All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was
made. —John 1:3
Thinking people naturally wrestle with the notion of an all-knowing God having “hopes” for human beings, and giving us free will. After all, the all-knowing God already knows all! He knows how his hopes will be realized. He knows what choices we will make.
Yet the identification of the Son in the verse above as the one through whom “all things were made” actually speaks to this apparent contradiction. The Son-God as the creative agent of the Father-God provides us with a precious insight—a picture, or perhaps just a glimpse, into the way that our God is simultaneously omnipotent and engaged.
The Son, also called the “Word,” was with the Father in the beginning. The start of John’s gospel says this (John 1:1-2), but the very beginning of the Bible says this as well. In Genesis, in the first three verses, all three members of the Trinity are present.
The Father is in Genesis 1:1. The Spirit is mentioned in 1:2. Then, in Genesis 1:3, God says “Let there be light” before any material sources of light have been created. The sun hasn’t been invented yet. Instead of the sun, this light is the Son. John’s gospel actually confirms this identity—calling the Son “the Light” just before repeating the essential point that the world was made through him (John 1:9-10).
Therefore, what we see in Genesis 1:3 is God sending in the Son—the one who is charged with making every part of the world according to the Father’s will. The Father is the author or designer of the world, while the Son is the craftsman. The Son is, if you will, the carpenter.
This is the one who gave us the Commandments. He identified himself to us in both the Old and New Testaments as “I AM.” Old Testament scripture refers to him as “Lord,” with New Testament scripture making the distinction that God is the Father while the Lord is Christ (I Thessalonians 1:1, for example). In other words, this “Son” has been active and near since well before Jesus. When the Son became human in order to return us to God, he simply embodied in the flesh the very same role he plays through every moment and molecule of the universe. In the flesh or beyond it, the Son is the loving link between God and his creation.
As scripture also puts it, the Son is the vine by which the fruit grows, while the Father is the keeper of the vineyard (John 15:1).
Of course, both are also God. Both are also one God—the same God. “Father” and “Son” are human terms that help humans hold onto these senses of the different ways that God is. Father-God and Son-God are simultaneously the same and separate, simultaneously integral and different.
What are the differences? One of them might be time.
The Father exists outside of time. Necessarily so. He created the linear phenomenon we think of as “time,” and he could not create anything to which he himself is subject. But the Son—while he, too, transcends time—somehow also descends into time to carry out his role. After all, we see the Son working in seasons and following plans that unfold in steps. The Son also pursues and communicates with beings who do live in time, such as you and me.
Another difference between Father and Son might relate to information or perspective. God the Father knows all. God the Son can know all, because the Father would deny him nothing. However, we see hints that the Son knowingly works with less than complete knowledge, leaving ultimate knowledge with the Father. (Mark 13:32 is significant.)
To be sure, the Son knows vastly more than we ever could. From our perspective, the Son is practically omniscient. From his perspective, though, there is one who knows more. Between “practically omniscient” and fully omniscient there lies a distance that, as far as we know, might be great indeed—as great as the distance between the vine and vine keeper. This is the distance before which the Son worshipfully bows to his Father.
The picture that develops from these glimpses shows us something so contrary to our expectations that we still have difficulty imagining it. Namely, ours is a humble god. The Son is as vast as the universe, but at the same time he is so close that we can barely conceive of his intimacy. Rather than standing above us as master, he wishes to stand beside us as friend (John 15:15). What we thought we saw as logical contradictions about the nature of God thus become resonant notes in Christ—harmonizing to voice the very song of his nature. The Son-God fulfills these two separate but complementary roles:
He is the king of all of the cosmos.
Yet he is also the workman, the reverential servant, the maker of creation. He is the one who is faithfully fulfilling every detail of his Father’s perfect plan.
Photo: Detail of MCC chapel courtesy of John Cowell.
