What Does the Bible Say About God and Jesus? - Jesus a Separate Creation

WHILE on earth, Jesus was a human, although a perfect one because it was God who transferred the life-force of Jesus to the womb of Mary.  (Matthew 1:18-25)  But that is not how he began. He himself declared that he had "descended from heaven." (John 3:13)  So it was only natural that he would later say to his followers: "What if you should see the Son of man [Jesus] ascend to where he was before?" - JOHN 6:62, NJB.

Thus, Jesus had an existence in heaven before coming to earth.  But was it one of the persons in an almighty, eternal tribune Godhead? No, for the Bible plainly states that in his prehuman existence, Jesus was  a created spirit being, just as angels were spirit beings created by God. Neither the angels nor Jesus had existed before their creation.  

Jesus, in his prehuman existence,  was "the first-born of all creation."  (Colossians 1:15, NJB)  He was  "the beginning of God's creation." (Revelation 3:14, RS, Catholic edition)  "Beginning" [Greek, ar-kehe'] cannot lightly  be interpreted to mean that Jesus was the beginner of God's creation.  In his Bible writings, John uses various forms of the Greek word ar-khe' more than 20 times, and these always have common meaning of "beginning." Yes, Jesus was created by God as the beginning of God's invisible creations. 

Notice how closely those references to the origin of Jesus correlated with expressions uttered by the figurative "Wisdom" in the Bible book of Proverbs:  "Yaweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works.  Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I came to birth; before he had made the earth, the countryside, and the first elements of the world." (Proverbs 8:12. 22. 25. 26, NJB)  While the term "Wisdom" is used to personify the one  whom God created, most scholars agree that it is actually a figure of speech for Jesus as a spirit creature prior to his human existence.

Next time: What Does the Bible Say About God and Jesus? - Conclusion of Jesus  a Separate Creation

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