Buck To Basics

Following up on “Who or what is Jesus now?” (Feb 19/10), John 1:14 also tells of Jesus being God’s “Son” and God being his Father. So in asking the question,”Who is Jesus now?” we discover he’s not only “the Word,” he’s also God’s Son. But how can God have a son?

How can God, being spirit, sire a child? That child would be a created being, and therefore not like God at all. God is eternal, so any son of his would have to be eternal, too. The term “Son,” then, can’t be a son as we humans think of sons, as beings we create, because Jesus wasn’t created. Verse 2 also clearly states he was “with God from the beginning,” so wherever God was at “the beginning” Jesus was with him already. He didn’t appear at some later time, as a later creation. “The Word was God” and was “with God” always, verse 1.

Jesus wasn’t a created being, he was the eternal Word, and as the Word he told us God had a Son. It was a startling revelation! Here was Jesus, a human being, with edges and skin like any other human, stating to all and sundry God had a Son, and that Son was him. To the Jews back then it was blasphemy! God was one; he’d always been one (Deut 6:4, Isaiah 40:25).

The idea that God could be two – well the Jews had never heard of such a thing. But here was Jesus saying “I and my Father are one,” John 10:30. But how could God still be one with two?! Jesus explained: it was in their relationship. The term “Son” made that clear. It showed that “God” wasn’t a singular Being on his own, he was, instead, a loving Father/Son relationship, and it was in their relationship together that two had become one – just as the Bible says husband and wife become “one.”

In the Bible, then, two can become one based on their relationship. And it’s love that does it, as Jesus made clear when he said “you (referring to the Father) loved me before the world began,” John 17:24. That’s an amazing verse. It not only tells us Jesus existed before the universe was created, it also tells us God existed in relationship. God had always been a loving Father/Son relationship. And they were still in that loving relationship when Jesus was here, too: “I love the Father,” he said in John 14:31, and “the Father has loved me,” John 15:9. It’s what’s made them one forever.