WAS JESUS CREATED BY GOD?

WAS JESUS CREATED BY GOD?

WAYNE JACKSON

“Is there a possibility that before the Universe was created that God, the ‘Ancient of days,’ was all alone, and that out of his own being he brought into existence the Word, who eventually became Jesus Christ?”

No, that is not a concept that can be harmonized with Bible truth. Consider the following:

No other God before or after
Jehovah God explicitly declares that no other God existed — either before or after him. Note the testimony of Isaiah:

“[B]efore me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am Jehovah; and besides me there is no God” (Isa. 43:10-11).
Christ is eternal
Eternality is a prime characteristic of one who possesses the nature of deity. God is “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psa. 90:2). He is the “high and lofty One who inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). Now, inasmuch as it is clear that the divine Word (Christ — Jn. 1:1, 14) possesses the nature of deity, one must conclude that he is intrinsically eternal.

Declared eternal in prophecy
The Old Testament explicitly declared the eternal nature of the preincarnate Christ. Isaiah refers to the “Prince of Peace” as “everlasting” (Isa. 9:6).

The prophet Micah says that, in reality, the “goings forth” of the Bethlehem baby have been from “of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2).

New Testament testimony
The New Testament is equally clear in this matter. Three times in John 1:1 the apostle employs the imperfect tense verb en (rendered “was”) to denote the “timeless existence” of the sacred person known as the Word. The eternal existence of the preincarnate antedates “the beginning,” to which John alludes, in this passage.

Jesus claimed eternality
Jesus himself affirmed his eternal existence, when he said to the Jews: “Before Abraham was born, I am” (Jn. 8:58). The present tense form, ego eimi (“I am”) stands in contrast to the aorist form “was born” (genesthai — to begin to be, to come into existence). The two expressions contrast the eternal and the temporal.

The Jews certainly understood what Christ said, i.e., that he claimed eternality, therefore, the status of being God. That is why they sought to stone him. The expression “I am” points one back to Exodus 3:14, where Jehovah identifies himself as the “I AM,” i.e., the self-existent One.

The first and the last, the “always living one”
In the book of Revelation, Jesus claims that he is “the first and the last, and the Living [present participle — always living] one” (Rev. 1:17-18). He is also the “Alpha and the Omega” — first and last letters in the Greek alphabet (22:13; cf. 1:8; 21:6). These phrases assert the eternal nature of the One so described, and are applied in these texts to either God, the Father, or to Christ.

It is not biblical, therefore, to assert that the second Person of the Godhead had a “beginning” in any way. Unfortunately, those of the Watchtower persuasion teach the heresy that Jesus was created by God originally.

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

Isaiah 43:10-11; Psalm 90:2; Isaiah 57:15; John 1:1, 14; Isaiah 9:6; Micah 5:2; John 1:1; John 8:58; Exodus 3:14; Revelation 1:17-18
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