Hebrews 1:1-3
The Jewish people knew God. They knew Him as the creator. The first words of their holy scripture places God at the beginning of everything. The writer of Hebrews tells us that it is through Christ that God created all things. Without him, nothing was made that has been made, in other words without Christ there is nothing. A Christian who is considers returning to a life without Jesus should know they are considering returning to a life of chaos and nothingness. It is Christ, by his powerful word who is sustaining all things. Christ is not like the Greek god Atlas, who held the world upon the shoulders, without Christ, the world, and everything in it, would cease to exist. If a Christian chooses to leave Christ out of his life, his life as he knows it will fall apart.

The Jewish people know about God’s glory. They had seen his glory fill the temple with a cloud. They had seen his glory in fire. The writer of Hebrews states that Christ is the radiance of God’s glory. He does not say that Christ reflects God’s glory or that God created Christ in the image of God’s glory. Think of it in this way, the light of the sun and the sun are the same. You cannot have sunlight without the sun, and it would not be the sun without sunlight. Christ the Son and God the Father are God. A Christian cannot be right with God without been right with Christ.

The Jewish people believed that Godly-wisdom reflected the nature of God. They also believed that God created humanity to reflect his image just as a mirror reflects the image of a person standing in close relationship to it. Christ is not a reflection of God. Christ is the exact representation of his Father. Christ is God.

Christ created us, and only He holds our world together. Only through Christ, is a relationship with the God of Abraham possible. Only the image of Christ, in us, recreates us in the image of God. For a Christian, Jewish or Gentile, leaving Christ is unthinkable.