This Article: (12 Pages)
- 1. The Son of God
- 2. The Son of Man
- 3. The Special Birth of the Son of God
- 4. Paul's ideas regarding God and the... Son of God
- 5. What is meant by Jesus being Sent?
- 6. God's Character Shown to the World
- 7. There is no power but that of Yahweh
- 8. Jesus as the Man
- 9. In the Beginning was the Word... (John 1)
- 10. The Title 'God'
- 11. Could Christ have Pre-existed?
- 12. Our future as Sons of God
2) The Son of Man
Few scholars realise that in the records of the gospels, Jesus only rarely refers to himself the Son of God.
The first person to call him the Son of God is John the Baptist.
John bare record, saying, “....I knew him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, ..said unto me, Upon whom you shall see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:32-34)
John the Baptist had a huge following and within a short time the records indicate many people call him the son of God. For example, the adversary who tempted him in the wilderness asked Jesus to prove he was the son of God and the sick who came to him for healing called him the son of God.
There are 45 references to Jesus as the Son of God in the Bible, of which only four were made by Jesus himself. This is characteristic. At the trial he is asked,
“Are you then the Son of God?” And he (Jesus) said unto them, “You say that I am”. (Luke 22:70)
The writers of the gospels tell us Jesus called himself the 'Son of Man' eighty times. This is one occasion.
He asked his disciples, saying, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?” (Matthew 16:13)
To call himself the 'Son of Man' was powerful, as Ezekiel and Daniel the great Hebrew prophets were called that. However, it was also in the Hebrew language a common term to describe the typical human. In Hebrew a word for man is 'adam'. Jesus literally called himself the Son of Adam. Why? Jesus said,
The Son of man is come to save that which was lost. (Mat 18:11)
The apostle Paul gives the answer,
For as by one man's disobedience (Adam's) many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)
Jesus was to be the man. The new obedient Adam.
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