For the ancient interpreters of the Hebrew Scriptures, wisdom was the ground upon which all dirt was founded.  Before a physical thing was formed, there was a “way” put in place upon which all things operated.  This “way” was known as “wisdom”.  But wisdom was not only seen as a “thing”, but as a personality, a being in partnership and conversation with God.  This made sense of the confusing ancient Hebrew Scripture that said, “Let us make humankind in our image…”. If God was One, what was this us doing there in the creation narrative?

Their answer?  Wisdom was a co-creator with God.  And so we see this language in the Proverbial poets: wisdom is associated with “first”, “creating”, and “beginning”.

Which brings us to Jesus.

Notice the language the very first followers use of Jesus. In the letter to a community of faith in Colossae, we read this, “The Son (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him all things were created…”

Okay.  Whoa.  Slow down.  Notice a few things here:  

• First of all, this Jesus, for his first followers, was the “image of the invisible God”.  In other words, they believed Jesus showed the world what the Source, the One, the Giver—God—was really like.
• Secondly, they use the language of “firstborn” here.  “First” is the language associated for thousands of years with wisdom.
• Thirdly, this Jesus is spoken of as being with God in creating all things.  This also is a nod to wisdom.

When another follower of Jesus wanted to share who Jesus was and what he was like, he began his accounting like this, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”

Oh my word.  Okay.  A couple of things here:

• “Word” or logos, was the Greek way of talking about the deep wisdom by which all things operated.
• And “In the beginning” was the Hebrew way of talking about that very same wisdom as they understood it.

And then someone comes along and asks Jesus, “Who are you?”  And in the literal Greek construction, this is precisely what Jesus says, “The Beginning, which is what I have been telling you all along.”

Jesus calls himself “The Beginning.”

No way.

Way.

Notice what’s going on here.  The early Christians use language that associates Jesus with the wisdom that was from the beginning.  And then Jesus takes on that mantle as well.  For the early followers of Jesus, he is the wisdom on which all else is founded.

Jesus is what the One is like.  The Way of Jesus is how the world really moves forward.  The life of Jesus is what it looks like to live a fully human, flourishing, thriving life.

And for the first followers of Jesus, it has been this way since the beginning of everything.

Which has this whole other set of implications…which, if you can hang with me, will take a few more series of posts to tease out.