Pre-existence of Jesus
“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’”
Definition
The pre-existence of Jesus is the doctrine that Christ existed as a divine person before his incarnation, not merely in God’s eternal plan but in actual personal being: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Bavinck puts it this way: “also before his incarnation Christ already possessed a personal divine existence… and was God’s own Son.”1 Pre-existence is distinct from, though closely tied to, eternal Sonship: pre-existence asserts that the Son already existed prior to Bethlehem; eternal Sonship specifies what kind of existence that was — an eternal, not merely prior, relation to the Father.
Confessional Definition
The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession locates this within its doctrine of the Trinity: “the Son is eternally begotten of the Father,” one of three subsistences “of one substance, power, and eternity,” all “infinite, without beginning.”2 Because the Son’s begetting is eternal rather than an event within time, his existence has no starting point to precede: he was not merely prior to his human birth but without beginning at all.
Biblical Basis
Paul assumes Christ’s pre-existence when he describes the incarnation itself as a movement from one state to another: Christ Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:6-7), and “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor” (2 Cor. 8:9) — language that requires an already-existing subject prior to the taking of human form. Paul makes the same claim about Christ’s relation to creation itself: “all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16-17). Jesus makes an even more direct claim for himself against his Jewish opponents: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), and prays to the Father for the glory “that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). Bavinck notes that Paul does not treat this pre-existence as contradicted by his own teaching that Christ was “declared to be the Son of God in power… by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4): the resurrection installs Christ in the full exercise of his messianic sonship and lordship, but does not mark the beginning of his divine existence, which Paul elsewhere assumes was already personal and real before the incarnation.1
Objections and Responses
Doesn’t Paul’s language of Christ being “declared” Son by his resurrection (Rom. 1:4) or given “a name above every name” only after his obedience (Phil. 2:9) suggest his divine sonship began at, or was completed only at, some point in his human life? Bavinck answers that Paul can say both things without contradiction: Christ enters into the full messianic exercise of sonship — becoming “Lord from heaven,” receiving the name above every name — only through his resurrection and exaltation, but this is a change in status and office, not the coming-into-existence of a divine person who did not previously exist. The same Paul who describes this exaltation is the one who elsewhere assumes Christ’s prior, personal divine existence (2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:6; Col. 1:15-17) and calls him “God’s own Son” sent in the fullness of time (Rom. 8:32; Gal. 4:4) — language that presupposes a Son who already existed to be sent.1