There are different aspects of the Sonship of Christ in the Holy Scriptures, each one implying the relationship in which He was, and ever had been, with His God and Father. As born in this world the Son of God brought into Manhood the relationship that was His in eternity with the Father, the relationship remaining the same though taken up in new conditions. The Second Psalm predicted the coming of the Son into the world, presenting Him as God’s anointed, God’s King, and foretelling the rejection of Him who was so dear to God. Other Scriptures, notably Isaiah 9:6, Daniel 3:25, and Proverbs 30:4, indicate the relationship of the Son to God in one way or other.
Matthew writes of the Son whom “no man knows…but the Father” (11:27), which plainly shows the Son in a unique relationship with His Father, involving His eternal Sonship and the mystery of the union in the Son of the fulness of God and the perfection of Manhood. In this relationship it must be evident that He is alone with His Father. As “the Son of the living God” He builds the assembly, and as Son building He stands alone. The gates of hell cannot prevail against what He builds, but men can defile the temple of God in which men build (1 Cor. 3:17).
The Gospel preached by Paul declared Jesus to be “the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead” (Rom. 1:4). In this character of His Sonship the Lord Jesus is alone, just as in John 5:28-29 where He speaks of the hour that is coming when all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth. John 5 also shows the Lord in His unique relationship of Son, quickening whom He will, and having all judgment committed to Him (John 5:22, 25-26).
These and many other Scriptures bring out the unique place of relationship in which the Son is with the Father, but other Scriptures show that saints of God are brought as sons before God to share the place He has as Man, and as Son, with His God and Father. This could not be until the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, so that it is with the risen Son of God, and in virtue of His work on the cross, that we are sons with Him. On earth the Son had often spoken to His own of His Father, and The Father, but as risen from the dead He said to Mary, “go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17). From Ephesians 1 we learn that this place of relationship with the Father in association with His Son was according to the eternal purpose of God, and according to the good pleasure of His will.
Only in John’s writings is the term only-begotten used in relation to the Son of God, though it is used three times by Luke when speaking of only children (Luke 7:12; 8:42; 9:38). It is also used by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only-begotten son” (Heb. 11:17). Is it not clear from this last Scripture that only-begotten is used in the sense of being in a place of peculiar relationship and affection, for, as is well known, Ishmael was the first of Abraham’s sons, and he had other sons by Keturah, his wife. The word begotten has nothing to do with birth in this word, for Isaac was not the only one born to Abraham, it is a word that could quite well be translated “only”, as is done by the translators in Luke’s Gospel.
“An Only-Begotten”
Some translators of John 1:14 give “an Only-begotten,” instead of “the Only-begotten,” the Revised Version giving this in the margin as an alternative reading. When John and his fellow apostles companied with the Lord on earth they saw in Him something that was unique, a glory that was divine, veiled in His human form, yet discerned by the eye of faith. This glory discovered to the faithful a relationship in which the Son was with God, and it conveyed to their adoring hearts the relationship in which the Son was with the Father. It was not the disclosure of the eternal Sonship, but the relationship of the eternal Son as seen in time. Here on earth was the divine Son, and before their eyes the disciples of the Lord saw their Master in a relationship that belonged to heaven.
This divine glory belonged to the Word become flesh, the glory of an eternal relationship as seen in time. It was of necessity a divine glory as pertaining to Him whom John had presented as the eternal Word, and it was a relationship as seen in time because the Apostle is writing of the Word in flesh. As come in flesh, the Word was “full of grace and truth,” and immediately this is written, the Evangelist brings in the witness of the Baptist, “This is He of whom I spake, He that comes after me is preferred before me: for He was before me” (verse 15).
“In the Bosom of the Father”
If the term only-begotten shows the unique place the Son has in relationship with the Father, the bosom of the Father tells of the unique place the Son occupies in the affections of the Father. This is a place that none can share. There is affection that belongs peculiarly to the Son’s relationship with the Father in the Godhead, even as there is glory that belongs to the Son in which none can have part with Him. This latter is spoken of by the Son in John 17, where He says to the Father, “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was” (verse 5); and in verse 24 of this same chapter the Son could say, “Father…Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”
Although the bosom of the Father tells us of the peculiar affection that the Father has for the Son in the unity of the Godhead, there is affection that the Father has for the Son in which we do share, for the Son said to His disciples, “For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me” (John 16:27), and again, in speaking to the Father, “And the glory which Thou gavest me I have given them…that the world may know that Thou…hast loved them, as Thou hast loved me” (John 17:22-23).
The Son’s place “in” the bosom of the Father is His eternal place. Although come in Manhood to make the Father known the Son never left the Father’s bosom. There are divine mysteries in this as in much else connected with the Son, but the truths that are presented to us are for faith to lay hold of, not necessarily for the mind to understand. This kind of divine mystery is also found in the Lord’s words in John 3:13, “And no man has ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven.” Although speaking to a man on earth, the Lord can speak of Himself as being in heaven, for He ever retained His place in the unapproachable light, and in the bosom of the Father.
None but the only-begotten Son could make God known. Moses had been privileged to see the glory of God from “a clift of the rock,” and to see His back parts (Ex. 33:18–23), but it still remained true that “No man has seen God at any time.” In the Son incarnate God was made known in His nature, and in His disposition of grace towards men. Until the only-begotten Son came God was really unknown to men as He truly is. No angel could make God known, only the Son who is “the image of the invisible God.”
God was seen in all that the Son was before the eyes of men, and God was declared in all the words spoken by the Son, and also in the works of power wrought by Jesus. The revelation of God was perfect and complete, for dwelling eternally in the bosom of the Father the Son knew all His thoughts, His affections, the feelings of His heart, and all His desires, and being one with the Father in all these things the Son was competent to give expression to them. The law was given not to express what God is, but to expose what man is; and man being exposed, God came out in His Son, in all the love of His heart to bless men with the knowledge of Himself.
Moreover, in the Son there was the manifestation of the Father’s Name. The Son ever dwelt in the bosom of the Father, and He revealed God as Father, as He said to Philip, “He that has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Speaking to the Father the Son said, “And I have declared unto them Thy Name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). The declaration of the Father’s Name by the Son brought before the disciples the Son’s relationship with the Father, but the declaration of the Father’s Name by the risen Son of God also told of the place of relationship into which His own had been brought.
“He Gave His Only-Begotten Son”
The infinite and sovereign love of God has been measured by the gift that God has given, even His only-begotten Son. Into a world that knew not God, God sent His Son that men might have through Him the knowledge of His compassion for them, and it is thus love that has been fully told out in the gift that God has given, and in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. God has no pleasure in man’s ignorance of Him and of His great love, and to save men from perishing God gave His greatest treasure, the Son of His bosom to bring to men the eternal life on which death has no claims.
God’s object in sending His Son was not to condemn the world, but to save the world. Alas! on account of the rejection of God’s Son, the world has come under judgment, as has also each individual in the world that refuses to believe in the Name of the only-begotten Son of God. The light of the knowledge of God has come in God’s Son, but men prefer to remain in ignorance of God rather than have the Son and the heavenly blessings that are in Him.
If the world has refused to believe in the only-begotten Son of God, there are those who do believe in Him, and to such the Apostle John wrote, “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9). Although the complacent love of the Father rests on us as His children, we must never forget the sovereign love that God showed towards us in sending the darling of His bosom into the world to bring to us eternal life. Apart from the coming of the Son of God we must have remained in moral and spiritual death, and have been banished from His presence for ever.
The same love that gave the Son of God to communicate divine life to us gave His Son to die on the cross to take away our sins. Our sins lay as a barrier between our souls and God, and only the sending of His Son to be the propitiation for our sins could take those sins away. The great work of propitiation was wrought upon the cross, when Jesus shed His precious blood, but now He lives in the presence of God, all the efficacy of the work accomplished abiding in Him there.
With such a presentation of God’s love in the only-begotten Son our poor hearts are surely stirred in response. The Father sent the Son that we might live through Him, and to secure for Himself a company of worshippers, such as can worship Him in spirit and in truth. There is also to be a response in communion with the Father and the Son, and in our seeking to manifest the life of God, the life He has given us, in all the details of our life and testimony here below.
R. 16.1.69