Preexistence Of Christ

Pre Existence of Christ

Charles Ryrie defines the pre-existence of Christ as meaning that; "He existed before his birth" (Basic Theology, 273). This is an essential part of Christology in the sense that if Christ did not exist before the virgin birth, then what can we believe of the Bible? The Bible gives us direct statements concerning Christ's pre-existence. Through these statements one can see the meaning of the preexistence, the importance of the preexistence, and the evidence for the preexistence.

The meaning of the preexistence of Christ is that he had existed before the virgin birth. Believing in the preexistence of Christ is not necessarily believing in the eternality of Christ as the eternality speaks of Christ being there before the world was formed. These together work hand-in-hand, and denying one of these would be to deny the other.

Why is the preexistence important? The preexistence is important because not believing it would be to say that the Bible has false scripture in it. If this was the case, what can we believe and what can we not believe? As Christians if we didn't believe the preexistence of Christ then we would have no grounds to believe in the trinity. In John 17:5 Christ says; "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." If Christ lied here, what can we believe of the gospels or any other work or saying of Jesus Christ?

The evidence of the preexistence of Christ has been clearly stated throughout Scripture. One evidence is that of Christ's heavenly origin. Henry Thiessen says:

In the eternal past Christ "was with God," indeed, he "was God" (John 1:1). This was "before the world was" (John 17:5). He is called "the Word" (John 1:1, 14; Rev 19:13). A word is a medium for manifestation, a means of communication,

...