A Critical Deprecation
By John R. Gavazzoni

There persists, even on the part of some otherwise skilled handlers of the word of God, a view, quite ardently and insistently held, that a distinction must be made between the Word of God (as per the prologue to John's Gospel: "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," and "the Son of God." According to that view, the Word, which was with God, and was God, and by which all things were created, was not the Son "in the beginning;" rather, the Word became God's Son by being conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary. In other words, the Word of God AS the Son of God had no existence until His incarnation.

Such a postulation amounts to an ontologically critical deprecation of the One who testified, "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world." In his translation, Jonathan Mitchell has it more precisely as, "I came from out of the midst.....of the Father." In contrast to the notion that it was the Word (not yet having become the Son) that came into the world, proceeding to become the Son by incarnational birth. We have the added testimony of Jesus, Himself, "the Christ, the Son of the Living God," "God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved by HIM."

Note; did you get it? God sent His Son. The One sent, was His Son, at the point of being sent. It was not the Word sent to become the Son. That which was sent, was God's Son. How very unavoidably clear, yet missed by otherwise careful students of scripture. How so? How came to be; how comes to be, such a critical error, such a critical deprecation of Divine Sonship? Ahh, dear brethren, let it be a word of caution for us all. Even, in the heart and mind of those blessed with revelation, and with teaching-clarity on not-trivial biblical subjects, such that can leave their listeners in awe of their understanding, a vein of darkness can co-existent along with the light, though the two, light and darkness can never mix. Co-exist; yes. Blended into a mixture; no. The anointing understands the co-existence, as it were, side by side, but a great wall separating the two.

What did Paul have to contribute to our understanding? Within a context where Paul is extolling the Lord Jesus Christ, AS God's Son (Col. 1: 3 and vs 13), giving thanks to the Lord Jesus' Father, he goes on to explain that, it is by that One, the Son of the Father, the Son into whose kingdom we have been translated, that "....by Him (personal pronoun, Him, not it). In John's prologue to His Gospel, it's the Word by which all things were created. In Colossians, it is God's dear Son by whom all things were created. Conclusion (drumroll), the Word is the Son; the Son is the Word. Certainly, all things didn't await their creation until the incarnation.

When I last encountered this infamous, blatantly unscriptural postulation of wrongfully distinguishing between the Word and the Son, I was aghast. For I'd been blessed, instructed, and edified in depth by the same writer in regard to very fundamental biblical truths. Yet, there it was, stupid as stupid gets. This is a serious matter, brethren. It strikes a deprecating blow at the nature of the unity of the Father and the Son. To make divine sonship a temporal matter....and that's what this amounts to....is critically deprecating.

When God sent His Son into the world, from whence did He come? To be sent into the world; to come into the world, He came from "somewhere" other than the world; from that somewhere beyond the world. To come into the world of time, space, and materiality, He came from that dimension of, and which is, the Father; the dimension of no time; no ages; no space....no space "there" only the eternal Father's fullness shared fully with the Son; no materiality, only the Spirit which God is. He came from the heaven of, and which is God, into the world, coming AS the Son, not to become the Son.

Beware, brethren, of really bad, dumb stuff, especially that which ontologically devalues the Son of God's love.