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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Welcome Service of Praise & Confession * Song of Praise: “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” # 268:1-3 Service of God’s Holy Word Scripture Reading: John 1:1-18; Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 13 |
Beloved brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the most important questions of Christmas – indeed one of the most important questions of our entire life is this: who is Jesus? It’s not so much a historical question as it is a deeply personal and spiritual question. And in one way or another, everyone ultimately gives an answer to this question. It is unavoidable.
We might get the answer wrong, or someone might say that he just doesn’t care – but that’s an answer none the less. What’s at stake of course, is eternity. Whether you and I will spend eternity in heaven or in hell- in glory or under wrath- all depends on our answer to this one question.
In the days of Christ’s ministry, Jesus asked his disciples: Who do people say that the Son of Man is? They responded: Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still other Jeremiah or one of the prophets. In other words, most people had no idea who Jesus was. They acknowledged that he was someone special – a great teacher? A prophet perhaps? Who knows?!
Then Jesus asked them: But who do YOU say that I am? Peter said, You are the Christ the Son of the Living God. Do you recall what Jesus said to Peter? He said, Blessed are you Simon …for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.
You see, the identity of Jesus as the Son of God was not something that could be seen, or known or discerned with the naked eye. Rather, it was something that had to be made known! It has to be seen, known and discerned by true faith. The Father gave such faith to Peter, and to John, and to all who believed in Jesus.
Here in his Gospel account, John is answering that same question. He is revealing to us who Jesus is. My hope and prayer this morning, as it is every time God’s Word is opened and the gospel is proclaimed, is that the Father, by His Holy Spirit would give us ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts and minds to believe and understand who Jesus is – and to adore Him! To worship him! To fall on our knees before Him -- for as Lord’s Day 13 teaches us -- Jesus is the Only Begotten Son of the Father. We note two points:
1. How this Distinction Sets Christ Apart
2. How this Distinction Draws us Near
1. How this Distinction Sets Christ Apart
In this first point we’ll be looking at the exact meaning of the phrase Only Begotten Son. We want to know: where, in the Scriptures, do we find such language? and How does it apply to Jesus?
First off, the term only begotten Son is used 5 times with reference to Jesus by the apostle John. (As a side note, Luke uses the term 3 times, but each time he refers to a son or a daughter who was the only child of a parent). Whereas John uses this term exclusively when referring to Jesus.
I am going to read those passages to you (and I’m quoting from the NKJV because that is one of the only versions that employs the language of ‘only begotten son’). The first two references are found in the passage we read today.
John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And verse18: No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.”
Then there’s John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” And John 3:18, “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Finally, there’s 1 John 4:9: "In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”
The word only begotten comes from the Greek word mono-genes. It’s a compound word made up of the word mono – meaning one or only, and genes which means generate (like parents generate offspring for example).
So, mono-genes means one genesis or generated one. But now, what does this mean theologically? For example, is John simply saying (like Luke) that Jesus is the ‘only child’ of the heavenly Father.” Is that all this means? No. John is saying something infinitely more meaningful and profound. He’s revealing something about the identity of Jesus that is truly majestic and amazing.
Lord’s Day 13 puts it in these words: Jesus Christ alone it the eternal, natural Son of God. As opposed to us – who are adopted children, adopted by grace for the sake of Christ. Jesus is God’s rue Son, His eternal Son, and even more than that he is the eternally generated Son – who has been with the Father before all worlds, from even before the beginning.
Let me try to explain this. Normally, when we speak about an earthly son who is generated by his father, we can pin-point to a specific moment – an exact time when that child was conceived, when that child ‘came into being,’ or started to exist. One moment he was not, then next moment he was.
But what John is revealing to us in the opening verses of chapter 1 is that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, never had a beginning. Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, never had a moment-in-time when he came into being, or when he began to exist.
Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father from all eternity. It means that He has always been the Son of God. It means He will always be the Son of God! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made that has been made.”
Granted, what makes this all the more difficult to understand is that we have to reckon this with the incarnation of God’s Son. The incarnation refers to when Jesus, God’s Son, took to himself a truly human nature and was born of his mother Mary. Let’s look at Lord’s Day 14 a moment. I want you to see how the catechism describes and explains the incarnation of Jesus.
The question comes: What does it mean that he (our Savior, God’s only begotten Son), was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Notice the first line in the answer: That the eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to himself, through the working of the Holy Spirit, from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, a true human nature.
In describing the miracle of the incarnation, in describing this wondrous marvel and mystery that we celebrate at Christmas, the catechism is defending the divine nature of God’s only begotten Son. The catechism is explaining that even though Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, took on flesh and bone, even though he took to himself a true human nature, and even though there was a point in time when baby Jesus was generated by the Holy Spirit in his earthly mother’s womb, even though baby Jesus had a birthday, he was still, at that very same time, the eternal Son of God.
Even in the flesh, God’s only begotten Son never became less than almighty God. He never had to set aside, or sacrifice, or compromise his deity as true and eternal God.
You might ask, is this level of knowledge really important? Yes, we want to know who Jesus is, but isn’t this taking it a bit too far? Remember again the opening question: who is Jesus? That is not just a theological, abstract question or puzzle to be solved by pastors and seminary professors. No. This is a question of great spiritual consequence. It all boils down to getting the gospel right.
Remember as well, the phrase (only begotten Son) is part of the Apostle’s Creed. It one of the foundational articles of our Christian faith. Also, if you look at the Nicene Creed, (p. 149 F&P), we see that this is given even more time and attention! We confess: we believe in “…one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made…” Also in the Athanasian Creed: (art. 22): The Son was neither made nor created; he was begotten from the Father alone.
Remember, these creeds were written in the early days of the church, dating back to the 300’s and 400’s. So why was so much attention devoted to this? Because the Christian faith was coming under attacks by those who spread false teaching, and our brothers and sisters in Christ wanted to get the Gospel right – both for their generation, and for generations to come!
Let me give you one example. I recently purchased a book on the Nicene Creed, written by pastor Kevin DeYoung. In it, he explained how in the year 318, there was a very sincere, Godly well-educated man named Arius. Arius took the Scriptures seriously, and he taught that people should follow the example of Jesus.
But one of the things that troubled Arius was the teaching of the church that Jesus was true and natural and eternal Son of God. Arius could not understand this – because in his mind, God is One. It is blasphemous to suggest that Jesus Christ could also be true and eternal God.
Kevin DeYoung wrote: “ If Jesus was God just like the Father, he reasoned, and if Jesus suffered, died, and endured limitations, then aren’t we saying God is weak, God can suffer, God can die, and God can be changed? That hardly seems like God, Arius thought…it seemed blasphemous to him—that the eternal, uncreated, ever-existing God could come down to earth as a finite, changeable man. Jesus Christ, he thought, must not be God in the same way the Father is God.”
(By the way, those are the same kind of questions that we pastors ask our ministerial candidates in their classical examinations. If the Bible says that God cannot be tempted, was Jesus truly tempted? If we confess that God is almighty and eternal, how can it be said that Jesus was weak, that he suffered and actually died? It all has to do with our proper understanding of the union of the divine and human nature in the Person of God's Son, Jesus Christ what we call in theological terms: the hypostatic union).
But now, getting back to Arius: do you see how heresy works? Do you see how subtle it is? Sometimes we think heresy is just pure falsehood, it’s easy to spot. But that’s not true. The most dangerous heresies are those that most closely resemble the truth -- they are falsehoods about God that are disguised as truth. Heresy, you see, always contains truth. Most heresies simply elevate or emphasize one truth at the expense of another.
Arius elevated and exalted the sovereignty and majesty and deity of the Father at the expense of the Son. In his desire to defend the deity of the Father, he forfeited the deity of the Son. He concluded that the term 'only begotten' must mean that the Father created the Son, that the pre-incarnate Jesus (like all children) came into being, that He must have had a beginning -- because only God is eternal.
Once more we must ask -- is this really important? Does any of this matter in the end? It does matter beloved. It is of utmost importance -- because if God’s Son, our Savior is not true and eternal God, if he is anything less than God, if Jesus is Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets, if Jesus is just a great teacher, an example to follow, or a social justice warrior, then Jesus is less than God – and he cannot pay the ransom for sin.
If Jesus is not true and eternal God, he cannot endure the infinite wrath and fury of God’s wrath against all our sins. Then we are still in our sins and there is no hope for us. So beloved, we are to see and to acknowledge and to celebrate the distinction between Christ’s Sonship and our own. As we sing in the second stanza of O Come all Ye Faithful: “God of God, Light of Light, Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb; Very God, Begotten, not created: O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
2. How this Distinction Draws us Near
We have now heard that the Distinction of Jesus Christ as the Only Begotten Son sets us apart from Christ – for He alone is the eternal, natural Son of God. But now secondly, we consider how this distinction draws us near unto God.
The second half of answer 33 says: We, however, are adopted children of God —adopted by grace for the sake of Christ. Look at John 1:11-13. “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Yes, it’s true, many in Jesus’s day – even many Jews -- and many people in on our day, do not receive Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of the Father. They do not embrace Him and worship Him as Savior and Lord. But…Spurgeon calls that a “blessed but” … to all who do receive him, to all who do believe in his name – God gives the rights of Sonship.
This means that unbelief -- as wicked and evil as it is – cannot triumph over God’s grace. God has preserved for himself a remnant – a people who will his very own, as we heard Rev. Sinke preached about last week with Rahab the prostitute, who by grace became Rahab the child of God. “When the Lord shall count the nations sons and daughters he shall see, born to endless life in Zion…”
Hebrews 2 puts it like this: “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
When we consider all the theological terms that orbit around the topic of salvation – like expiation, propitiation, justification, sanctification, adoption is considered to be the highest privilege afforded to us in and through the gospel of grace – even surpassing justification – because adoption signifies that deep, intimate, personal love of God for His us.
As John writes in 1 John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And so we are!
This privileged relationship qualifies us as heirs and fellow-heirs with Christ, receiving the Spirit of sonship, and having a right to all the privileges of being a child of God. We see here that salvation in Christ is not a prize that God awards us at the end of our life. No. Salvation is a transformation of our status right here and right now.
I call your attention once more to what verse 12 said in our text: But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Did you hear that? God gave us the right to become children of God! But how can that be?
A right is a freedom or an interest or a privilege that legally belongs to us and is protected by law. Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms every Canadian citizen has certain fundamental rights – the right to free expression, religion, and equal treatment under law among many others. But how can it be said that we have the right to become children of God?
If we are honest with ourselves, we’d admit that there’s no greater irony in all the world, in all the universe than that! We who were disinherited, who were rebels, outlaws, and outcasts—who were prodigal sons and daughters, who (in Adam) demanded our inheritance, we left Paradise. We left our father’s home. We happily squandered all our wealth in the far country and wanted NOTHING more to do with God our heavenly Father or Jesus Christ His Son.
But…by God’s amazing grace, in his abundant mercy, according to His steadfast, unchanging relentless love, God called us back to himself. God sent our older brother Jesus Christ to save us! And Jesus left the Father’s house above, He humbled Himself and came down to this earth, and he suffered and died and rose again – all to bring us back home; all to restore our rights – the rights of sonship.
And even though Jesus is the only natural and eternal Son of God, He is not greedy, he is not jealous so that would keep the title of Son of God to himself, or cling to all the riches of his household – claiming them for himself. No. Jesus, God’s natural and eternal son, lovingly, willingly, joyfully shares with us ALL the privileges of adoption – and he is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.
That is what makes this truth, this particular teaching, this Gospel so humbling, yet so glorious and majestic! This is why it is important for us to know who Jesus is. This is why the church has worked so hard down through the ages to defend the truth of Gospel: because this is what’s at stake. These are the precious promises of God that give us hope in a dark and sinful world – where outside of Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God, we would have no hope, and no salvation.
Amen.
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