“All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Mt 11:27)
“He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’” (Mt 17:5)
“And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, ‘Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?’ But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am…’” (Mk 14:60-62a)
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Lk 1:31-32a)
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16a)
Father, may we see your Son and see Him clearly, that we may enjoy His beauties and that our lives may be transformed by His.
Christianity is unique, and Jesus is the reason why. He is the center of our faith. He is the reason why people are Christians, and He is also the reason why others are not. Everyone does something with Jesus, even if it is to ignore Him. You will stand before God clean or unclean, according to what you do with Jesus. That is a radical claim, but it is the heart of Christianity.
Jesus claimed for Himself a position and authority that no sane man would ever claim. Jesus is not like you or me. He is the Son of God. This phrase, “Son of God,” or some equivalent phrase (the Son, Son of the Most High, etc) occurs more than 120 times in the New Testament and always in reference to Jesus. It is one of the most basic proclamations that a follower of Jesus makes. Jesus understood Himself to be the Son of God. He acknowledges that fact in all four gospels.
Now when the Bible calls Jesus “Son of God,” it is not saying that He is like Hercules whose mother was human and whose father was Zeus. God the Father did not come to earth and have sex with Mary. Sometimes Muslims think this is what Christians mean by “Son of God.” They are wrong. That understanding of “Son of God” has no Biblical warrant, even in the Annunciation narrative.
In addition, when the Bible calls Jesus “Son of God,” it does not mean that Jesus is merely a son of God, as you or I might call ourselves children of God. Jesus calls Himself something different. He is the Son of God. He is the only one, the only begotten. In other words, He is unique.
Finally, when the Bible calls Jesus “Son of God,” it does not mean that Jesus had a beginning and that the Father existed before the Son. This is what Jehovah’s Witnesses believe. Instead, the Bible is using a human picture to describe a divine reality. The picture of father and son is a reference to a shared nature and inheritance. As a son has the same nature as his father, so does Jesus have the same nature as His Father, and as a son owns His Father’s inheritance, so does Jesus own everything that God owns. In addition, the picture is also a reference to how the two beings relate. The love and intimacy between Jesus and the Father is something like what you might see in a good father/son relationship. The voluntary submission of Jesus to the will of the Father is something like the voluntary submission of a good son to his father. Fathers and sons have the same nature but different roles. That is the picture of the Son of God. He is the same as His Father in terms of His nature, but He differs from His Father in terms of His role.
This means that Jesus is no ordinary man. He has the power of God. He commands demons to flee, sickness to be gone, and death to die. His death on the Cross saves all peoples in all times because He is the infinite, eternal Son of God. The love He demonstrates through the Cross is the inexhaustible love of God. His righteousness is God’s righteousness; His mercy is God’s mercy; His authority God’s authority.
Jesus does not have these things imputed to Him as gifts from God. He has them on His own by virtue of His nature. He is God. He is the glory of God on earth, the exact imprint of God’s nature (Heb 1:3). He is the Creator (Jn 1:3; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3). He is wondrous. As wondrous as God Himself.
He has an intimacy with the Father that we can never have on our own. The Father is his Abba, his Daddy, in an original sense. We can taste that intimacy through the Son of God, but we can never experience it apart from Him (Mt 11:27).
He knows God and the ways of God because He is God. He knows heaven because He has come from heaven. He does not know these things by virtue of someone teaching Him. He knows them as an insider. Heaven is His turf.
No other person in history is like Jesus. Get to know Him, and you will find yourself discovering depths you never dreamed of — the marvels of the Son of God.
