From God and From the Father
The knowledge of the Father and the Son was not made known to Jehovah's earthly people. And by this revelation of His own Personal relations to God and the Father, the Lord laid the foundation of the heavenly character of Christianity. It was His closing word to His disciples, for whom He had kept the "good wine" until the end.
Having been rejected by Israel and the world as the Messiah and the Son of God, He declared Himself as come from the Father. In Him, the Son, were hidden reserves of blessing superior to the promises made to Abraham, and to all God's dispensational dealings with the earth. And the Lord linked these revealing words with the affection the Father had for them, because they had affection for the Son, and had also believed that He came out from God.
It was to this faith of theirs that He had come out from God that the Lord added the knowledge that He had come forth from the Father, and, again, that He was departing out of the world unto the Father (John 16: 27, 28). They were thus put into possession of these secret divine relations, though they little dreamed what wealth of blessing for them was embodied therein and would be derived therefrom. For the knowledge of t he Father and the Son was the basis of the truth which the Holy Spirit at His coming would confirm and develop for them and within them during the Lord's absence.
Moreover, the Lord Himself had reserved something further which He would say to them concerning God and the Father before He ascended to the Father. After His death and resurrection, His first message to His own related to God and the Father. It not only reminded them of His farewell words on this theme, but added that henceforth they should share in that relationship. To Mary of Magdala the Lord said, "Go to My brethren, and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God" (John 20: 17).
Later, we note a further stage. When the Holy Spirit, through Paul, revealed to the church the unique character of our heavenly calling in Christ, He begins with the declaration that every spiritual blessing that we possess is associated with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 1). As God, He has chosen us in Christ before the world's foundation (ver. 4); as Father, He marked us out beforehand for adoption (sonship) to Himself (ver. 5).
If we go on to trace the exposition of the heavenly mystery in this Epistle, which unfolds the dignities of the assembly, we shall not fail to mark repeatedly how closely these truths are connected with God and the Father. Indeed, it is God, so named, Who alone enables the saints to apprehend these exalted truths (see the prayers, Eph. 1: 17; Eph. 3: 14). These blessings in the heavenlies, so widely differentiated from those of the earthly kingdom, flow out of the Lord's message sent to His own through Mary of Magdala — "My Father and your Father . . . My God and your God." We are blessed through and in and with Him, Who is the Son of the Father's love.
The company of His own in the world but not of it are the Father's gift to Him, the Son. And in His resurrection, believers became related to the Father and the Son in the most intimate way — "My Father and your Father." The promised Abrahamic and Davidic blessings through Him being postponed because He was refused by His own nation, the Son introduced a scheme of celestial blessing founded upon His own Person, apart from His terrestrial offices as King, Priest, and Prophet. And the Lord's saying in private to His own circle, "I came forth from beside the Father," prepared the way for the Holy Spirit's teaching that believers upon Him in the time of His rejection are specially and peculiarly blessed with the Son according to the good pleasure of the Father's will.
From the foregoing considerations, therefore, we believe (1) that the Lord's eternal Sonship is involved in His own words, "I came forth from the Father"; (2) that His revelation of the Father and our association for blessing with the Son is the essence of Christianity, distinguishing it by this heavenly character from all other divine dealings, both past and future; and (3) that the denial of the Eternal Sonship of Christ Jesus is anti-Christian in its effect, since it impairs the doctrine of the Father and the Son, and, also, by consequence, the central truth and privileges of the assembly.
Confessing the Son or Denying Him
The apostle John in his Epistles emphasizes the seriousness of tampering with the doctrine of the Son, which is declared to be inseparable from the doctrine of the Father: "Whoever denies the Son has not the Father either; he who confesses the Son has the Father also" (1 John 2: 23). Christianity is the confession of the Son. To speak disparagingly of the Son is to dishonour both the Son and the Father Whom He revealed.
There are in Christendom many forms of denying the Son, some gross, some subtle. Unitarianism comprehends many varieties of disbelief in the Deity of Christ. Christadelphianism and similarly perverted creeds deny the eternal Sonship of Christ, teaching that the "title," Son of God, should only be predicated of the human nature, born in time. The adherents of Christian Science, and those of some other modern cults, hold in a restricted sense that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but all of them deny that He was such from all eternity, that is, in virtue of His Own Essential Being.
These varied forms of antichristian denial are all repulsive and abhorrent to the spiritual mind, since they all agree in denying that Christ is God. Another form is perhaps more specious than the classes mentioned, but hardly seems less deadly in its nature.
In this case, a writer, referring to the "sonship of Christ," asserts that "There is no ground for the assumption that it (the sonship) was a relationship of Deity carried into manhood," And, to this assertion that His sonship began with His manhood, the writer adds, "Luke clearly bases our Lord's sonship on the great divine transaction of the incarnation," quoting Luke 1: 35 in its support.
This passage in Luke has often been misunderstood and shamefully mis-handled in connection with this subject. Christadelphians, Swedenborgians, and others have mis-applied it for the like purpose — namely, that of denying that Christ was the Son of God before His conception by the Virgin Mary under the power of the Holy Spirit and the overshadowing of the Highest. They all unite in ignoring the true significance of the angel's words to Mary, "The Holy Thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God," and in enfeebling their meaning by declaring that He was to be called so merely because of His miraculous birth.
But the truth is that, while He was the Son of God at His birth, He was so before His birth. This name was His Personal right at His incarnation, because He was the Son of the Father from eternity. Other scriptures, such as John's Gospel, the Colossian and the Hebrew Epistles, fully establish the truth of the Eternal Sonship, and Luke 1: 35 does not contradict them. The Third Gospel deals specially with the humanity of Christ, and at the outset we learn from it that the "Holy Thing" to be born of Mary should be called the Son of God. This name is not a new one conferred, but the original one confirmed.
This passage is profound, its subject sacred, and all comment upon it is attended with risk. But, surely, the action of the Holy Spirit was to exclude the poisonous taint otherwise derivable from Mary, and to ensure immaculate holiness for the One to be born by virtue of the miraculous conception. Moreover, the energy of the Deity was engaged in taking this holy humanity into indissoluble union with the Son. "Wherefore," said the angel, "the Holy Thing . . . shall be called Son of God."
By reason of His pre-incarnate Sonship, the Lord Jesus differed in toto from Adam and the angels, who are also called in scripture sons of God. They are so designated because of the manner of their creation and the status given them. But our Lord carried His name, Son, into His incarnate state. In Deity, He was the Son; in flesh, He was the Son of God. The angel's words guard His Holy Person against any evil thought that His eternal Sonship was in any degree weakened or dishonoured when He became flesh. When He appeared in manhood, not in maturity as Adam in Eden, but as the Babe in Bethlehem, He should be called the Son of God, and the Son of the Highest.