(An aside: teaching an AI anything about authority is next to impossible, let alone biblical authority. All it will give you by way of illustration is a group of random people holding hands in a circle, presumably singing Kumbaya.)
Regardless of their home denomination or personal theological quirks, most remotely orthodox Christian readers will not take issue with the contention that the Son is the intrinsic equal of the Father. It’s the plain statement of the New Testament.
Philippians says prior to the incarnation the Son was “in the form of God”. Hebrews says the Son is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”. John calls him the one who makes God known in the world, and this statement has the approval of the Lord Jesus himself.
“A Few Ancient Texts”
This is not some modern gloss on a few ancient texts. The church fathers interpreted these and other verses on the subject precisely as today’s orthodoxy. Clement of Alexandria calls the Son “one with the Father by equality of substance”. Justin Martyr writes, “Therefore these words testify explicitly that he [Jesus] is witnessed to by him [the Father] who established these things, as deserving to be worshiped as God and as Christ.” Irenaeus says, “He is himself in his own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God and Lord and King eternal, and the incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit himself.”
In this respect at least, the ancient writers understood the scriptures to say exactly what they say to the orthodox believer today. When we speak of the Son as the Father’s equal in every innate respect, we are not presenting to the world any new or heretical teaching, but rather the consistent witness of the Holy Spirit down through the ages to the present day.
Differences in Rank
Nevertheless, when we say we have discovered in the gospels and epistles evidence of what appears to be a hierarchical distinction between Father and Son — a difference in rank, if we may reverently put it that way — we are still not venturing into uncharted theological territory. We are simply taking the Lord Jesus at his word. John quotes him saying, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Again, he says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”
Notwithstanding their source, these are not declarations of autonomy based on a well-established equality of intrinsic worth. Quite the opposite, they demonstrate that whatever the Father planned, the Son perfectly executed in a role self-assumed and divinely subordinated. Despite being in very nature God, he was also indisputably a man under authority. He insisted upon that, and rewarded those who grasped the concept.
A Subordinated Will
There is more of this, of course, much of it from the gospel of John. “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” “I have accomplished the work which you have given me to do.” “The works which the Father gave me to accomplish … testify about me.” “Not what I desire, but what you desire.”
Subordination to the will of another — self-determined, perhaps, but all the same very, very real. When tested to the point of death, the evidence was staggeringly on the side of the Son as self-cast and consistently obedient servant to an intrinsic equal whose authority he respected and stringently obeyed to the very end of the path he had elected to walk. If you can argue with that, you have more temerity than I do. It sounds for all the world like a perfect man trusting in his God to call all the shots, and walking a road he did not personally design or control, nor desire to. It sounds like a hierarchy, however unlikely that may seem to today’s reader. It sounds like authority and submission.
How do we reconcile that among intrinsic equals? Yet it is the incontestable teaching of scripture.
Uncomplicating the Complicated
When we come to the issue of the relationship between godly members of different sexes in the same Christian family unit, surely these incontestable biblical truths should uncomplicate any apparent theological or practical problem for us. Unless we determine to render ourselves deliberately incapable of following a baseline of rational, biblical thought, hierarchy in the family should not be a problem at all. Every believer is under authority in one form or another. Differences in God-given roles are not intrinsically punitive, not if Christ’s servanthood wasn’t. Such distinctions in role are not humiliating, or demeaning, or inconsistent with the work of Christ on the cross in breaking down the walls between different categories of the human species. They are simply administrative. In football jargon, they move the ball down the field. They are critical to a role-playing arrangement in which all that God seeks to do on earth is accomplished for his glory, but in different ways by different servants, as they are called on to perform the tasks for which they are uniquely equipped. You might be the field goal kicker. I might be the strong safety. Nothing beyond the job at hand should be inferred from such designations.
Let us embrace our roles in life and enact them to the glory of God.
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