As a former Jehovah’s Witnesses who once quoted “He is…firstborn over all creation” to prove Christ is the “first created”, I want to share the context I never saw when I did that.
Let’s see what Paul is really saying about Christ:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (Col. 1:15-17 NKJ)
Paul says Christ created all things, that He existed before they did, and that IN HIM “all things consist”.
You saw the movie the Matrix. Reality was generated by computers. Our reality is like a matrix, it is generated by the Mind of God. By the power of God’s thought, all things “hold together, consist”.
Christ created all things by verbalizing God’s thought, He is the Word of God. When God wants something to exist, the Word of God gives it concrete existence, IN HIS MIND. He “speaks it into being”, actualizing it.
Then it exists.
“for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said,`For we are also His offspring.’ (Acts 17:28 NKJ)
That is how Christ is the “firstborn heir of what the Father had Him create, the ” πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, (Col. 1:15 BGT)
Therefore, I as a Jehovah’s Witnesses was wrong. It is NOT saying Christ is created.
I publicly regret my error.
As the Son of the Father, Jesus is the Firstborn Heir of all God creates.