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Japanese Yes. John’s Gospel opens, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Colossians says Christ “is before all things” (Colossians 1:17), and Hebrews calls him “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Jehovah’s Witnesses and some other groups disagree.
Where does the Bible say Jesus is eternal?
The fullest statement is the opening of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). The first three words repeat the opening of Genesis, and a few verses later John says who the Word is: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
The letter to the Colossians calls the Son “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” and continues: “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15–17). Hebrews says God “created the world” through the Son (Hebrews 1:2) and applies to him words that Psalm 102 speaks of God: “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning… they will perish, but you remain… But you are the same, and your years will have no end” (Hebrews 1:10–12). Near its end the letter says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
In Revelation, God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Revelation 1:8), and in the last chapter Jesus uses the same title of himself: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13, with 22:16). “The first and the last” is how God describes himself in Isaiah: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6).
Christians have also read the Old Testament’s promise of a ruler from Bethlehem as pointing to Christ’s existence before his birth. Micah says his “coming forth is from of old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2, ESV); the King James Version has “from everlasting.” Isaiah names the child to be born “Mighty God, Everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6).
What did Jesus say about his eternal existence?
In a dispute in the temple Jesus told his opponents that Abraham “rejoiced that he would see my day.” They answered, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” He replied, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am,” and “they picked up stones to throw at him” (John 8:56–59). The words “I am” recall the name God gave Moses at the burning bush: “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14).
On the night before he died, Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed,” and spoke of the glory the Father had given him “because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:5, 24). Earlier he had asked his disciples, “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” (John 6:62).
How can Jesus be eternal if he was born?
Christian teaching answers that the eternal Son took a human nature at a point in time. Paul writes that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Galatians 4:4), and that Christ, “though he was in the form of God… emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7). The church calls this the Incarnation.
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 set out the teaching that the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches and most Protestants still hold. It says Christ was “begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born… of the Virgin Mary… according to his manhood,” and that he is one person “in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably.” In this teaching Jesus began to exist as a man in Mary’s womb, while the Son who became that man has no beginning.
“Begotten” might seem to imply a beginning, since a son is usually younger than his father, and Arius drew that conclusion (see below). Christian theologians use the word for the Son’s relation to the Father, not for a start in time. Origen of Alexandria, in the third century, wrote that the Son’s “generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the sun.” The Nicene Creed of 381 calls the Son “born of the Father before all ages,” in the English used at Catholic Mass.
What did the early church teach?
Ignatius of Antioch, writing to Polycarp early in the second century, told him to “look for Him who is above all time, eternal and invisible, yet who became visible for our sakes.” Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, wrote that “God begot before all creatures a Beginning,” whom the Holy Spirit calls in Scripture the Glory of the Lord, the Son, Wisdom, an Angel, God, Lord and Word (chapter 61). Irenaeus of Lyons, late in the second century, wrote of “the Son, eternally co-existing with the Father, from of old, yea, from the beginning” (Against Heresies 2.30.9).
The Arian controversy
The question came to a head in the fourth century. Around 318 Arius, a priest in Alexandria, disputed with his bishop, Alexander. The church historian Socrates records his argument: “If the Father begot the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not.” Arius and his supporters read Proverbs 8:22, where Wisdom speaks, as a statement about the Son; in the Greek Old Testament it reads, “The Lord created me.” Athanasius of Alexandria answered that the passage “signifies, not the Essence, but the manhood of the Word” (Discourses Against the Arians 2.51).
The Council of Nicaea in 325 declared the Son “begotten, not made,” and “of one substance” with the Father, and added a condemnation of those who say “There was a time when he was not” or “The Son of God is created.” The dispute went on for decades, and the Council of Constantinople in 381 confirmed and expanded the creed, adding that the Son was begotten “before all ages.” Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches confess this creed and agree on the Son’s eternity.
Who does not believe Jesus is eternal?
Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus existed before his human birth but had a beginning. “God created Jesus before he created anything else,” their website says, citing Colossians 1:15, “the firstborn of all creation,” and Revelation 3:14, which calls him “the beginning of the creation by God” in their New World Translation. That translation renders John 1:1 as “the Word was a god.” They hold that the Son helped his Father create everything else and is not equal to him.
Oneness Pentecostals, such as the United Pentecostal Church International, reject the Trinity but hold that Jesus is “God manifested in flesh.” For them the eternal one is God, not a distinct Son. David K. Bernard, the church’s general superintendent, writes in The Oneness of God (1983) that “the Son of God had a beginning,” at the conception in Mary’s womb, while “the Spirit of Jesus existed from all eternity because He is God Himself.”
Is Jesus an eternal high priest?
The letter to the Hebrews ties Christ’s priesthood to his lasting life. It compares him with Melchizedek, the priest-king who meets Abraham in Genesis 14, whom Hebrews describes as “without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever” (Hebrews 7:3). The earlier priests “were prevented by death from continuing in office,” but Jesus “holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever,” and “he always lives to make intercession” for those who come to God through him (Hebrews 7:23–25). By his own blood, Hebrews says, he secured “an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12).
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