In our last post on who is God the Father, we dwelt into the nature of God the Father, who gave us to privilege to call him Abba, Father. Our We the Faith People series in this Lenten season answers key aspects of our Faith. Today, We will dig deep into the phrase “begotten, not made” in the Nicene Creed. This phrase is one of the most intellectually dense parts of the Nicene Creed. It was specifically included to counter the teachings of Arius, who argued that Jesus was a created being—the first and greatest of God’s works, but a “creature” nonetheless. By saying “begotten,” the Creed asserts that Jesus shares the exact same nature as the Father.

The Distinction: Nature vs. Creation

In theological terms, making involves creating something of a different substance (a carpenter making a chair). Begetting involves bringing forth something of the very same substance (a father begetting a son).

The Bible should be our final authority, not the creeds. I think a compelling case can be made biblically from the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of John that the phrase “begotten, not made” is biblical

John 1:1-3:“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things were made through him.” If all things were made through Jesus, Jesus cannot be one of the things “made.” He exists on the side of the Creator, not the creation. And then in John 1:14 reads And the Word became flesh [we’re talking about Jesus Christ] and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only [the KJV reads begotten] Son from the Father, full of grace and truth

What we’re really digging into here is how John introduces Sonship. Look at the transition: the one he calls the “Word” in verse 1, he identifies as the “Son” by verse 14. Now, if you’ve spent any time in a Greek lexicon, you know there’s a massive tug-of-war over whether monogenes should be translated as “only Son” or “only begotten Son.”

But here’s the catch—and I want every “run-of-the-mill,” faithful Christian out there to take heart: The doctrine of “begotten, not made” doesn’t actually hang on the translation of that one word. If it did, our entire theology would be held hostage by a linguistic dispute that’s been running for centuries. We have a firmer foundation than that.

What’s truly essential is found in the first three verses of this Gospel. John tells us the Word of God is God and is with God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Think about what that implies. You have two distinct Persons: God (the Father) and the Word of God (the Son). This second Person isn’t a separate; He is God, and He is right there with God always. Then John drops the hammer: he says that through the Word, everything was “made that was made.” That precise wording is a game-changer. It creates a total boundary.

If it is in the category of “made” or “coming into being,” it was brought into existence by the Word. Logic follows: the Word cannot be in that category. If the Word made everything that was made, He Himself could not have been made. He stands outside that circle. He is uncreated. He is “begotten, not made.”

Eternal Generation

When you hit verse 14, John shifts gears into “Sonship” language. Here’s the logic: the Word is God. But the Word is also the Son of God. That means everything we just established about the Word—specifically that He was not made—applies directly to the Son.

So, how does the Son exist as a Son? He isn’t the Father, He’s the Son. If we just stick to the plain meaning of those words, the answer is clear: He wasn’t made; He was begotten. That’s just what sons are. They are begotten of their fathers.

But we have to be careful here, because this is a unique, one-of-a-kind begetting. This Son—this Word—has no starting line. “In the beginning was God.” The Word was there, and God was there, and the two of them have been there eternally. There was never a “Point A” where they began. He was always there with God, as God.

The Church is absolutely right to stand its ground here. We are talking about an eternally existent Son who is fully God, yet distinct from the Father. He didn’t “come into being” at some point; He has been eternally begotten.

Let’s get to the heart of it: There is no salvation without the deity of Christ. The point being hammered home—both in the Bible and in our creeds—is that this eternal begetting is what secures the Son’s nature. He has the exact same essence as the Father. That’s what Hebrews 1:3 is getting at when it calls Him the “exact imprint of His nature.” It’s what Philippians 2:6 means when it says that even though He was in the “form of God,” He didn’t have to “grasp” at equality with God. He already had it. It was His by nature.

In other words, there is no salvation without the deity of Christ. If the Son of God was made instead of being eternally begotten in the very nature of God, we are still in our sins, and biblical salvation does not exist.

Shall we look unto “Christ, who is begotten, not made” and desire to be-like him? In our next post, we will understand another dense part of the Nicene Creed “one being with the Father“. We will answer the question – What does “one being with the Father” mean?