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.
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