The Preeminence of Jesus Christ: Why He Must Be First
Preeminence means having first place, and Scripture gives that place to Jesus Christ. He is the Creator to whom we owe our existence and the Savior who gave His blood for sinners. I don’t think we have understood either claim if we treat Him as someone to consult when we need help and disregard when His commands interfere with our plans.
The Scriptures Testify of Him
In John 5, Jesus had healed a man on the Sabbath. The religious leaders objected, and their hostility intensified when He spoke of His relationship with the Father. These were men who considered themselves serious students of Scripture, so Jesus appealed to the very writings they claimed to honor:
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.
Jesus went on to say that they were unwilling to come to Him for life. He also told them that if they believed Moses, they would believe Him, because Moses had written about Him. They were not being asked to abandon Scripture in order to receive Jesus. Their refusal contradicted the testimony they professed to believe.
I need to take that warning personally. If I can explain a passage accurately but keep rationalizing my refusal to obey it, knowing the text has not excused my conduct. I may win an argument and still need to repent. Our study should lead us to trust Christ and receive His correction, including when His Word exposes something we would rather defend.
Reading the Old Testament in that way requires care. Before applying a command to ourselves, we need to know whom God addressed and what He required of them. Historical accounts record events that actually happened, while a lament gives words to grief and a proverb teaches wisdom for ordinary life. Those different purposes should guide our reading. We should not turn every sentence into a prediction about Jesus or invent a hidden symbol because it sounds impressive.
Those writings nevertheless belong to one inspired revelation. God’s promises and covenants prepare us for Christ, while the sacrifices show the seriousness of sin and our need for God’s provision. The priesthood teaches us why sinners need a mediator, someone who brings them before God. Kings and prophets point beyond the limits of their own service, and the wisdom of Scripture prepares us to recognize the wisdom of the Son. Scripture’s warnings expose our need for rescue; its promised hope ultimately depends on His resurrection.
Christ did not suddenly become relevant when we reached Matthew. Jesus Himself said the earlier Scriptures testified of Him. We need to follow the connections He and His apostles explain, while respecting what each earlier passage meant to the people who first received it.
God Has Spoken in His Son
Paul opened Hebrews by reminding believers under pressure that God had spoken through Israel’s prophets. Their message was inspired and authoritative, though God had revealed His purpose in stages. Now He had spoken through the Son:
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.
Jesus did not simply become the next prophet in a long succession. He is the eternal Son through whom the Father made the worlds and whom He appointed heir of everything. The One who makes the Father known is also the rightful ruler of what He created.
Hebrews 1:3 describes Him as the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. The Father and Son are distinct Persons, but the Son reveals the Father perfectly. When Jesus took human flesh, He did not become a lesser version of God. He remained God the Son while living a truly human life.
The same verse says that after He had purged our sins by Himself, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Priests under the old covenant kept offering sacrifices because those offerings could not provide final cleansing. Christ offered Himself once and completed that work. He does not need to suffer again, and we do not need another sacrifice to finish what His blood accomplished.
We can therefore come to the Father through Him because He has actually dealt with our sin. Jesus has given us more than instructions about how salvation works. He is the Savior who provides the cleansing we could not obtain for ourselves.
Creator, Sustainer, and Firstborn Over Creation
Paul gave a fuller explanation of Christ’s supremacy in Colossians. He wrote from prison after hearing about the believers through Epaphras. In chapter 2, he warned against teaching that drew people away from Christ through human philosophy and religious demands. It included rules about food and religious days, the worship of angels, and severe treatment of the body. That last practice is often called asceticism, the attempt to gain spiritual benefit through strict self-denial.
These practices could look humble or impressively disciplined without giving people the life they needed. Paul told the Colossians they were already complete in Christ. They did not need to seek spiritual fullness from angels or submit to man-made restrictions that promised to improve on what He had given them. In chapter 1, he had already explained that even those angels owed their existence to the Son:
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.
Paul goes on to say that everything was created through Christ and for Him. The visible world owes its existence to Him, and so does the unseen realm. Heavenly beings are His creatures, including those who have rebelled against Him. Earthly rulers also remain accountable to their Maker, however powerful they appear.
John begins his Gospel by identifying the Word who existed before anything was made:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John then says that all things were made through Him. The Word was already there when creation began; He cannot be one of the things that came into existence through His own work. He was with God and was Himself God, personally distinct from the Father while sharing the divine nature.
Colossians 1:15 calls the Son the image of the invisible God. The Greek word eikon means an image or representation, but Paul’s surrounding explanation rules out treating Jesus as a created copy. God is truly made known in His Son. Jesus could say that whoever had seen Him had seen the Father without claiming to be the same Person as the Father.
We need that context when we read “firstborn over all creation.” The Greek prototokos means “firstborn,” and it can refer to rank and inheritance as well as birth order. In Exodus 4, God called Israel His firstborn, although other nations existed before Israel. In Psalm 89, He promised to make David His firstborn and explained the position as highest among the kings of the earth. David was the youngest son in his family, so the title clearly concerned his appointed standing.
Paul likewise describes Christ’s supreme place over creation and His right as heir. Reading the title as though it meant the first creature God made would contradict the next verse, which says that all created things came through Him. Jesus also claimed divine identity in John 8:58 when He said, “before Abraham was, I AM.” His existence did not begin with His birth in Bethlehem.
The worship Jesus receives agrees with that identity. Thomas confessed Him as “My Lord and my God,” believers call on His name, and heaven honors the Lamb. A creature has no right to accept the worship that belongs to God. Jesus receives it because He is the eternal Son, who can truly reveal the Father and accomplish the redemption no creature could provide.
Paul also says that all things consist in Christ. He did not create a universe capable of existing independently of Him and then withdraw. He upholds it now, so even our next breath depends on Him. Human rulers can do real harm, and spiritual opposition is real, but neither possesses independent life or unlimited authority. Seeking secret spiritual help from angels or other created powers would turn us away from the Son who made them, as though His provision were insufficient.
The Law and the Prophets Reach Their Goal in Christ
The Son who made all things also brings God’s earlier revelation to its intended fulfillment. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addressed the idea that His teaching set aside the Old Testament:
Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.
Genesis 3:15 promised the woman’s Seed, who would defeat the serpent while suffering in the conflict. Later, at the first Passover, God appointed the lamb’s blood as the mark of protection while judgment fell on Egypt. Israel really was delivered from bondage; the event was not merely an illustration waiting for a future meaning. Yet 1 Corinthians 5:7 identifies Christ as our Passover, sacrificed for us. The earlier deliverance helps us understand the greater deliverance God has provided through Him.
The priesthood likewise ordered Israel’s worship while teaching that sinful people need a mediator to approach God. Its sacrifices showed the seriousness of sin and the need for His provision. Each offering had its own purpose, so we should not treat all those instructions as interchangeable symbols. Later Scripture explains how the priesthood and sacrifices anticipated Christ, whose offering provides the final cleansing they could not accomplish.
Jesus fulfills the offices of Prophet, Priest, and King in one Person. The perfect Prophet who reveals the Father is also the Priest who offered Himself and now intercedes for His people, representing them before the Father. He is the King whose reign will never end. Moses did not complete God’s whole redemptive purpose, nor did Aaron’s priesthood provide final cleansing. David and Solomon could not establish the promised everlasting kingdom. Even the prophets who faithfully delivered God’s words directed His people toward what He would accomplish beyond their own lifetimes.
When John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, he was announcing the Savior these earlier provisions had prepared people to recognize. We can explain those connections from Scripture without searching for clever meanings in every incidental detail.
Preeminent in Redemption
We have sinned against the One who made us, so we need more than an explanation of His authority. We need to know how guilty people can be reconciled to Him. Colossians 1:20 says that peace was made through the blood of His cross. Our reconciliation rests on what He actually suffered and accomplished, rather than on the inspiration we might draw from His example.
Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, who lived without sin. He willingly offered Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His sacrifice was sufficient because He was perfect and gave His own blood and life for us. Wicked men inflicted real torture on His innocent body and crucified Him. His saving offering was complete when He shed His blood and died. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus; Father and Son remained united in redeeming us.
Before His crucifixion, Jesus explained His coming death in a conversation with Nicodemus. He referred to an earlier act of God’s mercy, when Israelites dying from serpent bites had been told to look toward the bronze serpent Moses lifted up. Jesus connected that event with what He would do for sinners:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
God had appointed the remedy and promised life to those who looked. In the same way, sinners must receive the life God offers through faith in His Son. We cannot place Jesus alongside competing ways of salvation and still accept His teaching about why He had to be lifted up.
After completing His sacrifice, Jesus was buried and rose bodily from the dead. Colossians calls Him the firstborn from the dead, so that He has preeminence in everything. Lazarus and others had been brought back to mortal life and still faced death. Jesus rose into immortal resurrection life and will never die again. He has first place in the new creation, and His resurrection guarantees that His people will also be raised bodily. Our hope extends beyond the survival of our spirits.
Christ died for the whole world, and God’s offer of salvation is genuine for every person, though people can resist His grace and reject Him. Everyone who repents and believes is born again and made a new creation. The Holy Spirit comes to live within that believer and seals him for redemption, making him eternally secure in Christ. The Savior who shed His blood keeps His sheep and will bring them safely home, but He also corrects them when needed. I cannot appeal to His faithfulness as an excuse to disregard the holiness He commands.
Head of the Church and Lord of All
The church belongs to the living Lord who rules and intercedes for His people now. We are not merely preserving the teachings of a founder whose life has ended. Colossians names Him as Head of His body, the church, and Ephesians 1 describes His authority over every principality and power. He is Head over all things for the good of His church. A congregation belongs to Him, even if a pastor, donor, or influential family has begun acting as though it were theirs. Neither longstanding tradition nor current preferences can usurp His authority.
A pastor’s responsibility is to teach Christ’s Word, not to turn his own preferences into commands simply because he can announce them from a pulpit. When a ministry asks for loyalty, we need to know whether it is asking people to obey Scripture or to protect a preacher’s reputation. If a leader has done wrong, calling truthful correction an attack on the ministry shields him from accountability and allows the wrong to continue.
We can keep a full schedule of services and events while neglecting what Jesus told us to do. Faithfulness has to be judged by His Word, including the love He commands toward the people in our care. Worship should direct our attention to Him, and correction should help a believer obey Him. A leader who humiliates someone into compliance has no right to call that conduct obedience to Christ.
His authority extends beyond those who presently acknowledge Him. Philippians 2 describes the eternal Son humbling Himself by taking a servant’s form and becoming truly human. He obeyed the Father all the way to death on the cross. God then highly exalted Him, giving Him the name above every name, before which every knee will bow. He already shared God’s form before humbling Himself; His exaltation did not turn a creature into God. Creation will finally acknowledge the Lord so many now refuse.
I also need to recognize His authority outside a church service. If I am willing to mislead someone to get what I want, reading my Bible that morning has not made the dishonesty acceptable. I need to stop rationalizing it and tell the truth. The same Lord governs how I treat my family and fulfill my responsibilities at work. He has authority over those decisions because the life I use to make them already depends on Him.
Religious knowledge, moral effort, and a Christian family background cannot give us life. We must come to the Son by faith. Once we belong to Him, obedience should grow out of that new life and become evident in what we do. I have no right to insist that some part of my life is my own business when I was made through Christ and for Him.
My Final Thoughts
I want to understand Scripture well, but I don’t want to become so pleased with what I can explain that I resist what Christ tells me to do. He is the Lord who made me, the Redeemer who shed His blood for sinners, and the risen Savior who keeps His people. When His Word exposes a sin I have been defending, the proper response is to repent and obey Him. A study of His preeminence should bring me to that response, rather than leave me satisfied with knowing what the word means.