 |  |
". . . . . And again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son."
This was prophetically looking forward to His future manifestation in the flesh. It was
at that future that this context stresses the Father-Son relationship, not in past eternity.
The dogmatism of the creeds on this point is amazing, considering there is no clear
statement in Scripture that teaches this relationship obtained before the birth of the Lord
Jesus. The title "Only begotten" as applied to the Lord Jesus is not only a term of strong
endearment, but one expressing unique relationship, of which Isaac's relationship to
Abraham was a type. Isaac was Abraham's "only begotten son" (Heb. 11: 17), and
although he had other children, no other son was begotten in the same wonderful way as
the child of promise and of resurrection power. Isaac was truly born `according to the
Spirit' (Gal. 4: 29). Similarly the word `begotten' is definitely used of the Son of God as
born in time and in no other sense is the word `only-begotten' ever used of Him.
Another reference back to Heb. 1: should make this clear in its quotations from the
Psalms:
"For unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, THIS DAY have
I begotten Thee?" (Heb. 1: 5).
The divine begettal of the Son took place at a specific moment in time--THIS DAY and
it therefore cannot refer to past eternity. If we ask when THIS DAY occurred, the next
quotation from the Psalms tells us:
"And again, when He bringeth in the First begotten into the world, He saith, And let
all the angels of God worship Him" (Heb. 1: 6).
The bringing in of the First begotten into the world relates to His birth. Furthermore,
although the Father-Son relationship commenced here, His Deity is still affirmed, for the
angels are bidden to worship Him and worship in the Scriptures is the sole prerogative of
God. The worship of any created being, however exalted, is not tolerated. It is
noteworthy that Paul in Acts 13: 33 links the quotation from Psa. 2: 7 ("this day have I
begotten Thee") with the resurrection of Christ. So we see that this divine begettal is
linked with the beginning of His human life and reaffirmed at the beginning of His new
life in exaltation when He was raised from the dead by the Father.
Theologians, feeling that the word `begotten' implied the posteriority of the Father
Who begat the Son, and not seeing that this referred to Him Who was born of a virgin in
time, tried to escape the difficulty by asserting that in some way the Deity of the Son was
derived or communicated from the Father in past eternity. This leads to serious error,
denying His external existence in the past as God and according Him the position of a
lesser Deity than the Father, thus in turn denying the emphatic monotheism of the Word
of God from Genesis to Revelation.
The Bible reveals little of the Lord Jesus Christ before Bethlehem. What an
opportunity John had when he commenced writing his Gospel to support the view we
have just given if it was truth. John did not write: