The firstborn: A Meditation for the First Day of Advent

“The Son is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn over all creation.”
Colossians 1 v 15

Storyline
Proverbs 8 v 22-31 and Colossians 1 v 15-20

What is it about small babies that makes us go gooey? They’re not very useful. In fact there’s almost nothing they can do except wail and poop. And, to be honest, they’re not always that pretty. Most of them look like a miniature version of Winston Churchill.

Yet when we hold them in our arms, our hearts melt. And when they smile, even the hardened cynic is won over.

The evolutionary biologists tell us this is about the instinct to preserve our genes. Perhaps. But we have similar feelings about other people’s children. Indeed, we go a bit gooey about chicks, puppies, kittens, lambs, calves and foals. There’s something about the newness of life that captures our hearts. Perhaps that’s one reason why we love the Christmas story.

But Christmas is not the beginning of the story of the baby in the manger. The baby in the manger was old and new and always new. When Paul writes to the Colossians, he includes a hymn about Jesus. It begins:

The Son is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
Colossians 1 v 15

Jesus was born into our world on the first Christmas Day. Thousands of people had already been born before that date. But Jesus is the “firstborn” because he existed before any of them. Abraham was born at least 2,000 years before Jesus. But Jesus said, “Before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8 v 58). His birth into this world came after Abraham’s birth. But his existence came long before Abraham. Indeed so long before that it has no date. That’s not just because it was in some forgotten pre-history. It’s because Jesus has always existed. He doesn’t say, I was born before Abraham was born. He says, “Before Abraham was born, I am”. I am was how God described his external existence to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3. And Jesus is God: he is one of the three Persons of the triune God.

The Christmas story is the one true story because it completes and fulfils all the stories of the Bible.

From the earliest times the church has said that Jesus is “eternally begotten”. He wasn’t born in the sense that there was time before he existed and then he was born into existence. No, he has eternally been given life from God the Father. It’s a tough idea for us to get our heads round. Jesus himself says, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5 v 26).

The early church fathers described the Father as the fountainhead of the triune God. Imagine an eternal fountain, eternally pouring out clear, clean water. Around it is an eternal pool. The pool receives its water from the fountain. But, because the fountain is eternal, the pool is also eternal. Although it depends on the fountain for its water, there was never a time when it didn’t exist. In the same way the Son receives life from the Father—and in that sense is begotten. But there was never a time when the Son did not exist—and so he is eternally begotten.

This eternal begetting means the life of the Son is always new. He never grows old. There is always a freshness to his life. And he is full of joy.

***

Children love doing the same thing over and over again. My two-year-old friend Tayden loves it when I throw him over my shoulder, and dangle him down my back with one hand while I reach round with the other hand so I can scoop him round, flipping him over in the process, to land him on his feet by my side. “Again!” he cries. “Again!” “Again!”

His capacity to do it again always exceeds mine. His joy is undiminished by repetition. It’s as if it’s always new for him. Children have a delight in the world because to them it’s new. Too often the rest of us have grown old and weary of the simple joys of life.

But the life of Jesus is always new. And the joy of Jesus is always fresh. Proverbs 8 personifies Wisdom and celebrates its role in creation. The New Testament suggests Jesus is that Wisdom. And in Proverbs 8 v 30-31 Wisdom-Jesus says:

Then I was constantly at his side.

I was filled with delight day after day,

rejoicing always in his presence,

rejoicing in his whole world

and delighting in the human race.

“Delighting day after day.” “Rejoicing always.”

***

But the Jesus born in the manger was not “rejoicing always”. Sometimes he wept; sometimes he was angry. That’s because death had entered the world because of human rebellion. So now the world is subject to decay. There’s still plenty to bring delight. But there’s also sorrow and pain. Christmas can be a time when we’re reminded of a lost loved one or a time when family conflict reaches fever pitch.

The good news is that the hymn in Colossians goes on. Not only is Jesus the firstborn over creation; he’s also the firstborn over a new creation. Colossians 1 v 18 says Jesus…

is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead.

Jesus died bearing the penalty of our sin. But at his resurrection he was, as it were, reborn—the beginning and promise of a world made new. At Christmas the story of creation starts a new chapter. It becomes the story of re-creation.

At Christmas the story of creation starts a new chapter. It becomes the story of re-creation.

Jesus said, “I have come that [you] might have life, and have it to the full” (John 10 v 10). The life that flows from the Father to the Son flows to us through the death of the Son. That means we can look forward to eternal life instead of eternal death. But it also means new life. “If anyone is in Christ,” says 2 Corinthians 5 v 17, “the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” One day we will be people made new in a world made new. But even now we have life. And that includes a new perspective on the world. We see the world as a gift from God.

It’s not hard to be a curmudgeon at Christmas: the same old decorations, the same old routines, the same old television programmes, the same old family arguments. This Christmas try to rediscover the joy of simple things. Try to see the world through the eyes of a child. Try to look at the world filled with the wonder and newness of God’s Son and cry, “Again!”

***

Meditate
“The Son is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn over all creation.”

Lo, within a manger lies
He who built the starry skies …
Sacred Infant, all divine,
What a tender love was thine,
Thus to come from highest bliss
Down to such a world as this.
(From “See, amid the winter’s snow” by Edward Caswall)

***

Prayer
For the beauty of the earth,
for the beauty of the skies,
for the Love which from our birth
over and around us lies:
Christ, our God, to thee we raise
this our Sacrifice of Praise.
Amen.
(From “For the beauty of the earth” by Folliott S. Pierpoint)

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