Eternal Generation
Defending the full divinity of Christ—that He is equal to the Father in all things—includes a defence of His eternal generation.
Generation refers to a father begetting a son. A mother conceives, but a father generates. Here generation refers to the fact that He, as the second person of the Trinity, is the Son of God and that the first person is His Father. Another word for generated is “begotten.” In relation to the Father He is the only begotten Son.
In our experience generation means that a son comes after his father and has a beginning. Eternal generation means that as the second person of the Trinity He is begotten—generated—by the first person of the Trinity, but from eternity and without a beginning. Because His generation is eternal, the second person of the Trinity is not after the first person or inferior to His Father.
Understand, we are not speaking here of Christ’s birth in the flesh. He is the Son of God in that respect also, born in our human nature by the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit. As the Son of God, born in our flesh, He has a beginning and is inferior to the Father.
The old Athanasian Creed puts it this way:
For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man: God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the substance of His mother, born in the world … Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood (30-33).
The eternal generation of Christ is a truth that needs emphasis today. It seems to be the fashion among some to deny it. Whatever their reasons, they are really denying the Trinity: if Christ is not eternally generated as the Son, He has a beginning; if He has a beginning, He is not eternal; if He is not eternal, He is not fully and really God; if He is not fully God, He is no Saviour to us.
Denying the eternal generation of Christ is the old heresy of Arianism. Back in the early history of the church this heresy taught that Christ was a god, but not equal to the Father, just as the cults teach today. The Arians insisted that the name “only begotten Son” implied that He had a beginning and was not eternal like the Father—that He was, therefore, not equal to the Father.
Eternal generation is clearly taught in Proverbs 8:22-30 (“Wisdom Christ,” the Son of God), Micah 5:2, John 1:1-2, 18, 5:26, 8:42, 17:5, 24 and Colossians 1:15. Let us hold to Scripture, therefore, and not allow the enemies of the truth to take away our confession that He is our Lord and our God. Rev. Ron Hanko
The Demands of Discipleship
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
One of our readers, struck by the severity of Jesus’ words in this passage, wonders how this injunction of our Lord is to be taken. It is no wonder that such an injunction as this not only puzzles some, but even fills them with alarm—it is almost more than we can bear to think about.
We ought, first of all, to be clear that within the entire context Jesus is indeed talking about the demands—we might even say, the cost—of discipleship.
We read in the immediately preceding verse that “there went great multitudes with him.” It is as if Jesus means to say to these multitudes: “Do not be so eager to follow me and be my disciples; the cost is very high … One ought to consider the cost of building a tower before one begins. One ought to consider whether he can be victorious over an enemy before he goes out to fight him (28-32). So one ought to understand what is involved in discipleship before one follows Me.”
The cost is unbelievably high. In the final analysis, the cost is everything. Absolutely everything.
In quite a different fashion from modern “evangelists,” Jesus seems to go out of His way to discourage people from following Him. And indeed He does.
Let it be emphasized that this is so very, very true. If one does not want to pay the price, one ought to forget about it.
In fact, the cost is so high that no one—and I mean, no one—will ever want to be a disciple of Jesus. Jesus must, by sovereign grace, make His own disciples. And He must, through His Spirit, give His people grace to follow Him in spite of the impossible cost—to see that the price can be paid by His grace, to understand that the blessedness far outweighs the cost. “No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44).
But we have not answered the question.
We receive some light on the question from the Lord Himself in His words in Matthew 10:37-38 (the occasion may have been the same): “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.”
It was a theme that Jesus sounded again and again in His ministry.
There is also some help to be found in Matthew 19:29: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.”
Ordinarily, when life is normal, we are able to be Jesus’ disciples in the family relationships of marriage and home. That is, it is not as the Roman Catholics teach, that a man is better able to be Jesus’ disciple if he lives in celibacy outside family relationships. We are able and are called to be Jesus’ disciples within these family relationships. That is a great blessing for which we ought daily to be thankful.
But everyone knows that this is not always true. Sometimes the relationship of friendship and family life get in the way of discipleship. This is true if husband or wife is an unbeliever, or if children or parents forsake the gospel.
What then?
The clear and unmistakable teaching of all these passages is that no relationship of life is more important than faithfulness to Christ. If these relationships make it impossible to be a faithful disciple, then discipleship to Christ comes first, absolutely first. Nothing, nothing at all, not even our own lives, may stand in the way of faithfulness.
What that means in particular instances in life is spelled out in other parts of Scripture, as, for example, what it means if a husband or wife is married to an unbelieving spouse (cf. I Cor. 7 and I Pet. 3). Here the point is simply that faithfulness to Christ is demanded always.
Is this painful? Indeed it is. It is the cross that some must and many do carry. They live the devastatingly lonely life of celibacy because of unfaithful spouses. They grieve for wandering children. But let them bear their cross. The Lord has never promised an easy life in this world.
In the matter of discipleship, every man has his cross. Let him take up his cross and follow Jesus. And if he does not want to bear a cross, let him not speak of being a disciple. Discipleship is cross-bearing. Always. Prof. Herman Hanko
What Is Antinomianism?
One of the questions we promised to answer in our discussion of the law and its place in our lives concerns antinomianism. One reader asked what antinomianism is.
The word means “against the law,” and refers to those who deny in one way or another that the moral law (Ten Commandments) has any place in the life of a New Testament Christian. There are various kinds of antinomianism, therefore.
First of all, there is the teaching that separates the Old and New Testaments, insisting that the moral law was only for Israel in the Old, not for Christians in the New. New Testament Christians, so they say, have only the law of Christ and of the apostles to obey. This form of antinomianism is often used as an argument against remembering and keeping holy a New Testament Sabbath day. Jesus shows that this is wrong in Matthew 5:17-19.
Another kind of antinomianism denies that Christians are called to do good works, that is, the things commanded in the law. It says that the good works commanded by the law were all done by Christ and so there are none for us to do. The answer here, of course, is that Christ did all the good works necessary for our justification, but that He does not do the good works that are part of our sanctification, though the grace to do them comes from Him. The Christian’s good works are not done, therefore, in order to merit salvation, but as a result of salvation. They are a matter of thankfulness for salvation received, not of meriting in order to receive that salvation.
A variation of this kind of antinomianism is the refusal on the part of some Christians to accept any commands or demands. If you say to them, “You must live a godly life,” they insist that the “must” is a denial of sovereign grace and a concession to works-righteousness. They reject, therefore, any preaching of the law or any preaching at all that exhorts believers to live obedient lives.
This form of antinomianism also sometimes rejects the demand for repentance and faith that accompanies the gospel. They feel that demanding repentance and faith of sinners implies that men have the ability in themselves to repent and believe—a denial of total depravity and of salvation by grace alone.
Others are antinomian in denying that the moral law is a rule of life for New Testament Christians. Because Scripture says that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law and that we are no longer under the law but under grace, they think that we have nothing more to do with the law once we are saved. To this James 2:8-13 is an answer.
There is also a kind of practical antinomianism according to which those who claim to be Christians nevertheless live careless and even wicked lives and excuse themselves by an appeal to God’s sovereignty. The young man who claimed to be a Christian but excused his wicked lifestyle by saying, “God didn’t give me the grace to do what is right,” is an example of this kind of antinomianism. Such carelessness on the part of those who are supposed to be Christians is very much like the error Paul condemns in Romans 6:1, “Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.”
If, as we have pointed out in previous articles, the law is still valid and is a rule of life for New Testament Christians, then these are serious errors. We believe, then, that I Corinthians 9:21 exactly expresses the Christian’s relation to the law: “Being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ.” Rev. Ron Hanko
