“The Firstborn of Every Creature” (Col.1:15)
Fr. Campbell
“Everyone
who believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And everyone who
loves him who begot, loves also the one begotten of him” (1Jn.5:1).
“Who
is the liar,” says St. John, “but he who denies that Jesus is the
Christ? He is the Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. No one
who disowns the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the
Father also” (1Jn.2:22,23).
But
not so the world! In denying the Son, it has denied the Father also. It
does not have the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit. The result is
confusion and chaos. Those who are deceived by the world can find no
satisfactory answers, and for them life has lost its meaning. Despair is
the result. There are many suicides. Often they take the lives of
others before taking their own. Some kill themselves by degrees through
drugs and alcohol. Hundreds of millions enter this world only to starve
to death or to die of aids and other diseases. We are haunted by wars
and threatening disasters. But St. John assures us,
“He who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1Jn.2:23).
During
the early years of the fourth century there arose the great heresy of
Arianism. In the year of Our Lord 319, Arians could be heard singing the
refrain which denied the divinity of the Son and almost destroyed
Christianity: “There was a time when the Son was not.” In order to put
an end to the terrible controversy that developed, the Emperor
Constantine called together the Council of Nicea in the year 325, at
which it was defined that the Son is “one in substance with the Father.”
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 dealt the decisive blow to the Arian
heresy, defining that Jesus Christ is a Divine Person having two
natures, human and divine. These two natures are united in such a way
that they remain distinct in the one Person of the Son. This is called
the “hypostatic union.” Jesus Christ is therefore one of us, “like us in
all things but sin” (Heb.4:15), but in His divine nature is one with
the Father.
Jesus declared to the Apostle Philip: “Philip, he who sees me sees also the Father” (Jn.14:9).
He
declared His own divinity when He took to Himself the name God revealed
to Moses on Mount Sinai – “I AM”. “Amen, amen,” Jesus said to His
adversaries: “I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM” (Jn.8:58).
The excuse for His crucifixion was His claim to divinity, for which He
was accused of blasphemy by the Pharisees: “They therefore took up
stones to cast at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out from the
temple” (Jn.8:59).
Only
thirty years after Our Lord’s crucifixion, in 63 A.D., St. Paul refers
to a hymn of the Christians at that time which testifies to Christ’s
divinity:
“Have
this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who though he was by
nature God, did not consider being equal to God a thing to be clung to,
but emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave and being made like
unto men. And appearing in the form of men, he humbled himself, becoming
obedient to death, even to death on a cross” (Phil.2:5-8).
Everything,
the whole economy of salvation, depends upon the man Jesus Christ being
truly God. If Jesus is not God we are not redeemed, we are all on our
way to Hell. Pope St. Leo the Great explains this in one of his letters:
“The
divine nature and the nature of a servant were to be united in one
person so that the Creator of time might be born in time, and he through
whom all things were made might be brought forth in their midst. For
unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh,
had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had
stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the
Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to
his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion
of Satan.”
In
discussing the question of man’s participation in the Divine Nature by
grace, St. Augustine remarked: “God became man that man might become
God.” In his Confessions he speaks to God about the key point in his conversion:
“I
looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did
not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed
forever.”
To this day we pray the Nicene Creed in the Traditional Latin Mass:
“I
believe …in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God. Born
of the Father before all ages. God of God; Light of Light; true God of
true God. Begotten not made; consubstantial with the Father; by Whom all
things were made. Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from
heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, AND WAS
MADE MAN…”
No
mere man could be “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the
world,” atoning to God the Father for the sins of men, but a MAN WHO IS
GOD can bridge the gap between earth and Heaven, between Humanity and
Divinity. And the Son of Man, Jesus Christ is that MAN. In the words of
St. Paul:
