The Son of God

Introduction

This brief essay can, by no means, say all that there is to say about the Son of God. It will not be written in order to bring out every aspect and nuance of the nature and work of the Son of God. Only some of it can be discussed.

However, what will be discussed about His nature and work will be sufficient to build upon and do further study in the Bible. The goal and prayerful result of our discoveries in this essay is worship. As the psalmist says,

6 Come, let us worship and bow down,

Let us kneel before Yahweh our Maker.  (Psalm 95:6, LSB)

Who Is The Son of God?

The First Reference To “Son of God”

Genesis 3:15–16 (LSB)

          15       And I will put enmity

    Between you and the woman,

    And between your seed and her seed;

    He shall bruise you on the head,

    And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

     16       To the woman He said,

    “I will greatly multiply

    Your pain and conception,

    In pain you will bear children;

    Your desire will be for your husband,

    And he will rule over you.”

Genesis 3:15 is a direct statement from YHWH concerning the woman, Eve, who has sinned against God. Yahweh speaks to the man, Adam, in the following verses. But, in Genesis 3:15 there is a particular reference that helps us in our study.

As you can see, the first reference to the Son of God in the Bible does not even use the term “son.” Rather it uses the euphemistic reference to a son, “seed.” The fact that the verse refers to a son is seen by two observations: 1) verse 15 uses a masculine pronoun, “he,” and can only refer to a male, and 2) the use of the term for “sons” is used in the very next verse to refer back to the person spoken of in the first verse.

What forces us to realize that this male Child of the woman is the Son of God is two-fold. First of all, the Child is the product of the woman alone, and not of the union of the woman and a man. We see this specifically through the direct reference to the woman by God at the beginning of v.15. It is the woman who will conceive a Son. This is a reference to the miracle of conception without a human father. It is a reference to the woman who will conceive by the creation power of God.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, did in fact conceive in her womb without the aid of a man.

Luke 1:30–35 (LSB)

     30       And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

     31       “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus.

     32       “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David,

     33       and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end of His kingdom.”

     34       But Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

     35       The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.

That Child was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. This conception was a direct work of God in order to accomplish what was spoken millennia ago. Notice that at the end of this quotation above, the Child is called the Son of God.

The second reason we realize that the male Child of the woman is the Son of God is the fact that this “seed” of the woman will crush the head of the serpent, Satan, even though the serpent will only “crush,” or “bruise” the Child’s heel. The power that would have to be available to this miraculous seed of the woman is beyond normal power. In fact, this display is not power at all. It is authority that is being spoken of here. That is to say, God told the serpent that a male Child of the woman, born by the creation of God, will come and dominate the serpent and crush him, and his work.

This is exactly what happened in the coming of Jesus Christ.

Romans 16:20 (LSB)

     20       And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

           The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

Hebrews 2:14–15 (LSB)

     14       Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,

     15       and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

1 John 3:8 (LSB)

     8       The one who does sin is of the devil, because the devil sins from the beginning. The Son of God was manifested for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

John 12:31 (LSB)

     31       “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

What we understand, then, is that the Son of God will come into the world by the power of God, born of a woman who was a virgin at the time of conception, and would have the authority of God Himself.

How Could the Son of God Die?

The above discussion leads us to ask more questions. It makes us want to understand more about the Son in order to make sense of the miracle of His incarnation, and His work of destroying the works of the Devil. If this Son is going to be able to destroy the works of the Devil, then this Son must be deity because only God has the authority to reverse the power of death. Given that, we need to go further into our understanding of this Man.

There is another text of the Old Testament that gives us the information we need in order tobuild a solid foundation about the Son of God. It is a pillar in this entire beautiful discussion about the Son of God, especially as it relates to the death of the Son of God. That text is Psalm 2:7. It reads:

Psalm 2:7 (LSB)

     7       “I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh:

    He said to Me, ‘You are My Son,

    Today I have begotten You.

David is the human author of Psalm 2. God gave him this Psalm, as He did all the Psalms in the Bible which David wrote. This particular Psalm is one of the most often quoted Psalms of the Bible because of its significance to the fundamental truths of Scripture. For our purposes, however, we can only refer to Psalm 2:7 because of its statement about the Son. This verse indicates that the “Son” is more than a Man born of a virgin. He is, in fact, eternal God.

This verse is a record of the statement given directly to the Son by the Father: “He said to Me…” In Psalm 2:2, the Two referenced are Yahweh and His Anointed. If we incorporate that into this verse, we see that the Father, Yahweh, is speaking to the Son, His Anointed. The Anointed is recounting the “decree of Yahweh” and it begins with this magnanimous statement: “You are My Son.”

To say that the Anointed is the Son of Yahweh is not a reference to His incarnation. “You are My Son” contains a verb which indicates that the Son is the Son at the time this statement was spoken. This statement states that the relationship of love between the Father and the Son is eternal.

For example, Jesus said as much:

John 5:20 (LSB)

     20       “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.

And,

John 14:31 (LSB)

     31       but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.

In fact, this love is the dominant quality of God.

1 John 4:8 (LSB)

     8       The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

In fact, Paul gives us further commentary of this relationship between the Father and the Son when he wrote:

Colossians 1:13 (LSB)

     13       Who rescued us from the authority of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of His love,

As the angel told Mary, Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is the same Son as is mentioned here in Psalm 2:7. He is the One called “Son” from eternity. His “Sonship,” is eternal and not confined to a point in time.

“Begotten”

Psalm 2:7 makes a peculiar statement, however. David writes, “Today, I have begotten You.” If the Son is eternal, and was not conceived in the natural way, then how could He be “begotten”?

The answer is again two-fold. First of all, the wording in Psalm 2:7 indicates a point in time when He is begotten. David wrote, “Today, I have begotten You.” That is to say, whatever“begotten” means, it is something that happens on a particular day, or at a particular time. The Son of God is eternal and always the Son. But, the begotten event is at a point in history.

Second, the New Testament writers give us the clearest explanation of all the options of interpretation. Psalm 2:7 is quoted verbatim in three specific texts in the New Testament: Acts 13:33, Hebrews 1:5, and Hebrews 5:5. In each case, what is being said about Jesus Christ is true in those verses based upon His bodily resurrection from the dead. In other words, the “day” in which the Son is begotten is the day of His bodily resurrection from the grave. This coming to life, as it were, is consistent with the term used in Psalm 2:7 and indicates the completion of the plan of God to redeem His people from their sins (Luke 1:77) when the Son comes back to life in His resurrected body.

Conclusion

In our next essay, we will examine the Son of God from the standpoint of His human body. He was seen as a Man, walked and talked like an ordinary Man, but did things that no Man has ever done, nor will ever do.