The Father and the Son Distinguished

As briefly as I can, I will put this one out there (what blogs were originally all about, right?).

This verse has been coming to my mind over the last few days, and coming back. I think it is one of the verses that can speak to the issue of Jesus Only or the Modalist view of God, that says there is only one person in God, and the three designations, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are just manifestations of the one God. I found this teaching close to home where I live, where one of the children's pastors in a very large growing church is teaching this to the children as part of their baptism catechism.

Modalism (the view of United Pentecostals and others) lays great emphasis on the unity of God, but really overlooks the distinctions of the persons of the Godhead, representing the Scriptures as showing God simply manifesting himself to man in three different modes; insisting that God exists as one single solitary person. Modalists try to say that the view of the Trinity is really a polytheistic view, and Trinitarians cannot escape the charge of having three gods.

The concept of the Trinity historically has been the best explanation that Christianity has been able to give for the Scriptural truths that there is only one God, but that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are spoken of as distinct “persons” from one another, and yet are attributed the titles and attributes of Deity.

This verse I refer to is John 1:18. In the NIV (New International Version) I own, it says: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” OK, I see this as kind of weak in translation, which is why a newer version of the NIV has it a little differently. But note in here the distinction between the Father and the Son. The Son is at the Father’s side, which means he’s separate from the Father as a personality in existence.

A closer translation is the NKJV (New King James Version) which reads, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Here, we have the phrase “in the bosom of the Father,” which seems to indicate very close intimacy. Still, a Jesus Only person may point out the use of “in” the bosom of the Father. Isn’t that like emanating from within the Father, i.e., the same origin?

Let’s look at a more literal translation: “God no one hath ever seen; the only begotten Son, who is on the bosom of the Father—he did declare.” YLT98 (Young’s Literal Translation) Notice that literally, the Greek doesn't place the Son inside the Father, but on him. The Son is in the most intimate embrace of the Father, and that’s about as close as he can get without being the Father. Get that?

No where does the Scripture say that the Son is the Father, or vice versa, in any sense. I think a solid meditation on Romans 8 can show the distinctions between the persons of the Godhead as well.

Five Minutes with a Bible Study App

I just want to let you know how easy it is to do a simple bible study while you are at your computer, or even on your smartphone. All the while, like me, you can be listening to Stryper on Spotify or something similar.

Here goes. First of all, what brings this up is a discussion with someone about what the phrase “the Word of God” might mean, for it would seem that somewhere out there in the mass of bible teaching, there are some who teach it as distinctively one thing. This is a reminder that we need to make sure we check everything out in the Word, er, I mean, the bible. 

I mean, we surely can, and should, listen to our Sunday morning teachers, but we are still told by Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament to check out what we are taught against the written Word (there I go again!).

So that’s what I decided to do a few nights ago. It only took me about five minutes. How? A simple search using one of the free Bible reference and study applications available from the internet. Some are downloads, some are online sites. Either way, most allow you to search for words and phrases. This takes even less time than looking up verses in a concordance, such as Young’s or Strong’s, which are still great resources though.

So I used one of the apps simply called Bible Study App by Olive Tree. Another I use sometimes is Online Bible by Cross Country Software. Both would work just fine for my phrase search.

So when I opened Bible Study App, I then chose Edit > Find and entered with quotes “word of God” to see what would come up. Simple enough. Then what did I have to do? Simply scroll down the list of results and read each one in its context, which BSA gave enough of. Then I just had to do some thinking about each one and see what the overall usage of that phrase might disclose. 

You could do this for yourself and check the same facts out that I think I figured out. Here’s what I concluded:

• The term “word of God” refers in general to any kind of revealed truth or revelation from God, whether it is by the word of a prophet, directly spoken by God to man, a written source (Torah, other OT writings, Pauline letters), or a direct revelation of God to us by his Son, Jesus Christ.

• The phrase was commonly used throughout the New Testament (especially by Luke) and referred both to the written scriptures, and revelation from God through the teaching of the New Testament Apostles, prophets and teachers. This would make sense, since the completion of the New Testament writings had not been accomplished yet.

• It says that Jesus himself spoke and taught the word of God to the crowds who came to hear him. So if the only thing you can call the word of God is Jesus, then Jesus was speaking himself to the crowd, which seems rather absurd.

• Jesus said that the seed in his first parable is the word of God. So it means something other than Jesus himself. It is also spoken of by Jesus as something we hear and do.
• In one place Jesus equates the word of God with the Scriptures (John 10:35).

• The word of God is our main offensive weapon in spiritual warfare, coupled with prayer (Eph. 6:17).

• Jesus is called the Word of God. But you can see it is not an exclusive phrase only applied to Jesus. However, as one of his names it declares something special about his place and ministry to the world. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

• Similar phrases found in context would be “the word of the Lord,” “your word (O Lord),” and so forth. Psalm 119 is rife with those in reference to God’s written word in the focus of its writer.

In conclusion, I think the words of Jesus in his priestly prayer, “your word is truth” is very fitting. When the bible refers to the word of God, it in general means any truth revealed by God, or in other words, divine revelation. As a bible-believing christian, I would say the only reliable and complete revelation we have given to us to stand on, that can be verified and referred to by anyone, is the scriptures, containing the Old and New Testaments. This for centuries, in fact since the New Testament times and before by the Jews, was called the Word of God, because of the belief that it is truly divine revelation.

The final thing to conclude: Jesus is called the Word of God as one of his titles because as the incarnate Son of God, he is the fullest revelation of God given to us. While he walked on earth, he, as it is described by John, exhibited the character and nature of the Father to those who followed him.

I feel pretty confidently about my conclusions. Not because I have such great brains (hardly). Only because this five minute look at some scriptures, being fairly easy to get a good search of phrases from a bible study computer application, makes this kind of information accessible.