It is true that we believe the Son is the Firstborn of all creation, but our belief is not according to the teaching of Arius but according to the pure revelation of the Bible. The Bible says that Christ is the Firstborn of all creation not according to His divinity but according to His humanity. According to His divinity, He is the eternal God, the Creator; however, since He became flesh and put on a body of flesh and blood, He also possesses humanity. Hence, in the aspect of His being a man, He has humanity and is a creature.

In the Council of Nicaea, convened in A.D. 325, Arianism was condemned as a heresy. This is why up to the present almost no one dares to teach that Christ is a creature. Nevertheless, in church history, still there were some who properly taught that Christ is both the Creator and the Firstborn of all creation. Such ones include Robert Govett and his student D. M. Panton in the beginning of the twentieth century; based upon Colossians 1:15b, they clearly said that Christ is the Firstborn of all creation. This is according to the revelation of the Scriptures. If you do not believe this, you fall into the heresy of the Docetists, referred to in 1 John 4, who did not believe that Christ came in the flesh (vv. 1-3). The Docetists advocated that Jesus was not a real man but simply appeared to be; to them He was merely a phantasm. They asserted that the body of the Lord Jesus was not a real body but was merely a phantom. This is altogether a heresy; such a heresy undermines not only the incarnation of the Lord Jesus but also His redemption and resurrection.

We firmly believe that the Lord Jesus became a creature through incarnation. Perhaps some would say that since the Lord Jesus was incarnated two thousand years ago and Adam was created six thousand years ago, and since there were other created beings before Adam, the Lord Jesus could not have been the Firstborn of all creation. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Bible readers acknowledge that heavens and earth here do not merely refer to the heavens and the earth per se, but they refer to all the heavenly things and all the things on the earth, all the things that belong to the realms of the heavens and the earth, included among which are the angels, the living things on the earth, and even Satan, since he was the top archangel before the fall (cf. Ezek. 28:13-15). According to man’s view, Satan may be considered the first of the creation, because in the Bible he is addressed as “Daystar, son of the dawn” (Isa. 14:12), indicating that he was created at the beginning of the creation of the universe. But this is not God’s view. According to God’s eternal view, Christ is the Firstborn of all creation.

I have the basis to say this. Revelation 13:8 says that Christ is “the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.” Concerning the crucifixion of Christ, however, the prophecy in Daniel 9:25-27 clearly says, “From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of Messiah the Prince will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks....And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah will be cut off.” The Messiah, referring to the Lord Jesus, was cut off at the fullness of the sixty-ninth week of the seventy weeks. History tells us that the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem occurred in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king (Neh. 1:1; 2:1-8). After seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, that is, four hundred eighty-three years, that was exactly the year of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. Thus, according to man’s viewpoint, Christ was crucified less than two thousand years ago; how then could Revelation say that Christ was slain from the foundation of the world? This is God’s view. According to this principle, we can understand that in eternity past the three of the Godhead held a council, in which it was decided that the second-the Son-of the Divine Trinity would come to be incarnated as a creature. From that time on, in God’s eternal view, God the Son had become a creature, even the Firstborn of all creation.

Not only the Triune God as a mystery is difficult to understand and impossible to comprehend, but even incarnation is a mystery that is hard for people to understand. According to man’s view, the Lord Jesus did not become flesh until two thousand years ago. Yet Genesis 18 says that when Jehovah came with two angels to visit Abraham, He had a physical body. Abraham brought water to wash His feet and prepared a rich meal for Him. Nearly all orthodox Bible scholars acknowledge that the Jehovah there is the Christ in the New Testament (John 8:56-58). As early as the time of Abraham, Christ had already appeared in a bodily form. This is truly difficult to explain or comprehend. However, according to God’s view, the Firstborn of all creation is Christ. This is why He also became the instrument, the means, through which all creation came into being (John 1:3; Col. 1:16).

In summary, the three-the Father, the Son, and the Spirit-all are from eternity to eternity, being equally eternal, without beginning and without ending, and existing at the same time.
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