Jesus–Eternal – What Does This Mean?

The Three Ways God Cares for Us

Encore Post: When we baptize a new Christian, we ask him to promise several things and to confess several things. Following the ancient tradition of the Church, we ask the candidate if they believe what the creed proclaims. But we do this with three questions: “Do you believe in God the Father…?” “Do you believe in Jesus Christ…?” and “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit…? We do this because each person of the Holy Trinity has His own role in our life and salvation.

This is a bit of a mystery, since all three persons are involved in all these acts of love for us, yet the Scripture speaks of each having these roles. Rather than try to puzzle out how this is so, we rejoice that each person loves us in his own way.

Martin Luther in his Small Catechism calls each person’s work an article and speaks about them separately. So, he talks about the good news that God the Father created and provides for us, God the Son redeems us with his own blood and the Holy Spirit makes us holy. This good news gives us joy, especially since we just considered his law in the Ten Commandments. We have been confronted by the fact of our sinfulness. Now we can have peace in the gospel of the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.

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The Father and the Son: The Greatest Relationship of Them All

Encore Post: If you watch carefully, you may observe great beauty in unexpected places. An elderly couple, slowly walking hand-in-hand in the park is one such sight. Their marriage has grown through decades of life, thriving in times of great joy and unimaginable grief. If you have the privilege of speaking with them, asking about their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you will have the sense that you are speaking to one individual, yet two persons. They complete each other’s sentences, think the same thoughts and share a lifetime of memories.

God the Father and God the Son have an eternal relationship. Their love is perfect and profound beyond our ability to understand. No one understands the Father better than the Son. They have been together since the beginning. The Father made the world through the Son. Because He loved us, the Father sent the Son to seek and save the lost. No one has seen the Father and would die if they did. But the Son has always been seen by God’s people and he makes the Father known. (John 1:18)

The Father and the Son share everything. The titles given the Father are given the Son. The Father is the only God, the First and the Last, the only Savior (Isaiah 44:6-8, Isaiah 43:11) The Son is God, (John 1:1) the First and the Last (Revelation 22:13) and the Savior (Luke 2:11). What the Father does, the Son does. (John 5:18-29) Together, and with the Holy Spirit, they are life itself.

So, the depth of his love for us is beyond our understanding. To redeem us, the Father did what he did not require of Abraham. He sacrificed his Son, his only Son, whom he loves, for our redemption. By his death on the cross, he won eternal life for us so that we might live with him forever.

The Eternal Son of the Father

Encore Post: Jesus has always been God’s Son and always will be God’s Son. “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity…” Martin Luther explains in the Small Catechism. “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds…” we confess in the Nicene Creed. It is why we sing in the ancient hymn Te Deum Laudamus, “you are the Everlasting Son of the Father.”

We can somewhat understand how Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. But how he could be “begotten” by the Father in eternity — outside of time — without having a beginning makes no sense to us. Yet that is exactly how God describes the relationship between God the Father and God the Son.

So far, so good. The problem comes when we try to understand how this can be. As we discussed in a previous post, we cannot fully understand God because we are creatures and he is our creator. It is a mystery — a riddle human logic cannot solve. The issue has to do with the quality of God (attribute) that he is eternal — that time does not exist for God. For human beings, everything has to do with the fact that time passes. We are conceived in our mother’s womb, grow, are born, become adults, grow old and die. Even though we we live forever, it is at best difficult to imagine life without a beginning and an end.

Yet God, in his wisdom, uses this language to help us understand the closest relationship in the universe — the eternal Father begets his eternal Son. (Psalm 2, John 1:18, 3:16-18, Hebrews 1) So, we also use this way to describe the Son and be content to understand him this way.