Looking To The Cross | Day 29 | Colossians 1:15-20

The nativity scene with baby Jesus in the manger can tempt us to believe that this was His beginning.

And with little information on Christ’s early years, it’s also tempting to consider that even the manger wasn’t His beginning; that His real beginning began at age 30, perhaps with His baptism or first miracle. Colossians 1:15-20, however, clearly informs us that this isn’t the case. 

Jesus has been at work since the beginning of time. Genesis 1:26 quotes God as saying “Let us make man in our own image” and further, in Genesis 3:22, “the man has now become like one of us”. Who is us? Who is God talking to?

Even the word Elohim, one of the most commonly used names of God, is plural. So, God, in His very nature, is not alone. Jesus has always been there. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, (John 1:1).

At the time of Paul’s writing to the church at Colossae, within 2 or 3 decades of the resurrection, false teachings were circulating that diminished Christ’s deity. One of the primary purposes for Paul’s letter was to dispel such heresy by boldly proclaiming the pre-eminence and pre-existence of Jesus.

I like the phrasing of Colossians 1:18b, “He is the beginning”. He wasn’t just there in the beginning. He is the beginning. He is the Alpha and the Omega.