Question:
Does Colossians 1:15-19 mean that Christ was begotten in His origin? If He was not, how could He lay down His life?
Answer:
The passage in Colossians has to do not with the origin of Christ simply, but His humiliation also. He was born of a woman and made a brother-man (See Galatians 4:4; Hebrews 2:11); therefore, He is the Head of the body of the church, kindred with them; “the firstborn 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” (John 10:18).
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 angels; still, later He takes another step downward and takes upon Himself the form and likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3; Hebrews 2:14-16), and becomes in all things “like unto his brethren” of the human family (Hebrews 2:17), and suffers from the infirmities of the human family upon Him, dying at last upon the cross. That act was but the climax of a series of actions, extending from when He gave Himself for man’s sin, at the foundation of the world Revelation 13:8), till He died upon the cross. Human minds can never understand it. “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness” (1Timothy 3:16). How He who was “from of old, from everlasting” (Micah 5:2, margin) could become as His creatures, going down to the very depths of woe and sin, will be utterly incomprehensible to the creature. Just so long as endless ages roll, we 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 throughout eternity. But He did it all, and He did it for us; and while our minds can not comprehend, faith can lay hold of the remarkable fact and thus be the means of another mighty miracle, Christ dwelling in us (Colossians 1:27).
