Page 20 - BV18

20 Colossians 1:15-20

Colossians 3:10: “Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its
practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the im-
age of its creator.”

2 Corinthians 5:17: “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed
away; behold, new things have come.”

Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that
God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”

Just as those of us are created new in Christ, so will the earth and heavens. This is what is re-
ferred to as the New Earth and the New Heavens in the Messianic kingdom.

Revelation 21:1: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the
former earth had passed away.”

Creation was also made subject to sin, but in Christ, in his kingdom, it too will be a new cre-
ation.

Romans 8:20-22: “For creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but be-
cause of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery
to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

Creation will be set free and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God in the Mes-
sianic kingdom, the age to come.

This is how everything is created “IN CHRIST.”

The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume 2 pg. 254-256, sums it up
best:

“Adam was by nature endowed with original righteousness. He had a moral likeness to
God; he possessed holiness although he was in no sense equal to God. What he lost in the
Fall was original righteousness, and thenceforth the slant of his life was affected by sin.
But there are elements in man which he did not lose — elements having to do with the im-
age of God as a person or personality — traits such as self-consciousness, self-deter-
mination, superiority over nature, creativity, and the like. The restoration (a process) of
these human powers plus original righteousness awaits the new creation, the new birth,
THE INDWELLING OF CHRIST, so that a Christian may say with Paul, ‘It is no longer I
who live, but Christ who lives in me.’ The hope of the Christian faith is the full attainment
of that new nature...after the image of its creator."

17a. “He is before all things,”

This has nothing to do with time. It does not mean that Yeshua preexisted before his birth to
Mary. It has to do with rank or position. It is an echo of 15b and 18c.

The Berean Voice November-December 2002