Hi John,<\/p>\n
I was reading in Colossian 1:18 when I had a question about the Son of God being the “firstborn from the dead”.\u00a0 I remembered before Jesus died that Elijah had raised from the dead the son of the widow woman the Lord had sent him to dwell with and that Jesus had raised Lazareth from the dead. After this thought I asked you what the difference was in being raised from the dead and being the firstborn from the dead. Without any hesitaton you looked at me and said the difference was that the Widow’s son and Lazareth had to die again.
\n\u00a0
\nWhen I read this chapter the first time I had really good feelings while reading it.\u00a0 After talking with you, I told Doris about you telling me about the difference between being raised from the dead and being the firstborn from the dead and the good feelings I had from reading in Colossians. Then she wanted us to read it together. As she was reading I was following along in another translation. When we read Col 1:18 it said “he is the head of the body, the congregation. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that he might become the one who is first in all things”. It was the first time I had thought about the Father wanting his Son to be first in all things.
\n\u00a0
\nI thought about a few things the Son was first in and went on doing something else. During the next week I started having thoughts pop up while driving down the road, in the shower, at work, etc about different times the Son was first. I was having so many thoughts I couldn’t remember them all so I started writing them down on a scratch pad at work. Before I could write them all down I started forgetting some of the thoughts so I carried the scratch pad in my pocket and eventually filled up both sides of the paper. The list grew to where I felt I needed to type it out. Below are the “firsts” that the Lord gave me.
\n\u00a0
\nThe Son of God is the:
\nFirst creation of God
\nFirst born of every creature
\nFirst created in image of God
\nFirst Son of God
\nFirst to see God
\nFirst to feel the love of God
\nFirst to love God
\nFirst to feel the joy of God
\nFirst to feel the peace of God
\nFirst to please God
\nFirst to be God’s daily delight
\nFirst to love righteousness
\nFirst to hate evil
\nFirst to hate lawlessness
\nFirst to love government
\nFirst to love judgment
\nFirst to create after the Father
\nFirst to love us
\n\u00a0
\nFirst and only one Holy enough to be made a sacrifice
\nFirst begotten son of God
\nFirst to exist in God’s form to divest himself and be made in likeness of man
\nFirst to receive holy Ghost on earth
\nFirst to overcome the sins of the world
\n\u00a0
\nFirst to die for the sins of man
\nFirst to go to Hades and return
\nFirst born from the dead
\nFirst to enter through the veil
\nFirst to ascend into heaven and offer himself as a sacrifice to God
\nFirst to become high priest forever with a priest hood that is unchangeable
\nFirst to receive a glorified body
\nFirst to be consecrated forever more
\nFirst to be given a name above all names
\nFirst to sit down at the Father’s right hand
\nFirst to offer forgiveness of sins to fallen man
\nFirst to offer eternal salvation to fallen man
\nFirst to offer man the opportunity to be one with the Father and him
\nFirst king to be on the throne forever
\nFirst to be appointed heir of all things
\nFirst and only one to have all things put in subjection under his feet
\nFirst to have children from a spiritual seed
\nFirst and only one able to open the scroll with the 7 seals
\n\u00a0
\nThe past week has really been good with the Lord giving me all these wonderful thoughts about the Son being first. During this time the Lord also helped me find the scripture “who, existing in God’s form, did not consider equality with God as a prize to be seized upon; instead, he divested himself, assuming the form of a slave, made in the likeness of men”.\u00a0 I could not remember how this scripture read and I couldn’t find it in the Bible.\u00a0 I remembered it was in the book you are writing about the Father and Son, but I didn’t know where to look. When I opened the Father and Son book I had a paper clip at the last place I had read.\u00a0 I don’t know why but I started looking for the scripture where the paperclip was.\u00a0 God is good!\u00a0 He knew I didn’t have a clue where the scripture was, and I turned right to the page with this scripture.
\n\u00a0
\nI have enjoyed this time thinking about the Son being first in all things.\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nRandell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi John, I was reading in Colossian 1:18 when I had a question about the Son of God being the “firstborn from the dead”.\u00a0 I remembered before Jesus died that Elijah had raised from the dead the son of the widow woman the Lord had sent him to dwell with and that Jesus had raised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}