Thursday, May 29, 2008
1 John 5:11-13 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.
GOD, THE ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON
When the apostle John wrote this letter near the end of the first century, false teaching about the deity of Jesus was already being taught and spread. For this reason, the writings of John are among the strongest defenses of the deity of Christ in the New Testament.
John makes it clear that Jesus is not just a great prophet (Islam) or a lesser god (Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses), but that He is true God with the Father. John quotes these words of Jesus: "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). Throughout his writings he makes it clear that Jesus is true God. He also points out that without knowledge of Jesus and trust in Him, a person cannot be saved!
In these verses from his first letter John describes how our salvation is dependent on the work of Jesus Christ. Without Him there can be no life. These verses clearly refute the notion that we believe in the same God as the Muslims or the Jews because both those religions reject the work of Jesus as the Christ. John says: "This life is in His Son." Jesus is our Redeemer -- true God with the Father.
In the Athanasian Creed we confess: "Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe faithfully the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is, that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world; Perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His man-hood; Who, although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ."
