Yesterday I spoke with some people who held beliefs about Jesus that deviate from what the Bible teaches. Now, the identity of the Chief Cornerstone is not a point upon which we can agree to disagree. That being said, I want to take today to proclaim Jesus, the one to whom every soul and all of creation throughout all of history owes its existence, and must look to for salvation. In Nazareth, He stood in the synagogue and read the roughly 700 year-old Word of God, spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord." It's ironic to think how many of us wish we could have been there on that day, and how many who were there rejected Him. You know there was that one guy there not even listening, finger in nose, wondering why girls won't talk to him, while the Son of God stood and read about Himself.
From John 1:3, we know that "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." In Revelation 5:5, He is "the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah", "the Root of David", and He "has overcome". He is the one who is able to open the scroll and the seven seals. From creation to the end of the world, He is the Word of God, by which He accomplishes all of His works.
Colossians 1:17-22 teaches us that "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything." Through Him, God reconciles us to Himself making us "holy and blameless and beyond reproach."
"'And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.' Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them that they had been with Jesus."-Acts 4:12-13