God the Father and God the Son in John 5:26

D. Scott Meadows

For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.

The doctrine of the Trinity, as expressed in the church’s early creeds, is implicit in Scripture itself, even though we freely admit that forging orthodox, consensus expressions of it required much study, many people, hot debate, and several centuries. Orthodox trinitarianism is not philosophy corrupting purely scriptural teaching, but rather, biblical truth making servants of philosophical terms and concepts, always in submission to the authority of Scripture. The resultant creeds promoted doctrinal unity in Christ’s church and were necessary to identify and repudiate heretics.

Admittedly, there is no one verse that states the doctrine of the Trinity with anything like sufficient detail. 1 John 5.7 comes closest: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” The church’s earliest teachers were grappling with how to understand and harmonize this and countless other biblical statements without neglecting or contradicting any in the entire biblical testimony to God. That was not an easy task, to be sure. We can thank God that we have the fruit of their holy labors for our guidance and edification in the Apostles Creed, the Nicene, and the Athanasian.

John 5.26 bears witness to several profound Trinitarian truths we need to understand, as the whole of Scripture is for our enlightenment and faith. Three truths are conspicuous from this text.

I. The Divine Persons of the Father and the Son

That our Lord’s use of the phrase “My Father” is a reference to God was understood even by Jesus’ enemies. They persecuted Him, and sought to slay Him (5.16). And Jesus’ answer to them only enraged them further: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (5.17). Therefore Jesus’ foes “sought the more to kill him, because . . . [he] said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God” (5.18). Indeed He had done that, but it was no basis for hostility. Instead, worship should be paid to Jesus, the very and “only begotten Son” of God (3.16).

From this it is perfectly clear that while there is only one true and living God, yet there are two divine persons (better, “subsistences”) spoken of in this passage: God the Father and God the Son. The statement of 5.26 implies and requires that “the Father” is distinct in some sense from “the Son,” since the Father has given something to the Son. The implication of their distinction from one another as divine persons is inescapable. In Trinitarian theology, however, “persons” refers to divine relations in the simple essence of God, not separate individuals with emotional individuality or unique consciousness typically associated with the modern usage of the term (see Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, Second Edition, “persona”).

II. The Divine Aseity of the Father and the Son

A truth claim that Jesus makes here about the Father and the Son is that each has “life in himself” (5.26). This is far more than being alive, as creatures may be alive. Our Lord is telling us something that is true of God alone. The theological term for it is divine “aseity” (from the Latin word meaning “from himself”). The “life” in view is not creaturely life but divine life, which is nothing else but the very substance of God’s being, His essence. It is “the eternal fullness of the loving relations of Father, Son and Spirit” (John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, Volume 1, p. 23). He has this life from Himself. Nothing about God is derived from another. He is being itself, whereas His creatures have being from God. Our existence is dependent upon our Creator and Sustainer. Our life, such as it is, is derived from and sustained by God.

So the Lord Jesus Christ is stating that this aseity, this self-existence and utter distinctiveness from all creation, belongs to the Son as well as to the Father. To quote our Lord, “the Father has life in himself,” and, “the Son [has] life in himself.” It necessarily follows that the Father is very God, and that the Son is very God as well, and yet there is only one God.

III. The Divine Relation of the Father and the Son

Using a vocabulary of very simple words, Jesus makes a profound statement of theology proper that is, to us, incomprehensible. The Father has given to the Son to have life in Himself, as the Father has life in Himself. This astounding statement pertains not to something that takes place in history, at any specific point in time. Rather, it describes an eternal relation of the Father and the Son, and what constitutes that eternal relation. The proposition cannot be reversed. The Son does not give to the Father to have life in Himself. The Father gives this to the Son.

Orthodox theologians refer to this as one of the eternal relations of origin peculiar to persons of the Trinity. There are three such personal relations: the paternity of the Father, the filiation of the Son, and the procession or spiration of the Spirit. To quote the biblical, true, and orthodox explanation of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith,

In this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided: the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son; all infinite, without beginning, therefore but one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations (2LCF 2.3).

How glorious! A typical modern impatience with such Trinitarian truth is reproved by the further assertion of 2LCF 2.3, that this “doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God, and comfortable dependence on him.” To commune with God in comfortable dependence upon Him should be the greatest aspiration of our lives. Hence, we ought to be very careful students of Holy Scripture and of sound Trinitarian doctrine. We may ponder John 5.26, but we will never completely fathom its depths.