Is Jesus the Creator?

If the first scripture speaks only of the worlds as being made by Christ, it is because the special dignity of God’s Son is in view as taking the throne of glory in relation thereto. As to the Son it is therefore said, “Thy throne, O God, is to the age of the age” (v. 8, N.Tr.). And when entering this habitable world even, it is said, “Let all God’s angels worship Him.” The second scripture recognises other thrones. All of them were, however, created by Him—by the Son of the Father’s love. Now these great and glorious positions in the seen and in the unseen, which are expressed to us as thrones, lordships, principalities, and authorities, all subsist together by Him. The Spirit constantly indicates to us that there are mighty dignities in the heavens, and we see around us very high and exalted dignities upon the earth, in the various nations where authorities are divinely set up. We are to view all these, apart from the disorder which has come in through sin, as created primarily “in” the Son, and also “by” Him, and “for” Him (Col. 1:16). How all this greatness enhances before our gaze the glory of our adorable Lord. And when, as we shall see, all these glorious thrones and authorities are reconciled, He shall shine in supreme splendour and royal majesty above them all. This place is His already; it will be seen publicly soon. Faith takes it in now. The third scripture embraces not only the worlds mentioned in the first, and not only the thrones and authorities named in the second, but everything—the universe. “All things received being through Him, and without Him not one thing received being which has received being” (John 1:3, N.Tr.). This work was done, as we have said, by the eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God. HE IS THE CREATOR.

It is in this terse account of creation (vers. 16, 17) that the Spirit both testifies to the Son's personal glory, and "sets bounds" to the inquisitive intrusions of the human intellect. In His detailed description of the Son's creative work, He leaves not a single loophole for unbelieving man to suggest an exception, which might seem to invalidate His claim that the Son of the Father's love is the Creator of the whole creation. He created all things both personally in His own right, and instrumentally to the purpose and glory of God. Therefore, according to the Spirit's teaching, nothing can pass the fixed barrier between the Son, the Creator, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the created, produced by Him. The whole creation sprang into being at His voice and by His hand. The Son, therefore, is before and above the whole creation.

His primal distinction from all creatures is emphatically asserted in Scripture, and the same scripture as we have just quoted: "For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him" (Col. 1:16). He is Creator, not created, and all created things are not only by but for Him. Did He, a creature, create all things for Himself? What is left then for God?

That He is not a creature, though He took on the creature's form, is at once demonstrated by the words which follow. The Holy Spirit anticipated the errors which would deny His glory and therefore we read of Him as the Creator. "For by Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him." It is therefore absolutely certain that the "Firstborn" does not mean that our Lord is a creature, but the Creator. These words which were written by the apostle are revelation. Nor is Paul the only instrument through whom the Spirit of God makes known His glory. John wrote in the beginning of his Gospel the same truth. "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3). The Son of God is therefore the Creator, yet not to the exclusion of the power of the Father, nor the operation of the Spirit.

Still more remarkable is the sixth quotation from Psalm 102. Wonderful as His glory is in the Forty-fifth Psalm, the One hundred second Psalm surpasseth it. No human being would have ever known the real meaning of this psalm if it had not pleased the Spirit of God to give it in this chapter. The little word "and" shows that in verses 25-27 the Son of God is addressed by God as the creator of all things. It is Jehovah's answer to the prayer of His Son suffering as man and dying. "He weakened my strength in the way; He shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days, Thy years are throughout all generations." These words as well as verses 1-11 in this psalm are the expressions of the Man of Sorrows, the suffering Messiah. And Jehovah answers Him and owns Him in His humiliation, approaching the death of the cross, as the Creator. He was ever the same; His years cannot fail. He, the Son of God, had laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of His hands. And He will do, as the Sovereign One, what God attributes to Him. "They shall perish, but Thou abidest; they shall grow old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou roll them up, and they shall be changed, but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." Such is He, whose glory the Spirit of God reveals in the Holy Scriptures, who became Man, suffered and died, and risen from the dead, sits at the right hand of God. He is the unchangeable One, creator and sustainer of the universe.

τοὺς αἰῶνας, in general "the ages," but also beyond just dispute used by Hellenistic Jews for the universe (perhaps as the theatre of the divine dispensations or ages) as here and in Heb. 11:3. See Eccles. 3:11 in the Sept., and elsewhere.

As in Rom. 9 to Gentile saints, so here to Jewish, the apostle proves that Christianity reveals the Messiah in a grandeur far surpassing the imagination of the former or the tradition of the latter. He is Son as none else. He is Heir of the universe; and no wonder. For as He created the worlds, so He upholds all things by the word of His power. Yes, the very Man whom they crucified by the hand of lawless men, who was crucified through weakness! At the moment He bowed His head and expired, He was sustaining all creation. It were absurd to think or say so, had He been only man; but He was God; and the dissolution of the tie between the outer and the inner man in no way touched His almighty power.

Jesus then is not merely the Messianic Heir of the nations as in Psalm 2. He is the Heir of all things as He created all. Compare John 1:3. All things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, are to be summed or headed up in Christ: such is God's good pleasure which He purposed in Him (Eph. 1:9-10). He is exalted accordingly to the highest seat, the pledge of all that is to follow for now we see not yet all things subjected to Him, but we behold Himself crowned with glory and honour. And we know from elsewhere why He does not yet enter on the immense and glorious inheritance. He awaits the calling out of all the joint-heirs whom He will invest with the inheritance at the same time as He takes it Himself; for if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Such are the wondrous counsels of God, through his Son and to His glory, both before the world for a while, and afterward for ever.

Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria in a meeting of his presbyters, appears to have expressed himself rather freely on the subject of the Trinity; when Arius, one of the presbyters, questioned the truth of Alexander's positions, on the ground that they were allied to the Sabellian errors, which had been condemned by the church. This disputation led Arius to state his own views of the Trinity, which were substantially the denial of the Saviour's Godhead — that He was, in fact, only the first and noblest of those created beings whom God the Father formed out of nothing — that, though immeasurably superior in power and in glory to the highest created beings, He is inferior in both to the Father. He also held, that though inferior to the Father in nature and in dignity, He is the image of the Father, and the vicegerent of the divine power by whom He made the worlds. What his views were of the Holy Spirit are not so plainly stated. } Again, Romans 9:5 is a rich and precise expression of Christ's underivative and supreme Godhead equally with the Father and the Spirit. Christ came, "who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen." The efforts of heterodox critics bear witness to the all-importance of the truth, which they vainly essay to shake by unnatural efforts which betray the dissatisfaction of their authors. There is no such emphatic predication of supreme Deity in the Bible: not, of course, that the Father and the Holy Spirit are not co-equal, but because the humiliation of the Son is incarnation and the death of the cross made it fitting that the fullest assertion of divine supremacy should be used of Him. Next, the apostle says of Christ, "who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature; for by Him were all things created, that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him; and He is before all things, and By Him all things consist [subsist]." (Col. 1:15-17) The reveries of the Gnostics are here anticipatively cut off; for Christ is shown to have been chief of all creation because He was Creator, and this of the highest invisible beings as well as of the visible: all things are said to have been created for Him as well as by Him; and as He is before all, so all subsist together in virtue of Him. The only other passage I need now refer to is Hebrews 1, where the apostle illustrates the fulness of Christ's Person among other Old Testament scriptures by Psalms 45 and 102. In the former He is addressed as God and anointed as man; in the latter He is owned as Jehovah, the Creator, after He is heard pouring out His affliction as the rejected Messiah to Jehovah. It is impossible then to accept the Bible without rejecting Arianism as a heinous libel against Christ and the truth; for it is not more certain that He became a man than that He was God before creation Himself the Creator, the Son, and Jehovah. From unpublished MSS of W.K.}

282 But the divine glory of His Being is maintained and secured, when He became incarnate, by the incomprehensibility of His Person. But here too the Father and the Son are carefully distinct. But though I might multiply quotations proving the personality of the Lord before the worlds, this is not quite all - He created the worlds as He upholds them. Thus, in a passage I once had the pleasure of quoting to Mr. Sen, I read: "God … has in these last days spoken to us by (his) Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Here I have, so to speak, the whole career of Christ, down here to speak to us, and gone up and sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. But it is the same by whom God created the worlds - He upholds all things by the word of His power - He is a divine Person, with divine power, but One by whom God made the worlds.

Nor is this all. We find that He holds His place of glory as Head of Creation because He created all things. I read, Colossians 1, "The Son of his love … who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created by him and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the Head of the Body, the Church." I add this last that there may be no question as to the Person spoken of. "All things were created by him and for him." Christianity is not Pantheism either. It is not emanation - it is not evolution - though it does tell us far more, it tells us things were created, and that there was a Creator who now upholds all things by the word of His power; and this Creator was the Son.

His power and glory as the alone effective Creator are next affirmed — "by whom also He made the worlds." Not one, but all. The ages, in the ordered sequence of their ever-flowing course, are the work and ordinances of the Son. God made them by the Son. Creation, under what aspect soever regarded, is a Divine work. The wisdom which designed it, and the power which produced it, are alike of God. But Christ is the wisdom, and Christ is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:24). In the creation, as well as in the administration of the ages and dispensations, He has been (conjointly, in the unity of Godhead, with the Father and the Spirit) the producer, and remains for ever the maintainer of them all. All things consist in Him, for He is God (Col. 1:17).

However the immediate theme before us in chapter 1 is the unique glory of the Son. Immediately He is mentioned our thoughts are swept forward to the moment when His glory shall be fully manifested, and then back to the moment when first it appeared, as far as all created beings are concerned. On the one hand He is the Heir not merely to David's throne but of "all things," and this expression covers things in the heavens and not only things on earth. On the other hand when the worlds were made He was the Maker of them. God created indeed, as we are told in Genesis 1:1, but when the Persons are distinguished, as in this Scripture, creation is attributed not to the Father but to the Son. The Son — whom we know as our blessed Lord Jesus — was the mighty Actor in those creatorial scenes of inconceivable splendour.