Son of God

VIEW:20 DATA:01-04-2020

Applied in the plural to the godly Seth's descendants (not angels, who "neither marry nor are given in marriage," Luk_20:35-36), "the salt of the earth" heretofore, amidst its growing corruption by the Cainites.(See SETH.) When it lost its savour ("for that he also (even the godly seed) is become flesh" or fleshly) by contracting marriages with the beautiful but ungodly, God's Spirit ceased to strive with man, and judgment fell (Gen_6:2-4). In Job_1:6; Job_2:4, angels. In Psa_82:6 "gods ... sons of the Highest," i.e. His representatives, exercising, as judges and rulers, His delegated authority. A fortiori, the term applies in a higher sense to cf6 "Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world" (Joh_10:36). Israel the type was Son of God (Exo_4:22-23; Hos_11:1). Faith obeying from the motive of love constitutes men "sons of God" (Jer_3:4; Hos_1:10). Unbelief and disobedience exclude from sonship those who are sons only as to spiritual privileges (Deu_32:5; Hebrew).
"It (the perverse and crooked generation) hath corrupted itself before Him (Isa_1:4), they are not His children but their blemish," i.e. "they cannot be called God's children but the disgrace of God's children" (Rom_9:8; Gal_3:26). The doctrine of regeneration or newborn sonship to God by the Spirit is fully developed in the New Testament (Joh_1:12-13; Joh_3:3; Joh_3:5; 1Jn_3:1-3; Rom_8:15; Gal_4:5-6). The Son of God, Antitype to Israel, is co-equal, co-eternal, co-essential (consubstantial) with the Father; by eternal generation (Col_1:15), "begotten far before every creature" (Greek), therefore not a creature. So Pro_8:22 (Hebrew), "Jehovah begat (qananiy related to Greek gennaoo) Me in the beginning of His way (rather omit "in"; the Son Himself was "the Beginning of His way", "the Beginning of the creation of God", Rev_3:14) from everlasting ... or ever the earth was ... I was by Him as One brought up with Him. I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Pro_8:22-31; Joh_1:1-3).
The Son was the Archetype from everlasting of that creation which was in due time to be created by Him. His distinct Personality appears in His being "by God ... brought up with God," not a mere attribute; "nursed at His side"; "the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father"; to be "honoured as the Father" (Joh_1:18; Joh_5:20). Raised infinitely above angels; "for to which of them saith God, Thou art My Son, this day (there is no yesterday or tomorrow with God, His "today" is eternity from and to everlasting) have I begotten Thee?" and "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever" (Hebrew 1; Psa_2:7; Psa_45:6-7). His divine Sonship from everlasting was openly manifested by the Father's raising Him from the dead (Act_13:33; Rom_1:4; Rev_1:5). Nebuchadnezzar called Him "the Son of God," unconsciously expressing a truth the significance of which he imperfectly comprehended (Dan_3:25).
The Jews might have known Messiah's Godhead from Psa_45:6-7, and Isa_9:6, "a Son ... the mighty God, the Everlasting Father"; (Isa_7:4) Immanuel "God with us"; (Mic_5:2) "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." The Scripture-asserted unity of God was their difficulty (Deu_6:4), and also the palpable woman-sprung humanity of Jesus. Their supposing John the Baptist to be Messiah (Luk_3:15) shows they did not expect Messiah or Christ to be more than man (Mat_22:42-45). To Jesus' question, "what think ye of Christ, whose Son is He?" the Pharisees answered not the Son of God, but "the Son of David," and could not solve the difficulty," how then doth David in the Spirit call Him Lord?" in Psalm 110, "Jehovah said unto my Lord" ('Adonay), etc., i.e. the Lord of David, not in his merely personal capacity, but as Israel's Representative, literal and spiritual. Jesus quotes it "Lord," not "my Lord," because Jehovah addresses Him as Israel's and the church's Lord, not merely David's.
Had the Pharisees believed in Messiah's Godhead they could have answered: As man Messiah was David's son, as God He was David's and the church's Lord. The Sanhedrin unanimously (Mar_14:64) condemned Him to death, not for His claim to Messiahship but to Godhead (Joh_19:7; Luk_22:70-71, "art Thou the Son of God?" etc., Luk_23:1; Mat_26:63-66). So contrary to man's thoughts was this truth that, Jesus says, not flesh and blood, but the Father revealed it to Peter (Mat_16:17). The Jews thrice took up stones to kill Him for blasphemy
(1) in unequivocally claiming God to be peculiarly "His own Father" (idion patera): Joh_5:18. Again,
(2) in claiming divine pre-existence, cf6 "before Abraham was created ("began to be", genesthai), I am" (eimi): Joh_8:58-59. And
(3) in saying, cf6 "I and the Father are one" (hen, one "essence", not person): Joh_10:30-31; Joh_10:33.
The apostles preached His divine Lordship as well as Messiahship (Act_2:36). His acknowledged purity of character forbids the possibility of His claiming this, as He certainly did and as the Jews understood Him, if the claim were untrue; He never would have left them under the delusion that He claimed it if delusion it were. But the Jews from Deu_13:1-11 (some thought Jesus specially meant, "if the son of thy mother entice thee," for He had a human mother, He said, but not a human father) inferred that His miracles, which they could not deny, did not substantiate His claim, and that their duty was to kill with holy zeal One who sought to draw them to worship as divine another beside God. They knew not that He claimed not to be distinct God, but One with the Father, One God; they shut their eyes to Deu_18:15, etc., and so incurred the there foretold penalty of rejecting Him. His miracles they attributed to Satan's help (Mat_12:24; Mat_12:27; Mar_3:22; Luk_11:15; Joh_7:20; Joh_8:48; Mat_10:25).
Men may commit awful sins in fanatical zeal for God, with the Scriptures in their hands, while following unenlightened conscience; conscience needs to be illuminated by the Spirit, and guided by prayerful search of Scripture. The Jews ought to have searched the Scriptures and then they would have known. Ignorance does not excuse, however it may palliate, blind zeal; they might have known if they would. Yet Jesus interceded for their ignorance (Luk_23:34; Act_3:17; Act_13:27). Deniers of Jesus' Godhead on the plea of God's unity copy the Jews, who crucified Him because of His claim to be God. The Ebionites, Cerinthians, and other heretics who denied His Godhead, arose from the ranks of Judaism.
The arguments of the ancient Christian apologists, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, etc., against the Jews, afford admirable arguments against modern Socinians; the Jews sinned against the dimmer light of the Old Testament, Socinians against the broad light of both Old and New Testament The combination in One, the Son of God and the Son of man, was such as no human mind could have devised. The Jews could not ascend to the idea of Christ's divine Sonship, nor descend to the depth of Christ's sufferings as the Son of man; so they invented the figment of two Messiahs to reconcile the seemingly opposite prophecies, those of His transcendent glory and those of His exceeding sufferings. The gospel at once opposes the Jews' false monotheism by declaring Christ to be the coequal Son of God, and the pagan polytheism by declaring the unity of God.
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

Like a number of biblical expressions, ‘son of God’ may have different meanings in different parts of the Bible. Adam is called the son of God, because he came into existence as a result of the creative activity of God (Luk_3:38; cf. Act_17:28; Heb_12:9). Angels are sometimes called sons of God, probably in reference to the fact that they are spirit beings (Job_1:6; Job_38:7; Dan_3:25). The nation Israel was God’s son, for God adopted it as his own (Exo_4:22-23; Rom_9:4). In a similar but higher sense, Christians are God’s sons, again through God’s gracious work of adoption (Rom_8:14-15; Gal_4:5-6; see ADOPTION).
In Old Testament Israel, the Davidic king was considered to be God’s son, for through him God exercised his rule over his people (2Sa_7:14; Psa_2:6-7). The promised Messiah would also be God’s son, for he would belong to the Davidic line of kings. That Messiah was Jesus. But Jesus was more than God’s son in the messianic sense. He was God’s Son in the sense that he was God. He did not become the Son of God through being the Messiah; rather he became the Messiah because he was already the pre-existent Son of God (Mat_22:42-45; Joh_1:34; Joh_1:49; Joh_20:31; see MESSIAH).
Eternally the Son
God is a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all of whom are equally and eternally God (see TRINITY). Although Jesus is the Son, that does not mean that he was created by the Father or is inferior to the Father. On the contrary, he has the same godhead and character as the Father (Mat_11:27; Joh_1:1; Joh_1:14; Joh_1:18; Joh_5:26; Joh_8:18-19; Joh_10:30; Joh_10:38; Joh_14:9; Heb_1:1-3; 1Jn_2:23; see WORD), has the powers, authority and responsibilities of the Father (Joh_3:35-36; Joh_5:21-22; Joh_5:43; Joh_13:3), and has the thought and purpose of the Father (Joh_5:17-20; Joh_5:30; Joh_8:16; Joh_8:28-29; Joh_14:10; Joh_14:24; see FATHER).
The relation between Jesus (the Son of God) and his Father is unique. It should not be confused with the relation between believers (sons of God) and their heavenly Father. In the case of Jesus, the sonship is eternal. The Father and the Son have always existed in a relation in which they are equally and unchangeably God. This is a relation that no created being can share (Joh_1:18; Joh_5:37). In the case of believers, they become sons of God only through faith in Jesus. God makes them his sons by grace. Jesus was never made the Son of God. He always has been the Son (Joh_8:18-19; Joh_17:1-5; 1Jn_5:11-12).
Jesus was careful, when talking to believers, to make a distinction between ‘my Father’ and ‘your Father’ (Mat_5:16; Luk_2:49; Luk_12:30; Joh_20:17). Believers are not sons of God in the same sense as Jesus is the Son of God. Nevertheless, believers become sons of God through Jesus, the Son of God (Mat_11:27; Joh_1:12-13; Rom_8:16-17). Through Christ they come into a close personal relation with God the Father, and can even address him as ‘Abba’ as Jesus did (Mar_14:36; Rom_8:15; Gal_4:6; see ABBA).
The Son’s mission
As the Son of God, Jesus shares in the deity and majesty of the Father; yet he is also humbly obedient to the Father. Although he existed with the Father from eternity, the Son willingly took human form to fulfil his Father’s purposes for the salvation of human beings and the conquest of evil (Rom_8:3; Gal_4:4-5; Heb_2:14-15).
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the Son of God added humanity to the deity that he already had. His entrance into human life involved the supernatural work of God in the womb of the virgin Mary, so that the baby born to her, though fully human, was also the unique Son of God (Luk_1:30-31; Luk_1:35; Luk_2:42; Luk_2:49; see VIRGIN).
The earliest recorded words of Jesus indicate that even as a child he was conscious of his special relation with the Father (Luk_2:49). The Father reaffirmed this special relation at some of the great moments of Jesus’ public ministry (Mat_3:17; Mat_17:5; see BAPTISM; TRANSFIGURATION). Because the Son and the Father existed in this special relation, Satan tempted the Son to act independently of the Father. He tempted Jesus to use his divine powers contrary to the divine will (Mat_4:3; Mat_4:6).
There was often a difference between the way believers spoke of Jesus’ sonship and the way Jesus himself spoke of it. Believers usually spoke of it in relation to Jesus’ divine person and his unity with the Father (Mat_16:16; Joh_20:31; Col_1:13; 1Jn_2:23; 1Jn_4:15). Jesus also spoke of it in this way, but in addition he emphasized the meaning of his sonship in relation to his earthly ministry and complete submission to his Father (Mar_13:32; Joh_4:34; Joh_5:19; Joh_7:16; Joh_8:28; Joh_8:42; cf. Heb_5:8).
The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world, and the Son’s obedience to this mission meant that he had to suffer and die (Joh_3:14-16; Joh_12:27; Rom_5:10; Rom_8:32; 1Jn_4:9-10; 1Jn_4:14). The Son completed that work, being obedient even to death (Joh_17:4; Php_2:8), and God declared his total satisfaction with the Son’s work by raising him from death (Rom_1:4).
However, the mission that the Father entrusted to the Son involved more than saving those who believe. It involved overcoming all rebellion and restoring all things to a state of perfect submission to the sovereign God (Joh_5:20-29; 2Co_5:19; Eph_1:10; 1Jn_3:8). That mission extends to the whole universe, and will reach its climax when the last enemy, death, has been banished for ever (1Co_15:25-26). The conquering power of the Son’s victory at the cross will remove the last traces of sin. The Son will restore all things to the Father, and God’s triumph will be complete. God will be everything to everyone (1Co_15:24; 1Co_15:28).
Acknowledging the Son
One sign of the work of God in people’s lives is their acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (Mat_11:27; Mat_16:16-17; 1Jn_5:10). It seems that in the early church, an open confession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God was a formal declaration that a person was a true believer (Act_8:37; Heb_4:14; 1Jn_2:23; 1Jn_4:15).
Even Jesus’ opponents recognized in his works and his teaching a claim to deity. For this they accused him of blasphemy and in the end crucified him (Mat_26:63-66; Mat_27:42-43; Joh_5:18; Joh_10:33; Joh_10:36; Joh_19:7). God, however, demonstrated dramatically that Jesus was his Son by raising him from death and crowning him with glory in heaven (Rom_1:4; Eph_1:20; Heb_4:14; cf. Joh_6:62; Joh_17:4-5). One day the Son will return to save his people and set in motion those events that will lead to God’s final triumph (1Th_1:10; Tit_1:13). (See also JESUS CHRIST; SON OF MAN.)
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.


This expression occurs, and even with some frequency, in the plural before it is found in the singular; that is, in the order of God's revelations it is used in a sense applicable to a certain class or classes of God's creatures prior to its being employed as the distinctive appellation of One to whom it belongs in a sense altogether peculiar. It seems necessary, therefore, in order to obtain a natural and correct view of the subject, that we first look at the more general use of the expression, and then consider its specific and higher application to the Messiah.
1. SONS OF GOD viewed generally. We first meet with this designation in a passage which has from early times been differently understood. It is at Gen_6:14, where, in reference to the growing corruption of antediluvian times, it is said, “The sons of God (bene Elohim) saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all whom they chose” (that is, having regard only to natural attraction). And again, “There were giants in the earth (literally, the nephilim were on the earth”) in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] unto them, these were the mighty men (the heroes, הִגַּבֹּרַי) who were of old, men of renown.” The sons of God in these verses, say many of the Jewish interpreters, were persons of quality, princes and nobles, and. the daughters of men they married were females of low birth as if the climax of disorder and corruption in the Bible sense were marrying below one's rank! Such a view carries improbability in its very front, and is without any support in the general usage of the terms. In the Apocryphal book of Enoch, then by many of the fathers, and in later times not a few Catholic and Lutheran theologians (including among the last. class Stier, Hofmann, Kurtz, Delitzsch), the sons of God is a name for the angels, in this case, of: course, fallen angels; who they think form the only proper contrast to the daughters of men. In other passages, also, angels are undoubtedly called “sons of God” (Job_1:6; Job_2:1; Job_38:7; Dan_3:25) and “sons of Elim,” or the Mighty (Psa_29:1; Psa_89:7). There are, however, other passages in which men standing in a definite relation to God, his peculiar people, are so called. Israel, as the elect nation, is called his son, his first born (Exo_4:22); but within this circle a narrower circle still bore the name of his sons, as contradistinguished from those who corrupted themselves and fell away to the world (Deu_32:5); and those who had backslidden, but again returned, were to be designated sons of the living God (Hos_1:10). Also in Psa_80:17, Israel in the stricter sense, as the elect seed, is named the son whom God (Elohim) made strong for himself. There seems no reason, therefore, for supposing that the expression “sons of God” should be understood of angels any more than of men. Its actual reference must be determined from the connection, and in the case under consideration angels are on various accounts necessarily excluded. For
(1) the procedure ascribed to. those sons of God — choosing beautiful women for wives and marrying them — cannot, without the greatest incongruity, be associated with angelic natures, among which there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage (Luk_20:35-36). Even carnal intercourse between such parties was impracticable; but the actual taking of wives (the, term, used being that uniformly employed to denote the marriage relationship) is still more abhorrent to the ideas set forth in Scripture as to the essential distinctions between the region of spirits and the world of sense.
(2.) If a relation of the kind had been possible, it would still have been entirely out of place in such a narrative, where the object of the historian manifestly is to trace the progress of human corruption-implying that the prominent actors in the drama were men, and not beings of another sphere. Hence, immediately after the first notice of the angels of God marrying the daughters of men, the Lord says, “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh” (Gen_6:3); as if the whole quarrel were with the partakers of flesh and blood.
(3.) The moral bearing and design of the narrative also point in the same direction, which undoubtedly aimed at presenting, from the state of things which drew on the Deluge, a solemn warning to the Israelites against those heathen marriages which brought incalculable mischief on the covenant people.
(4.) In like manner, the allusion of our Lord to the marrying and giving in marriage before the Flood as things which were going to be repeated after the same fashion before the second advent (Luk_17:27) requires them to be understood of earthly relationships, otherwise the allusion could have furnished no proper parallel to the state of things anticipated in the last days, and would have been beside the mark. (See Stosch, De Filiis Dei [Lingae, 1749]; Quintorp, ibid. [Rost. 1751]; Scholz, Ehe d. Sohne Gottes, etc. [Ratisb. 1866].)
We are therefore decidedly of opinion that by “Sons of God” in the narrative of Genesis is meant, as the great body of the best interpreters have understood it, a select class of men on earth, those who belonged to the line that had maintained in a measure the true filial relationship to God (the Sethites). Though fallen and sinful, yet, as children of faith and heirs of promise, they were the spiritual as well as natural offspring of one who was originally made in God's image, and who still through grace could look up to God as a father. From this select class the Cainites were cut off, the unbelieving and godless spirit they manifested showing them to be destitute of the childlike spirit of faith and love; whence Adam and Eve, by reckoning their seed only through Seth, had in a manner disowned them. Alienated from God, the offspring of Cain were merely sons of men, and their daughters might fitly be called in an emphatic sense the daughters of men, because knowing no higher parentage.
But the other class contained members of a family of God on earth; for, if in that olden time there were pious men, who, like Enoch and Noah, walked with God, or who, even if they did not stand in this close, priestly relation to God, made the divine image a reality through their piety and fear of God, then these were sons of God (Elohim), for whom the only correct appellation was ‘sons of Elohim,' since sonship to Jehovah was only introduced with the call of Israel” (Keil). The name in question, “sons of God,” was made prominent at the critical time when it was on the eve of becoming altogether inapplicable in order the more distinctly to show how willing God was to own the relationship as long as he well could, and how grievous a degeneracy discovered itself when the distinction belonging to them as God's elect began practically to be obliterated by their ungodly alliances with the world. It is impossible here to enter into the collateral arguments urged by those who oppose the view given in the text and understand by “sons of God” the fallen angels. They are chiefly two. They conceive the nephilim (q.v.), the men of gigantic energy, or superhuman might, mentioned in Gen_6:4, to be the product of those unnatural connections, and a proof of it. But the text speaks of the nephilim as being on the earth before the improper marriages in question were formed; and it is not at all clear that the gibborim, or “mighty men” subsequently referred to, were the same or similar persons (see Keil, On Gen_6:4). The other line of support is derived from the supposed reference, in Jdt_6:7, to the wickedness of the fallen angels in a lustful and fleshly direction, as. if they left their proper habitation to mingle in the pollutions of sensual indulgence here; but this is quite a fanciful interpretation. The sensuality and defiling of the flesh spoken of have reference, not to them, but to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who indulged in wanton and rebellious courses like the angels, but in these took, of course, a different direction. Going after fornication, or strange flesh, implies, as Keil remarks, a flesh of one's own (ἴδια σάρξ), which the angels had not.
It was thus plainly in reference to men's moral state and relationship that the epithet “sons of God” was applied to some before the Deluge; and so was it ever afterwards. In a mere physical sense, as having derived their being from God, men are not in Scripture designated his sons; though there is an approach to it in the appropriation by Paul of a passage from a heathen poet (“We are also his offspring,” Act_17:28), in order to give it a higher application. Israel, when about to be called out of Egypt, or when actually delivered. was called collectively the son of Jehovah, or, in the-plural, sons (Exo_4:22-23; Deu_14:1; Hos_11:1); and this because they were by special election and privilege called to be “a holy people unto Jehovah their God, and Jehovah had chosen them to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth” (Deu_14:2; Exo_19:5-6). In this sense .are to be understood all the passages which speak of God as the Father, the Former, or Begetter, of Israel (Deu_32:18; Jer_2:27; Isa_64:8; Mal_1:6; Mal_2:10). The sonship they indicate is one of a moral or spiritual nature, having its origin in the free grace of God. and its visible manifestation in the peculiar relation of Israel to the knowledge, service, and blessing of Jehovah. They are also called God's first born, because the distinction thus conferred upon them was not to, be theirs exclusively; they only took precedence of others, and received their place and privileges in order that through them all the nations of the earth might be similarly blessed.
But from the manifest failing, on the part of the great body of the people, to fulfil their calling and destiny, the sonship was again, as it were, denied of the collective Israel, and limited to the better portion of them. The one had not the marks of true children (Deu_32:5), and the other alone could properly call God Father, or be owned by him as sons (Jer_3:4; Hos_1:10). And even in their case all was imperfect, and could not but be till “the time of reformation,” when God's purpose of grace reached its full development, and the partakers of it attained to a far higher position in the gifts and blessings of the divine; kingdom. From that time it was formally as the regenerate, those who have been born again of God or have received from him the adoption, that they become members of the kingdom (Joh_1:12-13; Joh_3:3; Joh_3:5; Gal_3:5, etc.); and the Spirit is conferred upon them, not with a kind of secrecy and reserve, but in the full plenitude of grace, and expressly as the spirit of sonship or adoption, leading them to cry in a manner altogether peculiar, “Abba, Father” (Rom_8:15). As compared with this higher stage of sonship, those who lived in earlier times, while they enjoyed the reality, scarcely knew how to use it. In the tone of their spirits and the general environments of their condition they approached al; nearer to the state of servants than that of sons. SEE ABBA.
2. SON OF GOD, in its special application to Jesus Christ. Even in Old- Test. Scripture, and with respect to the participation of sonship by the common members of the covenant, there was, as already stated, a narrowing of the idea of sonship to those in whom it was actually realized: But within that narrow circle there was a narrower still of which divine sonship was predicated, and this in connection with the family of David, the royal house. Even in the first formal announcement of God's mind on the subject, when the prophet Nathan declared so distinctly that David's son should also be God's son, and that the throne of his son's kingdom should be established forever (2Sa_7:14-16), there was an elevation of the idea of sonship beyond what had yet been given in the revelations of God to his people. The king on the throne of Israel in David's line was to be in the most emphatic sense God's son — combining, therefore, royalty and sonship and this associated with actual perpetuity. Could such things be supposed to have their full accomplishment in a son who had about him only the attributes of humanity?
Must not the human, in order to their realization, be in some peculiar manner interpenetrated with the divine? Thoughts of this description could scardely fail to occur to contemplative minds from the consideration of this prophecy alone; but other and still more explicit utterances were given to aid, their contemplations and render their views in this respect more definite. For David himself in Psalms 2 speaks of the future God-anointed king of Zion as so anointed and destined to the irreversible inheritance of the kingdom, just because he was Jehovah's son and had a right to wield Jehovah's power and exercise his sovereignty to the utmost bounds of the earth. This seemed to bespeak for him who was to be king by way of eminence an essentially divine standing; and in Psalms 45 he is addressed formally as God, whose throne should be for ever and ever. The same strain was caught up at a later period by Isaiah (Isa_7:14), where it is said of the child one day to be born in the house of David of a virgin that he should be Immanuel (God with us), and, again, in 9:6, that the child so singularly to be given should be called “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God (literally, the God hero), the Everlasting Father the Prince of Peace” — epithets which had been unmeaning, or at least extravagantly hyperbolical, if the destined bearer of them had not been possessed of strictly divine attributes. So, also, in the prophet Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah, it is affirmed of the future ruler of Israel, whose birth was to throw a peculiar glory around the little town of Bethlehem, that his goings- forth have been from old, from everlasting (5:2). It is but to give a specific application to these prophecies, and to many besides that spoke of the glorious powers and prerogatives of Him who should come as the angel or messenger of the covenant to redeem his people and rectify the affairs of the divine kingdom, when at the beginning of the Gospel era the birth was announced of one who should be called the Son of the Highest, and who should sit on the throne of David (Luk_1:32); and when this same person, as soon as he had begun to manifest himself to the people, was acknowledged as at once “the King of Israel and the Son of God” (Joh_1:49).
Nothing, however can be more clear from the records of New Test. Scripture than that the Jews, while they expected a Messiah who should be king of Israel, were all but unanimous in the rejection of the idea that he should be possessed of a nature essentially divine. They could scarcely doubt that he was to enjoy in a very peculiar manner the favor and help of God so as to occupy the very highest rank among God's messengers to men; but there is no evidence that they carried the matter higher (Schottgen's proofs [De Messia, vol. 3] to the contrary are insufficient); and, accordingly, whenever our Lord made declarations which amounted to an assumption of proper divinity, he was always met by an uncompromising opposition, except within the circle of his immediate disciples. Once and again, when he spoke in such a way as to convey the impression that God was his own (ἴδιος) Father — Father in a sense that implied equality of nature — the Jews proceeded to deal with him as a blasphemer (Joh_5:18; Joh_8:59; Joh_10:30-33).
When assuming the divine prerogative of forgiving sins, they charged him in their hearts with blasphemy (Mat_9:3) but, so far from desisting from the claim, he appealed on the spot to what should have been regarded as an incontrovertible proof of his right to maintain it — his power and capacity to perform an essentially divine work. When at a later period he challenged them, to reconcile their belief in the fact as to the Christ being David's son with David's own recognition of him as his Lord, they were unable to meet it (Luk_20:41-44), plainly because they were unprepared to allow any strictly divine element in the constitution of Christ's person. Finally, when driven from all other grounds of accusation against Jesus, they at last found their capital charge against him in his confession that he was the Son of the living God (Mat_26:63-66). In all the passages referred to, and very specially in the last, it admits of no doubt both that Jesus claimed a really divine character and that his adversaries rejected the claim and held the very making of it to be a capital crime. Jesus knew perfectly that they so understood him, and yet he deliberately accepts their interpretation of his words, nay, consents to let the sentence pronounced against him run, its course rather than abandon or modify the claim to divinity on which it was grounded. The conclusion is inevitable on both sides: on the side of the Jewish authorities that the idea of divine sonship was utterly abhorrent to their view of the expected Messiah, while in the mind of Jesus it was only as possessing such a sonship that the real characteristics of the Messiah could be found in him. Stier, however, has conclusively shown (Words of the Lord Jesus, on Joh_9:36) that the title “Son of God” was not a mere equivalent for “Messiah.”
The mistake of the Jews respecting the person of Christ did not come of itself; it sprang from superficial views of the work of Christ. The national king of Israel, such as they had come to anticipate in the Messiah, might have been a mere man only specially assisted by God. There was nothing in the contemplated office which lay above the reach of human capacity or prowess, and it could not appear otherwise than blasphemy to associate with it an incarnation of Deity. Had they seen the more essential part of the work to lie in the reconciliation of iniquity, and laying open, through an atonement of infinite value and a righteousness all perfect and complete, the way to eternal life for a perishing world, they would have seen that unspeakably higher than human powers were needed for the task. Misapprehending the conditions of the great problem that had to be solved, they utterly mistook the kind of qualifications required for its solution, and remained blind to the plainest testimonies of their own Scriptures on the subject. They alone saw it who came to know Jesus as the Savior of sinners, the Redeemer of the world; and their testimony to his divine character was, like his own, explicit and uniform. If, as has been well said gathering up the substance of their statements and our Lord's own on the subject — “if the only begotten and we beloved Son of God, who always was, and is to be, in the bosom of the Father, in the nearness and dearness of an eternal fellowship and an eternal sonship; who is the manifestation, the expression, the perfect image of God, such a reflection of his glory and express image of his person that whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father also; who is the agent and representative of God in the creation and preservation of the material and the spiritual universe, in the redemption of the Church and the reconciliation of the world and the government of both, in the general resurrection of the dead and the final judgment of men and angels, in all divine attributes and acts, so that he is manifestly the acting Deity of the universe if he is not God, there is no actual or possible evidence that there is any God” (Dr. Tyler, in Bibl. Sacra for October, 1865). SEE SONSHIP OF CHRIST.



CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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