Postmillennial Worldview

PMW 2026-059 by Jason Bradfield

Gentry note: The following article in the transcript of an insightful sermon presented by Jason Bradfield at the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly’s annual assembly. Jason is acting President at Whitefield Theological Seminary.

The Man in Glory
The Continuing Incarnation of Christ and the Redemption of Creation

I. The Forgotten Hinge

Our Lord’s whole life comes to us in the Creed as a string of verbs, and you have said them a thousand times. Conceived, born, suffered, crucified, dead, buried. Descended, rose, ascended, seated. Then the Creed turns and looks forward. He shall come. He shall judge.

Nine verbs lie behind us, and the whole story leans on the last of them before it can reach the future at all.

He ascended into heaven.

Strike that line out and the narrative dies at the mouth of the empty tomb, because a resurrection without an ascension leaves the story without an ending. The tomb is empty, but the throne is vacant. There is no enthronement, no intercession, no return. And without the ascension, the resurrection is unfinished. Gerrit Dawson is right that the resurrection needs the ascension to finish it.

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And here is the trouble with us. The ascension is the doctrine we confess on the Lord’s Day and misplace by Tuesday. We say it in the Creed and then let it quietly evaporate, and when a doctrine evaporates, the imagination does not leave the space empty.

C. S. Lewis put his finger on the thing we do in his book Miracles. “We also, in our heart of hearts, tend to slur over the risen manhood of Jesus, to conceive Him, after death, simply returning into Deity, so that the Resurrection would be no more than the reversal or undoing of the Incarnation.”

Beloved, that is not a harmless picture. It is the seed of every Christology that ever rotted, and it fuels a number of heretical ideas, not least full preterism, which we will come to later. So let me say plainly where we are going, and then let Paul prove it.

The Son of God did not rent our humanity for thirty-three years and hand it back. He took it, and he has it still. At this hour, on the throne of heaven, he is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And because he is still a man, the world he made still has a future.

His humanity and the redemption of creation are tied in one knot. Pull on either rope and the whole thing comes loose. Lose the continuing incarnation and you lose the redemption of creation, and the man who keeps only half of Christ has kept the half that cannot save him.

Half a Christ saves no one.

That said, please open your Bibles to Colossians 1.

II. Reading the Hymn

Hear the word of God, Colossians 1, verses 15 through 20.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

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This section we just read is as concentrated as Paul ever gets, and we will not spend our entire time here, but I want to build from this text outward, because everything I have to say tonight is rooted in what Paul says in these six verses. Once you see how he built it, you cannot unsee it.

There are two movements here:

The first runs through verse 17 and concerns the old creation.
The second runs from verse 18 to verse 20 and concerns the new.

And Paul has bolted the two together with a single word, set at the head of each.

Verse 15, firstborn of all creation.
Verse 18, firstborn from the dead.
One Son, firstborn in both worlds. That is the hinge of the passage, and it is the hinge of everything I have to say tonight.

Look at the title first. He is the image of the invisible God. The God no eye can see has made himself seen, and the place he chose to be seen is a man. Paul does not say the Son is rather like God. He says he is the image, and the rest of the chapter will not let us drain that into metaphor. The image is the man Christ Jesus. Now, keep that close by, because when the full preterist tells you the embodiment was a passing phase, Paul has already answered him in the first clause.

Then comes the phrase the cults have always loved. Firstborn of all creation. Arius read it as first created thing, and the man at your door with the magazine reads it the same way, as though Paul had signed the Son up as creature number one. The next word kills that reading dead. Verse 16 opens with one small word, “because.”

Why is he firstborn over all creation? Because by him all things were created.

You do not prove a man is a creature by saying that everything was made in him. The word translated “firstborn” is not telling you when he was born. It is telling you who is heir. It is the language of Psalm 89:27, where God says of David, “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” David was not the first baby born in Israel. He was the son with the rights, the rank, the inheritance. So with Christ. He is firstborn over creation as its Lord, not firstborn inside it as its oldest item.

Then Paul stacks three little prepositions: All things were created in him, and through him, and for him. He is the one in whom creation was conceived, the agent through whom it was made, and the goal toward which all of it moves. Creation is not a machine the Son was later assigned to manage. It was built with him in view from the first line of Genesis.

And watch how wide he throws the net. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities. He is naming the very spirit-powers the false teachers were busy flattering, and he stamps every last one of them with one word. Created.

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James Ware offers us a help right here. Paul’s world, and ours, wants to file reality in two drawers, spirit on the top and matter on the bottom, the unseen prized and the seen despised. And if that is your filing system, then the thrones and dominions float up toward God while the dirt sinks down toward worthlessness.

Well Paul throws the whole cabinet out.

His one great line does not run between spirit and matter. It runs between Creator and creature, and every contrast in the verse, heaven and earth, seen and unseen, throne and footstool, lands on the creature side of it. Only the Son stands on the far side, with God.1

That is what makes the phrase “all things” so large. It is the whole of everything that is not God, the seen and the unseen together. Paul is not surveying a county. He is surveying the cosmos.

So, remember the width of that phrase, because in four verses he is going to reach for it again to measure redemption, and the two measurements have to match.

Verse 17 keeps him in the present tense. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And note the verb Paul chose, for it keeps right on working. The cosmos does not merely owe him its birth certificate. It is being held in one piece by him at this very second. Every orbit, every atom, every law that keeps the universe from coming apart at the seams is his ongoing labor. And here is what should stop your breath. The hand that holds the galaxies in place is a pierced hand, because three verses on, this same Son is the one making peace by the blood of his cross. The one in whom all things cohere has a body.

Now the hinge turns. Verse 18. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. Now we have crossed out of the first creation and into the second, and Paul reaches for the same title he used at the top. As he was firstborn over the old world, he is firstborn of the new, the head of a new race of men, the first man out of the grave who never has to go back into it. And you cannot turn firstborn from the dead into a figure of speech either.

That is resurrection, and resurrection in Paul means a body or it means nothing. The firstborn from the dead walked out of the tomb in the body that was carried in, changed but continuous, and he took that body up into the heavens. In everything he might be preeminent, Paul says. First in creation, first out of the grave, first in the church, first, full stop.

And then the last two verses give the reason and the goal. In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Turn the page and Paul says it again and in the present tense. In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col 2:9). Note that the present tense is clear: dwells, not dwelt.

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Now, I am not unaware that various men have understand this differently. The word translated bodily has been read various ways. Calvin took it to mean essentially or substantially, pointing to the fullness and reality of the divine presence in Christ over against the partial, figural manifestations of the old covenant.

Beza, however, read it as anchoring the two natures in one embodied mediator, the second Adam who is both truly human and truly divine, the fullness of deity dwelling in real flesh.

The Heidelberg Catechism cites this very verse as proof that the Godhead, though beyond the bounds of the manhood, remains personally united to it.

And the Westminster Larger Catechism, question 36, cites Colossians 2:9 alongside Hebrews 7:24-25 as proof that Christ “continues to be God and man, in two entire distinct natures, and one person, for ever.” Continues. The Westminster divines read this verse as a text about the permanent, ongoing two-natured person of Christ, which is the continuing incarnation in confessional form.

I believe that is the reading the flow of the passage itself supports, but we can dive into those details some other time.

The main thing is this: The fullness of deity is permanently and completely at home in Christ, in a body, on the throne.

And the goal, verse 20. Through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. There is that phrase, all things, a second time. The same all things made in him are the all things reconciled through him, the whole created order brought back under his lordship…not every person saved without exception…but the cosmos itself redeemed from its bondage.

Redemption is cut to the exact measure of creation. And the instrument is as physical as a wooden beam and a man’s blood. Paul simply will not let redemption drift loose from the body any more than he will let creation drift loose from the Creator.

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Presents the exegetical evidence for Six-day Creation and against the Framework Hypothesis. Strong presentation and rebuttal to the Framework Hypothesis, while demonstrating and defending the Six-day Creation interpretation.

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So hear the whole argument before we leave the text: The maker of the world became flesh. He died in that flesh and rose in that flesh, and as the embodied firstborn from the dead he reconciles the whole created order.

With that in place, now you can do a little experiment that exposes a counterfeit gospel every time. Reach into this passage and pull the standing humanity of Christ out of it, and watch what falls.

There is no firstborn from the dead, because a ghost was never in a tomb.
There is no blood of the cross with any lasting power, because the one who shed it has thrown away the nature that bled.
There is no cosmos reconciled, because the Reconciler has walked out on half of what he came to mend.
Take the flesh out of Colossians 1 and the entire hymn falls apart. Paul’s Christ is embodied, permanently, gloriously, with no expiration date.

Paul has established two columns: the continuing incarnation of the Son, and the redemption of the creation he made and keeps. Now let’s follow each in turn.

III. The Incarnation That Does Not End

If the Son peeled off his humanity somewhere past the clouds, then whoever is sitting on that throne is not the carpenter the disciples touched and ate fish with and watched rise into the air. He is the eternal Son who paid humanity a visit and has since moved on….

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