I. What is being confessed in this article?⤒🔗

This article proves from Scripture that Jesus, who is the Son of God, is at the same time fully God himself.

1. Jesus is the Son of God. Yet he is not created, for in that case he would be a creature. However, he has a divine nature. In all things, therefore, he is equal to the Father whose glory radiates from him.
   He did, however, humble himself and took on human form later. Yet he is Son of God infinitely longer, from all eternity. For he is from all eternity.
2. This is then proved from Scripture, which says that God made the world. But also that he did this through his Son, or through Jesus Christ, or through the Word, which is also called God.
   Therefore, he must have been there when everything was made by him. His life is without a beginning and without an end, as Micah 5 and Hebrews 13:8 teach us.
   Thus the Son is true eternal God, the Almighty whom we invoke and serve.              

II. What is essential with the confession of the deity of Christ?←⤒🔗

1. Christ is indeed God. That is confessed and defended in this article. Many praise Jesus as a great prophet, a remarkable religious teacher, and a brilliant social reformer, but no more than that. Despite their words of praise, they rob him of his divine honour. Therefore, this article does not deal with merely theoretical issues. The divine honour of Jesus Christ is at stake.
2. Moreover, this confession is vital to us. For if Christ himself is not God, then the Christian faith is essentially nothing special anymore. Then it is in fact on a par with all other so-called religions. In that case the Christian faith would be teaching us, like these other religions, that we are redeemed by a creature. But that is not redemption. In addition, we have then received our knowledge of God from a creature. But who guarantees that this creature was not mistaken when he told us about God?
   Our very salvation and the assurance of our faith are at stake here!

III. How Christ’s divinity is being denied←⤒🔗

1. Christ is truly God. When this article was written in 1561, the church had already experienced a difficult struggle about this matter. Our article bears the traces of this, for it contains terms that were already rather old at that time such as "only begotten." Older than the article itself is also the way in which it is proved that Jesus is God. Already in the year 325 AD the church confessed, contrary to the heretic Arius, that Christ is God.
2. Arius, born in Cyrenaica (Libya), was ordained as priest in Alexandria in 313 AD. He denied outright that Jesus is God. Instead he claimed that Jesus would be the greatest and highest creature. In trying to prove it, he made two big mistakes. He pretended that God the Father and the Son are the same as an earthly father and his son: that a son always arises later than the father and that both can never be the same age. Therefore, according to him, God the Son came into existence later than the eternal Father. Rather rudely he would say to mothers: "you did not have a son before you brought him into the world, did you?" In this way, he argued, God would only have become Father when he brought forth Jesus. So there would have been a time when the Son was not there. He made the serious error of seeking to apply to God what applies to creatures.
   His second error concerns the way in which he tried to prove his point from all kinds of texts in the Bible. Because what did he do? He pointed out that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature (Luke 2:52), needed to ask where they had laid Lazarus who had died (John 11:34). This would prove that Jesus was a creature who did not know everything. But these texts clearly speak of Jesus’ adopted human nature.
3. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are true Arians. Many eminent theologians also deny the deity of Christ. Generally they freely admit that Jesus is called God in the Scriptures. That is why they will do it themselves. But this name would then only be intended as an honorific name, so that when Jesus is called God this does not mean that he really is God. Therefore, these people can safely accept the basic formula of the World Council of Churches, which speaks of "Jesus, God and Saviour." We call this a trifling with the word "God."
   But there is a second way of disregarding the biblical statements about the deity of Jesus. The claim is that the writers of the New Testament would have made Jesus into an excessive ideal — the one even more than the other. In their enthusiasm they would have portrayed him as a God. Therefore, theologians need to attempt to get rid of the "baggage" and re-discover the real historical Jesus from their exaggerated stories. That has indeed been attempted. People started to peel away the layers. But what turned out then? Each theologian conjured up his own Jesus from the New Testament, that is, one that he invented himself. Some saw in him the great Liberator, others the Revolutionary, the Social Reformer, the Friend of the Poor. There are plenty of different projections of Jesus.
   That is what happens when one does not want to submit to God’s own Word.

IV. Proofs for Christ’s divinity←⤒🔗

1. The article does not mention a number of isolated Scriptures in which the deity of Christ is conclusively shown. Such texts certainly exist and they have their value, such as Isaiah 9:5, John 20:28, Romans 9:5, and Colossians 2:9. Our article points to Hebrews 1:3.
2. But when it comes to real proof, the article takes a slightly different path. It shows the connection between statements of Moses in Genesis 1:1 and the statement of the apostles John and Paul, and of Jesus Christ himself in John 8 and 17.¹This shows how Jesus was involved in the divine work of creation and that he was already there, even from eternity. For the proof itself, we refer to the article. We call this method "comparing Scripture with Scripture."

Points to discuss←↰⤒🔗

1. To indicate the relationship between God the Father and the Son, this article quotes Hebrews 1:3a. Which two images are used there and what is their purpose?
2. Should we say "Jesus is begotten from eternity"? Or should we say that he is being begotten from eternity?
3. Jesus is called “God’s only begotten Son," but also “the firstborn among many brothers” in Romans 8:29. Does that latter put him on a par with us? Or would “firstborn” only signify his legal position, (Psalm 89:27)?
4. Israeli textbooks write appreciatively of Jesus. He would have been someone who proclaimed righteousness and who was innocently put to death. How would we evaluate this?