Arius Was Wrong — Andrew Forrest

John 1:3

3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

Around A.D. 300, there arose a controversy in the ancient church, provoked by a man named Arius. Arius was a priest from Egypt who began to teach that the Son had been created by the Father and was not co-eternal with Him. This controversy became known as the Arian Controversy. Arius’s famous phrase was “There was a time when He was not.” What he meant was that the Son had a definite beginning, unlike the Father, who had always existed.

The great opponent of Arius was a priest named Athanasius, who stubbornly insisted that the Son had always existed, because He was God. God has no beginning, and if the Son had a beginning the way Arius taught, then the Son was not God.

For Athanasius there could be no higher stakes, because if Jesus were not God, then His death on the cross would not have saved anyone. For decades Athanasius held the line, and ultimately Arius’s ideas were defeated at the great Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325.

What’s interesting is how Arius just ignored John 1:3 when making his argument, because John clearly tells us that the Word was not created but was ever-existing, and that through the Word everything that was made was made.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

When we try to get away from the Scripture, we always get ourselves in trouble. Arius was a clever man, but he was also a fool who thought he knew better than the Bible. The reason it is so important that the American church reads and loves the Bible is because the more we do that, the more it will protect us from ourselves and our arrogant tendency to think we know better than the Bible.