God’s Son is Our Lord BY William Boekestein for Core Christianity
(33) Q. Why is he called God’s “only begotten Son” when we also are God’s children?
A. Because Christ alone is the eternal, natural Son of God. We, however, are adopted children of God—adopted by grace for the sake of Christ.(34) Q. Why do you call him “our Lord”?
A. Because—not with gold or silver, but with his precious blood—he has delivered and purchased us body and soul from sin and from the tyranny of the devil, to be his very own.
Jesus’s lordship makes sweeping demands. He has every right to command you to take up your cross and follow him, sacrificing your selfish ambition, putting to death the deeds of the body (Rom. 8:13), obeying him in every relationship, in private and in public. This is hard. At first, Christ’s lordship might seem unwanted. We’re so committed to autonomy that we distrust anyone ruling over us. But our willingness to submit should depend on the character of the one we’re called to submit to.
The second article of the Apostles’ Creed introduces the second person of the Trinity using four key names and titles: Jesus, Christ, Son, and Lord. The first three terms can help us embrace the last one, the one most likely to make us bristle. Jesus saves. Christ is anointed as mediator. The Son is God’s beloved who gladly shares with believers his glorious inheritance. Knowing Jesus our Lord as the courageous, self-sacrificing, loyal, and loving Son of the Father can encourage us—this is just the master we should want, one who has shown us how to offer our bodies as living sacrifices by doing it first.
Jesus Is God’s Son
While the second person of the Trinity took on flesh and was revealed to us in time as Jesus of Nazareth, he’s God’s only eternal, natural Son. So his sonship isn’t about coming into being—he has always been (Heb. 1:8–10). It’s about his relationship to the Father. Jesus is of the same essence as the Father. Like the Father, he’s almighty, all-knowing, just, and good. This is how he’s able to reveal God to us. If we know the Son, we know the Father (John 14:9).
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To understand the relationship between the Father and the Son we must know their love for each other. Central to John the Baptist’s introduction of Jesus is this truth: “The Father loves the Son” (John 3:35). In one of his last speeches to his disciples, Jesus pressed that truth upon them: “The Father has loved me” (15:9). As he prepared for the cross, Jesus prayed to the Father, “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Whatever true love might mean—loyalty, unity, affection, passion, pleasure, tenderness, joy—it’s found nowhere more perfectly than between the persons of the Trinity. “God is love” (1 John 4:16).
And God isn’t stingy with his love. He shares it with us. God eternally loves his elect people (Is. 54:8), even when we were sinners. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:4–5). Amazingly, God adopts his elect to be his children so that we might experience the love he has always had for us. “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:4–5). Jesus makes known the Father’s name to us so that the love with which the Father loved him will be in us (John 17:26). As the Father loved Jesus so he loves us (John 15:9).
Why must you know this? You will not trustingly submit to Jesus unless you know that “neither in heaven nor among the creatures on earth is there anyone who loves us more than Jesus Christ does.”[i] You will have no interest in doing the hard things of the Christian life unless you know that you’re fully supported and defended by the loving Father. Christ’s sonship, and our shared sonship with him, enables us to eagerly accept his lordship.
