Amen. Turn within your Bibles, please, to John 3:16.
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.”
From there we turn back to Genesis chapter 22. Moses writes, ‘After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ and he said, ‘Here I am.’
He said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’ So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. He cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.’
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. He took in his hand the fire and the knife, so they went both of them together.
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’
Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together.
When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’
He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called the name of that place, ‘The Lord will provide,’ as it is said to this day, ‘On the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’
And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, give us wisdom and understanding, especially when we read and hear such difficult texts. Help us to love you better through them, to see your love in them, and to know you for the loving, righteous, and good God that you are. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Now, there is much concerning the person of Jesus Christ, God the Son, that continues to remain a mystery for us. But we do know some things. However, I don’t mean the stories that tell us about Jesus’s life and his words—his words and works as found in the gospels. Instead, what I’m talking about is the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of who he is.
We know and believe that he is the physical human revelation of God to man, the Eternal Word made flesh. He is God, the creator of all things, for all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. He is the source of life and the rule for living. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
He is man, born of the Virgin Mary, as Gabriel told her, ‘And behold, you shall conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’
Therefore, Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of Man. The child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
We confess in the Nicene Creed that he is the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. We confess in the definition of Chalcedon that he is the God-man, truly God and truly man, possessing both divine and human natures, undividable, unmixed, and unmingled, unconfused, of the same substance or essence as the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet still being a distinct person within the Godhead.
Unfortunately, most of what we can say that we know and understand about Christ is all the result of interpretation. Sadly, there have been many misunderstandings concerning the person of Christ in history because of this, each of which led to various heresies. But only one understanding has been affirmed as the Orthodox belief by the Christian church ever since the 4th century.
There is one element in particular which is critically important for us to understand and get right in our faith because it is foundational; it is the bedrock supporting everything we believe about who Jesus is, what Jesus did for us, and how he was able to do it. That element is the Greek term ‘monogenes,’ and it carries certain distinctions within it that many modern English translations run the risk of losing through the evolution of English grammar and vocabulary.
The sense we need and must retain and preserve, and most clearly understand, is this: ‘only begotten.’ ‘Monogenes’ is used by the New Testament authors only a handful of times, mostly by John, who uses it five times while Luke uses it three.
The best way for us to understand the Jewish use of infrequently used Greek terms is by considering how they were used in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament. There we find ‘monogenes’ used in two ways. The psalmist uses it as a term describing loneliness for a sense of solitary uniqueness, and the Book of Judges uses it to describe the daughter of Jephthah, who is described as his only child.
I’ve said it before: ‘monogenes’ is a compound Greek word. It is derived from ‘mono,’ meaning one, solo, only, or unique, with the word ‘gano,’ meaning to beget, to give birth to, to father, to generate, or to be born. Together, united, it simply means ‘only begotten,’ making it a very appropriate term for an only child, especially an only child by natural birth as opposed to adoption.
When Luke uses the term in his gospel, he uses it to describe only children—an important and necessary description in that time and place, because of the weight of responsibility they were expected to carry as being only children. However, I can tell you that they also experienced a degree of both uniqueness and a certain kind of loneliness, being an only child myself.
However, this plain understanding of the term has led to our confusion and controversy within church history when it gets applied to Jesus because it can lead to very wrong conclusions and interpretations about how Jesus is the Son of God.
Fortunately, it is the single appearance in Hebrews of the term which helps explain what John intended by his use. John understood and intended both of those aspects, as well as something more. The author of Hebrews wrote, ‘By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in figure.’
Thus making Hebrews the key to unlocking this important mystery, meaning that the author of Hebrews instructs us to use Abraham and Isaac as the lens through which we should understand the description of Jesus as the ‘monogenes’ Son of God. Hebrews directs us back to two things to better understand John 3:16’s description of Jesus Christ as God’s only begotten Son: the relationship between Abraham and Isaac and Abraham’s willingness to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to the Lord.
Now, we know from the song that Father Abraham had many sons. By Hagar, God’s servant, whom she gave to him as a wife, he had Ishmael his first. By Sarah, his first and primary wife, he had Isaac, his heir. By Keturah, his third wife whom he married after the death of Sarah, he had Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shua. So, ultimately, Abraham is the father—the paterfamilias and progenitor of eight natural-born sons.
That means that the plain and common understanding of ‘monogenes’ cannot be applied simply to Isaac, although he was the only begotten son of Sarah, as she is not mentioned in this bullet point within the Hall of Faith. She should not be what the author of Hebrews intends for us to think of. Instead, the author follows the instance of ‘monogenes’ with ‘of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called,’ calling to our attention God’s covenant promise to Abraham, recalling Genesis 17:19, where God said, ‘No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.’
This is what makes Isaac the ‘monogenes’ son of Abraham, because he was uniquely begotten. Isaac is Abraham’s child of the promise, as defined by Paul in Galatians 4. Like the bronze serpent, Isaac is another type of Christ. The example of Isaac, as used by the author of Hebrews, makes him a prefigurement of Christ in the same way that the bronze serpent is a prefigurement of Christ being hung upon the Roman cross.
Remember that which happens in the Old Testament leads us to expect and understand what happens in the New. The Lord made a covenant with Abraham—a covenant that is everlasting—with him and his heirs. Part of that covenant was a sign given by God to prove to Abraham that the Lord would keep his word. That sign was that Sarah would bear Abraham a son, even in her old age and despite her disbelief.
So Isaac was born. And then the Lord gave King Ahaz a sign, a sign to prove that God would deliver Israel from its enemies. ‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.’ Thus, Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, after Gabriel, the Lord’s angel, informed her and promised her that she would bear God’s Son.
The birth of Isaac and the birth of Jesus both followed God’s unique promise, a promise that God would do what is impossible for man: that a woman who could not possibly have children due to their present circumstances would do so. Sarah, a post-menopausal woman, a woman far past childbearing age, gave birth to a healthy son. Mary, a virgin, a girl who had not yet known a man, gave birth to a healthy son. But both are miracles of God.
However, the greater miracle was with Mary since the conception of Jesus did not involve a man’s participation. Instead, the power of the Holy Spirit came upon her and overshadowed her to make her Son truly holy—the Son of God and the Lord God, his Father, true.
However, that’s not the only type example shared by Isaac and Jesus. There’s also the other story that the author of Hebrews alludes to: that of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. That story is one of the most troubling stories in the Old Testament for us as the people of God.
In it, the Lord seems to act against his revealed character and his commandments, suggesting that maybe, perhaps, God does change or that God is inconsistent, or even worse, that maybe God actually is evil. God gives an expressed command against child sacrifice: ‘You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God.’ And murder is a violation of the sixth commandment.
But although those statutes were given later, Abraham still should have known that this was a wicked thing because God had commanded Noah, ‘From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.’
Now here in the story, God commanded Abraham to take his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loves, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will tell you. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, to whom the Lord had promised an everlasting covenant. God commanded Abraham to murder a person: his son, as an offering to demonstrate his faith, his trust, his ‘pisteuo’ in the Lord.
Fortunately, because Moses tells us, we know that this was only a test. But Abraham did not know that it was a test. Still, surely he must have known that something was wrong with what was going on. The God in whom he trusted was asking him to do something which all nature, reason, and God’s law called abominable, wicked, and evil.
So Abraham, by going along with this, by obeying this demand of God, could have only assumed three possibilities:
That God lied about making a covenant with him and Isaac, that God was wicked or cruel and was toying with his feelings by giving him a son and then forcing him to kill his hope and his joy, or that he was obeying a divine monster, meekly thinking, as Job had said, ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
Or that God was going to provide another option, that this was a test somehow, and he was trusting God to stop it before events would go too far, or that God would raise Isaac up from the dead, as the author of Hebrews proclaims.
While he probably feared the first option, I cannot imagine that he actually believed it was a true probability—not from the righteous God who had thus far provided for him.
The second option was possible and humanly probable; it is the perspective most commonly held by Jews because it preserves a righteous hope of God and his providence since God never intended for Abraham to actually kill his son.
The third—the Holy Spirit-inspired explanation—must then be the truth that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his most beloved Son as proof of his faith in the Lord, because of his confidence that the righteous and just God would restore his beloved Son to him, regardless.
That interpretation still seems to suggest that God might command something wicked so that something good could happen, which shows that even Abraham’s understanding of God’s character—who he is—may have been faulty or wrong at times.
Something that should give us all hope because we all, all of us, end up wrong about some part of the faith. But God never intended for Abraham to kill Isaac, nor would he have allowed him to do it. But the Lord did want to see and know that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his ‘monogenes’ son because of his faith and trust in God’s promised future.
Abraham, with Isaac, also serves as a type, foreshadowing God the Father’s willingness to sacrifice his only begotten Son in order to keep the promises of his blessing upon all of Abraham’s promised children.
Thus Isaac was a type of Christ in two more ways: by foreshadowing God the Son, Jesus Christ, being given by God the Father in sacrifice, and by his obedience to his Father Abraham by carrying the wood he was intended to be sacrificed upon, by being bound and prepared as that sacrifice.
So Isaac and Jesus were both ‘monogenes’—men uniquely born to women who should not have been able to birth them except through the miracle of God. Both Isaac and Jesus carried the means of their sacrifice as a burden. Both Isaac and Jesus were prepared and sacrifices.
But God, in his mercy, spared the life of Isaac, Abraham’s ‘monogenes’ son, for his father’s sake, while God in his mercy did not spare the life of his own ‘monogenes’ son for our sake.
Considering all that we can say, we recognize that because Abraham so loved the Lord that he was willing to give his only begotten son, because he believed in God and he trusted that God would keep all of his promises—promises for a people, a home, and for life—therefore we are able to recognize and understand it when God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Although Jesus and Isaac were similar, Jesus is more uniquely ‘monogenes’ because he was conceived by the Holy Ghost and not by man, granting him these two distinct natures of God and man. No other person before or since was born in the same or even similar circumstance. Jesus is the real ‘monogenes,’ the only begotten, the only natural born Son of God.
That’s where a different problem begins for us. If Jesus was begotten, does that also mean he was created? Why is this question so important? What is the big deal? So what if he was? What does it matter? Why should it matter for us?
Because we still affirm, along with the Jews, that the Lord our God, the Lord, is one. And we believe that this one God is a singular Triune God—one substance and three distinct persons. And those who understand this wrong cannot believe that Jesus is the one true God.
This question has been the cause of several heresies in church history, some of which persist into the present: the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example. Having this wrong matters for both our eternal hope and our worship because it directly concerns the effectiveness of our salvation.
If someone is wrong about this, then they have no hope in the resurrection, they worship a false god, and cannot be justified before him. Denying the historic Orthodox understanding of the unique nature of God the Son, his dual nature as both God and man, believing that he is not who and what we believe Scripture teaches he is, means that he could not have accomplished what we believe Scripture says he did.
Here are three heretical examples of why they create such problems.
Arianism is based upon the teachings of Arius that prompted the calling of the Council of Nicaea and the writing of the Nicene Creed. He taught that there was a time when Christ was not, that he was the very first and the greatest created being. This denies the eternality of God the Son. This denies his role in and work of creation. This makes Christ a creature instead of the Creator. If Christ was created, if he cannot be eternal, then he cannot be the only eternal sovereign Creator God, which means that he cannot be the Word who was in the beginning, who was with God, and who is God.
Adoptionism is the belief that although Jesus was born a man, the Son of Mary and Joseph, he became the Son of God, that he was adopted by God the Father upon his baptism when the Holy Spirit descended upon him. Like Arianism, this understanding denies the eternality of Christ. It denies his non-created status and denies his unique and perfectly united nature as God and man. This denies his role in and work of creation.
This suggests that Jesus underwent an apotheosis, that he was a man who became God rather than God who became man. If Christ was a man who became God, then he cannot be the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, who showed us the glory of God as the only Son from the Father.
The third is Docetism. Docetism is the belief that Christ only seemed to be human, that he only appeared to have human flesh and needs. This denies his human nature in favor of affirming his eternal divine nature. This denies his birth by a virgin, and this denies his atoning death upon the cross as an overcompensation to defend his divinity.
If Christ did not possess a human nature, then he could not have been born of a virgin. He could not have died a sacrificial death for our sins. If he did not die, then he could not have been raised from the dead, which has the effect of removing our hope of justification by the gracious application of his righteousness, and it removes our hope of also being raised to everlasting life with him in the eternal kingdom.
If Christ is not both man and God, then he cannot be the Word who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So if Jesus is the ‘monogenes,’ the only begotten Son of God, and his begetting does not relate to him being created, then what does it actually mean?
On the one hand, it refers to the uniqueness of Jesus as a human man, uniquely and miraculously born. It refers to a uniqueness different from all other religions of divinity adding humanity to themselves, condescending to be born and living a fully human life, temporarily self-limiting themselves even while retaining the fullness of deity.
Other religions, such as the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, or other ancient faiths, had their gods temporarily take on human form and visit Earth, but they never actually took on humanity—a human nature. They merely looked or seemed to be human, like the Docetists suggest.
But on the other hand, whenever we speak about God the Father begetting God the Son, we mean it as a way that distinguishes the Father and the Son in their personage, just as we speak about God the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son as a way to distinguish him as a separate person, all while being the same God.
Begetting is a relationship-defining term. It describes Christ’s filial love for the Father as his Son. Before Jesus was born of Mary, he was still eternally the only begotten Son of God, the Word, the Logos, who is Theos.
When he was born, God the Son added humanity to his divinity as a type, so that the eternally elected, predestined children of God could have divinity added to our humanity. Christ came down—God the Son, the Son of Man—descended so that one day we may ascend with him, in him through our faith.
He is eternally the only begotten so that we may be adopted and share in God’s inheritance as sons and daughters. As Christ remains the firstborn of creation, the preeminent Son and heir of all things, we, the elect, are equally the children of God with Jesus Christ. Yet he is still the only begotten, while we are the adopted.
We, the elect, are loved by God the Father as his sons and daughters. But God so loved the world, so loved us, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God loves you and me. God the Father loves us so much that he willingly sacrificed his only begotten Son for the benefit of his adopted children. Jesus loves you and me. God the Son loves us so much that he willingly laid down his own life so that we, his siblings and friends, might receive eternal life.
“Greater love has no one than this: that someone laid down his life for his friends.”
So understanding and preserving ‘only begotten’ matters because it teaches us about the greatness and the depth of God’s love for us. The Lord giving his only begotten for us teaches us that God loves us more than he loves himself. So that if God loves us more than himself, then we, his image bearers, ought to love him more than ourselves.
Therefore, let us live more faithfully and more loving of God and others. So knowing, appreciating, and receiving God’s great love, let us now strive to love the Lord our God with all of our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole soul, and all of our strength, and to love all of our neighbors as ourselves—as better than ourselves—as befits the God who loves us. Amen.