Part of a series
The Eternal Son: John’s Gospel Answers the Oneness Claim
Studies from the Gospel of John showing that Jesus Christ is fully God and is the eternal Son, not God the Father in a body. Read them in any order.
- Did God the Father Send His Son, or Did the Father Become His Own Son? A Study of John 3:16
- Seeing the Son Reveals the Father
- Jesus Christ Is Not God the Father Incarnate (Study Outline)
- I Am in the Father: Why John 14:10 Does Not Make Jesus the Father
- Jesus Is Not God the Father Incarnate (you are here)
- “I Am in the Father” (John 14:10)
- Does John 10:30 Prove Oneness? Let Us Think Biblically and Logically
- The Elephant in the Room: What Jesus Actually Said in John 10:30
- One God Does Not Mean One Person: A Bible Outline From John’s Gospel
Let me guard one truth for you tonight, because the enemy loves to blur it. Jesus Christ is fully and eternally God: yes and amen. But Jesus is not God the Father. He is the eternal Son who became flesh. The incarnation does not mean the Father turned Himself into Jesus; it means the Son took on a real human nature while remaining fully God.
The Son was with the Father before the world began
Start where John starts: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “With” God, that is distinction. “Was” God, that is deity. And it was the Word who “was made flesh” (John 1:14), not the Father. The Son prayed of “the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). You cannot have that relationship if they are the same Person.
Two witnesses, and a voice from heaven
Go stand at the Jordan again. The Son is in the water, the Spirit descends like a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven: all at once (Matthew 3:16–17). Three Persons, one moment. And Jesus Himself appealed to the law of two witnesses: “I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me” (John 8:18). A man is not two witnesses by himself! The Father sent the Son (1 John 4:14; Galatians 4:4). God “spared not his own Son” (Romans 8:32). And after Jesus rose, Stephen looked up and saw “the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55–56): two Persons, still distinct, in glory.
Distinct, but still one God
Now do not swing to the other ditch. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30): truly one God. So here is the balance the whole Bible keeps: any teaching that keeps the Son distinct from the Father but denies His deity fails Scripture, and any teaching that keeps His deity by making Him the same Person as the Father also fails Scripture. Only the truth holds it all: one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, distinct in Person, one in nature. Glory to God.
Related Teaching
- Study Outline: Jesus Christ Is Not God the Father Incarnate
- “I Am in the Father” (John 14:10)
- Jesus Is God, but He Is Not the Father
“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
2 Corinthians 5:18-21 (KJV)
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