Introduction
It is important to establish up-front an
important understanding of the word son as it comes to us in the New
Testament. The Greek word is huios, but it does not primarily denote
maleness. It might be useful for us to
ask the question, what defines sonship?
Only in strict biological terms is son defined as ‘male offspring”.
To the minds of the people of the era of Jesus
and Paul, this is only a minor consideration.
What is vastly more important is the nature and the extent of the
connection between the parent and the child beyond the biological connection. And, yet again, there are three main parts or
ideas involved: at its heart, sonship contains …
þ
name
þ
inheritance
þ
DNA.
Every true son bears the name, the inheritance
and the DNA of the father. Of course
there are exceptions in today’s world, often because of misogyny (men hating
women) and misandry (women hating men).
But the general practice has stood for millennia that ‘sons’ carry the
name of their ‘father’.
I have spent some time in Uganda, East Africa,
and noted the practice among most men that they have many names. The names they have come from different
sources – different influences on their lives or different phases in their
lives. Many have names from the family,
the clan and the tribe, as well as a special name that mum or dad has for
them. Many then add another name that
comes from their chosen religion: Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or
whatever. Many of the men and women I
have met, when they came to faith in Christ, took to themselves a “Christian”
name either from the bible or from a European connection they have. In some cases, they discard names they no
longer wish to be known by. In Uganda,
your name is a vital identifier for you, placing you in time; in family, clan,
tribe and region; in religious affiliation; and in spiritual life.
These are the things the Greek word huios (son in English) is intended to
convey. So when a person turns to God in
repentance, faith and baptism, God not only grants them forgiveness of sins as
we discussed earlier, He grants them adoption as sons. This means they take their primary identity
from Him, and that primary identity is SON OF GOD.
Two types of sons
But there are two distinct types of SON OF
GOD. Our old King James bibles use a
strange term “only-begotten” son of God to describe Jesus. Begotten means born; I’m not sure what
“only-born” means; I think it was the translators’ way of saying that Jesus was
different, but different in a way that means no-on else can be like him.
However, the Greek word translated ‘only’ can
also be legitimately translated ‘first’ and ‘once’. To me, this makes much more sense. You may have noticed that I use the
expressions ‘first-born’ and ‘once-born’ to describe Jesus. Let me explain that a little.
In the Hebrew setting (Jesus was born into a
Hebrew family), the first-born son traditionally got a double inheritance: he
got two shares when each other sibling got only one. For instance, if there were six children,
there were seven shares of the inheritance and the first-born got two while the
other five got one each. In this way,
the first-born was considered and treated as special.
At Jesus’ baptism by John the
Baptist, “a voice out of the heavens” declared, “This is my beloved son in whom
I am well pleased.” Later, up on a
mountain with Peter, James and John, Jesus is ‘transfigured’ in front of them
and they are given a glimpse of the hidden glory of Jesus. Matthew records that “a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out
of the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved
Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!’ When the disciples heard, they fell face
down to the ground and were terrified. And
Jesus came and touched them and said, ‘Get
up, and do not be afraid.’ And
lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone.”
Standing
there, on that mountain, on that day, were two types of sons intimately
connected by the love of God: Jesus the first-born once-born Son of God who
bears away the sin of the world; and three twice-born sons: Peter, James and
John – face down on the ground in awe of Jesus and the reality of God’s immediate
presence.
Two
births
In
the household of God, there is only one Jesus: he is unique, he is special, and
he is the first-born son. But Jesus is
also the ‘once-born’ son. Part of Jesus’
uniqueness is that, while he did have a normal natural birth, he only needed to
be born once, unlike us who (as Jesus himself said) “must be born a second
time”. Jesus always was fit for the
family and the household of God and his natural birth did not change that; he
always was the Father’s beloved son in whom He is well pleased.
We,
on the other hand, by virtue of the systemic sin disease I spoke about earlier,
are not fit for the family and the household of God without a second birth. This is what Jesus teaches us through the
story of Nicodemus in John 3. But apostle
John wrote a little about it in the first chapter of his gospel. He says, “But as many as received Him [Jesus],
to them He gave the right to become
children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man,
but of God.” (John 1:13)
For
most of us, our natural birth comes
with blood and it is the product of the desires of our flesh, and our human
will to reproduce. Our spiritual birth – or second birth – on
the other hand is from another place altogether. It is, according to Jesus in his discussion
with Nicodemus, like this: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God.” This
birth is from eternity, where God lives, and it is entirely a work of the
Spirit of God.
Many
commentators believe that Jesus’ words ‘born of water and the Spirit’ indicate
the two births: water = natural, physical birth; spirit = spiritual birth. Others believe the water is a reference to
water baptism as practised by John the Baptist, Jesus and his apostles. Either way, in that conversation with
Nicodemus, Jesus teaches that “that which is born of the flesh is flesh and
that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” (John 3:6) And flesh and blood do not inherit the
kingdom of God.
Apostle
Paul explains things in more detail in his first letter to the Corinthians:
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a
living soul”; the last Adam became
a life-giving spirit. However, the
spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the
second man is from heaven. As is the
earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are
those who are heavenly. Just as we have
borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the
heavenly. Now I say this, brethren, that
flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the
imperishable. (1 Corinthians 15:45-50)
In summary,
C we arrive in our earthly family by means of a natural
birth, with pain and water and blood
C we arrive in our spiritual (eternal) family by means of a
spiritual birth, with pain and water and blood – but not our own: the pain is
Jesus’; the water is Jesus’; the blood is Jesus’ (see John 19:34).
Jesus
shed his blood and bore the pain for us to be born into the family and the
household of God. And he did this
because it was the express will of God.
Remember John 1:13 – born “not of the will of the flesh nor of the will
of man, but of God.”
What then does this spiritual birth introduce
us into? Our status as children (sons)
of God. We shall consider that now.
Humans as sons of God
Despite
the struggles and strife of Israel throughout their history recorded in our Old
Testament, it has long been God’s intention that He live with His people as a
family, a household, in abiding relationships of father-son. One of the places we see this is in the
relationship God has with Israel’s King David and his son Solomon.
The
Old Testament historian records this:
The LORD, the God of Israel, chose me from all the house
of my father to be king over Israel forever. For He has chosen Judah to be a
leader; and in the house of Judah, my father’s house, and among the sons of my
father He took pleasure in me to make me
king over all Israel. Of all my sons
(for the LORD has given me many sons), He has chosen my son Solomon to sit on
the throne of the kingdom of the LORD over Israel. He said to me, ‘Your son Solomon is the one
who shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be a son to
Me, and I will be a father to him’. 1 Chronicles
28:4-6
God
had a very particular covenant with David and God takes his covenants
seriously. Prophet Nathan, speaking of
God’s covenant with King David said this, as recorded in 2 Samuel 7:14-15:
I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me;
when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the
strokes of the sons of men, but My lovingkindness shall not depart from him.
In
David’s beautiful prayer of response, he says this to God:
Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that You have
brought me this far? ... Again what more can David say to You? For You know Your servant, O Lord GOD! For the sake of Your word, and according to
Your own heart, You have done all this greatness to let Your servant know … For
this reason You are great, O Lord GOD; for there is none like You, and there is
no God besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
Later
in Israel’s history, according to the prophet Jeremiah, they forsook the Lord –
repeatedly. Jeremiah records the word of
the Lord in chapter 2,
I remember concerning you the lovingkindness of your
youth, the love of your betrothals, your following after Me in the wilderness,
through a land not sown. Israel was holy
to the Lord, the first of His harvest; and all who ate of it became guilty;
evil came upon them.” BUT, the word continues,
“What injustice did you fathers find in Me that they went far from Me and
walked after emptiness and became empty?
God
lays so many charges against “faithless Israel”, yet He has never departed from
His original intention and promise.
Jeremiah 3:19 records the word of the Lord like this:
How I would set you among My sons, and give you a
pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of the nations! … You shall call
Me ‘My Father’, and not turn away from following Me.
Despite
their philanderings, God’s mercy ultimately prevails. Jeremiah 30 and 31 record the word of the
Lord as,
Behold, I will restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob
and have compassion on his dwelling places; and the city shall be rebuilt on
its ruin, and the palace shall stand on its rightful place … and you shall be
My people and I will be your God. At
that time, I will be the God of all the families of Israel and they shall be My
people … I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have drawn you
with lovingkindness.
The
word continues,
There is hope for your future … I have surely heard
Ephraim [one of the tribes of Israel] … Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a delightful child? Indeed, as often as I have spoken against
him, I certainly remember him; therefore My heart yearns for him; I will surely
have mercy on him.
Old
Testament Prophet Hosea wrote the word of the Lord as follows:
Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the
sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered; and it shall come about
that, in the place where it is said to them ‘you are not my people’, it will be
said to them, ‘you are the sons of the living God’. (Hosea 1:10)
And
Prophet Isaiah records the word of the Lord:
And I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the
south, ‘do not hold them back’. Bring my
sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth. (Isaiah 43:6)
In
the days of Jesus and the first apostles likewise, it was God’s intention, will
and plan that He would relate to us humans not as a tyrant or a school
principal or an affable grandad, but as a true father. That is part of the good news of the kingdom
of God as lived and proclaimed by Jesus and his apostles.
The
writer to the Hebrew believers in the New Testament directly references the 2
Samuel 7 prophecy as he argues the case that Jesus is superior in every way to
all the icons of the old covenant: superior to angels; superior to Moses;
superior to the old priesthoods of Aaron and the Levites. The writer asks pointedly and rhetorically:
“To which of the angels did God ever say, ‘you
are my son, today I have given birth to you’ or ‘I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me’?” Yet that is what God said of Jesus.
The
same writer says a little later on that, “Both He who sanctifies [Jesus, the
once-born son] and those who are sanctified [the twice-born sons] are all from same
Father; for which reason He [Jesus] is not ashamed to call them
brothers.”
In
similar vein, apostle Paul quotes the Hosea and Isaiah references above when
writing to the Corinthian believers as he urges them to separate themselves
from the behaviours of the corrupt society they are living in because, argues
Paul, we are the temple of God and God’s temple has no agreement with temples
of idols and human depravity. We are
sons of God, says Paul, so let’s live up to that reputation.
Along
a similar line, apostle Paul writes to the Philippians:
For this reason also, God highly exalted Him [Jesus], and
bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of
Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under
the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father … so, do all things without grumbling or disputing; so
that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God
above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom
you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in
the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor
toil in vain” (Philippians 2:9-16)
The
other extremely important passage in the New Testament is Romans 8. From verse 12, Paul writes:
We are under no obligation to the flesh, to live
according to its desires; for if you are living according to the flesh, you
must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body,
you will live. All who are being led by
the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For
you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have
received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit
that we
are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs
with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. For
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits
eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For
the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who
subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its
slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know
that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together
until now. And not only this, but also
we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we
ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that
is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we
hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
Yes,
it is true – our adoption as sons is not fully realised as long as we remain
here limited as we are in time and space and matter. In the eternal dimension, sonship is fully
realised, but even as we live in hope of the full and rich outworking of
sonship, we have the day-by-day reality that the Spirit witnesses with our
Spirit that we are sons of God.
Earlier
I pointed to three parts of sonship: name, inheritance and DNA. This is what I am referring to:
Name
·
Philippians 2:9 above says that God highly
exalted Jesus and gave him a name that is above every name so that, at the name
of Jesus, every knee will bow to his lordship and every tongue will confess
that he is Lord – to the honour and glory of God the Father.
·
Hebrews 1:4 says that Jesus has inherited a name
and he is as superior to angels as his name is superior to theirs. Angels are servants and messengers; Jesus is
a son. But he is not just any son, he is
the first-born, once-born Son of the Father.
The Hebrew word for ‘son of the father’ is Bar-Abbas.
[There is a bitter-sweet irony in the fact that, when
Jesus [alias Bar-Abbas] was crucified, there was a criminal who was on death
row but who won a reprieve from the Jews because they said they wanted the
innocent Jesus dead in exchange for the life of a convicted criminal. The name of that criminal was … wait for it …
Bar-Abbas! True!]
Jesus, according to his Father,
is the much-beloved son with whom He is well-pleased. But what is this name he has inherited that
is far superior to angels? SON OF GOD! It is possible that the Hebrew aversion to
saying or writing the actual name of God might have prevented the writer to the
Hebrews from saying what the actual name is, but there seems little to support
that idea. The name that is above every
name; the name that is superior to the angels; the name to which every knee
will bow; the name which every tongue will confess – is this: THE LORD JESUS:
THE CHRIST; THE SON OF GOD. And what is
the name of every one (man or woman) who welcomes Jesus and receives their
right? Son of God!
And …
þ each
son bears the name of his Father.
þ in
every son’s face, you can see the attributes of the Father.
þ in
every son’s behaviour, the Father’s actions are reflected.
And, according to Paul, “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the
glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to
glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
Until we reach eternity …
Apostle
John wrote:
See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that
we would be called children of God; and truly
we are. For this reason the world does not understand or recognise us,
because it did not understand or recognise Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what
we will be. But we know that when He appears,
we will be like Him, because we will see
Him just as He is. And everyone who
has this hope fixed on Him
purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 John 3:1-2)
Inheritance
Every son inherits. What he inherits in detail is only fully
known at the time of the actual inheritance.
In his high-priestly prayer for his disciples recorded in John’s gospel,
Jesus said some very interesting things.
Like this:
But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide
you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but
whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to
come. He will glorify Me, for He will
take of Mine and will disclose to you. All things that the Father has are Mine;
therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose to you. (John 16:13-15)
The
Spirit will disclose, bit by bit, what the sons of God inherit. In general, Jesus inherits all that belongs to the Father. In the Romans 8 passage above, notice verse
17.
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are
children of God [part of our inheritance], and if children, heirs also, heirs
of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with
him.
All that belongs to the Father is inherited by the
first-born once-born Son; as sons (twice-born sons), we are also heirs of God;
that means we are joint-heirs with Jesus our elder brother. We get to share all that belongs to God with
Jesus – as our inheritance. Think about
that. What belongs to God? Perhaps it is better and easier to ask what
does not belong to God? Whatever
that is, we don’t inherit that, but the rest – we inherit.
Deoxyribonucleic acid: DNA molecules are nucleic
acids, informational molecules encoding the genetic
instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms. You wanted to know that didn’t you? I am not a scientist of any sort and I
understand little of DNA, but I can in part understand the above definition –
which I got from Wikipedia recently.
Molecules of nucleic acids
contain encoded information which constitute the “instructions” needed for life
to develop and to be maintained. One of
the results of the presence and functioning of DNA within me as a person is
that people looking at me can see, in my features and characteristics and
personality, elements of my parents and grand-parents and
great-grand-parents. I can even see some
of those things myself. My wife says to
me periodically, ‘sometimes you look just like your mother.’ And sometimes I act just like my father.
I am using DNA here as an
analogy. There is no scripture reference
for what I say since DNA was not known at the time the scriptures were
written. We accept that God is three
persons in one: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The terms and ideas of ‘father’ and ‘son’ are in everyday use and we
have the mental structures within us to transfer those concepts to our
understanding of God. But not so with
the ‘holy spirit’.
Many of our old English bibles
used the term Holy Ghost and delivered to generations of English bible readers
the concept of “the ghost of God”. Is he
an apparition that can come and go as he pleases, appearing and disappearing at
will? Is he the ‘shadow’ of a god who died
long ago? I don’t think so.
Many reject the whole idea of
God as a Trinity, seeing it as incompatible with the teaching that there is one
God and God is One. I am not one of the many. As a living breathing person, I am, at the
same time, father, son and brother; and I am always all three
simultaneously. So I have no trouble
believing that God can be Father, Son and Holy Spirit – simultaneously – and
still be One God. In a similar way, H2O
can be water, ice and steam and still be H2O.
But coming back to me for a
moment, I believe, I am, along with all humans, body, soul and spirit
(1Thessalonians 5:23). My body is a
composite of bones, flesh and skin; my soul is a composite of mind, emotions
and will; my spirit is a composite of conscience, intent and temper. My children have inherited some traits of my
body, some traits of my soul and some traits of my spirit – all quite
differently. When I die and my body and
soul wither and decay, my spirit, as I see it, continues on since it is not
subject to decay and destruction. In this
life, as Paul wrote, God’s Spirit witnesses with my spirit that I am a son of
God – a child who inherits the kingdom of God.
And, as we noted earlier, flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of
God.
I believe it is this way because
God willed it this way and then created according to His will. And we know that he created man after His own
‘image’. If God is Spirit and has no
body except for Jesus and the Body of Christ (the ecclesia); and if He has no
facial image as we understand it, in what way are we created “in the image of
God”? I believe it is precisely this:
that God created man with body, soul and spirit because that reflects His own
image.
And just as my spirit is hard to
define or capture an idea of, so is God’s Spirit. I find it easiest to begin to get a handle on
the idea of spirit by thinking of DNA.
Just as my children inherit my DNA and so develop features,
characteristics and personality according to the encoded information in my DNA
molecules, we as children of God are implanted with His DNA (His Holy Spirit)
at the time of our spiritual conception and inherit features, characteristics
and personality traits according to the DNA of God.
The Holy Spirit is given to
every son, and the Holy Spirit contains, and brings with him, and implants
within each one the encoded information necessary for the building and maintenance
of spiritual life.
Paul
said: “But just as it is written: ‘things which eye has not seen and ear has
not heard, and which have not
entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.’
For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the
depths of God. Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit
of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except
the Spirit of God.”
But, as Paul clearly and evidently teaches, it is this
Spirit of God that is given to the sons of God.
And “All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
says Paul in Romans 8:14.
And there is no better way to introduce the last of
the three gifts of God I am speaking of here: the gift of the Holy Spirit.Cheers,
Kevin.
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