#STRask - Prove to Me That Jesus Is Not a Created Being

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Questions about why we should think Jesus is not a created being, and what it means to say God became fully human if part of being human means not being God.   Prove to me that Jesus is not a created being, that “begotten” doesn’t mean he was created, and that he has always existed. What does it mean to say God became fully human if part of being human means not being God?

Thanks for joining us on hashtag STR Ask. This is Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Kokel. And Greg, today we're going to start with some questions about Jesus being a created being. So here's the question. Comes from Anthony. Prove to me that Jesus Christ is not a created being and that begotten doesn't mean created and that Jesus Christ has always existed. Please answer this in Jesus' name. Well, of course, to prove to somebody on an issue like this is simply to demonstrate what the scripture teaches about Jesus. So you're not going to find evidence outside of the text that tells us about Jesus and the nature of Jesus regarding his eternal sonship, if you were, his eternal existence is the word, is the right way to put it, I guess. And because there actually is some debate about whether Jesus was an eternal sonship relationship with the father, but that's another issue. The point is whether the word, who became flesh in John chapter one and dwelt among us, whether the word is eternal as the

script, as Christians believe, and that's the classical Christian view. It's interesting, a little bit, you know, sweet in a way that he says in Jesus' name, because, because if this person, I'm not sure if they're a critic of this view, or if they're just asking on behalf of their own ability to share with others. I don't know, but in Jesus' name. Okay, fine. In John chapter 1, verse 1, we have a statement about the word. And what's interesting about the way John 1-1 is written is that this is the, in a sense,

the ultimate, let me back up and put it differently. The other gospels, the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John start with historical information about Jesus. All right. Here's what was happening. Here's the genealogy and the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That's Mark, genealogies, and Matthew, etc. But when you come to John, he's approaching it from a very different perspective. He's starting with a very what is considered a high Christology, all right? They're all high Christologies, but he's focusing on the divine nature of Jesus, not the human nature so much. It's Christology from above, all right? And he starts out then to describe Jesus in his prologue to his gospel by mimicking Genesis 1-1.

Genesis 1-1 says, in the beginning, God created the heavens of the earth. And John writes regarding Jesus, in the beginning was the word. In Arche, it's the same idea, the very beginning. It's meant to pattern after Genesis 1-1. And the word was with God, and the word was God. He came into being all things. he was in the beginning with God, verse two, verse three, all things came into being through him, and apart from him, referring to the word now, nothing came into being that has come into being.

So this one verse, or the three of them, this pericopy, this kind of statement, this segment of scripture, paragraph, if you will, in speaking about the word which verse 13 says became flesh and dwelt among us, we beheld his glory, so that in the flesh individual is the man Jesus. But he is the incarnation of the Word, and the Word is identified there in this opening as the same one who started everything in the very beginning of the story, Genesis 1-1. In other words, he was there in the beginning. He was God, with God, and was God. It was a curiosity there, but that suggests the Trinity.

We're not dealing with that so much right now, but we are dealing with the eternal pre-existence of the one called the Word. And we know this because verse 3 makes it very clear and states it in two different ways that the one who is called the word is responsible for, everything that has ever come into being. And apart from him, nothing has come into being, nothing came into being that has come into being. So he is the agency of the creation of everything that was ever created. But he couldn't be a created being himself because he would have to create himself according to the language of John chapter one, verse three. Now, that to me,

and I got this argument from Bob Passantino, who's been a wonderful apologies. He had his wife, Gretchen, for many years, friends, and then both died a while back. But he said, this is an ancient argument, and it's just airtight, it seems to me. I've written a piece on this on the line is called the Deity of Christ case closed, and then I've also included this in street smarts. So the idea that this is just one passage. Now, I don't care what you do with only begotten. I mean, I'll speak to that in a moment.

But there it is, only begotten. There it is, it's a begotten. Well, if that's what begotten means, it's a direct contradiction from the absolute crystal clear statement of John 1, verses 1 through 3. You cannot say begotten means created because now you've got John contradicting himself in his own Christological characterization. This is something that people oftentimes make this mistake, and I'm trying to – I know

I wrote about this sometime, maybe a mentoring letter or something. And incidentally, if you're a reasonably faithful listener to hashtag SCR ask, and you don't receive the letters and articles that we. give out, and no charge, to anybody who asks, then you need to sign up. Just go to STR.org, upper right head corner says, register, all right, jump through the hoops, and no charge for that, just we need to know who you are and where to send stuff, basically. But I've written one piece about this, where people design, people who are biblical people, Christians who design contradictions. And that is, somebody looks at a text, and then they sit on

their understanding of that text, like only begotten. Well, it's the only one begotten. There he's begotten. He's born. That means there was a time he doesn't exist. Now, if you're going to do that, what are you going to do at John, chapter one, verse three? It can't mean that because John makes it clear in almost childlike language multiple times, twice in that verse three, that Jesus is the uncreated creator. So begotten must mean something else, which it does. It's monogyness, and what's interesting, that's one word in Greek. Monogenes is the prefix and the root.

and it means only one you could say generated or one of a kind. And this is another way of translating it, one of a kind. The problem is in translations that we have that say only begotten, it treats monogoness like it's two words, as if the first is modifying the second. That's not the way it is in the Greek, and this is why there's confusion. And I'm sympathetic to the confusion, but you don't. solve the confusion by camping on what you think that word means and ignoring the rest of the passages that disqualify that translation. Now, there is a, I mean, there are theological ways to

understand begottenness in an eternally begotten way. And C.S. Lewis talks about this in mere Christianity, how somebody, something, have an eternal dependency relationship on something. else. Lewis talks about, think of a couch and a bowling ball on the couch, depressing one of the cushions, and that being there for eternity. Well, of course, the depressing and the being upheld, the couch holding up the bowling ball and the depression created by the bowling ball. There is a relationship there, one being, in a sense, causing the other, but it's not a temporal causation. And so this is the way Lewis tries to explain it. However it is that you work this out, it could be one of a kind, monogyness.

It's the only one of a kind. And that's right. Jesus was one of a kind. There was no other godman in the sense that Jesus was the godman, the monogamous, whatever. So, I mean, that's another way of understanding it. So we can toy with ways of understanding that, that don't. require Jesus being a created being because that is a direct contradiction to the most clear passage, John chapter 1 verse 1 through 3, especially verse 3. But there are all kinds of other

ways to make this argument. And I think I just wrote a mentoring letter about this particular issue. Is it going out? Did it just go out? Or maybe this is January, so it's going out February. And, oh, no, it's going out in March. I can't remember what you went. Greg, it was probably a while ago. No, it's not a Ventry letter. It is the quick fire, solid ground that came out in January, where somebody says,

what are verses that prove that Jesus is God? And so I gave a whole different set of arguments. The main one that I offered there in that shorter response is that there are, all these passages in the New Testament that identify characteristics uniquely of God in the Old Testament. And we see the New Testament passages identifying Jesus as having those same unique characteristics, like the only rock, yes, the only creator, the only Savior, et cetera. I give my glory to no other. And Jesus, there is, Paul says, the first and the last. And the only rock, the judge of the earth. I'm reading your list right.

The creator. Yeah. So once again, there's another example where this question is answered in something that's gone out just recently, just a couple of days ago from our recording. Now, this is early January. We're recording. So what I'm making the point that there are actually different ways to indicate, prove, if you will, that the scripture teaches unambiguously that Jesus is God.

the God who made everything, and therefore, if he's the God who made everything, that would be the word who became flesh, then he himself was uncreated. Now, of course, his physical body was, his human nature was created, but not his divine nature that took on the human nature in the incarnation, one person, two natures. the, in that Calcedonian formula, fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, that's called the Calcedonian box. Notice that the person, that is the one person, is the divine person that John calls the word, who has the divine nature and then takes on the human nature.

So, strictly speaking, God doesn't become a man. God rather takes on a human nature, adds to his divine nature, a human nature. That's the most precise way of putting it. But this is, there's no, I know Jehovah's Witnesses following areas, you know, in the 4th century, and a bunch of others that had a very unusual ideas about how to understand the so-called divinity of Jesus had, you know, played this particular thing. theme, and so there's always been people that denied the full divinity of Christ. But in light of the scriptures, I don't see how that can be substantiated.

And when people strain at monogoness, only begotten, or what's the other one, Prototocus? Firstborn. Firstborn. Prototocus. Oh, she is the first one born? That isn't what Prototokos means. Again, a individual Greek word with a prefix and a root that is translated into two English words that give the impression that the first is describing the second, modifying the second.

Firstborn doesn't mean first one born. It means preeminent one. And this is fairly easy to establish when you go back to the Old Testament, you see individuals called firstborn who are not the first ones born. We know that because we have the birth order information of those families. So you have to use the language the way the authors are using the language and understand them in light of the full revelation, not just a microscopic look at that one word, and then I'm just reading what it says. Yeah, but you're reading what it says, but you're not understanding what it means. that's the key.

And unless John is an idiot and he just completely disagrees with himself within the space of about 15 verses, you know. So anyway, I hope that's... So it sounds like there are two ways to go about this. First, to show that he's not created. Go specifically look at that in particular. And second, to look at the places where he is described as being divine because if he is God, then he wasn't created. Right. So those are the two.

ways to go about it here. I just want to note really quickly about the controversy. I don't think the controversy is over, if I understand it right, is over the son and father. It's over submission. Yeah, I'm not familiar enough with the controversy. I'm not either, but I'm just going to throw that out there. People want to look into it. Yeah, I think John MacArthur came out denying eternal sunship and, and he got in, you know, created a firestorm. He's not the kind of guy you can knock from the Orthodox seat, so to speak, but he explained why he holds a view. And anyway, I'm not, to me, that's not that critically important. So I'm not sure about, about MacArthur. It may have been submission rather than Sunship. So, and just so people can

look it up, they can figure out what this, because I'm not really. up on that whole controversy. But what's not in question is the divine nature of the sun. Right. And following that, here's a question from Amber. What does it mean God became fully human? I am fully human, and part of that means not being God. Well, I made reference to this a moment ago, or at least just the fact that what God added to himself in the incarnation is a human nature. And indissoluble now. So you have one person, two natures, okay? What it means that when we say that Jesus was fully human, we mean that everything that is

characteristic of true humanity was characteristic of him, what is essential, what is, what is, an indispensable part of being human. Now, people say, well, Jesus, we all human sin, and Jesus didn't sin, so he's not really a human. Keep in mind that being morally flawed is not an essential characteristic of humanity because Adam was a true human who wasn't morally flawed. He was innocent, morally innocent. Now, of course, it's possible for Adam to have sinned, which he did. But his human nature wasn't given to sin as our human natures are now after the fall. And so what, philosophers call that as our ability to sin or our sinfulness, our inclination is sin,

that is an accidental quality, not an essential quality. An accidental quality is a quality that could have been different and the essence doesn't change so that I have brown eyes and I think you do too. Isn't essential to our humanity because we could have blue eyes. we might not have any eyes at all. Those are qualities that are characteristic for humans, but change with different humans, and they're not essential to our humanity.

In the same way, sinfulness is not essential to our humanity. Jesus had everything that Amber has in terms of her essential humanity. The difference is her humanity was not attached, is not joined with in a hypostatic union, a divine nature. In Jesus' case, his humanity was joined with the divine nature.

Okay. Right. So she says, I'm fully human and part of that means not being God. And that's true even for Jesus. His human nature was not God. His human nature wasn't a divine nature. And that's, I think, where people get confused because they hear fully. And I think sometimes the word truly is more helpful to people.

because truly God and truly man, that means he has a true human nature and a true divine nature. But they aren't mixed together. No. So his human nature is not the divine nature. So how thinking about how Calcedon puts it, not dividing the essence or confusing the nature. So is that the way they put it? You know, something like that.

I can't remember. But it sounds really impressive if I just throw that out. It sounds like I know what I'm talking about. But there's a sense which you don't confuse the natures. In other words, you keep the nature's distinct as metaphysical categories or metaphysical elements, even though they're unified, just like our souls are unified with their body. We can talk about our soul and our body in a distinct way, but they aren't like somehow different from our – they are unified with their body in a deep way.

In the same way, we have Jesus' human nature and his divine nature. You know, we don't confuse them. we don't somehow mix them an inappropriate way, but we don't divide the essence either. Maybe that's it. We don't confuse the nature so we don't divide the essence, something like that. In any event, the early church was very, very careful to work these details out, so there wasn't any confusion. And I hope that helps Amber.

I don't know if you have more to add to that, Amy. Just to sum up that he has two natures. I think that's the key to understand to even start to make sense of this. We have one nature. We have one human nature. He is two natures. And that's why she can't compare herself to him because it's a different situation. Yeah.

This Caledonian box, just think of a square. And at the top it's written fully God. At the bottom is fully man. That's the horizontal lines. And the vertical lines are one person, two natures. And so that's kind of the orthodox formula for understanding Jesus. And inside the box, there's lots of different kind of ideas, whether you have a Christology from above or below or, you know, different emphasises. But as long as you stay within the box, you're Orthodox.

Well, thank you so much, Amber and Anthony. And if you have a question and you've never sent it in, send it in. Go to X and just use the hashtag STR Ask. Or you can go to our website. It's at STR.org. And then all you need to do is just look for our podcast page. Find hashtag STR ask. and you'll find a link there. And we'd love to hear from you. We're always looking for more questions,

and I always try to gather them together, questions that go together. So the more questions we have, the better. We'd love to hear from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for a stand to reason.