The Christ of the Bible: God, the Father, Is Greater Than His Son, Jesus, Who Is the Christ of God

We saw in our first chapter that the Christ of the Bible, the Christ of Old Testament prophecy as well as the Christ of New Testament history, the Christ of actual fact, as distinguished from the Christ Whom many men fancy and preach, Christ Jesus, was a Divine Person possessed of all the distinctive and incommunicable attributes of Deity, all the attributes that God possesses, and that God alone possesses. We saw that Christ Jesus is our Lord and our God, and is to be believed in and obeyed and honored and worshiped, just as we believe in and obey and honor and worship God the Father.

I. GOD, THE FATHER, GREATER THAN JESUS
CHRIST THE’ SON,

Now we shall look at the other side of the truth, a side that is clearly and frequently set forth in the Bible, namely, that God, the Father, is greater than Christ Jesus, the Son of God. So the subject of this chapter is, The Christ of the Bible: God the Father is greater than His Son Jesus, Who is the Christ of God. You will find our foundation text in the very plain and very explicit words of our Lord Jesus Himself, in Jno. 14: 28:

“Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved Me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I.”

Let me tarry a moment to say that the truth usually has at least two sides, and not infrequently those two sides seem at first to be flatly contradictory to one another, and yet they are both true. One of the many glories of the Bible is that it presents clearly both sides of the truth, it teaches not only the truth but the whole truth. That is one place where it differs to some extent at least from all man-made philosophies and theologies. Most men see only one side of the truth, and no man attains perfectly to the Bible perfection of seeing all sides of the truth. So the Bible is always ahead of all of us, including the wisest and most far-seeing of us. This is peculiarly true when we come to that most profound and most unfathomable of all subjects, the one infinite subject, God Himself, His Person and Nature. On this infinite subject we shall continue to make new discoveries as long as we continue to live and think; but we shall never discover anything that God has not already revealed in the Bible, only we have not seen it as yet. This is, of course, demonstrative proof that the Bible has God Himself and not man for its real Author.

Many see the great foundation truth about Christ that Jesus Christ, the Christ of the Bible, the only true Christ, is equal to the Father in His nature, in the perfection of His attributes, in His honor, and in His glory: and then some day they suddenly run upon a passage like that which we are now studying, and they are greatly puzzled, bewildered, dumbfounded, all at sea. “What!” they exclaim, “I thought Jesus Christ was God. I worshiped Him as my Lord and my God, and here He Himself says, ‘My Father is greater than I” AmTall wrong?’ No, you are quite right. Jesus Christ is equal to the Father in His nature, in Hts attributes, in His honor and authority and glory, but He is subordinate to the Father in His position, and also in His work. Do you ask me, “How can that be?” I reply that to my mind there is no difficulty here whatever, but even if I could not see the How of it, I would believe it because the Bible teaches it, and I have found conclusive proof that the Bible is the Word of God; and, furthermore, I believe many things of which I do not understand the How. Indeed, I understand the How of very few things I firmly believe. But what concerns me in every department of life and thought is the facts, and not the philosophy of the facts. I am glad that God made me a practical man and not a philosopher. I have indulged quite extensively in the study of philosophy, Greek philosophy, and German philosophy, and French, and Scotch, and English, and American philosophy. I have found great recreation in it, more even than I have found in reading Mark Twain or Dicken’s Pickwick Papers, though I have read Pickwick Papers four or five times. I do not understand the philosophy of the radio. It is a great mystery to me how at this very moment, up in Oregon men and women can be picking my words out of the apparently silent air and hear me as clearly as you folks down there and up yonder in the gallery hear me, only a few feet or a few hundred feet away, and how also, at the same time, they could, if they wished, shift their key a little ways and no longer hear me, but hear the music or whatever it may be that is going over “the Examiner” radio, at this same time. I do not understand it. I do not much care to. It seems quite incredible to me; nevertheless I know it is a fact, and I rejoice that we did not wait until we understood the philosophy of it before we put this blessed broadcasting outfit into our auditorium.

II. GOD THE FATHER BEGAT JESUS CHRIST
THE SON.

To return to our subject: in the second place, God The Father Begat Jesus Christ The Son. This truth we find in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. To begin with the Old Testament, read Ps.

Bere

“I will tell of the decree:
Jehovah said unto Me, Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten Thee.”

This declaration that the coming Christ should be the Son of God the Father, is quoted in the New Testament, in Heb, 1: 1-5:

“God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds; Who being the effulgence of His glory, and the very Image of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; having become by so much better than the angels, as He hath inherited a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, This day have I begotten thee? and again, I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son?” The same important and fundamental truth is found in one of the best known verses in the Bible, Jno. 3: 16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” While we emphasize the truth that Jesus, the Christ of the Bible, the Only true Christ, is the Son of God, we should also emphasize the truth which the Bible emphasizes, that He is the SON of God. He is not the Father, He is the Son; and the Son is always subordinate to the Father. I have a son in China. He is a fine son. I suspect that he is not only equal to his father but much better than his father in many ways. Nevertheless, he is the son and I am the father, and he never forgets it, and he does not fret at all about it. And God the Father is the Father; and Jesus, the Christ, is the Son; and while Jesus Christ is equal to the Father in attributes, He is subordinate to the Father in position, office and authority; and He rejoiced in the fact, and constantly emphasized that fact while He was here on earth among men.

The question may arise in some inquiring minds, Was Christ eternally the Son of God, or did He become the Son of God by becoming man and being born of the virgin? To this question the Bible answers in Jno, I: 1:

“Tn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

That is to say, it is as the Eternal Word that He is primarily set forth in His preexistent glory and not as the Eternal Son. And in Jno. 1:14, we read:

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.”

That is to say, it is when the Word became flesh that we beheld His glory as the Only begotten Son. And in Ps, 2: 7, we read:

“I will tell of the decree:

Jehovah said unto Me, Thou art My Son;

This day have I begotten Thee,”

which plainly indicates a begetting and thus becoming the Son in time. And we are told in Luke 1: 35:

“And the angel answered and said unto her, (that is unto the Virgin Mary) The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the powers of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God,”

which plainly tells us it was because He was conceived

Jota CH nhs TsOh CHT BIBER 43

by the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ was to “be called the Son of God.” But there is still another side to this truth also. This other side we read in Jno. 17:5: “And now, Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine Own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was,” which clearly implies that the Christ was the Son of the Father in the Eternity before the world was. And in Jno. 3: 16, we are told that: “God so loved the world, that He gave His Only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Here the words “He gave His Only begotten Son” clearly imply that the One He sent into the world. was already His Son. And in Jno. 17:24, we read: “Father, I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given me: for Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” These words seem to clearly set forth the love of the Eternal Father to the Eternal Son in the Eternity before the world was.

III. JESUS CHRIST LIVES BECAUSE OF HIS FATHER.

In the third place, Jesus Christ lives because of the Father. We read in John 6:57: “As the living Father sent me, and J live because of the Father.” While the Christ of the Bible is, as we saw last

Sunday, an Eternal Being, while He existed from all Eternity and will exist to all Eternity, His Eternal existence is a derived existence, eternally derived from the Father. Or, as His own words put it, He “lives because of the Father.”

IV. THE SON CAN DO NOTHING INDEPENDENTLY
OF THE FATHER.

In the fourth place, The Son can do nothing independently of the Father. We read in John 5: 10: ‘Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing: for what things soever He doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner.”

The Christ of the Bible, the Son of God, is omnipotent, as we saw last Sunday. He can do all things; but He can do nothing independently of the Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ rejoiced in that fact. He gloried in it and recurred to it in one form or another again and again.

V. JESUS CHRIST WAS SENT BY THE FATHER.

In the fifth place, Jesus Christ was sent by the Father. Jesus Christ came into this world upon a wondrous mission. He came gladly, difficult as the mission was and demanding such amazing sacrifice on His part as it did; nevertheless He did not come primarily of His own volition, another sent Him. God, the Father, sent Him, and He replied to the Father’s commission, as we read in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, Ps. 40:7, 8: “Lo, I am come; In the roll of the book it is written of Me: I delight to do Thy will, O My God.”

In the New Testament, it reads in this way, Heb.

10: 5-7:
‘Wherefore when He cometh into the world,
He saith,
Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
But a body didst Thou prepare for Me;
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin
Thou hadst no pleasure:
Then said I, Lo, / am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God.”

I wish we might linger here a while, but we must pass on. But never forget that it was “God (the Father ),’’ Who “so loved the world, that He gave His Only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

VI. JESUS CHRIST RECEIVED COMMANDMENT
FROM THE FATHER.

In the sixth place, Jesus Christ Recewed Commandment From The Father, i.e., He Was Under The Father’s Authority And Direction. Read Jno. 10:18:

“No one taketh it (that is My life), away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment received I from My Father.”

While the laying down of His life was entirely voluntary on our Lord’s part, while He joyfully “though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich,” nevertheless it was an act of voluntary obedience to a commandment that originated in the will of Another, in the will of His Father.

Vil. JESUS CHRIST RECEIVED HIS OWN AUTHORITY FROM THE FATHER.

In the seventh place, Jesus Christ Received His Own Authority From His Father. This we read in Jno. Agia

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He came forth from God, and goeth unto God.”

Jesus, the Christ of the Bible, has “all authority in heaven and on earth’”’ (Matt 28:18), but it is a delegated authority, an authority that has been “given unto” Him, an authority He has received from Another, God the Father. As we read in Matt. 28:18:

“All authority hath been given unto Me in
heaven and on earth.”

And we read in John 17:1, 2:

“These things spake Jesus; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee: even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He should give eternal life.”

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VIII. JESUS CHRIST RECEIVED HIS MESSAGE FROM THE FATHER.

In the eighth place, Jesus Christ received His message from the Father. These are His Own Words found in Jno. 8: 26, 40:

“I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you: howbeit He that sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these speak I unto the world.... But now ye seek to kill Me, a Man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God: this did not Abraham.”

Jesus Christ’s Message was a Divine message, every word of it was God’s Word, every word that the Christ of the Bible uttered was a Divine word, absolutely dependable and inerrant, but it did not originate with Him, it came from God the Father. He spoke only what He heard from the Father, as He declared in Jno. 7: 16:

“Tesus therefore answered them, and said, My teaching is not Mine, but His that sent Me.”

IX. THE FATHER GAVE JESUS CHRIST HIS WORKS TO ACCOMPLISH, AND IT WAS THE INDWELL-ING FATHER WHO DID THE WORKS.

In the ninth place, The Father Gave Jesus Christ His Works To Accomplish, and It Was The Indwelling Father Who Did The Works. For example, we read in Jno. 5:36:

“But the witness which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given Me to accomplish, the very works that

I do, bear witness of Me, that the Father hath sent Me,” and many months later, on the night before the end of His earthly life, Jesus declared in Jno. 14: 10: “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from Myself: but the Father abiding in Me doeth His works.”

X. JESUS CHRIST’S KINGDOM WAS APPOINTED
UNTO HIM BY THE FATHER.

In the tenth place, Jesus Christ’s Kingdom Was Appointed Unto Him By God the Father. This we read in Luke 22: 29:

“And I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as My Father appointed unto Me.”

Jesus, the Christ of the Bible, has a kingdom, a kingdom so vast that only a Divine Person could properly administer it, but He did not achieve that kingdom for Himself, His Father gave it to Him. He will appoint a kingdom to us, but His Father appointed His kingdom to Him.

XI. JESUS CHRIST SHALL ULTIMATELY DELIVER
UP THE KINGDOM TO THE FATHER.

In the eleventh place, Jesus Christ Shall Ultimately Deliver Up The Kingdom To The Father. This we are plainly told by the Holy Spirit, speaking through the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 15:24:

“Then cometh the end, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father.”

Jesus Christ shall still reign; for we are told in ukeyr 33°:

“And He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.”

He shall still reign, but He shall reign eternally in subordination to the Father.

XII. JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF SHALL BE SUBJECTED TO THE FATHER THAT GOD MAY BE ALL AND IN ALL.

In the twelfth place, Jesus Christ Shall Be Eternally Subjected To The Father, That God May Be All And In All. This also the Holy Spirit tells us through the Apostie Paul; in-r Cor. 15:27,28:

“For, He put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He saith, All things are put in subjection, it is evident that He is excepted Who did subject all things unto Him. And when all things have been subjected unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him that did subject all things unto Him, that God may be all in all.”

Jesus Christ is not only now subordinated to the Father, and not only has He always been subordinated to the Father, but He also eternally shall be subordinated to God the Father.

XIII. GOD, THE FATHER, IS THE HEAD OF
JESUS CHRIST.

In the thirteenth place, God, The Father, Is The Head Of Christ, As Christ Is The Head Of Every

50 THE CHRISTOF: THE VBibigs

Man, And As the Man Is Head Of the Woman. Turn to a most remarkable, and most instructive, and very suggestive passage, 1 Cor. 11:3:

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”

Jesus Christ is possessed in all their perfection and fullness of all the glorious attributes of Deity, and yet He does not desire nor seek the Headship of the universe. Satan sought the headship of the universe; Jesus Christ did not and does not. He rejoices that the Father is the head.

How many foolish men, puffed up with a little knowledge that they possess, or fancy that they possess, fret at the headship of Jesus Christ, they want to be head themselves; just as Satan did. They have fallen “into the condemnation of the devil’ and the snare of the devil (1 Tim. 3:6, 7), that is “into the condemnation” and “the snare’ into which Satan fell and thus fell from heights of glory to depths of shame. How many women in this wild, foolish day in which we are now living, fret at the headship of “the man.” Overconscious of their ability and of their unquestionable equality intellectually with men, they wish to assert their equality by claiming the headship, which God for His Own wise purposes has bestowed on “‘the man,” and thus they too fall “into the snare of the Devil,” that is the snare into which Satan fell. Every woman-headed religious organization composed of both men and women sooner or later goes to smash. Yes, I say it solemnly, not profanely nor flippantly, it goes to “the Devil,” in whose spirit it originated. Let us all, both men and women, learn humility and to rejoice in our God-given position of subordination from Him we acknowledge as Head, Jesus Christ, our Lord, Who, notwithstanding all His equality with the Father, gladly recognizes God the Father as the Head.

XIV. MEN DRAW NEAR UNTO GOD THROUGH
GHRIST:

In the fourteenth place, Men Draw Near Unto God Through Christ. God, Not Christ, Is The Ultimate Goal. This, we are told in a passage that few of us have pondered as we ought. Heb. 7:25:

“Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.”

I shall never forget a day in which I heard Andrew Murray at Northfield many years ago expound this verse, Heb. 7:25, and dwell upon the fact that, while it was through Christ alone we could draw near unto God, it was not to Christ Himself, but to God the Father, we drew near. I knew this before. Indeed I am not sure that I had not already written my book, “What The Bible Teaches,” in which I somewhat emphasized this; but it gained a new meaning for me that day. Oh! so many of us are so entirely taken up with Jesus Christ, the Son, that we lose sight of the great truth that He is “the way” not to Himself, but to the Father. WE NEED TO KNOW OUR FATHER GOD. In the experience of many twentieth century

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Christians, Jesus, the Only begotten Son of God, Whose work it is to “reveal THE FATHER” (Jno. 1:18), has become so much to us that the Father, Whom He desires to reveal, has become practically nothing. He Himself, while He declared that he was, “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” declared, with equal clearness and with even more emphasis, that He was the way to some one else, “to the Father.” His words are, as found in Jno. 14:6:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”

The Father, not the Son, is the ultimate goal.

Listen again to Heb. 7:25:

“Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near UNTO GOD through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.”

It is to the Father I go. I go to the Father through the Son, but I do not stop at the Son, Who is “the Way,’ I press on unto the Father, unto Whom He is the Way, “draw near unto God through Him.”

XV. GOD, THE FATHER, IS JESUS CHRIST’S GOD.

Finally, God The Father Is Jesus Christ’s God. Jesus Christ’s words about this are very plain and very explicit. You will find them in Jno. 20:17:

“Jesus said to her, Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto My brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.”

Remember that these words were spoken by our Lord even after His resurrection. Jesus Christ is “Lord and God” to us, but God, the Father, is Father and God to Him. Listen to His words again:

“I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.”

To sum up all we have seen in this chapter concerning the Christ presented to us in the Bible, Jesus Christ Is, And Eternally Shall Be, Subordinate To God, The Father. In God, The Father, we have the Source of Deity; In Jesus Christ, Deity in Its Outflow. But in the Stream Is all the Perfection of the Fountain. To use Paul’s words, “In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” (Col. 2:9.)

It has been said that this conception, that in God the Father we have the Source of Deity but in Jesus Christ we have Deity in its outflow, is Sabellianism; but it is not, if we bear constantly in mind that God the Father, the Source of Deity, is a Person, and that Jesus Christ, the Son, the perfect Stream that flows from the Father, is also a definite and distinct Person.

What a marvelous and many-sided conception of the Christ it is that is given to us in this old, old Book, the Bible, and in the whole Book; not only in the books written after Christ came but also in the passages written a thousand years before He came, which looked forward to Him. Whence did David, and Isaiah, and Micah, and John, and Paul get their wondrously profcund and wondrously unified conceptions of the Christ, conceptions that we, after eighteen hundred, yes, even after twenty-eight hundred years, have not even yet fully fathomed? There can be but one reasonable or even fairly intelligent answer to that question: beyond a doubt they got their conceptions of the Christ, and the very words in which those conceptions are phrased, from God Himself.

Let us ponder these God-given words and behold the real Christ, the Christ of actual fact, and wonder, and admire and love and worship Him, and through Him press on to the Father that He, God, The Father, “may be all and in all.”’