Begotten, Not Made | Sunday, June 22, 2025

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made... For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven... We look for the resurrection of the dead and of the life of the world to come. Amen.

When chaos surrounds us, the creed redirects our focus to the question everything turns on: who is Jesus?

Living in Interesting Times

It's good to be reminded that the battle belongs to the Lord. Less than fifteen hours ago, things got a little more interesting. We are certainly living in interesting times. Thank you for your prayers for my family—part of my family was in Paraguay for the last ten days, and they have all returned safely and are doing well.

The news has been remarkable, and I've already had the question several times in the last few hours: what in the world is going to happen? I've told you before, I'm a preacher, not a prophet. I don't have a red phone to the big guy upstairs. But I did find it fascinating that when the president addressed the nation last night, he directly addressed God, saying, "I want to say we love you God... God bless Israel. God bless America." Regardless of what you think about the president, we should pray for our leaders and our nation.

In the midst of chaotic times, when we gather and look at the Nicene Creed—the roadmap for our studies this summer in honor of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council and Creed of Nicaea—the whole text redirects our focus back to God. Whenever things are chaotic individually, nationally, or globally, we need to remind ourselves that our God is on His throne and He reigns. I don't know the future and you don't know the future, but I trust that He knows the future and is in control. I find great peace in that.

The Big Questions of Life

Life is filled with big questions—much like that question, "What do you think is going to happen?" We're often confronted with the deep, heavy questions of life. Beyond the lighthearted ones, there are the philosophical questions people genuinely wrestle with, even if they don't always voice them.

We wrestle with meaning—what is the meaning of life? Researchers over the last decade and a half have identified what some call a "meaning crisis." We wrestle with origin—where did I come from? With identity—who am I? With purpose—why am I here? And with destiny—what happens after I die? Especially as we approach the older years of life or face the loss of a loved one, those questions weigh on our souls. These are the questions that make up the study of philosophy. If you've ever thought about them, you've existed, in a small way, as a philosopher.

For some of you, these questions keep you up at night. For others, you've given up on them, believing the answers are too elusive or too subjective. Some of you came to church hoping to find an answer that satisfies your soul's longing.

A Question That Echoes Through the Centuries

The creed we recited originated from a question—and fundamentally it is the same question Jesus put to His disciples three hundred years before the council met in 325 AD. We find it in Matthew 16. Jesus is in the northernmost part of Israel at Caesarea Philippi, where the headwaters of the Jordan emerge from a beautiful red rock cliff. At that time, that place held a pagan pantheon of gods worshiped by the Gentiles. There Jesus asks His disciples:

When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"

That's the question. Who is Jesus? For some, it rises to what is Jesus—this figure that almost all of culture in 2025 looks back to as significant in human history, the one who reordered human history from that point on.

This was about halfway or two-thirds through His earthly ministry. He'd been preaching and performing miracles, and there were many opinions about Him. How did the disciples answer?

Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

By this time John the Baptist had been beheaded for speaking truth against the immorality of Herod. Some thought Jesus carried John's spirit. Others named Elijah—one of the most important prophetic figures, whose words aren't even recorded in the prophets—or Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets. Boiled down, people knew this much: He's a deeply spiritual man. They didn't know exactly who He was, but they regarded Him as more than the average person—so they assumed He must be a prophet.

The Controversy of Arius

Three hundred years after Jesus asked that question, it surfaced again through a controversy triggered by an Egyptian pastor named Arius. Arius taught that the Son, Jesus, was a created thing, made by the Father, and not of the same substance as the Father. As a result, a council was convened in 325 in the town of Nicaea in what we know today as northern Turkey. The rest of the church's leaders said that what Arius taught was outside orthodoxy—heterodox, and ultimately heresy. Arius was saying Jesus was just a man, a created being, not of the same substance as the Father.

The words differ between Jesus' question and the controversy of 325, but the sentiment is identical. The whole point of the council and the creed was to identify what the church believes, according to the Scriptures, about Jesus. Who is He?

Over the last 1,700 years people have kept offering their answers. Thomas Jefferson regarded Jesus as a wise ethical teacher but denied His miracles and divinity. Immanuel Kant viewed Him as a perfect moral exemplar. Leo Tolstoy admired Him as a promoter of nonviolence and moral reform. Marxist revolutionaries call Him the revolutionary of revolutionaries, the liberator of the oppressed. Gnostics, from the second century to today's New Age thinking, saw Him as a cosmic emanation and revealer of hidden, secret truth—the very premise behind a book like The Secret. Others call Him a spiritual guru, an enlightened mystic, a political reformer, an apocalyptic prophet, a social justice warrior, a champion of the marginalized. Try the test sometime: ask someone, "What do you think about Jesus?" You'll hear some interesting things.

Christianity Rises and Falls on the Nature of Jesus

Arius believed God the Father created Jesus and regarded Him as the most extraordinary human—but still just a creature. This is no small thing. In fact, this is the whole deal.

Point one: Christianity rises and falls on the nature of Jesus. That may sound like hyperbole, but it's not. Jesus is not whoever we want or decide Him to be. We don't get to co-opt Him for our program or purpose, though many—even in the name of the church—have tried. We must accept Him as He is revealed. Jesus asked, "Who do men say that I am?" But the more urgent question is: who does God say that Jesus is? What do the Scriptures, which we believe are revealed by God, reveal about Him?

After the general question, Jesus gets specific: "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter—always the spokesman, often putting his foot in his mouth—spoke up:

You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus called that statement the foundation stone of the church: "On this rock I will build my church." I don't think He's talking about Peter himself, but about this confession. Where did Peter get it? Jesus tells us:

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

It came by inspiration from God. And it matches the creed exactly: "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God."

Eternally Begotten, Not Made

What does that mean? These are big words, full of relational, familial terms—Father and Son. When we hear "father" and "son," we compute that a father begets a son, and a son derives his life from the father, so the son doesn't exist without the father. But there's more here than ordinary relationship.

The creed says: "eternally begotten of the Father"—meaning He has always existed; there was never a time He didn't exist. "God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made." I, as a son, was made; not Jesus. He is begotten but not made, "of one being with the Father."

As we reason through the creed this summer, remember: there is a lot in the Bible that is not in the creed, but there's nothing in the creed that's not in the Bible. In just 271 words, the creed answers as simply and clearly as possible the question: who is Jesus, according to the Scriptures?

Point two: Jesus is the anointed and eternal Son, not a created being. He did not descend from, derive from, or be conceived by the Father. He always existed eternally in a relational connection with the Father. The words themselves are simple, but few words are more misunderstood—especially this word "begotten." What does it mean, and where does it come from?

The Most Christological Passage in Scripture

The clearest place is John 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth... No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.

This passage reveals much about Christ—not everything, but a great deal. It teaches His pre-existence and eternality, His divinity, and also His distinction from the Father, which is hard to grasp because the creed opens by affirming one God, one Father. Now we see a Father and a Son, yet they are one. In a few weeks we'll be introduced to the Holy Spirit, and then it gets real. This is what we call the Trinity—the core of the Christian faith, the very nature of God. It's why a Muslim says we believe in more than one God. We believe in one God, yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In this passage Jesus is pre-existent, eternal, and divine, yet distinct from the Father. He was the agent of creation; without Him nothing exists. He is the source of light and life, of grace and truth. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us—the incarnation. A unique oneness relationship between Son and Father is revealed, along with His role as Redeemer, Savior, and revealer of the Father. We would not know God apart from Jesus, who is supreme over all things.

Twice, in verses 14 and 18, the challenging word appears: "begotten" in the New King James and King James, "one and only Son" in other versions. There is something distinct and unique about Jesus that makes Him greater than you and I.

From the Father to Us, Not Into Being

Why is this hard for us? Because God, whom we seek to describe, is infinite, and I am finite. My finite brain has a hard time comprehending the infinite. I could give you thousand-page volumes on this, and I have a few minutes to explain it. So let me say it simply.

Point three: God the Son comes from God the Father to us, not from the Father into being. He is not the Father's Son because He was born, descended, or conceived. He always existed in eternal, united oneness with the Father. So why is He called Son? Notice that in John 1 His original title is not "Son" but "the Word"—the logos. When the Word became flesh and was incarnate, His title became "the Son of God."

A son of man has the nature of a man—just as my dad sat here in the first service, and I, his son, share his human nature. So Jesus is the Son of Man—a human man—but also the Son of God, meaning a man who has the nature of God completely.

The creed explains it by analogy: Jesus comes from the Father to us like light from light. We live in a sunny place. The light rays that warm and even burn your skin came from the sun and took eight minutes to reach us. Is that light fundamentally different in nature from its source? No—it is the same as its source. In the same way, Jesus is light from light, bringing the presence of the light of the Father from another realm to us here. He is "from God" not because He descended in a lineage, but because He brings the Father's presence to us. That's why the creed says "begotten, not made, of one being with the Father." That phrase—homoousios in Greek, "of the same substance"—became the controversial word.

Bringing Us Into God's Presence

Why does any of this matter?

Point four: Christ brings God's presence to us in order to bring us into God's presence. If Jesus is just a man, as Arius said, He can't do this. But if He is, in nature, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, then He can bring the Father's presence to us in order to bring us into God's presence—which is the whole point of salvation.

Why do we need this? Because we are separated from God by sin. God made humanity to live in relationship with Him, but in Genesis 3 the ideal humans in an ideal situation chose the non-ideal and rejected God. Through one man's sin, sin entered the world, and death through sin—and death is separation. So all of us are born separate from God, though He never intended that. Jesus, the very presence of God, comes to us to bring us back into connection with Him. The point of salvation is reunion, reunification, reconnection with God.

Three Flavors, One Aim

There are three major groups of Christians. There are the Orthodox—great people who sometimes look down on us Protestants as the weird church. There's chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry; we're strawberry, the weird ones. The Orthodox and Catholic split in the great schism of 1054, and we split from the Catholics with Martin Luther and others in 1517. We are the post-Reformation Protestants.

Yet all three believe the same thing about why Jesus came to save us: to reunite us with God. The Orthodox call it theosis—becoming one with God again. The Roman Catholic calls it the beatific vision—seeing God fully and knowing Him as we are known. The Protestant calls it glorification—when we see Him we are made like Him and made one with God again. This fulfills Jesus' prayer in John 17: "Father, I pray that they may be one as we are one."

This sounds strange to Protestants, but Athanasius—a deacon at the Council of Nicaea—later wrote that the point of the incarnation is this: "He became man that we might be made God." Augustine said the same thing less than a hundred years later. Thomas Aquinas said it in the thirteenth century. Are they saying we become gods? No. They're pointing to theosis, the beatific vision, glorification—the end and point of your salvation. When we see Him we shall be like Him; He will transform our lowly body to be conformed to His glorious body; we shall know Him even as we are known. We are reunited once again in oneness relationship with God, just as Jesus prayed.

Marriage as Illustration

We don't fully understand this on earth, because we are finite and He is infinite, and the idea of being joined to God's nature is hard to grasp. So God gave us an illustration: marriage.

Why did God create marriage? Not to make children—He could make babies all He wanted; He made the first humans out of dirt and doesn't need us for that. In Genesis 2, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that it illustrates the relationship God desires with His church. When you married, you entered a oneness relationship, joined body, soul, and spirit. Are you two individual people? Yes. Are you one in marriage? Yes. In God's math, one plus one in marriage equals one. Try that with common core—it doesn't work. God did this to illustrate what He desires to have with us. God's aim in salvation is to reunite us with the Father, and Jesus can only do that if He is God in nature.

In Christ, the Answer Behind Every Question

Let me bring it full circle. Life is filled with big questions that echo in the human heart—meaning, origin, identity, purpose, destiny. I'm convinced we will never answer them rightly until we first answer the question: who is Jesus?

Point five: In Christ we find the answer behind every question, because in Him dwells all God's fullness in bodily form. If you don't answer the Jesus question rightly, you can't answer the origin question. But once you understand who Jesus is, it reframes everything. Where did I come from? You were created purposefully and intentionally by God, in His image, for a purpose. Who am I? A being made in His image to declare His glory in this world. Why am I here? To know Him and make Him known—that's the meaning of life. Where am I going? When you die, if you know Him, you will be brought back into His presence and united with Him through Christ Jesus.

It's only found in Him. Colossians 2:9: "For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him." You will never fully understand the answers to origin, purpose, identity, and destiny until you discover your completeness in Him who is the head of all principality and power.

Jesus asked, "Who do men say that I am?" Everyone you know has an opinion about Jesus. But the more personal question is: who do you say that He is? And none of the other questions will make sense until you answer it correctly. Jesus said, "On this rock I will build my church." It is the only firm foundation in a world of total chaos. We don't know what will happen in the next twelve hours, but we know this: I know in whom I have believed, and He is able to keep that which I committed to Him until that final day.

Closing Prayer

God, thank You for Your word—though sometimes it is very hard for us to wrap our brains around, to comprehend or understand. Yet, Lord, You condescend to us, coming down to speak in a way we can grasp, even though in so many ways Your nature breaks the backs of words. There are no words that can fully articulate it. We try, and so often we fail. But Lord, You desire that we might know You. One day we will see You, and when we see You we will be like You, and we shall know even as we are known. We look forward to that day, which is why the church has said for centuries, "Lord, come quickly." But until You come, in the same way that You are light from light, would You cause Your light to shine on us, that it would reflect from us into a dark world that desperately needs You. We ask this today in Jesus' name, and all those who agreed said, Amen.