The Eternal Sonship of Christ (1)

Question: “Why is it so important that Jesus was God’s only Son? God could have had thousands of sons. Are not the angels His sons also? And what about Hebrews 2:10? ‘For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.’”

The point of the quotation from Hebrews 2 is that the people of God who are led to glory are called in the text “sons.”

Before I go any further with the discussion of this issue, I am going to quote the Heidelberg Catechism, which answers this very question. The Catechism is explaining here the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe … in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son.” “Why is Christ called the only begotten Son of God, since we are also the children of God? Because Christ alone is the eternal and natural Son of God; but we are children adopted of God, by grace, for His sake” (Q. & A. 33).

Because the question suggests the possibility that our Lord Jesus Christ is not the natural and eternal Son of God, I want to be sure that all our readers understand and confess this fundamental truth. It is a truth established by the church of Christ very early in its history. It is no wonder that this truth was set down in creedal form so early, because the absolute divinity of Christ is the fundamental confession of the church and the foundation on which the church rests. When, in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked His disciples their opinion as to who He was, Peter spoke for them all: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). After, strikingly, Jesus told the disciples that they could not have known this of themselves, but only through the revelation of God to them (17), the Lord said, “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (18).

Jesus makes the point that His absolute divinity is the rock on which the church is built. As long as the church confesses that truth and maintains it, hell cannot prevail against it. But when the church denies that truth, the gates of hell have destroyed that church. It is well to pause here and be sure of our membership in the church against which the gates of hell cannot prevail!

It is no wonder that this truth has been the object of bitter attacks since the beginning of the New Testament era. These attacks have their origin with Satan who hates God and God’s Christ and who does all in his power to destroy the church. He knows, better it seems than many churches know today, that if he can eliminate the confession of the deity of Christ from the church, he has destroyed it.

The immediate occasion for the early defence of this truth at Nicea (AD 325) was the heresy of Arius. Arius, originally from Alexandria in Egypt, taught that Christ was indeed the greatest of all the sons of God; that, in fact, he was the eternal son of God; but that he was created, not begotten, and was not, therefore, true God, but only another son of God, though the greatest of all His sons.

Following Nicea, the so-called semi-Arians took a slightly different position from Arius. They taught that Christ was the eternal son of God, but was not of the same essence as the Father. This attack too, though subtle and confusing and calculated to befuddle the minds of God’s people, was repudiated by the church.

It seems to me that there has never been a single moment in the history of the New Testament church when the divinity of our Lord has not been attacked. Even at the time of the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, there were many who attacked this doctrine. The most notable was Servetus, who was willing to say that Christ was a son of God, but who refused to say that Christ was the Son of God. He was a blasphemous man and was burned at the stake in Geneva for his blasphemy.

The attacks go on today, principally among the Unitarians. However, there are most subtle ways to deny this great truth. It can be and is denied today in many churches who claim to hold to the Reformed creeds—all of which teach emphatically the absolute divinity of Jesus Christ—but who, in fact, deny His deity. Within apostate Reformed churches, the virgin birth of Christ is open to question and denied. Christ’s bodily resurrection from the grave is said to be only a myth invented by the disciples to establish firmly their claim to preach the gospel of Christ. Let it be clearly understood that any denial of Christ’s virgin birth and bodily resurrection is also a denial of His propitiatory sacrifice for sin on the cross of Calvary, and thus a denial of Christ’s divinity.

Moreover, any person or church or organization that denies the sovereignty of God in the work of salvation and ascribes salvation in some measure to man and his own free will also is guilty of disparaging the atonement of Christ and stands on the brink of denying His deity. The Heidelberg Catechism is speaking especially, but not exclusively, against the Roman Catholic Church in question and answer 30: “Do such then believe in Jesus the only Saviour, who seek their salvation and welfare of saints, of themselves, or anywhere else? They do not; for though they boast of Him in words, yet in deeds they deny Jesus the only deliverer and Saviour; for one of these two things must be true, either that Jesus is not a complete Saviour, or that they who by a true faith receive this Saviour must find all things in Him necessary to their salvation.”

Arminianism is incipient Modernism.

The subject is important enough to devote another article to it.