Alpha & Omega

I’ve had another verse on my mind—ok, a series of them—for a couple of weeks now.

Isaiah 41:4 Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.

Isaiah 44:6 Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.

Isaiah 48:12 Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last. 13 Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together.

Revelation 1:8
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Revelation 21:6
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

Revelation 22:13
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. Omega contrasts that in that it is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. By combining the two it signifies completeness; we would say "from A to Z" in modern usage. In reference to Christ it signifies His completeness in more ways than I could possibly get into in the scope of this entry.

Have you ever thought about the title, “Alpha and Omega” or “the beginning and the end?” I have. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

You know me. I’m always looking for the deeper significance of a passage, hoping for insight into how it relates to my life in the here and now. Practical application is everything, because without it scripture is irrelevant, having little bearing on our lives. As a minister, I realize that a sermon is just as irrelevant—more, actually—if it does not include well-defined practical application.

That said, the question that keeps returning to me is, “Is Christ the Lord of all my beginnings and endings.” So many thoughts are bouncing off of my heart, as I ponder these passages, and the most preeminent of them pertain to what it means for Christ to be Lord in the all the beginnings of my life.

You see, when I invite HIM to have the preeminence in the beginning of my decision making and all of the significant events of my life, I see Him evidenced in everything that follows and find Him waiting at the conclusion, where He has guided me all along. Yet, when I fail to take this simple but definitive step, a multitude of uncertainty rushes in to occupy all the little spaces I never foresaw.

I make so many decisions, each day, and I seldom stop to think about the import of those decision until one of them goes awry, leaving me to regret having treated it so casually. The result: I do not find Christ in the midst of those things that follow, in the way that I desire. What’s more, if He was not in the beginning, where is the confidence that He will at the end?

God forgive me for treating life so casually, as if the everyday decisions that I make made little difference.

Furthermore, when I have need of anything, I should never fail to understand that it is Christ whom I have need of. The “issues” of life tend to be very distractive from the fundamentals that remain constant regardless of the situation or setting.

In other words, it isn’t patience that I need more of; it’s Christ. Yes, I ought to be more patient with my children, but my obsession with the "need" for patience is not likely to produce patience. More likely, it will produce frustration at my continued failure to manifest that patience the way I should.

A good Baptist will tell you not to worry about it, because we're all sinners and will be so until we die, which is where there's grace. Scripturally, however, grace does not excuse sin; nor does Christian liberty permit the occasion to sin, as though God were powerless to produce holiness in the lives of the redeemed (ie. sanctification).

No, the answer is not to preach ourselves into hell because of weakness; nor is the answer to resign ourselves to be governed by the flesh, since it cannot be overcome in the flesh. The answer, according to the Apostle Paul, is to, "walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh."

However, walking in the Spirit is not some mystical state of consciousness. Rather, it is fostering and maintaining a life of intimacy with Christ, in which we acknowledge Him in all things. Thus, our focus is on Him and on the things of Christ -- a setting of our hearts on things above and not on the things of earth.

When we focus only on the shortcoming or sin, it produces only frustration and more failure; but, when we focus on Christ, we find that we are more than conquerers through Christ, Who strengthens us and by whose righteousness we stand rather than fall. Hence, what we need is a divine obsession with the Son of God.

The presence of anger or covetousness or apathy or worldliness is never the issue. The issue is the absence of Christ, where and when He should be present—whether in my thinking, my decisions, my actions, my judgment, my beginning or my endings. The issue is our failure to appropriate the grace and provision of Christ, which should have been immediately with us, if we would have but invited Him into the very beginnings of our day, our relationships, our decisions, our trials and our struggles against the flesh.

We must also understand that He is a gentleman, and so He seldom ventures into situations where He wasn’t invited. That’s the real issue. Most of the time, we assume that He knows He is invited (the way we assume that our friends know they are invited, wanted and thought about, no matter how frequently we neglect them—again, until we suddenly realize how much we need them).

Does my life say to family, friends and those who are always watching me, “Christ is the beginning, and He will also be the end. Hence, He is everything in between.”? I’m not talking about what I tell them, but what my life communicates to others around me—what the day by day comings and goings of life reveal about where I place my priorities.

When Christ is the first, we can honestly say that He was from the beginning and will be at the conclusion of the matter (as well as every point in between). Truly, He is Alpha and Omega. Truly, He filleth all in all. Truly, He upholdeth all things, by the Word of His Power. Truly, all things are BY Him and THROUGH Him and FOR Him.

But when I fail to acknowledge Him in the beginning, I may find that the ending is not at all what I had envisioned (or what I assumed, as a good Christian, it would be), in which case I have no one to blame but myself.

These versus have changed the way that I look at the little things that I take for granted, each and every day of my life. They have also caused me to realize that this may be—and most assuredly is—the very reason why all things are not as I would like them to be, whether in my marriage or in my relationship with children, friends, church, service to Christ and community, and faithfulness in any number of responsibilities or disciplines.

In at tract that is titled, “The Church, from A to Z,” the contents could easily focus on the above verses without detracting in any way from the integrity, significance and holiness of the Church—for, if Christ is in the beginning, He will be also in the end. He IS the A-Z of the Church. ["And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all." (Eph. 1:22-23) "And He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence. (Col. 1:18)]

When we forget this, we will ever find ourselves something less than what we aspire to be. Our emphasis on various issues, though necessary to some extent, will not perfect the Church of God if the power of that focus does not lie solely in Christ as the all in all. He is the sum-total of the “all things” we teach and the “all things” we need.

"All things, whatsoever I have commanded you,” was intended to draw all focus to HIM. When intimacy with Christ is the divine obsession of my life, I will not be far from perfection, for CHRIST is perfection. Indeed, He is ALL perfection. …“Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”

May He truly be the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end of all things, both to myself and to the Church of God.

Amen.

(Bro. Jacob)