Statements of Christ's creative and of his upholding activity are combined in John 1:3, 4—Πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὅ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν—“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made. That which hath been made was life in him”(marg.). Westcott: “It would be difficult to find a more complete consent of ancient authorities in favor of any reading than that which supports this punctuation.”Westcott therefore adopts it. The passage shows that the universe 1. exists within the bounds of Christ's being; 2. is not dead, but living; 3. derives its life from him; see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 46. Creation requires the divine presence, as well as the divine agency. God creates through Christ. All things were made, not ὐπὸ αὐτοῦ—“by him,” but δι᾽ αὐτοῦ—“through him.” Christian believers “Behind creation's throbbing screen Catch movements of the great Unseen.”
Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, iv, lvi—“That which many a philosopher dimly conjectured, namely, that God did not produce the world in an absolute, immediate manner, but in some way or other, mediately, here presents itself to us with the lustre of revelation, and exalts so much the more the claim of the Son of God to our deep and reverential homage.” Would that such scientific men as Tyndall and Huxley might see Christ in nature, and, doing his will, might learn of the doctrine and be led to the Father! The humblest Christian who sees Christ's hand in the physical universe and in human history knows more of the secret of the universe than all the mere scientists put together.
Col 1:17—“In him all things consist,” or “hold together,” means nothing less than that Christ is the principle of cohesion in the universe, making it a cosmos instead of a chaos. Tyndall said that the attraction of the sun upon the earth was as inconceivable as if a horse should draw a cart without traces. Sir Isaac Newton: “Gravitation must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws.” Lightfoot: “Gravitation is an expression of the mind of Christ.” Evolution also is a method of his operation. The laws of nature are the habits of Christ, and nature itself is but his steady and constant will. He binds together man and nature in one organic whole, so that we can speak of a “universe.” Without him there would be no intellectual bond, no uniformity of law, no unity of truth. He is the principle of induction, that enables us to argue from one thing to another. The medium of interaction between things is also the medium of intercommunication between minds. It is fitting that he who draws and holds together the physical and intellectual, should also draw and hold together the moral universe, drawing all men to himself (John 12:32) and so to God, and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Col. 1:20). In Christ “the law appears, Drawn out in living characters,” because he is the ground and source of all law, both in nature and in humanity. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 6-12.
(e) He receives honor and worship due only to God.
In addition to the address of Thomas, in John 20:28, which we have already cited among the proofs that Jesus is expressly called God, and in which divine honor is paid to him, we may refer to the prayer and worship offered by the apostolic and post-apostolic church.
John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”; 14:14—“If ye shall ask me [so אB and Tisch. 8th ed.] anything in my name, that will I do”; Acts 7:59—“Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (cf. Luke 23:46—Jesus' words: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”); Rom. 10:9—“confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”; 13—“whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (cf. Gen. 4:26—“Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah”); 1 Cor. 11:24, 25—“this do in remembrance of me” = worship of Christ; Heb. 1:6—“let all the angels of God worship him”; Phil. 2:10, 11—“in the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”; Rev. 5:12-14—“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power....”; 2 Pet. 3:18—“Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory”; 2 Tim. 4:18 and Heb. 13:21—“to whom be the glory for ever and ever”—these ascriptions of eternal glory to Christ imply his deity. See also 1 Pet. 3:15—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,” and Eph. 5:21—“subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”Here is enjoined an attitude of mind towards Christ which would be idolatrous if Christ were not God. See Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 266, 366.
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 154—“In the eucharistic liturgy of the ‘Teaching’we read: ‘Hosanna to the God of David’; Ignatius styles him repeatedly God ‘begotten and unbegotten, come in the flesh’; speaking once of ‘the blood of God’, in evident allusion to Acts 20:28; the epistle to Diognetus takes up the Pauline words and calls him the ‘architect and world-builder by whom [God] created the heavens’, and [pg 312]names him God (chap. vii); Hermas speaks of him as ‘the holy preëxistent Spirit, that created every creature’, which style of expression is followed by Justin, who calls him God, as also all the later great writers. In the second epistle of Clement (130-160, Harnack), we read: ‘Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.’ And Ignatius describes him as ‘begotten and unbegotten, passible and impassible, ... who was before the eternities with the Father.’ ”
These testimonies only give evidence that the Church Fathers saw in Scripture divine honor ascribed to Christ. They were but the precursors of a host of later interpreters. In a lull of the awful massacre of Armenian Christians at Sassouan, one of the Kurdish savages was heard to ask: “Who was that ‘Lord Jesus’ that they were calling to?” In their death agonies, the Christians, like Stephen of old, called upon the name of the Lord. Robert Browning quoted, in a letter to a lady in her last illness, the words of Charles Lamb, when “in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more—on the first suggestion, ‘And if Christ entered this room?’ changed his tone at once and stuttered out as his manner was when moved: ‘You see—if Shakespere entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we must kneel.’ ” On prayer to Jesus, see Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note F; Bernard, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 4:44; Zahn, Skizzen aus dem Leben der alten Kirche, 9, 288.
(f) His name is associated with that of God upon a footing of equality.
We do not here allude to 1 John 5:7 (the three heavenly witnesses), for the latter part of this verse is unquestionably spurious; but to the formula of baptism, to the apostolic benedictions, and to those passages in which eternal life is said to be dependent equally upon Christ and upon God, or in which spiritual gifts are attributed to Christ equally with the Father.