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In this portion of our studies, we are examining the names, titles and descriptions of God and of His Son, showing that they are one and the same. (Remember the axiom: If a = c and b = c, then a = b.) Please open your Bible to Mark 2.
Mark 2:18 And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast: and they come and say unto him, Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not?
19 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
20 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.
Here is a question for you: In this little parable, who is Jesus referring to as the bridegroom? It is He, Himself, is that not correct? Now turn back a few pages to Matthew 25, where Jesus was giving another kingdom parable with a bridegroom.
Matthew 25:1 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:
4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Once again, Jesus refers to Himself as the bridegroom. From the realm of stupid questions, I would ask you the obvious? Why would Jesus be using this wedding terminology about Himself? Answer: Because He is going to get married! This is confirmed in the prophecy found in the book of Revelation, chapter 19.
Revelation 19:7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
Of course, any baby Christian will tell you that the Lamb is Christ, but most believers stumble in identifying the Lamb’s wife. They will tell you it is the church. Not so, the wife is not the church, but the sanctified and cleansed nation of Israel. (Not the current Israeli state; but that’s another story for another time.) Continuing in Revelation 19, …
8 And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
9 And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.
So, Jesus the Son, is going to marry Israel. However, if you will turn back to the prophet Hosea, we will discover that the Father said that He was going to marry Israel (actually, to re-marry Israel), but in either case, what do we have going on here? Is Jesus the Son a usurper in laying claim to Israel as His wife? Let’s look at this prophecy.
Hosea 2:16 And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD [Yahweh], [This is the Father speaking here.] that thou shalt call me Ishi [which means My Husband]; and shalt call me no more Baali [which means Lord or Master].
17 For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.
18 And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.
19 And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies.
20 I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD [Yahweh].
Pause a moment. How do we know Yahweh? How do we know God the Father? By having faith in, and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ the Son, is that not correct? As we go on now, dropping down to verse 23, remember this is God the Father speaking through the prophet Hosea, and He says to Israel:
23 And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.
“And they shall say…” Who is they? It is Israel. Christianized Israelites will say to their husband, Yahweh and Jesus: You are my God! Isn’t that what we do? We Christians claim both Christ the Son, and the Father [Yahweh] as our one God. Ponder this: If Arianism had won out as orthodoxy in the Council of Nicea, then this prophecy would not have been fulfilled!
Before this series of studies is finished, we will come back and revisit the idea of the marriage of God. I know that some of my listeners and readers already know what I am referring to as regarding the deity of Christ, but I want to save that for later, so those of you who know what I mean, don’t think that I have forgotten it.
Meanwhile, we turn now to Isaiah, chapter 9—you didn’t think we were going to just gloss over it with that brief allusion to it earlier, did you? Because this verse presents us with one of the most obvious—actually two—of the most obvious proofs of the deity of Jesus the Christ.
We are still dealing with the names, titles, and descriptions of God and His Son, showing that they are one and the same. This is the well-known prophecy of the Messiah.
Especially around Christmastime, this prophecy is commonly heard across the land as thousands of churches and millions of individual believers hear portions or all of George Frederick Handel’s great oratorio, The Messiah. One of the great songs in The Messiah starts like this: (Can you hear the music in your mind that goes with these words from Isaiah?)
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Remembering the question I posed earlier, why don’t we call Him Immanuel Christ? Well, we could also answer: For the same reason that we don’t call Him Counselor Christ. Here again, where it says in this verse, “His name will be called…” it is referring to a description of the Savior, not to His legal name, per se.
This verse is about as clear a proof as one could ever ask for that Jesus is God of very God. He is not another God. He is not a* god, or a small “g” god. He is not a secondary* god, or God #2.
We know that the Bible teaches in numerous places that there is only one God, and so when we read here that this Son who is prophesied to be born is both the “Mighty God” and the “Everlasting Father,” then it is obvious that Yahweh and Jesus, Father and Son, are one and the same God.
But remember, at the time of Isaiah, this was a prediction about the Son who would be born about 800 years later. So obviously, the Son was not born into flesh and blood yet. But still, He was already existing as one with the Father.
Let me explain something here very carefully which you may not have thought about before. We all believe that Yahweh, or the “LORD” (in all capital letters) is the everlasting Father. He is eternal; He had no beginning and will never cease to exist. And you might recall how I stated in the Arian Controversy essays, how I had some problems with the Nicene Fathers and their idea of the “eternally generated” Son. Let me tell you how I see it.
In this verse in Isaiah, the Son is said to be the Everlasting Father. The Son IS the Father! Notice He is not said to be the everlasting or eternal Son. Jesus the Christ was both fully God and fully man, so that when we speak of Him as the Son of God, it generally refers to his humanity aspect, not His deity.
As God, He had no beginning. Notice what I said there. I said: As God, He had no beginning. I did not say, the Son had no beginning, but I used the pronoun He, meaning He who became the Son had no beginning, because He always was and is God.
As God, this Being was not begotten, or else He would have had a beginning as God, and that cannot be because, by definition, the one true God has always existed. We can also say that at the beginning, He was not God’s son. He would become the Son, but He was not God’s Son until He was begotten. This then, is where some readers might get hung up on the Trinity concept, because most give no thought to this aspect.
We sing hymns about the Trinity, we hear ministers teach about it in such a way which implies that all three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, have existed from eternity past. Well, technically, that cannot be. The One who became the Son did always exist, but not as the Son. How then did He exist if not as the Son? Turn to the gospel of John, chapter 1.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Then in verse 14, it says:
John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, […and so forth].
The Greek word there which is translated “was made” in the KJV is G1096 ginomai {ghin’-om-ahee} and its primary meaning is to become, which is why almost all other English versions render it as “And the Word became flesh.”
If God, the Word, became flesh, that means that the Word was not always flesh. The Word became flesh. The Word became the Son. The Son had a beginning as the Son. Does this make sense so far?
We speak of Jesus as “the only begotten Son of the Father.” One of the things the anti-deity people stumble over is this fact that the Son—as the Son—had a beginning. That’s part and parcel of being somebody who is begotten. If you are begotten, you had a beginning.
It is also important to notice that Christ is THE only begotten Son of God, not a begotten Son of God. He is THE ONLY BEGOTTEN in a sense that no other man ever was or will be. Jesus was actually begotten by the Father. Turn quickly to Luke, chapter 1, verse 35. Here is how the inspired Scripture describes what would happen to Mary.
Luke 1:35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
Being God, the Word had no beginning, but as a man, He did have a beginning. He was begotten, and was God’s Son. It says in…
Psalm 2:7 I will declare the decree: the LORD [Yahweh] hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Hebrews 1:5 For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?
From these passages and others, it is clear that there was a certain day when God was to have a Son and the Son have a Father. It was to be in the future from the time when the prophets spoke and from the time the angel declared it unto Mary.
Therefore, Jesus was the only one who was actually physically begotten by the Father, El Elyon, the Most High God. We are sons also, but not because we were begotten by the Father, but we are sons by adoption.
If we allow the sonship of Jesus to refer to His humanity, then all Scriptures are clear and we have no man-made mystery of the so-called “eternal sonship” of Jesus. So the Son was not eternal and yet Jesus is very God Himself, because as the Word, He was co-eternal and one with the Father.
Let us now consider the converse idea. What if Jesus the Christ were merely a man—a very good man, a master teacher and all that, but a man just the same. What if…? Well, if He were only a man, then Romans 3:23 applies to Him just as it does to you and me. The first part of Romans 3:23 says:
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
If Jesus were only a man, then He would not have been begotten physically by the Most High God; He would have been wholly a son of Adam, and as such He would have been a sinner like all the rest of us.
Therefore, His sacrifice on the cross would have been the futile act of a martyr. It could have no validity or efficaciousness for us. He would not have been a spotless sacrifice. His death and shed blood could not cleanse us from sin.
It would not have met the requirements for atonement set by the Father. And where would that leave you and me and the rest of the world insofar as any hope of eternal life? There would be no hope.
That is why I can state that if Christ is not God, then I would forsake Christianity. For if indeed this life is all there is, then the old pagan, Epicurean philosophy of “get all you can get,” or “you only go ’round once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can get, etc.….” (this latter quotation was part of a jingle from a TV commercial for a certain brand of beer which I recall from my childhood), then that philosophy would be the only rational alternative.
Or, as the apostle Paul said in a similar vein: We would be of all men most miserable. (1 Corinthians 15:19) So, with the foregoing discussion, we can see how, in this respect, the very essence of Christianity rests entirely on the doctrine of the divinity (or deity) of Jesus Christ.
(To be continued.)
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