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B - You are asking a question which the human mind cannot answer unaided, and upon which Scripture never
speaks. As I have said, I am no philosopher, all I know is already written in the Word. What I find there is that
Christ
`Originally was in the form of God'.
`In the beginning He was the Word'.
When the fulness of time came the Word became flesh, and then, the Scripture says, `we beheld His glory as the
only begotten of the Father'. Luke 1:31-35 makes a very complete statement. Let us read it:
`And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name JESUS. He shall be
great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ... Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I
know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the
power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be
called THE SON OF GOD'
The words `therefore also' put the matter beyond question. The great confession of Matthew 16:16:
`Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God',
and the words of 1 John 4:2 are complementary:
`Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God'.
Sonship speaks not so much of His Deity, as of His office of Mediator. The way in which many who attack the
doctrine of the Lord's Deity use the title `Son' is but the old abuse of the man of straw.
A - What do you mean by this `man of straw'?
B - It means that for the purposes of argument a person first collects together a series of statements which have
no real place in the argument, but which appear valid to the ordinary hearer, and then having built up this `man of
straw' he proceeds to display his ability in knocking it to pieces. To those who see that the Sonship of Christ is
essentially a part of that great voluntary self-emptying, when the servant's form was taken at Bethlehem, the
spectacle is a pitiable exhibition of either ignorance or prejudice.
A - There does not seem much more to be said. I think however that you ought to face 1 Corinthians 8:5,6
before concluding.
B - By all means. What is the context of these verses?
A - Idolatry.
B - So then we have a statement concerning the Christian faith as opposed to idolatry. In contrast with the `gods
many and the lords many' of paganism, we have the sublime teaching of Scripture:
`But to us (here we have the "relative" argument brought in, to which we devoted some time at the opening of
our discussion) there is but one God, the Father, out of Whom the all things, and we for Him; and one Lord,
Jesus Christ, through Whom the all things, and we through Him' (1 Cor. 8:6 literal).
The `lords' of paganism were mediators between men and the more remote `gods', and this statement becomes
exactly parallel with that of 1 Timothy 2:5:
`For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus'.
The question of the Deity of Christ is not in view. It is the `Mediator' and the `Man' that is in question. None of
these things, nor all that Scripture says concerning Christ as the Servant or the Son, the Sent One or the Sacrifice,
the Shepherd or the Sufferer, can have the remotest influence upon the revealed facts of Scripture that this same
Christ is also `The Great God', `The High God', `The Almighty God', `The Creator', and `Jehovah'.
It is essential to our redemption and to the purpose of reconciliation that Christ shall be man. It is also the
continual teaching of Scripture that He is God. Faith believes the complete statement. The mere multiplying of
examples cannot make the doctrine more true nor more plain. I am not aware that any passage has been passed over