Jesus Distinct from the One God by Frederick A. Farley, D.D., Boston pastor (1800-1892)
What I said before of the entire Scripture holds specially true of the New Testament, that its general tenor and drift are entirely adverse to the dogma of the Supreme Deity of Jesus Christ; and express his inferiority and subordination to the Father as the Only True God.
Do you ask what I mean by the general tenor and drift of Scripture? Precisely what is meant when the phrase is applied to any other book — namely, the first, the prevailing, the obvious impression, made by a careful perusal of the whole. For instance, when one reads the Aeneid or the Iliad, no doubt it is felt that Virgil and Homer were polytheists. So in the New Testament, the first and the most obvious impression made is that our Lord is the Son of God and not God Himself; that God is one and supreme; that the doctrine of its pages is consistent and uniform throughout on this point, with that of the Old Testament.
One of the scribes asked Jesus: “Which is the first commandment of all?” and he replies in the very words of Moses: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is One Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:28-30). Accordingly, his constant allusions, his uniform habits of speech, his prayers, his whole deportment, are in perfect and unbroken sympathy with this idea and doctrine, nay with this grand paramount truth. The same may be said of the Apostles.
But, more particularly; throughout the New Testament, Christ is uniformly kept distinct or distinguished from God. If distinct, then, of course inferior — then not God Supreme. How explicit his own language! “This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). “We have peace with God,” says Paul, “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Two beings here are certainly brought into view.
Quite as explicit as his Master’s is the same Apostle’s language to Timothy: “One God, and One Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). The Apostolic benedictions at the beginning of the epistles are in corresponding form. “Grace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:7). James begins thus: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). Peter says: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:3). John in his second epistle: “Grace to you, mercy and peace, from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father” (2 John 3).
These are examples of what is the uniform style of the Apostolic Epistles, in which in seventeen passages this distinction is most carefully observed, and in which one Being alone is always called “God”; the other, without exception, “Lord.”
God is spoken repeatedly as being “with Christ” (John 3:2; Acts 10:38). Eleven passages in St. John’s gospel alone assert that Jesus “came from God” or “went to God” (e.g., 3:2; 8:42; 13:3). Twice in his epistles, St. Paul speaks of Christ as “the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). In one he is called “the express image of God” (Heb. 1:3). In one he is said to be “in the form of God” (Phil. 2:6). Whatever these passages and expressions mean, they assuredly show distinction of being.
The above was taken from
Focus On The Kingdom Vol. 4. No. 2
