Word of Salvation – Vol. 33 No. 07 – February 1988

 

God’s Only Begotten Son, Our Lord

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 13.

Reading: John 1:1-18; Col. 1:9-23

Singing: PsH.483; PsH.55:1,4; PsH. 206; PsH.372: 1,3; PsH.281:1,10.

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Nothing causes a Jehovah’s Witness to disagree with you more quickly than for you to say that Christ is also eternal God.  This denial of Christ’s existence from all eternity by the Jehovah’s Witness is actually a very old heresy.  Way back in the year 320 A.D. an elder by the name of Arius, who was in charge of a Christian Church in Alexandria, North Africa, began to teach that Christ was not eternal but a created being.  Arius at this time was an older man, a great preacher, an able scholar and a man of piety.

But influenced by different winds of doctrine around him, he began to believe that Christ was not really of the same substance as God.  Christ, he said, was made like other creatures.  To Arius, Christ was very important and he spoke of Christ as the first-born of all creatures and that God made the world through Christ, just as the Bible says in Col.1:15.  But for all that, said Arius, Christ Himself had a beginning too.  God is without beginning, but not Christ.  He said that Christ was God in a certain sense, but a lower God and in no way one with the Father in essence or eternity.  But what happened then in Bethlehem when Christ became human?  one might ask.  Well, said Arius, Christ is not God nor man, He is somewhere in between.  In the beginning God created Christ, before everything else, and then much later in Bethlehem this Christ entered a human body through being born of Mary.  Now Arius was not one to keep his views to the theological study circles, and neither did he want to keep things unnecessarily difficult.  So he put forth his views in simple lines, like …”there was a time when Christ was not” and arranged for these lines to be sung to popular tunes by the rank and file of the Alexandrian Christians.

Jehovah’s Witnesses today try to make the same views popular by going from door to door, but Arius, their forerunner, got people to actually sing his views.  But so threatening to the well-being of God’s church were these views about Christ that it resulted in a Church Council which was held in Nicea in the year 325 A.D.  The Church Council was the first of its kind and represented the whole Christian church of that time.  It condemned the views of Arius and the ruling authorities banished him into exile.  The council of Nicea said, and some of its statements later found their way into the Nicene Creed, that Christ is ‘the only-begotten Son of God, begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father.”  We proclaim God’s Word then concerning GOD’S ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON, OUR LORD.

We will see    1.  Its Meaning …and
                        2.  Its Application.

1.  Its Meaning

The Apostles’ Creed speaks of Christ in this way: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, our Lord”.  The words “only-begotten” and also the word “Lord” are actually from the Bible itself.  The evangelist John, author of the fourth Gospel, testified of Christ, saying:

“The Word became flesh, and lived for a while among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only-begotten Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth”.  (Jn.1:14)

And in his first letter the same John was further inspired by God’s Spirit to write:

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”.  (1Jn.4:9).

And the word “Lord” referring to Christ, is, as you know, widely found in Scripture as well.  In 1Cor.12:3 it says:

“…and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Holy Spirit.”

Perhaps nowhere does this fact stand out so well as with the confession of Thomas, the disciple who doubted, but who, when he saw the risen Christ, called out: “My Lord and my God.’

But how does this scriptural witness to Christ being both God’s only-begotten Son, and our Lord, concern the Christian believer?  What does all this mean to the Christian who is also a child of God and a son of God?  And what is implied when the Christian confesses that Christ is His Lord?

Well, in working out the value of all this for the Christian, must concern ourselves first of all with Christ.  And when we see how it all relates to Christ, how it sets forth Christ as God’s Son and our Lord, then we can also discover the meaning He has for us.  In fact, the whole concept that we are dealing with here, can be put as follows:

Because Jesus, God’s only eternal and natural Son, died for our sins, God has adopted us into His family; and therefore we call Jesus “Lord”.

In this formulation it helps us to distinguish between Christ’s eternal, natural Sonship, and the Christian’s membership in God’s family.  On the one hand we have Christ as the eternal Son of God, or the only-begotten of the Father.  Here the Christian church sometimes speaks of the Son being eternally generated by the Father.  The Father is begetting the Son in an eternal process.  This way of speaking comes from Ps.2 where God speaks about Christ as follows: “You are my Son, today I have become your Father,” or, “today I have begotten you.”  With that word “today” we must not understand one particular point in time but more in the sense of ‘everyday’, or ‘all days’.  Yes, in all eternity the Father begets the Son.  It is a never-ending process.

But now, on the other hand, that can never be said of the Christian.  The Christians are not the eternal children of God.  They have been chosen to be Christians from all eternity in God’s decree of election but they are of course all born as people with sinful natures.  They become children of God only in the course of time and that happens when the Spirit of God causes them to be born again and become converted.  Christ is the eternal Son of God, and Christian believers become God’s children through the new birth at some point in time.

But now from a slightly different perspective, Christ is also the natural Son of God.  Here the Christian church speaks of Christ as being of the one essence and being of one substance with the Father, or in the words of the Nicene Creed: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.”  All this is based on Christ’s own testimony: “I and the Father are One” and “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”

But on the other hand it can never be said of Christians that they too are the natural children of God.  No, Christian believers are God’s children by adoption.  By Christ’s nature you can see that He is the Heavenly Father’s natural Son, for Christ is like His Father, the same as His Father.

But Christian believers were by nature children of wrath, sons of disobedience.  Their natures were not at all like God’s; their natures are sinful and depraved.  But as they were, by the grace of God, made new by spiritual birth, through the Holy Spirit, they were adopted into Christ’s family.  Christ is the natural Son; Christian believers are the adopted children.  A natural child looks like his father, shares the being of his father, but not so the adopted child.  Yet both have the same rights and the same privileges in the one family.

So it is with Christian believers.  They receive, as adopted children into the family of God, all the riches and benefits of Christ, the natural Son.  And Jesus made this adoption a beautiful reality because He died for our sins, and for that reason we call Him, our Lord.

2.  Its Application

Let us now see in a practical way how Christ, being the only-begotten Son of God and our Lord, affects the lives of Christians.  Let us see how it affected the Christians of the past and how it affects Christians today.  The early Christian church had to survive, not in a secular and humanistic culture as the church of today has to, but in a culture that was very much religious.  It wasn’t so much Christianity versus a godless society, as it is now, but Christianity versus many other gods.  There was for example the god Jupiter who was also known as Zeus.  On one of his missionary journeys Paul and Barnabas preached the gospel in a town called Lystra and had healed a crippled man there.  When the crowd saw what had happened they called out “The gods have come down to us in human form” and they called Barnabas, Zeus and Paul, Hermes.  (Acts 14:1-12).  It was believed that Jupiter or Zeus had one wife but numerous sons and daughters, all called gods or goddesses.  So when the people of Lystra referred to the apostles as Zeus, and said the gods had come to them in human form, and even wanting to sacrifice to them, Paul and Barnabas had to counteract these pagan ideas and make clear who God really is and that Christ is His only Son.  And as we saw already, the term “only-begotten Son” became very important in the struggle around the doctrine of Christ’s person with Arius in the fourth century.

But at the time of the Reformation the issues had shifted.  The burning issue of the 16th century was not so much what to think about the Person of Christ, as it was in the first centuries, but what to think of salvation.  For this reason the Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s in Day 13 affirms that Christ alone is the eternal, natural Son of God, but hurries on to say that the Christian believers are the adopted children of God, adopted by grace through Christ.  In the 16th century, the Reformation had to point out that God’s people are saved not by works, or by the priest’s absolution or by the indulgence of the church, but by grace through Christ!

It was the same with the issue of calling Jesus “Lord”.  In the early church, man, women and children were burned for confessing Jesus to be their “Lord”.  The Roman Empire did not mind Christianity if it was just one other religion besides the many that were already there.  Anyone could call anyone else “Lord” as long as the Emperor was given that honour too.  But Christianity made enemies when it was claimed to be the only true religion and that Christ only was “Lord”.  But that was not the issue anymore in Reformation times.  Most people had no problem calling Jesus their “Lord” but they did it for the wrong reasons.  They could buy their salvation with gifts to the church, and then when they thought that this made them Christians, they often went on living as though Jesus was not “Lord” over them by continuing to live in sin.  So the Reformation put the confession of Christ’s Lordship in a much broader context.  Since our Saviour has rescued sinners from the home of their foster father, the devil, and has adopted us, we call Him Lord.  We were once “captive slaves” to sin and Satan, but now we are “willing slaves” to Christ.  For Christ has set us free from the power of sin but in doing so He bought us by His precious blood to be His very own in body and soul, and therefore He is now our Lord.

But those were the issues in the past.  How does this confession that Christ is the only-begotten Son, and our Lord affect us today?  It is easy enough to confess this in church and in our own homes, but we are of course not always in church and at home.  We also come into contact with a society that has not only people in it who believe there is no God, or that one cannot know anything about Him but we also meet up with people who talk quite differently about the Christian faith, and hence the many different denominations and sects that we have.  Nowadays we have the belief that people are basically good, honest, decent and competent and with a capacity to love.  None less than an American president used these words to describe his government and many other western leaders speak in a similar way when they appeal to “good people” to help overcome the bad elements in society.  Our own prime minister often speaks like that.

But since when are people inclined to good rather than to evil?  All people are by nature sinners.  They are not free from the power of sin and evil and the tyranny of the devil.  For that very reason God’s people confess Jesus as Lord because He redeemed them from all that.  However, when we believe in people as being basically good and honest, then we are making man into a god.  That’s our problem in the present.  Today’s society is so thoroughly humanistic that it says that man is inclined to good rather than to evil.  Small wonder that the belief in the only-begotten Son stands in direct contrast to the belief that all men are good.

And many who identify with the Christian religion do not speak of faith as having to do with being adopted as children of God by grace through Christ, but faith as a means to build up one’s confidence, and resisting negative thoughts, and tapping the limitless possibilities within ourselves.  Again, it is an attempt to look for salvation in man himself, rather than in the eternal, natural Son of God.  Today we live in a culture that loves to speak about peace of mind, self-fulfilment, and self-sufficiency.  And if people are basically thought to be “O.K.”, then we no longer have to speak of the need to be adopted into God’s family because of sin and Satan domination.  Many leaders in the million-dollar electronic church are often part of all this.  They succeed in their enterprises because they preach a Christ who helps you with your fears, frustrations and anxieties rather than the Biblical Christ who exposes man’s moral poverty, his selfish blindness and spiritual nakedness.  But when Christ is presented as One who helps you with your fears, rather than having had to die for your terrible guilt, as One who helps you to overcome your frustrations rather than overcoming in you the power of sin and Satan, and as One who relieves you of your anxieties rather than having you submit all of your life to His Kingship, no matter the cost, what meaning has it then to speak of Him as being our Lord?  He has been reduced to a mere friend!

How are we to appreciate again the biblical truths of all people being slaves to sin and children of wrath, and that only through the only-begotten Son can anyone be adopted into God’s family?  And that Christ because He has bought us with His death is therefore our Lord?  Well, it needs to be stressed again and again that human nature is inclined to evil rather than to good.  The issue today is that we are forgetting the nature of evil.  Sin is no mild disease of the soul but a deadly cancer demanding radical surgery of the new birth and conversion.  The gospel is not only a soothing message of comfort, of forgiveness, of acceptance and peace of mind.  It is much more.  The gospel must first crush all the self-righteousness in us before we may believe that God gives us the rights and privileges of sonship.  And we must first be cured from our self-centredness before we can live as God’s children to His glory.  And first our self-will must be killed off before Christ gives us His power to live as willing slaves to His will.

Faith is not so much looking to Christ to overcome our mistakes and helping us to save our lives, but faith is admitting before a holy God our terrible rebellion and utter helplessness.  We must not look to Christ to achieve our own self-fulfilment but we acknowledge Him as Lord over our lives and therefore obey Him.  To find our true selves, our reason for living, discover a true spiritual character, is to learn first of all what it means to be sons and daughters of God.  We cannot very well confess Jesus as “our Lord” when we do not also let Him mould our homes, our marriages, our education, work, and our entertainment.  We cannot say we are free in Christ when we are under the influence of liquor, porn, materialism, or whatever.  We cannot very well participate in the Lord’s Supper if we only confess Christ as Lord there and do not follow it everywhere with a faithful obedience to Him, the only-begotten Son, our Lord.

AMEN.