Theology Thursday: Son of God, Son of Man

Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him. I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.

Today's question:
Jesus is the Son of God, but he’s also called the “Son of Man.” What’s that about?

Pastor Brady's thoughts:
Jesus is identified in a number of different but complementary ways in Scripture - Messiah, Savior, Lamb of God, Emmanuel, the Good Shepherd, Lord, Christ, the Word, and several others - but one of the most significant is Jesus’s identity as Son.

Interestingly, the idea of “Son of God” actually predates the use as a New Testament title for Jesus. For many of the cultures that pop up in the Old Testament and elsewhere in ancient literature, “son” indicated a person who was thought to somehow be an offspring of the pagan (meaning non-Christian) gods. It was a label for kings and other elevated-status celebrities thought to have some type of “divine” power.

For the Old Testament Israelites - God’s chosen people - “son” was meant (beyond its common use for biological offspring that we still use today) to indicate a particularly obedient follower of the LORD who was a consequential participant in God’s work. The “Son of God” was God’s special agent, elected (by God) to carry out God’s mission in the world. As such, in several places - Exodus 4:22; Hosea 11:1; Isaiah 1:2; Samuel 7:14 - the writers of the Old Testament books referred to the entirety of the Israelite people group as the “Son of God.”

Moving ahead to the New Testament, the gospels refer to Jesus as the “Son of God,” and when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John use this title, they’re using it to point to Jesus’s unique relationship to God the Father, his unique role in executing God’s plan to redeem Old Testament Israel and the world and, perhaps most notably, his unique obedience to the Father’s will.

Mirroring the Old Testament use of the term, Jesus was understood to be the true, perfect, “Son of God” due to his total, complete obedience to God’s will (Philippians 2:8: ...he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!).

Then in the New Testament letters, “Son of God” points to the apostles’ belief in Jesus’s supernatural co-identity as fully human and fully divine. We read two representative examples of this in Hebrews and Colossians:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (Hebrews 1:1-3)

And

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. (Colossians 2:9)

Jesus’s miraculous birth via Mary’s conception by the Holy Spirit, his sinless life, his holiness-infused moral instruction, healings, and other miracles, his atoning death, his triumphant resurrection, and his glorious ascension all led the disciples (not just the 12, but the many others who observed, lived alongside, and followed closely as well) to conclude that while this man was clearly 100% human, he was more than human; he was also a divine and eternal being, more so even than the heavenly angels. He was the Son of God.

Jesus’s faithfulness to the mission of God led the early church - and the church today - to affirm and declare his status as Son, as evidenced by John’s statement:

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. (1st John 4:14-15)

Ok, so that summarizes our understanding of Jesus as the Son of God, but what about the “Son of Man”?

“Son of Man” most generally just means “human,” and just as “Son of God” originated in Old Testament usage, “Son of Man” did too. The Israelite priest and prophet Ezekiel was called a “Son of Man” nearly 100 times. But Ezekiel was a Son of Man, Jesus was the Son of Man. Jesus was the perfect, ideal human, even given his challenging and at-times brutal circumstances.

While “Son of God” is perhaps the more popular and common title for Jesus today, we can’t ignore that he was also referred to as the “Son of Man,” a phrase that’s used more than 80 times in the New Testament to describe Jesus. In fact, “Son of Man” is the primary title Jesus used for himself (examples can be found in Matthew 12:32, 13:37; Luke 12:8; and John 1:51.)

There are a few things going on here, but the simplest way to think about it is that both “Son of God” and “Son of Man” are accurate and descriptive ways of talking about Jesus; “Son of God” points us toward his divine status as a co-equal member of the Trinity, and “Son of Man” points us toward his full humanity: Jesus was God in the flesh. He learned, he grew, he felt real emotions, he bled real blood.

While Jesus as Son of God speaks to his exaltation and his glory, Jesus as Son of Man speaks to his humility and his suffering. From lowly beginnings in a borrowed delivery room/stable, Jesus was “despised and rejected by mankind” (Isaiah 53:3); he had “no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58); scandalously, he spent time with outcasts and sinners (Matthew 11:19); he was tortured and killed.

Jesus’s earthly life was hard, and that is one of the causes for the hope we have: our Savior suffered, and yet was glorified. We do too, and we can be too.

I quoted Philippians chapter 2 above, and that beautiful passage - sometimes called the “Christ Hymn” - is really key to unlocking this marvelous mystery:

...have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11)

Jesus, willingly, at God the Father’s request, descended to earth - he lowered himself, he took on flesh, he left the glories of heaven - in order to become and perfect what he would then save…

…us.

He was the Son of Man, and through him our humanity has been redeemed. He is the Son of God, and in him we (believers) are all children of God.

Related Resource: 
To spend some more time on what Scripture means by Jesus as Son of Man, check out this GotQuestions post What does it mean that Jesus is the Son of Man?

To know God and to make Him known!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.