(c) He possesses the attributes of God.
Among these are life, self-existence, immutability, truth, love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. All these attributes are ascribed to Christ in connections which show that the terms are used in no secondary sense, nor in any sense predicable of a creature.
Life: John 1:4—“In him was life”; 14:6—“I am ... the life.” Self-existence: John 5:26—“have life in himself”; Heb. 7:16—“power of an endless life.” Immutability: Heb. 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.” Truth: John 14:6—“I am ... the truth”; Rev. 3:7—“he that is true.” Love: 1 John 3:16—“Hereby know we love” (τὴν ἀγάπην = the personal Love, as the personal Truth) “because he laid down his life for us.” Holiness: Luke 1:35—“that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God”; John 6:69—“thou art the Holy One of God”; Heb. 7:26—“holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners.”
Eternity: John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.” Godet says ἐν ἀρχῇ = not “in eternity,”but “in the beginning of the creation”; the eternity of the Word being an inference from the ἦν—the Word was, when the world was created: cf. Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created.” But Meyer says, ἐν ἀρχῇ here rises above the historical conception of “in the beginning” in Genesis (which includes the beginning of time itself) to the absolute conception of anteriority to time; the creation is something subsequent. He finds a parallel in Prov. 8:23—ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸ τοῦ τὴν γῆν ποιῆσαι. The interpretation “in the beginning of the gospel” is entirely unexegetical; so Meyer. So John 17:5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was”; Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” Dorner also says that ἐν ἀρχῇ in John 1:1 is not “the beginning of the world,” but designates the point [pg 310]back of which it is impossible to go, i. e., eternity; the world is first spoken of in verse 3. John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”; cf. 1:15; Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”; Heb. 1:11—the heavens “shall perish; but thou continuest”; Rev. 21:6—“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”
Omnipresence: Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always”; Eph. 1:23—“the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” Omniscience: Mat. 9:4—“Jesus knowing their thoughts”; John 2:24, 25—“knew all men ... knew what was in man”; 16:30—“knowest all things”; Acts 1:24—“Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men”—a prayer offered before the day of Pentecost and showing the attitude of the disciples toward their Master; 1 Cor. 4:5—“until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts”; Col. 2:3—“in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.” Omnipotence: Mat. 27:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”; Rev. 1:8—“the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”
Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 1:249-260, holds that Jesus' preëxistence is simply the concrete form given to an ideal conception. Jesus traces himself back, as everything else holy and divine was traced back in the conceptions of his time, to a heavenly original in which it preëxisted before its earthly appearance; e. g.: the tabernacle, in Heb. 8:5; Jerusalem, in Gal. 4:25 and Rev. 21:10; the kingdom of God in Mat. 13:24; much more the Messiah, in John 6:62—“ascending where he was before”; 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”; 17:4, 5—“glory which I had with thee before the world was” 17:24—“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” This view that Jesus existed before creation only ideally in the divine mind, means simply that God foreknew him and his coming. The view is refuted by the multiplied intimations of a personal, in distinction from an ideal, preëxistence.
Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 115—“The words ‘In the beginning’ (John 1:1) suggest that the author is about to write a second book of Genesis, an account of a new creation.”As creation presupposes a Creator, the preëxistence of the personal Word is assigned as the explanation of the being of the universe. The ἦν indicates absolute existence, which is a loftier idea than that of mere preëxistence, although it includes this. While John the Baptist and Abraham are said to have arisen, appeared, come into being, it is said that the Logos was, and that the Logos was God. This implies coëternity with the Father. But, if the view we are combating were correct, John the Baptist and Abraham preëxisted, equally with Christ. This is certainly not the meaning of Jesus in John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”; cf. Col. 1:17—“he is before all things”—“αὐτός emphasizes the personality, while ἔστιν declares that the preëxistence is absolute existence”(Lightfoot); John 1:15—“He that cometh after me is become before me: for he was before me” = not that Jesus was born earlier than John the Baptist, for he was born six months later, but that he existed earlier. He stands before John in rank, because he existed long before John in time; 6:62—“the Son of man ascending where he was before”; 16:28—“I came out from the Father, and am come into the world.” So Is. 9:6, 7, calls Christ “Everlasting Father” = eternity is an attribute of the Messiah. T. W. Chambers, in Jour. Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:169-171—“Christ is the Everlasting One, ‘whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity’(Micah 5:2). ‘Of the increase of his government ... there shall be no end,’ just because of his existence there has been no beginning.”
(d) The works of God are ascribed to him.
We do not here speak of miracles, which may be wrought by communicated power, but of such works as the creation of the world, the upholding of all things, the final raising of the dead, and the judging of all men. Power to perform these works cannot be delegated, for they are characteristic of omnipotence.
Creation: John 1:3—“All things were made through him”; 1 Cor. 8:6—“one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”; Col. 1:16—“all things have been created through him, and unto him”; Heb, 1:10—“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands”; 3:3, 4—“he that built all things is God” = Christ, the builder of the house of Israel, is the God who made all things; Rev. 3:14—“the beginning of the creation of God” (cf. Plato: “Mind is the ἀρχή of motion”). Upholding: Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist” (marg. “hold together”); Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.” Raising the dead and judging the world: John 5:27-29—“authority to execute judgment ... all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth”; Mat. 25:31, 32—“sit on the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all the nations.” If our argument were addressed wholly to believers, we might also urge Christ's work in the world as Revealer of God and Redeemer from sin, as a proof of his deity. [On the works of Christ, see Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 153; per contra, see Examination of Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 72.]