Christ the Redeemer

James B. Ramsey

When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades’ Revelation 1:17-18.

Dear believer, your Redeemer is God, —the author and the end of all things, in nature, in grace, and in Providence. “I am the first, and the last, and the living one.” The original, perfect divinity of our blessed Lord is the very cornerstone of our hope, the one deep exhaustless fountain whence every possible stream of consolation flows forth to a guilty world. In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, —of everything that we can need through eternity. If Jesus is yours, then all things are yours. For He is “the living One,” who has life in Himself, and is the fountain of all life, natural, spiritual and eternal.

He is therefore the first and the last in Creation. All things were made by Him and for Him. “For Him;” all therefore of nature’s laws and processes must be such by their original constitution as shall work in perfect harmony with the good of His redeemed, and with perfect efficacy for His glory as their Redeemer. He is the first and the last in Providence. All its movements originate in His holy will, and are compelled to help forward His grand designs of redeeming mercy. Every event, great or small, from the sparrow’s fall to that of an empire, receives from His its commission, and brings back to Him its due revenue of glory. Those mighty convulsions which roll on, as the sea and the waves roaring, causing men’s hearts to fail for fear, are His voice, like the sound of many waters, and the march of those feet of burning brass, consuming and treading down with resistless energy whatever opposes His kingdom. He is the first and the last in redemption. In His eternal purpose to meet, by the sacrifice of Himself, the claims of eternal justice, and so to redeem a chosen people from our ruined race, this plan of mercy had its origin; and all the means by which that glorious plan has been carried forward since the fall, and applied to each individual believer, have had their origin in Him, and have derived from Him their efficacy.

And the grand end of all is to secure and gather and perfect all the vast multitude of believers, and unite them in one glorious whole, and by an indissoluble union to Himself as His own body; so that the perfect and eternal salvation of each is inseparably connected with His own glory, and essential to the completion of His own mystical body. The church “is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.”¹

He is thus, believer, the Alpha and Omega of your salvation. He is the author and the finisher of your faith. He is, in every step, from first to last. He who has begun will finish. All is His own work. “Of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”² The one voice, therefore, of every one of nature’s laws and processes; of every change and movement in the progress of this world’s affairs; and of every fact, doctrine, threatening, and promise of His word and kingdom of grace to every believer, in all circumstances, is just this, “Fear not; I am the first and the last and the living one.”

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1. Ephesians 1:23
2. Romans 11:36