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Abraham, Who was born of Mary, named Jesus, and is called Christ (Matt. 1: 1, 16). John
who so stressed the need for faith in the fact that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" is
the one who records the explanation that "The Messiah", being interpreted is "The
Christ" (John 1: 41). Herod ask "where Christ should be born" (Matt. 2: 4); the Saviour
Himself, while forcing the Pharisees to acknowledge that He was "The Lord", readily
granted that He was "The son of David" (Matt. 22: 41-46). "Ye are Christ's; and Christ
is God's" said the Apostle (I Cor. 3: 23). Christ died for our sins, Christ was raised from
the dead, Christ is coming again. When, therefore, the Apostle reveals that some were
chosen in Him, that is in Christ, before the foundation of the world, it means that He Who
at that time was "The Word" and "The Image of the Invisible God", was the blessed One
who was yet to lay aside His glory and be made in the likeness of men, just as we have
already seen that while He was the Son of Man when He uttered the words of John 6: 53,
He had not become a partaker of flesh and blood at the time spoken of as before the
world was, and the place where He was before.
Notice the change of terms in John 1: 1-18. As the WORD He was with GOD; as the
only begotten SON, He is in the bosom of the FATHER. In the Divine counsels, God
was to be manifested in the flesh (I Tim. 3: 16), to come into this world a Man, and be
the Only begotten Son of God. As a consequence of the Mediatorial work for which this
mighty miracle of Divine condescension was planned, many who were sinners and
undone, would find themselves by redemption sons of God. God therefore was
potentially the Father before the foundation of the world, even as Christ was verily
foreordained from before the foundation of the world.
Another passage of Scripture calls for attention. The Apostle writing to the
Corinthians concerning the vexed question about eating things offered to idols says:
"As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto
idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but
one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth (as there be
gods many, and lords many) But to us there is but one God, the Father . . . . . and one
Lord Jesus Christ . . . . ." (I Cor. 8: 4, 5).
To Paul, the title "The one Lord" would mean none but Jehovah, and this has been
made plain in the second article of this series. He is opposing the `gods many' by the
One God the Father, and the `lords many' by the One Lord Jesus Christ. If we attempt,
as some have done to teach that the Father alone is God, to the exclusion from that title of
the one Lord, we shall in the very act destroy the very God we seek to serve. Of the
Father, Paul says "Of (ek) Whom are all things, and we for (eis) Him", and of the Lord
"Through (dia) Whom are all things, and we through (dia) Him". If these statements are
kept apart, then God has originated the great purpose of the ages, but has never
implemented it, and on the other hand the Lord has mediated this purpose but never
planned it. Yet this division is contradicted by such passages as Rom. 11: 36, which
does not speak of God as the Father, or of the Lord, as Jesus Christ but indiscriminately
says:
"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of GOD . . . . . For who
hath known the mind of the LORD . . . . . For of (ek) HIM (Whom? God or the Lord?)