Revelation 3:14

Revelation 3:14

The New Creation.

The Son of God is called by the title "the beginning of the creation of God," (1) because He was Himself the Creator of the world; (2) because He is the first cause or principle of its restoration.

I. We have here two great spiritual facts. The first is that the Word, who is by eternal generation of one substance with the Father, by the mystery of the Incarnation became of one substance with us. His union with us is a consubstantial union; His substance as man and our substance are one and the same.

II. The other great fact, issuing from the last, is that as by this substantial union and personal distinctness the Son lives by the Father, so we, distinct in person, but partaking of His substance, live by the Son. As the Son partakes of the Godhead of the Father, so we partake of the manhood of the Son; as He lives by the Father, we live by Him. The miraculous Agent in the Incarnation and in the holy sacraments is the same Third Person of the ever-blessed Three, uniting first the Divine nature to ours in the person of the Son, and now our fallen nature to Him as the beginning of the creation of God.

H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 176.

References: Revelation 3:14 . J. B. Lightfoot, Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 53; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 679; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 110. Revelation 3:14-21 . Ibid., Sermons, vol. xx., No. 1185.Revelation 3:14-22 . Expositor, 1st series, vol. iii., p. 433; J. W. Lance, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 172; G. Macdonald, Ibid., vol. xxxvi., p. 72.