30 April 2024 John 14:27-30
This is one of the most dangerous verses in the Bible: “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). It tore the Church apart for decades, and if the wrong understanding of it had prevailed, Christianity itself would have been mortally wounded.
This is not sensationalism, not some garish attempt to get your attention. It is the simple truth.
In the fourth century there was a priest in Alexandria named Arius. He believed this text, and others like it, showed that Jesus was, at best, only somewhat divine, as was the Holy Spirit. He developed a theology that said only God the Father was truly God, and did His work through two less divine entities, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. Arius believed that humans had no access to God the Father, that God was totally unique and totally unapproachable, that we only had access to Jesus the Son and/or the Holy Spirit, neither of which was God in the sense that God the Father was. Arius thought this was the plain teaching of the Bible, and the only teaching that was truly monotheist, that preserved the true Oneness of God.
This teaching was rejected at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, which gave us the Nicene Creed, but that wasn’t the end of the story. There were twelve subsequent councils that supported the teaching of Arius. Fifteen emperors, five popes, scores of patriarchs, hundreds of bishops, even street mobs took sides. Athanasius, the arch-defender of the Nicene Creed that rejected Arianism, was exiled five times for his views. Eventually it took the determination of gifted theologians and pastors like Athanasius, along with the Cappadocian Fathers, to finally defeat Arianism. That and Muhammad, who in the seventh century simply conquered all the regions where Arianism lived.
So what would have happened if Arius had prevailed?
Quite simply, there would be no salvation. In Arianism we don’t have any access to the life and love of God, so there can be no atonement. We cannot be made right with God apart from some contact with God. Therefore, we can never be fit for heaven, and are condemned to lifetimes, perhaps eternities of simply “trying harder.” Without access to the life of God binding us to God and one another, we are driven back on ourselves and inevitably against one another.
Arianism is the absence of God. Arianism is hell.
When Jesus said, “The Father is greater than I” he meant that during his earthly ministry He was subject to pain, hunger, thirst, temptation (even if He never sinned), and death. He did all this to give us access to God, access that was completed on the Cross. On the cross every part of our lives, even our death, was taken up into the very life of God. When He rose, he brought it all into heaven.
That is access to God. That is atonement. That is salvation.
It isn’t like Arius hadn’t read his Bible. He had, but he came to some disastrously wrong conclusions about it, and before very long it was out of Arius’ control. Others had adopted his false views and were running with them. Some, no doubt, were doing that just to make a name for themselves, maybe get a little money and some power, too. Maybe they weren’t true believers in Arianism, but so what? – the idea was spreading. It took generations of careful study, determined argument, and real sacrifice to protect our access to God, and our salvation.
Just goes to show you – careful Bible study matters, and willingness to study, and readiness to argue. Hard.
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