What does Colossians 1:16 mean when it says "For by him were all things created..."

[Matthias]

The mortal man dies-- he is mortal.

The spiritual man doesn't die with him when the mortal man dies. The nature of that mortal man is human flesh. The spirit inside the mortal shell, sheds that shell and returns to God, not "as" God, but as spirit-- which is his nature. The mortal shell is cast off, the immortal spirit returns and stands judgment before God who determines if it should endure (remain immortal) or be destroyed.

When you put on your coat, your coat doesn't become you. It's just a covering for you.

That doesn’t fit with resurrection, does it?

 

[Mr E]

You’re a Southern California man. Are you familiar with Herbert W. Armstrong and his son, Garner Ted Armstrong? The Worldwide Church of God? Pasadena, California.

They taught that there are two Gods in the God family. They further taught that the destiny of men was to become Gods in the God family.

I've heard of him and have no interest in him. Nor Ellen White, or Charles Taze, or Joseph Smith or any number of such self-proclaimed teachers and leaders of organizations that I don't find particularly well organized in thought.

 

[Peterlag]

That is a good question, Peterlag! It's in the Greek dictionary for everyone to read, and should be read.

The Greek word for "form" is "morphe" and refers to outward appearance in general. It is only used 3 times in the New Testament.

In Mark 16:12, it is used as "another form" when Christ' outer appearance was changed that He would be unrecognizable.

In Phil. 2:6, He exists in the "form of God." In Phil. 2:7, He exists in the "form of a servant."

The change that has taken place here must be taken into context. He existed in the "form of God" in heaven, and in the "form of a servant" on earth. In these 2 verses Paul tells us that Christ "made Himself of no reputation and took on the form of a servant."

This change is one of expression of who He was and who He became to be. He emptied Himself of His heavenly "form" and took on the earthly "form of a servant." He changed from the form of God to the form of a man, which means the entire being of who He was and who He became has changed, and not just in outward appearance.

So you agree that the evidence clearly reveals that "morphe" does not refer to Christ's inner essential being, but rather to an outward appearance? So again Jesus did not change his essential nature when he was with the men on the road to Emmaus. He simply had a different outward appearance.

 

[Mr E]

That doesn’t fit with resurrection, does it?

It absolutely does. Maybe it doesn't fit with your understanding of resurrection. It fits perfectly with mine. It's not the mortal body that gets 'brought back to life.'

 

[Matthias]

It absolutely does. Maybe it doesn't fit with your understanding of resurrection. It fits perfectly with mine. It's not the mortal body that gets 'brought back to life.'

Thanks. Our respective understandings of resurrection do appear to be different.

Dr. Cullmann writes about what I believe.

“Only he who apprehends with the first Christians the horror of death, who takes death seriously as death, can comprehend the Easter exultation of the primitive Christian community and understand that the whole thinking of the New Testament is governed by belief in the Resurrection. Belief in the immortality of the soul is not belief in a revolutionary event. Immortality, in fact, is only a negative assertion : the soul does not die, but simply lives on. Resurrection is a positive assertion: the whole man, who has really died, is recalled to life by a new act of creation by God.”

(Oscar Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?, pp. 26-27)

 

[Matthias]

It absolutely does. Maybe it doesn't fit with your understanding of resurrection. It fits perfectly with mine. It's not the mortal body that gets 'brought back to life.'

Our conversation in this thread began with your inquiry to me.

You really believe that Jesus is a human person in heaven right now?

I appreciated the question then and still appreciate it now.

You continued in that initial inquiry,

I hope you give that idea full (re)consideration.

Your hope has been realized, at least in part. Through our conversation I’ve given “that idea” reconsideration. You helped me to do that by working through it with me. I gained from the experience, and I thank you for that. I still believe that mortal man will either become immortal man or cease to exist.

Finally, this …

It confounds most things you get right about him.

What would you think if I were to say these words, your words, to you?

This is the most important thing remaining from our conversation for me to address.

 

[Mr E]

Finally, this …

What would you think if I were to say these words to you?

Are you offended by them? If you posed those words to me (and asked me to rethink a premise) I would wonder and ask what inconsistency it was that you were referring to. Then, if you were to respond to that inquiry, I would re-examine the premise and see if you were right in thinking it inconsistent - confounding the other things I've said.

Incidentally, you never explained your answer to the original question that began the conversation, did you? How can a "mortal human person" be in heaven?

 

[Matthias]

Are you offended by them?

No. I wasn’t then and I’m not now.

They could cause offense. They could turn off. They could shut down. They could end conversation. They could end friendship.

It’s because of that potential that I don’t use them in conversation.

We’ve known one another on the Internet for several years now. I had a decision to make; a choice. The potential is there in your words but, because I know you as well as I do, there was no real chance of that happening. My decision, my choice, was an easy one to make.

Had it been said to me by someone I don’t know as well as I know you, I might have made a different decision.

I’m not chastising you over them. I’m thanking you for them. They gave me a segue - in a safe and friendly environment - to comment on something which has been weighing on my mind.

Our words are spirit and they have power. We all need to be careful with them. They can work for us and they can work against us.

If you posed those words to me (and asked me to rethink a premise) I would wonder and ask what inconsistency it was that you were referring to. Then, if you were to respond to that inquiry, I would re-examine the premise and see if you were right in thinking it inconsistent - confounding the other things I've said.

Which is precisely what occurred with me in the course of our conversation.

Incidentally, you never explained your answer to the original question that began the conversation, did you? How can a "mortal human person" be in heaven?

I’ve never believed that a mortal human person can be in heaven. In fact, I’ve said that no mortal human person is in heaven, nor ever will be.

What I’ve said, and what I’ve believed for a long time now, is that an immortal human person is sitting at the right hand of his God and my God in heaven right now.

I don’t see anything in scripture which leads me to think that any other human person who will be clothed with immortality when resurrected from the dead will ever be in heaven at any time. I leave open the possibility that it could happen sometime but the action such persons will be involved in will take place on the earth.

 

[Wrangler]

Paul said in Heb.1:3 that Christ is "the express image of His person" that is the exact reproduction of God the Father in the flesh.

No it is not! An image is an image, NOT the thing it is an image of.

 

[Peterlag]

No it is not! An image is an image, NOT the thing it is an image of.

Exactly. And by the way I understand what you meant when you said in another post something about we were not called to be students. It made me think of what I once wrote years ago which is...

I have become very aware that in the biblical field there is a vast difference between someone who has been "educated" on a subject versus someone who can do the subject successfully. Just because a person has studied a subject doesn't mean they can do it. A student who has been educated on a subject has only proven they can be a student successfully. They have not proven they can do the subject.

 

[Wrangler]

Perhaps I should have qualified that statement by saying "every serious Bible student should require of themselves a thorough and exhaustive investigation of the Bible and what it teaches".

This is an @Aunty Jane decree not a mandate from God.

If you have no idea what Christ taught, how do you follow HIS mandates?

Appeal to Strawman. I knew there was a risk that rather than accepting correction, you'd challenge every point. No one said only JW's Aunty Jane has an idea of what Jesus said.

The 'how' has been explained to you many times. You just don't have ears to hear.

The trinity consists of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It does not consist of the F, S & thorough and exhaustive knowledge of the Bible and what it teaches. 10 years ago, I was intellectually snobbish like you. A powerful sermon asserted that we do not have an intellectually aloof God. We have an emotional God who cares about us deeply and wants a personal relationship with us. Powerful. Even the intellectually superficial can grasp it.

 

[Wrangler]

you seem to have an aversion to knowledge that appears to be deeper than your own. Why is that?

Oy vey! I'm not going to answer tit for tat your defense mechanisms to defend your idol of knowledge.

Implied in this statement is you are the keeper of deeper knowledge than me. Pride this is.

Your preference to show off your knowledge may be a JW failing to not meet people where they are. For instance, in another thread, I asked a simple yes or no question; do JW's believe the angel Michael is the pre-carnate Jesus. A 2 or 3 letter reply would suffice. (Yes or no )Instead you pontificated for paragraphs!

It's a real turn off.

Clearly, you are not answering for my benefit. Your answer is to fluff yourself up, not to give glory to God but to give glory to yourself, your 50 years of Biblical study and the JW doctrines you adhere to.

 

[Wrangler]

Are you telling me that I have no right to provide what knowledge has been imparted to me?

Another Appeal to Strawman.

The goal of Christianity is NOT to be a Bible student!

Wow.....what a statement!.....all of the first Christians were Bible students because Jesus and his apostles taught from the Hebrew scriptures and often quoted them.

Thus proving again your idol is knowledge. You cannot simply agree with the statement that the goal of Christianity is NOT to be a Bible student.

 

[Wrangler]

The command was to "make disciples, TEACHING them"

The teaching is merely to obey the will of God, that Jesus ended with making disciples.

The teaching is not to achieve an army of theoreticians and academic pedants. And for some reason, you are equating 'teaching' with showing off your knowledge.

 

[Wrangler]

Knowledge is never an impediment in any subject.

Sure it is! When the subject is action, waxing philosophical sure is an impediment.

When my wife wants me to put the trash out or do anything of the NOW variety, I'll tell her I be learning stuff. I'm sure she will not deem my knowedge an impediment.

 

[Wrangler]

When Paul said he "became all things to all people so that he might save some"...that was the goal. It didn't mean that everyone had to be catered to, to the point of not telling them the way it is.

You so love your Strawman arguments.

 

[Peterlag]

Appeal to Strawman. I knew there was a risk that rather than accepting correction, you'd challenge every point. No one said only JW's Aunty Jane has an idea of what Jesus said.

The 'how' has been explained to you many times. You just don't have ears to hear.

The trinity consists of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It does not consist of the F, S & thorough and exhaustive knowledge of the Bible and what it teaches. 10 years ago, I was intellectually snobbish like you. A powerful sermon asserted that we do not have an intellectually aloof God. We have an emotional God who cares about us deeply and wants a personal relationship with us. Powerful. Even the intellectually superficial can grasp it.

Oh I got a get in on this...

Number one:
For clarity’s sake, it's helpful to understand what the Trinity is. The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and the three of them are co-equal, co-eternal, and share the same essence and together those three individual “Persons” are one triune God. The doctrine of the Trinity that Jesus is both 100% God and 100% man and that both the divine nature and his human nature live together in his flesh body may be widely believed, but is never stated in the Bible.

Number two:
Such supreme independent power requires tremendous wisdom, patience, love, faithfulness, and resourcefulness to work with a world of independent creatures. This kind of a relationship is not one of domination or manipulation, but of participation and cooperation wherein we become co-laborers with God. It did not have to be this way. It's so only because God wanted a reciprocal relationship of love and elected to make us an important element in such a relationship. And this is why I am suggesting that God has established personal relationships whereby He can have fellowship with us and not that of manipulative or contractual relations.

 

[Charlie24]

So you agree that the evidence clearly reveals that "morphe" does not refer to Christ's inner essential being, but rather to an outward appearance? So again Jesus did not change his essential nature when he was with the men on the road to Emmaus. He simply had a different outward appearance.

What I'm saying is that the change from the form which He existed in heaven, to the existence of man on earth, was a change from Deity to that of a man, who set aside His expression of deity, but could not change the fact He is deity.

If you take in context Phil 2:6-7, which most don't, there is a huge difference in the appearance of who He was while "in the form of God" in heaven, and the "form of a servant" on earth, but at the same time He was always deity.

Being in the form of God, and thinking it not robbery to be equal with God can only be taken as Him being a co-participant in the Divine essence of Deity. This is the position He emptied Himself of to become "the Servant" through the incarnation, God becoming man.

The change from exercising His power of Deity in heaven, to the realm of setting aside that power and becoming man on this earth, is a change far beyond that of external appearance!

"Morphe" takes on a whole new dimension in Phil. 2:6-8, than that of His change on the road after His resurrection, if the context is taken in it's full meaning.

 

[Wrangler]

And by the way I understand what you meant when you said in another post something about we were not called to be students.

Thank you. We are not called to be teachers either as Aunty Jane supposes. We are called to action, to sharpen iron as Proverbs 27:17 says; to be disciple makers, to love god and others.

This is the ends. The means may include us being students for time, to be teachers for a time. But the means and the ends are different. Knowledge is NOT an end onto itself. Knowledge is so we may possess the ful armor of God to successfully battle the spiritual forces of evil, Eph. 6:12 in achieving the great work before us, fulfulling the Great Commission.

I don't want to hear one more time what agape love means ... let's get 'er done!

 

[Charlie24]

No it is not! An image is an image, NOT the thing it is an image of.

"Express image" is used only one time in Scripture, Heb. 1:3.

It can be taken literally or figuratively, which one is correct? Meaning that Christ is the exact reproduction of God the Father in visual image, or the exact reproduction in character and essence.

The Scripture says that we have been predestined to be conformed into the image of God. Not the visual image of God, but the image of His character and essence. So I see it figuratively, spiritually speaking.

Christ is the exact reproduction of God the Father in character and essence. Which would mean, of course, Christ is Deity!