Introduction
We’re in that part of the Nicene Creed which is about the Lord Jesus Christ who is God the Son, the second person of the Blessed Trinity. And last week we were thinking about how he is the Lord, which means he is God. And he is Jesus, which means ‘the Lord saves’. And he is the Christ, which means he is God’s Spirit-Anointed King, who came into the world, not to kill his enemies, but to be killed for us and for our salvation. And he is also one, because he is not two persons as some people have said. He’s not a divine person and a human person mixed together, because he is one person. He is God the Son. But for us and for our salvation, God the Son took to himself a human nature like ours without ceasing to be what he eternally is.
That’s what we were thinking about last week. This week we’ve looking at the following lines of the Creed:
The Only-Begotten Son of God,
begotten of the Father before all ages.
In the original version of the Creed, the order of the words is different from the way it appears nowadays. In the original version the word order is as follows. It says: ‘The Son of God, the only-Begotten’. And the significance of that way of ordering the words is that the Creed is going to go on to define the Son of God for us. And it defines the Son of God as the one who is only begotten; and he’s begotten from the Father before all ages; and he is God from God; and Light from Light and true God from true God; and he’s begotten and not made; and he has the same being as the Father; and all things came to be through him. And then it goes on to describe what he did for us and for our salvation. So, when we say the Creed together, we’re confessing our faith in God the Son who is all of these things. We’re confessing and we’re proclaiming these things about him. And what we’re focusing on this evening is how he’s the only-begotten Son of God who is begotten from the Father before all ages.
And in case it isn’t clear, I should say that this part of the Creed is about the Son of God eternally. That is to say, it’s about his divinity and it’s about who he is eternally and it’s about his relation to God the Father. Until we get to the line in the Creed about how all things were made through him, the Creed isn’t saying anything about his outward works of nature or grace. It’s about who he is eternally. So, before his incarnation, and before the world was created, he was, and he is eternally, the only begotten Son of God who is begotten from the Father.
Biblical witness
In the Old Testament, God would refer to the people of Israel as his son. And far too often the people of Israel were God’s disobedient son. But in the gospels, the phrase ‘Son of God’ is often applied to the Lord Jesus to make the point that he is what Israel failed to be. So, whereas they failed to obey God, the Lord Jesus obeyed him perfectly. He was God’s obedient Son.
However, at the time of his baptism, we have God the Father sending his Spirit on the Lord Jesus and declaring him to be his Son. And so, in that one scene, God reveals himself to be a Trinity: there’s God the Father and there’s God the Holy Spirit and then there’s God the Son, who is the second person of the Blessed Trinity.
And there are several other places in the rest of the New Testament where it’s clear that he is God’s divine Son. So, in Romans 1:4, Paul says about him that he was declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead. And Paul refers to him as the Son of God in 2 Corinthians 1:19. And in Galatians 2:20, Paul says that the life he, Paul, now lives in the flesh, he lives by faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave up his life for him. In Hebrews 4:14, the writer says we have a great high priest who is none other than Jesus, the Son of God. And John, in 1 John 3:8, writes about the Son of God who appeared on the earth to destroy the works of the devil. John also refers in 1 John 4:15 to those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God.
And I could go on, because there are other places where the Lord Jesus is called the Son of God. But I should also mention John 1:14 where John calls him ‘the only begotten from the Father’. And in John 1:18, he’s called ‘the only begotten God’. And in what is perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, we read that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish.
In modern times, there’s been some disagreement over how to translate the word which John uses to refer to the Lord Jesus in these verses. You may have noticed that while older English translations have ‘only begotten’, modern English versions have something like ‘only Son’ or ‘one and only Son’. The dispute arose because the Greek word which John uses can mean both ‘only begotten’ or ‘unique’. And modern translators have preferred the translation ‘unique’ instead of the older translation.
However, other scholars claim that the translation ‘unique’ is only appropriate when the word is used to describe objects. For instance, someone might design a unique building. On the other hand, the translation ‘only begotten’ is appropriate when it’s used to describe a child. And in those cases when it refers to a child, it refers to an only child. Some parents have many children and some only have one child. When there’s only one child, that one child is the only begotten child of its parents. And God the Son is the only begotten Son of God the Father. And so, when we say the Creed, we are confessing and proclaiming that the Son of God is the only-begotten Son, who was begotten from the Father before all ages.
By saying he’s the Son of God, we’re confessing and proclaiming that he’s the second person of the Blessed Trinity. And by saying he’s begotten from the Father, we’re confessing and proclaiming that he is the same as the Father and distinct from the Father. And by saying he’s begotten before all ages, we’re confessing and proclaiming that he’s eternally begotten. Let’s take those three points in order.
The Son of God
By saying he’s the Son of God, we’re confessing and proclaiming that he’s the second person of the Blessed Trinity.
We believe that the one God we worship is three persons, because there’s the Father who is God and there’s the Son who is God and there’s the Holy Spirit who is God. And yet there are not three gods, because there’s only one God. There’s only one God because the three persons of the Trinity possess one and the same divine being and they are therefore identical to one another, so that whatever is true of the Father is true also of the Son and the Spirit. For instance, the Father is almighty, but so too is the Son and the Spirit, because they possess the one and the same divine being as the Father. They are identical to one another.
And so, if the Father and Son (and Spirit) possess one and the same divine being and are identical to one another, then how can we distinguish the Son from the Father? What makes the Father the Father and what makes the Son the Son? The answer is that the Son is the one who is begotten from the Father. And that takes me to the next point.
Begotten from the Father
By saying the Son is begotten from the Father, we’re confessing and proclaiming that the Son is the same as the Father and distinct from the Father.
The Father and the Son are distinct because while the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten. That’s how they differ from one another. The Father is the Father because he begets the Son. And the Son is the Son because he is begotten from the Father. That’s how they differ from one another. The Father has no origin, but the Son has: he originates from the Father.
However, since the Son is begotten and not made, then that means that the Son is the same as the Father. This is because to beget is not the same as to create or to make. When God created the heavens and the earth, he created something that was different from himself. Similarly, when we make something, we make something that is different from us. So, we might make a cake. When we do so, we are one thing and the cake is something else entirely. But when a man begets a child, the child has the same human nature as the father. And it’s the same with other living creatures. A dog begets another dog. A cat begets another cat. A horse begets another horse. And so, when we say that God the Father begets God the Son, or when we say that the Son is begotten from the Father, we’re saying that they are the same as one another. A human father begets a son in his likeness or in his image. And God the Son is the image of God the Father. Or to put it another way, the Father communicates his divine being to the Son so that the Son perfectly possesses one and the same being with the Father.
How the Father does this is beyond our knowing. One theologian (Gregory Nazianzus) puts it this way: ‘The begetting of God is to be honoured by silence; the great thing is for you to learn that he was begotten.’
And it is important that we learn this, because when the Creed was first written, Arius was saying that the Son is less than the Father. Arius believed and taught that the Son was created by God and therefore he is not God. And in recent times, some people have said that the Son is subordinate to the Father. They say the Father is above the Son and the Spirit; and the Son and the Spirit are inferior to the Father. But when we say the Creed, we’re confessing and proclaiming that the Son is begotten from the Father and he is therefore the same as the Father. He is the image of the Father. And so, the Father isn’t greater than the Son, because they are the same.
They are the same, because they have one and the same divine being. But they are distinct, because the Son is from the Father.
Before all ages
And by saying he’s begotten before all ages, we’re confessing and proclaiming that the Son is eternally begotten.
So, ‘before all ages’ means ‘before all time’. And that means that before God the Father created the heavens and the earth, and before he created time itself, the Son of God was begotten from the Father. In fact, since time had not yet been created, there was no before and there is no after to it. So, we’re not saying that the Father begot the Son at some moment of time in the past. We’re saying the Father begets the Son eternally. Similarly, we’re not saying that the Son was begotten at some moment of time in the past. We’re saying he is begotten timelessly and eternally.
So, there was a time when I was not a father. But then I became a father when my first child was born. And I became a father again when my second child was born. And I became a father again when my third child was born. And I can talk about my life before I was a father and I can talk about my life after I became a father. But God the Father begets his Son eternally and not in time. The Father begets the Son eternally and the Father is the Father eternally and the Son is the Son eternally.
Arius used to say that ‘there was once when he was not’. That is, there was once a time when the Son of God did not exist. But the bishops at Nicaea believed that there never was a time when the Son was not, because he exists eternally.
Conclusion
And since he is the only person of the Trinity who is begotten from the Father, then he is indeed the only begotten Son of God. He is the only divine person who is begotten, because the Father is unbegotten and the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father and Son. So, the Son is the only begotten Son of God and he has no brother or sister.
That is to say, he has no natural brother or sister. But thanks to God’s overflowing grace and mercy towards us, we are made his brothers and sisters by grace and through faith. Though we deserve to be condemned and sent out of God’s presence for ever to perish eternally for our many sins, we’re able to call God ‘our Father’ and we can look forward to coming into his presence in the life to come and being with him for ever. And we can look forward to this, because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
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