Jesus was the begotten Son of God. What in the world does that mean?

Steve Brown:
Jesus was the begotten Son of God. What in the world does that mean? Let’s talk, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life. We’re here to communicate the freeing truth that God’s not mad at His children. Steve invited our friend Justin Holcomb to teach us all this week. Justin is a priest, seminary professor, and he’s written, co-authored, or edited more than 20 books.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Bishop, it’s been good to have you at this table. I just, you know, Key Life is, we’re something else. We’re the only ministry in America that has a Bishop on our staff.

Justin Holcomb:
Yeah, yeah.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s really kind of cool.

Justin Holcomb:
That’s a bold statement. Don’t fact check that.

Steve Brown:
We are, Justin and I, Justin Holcomb and I are talking about, he’s teaching us, that’s what he’s doing on the subject of heresy and heretics. He wrote a book on it a number of years ago called Know the Heretics. You ought to get it, but this is interesting stuff and it’s important because it has to do with the central focus of the Christian faith, what we believe. Alright, who are we going to look at today?

Justin Holcomb:
Arius, A R I U S, Arius. Around 256 to 336 A.D. So, we’re going through history, the heretics we’ve covered. Like all these other ones they were all leaders in the church. He was a presbyter in Alexandria in Egypt and he read Jesus’ only begotten Son and said well, the Father made Jesus, there was a time when the Son didn’t exist and so if you draw a line between God and everything else that is created. There’s God, and then a line, and then everything on the other side of that line is created. And Jesus is a lesser devineish spiritual being. He was, Jesus was the first thing, according to Arius, that God created, and then He read Colossians, he knew Colossians said that Jesus created everything. And then Jesus created everything else. And so, he has a very high view of Jesus. This is what Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses would say, that they’re non Trinitarian and Jesus is not fully divine. So, he was kind of a semi-devineish creature, and had lots of power and Jesus is a big deal. And so, that was his main teaching. He ended up and we’ll get into more of this, but there were other Orthodox people who responded to him. So, Athanasius was a major figure in the Council of Nicaea comes out of, so this is again, we mentioned that there’s a gift to the heretics because it requires, the heretics and their teaching required that the church figure out what it believes and how to say that. And that’s where the, the Council of Nicaea in 325 and what we now know as the Nicene Creed, it’s technically the Nicene Constantinople Creed because there was another council in 381. So, when we say the Nicene Creed, that was something that was developed in response to Arius, that is the unifying statement that all Christians should be able to believe and say to, that’s kind of the boundaries of being a Christian. There’s some funny stuff because he was reading the Bible and trying to take it seriously.

Steve Brown:
These are not bad guys.

Justin Holcomb:
Jesus was begotten of the father. And so, basically we know what that means because we know what begotten means. And so, he was created and that was the problem. And so, looking at that, Jesus is the only begotten Son. And that’s what you asked. What does begotten mean? The word there is uniquely begotten or only. And so, it’s the uniqueness of the relationship between Father, the first person of the Trinity Father. Second person of the Trinity, Son. And so, we would say that he is eternally begotten. Well, that means that we’re trying to peer into the inter Trinitarian relationship. So, we want to be careful. And that’s why the precision of the Nicene Creed. Jesus is truly God, very God, light from light, that language of the Nicene Creed is so important. And so, he’s uniquely begotten meaning that from all eternity, he is begotten from the Father. So, they share this, it’s actually a comment about them sharing and having the same essence of divine nature.

Steve Brown:
It’s not a biological statement.

Justin Holcomb:
No. And so, this is where the analogy gets dangerous. I’m the Son of my Father, meaning we share the same essence of DNA. That’s the same stuff. So, that eternally begotten, and then you have language that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. And so, this whole language of proceeding and begottenness, the big idea is that Jesus is God. That’s the point that is missing out. And again, why is that important? Well, and we can get back to some of the history on this, but why is Jesus being God so important is, one is because Jesus said he was. That’s good enough reason right there.

Steve Brown:
Lewis said.

There are only three options with that. He was either crazy or he was lying or he was who he said he was.

And you get to choose. That’s all you get to choose from. And it’s important.

Justin Holcomb:
Yeah, because it, he said, I’m the light. He uses “I am” statements all the time. He starts doing stuff that only God can do, like forgive sin and raise people back from the dead. So, he does things that only God does. He says things that only God can say. And then he also says basically I’m God. People said, my Lord and my God. The rest of the New Testament after Jesus points to him being worshipped. And this is also part of the problem, the early church just worshipped and prayed to Jesus. Well, these are a bunch of mostly Jewish monotheists who believe in Yahweh and then they’re praying, they are now converted, have faith in Jesus, and they’re praying to and worshiping Jesus. And so, they didn’t have the language to describe what they were doing, but it kind of bubbled up out of worship in church. But the reason that’s so important is that we talked yesterday about why the full humanity of Jesus is so important for salvation. It’s also salvation hangs in the balance because the Bible’s teaching on Christ’s atonement requires a mediator who is fully God, or a mediator mediates between God and humanity. We need Jesus to be fully human because humans have an issue with God and our sinfulness, but we also need our mediator to be fully God and with the holiness to make a perfect offering for sin. And so, also fully human who truly represents us. A human is not powerful in him or herself to overcome the enemy of God. Satan, sin, hell, death, and the grave. And so, the deity of Jesus is important because that means Jesus is powerful enough to overcome his enemy. The enemy is Satan, sin, hell, death, and the grave. We’re the collateral damage. Satan hates God and comes after us because we’re the image of God. And when we realize that our enemy is really God’s enemy, Jesus being fully divine is a bigger deal than just, Oh, well, we got to check that theological box, I guess.

Steve Brown:
It’s more important than that.

Justin Holcomb:
Way more than that.

Steve Brown:
That’s good stuff. And by the way, some of you are saying this is, And, you know, this is, I’m a Protestant, this isn’t my stuff. Yeah, it is. This is family, and it’s what the family has decided, guided by God’s Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, throughout the history of the church. These councils are not just a group of people who are casting lots. These are God’s servants meeting together and ascertaining what is truth, and why does it matter, and does God love, and does God love me?

Justin Holcomb:
Here’s the beautiful thing about Jesus being God. Another thing about this in addition, so we already said that only God can save humanity. That’s one piece. One, Jesus teaches that he’s God too. Only God can save humanity because no creature can cancel the power of sin and death and offer eternal life to other creatures. Only the creator can do this. So, arguing against Arianism is that Arianism makes salvation impossible because no matter how high the status, the Son, according to Arianism is still just a creature. The other reason is we learn about God by looking at Jesus. I mean, if Jesus is God, then we actually know in addition to what God reveals about himself in the Old Testament, we get to look at Jesus and go, what do we learn about God from the ministry of Jesus? B.B. Warfield, who is Princeton theologian, wrote this article called, The Emotional Life of Our Lord. And he’s known for writing about inspiration and authority of Scripture. That article is one of my favorite in anything written in Christianity. And there’s some other good stuff out there, like Augustine’s Confessions and Luther and Calvin, some of that. But The Emotional Life of Our Lord, he says, here’s what’s a beautiful thing. Jesus is fully God and fully man. If we look to Jesus, what do we learn about God? The number one thing you learn about God from Jesus, which is in the Old Testament is his compassion.

Steve Brown:
Oh man.

Justin Holcomb:
And I mean, if you look at Jesus, his emotional response to sin and suffering, the effects of sin is compassion on those who are suffering under its weight. Death, when he saw someone with epilepsy and having seizures, he was angry, but because underneath that anger, he was angry at sin, but compassionate for the person. When the poor, the more marginalized and the outcast, he had compassion for them. And so, how wonderful that the effect of realizing Jesus is God is not only do you need it for salvation to work, not only did Jesus teach it. But you learn that God is compassionate and patient and long suffering.

Steve Brown:
So good. I had a friend once, who was an atheist and she came to our church occasionally, but mostly so she could point out the errors. And one time we were talking privately and she said, Steve, if you tell anybody I said this, I’ll say you lied. But every night when I go to bed, I say, good night, Jesus. Compassionate. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve and Justin. All this week, we’ve been learning about heresy. Today, touching on the heretical teachings of Arius. Still one more day to go in this thought provoking series. Sure hope you’ll join us again tomorrow. So, it’s summertime. You’re about to hit the road with the fam and you’re thinking through your prep. Sunglasses, check. Massively large Stanley tumbler with your favorite bevy, check. What about Key Life? Will I be able to listen on the road? Well, relax, friend. With our station finder tool, we’ve got you covered. Just go to keylife.org/stations to learn where our programs can be heard near you. And by the way, do you have Sirius XM? If so, find Key Life on Channel 131 every weekday at 2:30 PM Eastern. And of course, all our website features are still free thanks to the generous support of listeners just like you. If you’d like to donate, just call us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. If you’d like to send your donation by mail, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Or e-mail [email protected]. You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. And of course you can now give safely and securely through text. Just text Key Life to 28950 and then follow the instructions. Again, that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter. Text that to 28950. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.