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Psalm 2:7
“I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.’”
The Ebionite heresy emphasized the humanity of Jesus at the expense of His deity, giving us a Savior who is not truly God and thus finally unable to save us. Others besides the Ebionites also stressed the humanity of Jesus in such a way as to deny that He is truly God. Another prominent early Christian heresy known as adoptionism did not confess the deity of Christ.
According to the adoptionist heresy, Jesus is a mere man who was adopted by God and later exalted to the place of divine lordship. Most adoptionists have held that our Savior’s adoption as the Son of God took place at His baptism by John, for it was there that Jesus was publicly declared to be God’s beloved Son (see Matt. 3:13–17). Adoptionists have also appealed to texts such as Psalm 2:7, where the pronouncement “You are my Son; today I have begotten you” is taken as a reference to a new relationship that was established in time between God the Father and Jesus. According to this interpretation, at one time Jesus was not the Son of God but then became God’s Son by declaration when He was baptized.
In light of the full witness of Scripture, adoptionism cannot be sustained. Passages such as John 1:1–18, where the King James Version rightly uses the word “begotten” of the Son (vv. 14, 18), make it plain that Christ’s begottenness is eternal. Thus, many Christian interpreters have seen Psalm 2:7 not as a reference to adoption but as an indication of Jesus’ eternal sonship, with the “today” pointing to the eternal generation of the Son. Matthew Henry concludes that Jesus “is the Son of God, and therefore of the same nature with the Father, [and] has in him all the fulness of the godhead, infinite wisdom, power, and holiness.”
John Calvin, though he affirmed the eternal divine sonship of Jesus, did not think that Psalm 2:7 referred to the Son’s eternal generation. Instead, he said that the declaration in that verse represents the public proclamation of Christ’s divine sonship to the world: “This expression, to be begotten, does not therefore imply that he then began to be the Son of God, but that his being so was then made manifest to the world.” What changed at the baptism of Jesus was not that He went from not being the Son of God to being the Son of God; rather, when He was baptized, the Father proclaimed an eternal truth about Jesus—His divine sonship—to those who did not know it.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Like other heresies that deny Christ’s deity, adoptionism gives us a Savior who cannot reconcile us to God. If Jesus is not God incarnate, He cannot perfectly represent God and His interests, making Him an inadequate Mediator. Only if Jesus is “very God of very God” can He represent God to us and ensure that the divine demands of justice are met without compromise. Because Jesus is truly God, we can have confidence in the salvation that He provides.
For further study
- 2 Samuel 7:1–17
- 1 John 4:15
The bible in a year
- Psalms 4–6
- Acts 16:16–40
- Psalms 7–13
- Acts 17