Why Must You Have A Trinitarian Doctrine of the Son?
The Son is the eternally begotten Son of the Father. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” What does it mean to be begotten? It means to come forth from someone. At one point I wasn’t a father and at another point became a father. Our children come forth from me and Grace. They are “begotten” by us. This is an earthly analogy to the Son’s eternal relation to the Father. It is not identical.
Psalm 2:7 says, “Today I have begotten you.” When is “today” for God? God is outside of time. “Today” is always for God. This means that the Son is eternally begotten by the Father. Yet, what is also different about the Son’s relation to the Father than Knox’s relation to me is that the Son is of the same essence as the Father.
Everything that makes God God is the Son. There is nothing about the Son that makes Him subordinate or lesser than the Father. He is distinct not in His Being but in His eternal relations among the three Persons. The Son never had a time when He came into being. He has always existed! If at one point the Son came into being then that means that at one point the Father was not the Father.
The Nicene Creed says that the Son is “Very God of very God.” He is equal to the Father and Spirit in every way. He is the same in essence with the Father. He is only distinguished by His relation to the Father. Why is this important? If the Son of God is not eternally of the same essence then when the Son of God comes to take on flesh and die for us then there is no real salvation. The Savior for humanity must be “God of God and Man of Man” at the same time.
That Jesus is sent by the Father reflects this eternal relation but it is not absolutely identical. This is important because if we look at Jesus’ relation to the Father in His time on earth and say that in eternity it must be the exact same way then we get ourselves into trouble. Using this line of logic, we would say the following: If Jesus is subordinate to the Father while on earth then the Son must have always been subordinate to the Father in eternity. Therefore, the Son is lesser than the Father.
You see the problem here right? If the Son is always eternally subordinate to the Father then it implies that He was forced to come save us. It is divine child abuse. Most importantly, it means that Jesus is not God and is no longer a valid Savior.
Once again, you might be saying, “Why does this matter?” The man Christ Jesus, who was nailed to the tree, was none other than the eternal Son of God in our flesh. It means that God loved us so much that He did not just offer us salvation from afar. It means He Himself took on our flesh. He became a baby in a feeding trough. He ran around on this earth with the other children of His day. He worked a normal job as a carpenter. He went around teaching about the kingdom of God. Finally, when He went to the Cross, He didn’t just die an excruciating physical death. He died as the substitute for His people. He being God and Man bridges the infinite gap that sin created between us and the Triune God.
It means that in Christ, we receive that infinite and eternal love that the Son has always received from the Father. That’s what Jesus prayed in John 17:26, “that the love with which the Father loved the Son might be in us.” That same quality of love! Nothing less. It means that you can never and will never think highly enough of God’s love for you.
It means you can stop playing the “He loves me; He loves me not” game. You know that classic example of a young child thinking about their crush. They pick up a flower and begin picking off the petals one by one. Each petal either has a “He loves me” or a “He loves me not”. And whichever one you end up on, that’s your destiny. God doesn’t do that with us! He is never saying “I’ll love them today” or “I won’t love them today”. He is Love! When we run to Jesus with all our sin and trust Him for our salvation, we receive the God of infinite and eternal love! It means that the gentle and lowly Jesus is not contradicting the Father. The Father too is gentle and lowly towards His people. Isn’t this amazing? Don’t you see how this doctrine of the Trinity changes you? What you know influences who you are.