SON OF GOD
John 1:18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
One of the great mysteries of God is the eternal Sonship of Jesus. Jesus hasn’t always been a man but He has always been God’s Son. His birth in Bethlehem was not the beginning of His Sonship, it was only the beginning of His humanity. When the Bible talks about Jesus being the only begotten Son it is not talking about the birth in a manger, it is talking about one of the greatest of all mysteries. It is speaking of the eternal generation of Jesus Christ. Now don’t misunderstand, Christ had no beginning, He has always been. There are some things that are just beyond the capacity of our finite minds, eternity is one of those things. Martin Luther spoke about the meaning of Christ being the Son of God, here is something of what he said.
“As a human son receives his body and his very being from his father, so the Son of God, born of the Father, receives his divine essence and nature from the eternal Father. But this or any other illustration can never adequately describe how the divine majesty can be given to another, as when the Father gives his entire divine essence to the Son. A human father can’t give his entire being to his son. This is where the comparison breaks down. However, as far as the divine being is concerned, all of God’s divine essence and nature passes into the Son. Yet the Son, who remains in the divine being together with the Father, is one God together with the Father. Likewise, the Holy Spirit has the same divine nature and majesty as the Father and the Son.You must simply believe this. No matter how clever, sharp, or intelligent a person may be, the human mind will never be able to fully comprehend it. If human wisdom were able to grasp this, then God wouldn’t have needed to reveal it from heaven or announce it through Holy Scripture. So you should say, “Even though I can’t completely comprehend it, I believe and confess that there is one eternal God, who is also three distinct persons. Holy Scripture is God’s Word and says that this is the way it is. I will live by what it says.”
Augustine also spoke often of the eternal nature of the Son. He would often say, “He was born in eternity without a mother, He took on flesh in Bethlehem without a human father”. This is the mystery of godliness that Paul talked about, He is fully God and also fully man. He is a man to represent us to the Father, He is God’s Son to represent the Father to us. What a profound mystery!. Actually, this is the mystique of Christmas Day. We can’t put our finger on it but Christmas is mysterious. Its not the reindeers or Santa Claus that cause this dilemma, its the miracle of God becoming man.
