The Confession uses one article to defend the divinity of God the Son and another to defend the divinity of God the Holy Ghost. The article which we are consi­dering this month regarding God the Son begins with this statement: "We believe that Jesus Christ, according to His divine nature, is the only begotten Son of God, begotten from eternity, not made nor created (for then He should be a creature), but co-essential and co-eternal with the Father, the express image of His person, and the brightness of His glory, equal unto Him in all things." This is a confession that Christ is eternal God, and not, as Arius taught, that He is created.

Christ did not become the Son of God by creation, but by generation. It was not a human act, but a divine act, whereby the Father from eternity to eternity communicates the divine essence to the Son. Since Jesus is the foundation of the church, the confession of His divinity from eternity is of the greatest importance. It can therefore be expected that Satan has tried and is yet trying to undermine this foundation. It was because of this confession that the Lord Jesus was sentenced to death; the Jews called Him a blasphemer because He made Himself the Son of God. 

There is a long list of people, sects and schools of thought who do not believe that the Lord Jesus is very God. We will try to mention a few of the more important ones, both in past history of the church and also today.

1. The Ebionites: They existed already in the days of the apostle John, and taught that the Lord Jesus was real man, and that because of His moral perfection, He was declared to be righteous. According to them, salvation is merited by the works of the law, and not by faith in Christ. Their name is derived from the Hebrew word for poor or needy, and they were given this name because they had so little knowledge of the truth.
2. Gnostics: This word is derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge, and was the name given by the church in the first two centuries to a group who heretically taught that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and Mary, but that He excelled the people in righteousness and wisdom. When He was baptized, Christ was then said to have descended in the form of a dove upon Jesus, and He then began to preach the unknown God. They claimed that later Christ flew away again, and Jesus was crucified. What a strange and unbelievable doctrine.
3. Arians: This name was given to followers of Arius, who lived in the years 256 to 356 and was a presbyter of the church of Alexandria. He developed views of Christ as subordinate to God, saying that only the Father is truly God, and that Jesus Christ is merely the first of the created beings. Arius taught that Christ lived before the creation of the heaven and the earth and had been active in creation, but nevertheless that He had a beginning; that He is the perfect image of the Father, but is not of the same essence. Thus He is called "God", but only in a secondary sense.
   The opponent of Arius was his bishop Alexander, to whom he refused to listen. He had many followers and a split in the church was developing. The emperor Constantine intervened and called a council of the entire church together. At the Council of Nicea in the year 325 Alexander's condemnation of the Arian doctrine was upheld. But Arianism was not dead and the influence of it was evident. Alexander died, and another bishop took his place, namely, the well-known Athanasius, who defended the truth with all his strength. Five times he was banished from his church in Alexandria, and often during his life time the truth seemed to be lost. At times the Arians seemed to dominate completely, so that Athanasius found himself alone and the whole Christian world against him, just like Eijah on Mount Carmel. However, eight years after his death, the Lord brought about a change in Emperor Theodosius, who removed the Arians from their positions of authority in the church and held a council at Constantinople, at which the Nicene Creed was reaffirmed. From that time on Arianism disappeared as an organized force within the church.
4. Socinians: The founder of this group was Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), an Italian Catholic, who led a religious movement which interpreted Christianity along rationalistic lines. The doctrines about the Trinity, the Scriptures, and the sacraments were so altered that the group was later persecuted as heretical. Socinus denied Christ's existence from eternity, teaching that before He was conceived in the virgin Mary, Christ existed only in the thoughts of the Father, and that He was exalted to be the Son of God as a wage for His suffering, obedience and death. They appeal to Luke 1:35 where the angel said to Mary, "that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
5. Modernists: There are those in our days who speak of the Son of God, but not in the true sense of the word. They say Christ was the Son of God by adoption, not by generation. The Jewish Sanhedrin had a different opinion; they understood very well that Jesus made Himself as God (equal with God) and therefore they sought to kill Him. If the Lord Jesus was a child of God as the modernists of our day believe, then the suffering, condemnation and death of Christ was a great mistake and could have been avoided by the Lord Jesus Himself admitting this to the Jews. Also, if Christ were only a man, a real righteous man, it would have been impossible to be the Mediator, as He could never have borne the wrath of God and never could have said, It is finished. The Lord Jesus is not the eternal Son of God by adoption, but by generation.

What a comfort when we may believe that which is written of this in God's Word, but it is a greater blessing when we may learn this by the administration of the Holy Spirit: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."