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Testament period. Since God had not yet produced His Son, it was not the Son who said, "Let
there be light." It was Yahweh, the One God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who, unaccompanied
(Isaiah 44:24) spoke the Genesis creation into existence. It was God, not the Son Jesus, who rested
from the work of creation (Hebrews 4:4). The Son was reserved for the New Testament period.
The Son is the historical climax of God's speaking to the human race. To make the Son a spokes-
man before that time flies in the face of Hebrews 1:1-2.

As the image of God, Jesus is the visible manifestation of his Father. "God was in Christ"
(it does not say God was Christ) reconciling the world to Himself (II Corinthians 5:19). Jesus was
in the visible "form of God" -- a human being, sinless, virginally conceived, of whom it has to be
said that "in seeing him you have seen the Father" (John 14:9). This does not of course mean that
Jesus is the Father. He reflects the Father. He is the Father's ultimate and final appeal to the world
to hear and obey. The issues at stake are nothing less than our personal destiny -- to be lost or
saved.

Jesus is the second Adam destined in the future to be the man who arrives from heaven to
raise the dead. "The Last Adam...the second man is the Lord from heaven" (I Corinthians 15:45,
47). "From heaven we expect a Savior" (Philemon 3:20). How terribly confusing it would be to
say that the second Adam really preceded the first Adam. Jesus is the final Adam. He comes into
existence AFTER the first Adam. That last Adam, Jesus, is the heavenly one who descends at the
Second Coming from his heavenly session at the right hand of God, where he is currently the Man
Messiah Jesus, in contrast to the One God, his Father (I Timothy 2:5).

In Colossians 1:15-18 Paul is describing that human being Jesus. He pins down the iden-
tity of his subject by introducing him: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation. It is important to remember that Jesus is the firstborn of the New Creation. Firstborn is the
title of the Messiah par excellence. It derives from Psalm 89:26, 27; compare Psalm 80:17. The
Messiah did not precede Adam literally. He is, however, the one for whom (eis) and because of
whom (en) and through whom (dia, not upo, "by") God created all authorities in heaven and on
earth. In that hierarchy Jesus ranks ahead of all. Jesus was the occasion for the creation. The uni-
verse is his inheritance, and he achieves his status at the right hand of God by being the firstborn
from the dead (Colossians 1:18) -- the first to be brought back from death to indestructible life.
Remember, then, that Paul is talking about Jesus, the visible image of God. This excludes immedi-
ately a Jesus who was invisible before his birth as a man. Such a theory -- that there was a pre-
human person called Jesus -- is excluded from Paul's account. He is interested in the history and
triumph of the image of God, the human being Jesus who was seen and touched. Paul knew nothing
of a preexisting righteous angel who became a man -- righteous angels are immortal (Luke 20:36),
and Jesus died. The New Testament Savior is not a "God-Man" (a good Greek word is available,
theanthropos, but it appears nowhere in the Bible). Nor is he an Angel-Man. The whole point of
the identity of Jesus is missed if we do not accept him as the Man Messiah, Mediator between God
and the human race (I Timothy 2:5).

An unfortunate mistranslation makes Colossians 1:15 difficult for the reader of many ver-
sions. The celebrated Expositor's Greek New Testament declares plainly, "The text does not say
'all things were made by him [the Son]'" The point is that the preposition "in" him has a flexible
range of meanings. Turner's Grammar of New Testament Greek suggests "because of him." The

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