Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me

 Good morning. Talking about Jesus: He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. He is the head – the body should not be doing anything without consulting the head; but too many times it does. Eventually disaster will result. Several times the book of Revelation talks about Jesus being the beginning. Here it says that He is the firstborn from the dead. You don't have a firstborn unless you have a second born or more. In Luke it talks about Mary giving birth to her firstborn son. And why does Jesus have this position – for it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself; having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Jesus had all the fullness of God dwelling in Him. He wasn't just a good man. He was very God of very God, as they say. (Paul will mention this again in chapter 2). There is a divide between God and man. God used Jesus's death on the cross to reconcile us to Him, not the reverse. He is not the one that turned away. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach. When I was young, it did not seem like people were hostile toward God. They may not have been open to Him, but they were not hostile towards God. Now though it seems like they are hostile everywhere and all the time. And they are definitely engaged in evil deeds, even in the open not just in secret. He didn't save us just to give us our fire insurance. It was so that we would be holy and blameless and beyond reproach. Father thank You that You will present the reader to Yourself holy and blameless and beyond reproach.