"All?"

“All?”

(Thanks to Karen for another title)

 

Recently while driving to a hospice visit I was listening to Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. He stated what seems to be an obvious fact when he said, “Words have meaning.” But our current society has taken the liberty of changing definitions when they don’t fit a particular agenda by parsing words, splitting hairs, and spinning inconvenient facts. The result is confusion and misunderstanding. But words do have meaning. Mike Conneally, our Associate Pastor in New Hampshire, put it best when he said in a message, “All means all and that’s all all means.”

As I re-pondered Mike’s bit of wisdom I remembered meeting with a cultist while serving our first church in western New York. My visitor maintained that Jesus was created and not eternal so He couldn’t be God based on Paul’s describing Him as “…the firstborn….” in Colossians 1:15. In response I pointed out that “firstborn” in this context refers to status, not time, as with Solomon, who was David’s fourth son (1 Chronicles 14:4) but is called “…my firstborn….” (Psalm 89:27). I then took him to Colossians 1:16 (“…by {Christ} all things were created….”—emphasis added) and told him that if he was correct Jesus would had to have created Himself (read Mike’s statement again). The cultist said that didn’t make sense, to which I answered that the only way it did is if Jesus is Eternally God. (My guest never showed up for a scheduled follow-up session.)

“All” conveys entirety and without exception. The word appears 4660 times in the NIV (I assure all of you—pun intended—that I referred to a concordance and didn’t count them myself). Here are some of the most significant occurrences (emphasis added in each case):

   “All Scripture is God-breathed….” (2 Timothy 3:16)

   “Through him all things were made….” (John 1:3)

   “…All have sinned….” (Romans 3:23)

   “…The blood of Jesus, (God’s) Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

   “…In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form….” (Colossians 2:9)

   “All nations will come and worship before you….” (Revelation 15:4)

None of us has the right to make words say what we want them to, especially when it comes to Scripture (“Every word of God is flawless….”—Proverbs 30:5). So let’s be careful how we use words. And that’s all I have to say for now!

Blessings!

Jim McMillan