Summer in the Systematics – Christology (Part 1): The Preexistence of Christ

Transcript

JRS 41
6/2/2024
Summer in the Systematics – Christology Part 1 “The Preexistence of Christ”
Selected Scriptures
Jesse Randolph

Alright, well, welcome everybody to our first installment of year three of Summer in the Systematics, which is going to be our summer-long study of Christology, the Doctrine of Jesus Christ. His person, His works, His purposes. I’m grateful you’re all here tonight, you’re all able to make it, take time out of your busy summer, late summer evenings so we can study this important doctrine.

As I mentioned my first summer here at Indian Hills two years ago, if the Lord allows, I’d like to teach our church systematic theology on Sunday evenings in the summer not only over the next many weeks but, Lord willing, over the next many years. And what we’ll do over the next many years, if the Lord allows and tarries, is cover each of the traditional categories of Systematic Theology that you see up on your screen there, including our topic for the summer of 2024, Christology. And why? Why take a break from Esther? We were having so much fun with Esther. Why take a break and study Systematic Theology in the summer? Well, simply put, theology matters!

Here's what Daniel Wallace said, and I’ve given this quote to you before. A couple of these will be repeats from the last 2 years, but they really set the stage for what we’ll be doing tonight and throughout the summer. Daniel Wallace says, “Those in ministry must close the gap between the church and the academy. We have to educate believers. Instead of trying to isolate people from critical scholarship, we need to insulate them. They need to be ready for the barrage, because it is coming. The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ.” He’s absolutely right. We live in a period and a day in which there is a plague of biblical illiteracy among Christians. Men, you might remember Dr. Cory Marsh coming for our men’s conference and speaking to that very subject this year. We live in a time which is marked by the abandonment of biblical principles and a biblical ethic. In fact, Chuck Colson many years ago said this, I think somewhat prophetically. “Now we live in a new dark age. Having elevated the individual as the measure of all things, modern men and women are guided solely by their own dark passions; they have nothing above themselves to respect or obey, no principles to live or die for. Personal advancement, personal feeling, and personal autonomy are the only shrines at which they worship.” Was Colson not foreshadowing what we see all around us today? “Men and women being guided solely by their own dark passions,” as he put it? Worshiping at the “shrines” of “personal advancement,” and “personal feeling,” and “personal autonomy”?

Friends, we are in the month of June, if you noticed, which is now called “Pride Month.” A full 30 days in which godless, lawless rebels, take the sign of God’s promise to never judge the world again by a flood, the rainbow, and they use it as their symbol to celebrate their flagrantly sinful lifestyle. All while dressing up that sin in the language of what is arguably the most sinister form of sin imaginable and really, the taproot of all sin pride. We absolutely do live in a time and an era in which, culturally, we have untied the boat from the dock of biblical truth and we’ve shoved off into a sea of secularism, relativism, and open and flagrant sin.

So, with that being our context, that being the time, those being the times in which we live today, is the solution to run away from theology? To shy away from theology? To shy away from systematic theology and the various sub-disciplines of systematic theology, like Christology? Absolutely not. There’s no better time than the time we live in now to be girded up with all forms of biblical truth, to be taught biblical truth in various means and methods. Exegetically and expositionally as we tend to do, and typically do, on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. But also categorically and systematically, as we’ll do in these summertime studies.

Now, I’ve already used a few words. “Theology,” “systematic theology,” “Christology,”
which are interconnected but distinct. But they need some further definition. So let’s start our time this evening by defining those terms up front. And, again, some of these are by way of reminder. What is “theology?” What is “systematic theology?” What is “Christology?” Let’s start with “theology.” What is theology? Well, we get our word theology, that it comes from a root word Theos, it’s the Greek word for God, and Logos, that’s the Greek word for “word.” So that when you look at the raw definition of theology you’re talking about a “word about God.” Or, we could smooth that out and say, “the study of God.” Or some of the older theologians put it, “the science of God.”

Now, in reality, there are as many definitions of theology out there as there are theologians. So it’s kind of hard to pick a favorite one, but I do have favorite one. It comes from David Wells who defines theology this way, and I gave this definition to you last summer and the summer before. He says, “Theology is the sustained effort to know the character, will, and actions of the triune God as he has disclosed and interpreted these for his people in Scripture, in order that we might know him, learn to think our thoughts after him, live our lives in his world on his terms, and by thought and action project his truth into our own time and culture.” Now I think that’s a clear and concise, yet comprehensive, definition of what truly is a massive undertaking with theology, “the study of God.” So breaking this down a bit, Wells’ definition tells us that Theology requires effort. Theology is a “sustained effort.” It has a target, to know “the character, will, and actions of God.” Theology is trinitarian. It’s the study of the triune God and has a source, the Scripture, the 66 God-breathed books of the Bible. That’s what we studied last summer, and it has a purpose, "that we might know him, learn to think our thoughts after him, live our lives in his world on his terms, and by thought and action project his truth into our own time and culture.”

So that’s our definition of “theology.” What about “systematic theology?” What is “systematic theology?” Again you can find countless possible definitions of this term. I’m going to go with one from John Frame, where he simply defines systematic theology as “that field of study which asks what the whole Bible teaches about any subject.” Now, there are ten traditional categories of Systematic Theology. And different men may teach these in different order or according to a different outline, but by way of reminder, these are the categories traditionally of Systematic Theology: Theology Proper, the doctrine of the existence and being of God, we looked at that two summers ago; Bibliology, we looked at this last summer; the doctrine of the inspiration, inerrancy, authority, and canonicity of the Bible; Christology, that’s what we are doing this summer, the doctrine of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ; Pneumatology, next summer, the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit; Anthropology, the doctrine of man; Hamartiology, the doctrine of sin; Soteriology, the doctrine of salvation; Angelology, the doctrine of angels (holy and fallen) and Satan; Ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church (universal and local); and then last, Eschatology, the doctrine of last things (or end times). And, again, two summers ago we looked at Theology Proper, the doctrine of God. Last summer was Bibliology, the doctrine of the Bible. And this summer is Christology, the study of Christ. The person, the work, the purposes of Christ.

Alright, we’ve knocked out 2 definitions. Theology, and the study of God. We’ve knocked out this definition of systematic theology, that field of study which asks what the whole Bible teaches about any subject. Now, what is Christology? Christology, very simply, is the doctrine of Jesus Christ. His person, His works, and His purposes. And in the realm of Christology there are various sub disciplines, or subjects, of study and interest which we’ll be touching upon over the next ten weeks. These would include: The preexistence of Christ, that’s tonight; the deity of Christ; the natures of Christ; the incarnation of Christ; the humanity of Christ; the life and obedience of Christ; the crucifixion and death of Christ; the resurrection of Christ; the ascension of Christ; and, of course, the return of Christ. We have our work cut out for us this summer! Cancel all summer vacation plans forthwith! I kid.

Well, this subject, Christology, it really is a vitally important one. And that’s because, as Charles Spurgeon once noted, got to get a Spurgeon quote in each one of these lectures, “Christ is the great central fact in the world’s history. To Him everything looks forward or backward. All the lines of history converge upon Him.” I might quibble a little bit with that based on what I have said about reading Scripture forward, not backward, over and over and over again. But you get the point, He’s the focus of who we are in Christ. We are in Christ, and studying Him is of essential importance. But even the secular French philosopher, Ernest Renan, noted that, “all history is incomprehensible without Christ.” We can simply look at the calendar and how the world functions and we can understand what he’s saying. And that’s why Daniel Akin can say this rightly, “Christology, the study of the person and work of Jesus Christ, is the central doctrine of Christianity.”

Now, no matter where one sits on the theological spectrum of Christianity, there is common agreement that Christology, as the very definition of the term implies, centers around Christ, His person, His works, His purposes. And what’ll happen is, oftentimes, as you read on this subject, and read works on Christology, you’ll see the whole subject, usually in introduction of various works, of Christology teed up with the words of Jesus, here in Matthew 16:13, where Matthew records Jesus coming into the district of Caesarea Philippi. He’s asking His disciples, and He asks them this question, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And then Verse 14 records, “And they said,” (this is His disciples speaking back to Him) “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” And then Jesus responds, in verse 15, “But who do you say that I am?” And that’s where, in the study of Christology, the floodgates open as scholars and theologians of all stripes and persuasions and backgrounds, whether amateur or professional, look at the study of Christology as being subjective. As in, "Who is Jesus to me? What do I think Christ came to do?” Jesus asked here in Matthew 16:15, “who do you say that I am?” So, by golly, I’m going to tell Him, and everyone else who I say He is. And how He needs to resemble me, and relate to me; and while he’s at it, fix the culture and make the world a better place. It’s been this type of thinking which led the French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose thoughts were integral to the French Revolution, to declare that Jesus was a social revolutionary whose primary purpose was to free the Jews from Rome’s tyrannical rule. This is why the playwright, George Bernard Shaw, claimed that Jesus was “a rallying center for revolutionary influence in His times.” And this is why more modern liberation theologians will appropriate Jesus for their cause, whatever that cause may be. Like Albert Cleage, who wrote a book titled The Black Messiah, in which he says that, “Jesus was a revolutionary black leader, a Zealot, seeking to lead a Black Nation to freedom.” This is why Miguel De La Torre, who wrote a book called The Politics of Jesus: A Hispanic Political Theology, would say this, that to follow Jesus was “an invitation to pick up one’s own cross and follow (Note the accent mark there) Jesus in his call to serve and be in solidarity with the marginalized.” This is why Tian An Wong would write this in an Asian American Theology of Liberation, he says,
“Solidarity with other communities of color in their struggles is an exercise in demonstrating our faith through works.” A little James 2 language there. “For Asian Americans, repentance requires the conviction of our own complicity before we can even begin working toward the freedom first of all of Indigenous peoples, then of Black people, and, finally, the rest of us.”

You catching all that? Did you realize that there was such a kaleidoscopic of range of options that we get to pick from in terms of how we view Jesus, and His Works, and His Person, and His purposes? I’m being a tad facetious. Here’s how Bruce Demarest summarizes the range of views that are out there about Jesus, and His person, and His works. He’s right, he says, “The theories have no end. Albert Schweitzer saw in Jesus a deluded apocalyptic visionary. Hitler found an Aryan who proved the superiority of Gentiles of European stock. Picasso pictured a dashing bullfighter. Spiritism presents Jesus as a pantheistic god. And the Baha’i faith portrays Him as one of nine human messengers. The modern portraits of Jesus appear to be without a number.” It's ludicrous. And much of this can be traced back to what is perceived to be this open-ended question from Jesus, in Matthew 16:15, when he says, “but who do you say that I am?” The theory and the thought is that He here is Inviting endless subjective musings and ramblings such as the ones I’ve just quoted. When He asked this question, “but who do you say that I am?” Well, was that an open invitation from Jesus for all generations to come to subjectively muse and ramble about who He is? To make Him who we want Him to be? To mold Him into our image, to make him this little idol that we tuck away into our pocket and take to work? Absolutely not. Because we know from the context of that passage, that right after Jesus asked this question, Simon Peter, always quick to reply, answered. And in doing so he closed off the range of potential options of who Christ is. In verse 16, Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Amen! Jesus, the One born in Bethlehem to Joseph and Mary. The One who lived that perfect and sinless life. The One who died that undeserved, but divinely appointed death. The One who rose from the grave and then appeared to the masses before ascending to the Father, is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And all summer long we’ll be working through what those words, and other words like them, mean and entail. And as we do so, and this connects back to what we studied last summer, Bibliology, in developing a robust and detailed and faithful Christology, we’re going to be doing so from the Scriptures. So hold me to that. There won’t be from up here any “I feel” or “I just think” kind of statements about who Christ is as we work through this study of the doctrine of Christ. No, we’ll be submitting each of our thoughts about who Christ is. “Who do you say that I am?” to what has already been revealed to us perfectly and timelessly in the Word of God. I appreciate what Robert Lightner says on this topic of finding Christ in the Scripture. He says, “Jesus Christ and his work on the cross are absolutely central and essential to Christianity. One’s view of Christ will determine in large part his views of other cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith. It is generally true, for example, that one’s view of Christ, the Living Word, will correspond with his view of the Bible, the written Word. The reverse is also true; one’s view of the written Word in large measure reveals his view of the Living Word.” Amen. What we know of the Living Word, Jesus Christ, comes from the written Word, Scripture. And, yes, I’ll be quoting theologians like I always do as we go through this study, but even then I’ll be quoting them to the extent they’re quoting Scripture as we get down to the weeds of about who Christ is.

Alright with that, let’s get into it. Our first subject of study for the summer in our study of Christology, is “The Preexistence of Christ.” Now, when we embark on the study of the doctrine of Christ our minds, as temporal finite creatures as we are, might need to go immediately to Jesus’ birth, to the Christmas story, which is incidentally what we’re about to embark upon next Sunday morning in our morning series in the Gospel of Luke. But when you study the Scriptures, and specifically those Scriptures bearing on Christ and His Person, you note very quickly that the Bible takes us all the way back to eternity past as it reports on Christ’s pre-existence. So, while the study of Christology can be organized in a number of different ways, the one that’s going to make the most sense is studying Him chronologically; Is to study Christ first in His preexistent state, and then work our way up to His incarnation, His life, His death, His resurrection, His return and so on.

So tonight, though, our focus is on the preexistence of Christ. And here’s the basic outline or roadmap that we’ll be on. These correspond, by the way, to the 3 blanks on your worksheets there. Heading number 1 will be “New Testament evidences for the preexistence of Christ.” Number 2 will be “Old Testament evidences for the preexistence of Christ,” yes going out of order, and then third, will be “other theological grounds for the preexistence of Christ.” So “New Testament evidences” would be the first heading, “Old Testament Evidences” the second heading, and then “other theological grounds” will be the third heading.

Let’s start with New Testament evidences for the preexistence of Christ. Do the 27 books of the New Testament testify to the fact that Jesus preexisted not only His own birth and life and ministry, but that He preexisted the very creation of the world and the universe? Do the New Testament books give us that proof? Yes, they do. And in many different places, and from many different sources. We think of these words, to get us started, from John the Baptist. John 1:15 records it this way, “John bore witness about Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has been ahead of me, for He existed before me’.” John the Baptist would say something very similar, just down that page in John 1:29-30, it says, “On the next day, he saw Jesus coming to him (this is John the Baptist seeing Jesus coming) and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who has been ahead of me, for He existed before me.’”

Think about that. John the Baptist here on two different occasions says that “He,” meaning Jesus, “existed before him.” John the Baptist. And the verb that he uses there for “existed,”
it’s the imperfect form of eimai. So the Greek verb for existence IM is eimai. This is an imperfect form and all that means is, it can be translated “He was existing.” As in “He was existing before me.” Well, as we read the Gospel accounts, even looking at what we’re in in Luke in the mornings, who was conceived first? John or Jesus? The answer, of course, is John. So how could John say that Jesus “existed before me”? How could this be said if
Jesus existed prior to His birth and prior to His incarnation? Is this referring to rank? Is this referring to dignity? Is this John saying, in the John 3:30 sense, “He must increase, I must decrease”? Is he saying when He existed before me? Or is he referring to the fact that Jesus is a greater rank, or priority, or worth, or value? No, he’s speaking temporally. This is referring to a time relationship. Though John was older in age than Christ having been conceived first, Christ was before him. Christ existed before him. In point of time, Christ preceded John.

So there’s one biblical witness to Christ’s pre-existence, John the Baptist. Next we need to consider the testimony of the apostles and other human authors of Scripture. The Apostle John began his gospel by noting this familiar passage, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Now note the language of just those first few words, “In the beginning was the Word.” “In the beginning.” Meaning, in eternity past. “Was,” again that’s another imperfect form of eimai which is pointing to a prior continual existence. And then this. In the beginning was the “Word,” that’s a reference to Christ. We know that just by looking down the page in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” That’s clearly referring to the second person of the trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we also know that’s referring to Jesus from a passage like Revelation 19. “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sits on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; having a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself, and being clothed with a garment dipped in blood,” here we go, “His name is also called The Word of God.” What John 1:1-2 is telling us, then, is that Jesus was not only with God, He was God. He is God. Piecing that all together, what John is testifying to here when he says, “In the beginning was the Word,” is that Christ, “the Word,” eternally was. He eternally was and therefore preexisted all that is in this world in which we live. And that lines up perfectly, by the way, with passages like John 17:5, and Jesus’ prayer to the Father. He says, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

So those are some of the references that we see in John’s Gospel. What about in some of the other New Testament writings? Well, let’s consider Paul. Who infamously said this, in Philippians 2:5-7 he said, “Have this way of thinking in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.” Now we’ll get into the words “equality with God” next week when we study the deity of Christ. We’ll get into the words “emptied Himself” the infamous kenosis passage when we study the incarnation of Christ. But for tonight’s purposes, as we study the preexistence of Christ, we’re going to zero in on the words “existing in the form of God.”

“Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God.” Reading those words contextually and chronologically, what they’re telling us is that before Christ’s incarnation, before He came to earth, before He put on flesh, before He was born as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem, He was already “existing in the form of God.” That is, prior to His own birth, He existed in the form of God. And, by the way, that word “form” there is morphe. It refers to those qualities which make something exactly what it is, what makes up its essence. I appreciate how Homer Kent defines that term morphe, what we see for form in Philippians 2. He says that word morphe “refers to the intrinsic form,” it need not be physical, “that belongs to God and by which he manifests himself.” In other words, in His pre-existent state. Both before His own birth and, going back even further, before the universe was formed by Him, Jesus possessed these real and essential, though invisible, characteristics which expressed His true identity as God. And, until His incarnation when He took on the form of man, as we will see later in Philippians 2, when He put on flesh, He existed as spirit just as the other two persons, the Father and the Spirit of the Godhead.

Well Paul not only spoke of Christ’s preexistence in Philippians, He also did in Colossians. Here,
consider these words in Colossians 1:17. He is before all things. He is Christ. And this is describing not only Christ’s preeminence over all creation a major theme of Colossians 1, but His pre-existence of all of it, as well.

Or, also in that first chapter of Colossians Paul refers to Christ as “the firstborn of all creation.” And we saw this in our exhaustive series through Colossians over the last year. What we tell what this does not mean. What this does not mean as the various cult groups have taught over the centuries is that Christ was the first one created. What this does mean is that Christ, existing as He did before creation, from eternity past as the preexistent One, exercised the privilege of supremacy and Lordship over His entire creation. Or we think of these words, from Colossians 1:16, “all things have been created through Him and for Him.” Those words testify not only to Christ being the Creator, and Christ being God, both of which are true statements. But Christ, as God and as Creator preexisting all things. To be the Creator He must have already been there when creation began. And it was for Him as well as through Him that the whole work of creation was accomplished. All things have been created through Him and for Him. That lines up very directly, by the way, with John 1:3, “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” Sounds a lot also like Hebrews 1:1-2, “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.” And then 1 Corinthians 8:6 says, “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” Each of these testifies to Christ being the preexistent Creator.

So we’ve considered a little bit about John the Baptist said about Christ’s preexistence. We look now at what John, the author of the gospel of John, and Paul indicated about Christ preexistence, the author of Hebrews, what he said. There’s obviously one voice recorded on the pages of Scripture who we have yet to consult about Jesus’ preexistence, which is Jesus himself.

Now we can’t be totally exhaustive here, given our time limitations tonight, but we can survey the landscape of what our Lord revealed about His own preexistence. Here are some of the biblical evidences of what Jesus Himself said about His own preexistence. Here’s John 3:17, “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” Now we often look at this first and we think automatically about how it connects to the good news message back in John 3:16. But note the additional theological point that’s being made here that can be lost if we’re not careful which is that God sent His Son into the world. And importantly, God sent His Son as Son into the world. Jesus didn’t become God’s Son at His birth, or at His incarnation. He is God’s eternal Son; He is eternally the Son of God. He existed in eternity past along with God the Father and with God the Spirit. And in so doing, preexisted His own birth at Bethlehem. And preexisted the creation of the world, which He Himself, we’ve seen in Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, John 1, He brought about.

Here’s another one. In John 6:35, Jesus here is saying to the crowds, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” In other words, His goal was not simply to fill the bellies of hungry people, but to proclaim Himself as the Bread of Life. The source of strength and life for all things and all men. And then He says this, in verse 51, in keeping with this Bread of Life idea, he says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Heaven being the eternal dwelling place of God. So here in John 6:51, when he’s saying that He’s the living bread that came down from heaven, the idea is clear. That there was a time in eternity past, when being God, He was in heaven but then in His incarnation and through His birth He came down from heaven.

This same idea of Jesus coming down, or descending from heaven, or being sent from God
Is recorded elsewhere. Like here in John 3:13 he says, “And no one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” Or John 8:42, He says, “I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come of Myself, but He sent Me.” Or John 16:28, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world.” And we’ve already seen this one, John 17:5, He says, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” Again, each of these testifies to the fact that Jesus preexisted His own birth. There was a time, before He was born in Bethlehem, before the God the Father sent Him into the world that, if I can put it so simply, Christ simply “was.”

Well, there’s no place in the New Testament where we see a stronger and a clearer statement pertaining to Jesus’ preexistence of course than in John chapter 8. Now there’s so much to this account and again, for time sake, we’re just going to pick it up midway, where Jesus is recorded as saying, in John 8:56 to the Jewish religious leaders of the day; He says, he’s right in their face, and says, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” And they knew what He was saying and what he was talking about and so they were torqued right away with these words in verse 57, “So the Jews said to Him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?’” Abraham preexisted Christ by something like close to 2000 years. And you’ve seen Abraham? And then here’s the infamous passage, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’” He lived multiple millennium nearly before Jesus, Abraham did. And now Jesus is saying to this group of Pharisees, descendants of Abraham, that “Abraham rejoiced to see My day.” And that He preexisted Abraham, “before Abraham was, I am.” There wasn’t a stronger way for Jesus to say, not only that He preexisted Abraham in time, but that, unlike Abraham, He is God. “I am,” of course, was His deliberate way of identifying Himself with God. He was Himself identified to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, where it says, “And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’; and He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.’” In other words, In John 8:58, Jesus was declaring to the religious leaders of Israel in His day that He was God. And, for our purposes this evening
one aspect of being God is being eternal and preexisting all things, which is exactly what Jesus was communicating to these leaders in John 8:58, and they “got it.” They fully understood what He was driving at and what Jesus was saying and what He was claiming. Which is why the very next thing they did in John 8:59, you see it here as they picked up stones to throw at Him. If what Jesus was saying was not true, and these Pharisees did not believe it was true, the penalty was stoning. Execution for blasphemy.

OK, well we have marched our way through some of the key New Testament evidences for the preexistence of Christ. What about the Old Testament? Does the Old Testament give us any additional biblical data about the preexistence of Christ? The answer is yes. And that brings us to our heading here, number 2, Old Testament evidences for the preexistence of Christ. Now one of the key ways that the Old Testament testifies to the preexistence of Christ are with its many references to “the angel of the Lord,” or “the angel of Yahweh.” And we’ll get into this in much more depth when we study Angelology, I think that’s going to be in the year 2029. I like to plan ahead. But, and we are going to see some of these categories kind of bleed into each other and kind of blend with each other, categories of systematics.

But let’s start with this broad, sweeping statement on the front end. When we come across an Old Testament reference to “the angel of the Lord,” “the angel of Yahweh,” not a mention of the angel like Gabriel, like we studied this morning, or the angel Michael. If we see the angel of the Lord or the angel of Yahweh, what we are seeing is a reference to God the Son, the preexistent Christ. And how do we arrive at that conclusion? Well, there are multiple prongs to this, ok? One is, “the angel of the Lord,” in the Old Testament, when that configuration of words is used, “the angel of the Lord,’ “ the angel of Yahweh,” is a reference to deity. In fact, three of the names given in the Old Testament for God, Yahweh, El, and Elohim are used interchangeably with the words “the angel of the Lord” in multiple different Old Testament accounts. For instance, there’s this scene in Genesis 16, where Hagar is fleeing from Sarah, and in verse 7, Moses here says that “the angel of Yahweh found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur.” But then, just a few verses later, in verse 13, Moses still referring to that angel, says of Hagar here, that “she called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her.” Well, the one who had spoken to her was “the angel of Yahweh.” And now she’s calling this angel “Yahweh.” And then Hagar herself, in this same verse, Genesis 16:13, while still addressing this angel, says to this angel, “You are a God who sees.” So the concurrence of those words “God,” or “Yahweh,” and “the angel of God,” or the angel of “Yahweh” implies this identity between the two. They are each God.

There’s a similar development in Genesis 22 which records Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac. And there, as Abraham is raising the knife to kill Isaac, the following is recorded, in verse 11, it says, “But the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’”
And then look at what comes next, in verse 12. “Do not stretch out your hand against the boy, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God [elohim], since you have not withheld your son, your only one, from Me [me, being the angel].” And then, we see this recorded in verses 15-17 of chapter 22, “Then the angel of Yahweh called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By Myself I have sworn, declares Yahweh, because you have done this thing and have not spared your son, your only one, indeed I will greatly bless you.’” Note the linkage here, the angel of the Lord is Himself saying, “By Myself I have sword, declares Yahweh.” Which is His way of communicating what? That He is God! God Himself.

Then there’s this account of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel of God at Peniel in Genesis 32.
And we see this encounter, it says, “So he [the angel] said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then He said, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.’” Now with those words “you have striven with God” the angel is identified with God. And Jacob understands that this linkage is being made, which is why we see this in verse 30, Jacob naming the place Peniel. For he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been delivered.”

Then there’s this often-overlooked incident in Genesis 48, where Jacob, now aged prays this prayer of blessing over Ephraim and Manasseh, and He also blesses Joseph.
And we pick up in verses 15 and 16, here it says, “And he blessed Joseph and said, ‘May the God [elohim] before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd throughout my life to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless these boys.’” He’s not talking about a separate being there when he says the angel who has redeemed me from all evil. Rather He is drawing a parallel between the angel of God and God Himself.

Moving on from Genesis, we go to Exodus and the same pattern continues. Here’s the familiar burning bush episode of Exodus, chapter 3, verses 1 and 2, “Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of the bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.” Now in verse 3, we’re told that curiosity got the best of Moses. It says, “So Moses said, ‘I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight. Why is the bush not burned up?’” And now note this in verse 4. “And Yahweh saw that he turned aside to look, so God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’” Did you catch that? In verse 2, it said “the angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a blazing fire,” meaning in the bush. And in verse 4, though, it’s now God Himself calling out to Moses from the midst of that same bush. This juxtaposition of terms is telling us that the angel of the Lord is God Himself.

We see more scriptural evidence for this truth in verses 6 and 7 as we keep reading through this account, this is still the “angel of Yahweh” speaking. And note what He says, “He said also, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. And Yahweh said, ‘I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, because I know their sufferings.’” In short, the angel at the burning bush is also called Yahweh, and Elohim. Meaning, he is not just “an angel.” He is the “angel of God.” He is God.

Now, when we move out of the Pentateuch into the books of Joshua and Judges there are more instances of the angel of the Lord being associated with God. For instance, in Joshua, Joshua chapter 5. This is that scene where he’s contemplating the siege of Jericho. And he’s confronted by a man who has a drawn sword, and this man is called the “commander of the host of Yahweh.” What most would say in our camp is a reference to the angel of the Lord. And here’s how that’s recorded, in verses 13 through 15. “Now it happened when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you for us or for our adversaries?’ (and then sort of a none responsive answer) He said, ‘No! Rather I indeed come now as commander of the host of Yahweh.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and bowed down and said to him, ‘What has my lord to say to his slave?’ The commander of the host of Yahweh said to Joshua, ‘Remove your sandals from your feet, (sounds very Exodus 3 like) for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” And then just two verses later, in Joshua 6:2, this same “man” or angel is referred to as Yahweh, “And Yahweh said to Joshua, ‘See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors.’”

Last example I’ll give. Is that of Gideon, in the book of Judges, in the middle of all of his difficulties and battles with the Midianites, an angel of the Lord visits Gideon. And much of Judges chapter 6 we read this this morning, records this back and forth between Gideon and the “angel of Yahweh.” For time’s sake, I won’t get into all the details. But I do want us to zero in on these words, in verse 22. Note how Yahweh Himself, and the angel of Yahweh, as terms are interlaced with one another here. These are the words of Gideon, in Judges 6:22, “And Gideon saw that he was the angel of Yahweh, so he said, ‘Alas, O Lord Yahweh! For now I have seen the angel of Yahweh face to face.’” So he’s mixing the terminology together with the angel of Yahweh being identified as God Himself. Hence, Gideon’s worshipful and reverent response to Him.

I hope you’re still tracking with me in terms of how all of this relates to the preexistence of Christ. The case I’m attempting to build here, is that the angel of the Lord when referred to that way, as the angel of the Lord or the angel of Yahweh, is the preexistent Christ. That’s plank number one in the argument.

Plank number two, as we build out this case for the “angel of the Lord” being the preexistent Christ, is that the “angel of the Lord” is distinct in Personhood from God the Father. For instance, in Genesis 24 we come across this scene where Abraham tells his servant that he would be successful on his journey to Paddan-Aram, to find a wife for Isaac. And look what’s recorded here in Genesis 24:7, t says, “Yahweh, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my kin, and who spoke to me and who swore to me, saying, ‘To your seed I will give this land,’ He will send His angel before you, and you will take a wife for my son from there.” Note the important details here. God the Father, who is called “the God of heaven” in this passage, it says will “send His angel before You.” The “angel,” then meaning “the angel of the Lord,” is distinct in personhood from God the Father. They’re two separate persons. Here’s another example, from Zechariah 1:12, where the angel of Yahweh is addressed or described as addressing Yahweh. It says “Then the angel of Yahweh answered and said, ‘O Yahweh of hosts, how long will You have no compassion for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which You have been indignant these seventy years?’” So the angel of Yahweh is addressing Yahweh so its clear they’re both God, but they have a distinct personality, a distinct personhood would be a better way of saying it. So that, as Zechariah reports here, the angel is portrayed as answering God.

One more plank in this argument that Old Testament references to the “angel of the Lord” are actually references to the preexistent God the Son. It’s this; references to “the angel of the Lord,” now I have to say that carefully, references to “the angel of the Lord” cease after the first coming of Christ. And that suggests very strongly that “the angel of the Lord” and preexistent Son of God are the same person. Granted, there are several references in the New Testament to an “angel of the Lord.” We studied that this morning when we saw the angel Gabriel appearing to Zacheriah in the holy place. However, what you’ll find when you study the New Testament references to angels, is there’s a lack of the definite article attached to that angel; meaning, rather than seeing references to “the angel of the Lord” in the New Testament as we do in the Old. We see references to “an angel of the Lord.” Like in Matthew 2:13:, “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt’”. Or in Matthew 2:19-20, “But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Get up, take the Child and His mother.’” “An angel of the Lord,” Acts 5:19-20, opened up the prison gates for the apostles. “But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, and taking them out, he said, ‘Go, stand and speak to the people in the temple the whole message of this Life.’” We get to later in Acts. In Acts 12:7 we see an angel freed Peter, “And behold, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter’s side and woke him up, saying, ‘Rise up quickly.’ And his chains fell off his hands.” Last one, “an angel of the Lord” killed Herod. “And on an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel and sitting on the judgment seat, began delivering an address to them. And the assembly kept crying out, ‘The voice of a god and not of a man!’ And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.” All this to say. There is strong Old Testament evidence. Namely, with these references to “the angel of the Lord” back in the Old Testament that Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, was that angel of the Lord, and was then preexistent. Meaning he didn’t come into existence at His birth. Rather, He existed before His own birth. In the days of Abraham, and Moses, and Joshua, and Gideon, and reaching even further back into eternity.

That brings us to our third and final topic for this evening under this heading of this major topic of The Preexistence of Christ. This would be the third blank on your worksheet, other theological grounds for the preexistence of Christ. So far we’ve looked at New Testament evidences and Old Testament evidences. As we wrap up our time together in this first session we’re going to deal with a couple of theological odds and ends related to the preexistence of Christ. First, we’re going to look at how the preexistence of Christ interrelates with the doctrine of the Trinity. And then second we’ll look at how the interrelationship between the preexistence of Christ and the eternality of Christ.

Let’s start with some Trinitarian considerations, which really tie into what I just mentioned last. We have seen that the angel of the Lord, the angel of Yahweh, is God. And we also know from our reading of Scripture, and our deep dive into these matters two summers ago, that God is Triune. He is one God, eternally existing and subsisting in three Persons. So, that being the case, with which one of these three Persons, from the standpoint of a consistent Trinitarian theology, is the angel of the Lord to be identified? Well, by simple process of elimination, the answer has to be the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son. Why? Well, God the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is just that, “Spirit.” God the Father has never been seen by anyone. John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time.” 1 Timothy 6:15 and 16 calls God, here, “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” That would leave God the Son as the only visible person of the Trinity. Prior to the incarnation, all three Persons of the eternal Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, were spirit beings. And only one of those Persons, God the Son, as we’ve just looked at, Is ever being described as being visibly present among humans. And then we also know He was visible, of course, in his incarnation. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,” John 1:14. Or John 1:18, here’s the full version of that verse, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” The Son has explained, exegeted, the Father. So what Trinitarian conclusion can we draw from all of this? We can draw this conclusion; that any revelation of God in human form, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, as a matter of sound, biblically derived Trinitarian theology, is a revelation of the Son of God Jesus Christ.

Last, we’re going to consider the interrelationship between the preexistence of Christ and the eternality of Christ. Both the Old and the New Testaments teach that Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, is eternal. And note there’s a nuance difference between those two terms. Preexistence and eternality. Preexistence refers to the fact that Christ existed before His birth, and He existed before all of the events of creation. That’s what we’ve been looking at up to this point, that Christ pre-dated and preexisted all of these monumental events. But Christ is not merely preexistent. He is preexistent, but He’s not merely preexistent. He is eternal. He not only existed before His own birth, He not only existed before His own creation of the universe and the worlds, He has always existed, eternally.

I told you I’d be supporting my points each Sunday night this summer with Scripture. So which Scriptures support the eternality of Christ? Well, we can start with Hebrews 1. We’ve already looked at this, part of this one, but verses 1 through 3 of chapter 1 says, “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.” Our English words “exact representation” there are represented by a single word, it looks like “charakter” in Greek. And what that word “character”, we can call it, indicates is that Christ is the exact representation of God’s nature and God’s essence. And since God the Father is eternal, God the Son, as the Father’s “exact representation,” is Himself eternal.

And that one just gets us started. When we go to the Old Testament prophets, who had so much to say in terms of predictive prophecy about their coming Messiah, they likewise claimed that their Messiah would be eternal. We think of Micah who, in Micah 5:2; in addition to the familiar part of Micah 5:2 for each of us, is that the Messiah would come from this town of Bethlehem. That prediction. And he also says in Micah 5:2 that,“His goings forth (speaking of the coming Messiah) are from everlasting.” And though, in certain contexts, that word “everlasting,” Olam in Hebrew, can mean “from the days of old, or from the earliest times, it’s also a legitimate translation to say that is saying “from eternity.”

Or, in Isaiah 9 verse 6, this will be on many Christmas cards this December. That this information is given prophetically concerning the coming Messiah, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” Now, you see it there, “Eternal Father.” Some of us robust Trinitarians might get a little squeamish and nervous about those Words because we might be worried that there might be some tension, or even contradiction, here in Scripture. Because we know Jesus is the Son, and there is only one Father, and Jesus can’t be both the Father and the Son. But all this is referring to is that the Messiah, though a Son, and eternally the Son, would function as a Father to His own people, the people of Israel. Just like I can simultaneously be the “son” of my own father, at the same time be “father” to my sons. Christ can be simultaneously God the Son and “father” to his own people, the people of Israel. Of course, in His case, perfectly. The perfect Father, since He’s God, and the eternal Father, since He is God. He is eternal Father, Father to the people of Israel. I appreciate, by the way, how E.J. Young summarizes that far more artfully than I can. He says, “The word ‘Father’ designates a quality of the Messiah with respect to His people. He acts toward them like a father. The quality of fatherhood is defined by the word eternity. The Messiah is an eternal Father. If this is correct, the meaning is that He is One who eternally is a Father to His people. Now and forever He guards His people and supplies their needs.”

I’ll give you two more New Testament references to the eternality of Christ, and then we’ll call it a night. We’ll start again with John 8:58. We saw this earlier, so I won’t belabor it, but recall that there the following is recorded. “Jesus said to them, (the Pharisees) ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’” Now note those last two words again, “I am.” Had our Lord wanted to communicate merely the fact of His preexistence here, that He predated Abraham, He could have said something like, “before Abraham was, I was.” That’d be the simplest way to say, “I go further back in time than Abraham.” But He says “before Abraham was, I am.” That again indicates eternality. Because Jesus here, as we’ve already seen, is equating Himself with the eternal, self-existent God.

Here’s another one, Revelation 1:17. This is Jesus, of course, in His glorious post ascension state appearing to the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos. Here’s how John records it. He says, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not fear; I am the first and the last.’” And using that terminology, “I am the first and the last,” Christ was using an expression that was used of God the Father in Isaiah 48:12. “Hear Me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called; I am He, I am the first, I am also the last.” Both references, whether in Isaiah or in Revelation 1, are pointing to a transcendence over time, preexistence, eternality, and they both support the truth that Christ is eternal.

So to summarize, when we refer to the preexistence of Christ—I should say that again—when we refer to the eternality of Christ, we are saying He is preexistent. But it goes back even further than that, He existed eternally as the second person of the Godhead. He has always existed, being no less eternal than God the Father. I’ll give the final word to Chafer who says, “No approach to a biblical Christology is possible that does not ground itself on and proceed from the all-determining truth that the incarnate second person, though he was a ‘man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’ is the eternal God.”

That’s it for this evening. We will cover the Deity of Christ next Sunday night. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank you for this time together tonight to change our approach to take the Scriptures in a different, more systematic setting. And to be taken with the reality of the preexistence and eternality of your Son. God, I pray that we would come away from this lesson more than intrigued, but with a higher and more reverent view of who you are, a higher and more reverent view of all three persons of the triune God. That seeing Christ, of course as our Savior, of course as the one day returning and conquering King, but also as the preexistent One. I pray it fuels and enflames right and reverent worship of You. God, I praise you for your wisdom, and your plan of salvation and redemption, creation before that, and fulfillment in the end. God, I pray that You will take these truths that we have learned this evening, and also this morning, that they would sink into our hearts and penetrate our hearts and transform us into the image of your Son. It’s in His name we pray. Amen.