God was pleased<br />

to have all His fullness dwell in Him," therefore He was perfectly fitted to become human and so<br />

to take the leading role in the unfolding drama of God's purpose for recreating the world.<br />

In becoming the predestined human Lord of the world, Jesus has taken His rightful place,<br />

since from the beginning, as the true Wisdom of God, He was the Father's agent, God in the<br />

work of creation. The preexistent Lord of the world has become the human Lord of the world,<br />

and in so doing has reflected fully, for all to see, the God whose human image He has now come<br />

to bear.

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