Peter SmytheDecidedly Unprofessional

For whom he fore-approved he also fore-appointed to be conformed unto the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Romans 8.29, Rotherham)

For those who don’t like to believe in Identification (Jesus fully identified with us, even in sin, so that we could fully identify with him) and the born-again Jesus, Romans 8.29 stands as one of those spikes in the road that causes theology blow-out. In this short verse, Paul gives texture to his Colossian statement of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” He says God fore-appointed that we, as believers, should share in Jesus’s very own nature.

Conformed:

Louw & Nida: pertaining to that which has a similar form or nature

BDAG: to having a similar form, nature, or style, similar in form

Image:

Louw & Nida: that which has the same form as something else

BDAG: an object shaped to resemble the form or appearance of something; that which is the same form as something else

In the second half of the verse, he lays out just how that was to be accomplished: Jesus would become the prototype by becoming the firstborn of the new creation, i.e., the first in chronology and preeminence.

Ordinary preachers certainly do not like this plain reading for it requires the idea that Jesus did, indeed, fully become sin on the cross and that he was reborn when resurrected by the Father. To avoid this spike, they have careened over to stripping the ordinary meaning of “firstborn” out of the text. They say that “firstborn” means only preeminent and that it does not (and cannot) mean the first one in chronology or prototype.

That’s a reference to preeminence, not chronology. In Jewish culture the firstborn son inherited all his father possessed. He uniquely represented the dignity of his family and carried the family name. He was the preeminent one. (John MacArthur, Security in the Spirit)

While firstborn necessarily carries with it the idea of preeminence, the use of firstborn in the New Testament also connotes the common meaning of first in chronology:

And [Joseph] did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn son. (Matthew 1.25)

Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. (Hebrews 11.25, KJV)

If these verses (there are others) weren’t enough, there is the matter of the Koine Greek itself. The New Testament wasn’t written by apostles who lived in ivory towers, dabbled with endless theological arguments, premises, and footnotes, and spoke in ways that only their fellow illuminati and space aliens could understand. The NT was written in street Greek, the language of the commoner:

So far from the Greek of the New Testament being a language by itself, or even, as one German scholar called it, “a language of the Holy Ghost,” its main feature was that it was the ordinary vernacular Greek of the period, not the language of contemporary literature, which was often influenced by an attempt to imitate the great authors of classical times, but the language of everyday life, as it was spoken and written by ordinary men and women of the day, or, it is often described, the κοινη or Common Greek, of the great Graeco-Roman world. (Moulton & Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament at xi)

Now it seems to use that the language used by the Septuagint and N(ew) T(estament) writers was the language used in common conversation, learned by them, not through books, but most likely in childhood from household talk, or, if not, through subsequent oral instruction. If this be the case, then the Septuagint is the first translation which was made for the great masses of the people in their own language, and the N(ew) T(estament) writers are the first to appeal to men through the common vulgar language intelligible to all who spoke Greek. The common Greek thus used is indeed considerably modified by the circumstances of the writers, but these modifications no more turn Greek into a peculiar dialect than do Americanisms or Scotticisms turn the English of Americans and Scotsmen into peculiar dialects of English. (James Donaldson, Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, vol. ii, p. 170)

To the Greekster on the street, especially not one well-versed in the Torah (see 1 Corinthians 1.26 - not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth), “firstborn” had a pretty ordinary, but direct meaning: first-in-time and first-in-preeminence. This is even demonstrated by the inscription found on a pagan priest’s sepulchral:

As additional proof that this word is to be taken out of the list of purely “Biblical” words, Deissmann (LAE, p. 88) cites the undated pagan sepulchral inscription Kaibal 460.4 ιρευς γαρ ειμι πρωτοτοκων εκ τελεθ[ων] - “for I am a priest by the rites of the firstborn,” and notes that the editor suggests that in the family of the deceased the firstborn always exercised the office of priest. (Moulton & Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament)

Note the fact that this priest wasn’t a member of the Hebrew culture club.

Personally, if Jesus hadn’t fully identified with us, becoming sin on the cross, I’d have a hard time seeing just how in the world God could have sin-natured man-beasts become fully identified with Jesus [conformed to his image]. The very fact that Jesus did become the “firstborn of all of creation” - first-in-time - in order to redeem us does indeed make him first-in-preeminence.