One Person, God and Man

And how was the one who was born only recently the same Person who existed before the beginning of the world? Because the same Person who was recently born in human nature was God before all things came to be. And so the name of Christ includes everything that the name of God does. For so close is the union between Christ and God that no one who uses the name of Christ can help speaking of God under the name of Christ, nor, when he speaks of God, can he help speaking of Christ under the name of God. And since through the glory of his holy birth the mystery of each substance is joined together in him, whatever was there, I mean both human and divine, is all regarded as God. [a]

And so the apostle Paul, seeing with the unveiled eyes of faith the whole mystery of the inexpressible glory in Christ, spoke as follows when he invited the peoples who did not know God’s goodness to give thanks to God: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us worthy to share in the lot of the saints in light, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or powers; all things were created by him and in him. And he is before all, and by him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that in all things he may hold the first place. For it pleased the Father that in him all fullness should dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, both the things on earth and the things that are in heaven.”

Surely this needs no further explanation. It is expressed so fully and clearly that it contains in itself not only the substance of the faith but a clear exposition of it. For he tells us to give thanks to the Father, and he adds a weighty reason for giving thanks: because he has made us worthy to share with the saints, has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature; for in him and through him all things were created, and of them he is both the Creator and the ruler. And what follows after this? “He is,” he says, “the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” Scripture speaks of the resurrection as a birth, because as birth is the beginning of life, so resurrection gives birth to life. That is why the resurrection is actually called regeneration, in the words of the Lord: “Truly I tell you, you who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his glory, you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” So he calls him the firstborn from the dead whom he had earlier declared to be the invisible Son and image of God.

But who is the image of the invisible God except the only Son, the Word of God? And how can we say that he rose from the dead who is called the image and Word of the invisible God? And what follows afterward? “So that in all things he may hold the first place; for it pleased the Father that in him all fullness should dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, both the things on earth and the things that are in heaven.” Surely the Creator of all things has no need of the first place in all things? Nor does he who made them need the first place among the things he made? And how can we say of the Word that it pleased God that all fullness should dwell in him as the firstborn from the dead, when he himself was the only Son of God and the Word of God before all things began, and had the invisible Father within him, and so had all fullness within him from the first, so that he might himself be the fullness of all things?

And what next? “Bringing all things to peace through the blood of his cross, both the things on earth and the things that are in heaven.” Certainly he has made it as clear as possible whom he was speaking of when he called him the firstborn from the dead. For are all things reconciled and brought to peace through the blood of the Word, or of the Spirit? Most certainly not. For no kind of suffering can happen to a nature that cannot suffer, nor can the blood of anyone but a man be shed, nor can anyone but a man die. And yet the same Person who is spoken of in the verses that follow as dead was called above the image of the invisible God. How can this be? Because the apostles took every possible care that no one should think there was any division in Christ, or that the Son of God, joined to a son of man, might by wild interpretations be made into two Persons; and so that he who is in himself only one might not, by wrong and wicked notions of ours, be made into a double Person in one nature. So the apostle’s preaching passes most excellently and admirably from the only Son of God to the Son of Man united to the Son of God, so that the exposition of the doctrine might follow the actual course of what happened. He goes on in an unbroken connection and makes, as it were, a kind of bridge, so that without any gap or separation you might find at the end of time the one we read of at the beginning of the world. So you might not, by admitting some division and false separation, imagine that the Son of God was one person in the flesh and another in the Spirit, when the apostle’s teaching had so linked God and man together through the mystery of his birth in the body as to show that the same Person who reconciled all things to himself on the cross had been proclaimed the image of the invisible God before the foundation of the world.