Source:  Chapter 2 of The Incomparable Christ, by J. Oswald Sanders.

Key idea: Jesus Christ’s existence did not begin with his birth in Bethlehem.  He had a pre-existence in Heaven with God the Father.

Key verse: John 17:5: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”

1. “Christ’s existence prior to His conception and birth is nowhere in Scripture argued as a doctrine but is everywhere assumed and used as the basis of the doctrines of incarnation (coming in human flesh) and atonement (payment of our sin)”.
2. If He were not pre-existent, He cannot be God, and if He is not God, He cannot be Creator and Redeemer.
3. Micah 5:2, prophesying of Christ’s birth says “whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting.” It means that Christ’s origin was from heaven and from eternity.
4. In John 3:13, Jesus describes Himself to Nicodemus as “he who came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven.” Jesus spoke from the consciousness of His own pre-existence.
5. In John 17:24: Jesus said to God the Father as He prayed: “Thou lovest me before the foundation of the world.”
6. When challenged by the Pharisees in John 8:57-58, Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” His words constrasted Abraham’s entrance into existence and His own timeless being.  This is a clear assertion of pre-existence and a claim of identity with Jehovah of the Old Testament.
7. In Proverbs 8:22-31, there is an illuminating glimpse of the pre-existence of Christ and His relationship with God the Father: “When he prepared the heavens, I was there…I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him:”  On a purely literary level, this passage is a personification of wisdom.  Some have said that this is a personification of wisdom as an attribute of God.  Only in the New Testament was it revealed in 1 Corinthians 1:24 that “Christ is the wisdom of God.”  Thus, this is a clear reference to the pre-existence of Christ.
8. A theophany is an appearance of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament before he was born in Bethlehem.  Theophanies are not visions.  God appeared as a man to Jacob and wrestled with him.  In the Old Testament, Jesus Christ appeared in the form of man but in Bethlehem, He actually became man.  In both OT and NT, it is through the eternal Son that the invisible God the Father appeared to men.  In theophanies, God took human form only temporarily and for a limited purpose.  When Jesus was incarnated in Bethlehem, he assumed our humanity in perpetuity.  Until today, He is still, “the man, Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5)
9. Last Sunday, a visitor in my Sunday School class in Bulacan asked me, if Jesus and God the Father are one, if they are two persons in one Godhead, why did Jesus pray at the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

• Jehovah God calls the Son “God” just as Jesus, the Son of God calls God the Father, “God.”
• Jesus adopts this form of address of Jehovah on 3 occasions: in Hebrews 1:8 and in Psalm 45:6 in Mathew 27:46 and John 20:17.
• Remember also that Jesus was “made a sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21).  That is to say, Jesus had fully identified with the sinner and had taken his place when Jesus hung on the cross of Calvary.  At the time that Jesus shouted “Eli, Eli lama sabacthani” Jesus was cut-off from God the Father, because he was hanging there, having taken on his own body all the sin of the world. (Isaiah 53: 12)
• in Revelation 3:12, Jesus, the risen Lord has become the “firstborn among many brethren”.  He ascended to the right hand of the throne of God as a man to appear before God.  He counts himself, identified himself with the believers, calling them his “brethren” and therefore, Jesus Christ addresses Jehovah as “God.”

The question that begs to be asked:  Why did Jesus Christ become man? Jesus Christ had to become man so that He could save man.  Angels cannot die, God the Father cannot die.  In humility and obedience of God the Son, he “made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant.” “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death on the cross.”

in 1 John 4:3, John the Beloved was harsh: “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is the spirit of antichrist…” He was emphatic, insisting on the importance of the incarnation of Christ because if Jesus Christ did not take upon himself the nature of man, man can never be saved.  The cross would be useless, we will still be in our sin.