"What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?"—Matthew 22:42

I do not know whether or not the brilliant judge ever had read the Bible. I only know that the quest of judge and jury was used of God to turn my thinking toward that blessed Book. I too started out that day upon a quest, for I remember how our Lord had said to the Pharisees: "What think ye of Christ? whose son is He?" (Matt. 22:42). Always it had been my belief, from childhood, that Jesus was the Son of God. I believe it still. But the judge's question sent me to God's Word to grasp the facts, organize them, and then see if I could arrive at a logical conclusion. Since I had always insisted in my mind that a skeptic had no right to doubt or deny spiritual realities until he followed through with his theory of skepticism to its logical end, I now was challenged with the fact that I had no right to declare my faith in Christ until I went through to its logical end and saw where it brought me. This I have done, not fully of course, for we shall never know Him fully until we see Him and are like Him. But I have studied and searched in order to understand more about the majestic theme: "The Sonship of Jesus."

I have concluded that many things in this topsy-turvy world do not make sense. Man has taken it upon himself to run the universe without God, and the result has been this present, whimsical, unorganized, jumbled, and senseless environment in which we find ourselves. But my mind is at rest and my soul is satisfied in regard to the claims of Christ. I am now ready to declare more emphatically than ever that Jesus is all that the Scriptures represent Him to be, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God Incarnate, who is to be worshipped and obeyed by all men.

Isaiah said: "Unto us a son is given." But whose Son is He? This statement of the prophet introduces us at once to one of the most exalted themes applied to Jesus, namely, His Sonship. Upon this great doctrine all the interrelated doctrines of Biblical Christianity stand or fall. If for any reason we have an unsound, distorted view of the Sonship of Jesus, we stand in danger of being banished from the presence of God.

Jesus is "The Son of God." Here is a divine title that reveals the uniqueness of His Person, particularly since it has to do with Christ's deity. Immediately we see that there must be some marked distinction between Christ as the Son of God and ourselves as sons of God. By the self-designation of our Lord as "The Son of God," He meant that God was His Father in the sense in which God is the Father of none other. Let us make no mistake about this. Nowhere in the realm of science, philosophy, or theology can we discover or soundly reason a natural relationship between God and men such as that which exists between God and Christ.

Jesus Himself taught His unique Sonship when referring to God as "Father." He never said "our Father" when speaking to others except once. The one occasion where He used this term is in the prayer which He taught His disciples. Their request was: "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1), and Jesus replied: "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father." (Matt. 6:9). Of course this is not "The Lord's Prayer," as it is called by many; but it is a prayer pattern given expressly for the disciples. In it they were taught to pray for forgiveness, something which our Lord never needed. For this reason the prayer can find no application to His sinless life. When He spoke to other men of their relationship to God, He did say: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:14, 15).

Speaking of little children, Christ said: "In heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father" (Matt. 18:10). To encourage believing prayer among His followers, He promised: "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 18:19). In answer to Peter's inquiry on forgiveness, Jesus said to forgive a sinning brother "until seventy times seven"; and then He added: "So likewise shall My heavenly Father do also unto you"(Matt. 18:35). Here Christ is holding conversation with the most intimate of friends and followers. YET He does not include them in His unique relationship as the "Son of God."

This divine title was used by others whenever they acknowledged the dignity of Christ's Person or His essential deity.

When the devil tempted our Lord, he made his attack against the divine side of His nature saying: "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread," and "If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down" (Matt. 4:3, 6). The demons, having full knowledge of our Lord, cried: "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?" (Matt. 8:29). Christ's first meeting with Nathanael provoked a demonstration of divine omniscience, and brought from Nathanael the confession: "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel" (John 1:49). A knowledge and a confession of the great truth that Jesus is the Son of God is one of the prerequisites to any man's becoming a son of God. The Ethiopian eunuch confessed: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God" (Acts 8:37).

Dr. Loraine Boettner has said: "In theological language the terms 'Father' and 'Son' carry with them not our occidental ideas of, on the one hand, source of being and superiority, and on the other, subordination and dependence, but rather the Semitic and oriental ideas of likeness or sameness of nature and equality of being. It is, of course, the Semitic consciousness that underlies the phraseology of Scripture, and wherever the Scriptures call Christ the 'Son of God' they assert His true and proper deity. The title signifies a unique relationship that cannot be predicated of nor shared with any creature. As any merely human son is like his father in his essential nature, that is, possessed of humanity, so Christ, the Son of God, was like His Father in His essential nature, that is, possessed of deity. The Father and the Son, together with the Holy Spirit, are coeternal and coequal in power and glory, and partake of the same nature or substance."

Every claim of Jesus Christ, including the confessions of other men, that He was the Son of God is a remarkable expression that shows the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. His title of Son of God is not based upon His Virgin Birth. He did not become the Son of God by virtue of His birth in the manger of Bethlehem, but He was Son of God by inherent right in eternity past. When Isaiah said: "Unto us a son is given," he was not referring merely to the Nativity, for the birth at Bethlehem was a fulfillment of the prophet's preceding statement, "Unto us a child is born." The Son was given before the foundation of the world, and it was He of whom the disciples bore witness when they said: "We believe that Thou camest forth from God" (John 16:30). There is no support in favor of the doctrine that the divine relationship between the Father and the Son had its beginning at the Incarnation.

In John 3:16 we read: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Here the term "only begotten" does not have reference to the human generation of Christ, but it does speak of that unique relationship in which the Son stands distinct in personality as the Son, yet coequal and eternal with the Father. Elsewhere the Father testified to the eternality of the Son when He said "unto the Son . . . Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (Heb. 1:8). It is through the eternal Son that God bath spoken unto us in these last days (Heb. 1:2). Not through One who became His Son has He spoken to the world, but through "One whose relationship to Him as Son stands in antecedent existence both to creation and to His Incarnation" (W. E. Vine). There was never a time when this relationship between the Father and the Son had a beginning. The title of this chapter might well be "The Eternal Sonship of Christ."

Jesus is the Son of Mary also. The crowds in the synagogues marveled and were astonished at the wisdom and the mighty works displayed by "the carpenter, the son of Mary" (Mark 6:3). And were they not justified in their inquiry, for was He not the son of Mary? The writer believes with all his heart that our Lord is just as much the son of Mary in His humanity as He is the eternal Son of God in His deity. The body of Jesus was not merely an "appearance," as some would have us believe; but it was just as real as the body of any other person. He was very God of very God and very man of very man, a combination of the divine and the human, both of which were needed in order to redeem us. Christ needed to be God in order to give efficacy to His death; and He needed to be man, partaking of flesh and blood, made like unto His brethren, in order to offer His body for a sacrifice on the accursed tree.

The use of the word "conceive" (sullambano) when used in reference to Elisabeth is the same as that which is applied to Mary. Luke tells us it was after the announcement of the angel to Zacharias that his wife Elisabeth was to bear a son, that "Elisabeth conceived" (Luke 1:24). Then the angel visited Mary and said: "Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name JESUS" (Luke 1:31). In other words, writes Dr. Thiessen: "Mary's conception was as true a conception as was Elisabeth's." However, there is one observable difference. When Elisabeth conceived, she had Zacharias as a husband; but when Mary conceived, she had no husband, for the angel assured Joseph: "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 1:20). When Jesus Christ was born, He took from Mary His human nature, not Mary's fallen human nature, but human nature apart from sin. If there is any moral mystery in a sinful woman giving birth to a sinless child, we have a satisfactory solution to it in the way that God intervened. God had said through His servant: "The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee" (Luke 1:35).

"Overshadow" means to encase, envelope, imprison. So Mary was shut in (or hedged about) by the power of the Highest so that the child was not influenced by Mary's sinful nature. "Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."

Jesus was the son of Mary but not the son of Joseph. His humanity is confined to the virgin mother. If, conversely, our Lord Jesus Christ were not born of a virgin, then His father is not known, and the only logical conclusion is that He was an illegitimate child. Of all such the law says: "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD" (Duet. 23:2). If Jesus were not conceived of the Holy Ghost, then He is cursed with the stigma of illegitimacy, and of necessity He would have had to be kept out of the Temple at Jerusalem and the synagogue at Nazareth. But we know that "He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read" (Luke 4:16). Certainly if the Jewish fathers thought for one moment that Christ was an illegitimate child, they never would have permitted Him to read publicly from the prophecy of Isaiah. The conception of Jesus Christ was nothing short of a divine miracle, for He had no earthly father.

In a brief article on "The Virgin Birth of Christ," Captain Henry W. Uffelin says: "This was further proved in the demonstration by the rabble crowd who demanded His death outside the judgment hall when they were asked what was to be done with Jesus, and they cried, 'Crucify Him.' He was put to death because in the archives in the Temple at Jerusalem, there was the record of His birth; proof, unmistakably, that He was the rightful heir and legal claimant to the throne of David. On Joseph's side He had no legal right to the throne, because Joseph's line was cut off due to King Jehoiakim's sin in cutting up, destroying, and burning God's Word in a fire on the hearth (Jer. 36). He did have the right to the throne, however, on His mother's side, since she was a princess in the house of Nathan. He, therefore, was Israel's rightful King. The record stood! Here is the King, the record cannot be altered or destroyed. Therefore, they crucified the King. This was a direct proof of the virgin birth of our Lord, and places the question beyond debate."

Christ is called the Son of David. Matthew commences his record of the Gospel by giving us the title of the genealogy of Jesus Christ— "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matt. 1:1). Here is a relationship between Christ and David that is distinctly stated to be one of Sonship. This means that He has a royal connection with Hebrew people, and that He is the true heir to the throne of David. There can be no shadows cast upon this fact. The Virgin Mary was a descendant of David through the house of Nathan, and the Messiah of Israel was to be born of a virgin, one who must be a descendant of David. But lest someone should challenge our Lord's right to the throne on the ground that the virgin had to be the wife of a man who had an unchallenged right to the throne, Matthew shows that Joseph is a descendant of David, and therefore Jesus has a legal right to occupy that throne.

When David was king over Israel, the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to communicate to David the divine covenant: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people, over Israel: . . . And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever" (2 Sam. 7:8, 16).

We know that after the death of David, Solomon ascended the throne and reigned over Israel. It was a reign of peace and prosperity, the Temple being built during that time. The wisdom of Solomon spread far and wide so that it looked for awhile as though his kingdom might be the everlasting kingdom about which God had spoken to David. But the story of Solomon is one of decline and final disaster. The very truths for which the Temple stood were contradicted by Solomon in his folly. Soon after his death, the kingdom of Solomon reaped the bitter fruit that he had sown, and David's kingdom, which was to be an everlasting kingdom according to God, was a total failure in David's son after the flesh.

More than one hundred years after Solomon's death, there arose a mighty prophet in Israel. He was Isaiah, the son of Amoz. Guided by the Holy Spirit, Isaiah prophesied of an everlasting kingdom, the same kingdom which the Lord had promised David: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this" (Isa. 9:6, 7). Under no condition could this have been Solomon's kingdom, for Solomon had died and his body was in the grave when Isaiah spoke these words. Furthermore, Solomon's kingdom had disintegrated. The prophet was looking down the corridors of time to the day when the Son of David, "a greater than Solomon" (Matt. 12:42), even our Lord Jesus Christ, would occupy the throne of His father David. Of Solomon we read: "The king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with pure gold" (2 Chron. 9:17), but it toppled. Of Jesus we read: "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (Heb. 1:8).

Christ, the son of David came, and offered the kingdom to His people, but with unbelieving hearts they rejected it. Those who believed on Him were few in number. We call His public offer at Jerusalem "the triumphal entry," but there was no triumph in that march to the Holy City. Among the multitudes that went before and followed Jesus that day, some shouted:

"Hosanna to the son of David" (Matt. 21:9). But there was no triumph in that entry, only a pathetic entry that ended in crucifixion. The Son of David was here, but He was rejected of men. But one day David's Son will come again. Then the rejected King, the King of kings and Lord of lords will occupy the throne and His enemies shall be made His footstool. In that day shall be fulfilled the promise of the angel Gabriel to Mary: "The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David" (Luke 1:32).

Christ is called the Son of Abraham. The Abrahamic Sonship differs from the Davidic sonship in that, while the Davidic sonship is restricted to David's house and David's people, the Abrahamic Sonship extends to "all the families of the earth" (Gen. 12:3). When God made His covenant with Abram, He said: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 12:1-3). Let us give our attention to the last clause of this promise, "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." We might ask ourselves the question: "When have all families of the earth been blessed in Abraham?" Surely Abraham did not see the fulfillment of this promise in his day, nor in Isaac's day. In fact neither the patriarchs nor the prophets witnessed a universal blessing in Abraham.

How, then, are all families of the earth to be blessed in Abraham? This is the unfulfilled aspect of the Abrahamic covenant. Some questions remain. Is the present program of God in calling out from among Jews and Gentiles a people for His Name the complete fulfillment of the covenant? Was the promise to Abraham conditional or unconditional? The latter question can be answered briefly. A careful reading of those passages which deal with the Abrahamic covenant will reveal that the promises were unconditional. The covenant is called "everlasting" (Gen. 17:7, 19). God ratified it by an oath (Gen. 15:7-21), and it was given the rite of circumcision as an outward and visible symbol. It is one of the gracious, unconditional promises of God. As regards the first question, we must answer negatively that God's present program in calling out the Church from among Jew and Gentile is not the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. The gospel is being carried to the uttermost part of the earth, but we are not witnessing the universal acceptance of Jesus Christ. Through His death our Lord Jesus Christ reached out in grace to all families of the earth. But every family of the earth has not been blessed through Him.

Christ is the promised Seed, the ground and means of spiritual blessing to the world (Gal. 3:16), but the fulfillment of the promise awaits His coming again. The families of the earth have not acknowledged the sacrificial death of Abraham's Son as an atonement for their sins, but when He comes back to earth, it will be as the Blesser of every family in the earth. All who oppose Him He will smite, and as David's Son He will rule with a rod of iron. Then, after His enemies have been destroyed, all will be blessed by Abraham's Seed, the Son of God.

Another title ascribed to Christ, one which He used frequently when speaking of Himself, was the Son of man. Whatever else our Lord meant when He used this title, certainly He was thinking of His manhood, and certainly He sought to draw attention to the fact that He possessed real humanity. But we are not to suppose that the designation of the title, Son of man, is confined to His human nature. There is more than the human connotation here. Furthermore, it was not at His birth as the virgin's son that He was made the Son of man.

It appears quite clear from the teaching of certain Scriptures that Christ possessed an essential glory as the Son of man which is different from the humanity He possessed at His birth. Jesus Himself taught this when speaking to Nicodemus. He was referring to Himself when He spoke of Him "That came down from heaven, even the Son of man" (John 3:13), and later when He asked: "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?" (John 6:62). The martyr Stephen's vision of earthly things grew dim in his dying moments; but as he looked stedfastly toward heaven he saw the heavens opened, "and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God" (Acts 7:56). Who was this Son of man? He was the same heavenly Character whom Daniel saw in the night vision and wrote: "Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him" (Dan. 7:13, 14). The Son of man was in heaven before His human birth, for it was He who descended out of heaven, and ascended to heaven after His Resurrection from the grave. As Sir Robert Anderson has said: "It was not His human birth that constituted Him the Son of man. That birth, indeed, was the fulfillment of the promise which the name implied; but the Son of man, He declared explicitly, descended out of heaven." The virgin birth was merely a stage in the fulfillment of Christ's mission as the Son of man.

A minister in the Christian Reformed Church writes: "The name 'Son of man' has its origin in the heavenlies. It harks back to that supersensitive region where the council of redemption met. The name finds its origin in that great conference and in the subject about which it met. Redemption strategy was determined upon. And since the proposed program of salvation for mortal men required incarnation of deity it had to be determined upon which of the three persons this task logically devolved. And for it the Son was indicated. Not the Father, nor the Spirit, but the Son was to be made after the fashion of men. He was to become very man, become such by assuming human nature, by becoming 'Son of man' in a word. And that appellation became the exclusive property of the Son henceforth. This gives us the necessary background to any fair evaluation of the name 'Son of Man.'"

Now we wait for this same Jesus to come again—Jesus, Son of God, Son of Mary, Son of Abraham, Son of David, and the Son of man. "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom" (Matt. 16:27, 28).