 |  |
am Alpha and Omega, the beginning (arche) and the end", and Rev. 22: 13, "I am
Alpha and Omega, the beginning (arche) and the end, the first and the last". These
majestic titles take us back to the middle chapters of Isaiah's prophecy where God
asserts:
"I am the first, and I am the last; and beside Me there is no God . . . . . Is there a God
beside Me? Yea, there is no God" (Isa. 44: 6-8).
"Hearken unto Me, O Jacob and Israel, My called; I am He; I am the first, I also am
the last" (Isa. 48: 12).
There can be no doubt from these verses that the title `the first and the last' belongs to
Jehovah, God alone. They are unconditionally given to the Lord Jesus in the book of
Revelation. It is in this sense that He is the beginning, the First in all creation, either
material or spiritual, and this is the meaning the word bears in the much misunderstood
title in Rev. 3: 14, where the word beginning is this very word arche, `first'. And in the
context we are studying He is revealed as the `Beginning' or `the First', with one object:
"that in ALL things He might have the first place (pre-eminence)" (verse 18).
Note it is not merely the first place in some things, but the first place in everything,
and there is only one Person Who can rightly have such an exalted and unique position
and that is God Himself and He has been revealed to us `in the Person of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Image of the invisible God, the Head of the church, the Body'. In the light of
all this, the heresy at Colossae was shown up in its true colours. The pre-gnostic ideas of
many spiritual angelic mediators between God and men, claiming man's adoration, are
swept aside and shown to be part of the Satanic lie. The opposers at Colossae who were
seeking to put over these ideas were faced with a challenge of the first magnitude. They
either had to abandon them completely or persist in their deception and apostasy, and all
today who belittle or down-grade Christ are in a similar position. In these perilous times
we should maintain the utmost watchfulness over all that comes our way concerning
Him, either spoken or written. No one who names the name of the Lord Jesus and wishes
to be regarded as sincere and faithful can take any less or different position. Men today
either stone Him or worship Him as God manifest in the flesh. There is no middle
position.
The Apostle Paul continues the theme of the uniqueness of Christ:
"For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fullness dwell;
and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the
blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the
heavens" (1: 19, 20 R.V.).
Not only is Christ first as Creator and as Head of the Body, but in Him all the fullness
of the Godhead dwells in a bodily form (1: 19; 2: 9). Members of the Body as earthen
vessels can be filled with God's fullness (Eph. 3: 19 R.V.--and note the `unto' rather
than `with' of the A.V.), but neither they nor any other being, angelic or otherwise, can
contain ALL the fullness of God. Pleroma, fullness, is one of the great words of the
prison epistles, but it also occurs elsewhere. In the Gospels it is used of the patch put in
to `fill up' the rent in an old garment (Matt. 9: 16; Mark 2: 21) and of the left-over