No, ‘Father,’ says Jesus the Son in John 17:24, ‘you loved me before the creation of the world.’ The eternal Son, who according to Colossians 1 is ‘before all things’ (v. 17), the one through whom ‘all things were created’ (v. 16), the one Hebrews 1 calls ‘Lord’ and ‘God’, who ‘laid the foundations of the earth’ (Hebrews 1:10), he it is who is loved by the Father before the creation of the world. The Father, then, is the Father of the eternal Son, and he finds his very identity, his Fatherhood, in loving and giving out his life and being to the Son.
