The First and the Last

THE Coming One declares himself to be the first and the last. "Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Rev. 22:12, 13. In creation the Father is first. God made worlds by his Son. Heb. 1:1, 2.

But in the execution of the plan of redemption, Christ is the first and the last. He is the only source of redemption from sin, from paradise lost to paradise restored. When the plan of redemption was first opened immediately after the fall, as the representatives of the race stood trembling with guilt and shame at the gate of paradise, Christ was there. The holy angels, his representatives, were present with offers of pardon and hope on conditions of repentance and faith.

Before the transgression, man talked with God, and Christ, and angels, face to face. In his confiding innocence in holy Eden, he walked by sight. But when all was lost and moral darkness, like the pall of death rested upon a ruined world, the star of hope arose in Christ.

In humiliation, obedience, and faith, there is hope in Christ for the repenting sinner, while by the comparatively dim light of the spirit of prophecy he walks by faith. Christ opens this door of hope for fallen man. Christ instituted the path of faith that leads from sin to holiness, from earth to Heaven. He is, in this sense, the author and finisher of the faith of the gospel. Christ, as the author of our faith, commenced the work of redemption from sin as early as the representatives of the race stood beneath the burden of guilt outside the gate of paradise. His work reaches forward, embracing all dispensations of human probation, to be finished at his second coming and the resurrection of the just, when faith shall be lost in sight, and hope in glad fruition.

"I am the first and the last," says our adorable Redeemer. The plan of redemption is one plan, reaching through the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian ages Christ is the only Saviour of sinners in the first dispensation of divine grace, in the second, or Jewish, and in the last.

"Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling," says Paul, "consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house." Heb. 3:1, 2. The relative position of Christ and Moses is the subject here introduced for our consideration. The apostle continues,—

"For this man [Christ] was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honor than the house." Verse 3. Paul here uses the figure of a carpenter and the house he builds to illustrate the relation of Christ to the Jewish system which Moses represented. The carpenter builds the house. Christ builds Moses. The figure was not designed to teach that Christ built, or create, the physical form of Moses. Paul's subject is the two houses, the two priesthoods, the two churches, the two dispensations of the Israel of God. The carpenter brings the house into existence; Christ brings into existence the typical system which Moses represented. He is the author of the Jewish system as verily as he is the author of the Christian system. And those who hold the two in wide contrast, array Christ against Christ.

Speaking of the typical law of the Jewish system, the apostle represents it as "having a shadow of good things to come." Heb. 10:1. The good things of the Christian age cast their shadow back into the Jewish age. And as the shadow does not exist independent of the body that casts it, so the Jewish system existed because in God's great plan of redemption the Christian system was to exist. As the men who built the monument at Bunker Hill, in the very act of building brought into existence the shadow which the monument casts, so Christ, in becoming the author of the Christian system, also becomes the author of the Jewish system.