THE FIRSTBORN FROM THE DEAD

In Psalm 2:7, God the Father says to Christ, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” Being eternal and without beginning or end, when was Christ ever begotten by the Father? According to the Apostle Paul, Christ was begotten by the Father when He was raised from the dead. In Acts 13:33, Paul says, “God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”

Did you know that Jesus Christ was the first person to ever be born again? He was the first person to come back alive to God after being spiritually dead in trespasses and sin. However, Christ’s spiritual death was not the result of His sin, but of Him becoming ours. When Christ arose, coming back alive to God the Father, the Father said to Him, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” 

As “the first born from the dead”; that is, as the first person to ever come back alive to God after being spiritually dead to Him, Christ has become “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). What is the church? It is simply all of those, like Christ, who have been born again. The church is made up of those who were once dead to God in their trespasses and sins, but now have come alive to God through faith in the resurrected Christ.

According to the Apostle Paul, everyone in the church has been foreknown and predestined by God “to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). God wants many more children like His firstborn Son, Jesus Christ. Born again children to whom God can say, on the day they place their faith in His firstborn Son, “Thou art my [child], this day have I begotten thee.” All of those begotten by the Father through faith in His risen Son become Christ’s “brethren” and members of Christ’s body, “the church of the firstborn” (Hebrews 12:23).