Only Begotten Son | What's in a Name?

So it was October 11th, 2012, when our oldest, Joey, was born.

Made it very easy for us, 10, 11, 12.

We'll never forget his birthday, so that's good.

But that is when I became a father to a son.

And I just remember holding him, there's a picture somewhere, I'm sure, of me holding him.

And I think I've said this before, again, you think you're ready maybe when you start having kids

to be a father or a parent or a mother, and you're really not.

You don't really know, you can read all the books, you can watch movies or whatever examples

of your family about what it means to be a parent.

But I remember holding him, just knowing that something was different.

Life has now forever changed.

Not because it wasn't just Carrie and I now, but that there was a responsibility bestowed

on me to be a father to a son.

And though I don't really know what it's like to be a father to a daughter,

I know a lot of, because Annie's a dog and doesn't really count.

But understand that I know a lot of you have daughters.

And I sit and I talk with a lot of you, especially as I watch your daughters grow

up into teenagers or even older and just the sure terror that goes on as having a daughter

that gets older and older.

But it's a different kind of relationship from what I'm assuming, having a son and a daughter.

But son in biblical terms was very distinct.

Now, again, there's a lot of cultural things that we're not really going to get into today

as we look at 2025.

Culture is different in that sense.

But being the son, especially the oldest son of a family, was a kind of a statement

that when you were the oldest son, whether you cared or not, whether you knew it or not,

even though in biblical times you would have definitely known,

that you had a certain job as the eldest son or the only son in a family.

Part of that was the family business.

Part of that was that even right when you're born, that there was a contractual obligation

that you would care for your parents when you were older.

Joey, write this down.

That you will care for your parents when you're older.

That you will provide for them when they can no longer provide for you.

That you didn't really have retirement back.

There wasn't 401Ks back in biblical times.

But that there was even to the point of write this down.

That when the parents got to older age, that a place would be built on for them to live

if they could no longer live in their house.

There were not only cultural, but there was even political or law-based things

that the son stepped into.

Whether the son knew it or not, and again, the son doesn't have control over that.

Immediately when the son is born, that there are obligations placed on the son

that has to do with the family line.

Part of it is continuing the line, having children and all of those things.

And when I was reading that this week about this only begotten son title and distinctive

of Jesus, it blew up in a massive way for me.

And hopefully it will for you this morning.

That only begotten son, son of God, son of man, is a title and a distinctive that Jesus has.

That means absolutely everything to us.

That we should be thankful that Jesus is the son of God.

Now, next week when we prepare in service for communion, we will say a creed.

Who remembers what creed we recite?

The apostles creed, okay?

And there were two other kind of Protestant creeds that the church fathers adopted.

Does people remember what those are?

You have the apostles, you have the...

Nice. Oh, wow.

And then the third one...

Ah, blah, blah, blah.

No, what was that?

Athanasian creed.

I always joke.

We'll probably never do that one on a Sunday because we won't finish it until Tuesday morning.

Okay, because it's just extremely long of a creed.

But the Nician creed hits this term more than the apostles or the Athanasian creed is in the

Nician creed in 35 AD, the church fathers emphasize this term to affirm Jesus' unique divine nature.

The creed states, we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God,

begotten of the Father before all worlds, light of light, very God or true God, a very God or true God.

This underscores the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son affirming the Son, Jesus' full divinity.

Again, we're formed theology.

We believe Jesus fully God, fully man.

There was a heresy that was kind of put in Spain and in more Western Europe of the Aryan heresy that Jesus was created, human to die.

And some of you are like, well, isn't that true?

They were camped in that.

There's a lot more to that.

We believe that he is fully God and fully man in order for him to be the perfect sacrifice.

Because if he was just a man and not God, his sacrifice on the cross wouldn't mean anything for us.

That the sacrifice on the cross would be more a symbolic thing, not an actual conquering of sin and death.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ.

That this divine sonship that Jesus is now going to talk about with Nicodemus, continuing and ending the conversation with Nicodemus that Ken brought with you last week.

We see that Nicodemus is struggling.

He's struggling with this understanding of Jesus as the Son.

Because in, now this is for lunch in a conversation with Pastor Jim, that there would be a very specific place that a Pharisee like Nicodemus would go to in the Old Testament when the term Son of God or Son of Man would be used.

We talked about it for three weeks in the fall when we were doing Revelation.

Does anyone remember where that would be?

What would he be going back to?

He can't go to Revelation.

That wasn't written yet.

And he would be the, isn't that cool?

He would actually be the one to write it.

I just thought about that now.

And came down like a Son of Man.

It would be the prophecy of Daniel in the back.

Daniel, okay?

The prophecy of Daniel, like a Son of Man coming down.

We see this in Luke being used by Jesus.

And you know, the Pharisees get really mad.

But what Nicodemus is trying to grasp, what he's having friction major in, in his thoughts are, wait a minute, Son of Man Messiah, Messiah language.

Is this the Messiah?

I was just told I had to be born again.

And Ken went through all of that last week.

Like he is having just crazy thoughts trying to put all this together.

But in John 3, this latter part of the conversation, Jesus explains his authority comes from the unique relationship that he has with the Father.

Now understand, they knew God as Yahweh.

They knew God as Creator.

They knew God as sustainer.

They knew God as all of the Old Testament qualities.

Because we are in the New Testament now.

This understanding of Father and Son was only used in apocalyptic language.

Only used in Messiah language.

So there's another, I don't even think we're going to do Messiah, so to speak, for this sermon series.

Because we hit it pretty much all in the fall.

But Son of God and Messiah are now the same person.

That there's this unique relationship.

So let's jump in.

Starting with verse 9 of John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

John chapter 3, starting with verse 9 says,

John 3 · chapter mention

Nicodemus said to him,

How can these things be?

Jesus answered him,

You are the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things.

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen.

But you do not receive our testimony.

If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except who descended from heaven, the Son of man.

So Nicodemus is getting a reeducation, if you will, that is completely blowing up what he knew.

Now Nicodemus was a Pharisee.

Nicodemus made it all the way through the Talmud, the Talmud, all of the education.

Didn't ever have to go into Dad's business because he proved himself in school,

memorizing the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, understanding the prophets,

reading them in the temple.

Those are all parts of the training of a Pharisee to become a Pharisee,

which was the top of the top of the religious system.

And Jesus is punking them out, going,

You don't understand any of this because this is heavenly things.

That Pharisees were historians.

I don't know if you guys think much about Pharisees, I don't,

but it got me thinking about the life of a Pharisee that a Pharisee basically was regurgitive.

Now if you were a Levite, a little different story because that was the line,

that was the line, the Levitical line, the line of the priests,

priests were different than Pharisees.

That Pharisees were historians, Pharisees were rule followers, rule keepers,

and if we're being honest, they made them all up.

They were the ones that tainted the religious system because all they did

was go back to the Old Testament and understand the earthly things that happened.

There wasn't a lot of deep theological thought because Jesus wasn't in the equation yet.

The Messiah, the understanding of Messiah, there were Messiah's little M before Jesus,

Jesus is the only capital M Messiah that actually changed things.

So Nicodemus in this conversation is having his mind blown every step of the way.

We see Nicodemus at the end.

I mean, we see him in the crucifixion in the burial.

We understand that Nicodemus was a part of Jesus' ministry,

that we believe Nicodemus was changed.

But this understanding of the only begotten son of the Father is unique.

The term actually means one of a kind.

It emphasizes Jesus' eternal relationship with the Father.

It's not a created status.

Messiah was an understood term, the sheeah in Aramaic,

is the understanding of the one that was going to come to,

and then depending on what group you were, you kind of insert your own ending there.

What were some of the understandings of the people in that time of what the Messiah was going to do?

Does anyone remember?

They thought the Messiah was going to overthrow Rome,

was going to save them, purify the temple,

that they were going to go back to the life of David when being the Israelites was,

they were it.

They were the top of the top, only to get conquered multiple times.

But understand that they put these kind of earthly understandings of Messiah.

There was no heavenly understanding.

There wasn't a relationship with God.

We understand in 2025 our relationship with God is intimate.

They knew a relationship with God as legal, that it was the commandments.

It was the law.

That's why they held on to the law, and they put the law as a yoke or a burden on the people,

because that's how you grew your relationship with God,

or the dictated relationship with God is by following all the laws.

Over 600.

You don't eat this, you don't wear this, you don't do this, you don't say this.

That's how they upheld.

Kind of, I mean, it's hard to even say relationship,

because take, if you're married, take your spouse.

What if your relationship was only dictated by written down rules?

Just let that hang there for a minute.

That your wife put on you that every other Friday,

you will take me out, we will do these things, and all that stuff.

What if there was a relationship, would there be a lot of intimacy?

I know it's blowing your mind, you don't understand.

Or some of you are like, wow, that's a lot like my marriage,

you probably need to talk about this.

I have office hours starting in February,

but there's no intimacy there.

It really should open our eyes a little bit to what it was like to be a Yahweh follower in the first century.

It was do or do not.

It would, oh, that sounded a lot like Yoda, I apologize.

That is not where I wanted to go.

But understand, it was like that.

Fall in line here, don't step here.

That that was the relationship.

Jesus came to bring intimacy in your relationship with God.

Intimacy, because of your relationship with Christ,

Christ is the center of that,

He is the crux of the vertical and the horizontal, hence the cross,

that Jesus being the only begotten Son is giving us a first-hand glimpse

of a Father and Son's intimate relationship,

that God has an intimate relationship with God, with Jesus, and Jesus with God.

Unlike believers who are adopted as children of God,

Jesus is uniquely the eternal Son who shares the divine essence of who God is.

We're going to get to that in a couple weeks in John 10.

So the meaning of only begotten Son means something unique, something special.

Now go back to what I started with,

that immediately when a son was born, he was about what his father was about.

Business, whatever.

Lineage, the same goes with Jesus.

The minute Jesus was born, he was a part of what his father was about

because they were one.

And it was the Son's authority we see in verse 13 to reveal

that Jesus declares he has ascended to heaven and descended to reveal divine truth.

That Jesus' origin story starts where?

Where does Jesus' origin story start?

Creation, go a little higher than that.

Heaven.

Heaven.

He always was the first born among all the nations.

Colossians tells us that Jesus' story is part of that trinity that God had.

Yes, he's born in Bethlehem as a human person,

but again, he is truly divine.

He is one with the Father.

He has the authority to speak of the kingdom of God

because the kingdom of God comes through him.

The Heidelberg Catechism question answer 33 explains

that why he has called God's only begotten Son,

when we are also God's children,

is because Christ alone is eternal, natural Son of God.

I understand there's friction and there's confusion here,

but the first and foremost thing we have to understand

is that he has the authority to reveal who God is.

He understands God on that intimate level because they are one.

And whatever God is about, Jesus is about,

just like a son is to the Father.

So what did sonship look like in the ancient world?

Well, in Jewish culture, a son was seen as the heir

and equal of his Father in authority and representation.

You go to Jesus' the prodigal son,

you see that relationship with the two sons,

older son, younger son, different relationships.

Can enable different relationships.

We see how sons and fathers play in the scriptures

as far as what those relationships look like.

And Jesus claiming divine sonship asserts

not only his unique authority, but his identity as God.

Have you ever thought about that?

We don't really think about that.

Joey, though he has my DNA and so does Teddy and Jack,

they are their own individual persons.

Now, as we just watched one of my favorite Disney movies,

No Judgment, is Hercules, right?

It's in my top three.

Whatever your top three is, that's you, probably wrong.

But understand that in the movie Hercules,

one of the things that Phil Octides,

that is Danny DeVito's character,

one of the things you always want to do is create a hero

that the gods would put in the cosmos,

and we see this at the end,

and I've seen it a hundred times, I still cry, don't judge.

You know, and then you have one guy go,

that's Phil's boy, right?

That is exactly what I hope people say about my sons.

And we know with kids, it can be positive and negative.

I said this before, because some people go,

oh, that's Jim's son, and they could say that in a positive,

or they can go, oh, that's Jim's son.

See, very different.

Hopefully we're more on the former, not the latter.

But understand that Jesus has that responsibility

as the reflection of God himself.

Spoiler alert, if you are in Christ,

that same expectation is put on you,

that you are sons and daughters of the king.

Why? Because it is a gift to us.

We see this in verse 14 through 17.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son,

that whoever believes in him should not perish,

but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world,

but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Most famous verse in the world of Scripture.

For God so loved the world.

We see it used inappropriately throughout.

We see people's names in 316 and all of that.

It's all junk for what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus.

Out of love for the world, God sent his son.

Now, let's just change the story a little bit,

just for the sake of an example.

What if this was a Pharisee talking to a Pharisee?

What if it wasn't Jesus saying this to Nicodemus?

That God's going to send his son.

It's going to be a, you know, he's going to.

But Jesus is saying, no, it's here and now.

Think about that.

That God, that Jesus himself is saying that about himself.

The revelation here for Nicodemus is an unbelievable revelation.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, Nicodemus.

That's me, Jesus is saying.

I am the son of God and see how it works out in Jesus' life.

He says it to Nicodemus in the dark of night,

and Nicodemus is forever changed.

You go to Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

He says it after the, after the, the friends, the paralytics lower down.

And now guys want to kill him.

Notice that the intimacy of relationship is received in very different ways.

My hope is today we see it as a gift.

That Jesus being God's son is a gift.

That now there is a, there is an example we can follow.

Because we can't follow God's example one to one.

We are given Jesus.

There is an earthly example of what it means to live for God the Father as sons and daughters of the king.

Live like Jesus.

What would Jesus do?

Remember that fad?

What would Jesus do?

How did Jesus live?

That's how we as believers should live.

So Jesus lifts or shifts this focus now from intellectual understanding.

Where it was just funny to kind of watch Nicodemus go blah, blah, blah, blah.

He uses now the imagery of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness from Numbers 21.

To explain, not only do you need to be born again, but that the Son of God has a mission for himself and for you.

Jesus is foretelling of his death on the cross.

That the lifting up of the serpent was both a physical act and a spiritual symbol requiring faith to receive that healing.

Jesus uses the imagery as the ultimate source of salvation.

The term lifted up, hipposo, carries a dual meaning exalting of the physical, but emphasizing the humiliation of the cross and the glory of the redemptive act of dying for the sins of the world.

So he's lifted up for salvation, but God's love is also revealed.

That God has revealed his love for you and me, not because you have all the zeros in your bank account, not because of your stature or your wealth or whatever, your influence.

God loves you by sending Jesus to you and for you and by you to be like his Son.

He is my God and Father because of Christ the Son.

Understand that relationship that if we are going to be heirs of the King as well, those of us in Jesus, then as sons and daughters we need to be about what the Father is about.

The Son was sent to save.

The Father sent the Son not to condemn the world, but to save it.

This emphasizes grace over judgment.

Jesus was rejected for this.

In the Pharisees' mind Jesus wasn't following the rules because Jesus offers grace and forgiveness and love.

Guess what?

We should be doing the same thing because God's love is for the world.

The cosmos, the world in John 3.16 in the Greek would be surprising to Jewish readers.

And again, even as we're foreign believers in the understanding of elect, this is where it could get a little dicey.

Some of us may be uncomfortable.

That world is the goal.

The operation, if you will, God was sending his Son for, is that all might be saved through Jesus.

Then they are elect.

Understand how that works out.

Jesus, though the Jews and the Israelites, they would have said, this is only for Israel.

This is our guy.

And Jesus does talk about that, but then we see throughout his life.

He says that I will grab others by another way, that Jesus comes to save the world, that God's redemptive acts include all nations and people.

This ties to God's promise to Abraham that through his offspring, all nations of the earth will be blessed.

And here's the rub.

It is not our job to determine who's the Israelite or, in 20, 25 turns, who is the elect or not.

Our job is to point to the one who elects, the one who loves, the one who died, the one who saves.

Yet for some of us, we like to take on that role.

We like to take that on.

We like to call out who the nonbeliever is.

We really don't engage them much or we like to kind of make this an a la carte thing about salvation.

Friend, that is a fool's errand.

Please stop doing that if that's what you're doing, because that is not the love of Jesus.

You and I don't save people.

Therefore, you and I don't condemn anyone either.

Though we may try, though we may think about it, though we may even type about it or post about it or send about it, we don't do the condemnation.

If you can't save anybody, you can't condemn anybody either.

Again, we can try, but that's not our job.

Our job is to point to the cross.

Christian, little Christ, if we're sons and daughters of the king, we need to be about what God is about.

And that is what the Son teaches us.

Ephesians 2, we see historically this kind of universal offer of salvation was a major theme in the early church.

The early church wasn't filled with just Israelites.

There were Gentiles all over the place.

As seen in the book of Acts and Paul's writings, challenging cultural and ethnic boundaries is part of the radical love of the Son.

Welcoming the stranger, loving on those that might be different than us.

And so that is ultimately where we're going to end, is the call of the Son, verses 18 to 21.

The call of the Son is this, whoever believes in him is not condemned,

but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he is not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

And this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world.

And people love the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light,

lest the work should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light.

So that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

So what does this mean for the church?

This means if you are doing things in the dark, and I'm calling everybody out first and foremost myself,

if there are things you are doing in the dark where you honestly believe God doesn't see you,

you, my friend, are a fool.

I am a fool, if I believe that.

That everything in the dark will be brought to the light.

That's not some poetic lyric of a song that Jesus says, that is a judgment of the world.

We see it from John 1, we see it throughout Jesus' life.

Jesus comes to what?

Expose sin.

Hear me.

Jesus comes to expose sin.

I didn't say your name, I didn't say my name.

Though we are called to correct sin, to call out sin.

But how dare we call out sin and then not walk alongside.

That's like someone who sees someone in need and goes to another person,

hey, that person needs help.

You see, you go by and you see that maybe something is starting on fire,

and you go, huh, that's not right.

I should probably do something about that.

And then you just walk on by.

It's the story of the good Samaritan.

Who are the ones that pass by the guy half dead, the religious church people.

Yet the one who culturally should hate that guy and go,

I'm kind of glad he's half dead, hopefully it's full dead.

He's the one that shows compassion.

Yet we're really good, really good, and by that I mean bad.

And going, you do things differently than me.

So you're probably condemned.

I know the right way.

Well friend, if you're going to say that,

yet you're going to double down on living in the dark,

you're not doing it the right way.

And actually you're a hypocrite, and I'm a hypocrite,

if that's how I want to live my life.

So the call of the Son is first and foremost to have faith in the Son.

Belief in Jesus brings salvation,

while rejection results in death and condemnation.

This reinforces the exclusivity of Christ.

That when you have a relationship with Jesus, it should change things.

If people see your life and go, that person's the same,

they weren't a Christian there, but they now are a Christian here.

Everything, everything they say, anything they post,

nothing's changed.

Then maybe that relationship is not there,

or maybe it's not bearing fruit.

That when I say the exclusivity of Christ,

it's not because it's some club,

but it's the way of the Son, who is about the things of the Father.

So having faith in the Son, but also living in the light.

Again, I say these things, you don't have to believe them.

I'm doing my best to come out of Scripture,

to give it to all of us so we could walk differently,

that Jesus contrasts those who love darkness with those who come to the light.

Following the only begotten Son means living in truth and righteousness.

So be very quick, or don't be very quick,

to pick up that stone and throw without looking inward first.

Next week we're going to go to this idea of living water,

but before we do that, what does it mean for us today?

For our head, for understanding is know the Son.

Reflect on Jesus' unique identity as the only begotten Son.

Deep in your understanding of His divine nature and mission,

because if you claim Christ, His nature is your nature, and guess what?

His mission is your mission, should be the mission of the church.

John 1, Colossians, go back really quick. John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1.

Make it easy, John Colossians, Hebrews, start, and you'll get it.

So that was for the head.

For the heart, trust the Son.

Rest in assurance of God's love demonstrated through the gifts of His Son.

Let this truth strengthen your worship and your devotion.

Trust the sufficiency of Christ's work on the cross.

And finally, practical for our hands.

Proclaim the Son.

Share the good news of the only begotten Son.

Share the intimate relationship you have with Jesus that Jesus has with God.

That conversation goes a lot better than sitting down with someone

and reading them the book of Deuteronomy.

But share the good news with those who do not yet believe.

Sharing is one thing, talking is one thing, walking is another.

Demonstrate Christ's love through acts of kindness and service.

Think of someone you can reach out to with the love of Jesus this week.

And here's my added challenge for you today.

Maybe, just maybe, it's someone who makes you really, really mad.

Maybe it's someone who makes you really, really uncomfortable.

Maybe, just maybe, it's someone who doesn't look at the world the same way you do.

What would that look like to share with them the love of Jesus, the only Son of God?

Let's pray.