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before?” (6:62). And He prayed, “Father, Hebrews 1:5 quotes Psalm 2, “You are
glorify me in your own presence with the my Son, today I have begotten you.”
glory that I had with you before the world And John speaks of Christ as the “only
existed” (17:5). begotten” (Joh 1:14,18; 3:16,18; 1Jn 4:9
Paul also affirms the preexistence of the KJV). “Only begotten” conveys Christ’s
Son. To the Romans he wrote, “God … uniqueness as the Son, and His being
sending his own Son in the likeness of sin- of the same essence as the Father. In hu-
ful flesh” (8:3), and to the Galatians, “But man terms, we understand that what we
when the fullness of time had come, God make does not share our nature, but what
sent forth his Son, born of woman” (4:4). we beget does. The “only begotten Son”
Paul also reminded the Corinthians “that
though he was rich, yet for your sake he has eternally shared the nature of His
became poor” (2Co 8:9), which only makes Father. We must remember that human
sense if Christ’s life of poverty on earth father-son relationships are an imperfect
was preceded by riches elsewhere. And picture of the archetype – the perpetual,
to the Colossians Paul stated that by the divine Father-Son relationship. It would
“beloved Son … all things were created be backward to interpret Christ’s sonship
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… and he is before all things” (1:13,16-17). based on the limits of the human parallel.
The writer to the Hebrews asserts the In closing, consider that, if we deny the
same, opening with the statement that eternal sonship of Christ, “we lose our
God “has spoken to us by his Son … measure of the divine love. The force of
through whom also he created the world” a passage such as John 3:16 derives from
(1:2; see also v10). Later the writer de- Christ’s unique relationship with the
scribes Melchizedek, whose priesthood Father. He did not become God’s Son by
was “made like the Son of God,” “hav- being given; he was given as God’s Son.”
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ing neither beginning of days nor end We must uncompromisingly defend the
of life” (7:3 NASB). Christ was not made truth that the Son is eternal, and at the
like Melchizedek, but the priesthood of
Abraham’s contemporary was patterned same time bow our hearts in wonder and
after what was already true of the Son of worship.
God: without beginning or end. And when I think that God,
Much more could be said about these His Son not sparing, Sent Him to die,
and other verses which teach that Christ I scarce can take it in …
is the eternal Son of God, but it might be Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to
helpful to briefly touch two related scrip- Thee, How great Thou art,
tural terms: “firstborn” and “begotten.” 6
Christ is “the firstborn of all creation” how great Thou art!
(Col 1:15). “Firstborn” can refer to birth ⁴ John MacArthur admits that this was part
of where he went wrong when he held that
order, but this title is also used to signify Christ’s sonship began at His incarnation.
occupying the place of privilege. As Exo- MacArthur explains why he abandoned that
dus 4:22 and Psalm 89:27 show, “firstborn” view and now affirms the eternal sonship of
doesn’t always signify a birth. Arianism Christ: https://www.gty.org/library/articles/
A235/reexamining-the-eternal-sonship-of-christ.
wrongly concluded that “firstborn” meant ⁵ Macleod, The Person of Christ, 130.
a beginning. ⁶ Stuart K. Hine (1899–1989)

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