The Only Begotten Son

It has been several weeks since we have had this study, so let me remind you of a few things. The first is that the goal of this study is to help you to have a good theological base for evangelism. This study was prompted by the question “What is the Gospel?”

We commonly use John 3:16 as the “poster verse” for evangelism. We sometimes call it the poster verse for American evangelism. We see it being held up on posters and banners at sporting events. It is probably the most well-known and most often quoted Bible verse in our society. But the problem is the verse is full of theological “code words” which we must decipher first for our own understanding and secondly to assist in the task of evangelism among those who truly have no idea what it means.

So far we have covered the idea of the concept of God as a whole to an extent, focusing on the Father specifically. That took us several weeks. If you missed out on those, you can watch them on our YouTube channel or our website. We spent a couple of weeks examining God’s love and what that means. We spent a week on the world and some time on what it meant that God gave. Tonight we begin to study the idea of the His Only Begotten Son. I anticipate that this will take us quite a bit of time. There are some great confusions and some specific heresies we are going to examine to help us not only understand what this phrase means, but also what it does not mean and how we can combat against these ancient heresies that are still alive and kicking in our world today. So I ask that you bear with me over the next several sessions, but to begin let’s recite together from the NKJV

John 3:16 NKJV

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.

Trinitarianism

To begin speaking about God’s only begotten Son, I must begin by speaking about the nature of God as a Triune God. By Triune God, I mean that God is one being with three separate and distinct persons making up that being.

The New Testament is thoroughly Trinitarian.

Matthew 28:19 CSB

19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Christians are baptized into a Trinitarian baptism. You cannot be a Christian without an understanding that you are being baptized into a Trinitarian belief system. The doctrine of the Trinity is a biblical concept that should immediately belong to a Christian convert. For the Christian, God should be Trinitarian.

But the Trinity is quite difficult for us to understand and to explain. We try to use illustrations to get the idea across, but all of these fail because the Trinity is unlike anything else we experience. So I think it may be best for our purposes to look at some of the alternatives to see what the Trinity is not.

Monarchianism

Monarchianism is the belief in one divine being with one divine person. A couple of major religions are Monarchian.

Deuteronomy 6:4 CSB

4 “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Judaism is a monarchian belief system. They take the idea presented in Deuteronomy to mean that God is one divine being and one divine person. God Almighty, whom Christians refer to as the God the Father.

"There is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger."

Muslim Declaration of Faith: This is what people say to become Muslim, and it is repeated during prayer, in the call to prayer, and at other times during the day. This declaration of faith is called the shahada.

So you may be thinking “I’m not a Muslim or a Jew, so what does this have to do with me?” You may not realize it, but you have people, especially Muslims, moving into this general area.

When I was director of the BCM at Murray State College, I was invited to speak in a class on religions on campus. As I awaited my turn to speak, the speaker before me was a female Muslim student who had come to MSC on an athletic scholarship. As time goes on, I believe you will be encountering more and more people from other religious backgrounds, so it is helpful to know where their beliefs differ from the Christian belief. Fundamentally, these two groups are strict monotheists or monarchians.

Modalistic Monarchianism

Perhaps more familiar to Christians is the idea of modalistic monarchianism. This goes by other names, but it is the same heresy. It teaches that there exists one God who manifests himself in three different ways. Sounds right to an extent, but modalism denies that there are three separate eternal persons. Modalism remains true to monotheism but declares that there is only one person who reveals Himself as different people at different times.

This is the case when some tries to refer to the Trinity by saying that the Trinity is like water. Water is a liquid at normal temperatures, but at extremely hot temperatures, the water is transformed from the liquid state into another: a gaseous state we call steam. Or when water is exposed to cold temperatures, it transforms from a liquid state into a frozen state we call ice. And then we might say, that’s what the Trinity is like. But it is all the same water, so the illustration breaks down into a state of modalistic monarchianism.

Another analogy that is sometimes used is the idea that God is like a 3-in-1 shampoo. All three persons are merged together into the same substance. You cannot distinguish between the components of this mixture, so it is essentially one being with one person - modal monarchianism. This is similar to what some united Pentecostals teach. They believe that the three persons are united in Jesus. That Jesus simply manifests Himself in three different ways. They don’t baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but simply in the name of Jesus.

This is one of the most popular heresies of our day. Traditionally Christians were so afraid of being labelled as polytheistic that, at least in the West, we have emphasized that God is One being to the detriment of the Trinity. Some denominations have even rejected the idea of the Trinity in favor of “oneness,” such as the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World and the United Pentecostal Church International. Some of these churches even require a separate baptism simply in the name of Jesus rather than in the Trinitarian tradition of Matthew 28.

Arianism

Proverbs 8:22 RSV

22 The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.

The second greatest heresy the church has faced is Arianism. From Prov. 8:22, Arius began to preach that the son of God was a creature, His first creation. He taught that God had created him in the same way in which an angel or a man were a creature, but that the Son was a different class of creature. Therefore, he would not have shared the nature of God. He is not just speaking here about the Incarnation, to clarify, but that the Son actually came into being. Which would mean that the son did not possess the divine quality of eternality.

Here is the thing about heresies. Most heresies don’t begin at the seminary in a classroom. They begin in the pulpit. Everything that pastors says is supposed to be coming from the Bible, but it is possible to misinterpret the biblical texts, preach it to people, people take it as truth and run with it. Heresies have biblical text supporting them. They are preaching the Bible. The problem is that they are preaching it wrong.

Well, Emperor Constantine was afraid the Arian heresy was divining the Roman empire. He believed it would split over theology. Can you imagine having that concern for the United States? Anyway, Constantine called for a council of pastoral and theological leaders to meet at Nicaea with orders to work out what the Bible teaches about the nature of the Son of God. Is he a creature like Arius says or is He associated with God the Father as the Eternal Son of God as the Orthodox believers claimed?

So this council met and hashed out

The Nicene Creed

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God,] Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; By whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth]; Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost.

Now, we are Baptists. Traditionally we have claimed no creed but the Bible. So Bro. Joel, why are you pulling a creed out here for us? Do you see anything in this that you disagree with? If so, we need to talk.

Notice that creed begins with a strong statement on monotheism: We believe in one God. Arius was concerned that if there was more than one person, then you would not have one God. Rather, he contended that you would have two or three gods. This was why Arius tried to repeal the deity of Christ.

Son of God

Now we need to define what we mean here. In a human concept, a son implies a beginning. When Arius came across the term, he understood it to mean that the Son had a beginning point in time. But Son of God is a biblical term applied to Jesus. The reason the Nicaea existed was to define what this term meant. Does begotten mean that a child was conceived by a mother? Does begotten and conceived mean the same thing? Does it mean the same thing for the son of God to be begotten as it means for a human? Nicaea’s answer is no. So what does it mean?

Begotten of the Father

Nicaea says that the term means that the Son is of the same substance as the Father. In Greek, the term is homouseon. What does homo mean? (Same). Useon means “substance, nature, or essence.”

In the same way that human beget humans and deer beget deer and cow beget cows and chickens beget chickens, so also deity begets deity. You don’t get something of a different nature. A human does beget a dog or a cow beget a chicken. Each creature begets something that is of the same essence and substance. God the Son is God, for He is begotten of God the Father. He is Light because He is begotten of Light. He is true God because He is begotten of True God. He is eternal. He doesn’t beget within time. The Son shares eternity with the Father, just as the Son shares all the nature of God with the Father.

If Jesus is the Son of God, then He must be begotten. Arius affirmed that Jesus was begotten, but believed that He must have been begotten in time and therefore a creation. Arius wanted to take the term son to rob Jesus of His eternal deity. But this is contrary to Jewish understanding. The Son of God would be equal with God. To claim the one was the Son of God would be to claim an identical nature to the Father.

John 5:17–18 CSB

17 Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” 18 This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.

John 14:8–11 CSB

8 “Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who lives in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.

Colossians 2:9 CSB

9 For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ,

So the Son shares the same nature, but is distinguished from the Father by person (not nature). Although I may stand before you with Joen next to me, you won’t confuse us. There is a differentiation between the two of us in person, but we share the same substance and nature.

Nicaea closes by stating three doctrines that you must understand regarding the nature of God. If you do not understand the Trinity, you pervert the understanding of these doctrines.

Creation

The Christian doctrine of Creation understands that God the Father acts through the Son by the agency of the Spirit to accomplish Creation.

John 1, Hebrews 1, and Colossians 1 all state that creation came through the Son. Therefore, the Son is as much Creator as the Father.

Salvation

It was not a mere human being that died on a cross or that rose from the dead. The gospel is that one who was incarnate, suffered, and rose from the dead was the Son of God. He wasn’t an angel. he wasn’t a human being. He was one Who shared with the Father all of the divine attributes we described back in the first few sessions. To simply announce a Jesus Christ who is undefined as God is to preach a gospel that is not recognizable to the New Testament.

Eschatology

Jesus is coming with glory to judge the living and the dead. He is not a mere human or angel. He one making eternal separation is none other than the Son of God. He is of the same essence as the Father. He has the complete and utter right to make these decisions, for He is none other than God Himself.

The Council of Nicaea was focused on the Arian conflict. The goal was to determine the Bible’s teaching regarding the nature of Christ, specifically what it means that Jesus is the Son of God. Arianism and Modalism attack the nature of God. Both are beliefs in a false god, one not recognizable by the Scriptures.