The Life of All Lives - Our Saviour Jesus - 2
The Eternal Christ
In this study we consider the eternal pre-existence of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The twelve disciples discovered that following Jesus was a challenging business. It was not a matter of watching a few miracles and basking in the reflected glory of popular acclaim. There were times when it was difficult, even dangerous.
Sometimes this was because of what He said about Himself. At other times it was what he said about other people – and particularly the respected leaders of the Jewish religious fraternity. During one frank exchange, recorded in John chapter 8, Jesus told them: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.” The Jews answered: “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”
Following Christ was not for the faint hearted then, any more than it is now. On the occasion we are thinking of, matters became even worse. Jesus told the Jews: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it, and was glad.”
The Jews immediately spotted the claim that was implicit in this statement and retorted: “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham!” At that, Jesus said something that seems to have been the final straw for these religious people. He replied: “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was, I am.”
These words may seem obscure to us today, but they were clear enough to those who were listening. They were sufficiently confident that they understood them – and were appalled at what they meant – that they immediately picked up stones, and would have stoned Jesus there and then had He not slipped away.
So what was He saying that these Jews found so offensive? Referring to Abraham, who had lived hundreds of years earlier, He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” In using the present tense in this remarkable way, Jesus was claiming to have existed before He was born into the world, and before Abraham was born. Indeed, He was going even further than that if we understand His language correctly. He was saying that he had always existed; that there never was a time when He was not.
Only one Person can speak in those terms. No ordinary human ever could, without being guilty of the most blatant blasphemy. Only God is entitled to make such a claim, and Jesus was claiming to be God. That is why they picked up the stones.
This statement cannot be dismissed as a one-off. It is clear that Jesus was always very conscious of His eternal pre-existence. Towards the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus was speaking to a learned member of the Jewish ruling council. His name was Nicodemus. Jesus said, “No-one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man.” He was clearly referring to Himself, and claiming that he had come from heaven.
Then again, later in His ministry, he had been saying things that were simply too much for some people to take, and they began to grumble. Some of them turned back from following Him. Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where He was before!” We may ask, before when? Before he descended, naturally!
And this consciousness continued right to the end. In John chapter 17, we find recorded the prayer that Jesus uttered shortly before the crucifixion. In it he spoke these words: “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” These words are unmistakable in their implication. Jesus was asking his Father that He might return to what He enjoyed before the incarnation - an before the very creation itself.
This is the great truth that is plainly taught in Scripture and majestically asserted in the prologue to the Gospel according to John that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
It is probable that John is consciously using the language that echoes that of Genesis 1:In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” He was saying that when everything in the created universe came into being, Christ – the Word – did not come into being. He already was in being. There was never a time when He was not in being. He is the Uncreated Creator.
Neither is this the testimony of John alone.
In Hebrews chapter 2:9 we read: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because He suffered death.” He was ‘made a little lower than the angels’ – that is, this was not His original state, but the one that He assumed at His birth.
Again, listen to what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 8: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich.” He became poor – and the word used indicates that this was something that happened not gradually, but suddenly. It refers to His incarnation. He had been rich – He had inhabited the glory of heaven for all eternity – but now that had changed.
What does this all mean, and why does it matter? It means that the child who was born in Bethlehem was fully human but differed from all others in this vital respect: he was also fully God. And why does that matter? It matters because whether anything was achieved on Calvary depends on who was on the centre cross. If it was just another human being like you or I – even a remarkable human being – then his death could never pay the penalty our sins deserve and accomplish our salvation.
His eternal pre-existence also enables us to begin to grasp what lay behind his cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The perfect unbroken fellowship of the Father and the Son enjoyed from all eternity had suddenly been ruptured, and for Christ it was excruciating agony.
The One who was rich became poor. He took upon Himself ‘frail flesh’. He took upon Himself the poverty of the manger, the desolation of the cross, and the coldness of a borrowed tomb so that we, through that poverty, might be made rich. There was only one Person who could accomplish this, and there was only one way it could be done. “There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin: He only could unlock the door of heaven, and let us in.”