BULLSEYE!
ACCURATE BIBLE KNOWLEDGE!
“HOW CAN A SON BE EQUAL TO THE FATHER?”
QUESTION:
“How
could Jesus be equal to the Father?”
How can
the
scriptures call little baby Jesus the following :
“For unto
us a child is born, unto us a son is given: … his
name shall be called … The mighty God, The everlasting Father
…”
(Isaiah 9:6)?
ANSWER:
The Bible
definition of what a son is, is not the same as the world’s definition.
The
world’s definition is about earthly characteristics while the Bible’s
definition is about place of origin.
EXPLANATION:
“Therefore
the Jews sought the more to kill him (Jesus), because he not only had
broken the sabbath, but said also that God
was his Father, making himself EQUAL
with God.” (John 5:18).
Now when a
man has a son there are obvious differences - the son
is very small, not as strong, hasn’t had a job, doesn’t have any money,
hasn’t
been to school to learn anything and so on. There are a lot of
differences. But
the scriptures are NOT referring to any of that when it
talks
about what a son is.
THE BIBLE
DEFINITION OF A SON IS SIMPLY AN ‘ISSUE’.
A son in the Bible is simply something that has come out of the
father
with the woman as the vessel into which the seed (sperm) is placed.
When
the prophet Isaiah talks to King Hezekiah, he calls the king’s sons by
the term
“issue”.
“And of
thy sons
that shall issue from thee, which
thou shalt beget, shall they take
away; …” (2 Kings 20:18).
Indeed
when a man dies without having had any children, it is said that
he died without an issue. That means he died without giving
birth to any
offspring.
An
everyday example of an “issue” is the lava that comes out of a
volcano. When you turn on a tap, the water issues out of
the pipe. It flows or comes out of. So to be called a son simply
means you have been issued out of your father. It has nothing to do
with
height, weight, career, influence, intelligence or money and so on. To
be
called a son is simply about where you came from – your origin.
LIKE GIVES
BIRTH TO LIKE
Now
the
Bible principle is that everything produces
its offspring after its own kind.
The elephant produces (issues or what comes out of) the elephant not a
tiger.
No-one expects an apple tree to produce oranges. The issue of a cow is
a cow.
Like produces like.
As the
Bible
says “And
God made the beast of the earth after his
kind, and cattle after their kind,
and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind:
and God saw that it
was good.” (Genesis 1:25).
JESUS AS
THE SON
OF GOD THEREFORE IS GOD
We
know that “God
is a Spirit” (John 4:24) and so to call Jesus the Son of God, he
must also
be a Spirit in heaven also as like produces like.
So the
male offspring out of God is God. This
is the reason Jesus could say “I and my Father are one.” (John
10:30) and this is why
“… the
Jews sought the more to kill him (Jesus),
because he … said also that God was his
Father, making himself equal with
God.” (John 5:18).
God
produces
God. God issues out of himself God. Out of God
comes God. Indeed,
that’s why God the Father can say to God the Son, Jesus Christ “But unto the
Son he saith, Thy throne, O God,
is for ever and ever: ...” (Hebrews
1:8).
JESUS AS A
MAN IS THE SON OF MAN
Just
as Jesus is a man he is called the Son of man. So there we have it –
Jesus was a Spirit in heaven (called the Word) and he is also flesh as
the Son
of man. He is both God and man at the same time.
THE
GODHEAD HAS
THREE PERSONS
God
is made up of the Godhead which is the three persons – God the Father,
God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. One God but three
persons. An
analogy would be an apple with three parts – the core which is the
apple, the
flesh which is the apple and the skin which is also the apple. Three
parts but
one apple. You have ice, water and steam all of which can change from
one to
the other. Another example is the sun in the sky which has light, heat
and
invisible rays which come out of it. Three parts but one sun.
Similarly, God
has three parts but there is only one God.
HOW DO WE
KNOW THAT GOD WAS JESUS’ FATHER?
“Now the
birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise:
When as his mother Mary was espoused
to Joseph, before they came
together, she was found with child of
the Holy Ghost.” (Matthew 1:18)
Can you
see that? Joseph was not the father of Jesus?
Now in
heaven Jesus is called the Word (1John 5:7). What happened was the
Holy Ghost took the Word of out heaven and placed it in Mary’s womb,
and when
born he became known as Jesus.
JESUS GREW
IN WISDOM AND STATURE
“And Jesus
increased in wisdom and stature, and in
favour with God and man.” (Luke 2:52) Of
course he did. He learnt many things – how to be a carpenter, how to
earn a
living and so on. But he was always God. He came from the Godhead
So if we
come to the holy scriptures wanting to change the meaning of
words with our own definitions we will be sadly disappointed. We will
start to
believe what we want to believe and destroy God’s meanings of words.
Misunderstanding what a son is in the Bible gives men another example
of not
believing what the holy scriptures actually say. People are
too ready to
put their own interpretation with “Oh, what that means is this”
instead
of believing “what the scriptures say”.
Not
realizing what they have done, people have
destroyed the true meaning of the phrase “the son of …” and substituted
it with
another. The Jews
knew that
Jesus, to be called the Son of God, meant that he was God come out of
heaven,
to be God in the flesh. “And
without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God
was MAN-ifest in the flesh, …” (1 Timothy 3:16). “For
unto us a child
is born, unto us a son is given: … and his name shall be called …The mighty God, The everlasting Father ...”
(Isaiah 9:6)
BULLSEYE!
ACCURATE BIBLE KNOWLEDGE!
“WHAT DOES IT MEAN ‘TO BELIEVE’?”
**** ****
Harley Hitchcock
www.
AustralianBibleMinistries
.com