The Son of God

In the Old Testament there are two Scriptures that refer to the Sonship of the Lord Jesus which are quoted in Hebrews 1, Psalm 2:7 and 1 Chronicles 22:10. The former is a definite prophesy concerning the Lord Jesus as Jehovah's King; the latter shows Solomon as a type of the Lord Jesus. Besides these there is the appearing in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace of "One like the Son of God," and the mystic reference in Proverbs 30:4, "Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is His Name, and what is His Son's Name if thou canst tell?" All these are no doubt distinct references to the Person of the Son of God, but they could not be understood as such until the Son came from heaven to reveal the Father.

The Son Whom No Man Knows

Matthew 11 brings the Son of God before us as rejected by the cities of Galilee, where His mighty works had been done, and after pronouncing His judgment upon them He turns to His Father saying, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes" (Matt. 11:25). It was good in the sight of the Father to hide His great revelations from the leaders of Israel, and to make them known to His despised disciples. Then He said, "All things are delivered unto me of My Father: and no one knoweth the Son, but the Father."

The Father was revealed by the Son to the favoured disciples, whom the world thought nothing of, and this is true for those who belong to the Lord today as in that day; but the Son Himself was not the subject of revelation. Only the Father could know the Son in the eternal relationships in which He stood to Him, it belonged to the secret of the Godhead; nor could any know the Son in the mystery that united in Him the fulness of Godhead and the true and perfect Manhood that He had assumed in incarnation.

The Son of the Living God

If, as is recorded in Matthew 11, the Son is pleased to reveal the Father to His own, we learn from Matthew 16:13-17 that it was the good pleasure of the Father to reveal to Simon Peter who Jesus was as His Son. Peter did not learn that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God from flesh and blood; it was a divine revelation from the Father Himself. Some, like Martha and Nathanael, were able to confess Jesus according to the prophecy of the Second Psalm, but neither could be called a revelation of the Father.

This revelation of Jesus from the Father brings from the lips of the Son a further revelation to Peter, telling of what He was about to do, to build His assembly. The assembly was not to be built just then, it awaited the rising of the Son from the dead, and it may be that this explains why it was as Son of the Living God that the Father revealed Jesus to Peter. The Son of the Living God is later spoken of by Peter as The Living Stone, and that those who form the spiritual house are living stones. Here we learn the Name of Jesus as the Builder of the assembly, and as the Rock on which the assembly is founded. The gates of hell cannot prevail against His workmanship because of the greatness of the Builder, and because of the living material He uses to build with. The stones in the structure take character from the Builder, and from the rock on which they are built.

An Only-Begotten with a Father

To the eye that had been opened by God the glories of the Son shone in their varied lustre through the veil of His Manhood. John, with his fellow disciples, beheld One who was more than Man as they looked upon Jesus. There was a peculiar attraction for them in God's dear Son, and how they must have delighted in their Master, little though they could understand at the time concerning the wonderful mysteries that were bound up in Him. It is not exactly here the Only-begotten Son who inhabited eternity, but the Son in Manhood. There was evidently with the disciples, in the contemplation of their Master, that spiritual intelligence that impressed them with His relationship with God, and this was as of an Only-begotten with a Father (John 1:14).

Connected with the Lord Jesus in the glory that shone out in Him in this way was the fulness of grace and truth. This was a divine glory, but shining out in the Son in Manhood for the blessing of men. If it gave the Son pleasure to tell out the Father's grace, how it must have delighted the heart of the Father to look down upon His Son here to see Him carrying out His will, and to see the effect produced on those whom He had given to His Son. They could see that His mission was from God, that His grace was from God, and the manner in which He carried out His ministry brought home to them some ray of the pleasure that His life must have given to God His Father.

The Only Begotten Son in the Bosom of the Father

Here in John 1:18 is something different from what we have been engaged with in verse 14. There it was the relationship of the Son in Manhood as the One freighted with grace and truth, here it is the Son in His unique and eternal relationship with the Father from before time. The Only-begotten distinguishes the Son in a relationship peculiar to Himself, one into which none but Himself could ever be with the Father. It is also true that the bosom of the Father is the Son's own place, His eternal place, in the Father's affections. We are indeed sons in association with the Son, and the love of the Father rests upon us as it rests upon the Son: but this does not touch the questions of the Son's unique relationship and place in the Father's bosom.

No man had seen God at any time, and this evidently means something different from Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel seeing "the God of Israel" (Ex. 24:10). None had ever seen God as He is in His nature until He was revealed by the only One who could make Him known, the Only-begotten Son who is ever in His bosom. The elders of Israel saw God in relation to the giving of the law, but not as He truly is, the God of all grace, a God who is love in His nature, and who desires the blessing of all men. As to His being, God dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man hath seen, nor can see.

The Son. The Baptizer with the Holy Spirit

Of Jesus, John Baptist said. "I knew Him not" (John 1:33). It is hardly likely that John is speaking of Jesus as a Man in this world in His natural relationships, for their mothers were cousins, and from Luke's Gospel we learn of the intimacy of their relationship in earlier days, though Elizabeth being then advanced in years may have long since entered her rest. But John did not know Jesus as Son of God; he had not yet understood the truth as his mother had expressed it. "And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43).

But John had been sent of God, and the One who sent him revealed to him who Jesus was, the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit. Having learned this of Jesus he bears witness that Jesus is the Son of God. He saw the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, the evidence that it was the One of whom God had spoken, and the expression of the pleasure that God found in Him, and of the confidence of God in anointing Him for His divine mission.

Although John saw Him as Son of God in this world, His baptizing with the Holy Spirit relates to His place as risen from the dead and glorified at God's right hand. What a deep impression was left upon John's spirit by this divine revelation. It was this that enabled Him to say, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world"; and to so speak that two of his disciples left him to follow Jesus.

Son of God — King of Israel

The 2nd Psalm looks forward to the day when Messiah, God's King, will be set upon His holy hill of Zion, but it also contemplates the hatred and opposition to the Lord on earth. Nathaniel, like other pious Jews, looked forward to the coming of Messiah, but found it hard to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the One of whom Moses and the prophets had spoken, when Philip brought him the amazing tidings. But Philip's wise answer to him was "Come and see"; and when Jesus saw him coming, and told him He had seen him under the fig tree before Philip called him, at once he realised who Jesus was, and confessed "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel" (John 1:49).

"An Only-begotten Son" viewed the Lord here in Manhood as loved by the Father; "The Only-begotten Son" viewed Him as ever in the Father's bosom, a relationship outside of time, yet still existing in time; "The Son . . ." Baptizer with the Holy Spirit, is the Lord risen and glorified; and the Son of God, King of Israel presents Him in His coming kingdom among His people Israel.

Son of God with Power

What divine enigmas meet in the Person of the Son of God! But a short time before He entered into death, crucified in weakness, He had raised Lazarus from the dead. It ought to have been evident to all who knew of this mighty act, that His entry into death was a voluntary act, no man taking His life from Him, but laying it down of His own will. It was divine love that took Him into death, even as the Apostle Paul wrote, "The Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me." As soon as Paul was converted he preached that Jesus was the Son of God (Acts 9:20); and writing to the saints at Rome he tells us that the Gospel of God concerns God's Son, of David's seed according to the flesh, "And declared Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead" (Romans 1:1-4).

The same divine power in which the Lord walked in holiness in this world is the resurrection power manifested in Him. This is declared in the Gospel which brings to us the blessings of God which we could not have received apart from the resurrection of Jesus. We see that He is Son of God with power in raising the widow of Nain's son, and in bringing back to life the daughter of Jairus; but it is yet more manifest when He brings back Lazarus from death and corruption. The most wonderful display of this divine power was when He Himself came forth from death, leading captive principalities and powers, and overthrowing the power of death and Satan. Soon this same divine power will raise all His sleeping saints; and finally He will bring out of death's domain those who are to appear before His judgment seat, and cast death and hell into the lake of fire.

The Son of the Father's Love

When God delivers His people from the power of darkness, He brings them into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Under the authority of God's dear Son we learn what a God He is, and His mind and will for us. We also learn more of His Son who accomplished the great work of redemption that our sins might be forgiven, and that we might have part with those who are brought into divine blessing now, and shall be in the light of God's presence for eternity.

In Colossians 1, the apostle, by the Spirit, delights to present the Son of the Father's love in a rich array of glories. The saints at Colosse were in danger of being occupied with angels, and allowing philosophy to take them away from their resources in Christ. The Son of God, in the wide range of glories brought out in verses 15-18, was the Head of the body, the assembly; and in Him all that they needed as His members was to be found. Indeed, they were complete, without need of anything else, in Him who is the Head of every principality and authority. The world's learning, and its principles, can add nothing to the Christian; all for them is to be found in God's Son, and all outside of Him will but be for the gratifying of the flesh.

The Son — Appointed Heir of All Things

There are three outstanding chapters that present to us the greatness of the Son of God; John 1; Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1 We have touched lightly on the first two, and can but, for our present purpose, do the same with Hebrews 1 In each of these divine views of God's Son, He is brought before us as the creator. Often has it been noticed that when any one of the Persons of the Trinity is presented as the Creator, it is the Son. Do we not see in this the divine wisdom that safeguards the glory of the Person who took upon Him the form of a servant to secure the purposes of the Godhead? Men have used the incarnation and the Son's place as a Servant in attempts to deprive Him of His Godhead glory; but the Spirit of God, on the pages of inspiration, has presented Him as the One who created the universe of God.

God has spoken in former days by prophets, and all former communications were but fragments disclosing something of God's thoughts; but now, in the Person of the Son there has been the full revelation of God. Coming into creation, the work of His hands, to make God known, the Son is viewed as the "appointed Heir of all things." All things belong to the Son as creator, as appointed Heir, but also in His rights of redemption, for, as we read in chapter 2, "He tasted death for everything" (Heb. 2:9). God's glory shines out brightly in the Son: but He expresses what God is in Himself, what no other could do. Everything in the universe is held in its place by His might, and having wrought out the great work of propitiation. He sat down in the rights of His Person on the right hand of the majesty on high.

Gods Son — The True God and Eternal Life

There is not only everything for the assembly in Christ, but everything for the individual child of God. Eternal Life has been given to us by God, but "this life is in His Son." All our present divine blessing is summed up in eternal life in this epistle, and God would have us to realise that it is in Jesus, His own Son. We have the nature of God and the Holy Spirit, whereby "We know that the Son of God is come." Not only do we believe it; we know it, having the present consciousness of it as engaged in communion with the Father and the Son. This great fact, the coming of the Son, is the power that influences every department of our lives; controlling every spring and action of the divine nature within us, and every movement without that is actuated by the Spirit of God.

Having come and manifested all that God is in His nature of love, the Son has gone to the Father's presence, and from there has communicated to His own the eternal life of which He is the embodiment, as also the True God, setting forth in Himself where He is, as once where He was, every thought of God. While waiting to have our part with Him in the Father's House, He is the object to fill and satisfy our hearts, and it is as engaged with Him, the eye resting upon Him that we can be for Him during the time of His absence. Living for the Father, He overcame the world; and with our hearts and minds occupied with Him where He is we shall overcome the world, for, saith the Scripture, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1 John 5).