Lord’s Day 13 · The Only Begotten Son
What Does "God's Only Begotten Son" Mean? Reformed Confessions 8 min December 6, 2025
Taught by
John van Eyk Trinity Reformed Church, Lethbridge, Alberta Read along About Transcript
Q33 Why is he called God’s “only begotten Son” when we also are God’s children?
Because Christ alone is the eternal, natural Son of God. We, however, are adopted children of God— adopted by grace for the sake of Christ.
Q34 Why do you call him “our Lord”?
Because— not with gold or silver, but with his precious blood— he has delivered and purchased us body and soul from sin and from the tyranny of the devil, to be his very own.
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John van Eyk has been the Minister of Trinity Reformed Church in Lethbridge, Alberta since 2017. Prior to that, he served 9 years with the Tain/Fearn Associated Presbyterian Church in the Highlands of Scotland. His first charge was as a Church Planter with the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, ON where he served for 13 years.
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0:00 High Labor catechism, Lord’s Day 13. Why is He called God's only begotten Son when we also are God's children? Because Christ alone is the eternal, natural 0:20 of God. We, however, are adopted children of God, adopted by grace for the sake of Christ. 0:28 Why do you call him our Lord? Because not with gold or silver, but with his precious blood, he has delivered and purchased us, body and soul, from sin and from the tyranny of the devil to be his very own. 0:45 We confess that there is one God who has revealed himself to exist in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. 0:55 The second person of the Trinity is called God the Son, and that's the way the scripture talks about him. But when we think of Jesus as the Son of God, it might be tempting to 1:05 think that God the Father existed before God the Son did. After all, that's our experience in human families. Before there can be a son, there must be a father. The Father exists before he has a son. But God is 1:20 different from us. God the Father was always the Father because Christ was always the Son. Christ did not exist in any other way except as the Son of the 1:33 Father. That's why we speak about Jesus as the only begotten Son of God and He was eternally begotten of the Father. There never was a time when God was not 1:44 the Father of the Son, nor the Son, the Son of the Father. Jesus is the only natural Son of the living God. But the Bible is clear that Christians are also called sons of God. However, we are the sons of 1:59 God in a different way. Luke actually speaks about Adam being created as the son of God. But then Adam and Eve rebelled against their Heavenly Father 2:09 in the Garden of Eden by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 2:14 Since then they and all their posterity have become children of wrath as Paul says in Ephesians 2. And as our Lord himself says, we've become children of our father, the devil. 2:27 That's the situation that sin has brought us into, exiled from the family of God. 2:33 But God's great design is to bring many sons to glory. And he does that through his own natural eternally begotten Son, Jesus Christ. So Christ takes upon himself the sins 2:47 of his people, bears their punishment, and in the punishment he is, like us sinners, exiled from the family of God. You can think of it that way. So for example, 2:59 example, when our Lord was undergoing the wrath of God on the cross, he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That is the only time that we have a recorded prayer 3:12 of our Lord Jesus in which he does not call God his Father. So you can see that there's Christ being exiled from the family of God because of the sins of his people that were laid upon him. 3:27 And then after Christ has paid the penalty for sin, he again says, "Father into your hands I commit my spirit." And it's only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that we become 3:39 become children of God. Not natural born like he himself is, not eternally begotten like Christ is, but children of God by adoption. So through faith in Jesus Christ, God becomes 3:54 our father and the Lord Jesus Christ becomes our elder brother. As the apostle Paul refers to him in Romans 8. He becomes the firstborn among many brothers. So Christ is, by adoption, our elder brother. 4:08 But he is also our Lord. And we cheerfully call him our Lord. And the reason we call the Lord Jesus our Lord is because of what he has done to rescue us from the tyranny of both sin and Satan. Because of 4:26 our sin, God has consigned us to the dominion of Satan, and he has become our sovereign, and we have become his subjects. But remember, God is a kind and gracious God. He desires 4:39 to bring many sons to glory. He desires to redeem people from the tyranny of the devil. 4:45 And so that's what he has done in his son Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus took upon himself our sins, paid the penalty that those sins deserved when he experienced the wrath of 4:56 God upon the cross. By that act of substitution. 4:59 Lord Jesus was able to purchase us from Satan's tyranny and the power of sin You see the only power that Satan has over us is our sin and if someone can deal with our sin To render it no longer 5:16 Condemning then Satan has no power over us us any longer. Perhaps an illustration will help. Imagine that there's a king who has set out a 5:25 series of laws for his subjects, and he insists that those laws are obeyed by them. Well, his subjects, for various reasons, rebel against him and disobey his commandments. And so as punished 5:39 he assigns them to a jailer. 5:43 He imprisons them under the authority of a jailer who is harsh and cruel and unkind and tyrannical. 5:51 But he also says that if these prisoners can find someone who will take their penalty and who will take who will pay the penalty that their rebellion deserves, then they can go free. 6:06 And so we see that that's what happened in the gospel of Jesus Christ. 6:10 We are consigned to Satan's kingdom because of our sins. 6:14 Jesus pays the penalty for our sins by taking the punishment that sins deserve. 6:19 And so he has rendered our sin no longer a condemnation against us. 6:25 And therefore, Satan has no right to hold us any longer. 6:32 We must be set free because not only has our sin been taken care of, but Satan tyranny has been broken because his only power over us is our sin. That's why the 6:46 Apostle Paul can say in Colossians 1 that God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves. That's what's happening in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7:02 And that is why we call him our Lord. 7:05 We belong to him. 7:06 He has purchased us by his shed blood on Calvary so that we belong to him body and soul. 7:12 And so in the family of God, there is no sibling rivalry. 7:16 Jesus is our elder brother and we gladly call him our Lord. Made automatically from the audio, so a word here or there may be wrong. Tap any line to play from there.
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