the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Colossians 1:18
The pre-eminence of Christ (II)
Read Revelation 4:1-11
We know, worship and serve the triune God only as we know, worship and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Thomas, with his hand in the pierced side of the crucified, risen Christ, said unto him, ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20:28), and he was right in doing so. Paul says, ‘In him dwelleth all fulness of the Godhead bodily’ (Colossians 2:9). What can he mean but this: in the God-man, Jesus Christ, all that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit perpetually and eternally resides? ‘You must know that you are never to separate in your thoughts God from Christ; always as you look upon Christ, so look upon God; or as you look upon God, look upon him no otherwise than as he is in Christ, not as if there were another God besides what Christ is; for there is no such thing’ (Tobias Crisp). Jesus Christ our Savior is God.
Everything God has ever done, is doing, or will ever do, he does through the mediation of his dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The covenant of grace was made before the world was with Christ the Mediator. That solemn compact of mercy, ordered in all things and sure, was made with Christ (Psalms 89:3-4; Psalms 89:19-37; 2 Samuel 23:5; 2 Timothy 1:9).
The world was created by God through Christ the Mediator. When Paul says, Christ is ‘the firstborn of every creature’ (Colossians 1:15), he is simply declaring that Christ is the one out of whom creation was born. All things sprang from him. He is the original cause of all things, ‘the beginning of the creation of God’ (Revelation 3:14; John 1:1-3).
God’s providential rule of the world is by Christ the Mediator (Daniel 7:13-14; John 17:2). In time, as the reward of his obedience and death as our Substitute, Christ took his place of dominion as a man. But this world has always been under the mediatorial rule of the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting’ (Micah 5:2). It is the mediatorial rule of the Lord Jesus Christ that preserves this world. He will not allow this world to be destroyed until all his elect are saved (2 Peter 3:9). Thanks be unto God, the God who rules this world is the pre-eminent Christ, the Friend of sinners!
