The Berean Expositor
Volume 49 - Page 4 of 179
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The Acknowledgment of the Son of God.
pp. 61 - 67
From time to time we have to consider the overwhelming subject of the Godhead, and
two aspects of it relating to the Lord Jesus Christ are constantly coming to the fore,
namely His Deity and His Sonship.  We state straight away that, concerning God
unconditioned and limitless, we know nothing. We are shut up completely to what He
has been pleased to reveal of Himself in the holy Scriptures. Then again we must
remember our very limited powers of comprehension and that, however advanced we are
spiritually, we can now only see partially as in a mirror (I Cor. 13: 12) which often
creates for us a puzzling problem. This being so, we approach the subject in real humility
and dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit, Whose main object is to reveal and
exalt the Lord Jesus (John 16: 7, 14).
That the Scriptures reveal the one God in a threefold capacity as Father, Son and Holy
Spirit is true for all who have eyes to see and minds that are unbiased. In his Institutes of
Theology, the theologian Dr. Chalmers states that this, when viewed as separate
propositions is abundantly plain, but it is when we seek to bring them together and
attempt their reconciliation that the problems start.
This is certainly true concerning the Deity and Sonship of Christ and the subject has
been made increasingly difficult by some of the creeds. If ever there was a need to be
accurate and to keep within the bounds of the Word of God it is in respect of the Deity
and Sonship of Christ. Once we exceed or detract from what God has written concerning
Himself we get into an uncharted ocean and are completely lost. We have dealt with the
Deity of Christ in the booklet The Lord Jesus Christ, God or only man?. We now wish to
consider His Sonship.
There are those who believe in `the eternal Sonship of Christ', but when one seeks
plain Scriptural basis for such doctrine, we find it is conspicuously lacking. We are
treated to theological statements such as `the eternal generations of the Son' (attributed to
the early Fathers), but these words are meaningless and no one who uses them ever
attempts to explain them. We never find such expressions as `the eternal Son' or `the
eternal Father' in the Bible, and we should expect them there if they were true. Sonship
in relation to human beings is invariably connected with the thought of being begotten
and this thought is definitely connected with the Son of God when He became incarnate.
He was begotten by the Father through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. The angel
who appeared to the virgin Mary said to 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" (Luke 1: 35, and see verse 32).
Note that the Son of God was not His name before His birth, but the future child that
was to be born. Through this miraculous birth, He would be called the Son of God. On
this point we should carefully note the quotation from II Sam. 7: 14 given in Heb. 1: 5: