When Christ is first, evangelism overflows, Cox tells messengers

God wants Jesus Christ to be first in our lives and everything He does is aimed at accomplishing that, Henry Cox told those attending the Tuesday morning session of the Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting at Hunter Street Baptist Church, Hoover.
   
Delivering his president’s address from Colossians 1:15–22, Cox, pastor of First Baptist Church, Bay Minette, said, “Jesus paid the price on the cross for your sins and my sins, and He has a right to claim first place in our lives because He died.”
   
But it is the deity of Jesus that gives His death meaning, he noted.
   
Paul writes in Colossians that all the fullness of God dwells in Jesus, Cox said. “This fullness … was a part of His essential being as a part of His very constitution. He has the right to claim first place in my life because He is God.”
   
Because of His deity, Jesus is pre-eminent in all things, Cox said, noting three areas where Jesus’ sovereignty is apparent — revelation, creation and re-creation.
   
It is only through knowing Jesus that God is revealed to man, Cox said. “A church member — whether he be a teacher, a tither, a deacon or a preacher — who says he believes in God but has never had a personal experience with Jesus Christ is just as lost as a poor pagan in the darkest corner of Africa.”
   
This is the driving motive for evangelism — to reveal God to the lost by showing them Jesus, he said. “If I want to see God, I must look at Jesus,” Cox said. “If I want to know God, I must know Jesus.”
   
Cox added that Jesus is the power, preserver and purpose of creation. Quoting John 1:3, he said, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” 
   
The God of creation in Genesis is the same as the baby in the manger in Matthew 1, Cox noted. That same God is also the “adhesive of all life,” he said. “Without Jesus, life will disintegrate, come apart at the seams.”
   
In fact, the disintegration seen in today’s families, governments and other segments of society can be traced to one cause — “We’ve left Jesus out of all of it,” Cox said.
   
As Jesus is Creator, He is also the re-creator, Cox said. With His death, He created a new race, a new order, the eternal family of God.
   
He also re-creates Christians to conform to His image as they seek to know Him more, Cox said. This process will have more effect on evangelism than anything else we do, he said.
   
“Lost people get their ideas about Jesus Christ from Christians,” Cox said. “What does your life tell people about Jesus? Is He first?
   
“When He is, serving Him, witnessing, sharing His love with others will come out of the overflow.”