The Baptist Faith And Message Article 2B: God the Son (Part One)
There is one area of Doctrine that comes up over and over again and it is the person of Jesus Christ. We went into some detail about this as we worked through the Book of 1 John on Sunday Mornings.
And I hope that what you saw was that time and time again this has been a real point of contention in the history of the church. There are many crazy things that people claim about Jesus, and some originated very early on. If you’ll remember back to the Book of 1 John, those people who were teaching false things about Jesus were part of the “spirit of antichrist” (1 John 4:1-6).
In the Book of 1 John, John is dealing with Cerinthus. Remember, he taught that Jesus only appeared to come in the flesh and die. This would later be known as Docetism and would later grow into full grown Gnosticism.
Later, Arius taught that Jesus was not God. There are modern day Arians in America today. And they have likely knocked on your door. They are Jehovah’s Witnesses. But they add a lot of weirdness to their beliefs that was not there for Arius’s followers. I would also link Unitarians in this mix as well.
Another wrong view was Sabellianism. Those who believed this taught that Jesus and God the Father were two aspects of the same person. Modalism is a similar belief that is around today. Many charismatics believe this in our day. It’s called “Oneness Pentecostalism”.
Nestorianism would also arrive on the scene bringing more wrong views of Jesus. They believed that Mary gave birth to only the human Jesus. And this meant that Jesus was not both completely God and completely man. In essence, this fractured the deity of Christ and humanness of Christ into two different persons.
Apollinarianism would later deny the full humanity of Jesus.
Eutychianism taught that Jesus’s humanity was absorbed into His divinity. I’m not sure if this is like Dwight Schrute’s twin or not, but the humanity of Jesus was absorbed into the divinity of Jesus.
And I bring all of this up from church history because you should know that this is another area of our faith that has been dealt with in controversy after controversy until we have a good understanding of who God the Son is.
Here is the statement from the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
God the Son
Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and did the will of God, taking upon Himself human nature with its demands and necessities and identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin. He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross He made provision for the redemption of men from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where He is the One Mediator, fully God, fully man, in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission. He now dwells in all believers as the living and ever present Lord.
Genesis 18:1ff.; Psalms 2:7ff.; 110:1ff.; Isaiah 7:14; Isaiah 53:1-12; Matthew 1:18-23; 3:17; 8:29; 11:27; 14:33; 16:16,27; 17:5; 27; 28:1-6,19; Mark 1:1; 3:11; Luke 1:35; 4:41; 22:70; 24:46; John 1:1-18,29; 10:30,38; 11:25-27; 12:44-50; 14:7-11; 16:15-16,28; 17:1-5, 21-22; 20:1-20,28; Acts 1:9; 2:22-24; 7:55-56; 9:4-5,20; Romans 1:3-4; 3:23-26; 5:6-21; 8:1-3,34; 10:4; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2:2; 8:6; 15:1-8,24-28; 2 Corinthians 5:19-21; 8:9; Galatians 4:4-5; Ephesians 1:20; 3:11; 4:7-10; Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:13-22; 2:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; 3:16; Titus 2:13-14; Hebrews 1:1-3; 4:14-15; 7:14-28; 9:12-15,24-28; 12:2; 13:8; 1 Peter 2:21-25; 3:22; 1 John 1:7-9; 3:2; 4:14-15; 5:9; 2 John 7-9; Revelation 1:13-16; 5:9-14; 12:10-11; 13:8; 19:16.
Christ
Christ is a designation. It is a title, not Jesus’s last name. Christ means “Messiah”. When we say Jesus Christ, we are saying Jesus the Messiah.
The Old Testament looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. There was a promise given after the Fall that one would come who would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). The promise of blessing to all the nations was given to Abraham, and we understand that this is fulfilled in Jesus (Genesis 12:1-4). David was promised an eternal kingdom, that we understand is fulfilled in Jesus (2 Samuel 7:16). And by the time of the prophets there was a longing and expectation for the fulfillment of these promises. As Christians we oftentimes think a lot about these texts around Christmas time. One of those is Isaiah 7:14.
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14 ESV)
The Scriptures looked forward to one who would come and save God’s people. This is the meaning of the title Messiah. When we call Jesus, Jesus Christ we are saying that Jesus is the one who would save God’s people.
The New Testament begins with a proclamation of Jesus being that promised Messiah.
“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1 ESV)
…is the eternal Son of God
We dealt with this a lot over the course of the past few Wednesdays. So, I will keep this relatively short. That was one of the reasons that I covered the Doctrine of the Trinity the way that I did. Hopefully the past lesson helped us to understand this one rather easily.
If you’ll recall our discussion on eternal sonship then you’ll remember what was said there. Though it is hard to think through, it is important because it is about the nature and character of God the Son.
How do these three passages from the gospel of John come together?
In John 3:16 Jesus is called God’s “only Son” in the English Standard Version.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 ESV)
Because the word “begotten” is not often used in our language today and because it causes some confusion it seems that it was just translated as “only”. But “only” does not get the full meaning of the text. That’s why most of you have memorized that verse as “only begotten son”. The word for begotten is there. It’s μονογενῆ. “Μονο” means “only”. It sounds like “mono” and it is used in the English language today to mean “one” or “single”. And the word “γενῆ” means “begotten” and it usually has reference to giving life to something else, usually through procreation. And then you have other passages of Scripture within the same book of the Bible, written by the same author that make it abundantly clear that God the Son is eternally existent and was not created.
The Gospel of John opens with these words,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1 ESV)
Later in the chapter we understand without a doubt that this text is talking about God the Son who took on human flesh. The Word, God the Son, was always there. He was always with God. And He always was God. And then in John 8:58 you get these words of Jesus,
“Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58 ESV)
Before Abraham even existed, God the Son existed. And not only did He exist, but was, is and always will be “I am”, or “Yahweh” the self-existent one. His existence is not dependent upon anyone or anything else. He is. So, how do we square with all of this?
The relationship that God the Son has with the Father is one of “eternal sonship”. God the Son relates to the Father as His Father and has always done so. I would like to again quote James White’s book, “The Forgotten Trinity” to discuss this.
“We use the term begotten of the relationship of the Father and Son. The Son is eternally begotten by the Father. The Father is begotten by no one. Automatically we place this relationship within time and think of the Father originating the Son at a point in time. Most definitely not. The term as we use it here speaks of an eternal, timeless, relationship. It had no beginning, it will have no ending. It has always been. C.S. Lewis likened it to a book that is lying on top of another. We say the top book owes its position to the bottom one. It wouldn’t be where it is without the one on the bottom. Now, if you can, imagine this relationship as always having been.”[1]—James White
I think that the book illustration is very helpful here and really relates the idea well. This is an eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. And the Son is eternally the Son. The Father is eternally the Father.
R. Dwain Minor
[1] James White, The Forgotten Trinity, 1998, Bethany House Publishers, p. 173