Six Indicators of Jesus’ Eternal Sonship

  1. Jesus is frequently referred to as the Son who “was sent into the world,” “comes into the world,” etc.; the implication is clear that he was the Son before his incarnation. See especially the parable in Matthew 21:33-41 (also included in Mark and Luke). Also, Romans 8:3; John 3:17, 10:36, 11:27; Galatians 4:4; 1 John 3:8; 4:9-10,14; 5:20.

  2. The prophecy of God’s “begetting” Jesus was fulfilled at his resurrection, by Paul’s explicit testimony (Acts 13:33)1; however, God often calls Jesus his Son before this prophesied begetting, indicating that he was God’s Son before the begetting event designated him to be the Son (e.g. Mark 1:11, 9:7; Luke 3:22, 9:35; Matthew 3:17, 17:5). Also, Jesus’ own words (e.g. John 10:36), the words of his disciples (e.g. Matthew 14:33) and the words of the cast-out demons (e.g. Matthew 8:29) all corroborate this testimony.

  3. If the Son relationship of Jesus to the Father had a beginning point subsequent to Jesus’ incarnation (precisely at the point of his resurrection), then the Father relationship of God to the Son likewise had a beginning subsequent to Jesus’ incarnation; but John 1:18 testifies that Jesus was at the side of the “Father” before he revealed to mankind God’s nature by his incarnation. Hence, the Father-Son relationship within the Trinity existed prior to the incarnation.

  4. Hebrews 1:1 indicates that God made the worlds through the Son; the implication is that he was the Son at the time of creation.

  5. Hebrews 7:3 indicates that the literary figure Melchizedek is like the Son of God precisely because he had no beginning or end; in fact, it may be said that the bulk of Melchizedek’s typological significance lay in the unusual fact that the name of his father, or of any other of his ancestry, is nowhere recorded. Many more were the persons recorded in geneological records with no mention of their death than the persons whose deaths were recorded but not their ancestry. If the Son of God is not the Son from eternity past, the entire point of the comparison in this text is utterly obliterated.

  6. Romans 1:1-4 suggests that Jesus was the Son of God (verse 3) before he (1.) became the Son of David according to the flesh (verse 4); and (2.) was designated the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead (verse 4). His Sonship was not contigent upon the son-designation event of the resurrection (called in Psalm 2:7 a “begetting”), which was the culmination of redemptive history; instead, Jesus’ prior Sonship serves as the foundation of the “begetting-in-time” that is spoken of here as a “designation” of Jesus as the Son.

[ 1 The purpose of the work of redemption was to display the glory of the Triune God (e.g. Ephesians 3:8-12; Ezekiel 37:26-28); therefore, it is logical to suppose that the culminating point of redemption (the resurrection of Jesus) was likewise the point at which the inter-Triune relationship between the Father and the Son was most perfectly expressed. It was by the resurrection that Jesus’ sonship was displayed (Romans 1:4), and the prophecy of Psalm 2:7 refers to this culminating display of the economical Trinity, and not an eternal begetting within the ontological Trinity.]

2 Responses to “Six Indicators of Jesus’ Eternal Sonship”

  1. Chris says:
    April 27, 2007 at 9:12 pm

    Brilliant! I read an article by Johnny Mac where he recants his old view on incarnational sonship.

  2. pitchford says:
    April 28, 2007 at 12:24 am

    Thanks for the link. I certainly appreciate his recantation, particularly the point he makes about the father-son relationship within the human race being designed to display, in a certain sense, the prior relationship that existed wihin the eternal Trinity.

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